Before we get to this edition of the Dailies, I want to apologize to the 1 1/2 of you who care for taking about a month and a half since the last column. With my recent move and getting things in order in my apartment, trying to play through a 24 year major league baseball career on MLB 09: The Show, getting distracted writing other columns for this site, putting off writing by watching Red Sox games or boozing, trips to Maine and Philadelphia, mourning over the death of Michael Jackson, suffering a throat laceration when Randy "Macho Man" Savage dropped me over a guardrail, and sleeping, I've simply not had much time or inclination to sit down and watch movies recently.
I'm going to tinker with a new format moving forward. I've been writing reviews of every film I've seen since the inception of this site back in December, and while I like doing that, it causes me to put off watching films sometimes because I know that as soon as I watch one I need to go write about it. And between you and me, I don't always feel like writing about every movie I see. Then time goes by and the movie and its details move further and further into the back of my mind until they're hazy recollections that I have no business using as the basis for an article.
So instead, I'm going to pick one movie out of every three or four that I see and focus on that, while doing very brief opinions on the others that I viewed. I think I can name every person that reads this site in under four lines of text, so I don't think this will matter too much, but if you object or have any suggestions, please feel free to email me at themusicarium@yahoo.com.
Let's get started!
The Matador (2005) - Dir: Richard Shepard; Principles: Pierce Brosnan, Greg Kinnear, Hope Davis, Phillip Baker Hall
The Matador was a fun and entertaining film that was enjoyable despite problems with pacing, some poorly written/hastily thrown together plot twists, and a lack of depth. Brosnan plays a scummy hitman with a vulgar charm about him, and he is the reason this film keeps its head above water. I've never seen Brosnan like this; the role is sort of the antithesis of Brosnan's established English gentleman character. He plays off Greg Kinnear, who does what he seemingly always does; portrays an unsophisticated mope struggling through life. It's a sufficiently quirky film, thanks to some of the director's conventions and due in large part to Brosnan's character, who we never really get a true feel for until its conclusion. Loose ends are thrown together towards the end and the storyline doesn't always make sense. Brosnan's performance isn't enough to completely ignore the faults of The Matador, but it is enough to diminish them. B-.
Casino (1995) - Dir: Martin Scorcese, Principles: Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Sharon Stone
Yes, I've seen Casino before. I'm actually a proud owner of the film on DVD. But I recently rewatched it and was truly mesmerized by its frenetic (but never overwhelming) pacing, its strong performances from De Niro, Pesci and Stone, and the amazing storyline. Casino is sometimes overshadowed by Scorcese's Goodfellas, but this really might be a better film. Goodfellas showed us the life of a mobster, but Casino does the same, within the dizzying confines of Las Vegas. Not much new to say on the subject, but it really is a hell of a film and I'd recommend this strongly to anyone who hasn't seen it. Sharon Stone won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of call-girl and horrible mother Ginger McKenna. A.
Frost/Nixon (2008)
Dir: Ron Howard
Principle Actors: Michael Sheen, Frank Langella, Oliver Platt, Sam Rockwell
There are two very strong facets of Frost/Nixon that I imagine helped earn the film an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture at last year's Oscars. The first is the story. Frost/Nixon follows the series of 1977 interviews between British talk show host and moonlighting journalist David Frost and disgraced former president Richard Nixon from their inception to their ensuing fallout. It's an engaging story, helped in no small part because it actually happened in real life and people remember it taking place. Richard Nixon, from all accounts (I wasn't alive) a thoroughly despised man, during his presidency and after it, talking with a British entertainer candidly about what he did that caused him to be thought of that way. It's an engaging and at times exhilarating story, in ways we'll discuss in a second.
The other thing Frost/Nixon has going for it is the performance of Frank Langella as Richard Nixon, a role that earned him an Oscar nom for Best Actor. Again, I wasn't around to live through Nixon's presidency, and even though he died in 1994, I don't ever remember seeing an interview with him when I was a child. From every review I read and everything I hear, Langella nailed the performance.
Though I can certainly see for myself that Langella was very good in the film, someone as iconic and well known as Nixon must be a hard man to portray. In a way, Langella was almost too accurate. Not to say that he was "trying too hard" by any means, but I never got lost in the role. I think someone like Nixon is one of a kind; Langella handled the role strongly, but there was an unmistakable sheen of acting occurring that caused me to mentally separate actor from role and view the part as "Langella playing Nixon".
Michael Sheen plays British talk show/variety show host David Frost, whom I had never heard of before this film was released. He plays a decent foil for Nixon, but largely gives way to Langella's performance. David Edelstein of New York Magazine sums up Sheen's performance perfectly: "(the film) is brisk, well crafted, and enjoyable enough, but the characters seem thinner (Sheen is all frozen smiles and squirms) and the outcome less consequential". Indeed, Sheen's Frost isn't very nuanced or complicated. It's all on the surface for him, unlike Langella's Nixon, who tells us something every time he shifts his eyes.
Frost/Nixon's best scenes are of the duel between Frost and Nixon over which way the interviews go; essentially, who wins them. Frost assembles a crack team of researchers and Nixon historians to ready him for the interviews; they're played by Oliver Platt and Sam Rockwell in fine roles for both. Nixon's camp is led by Kevin Bacon, who plays chief-of-staff Jack Brennan. Both men depend heavily on their associates for guidance and support. At one point during the interviews, Brennan and Nixon discuss how the most recent session went as if Nixon is a boxer swinging away on the weaknesses of his opponent. The confrontations never get physically heated, but they don't need to. Nixon's attempt to break (in his opinion) the weak-minded Frost and Frost's attempts to cajole some sort of contrition from Nixon, and their strategies for doing so, provide for the best pieces of the film.
Frost/Nixon seems a bit confused when it comes to motivation, however. Frost seems to only be in this for the money. He talks before the Nixon interviews of the ratings they will bring and his lust for success in America. Sam Rockwell's character of Nixon biographer and UNC professor Bob Zelnick cares about getting a confession out of Nixon for the good of the American people; Frost doesn't seem to share his convictions. Frost cares about getting Nixon to say something noteworthy only because it would further his own career. After Nixon apologizes to the American public and says he'd do things differently (with Frost "winning" the interview), and we get the "what happened next" montage, Frost is mentioned as having gotten an American talk show and becoming even more famous. It's hard to buy the event as having created solace for Americans disheartened by Watergate when one half of the title wasn't really interested in that type of outcome.
B
John Lacey
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