Ten Costume Dramas That Fail

• Troy. Taking liberties with a story is not a crime, unless it is for no apparent reason and messes up entire character motivations. But that’s not the only thing wrong with this. Orlando Bloom is as convincing as a passionate lover as Gumby would be in this role. Eric Bana is usually good, but maybe Gumby’s pony pal Pokey would do a better job. Helen Whatsit as the face that launched a thousand ships? Well, OK, I mean she’s not my type, but when she opens her mouth to speak she KILLS the illusion completely. She might as well be saying, “Can I take your order?” Also — Calm down, Brad.
• Alexander. So many things to pick on. So so many things. I have to lay most of the blame on the doorstep of the script writer and the director. King Phillip united barbaric clans but here he is no more than a cave man. Colin Farrell screams and screams and screams and make it stop! I had no idea Angelina Jolie was a she-vampire from the Carpathian mountains.
• Titus. Based on Shakespeare’s most repellent work. NO version of this twisted bloodbath was ever going to be called “good.” This is horrific on every level. I wish I could forget I saw it.
• The Lion in Winter. Go ahead and hate me. I know this is considered Landmark Cinema and I used to feel the same way. But after seeing it lately and cringing at the borderline creepy dialogue, I have to say that this just does not hold up over time. It did motivate me to look more into Eleanor and Richard, though. So I’ve got that going for me.
• Tristan and Isolde. I like this story. But I think this version had two huge strikes against it. It was hard to follow (reading the story is much clearer … film just muddled the characters). And (huge) the casting was ridiculous. Are you asking me to believe Isolde would pine for whiny, sulky, angst-y teen wonder boy Tristan instead of Lord Marke? Really? Marke had it so going on. He could best Tristan one hand tied behind his back. Literally.
• Washington Square. Actually not an overall bad production. Good in many ways — except for Jennifer Jason Lee and her Clenched Jaws of Death. Why the hell do you always deliver your lines through a serious case of TMJ, Jennifer? Distracting. It’s like she’s imitating Kirk Douglas.
• Under the Greenwood Tree. I have no excuse. I fell asleep.
• Elizabeth, The Golden Age. It pains me because I wanted to like it. But come on…don’t you think it was kind of silly? You do. I know you do.
• House of Mirth. Hilarious Irony! I know it wasn’t supposed to be a Michael Bay film and I know I was supposed to see the characters’ subtlety and pain and layers of fraught meaning and catch their esoteric glances and swoony reactions but I didn’t. OK? I didn’t. I was just bored. Then Dan Akyroyd showed up and I perked up a bit, then I was embarrassed for him and them I went back to thinking about turtles. Or something.
• Middlemarch. A collective cry of pain and protest from Middlemarch fans everywhere! “How could you not like this?” I like the book. I really do. I felt like this 199? version almost made a caricature of some of the more complicated people and plots. (Except Raffles. I loved Raffles.) I also have to admit that just maybe many of the things that worked on paper would not work on screen regardless of how this story is adapted. They are taking another stab at this aghain with a new production in the works, and I am sure I’ll see it. But I think the book is always going to come out on top for me.

And…a few I lft off the list below of Costume Dramas That Succeed:

• Barry Lyndon

• The Duelist

• The Horseman on the Roof

• Gladiator

Ten Costume Dramas That Succeed…

• The Crossing — Jeff Daniels in the dramatization of Gen. George Washington’s Christmas Eve crossing of the Delaware. Breathes life into the history-class staple. The details are plenty and graphic and as a result, one begins to understand the gravity and desperation behind this monumental feat. Inspiring and deeply moving.
• Elizabeth I — Stroke of genius casting in Helen Mirren as Elizabeth I in her later years and Jeremy Irons as her forever and most trusted friend and lover the Earl of Leicester, Robert Dudley. The wisdom and stubborn folly of one of the world’s most powerful women ever is painfully and dramatically explored in this miniseries.
• The Way We Live Now — Overlapping and intricate stories of crumbling power, manifest destiny and financial desperation among the genteel and feckless. Fabulously broad social commentary by Anthony Trollope. It’s practically his specialty. Special applause for the wonderful and despicable Felix Carbury. The cad.
• Much Ado About Nothing – Kenneth Branagh sometimes succeeds and sometimes fails in his zeal to bring the classics to life. This is a howling success. He makes pure Shakespearean dialogue accessible and flat-out hilarious. Honorable Mention to Michael Keaton as…what the hell was he anyway? Nimrodus Absurdus Perfectus.
• North and South — Elizabeth Gaskell’s (arguably) best novel made into a miniseries that begs multiple viewings. Totally addictive.
• Anne of The Thousand Days — Richard Burton as Henry VIII and Genvieve Bujold as Anne Boleyn. One of the best celluloid stabs at telling this impossible-to-believe story.
• The Taming of the Shrew: Shakespeare Retold — This modern-day version gave me such momentous pause that I re-read the play and watched the Burton-Taylor version (which kind of blows — Liz overacts laughably) with fresh perspective. I am converted. This delightful re-telling has subtle, meaningful insight into the puzzle of marriage.
• Spartacus – All roads of period-drama lead here. Fantastically timeless story of slavery and the meaning of “fighting for freedom.” What a geek I am: I am tearing up thinking about Varinia showing the dying Spartacus his free-born son.
• Bleak House — So many of Dickens’ books are brought effectively to the screen. I chose this one because I recently re-watched it and it’s a great example of a production that does Dickens’ rich peripheral characters justice. X-Files‘ Gillian Anderson stars.
• Romeo and Juliet, Franco Zeffirelli version — Zeffirelli executes period drama so well (see the miniseries Jesus of Nazareth). He turns huge, passionate stories into huge passionate, delicious movies dripping with color, life and meaning. This 1968 version is a gold standard to me.

Next up: Ten Costume Dramas That Fail

Shakespeare Retold

The Taming of the Shrew/Midsummer Night’s Dream/Macbeth/Much Ado About Nothing

I love Shakespeare and I love BBC TV series. This popped up on my Netflix Recommendation list probably for those two reasons. I’d give this a huge A-plus, even though only 50 percent of the offerings are good. Scratch that…the two that are good (Macbeth and Taming of the Shrew) are GREAT. The other two are suckfests.

Macbeth

Take a murder-thriller-tragedy set in a dank Scottish castle and transfer it to a haute cuisine restaurant. Turn the three soothsaying witches into three trash-talking, prognosticating garbage collectors. Take a power-hungry, murderous couple driven mad by guilt, greed and power lust and cast James MacAvoy and Keely Hawes as a married couple living in the restaurant that they run (she’s the manager/host and he’s the talented head chef undercut by the poseur, marquee-name chef owner). MacAvoy has the frenetic energy and swagger to pull this off , and Hawes (who is usually prissy and off-putting) makes her version of Lady Macbeth come to life using a creepy/tragic episode in her past brought to the surface by her part in a (series of) grisly murder(s). The two of them and their freefall into bloody madness are not the only good thing about this. The aforementioned scary-comic trash collectors, the stalwart, loyal kitchen staff…all are very effective. The sterile-looking kitchen setting shows off all the blood (real and imagined) very effectively, sometimes looking strikingly a surgical theater or even a morgue. It’s really good, and it stayed with me for days. One Bad Thing: No subtitle option. This is acted using heavy Scottish accents, heavy on the slang. I lost a lot of the dialogue.

Taming of the Shrew

There are a few Shakespeare plays I just don’t like. This is on that list. Misogyny and wife beating are hard to make into comedy. This play (the original) has genuinely funny dialog and lots of drunken revelry, which is always reliably funny. But it cannot really save itself from the fact that its broad (distasteful) social comment cannot translate well to a contemporary audience.Except here, in the Shakespeare Retold version, where it comes off almost miraculously well.

Katherine is a total bitch. Her little sister Bianca is the object of everyone’s affection – sweet, kind, beautiful, compliant. Boisterous, impulsive Petruchio needs to marry well, and on a bet, settles for Katherine, deciding he will tame her. Shakespeare Retold turns Katherine into a ball-busting candidate for Leader of the Opposition party (something like running for Senate here in America).

Screw it. You know what? I can’t teach you Shakespeare. Just go with the flow and understand that Kate and Petruchio are hilarious together. Aside from the fact that she is about 4’11” and he’s gotta be 6 feet plus, making every physical scene they are in absurd, this works because neither of the main characters pulls any punches at all. She screams and spits and flips off every third person she meets. He’s completely, maddeningly, confidently crazy – but also unfailingly honest. Which leads to him getting married in drag, throwing Kate’s luggage in the pool, hiding her cell phone and letting her change a flat all by herself in the middle of the Italian countryside. Despite all this, Kate genuinely loves him … enough to reign in her vituperative tongue and just be loved by this sincere madman. You can’t blame her. He’s completely darling and looks bafflingly attractive in drag.

The secondary characters get (and deserve) the short shrift. Who fecking cares, really, about insipid Bianca and cardboard Lucentio when Kate and Petruchio are screaming insults at each other in an elevator? Not I. Even Shakespeare’s hard-to-swallow ending about submitting to one’s husband has been given a playful edge, making it more of a mutual-respect thing rather than a Marabel Morgan/Phyllis Shlafly-fest. I loved this. Loved it. I wonder how my guy would look in eye makeup and heels…

PS: No subtitles. So I had to watch it a few times to get all the slangy, Britishy dialogue. I would have watched it with the sound off, though, because Petruchio is a mad hot slut.

Much Ado About Nothing

One half of the romances in this comedy are good. The other half is so forced and overwrought that it drains all the good out of it entirely. Beatrice and Benedik (played by The Forsyte Saga’s Damien Lewis) are sparring news co-anchors and former (embittered) sweethearts. The other characters are lame. When B&B are on the screen, they really are captivating. But then there is a costume party and a creepy stalker and insipid lovers and it all goes to hell muy rapido and becomes muy stupido. Much ado about crappy. The End.

Midsummer Night’s Dream

The Worst Shakespeare Play Ever. I hate the whole stupid premise and the forced, hijinx-y enchanted magic-y lameosity. The Shakespeare Retold version is just as bad. I mean, I guess it is. I fell asleep about 4 minutes into it.

Juno

Please. I fell asleep after a half hour of this caricature-fest. I don’t like teenagers that much in real life. WHY would I want to watch this mouthy, eye-rolling bitch for 2 hours? This movie was trying so hard to be hip, edgy and cool. I disliked almost everyone in it. The person I was with kept nudging me awake telling me, “Wake up! It’s getting even worse!” and laughing caustically. This is what we throw awards at? We suck.

See 2001′s Ghost World instead.

The Other Boleyn Girl

The Other Boleyn Girl attempts to dramatize what must be considered one of the defining episodes of Western Civilization. The story of King Henry VIII’s decision to divorce his queen of nearly 20 years (Ferdinand and Isabella’s daughter) in order to marry one of her ladies-in-waiting in the hopes that she would bear him a son (and legitimate heir) is the perfect trifecta of politics, religion and celebrity-worship. The episode shook the foundation of England (a budding world power at the time), causing aftershocks that were felt for a century later. The effect on England’s social structure and religious laws were devastating. Henry had his best friends put to death over the matter, had his daughters declared bastards, broke with his Church, and made mortal enemies abroad and at home.

Can a movie tell this story with any hope of succeeding? It’s been done: Anne of the Thousand Days. A Man for All Seasons. Both are enduring and excellent examples of lofty achievement. Several Masterpiece Theater/BBC productions have been successful to varying degrees.

With these successes in mind, The Other Boleyn Girl is inadequate to the task. What a total pity, because it has a lot going for it. First of all, it is from Phillipa Gregory’s colorful novel, which takes liberties with the parts of the story that history can not unequivocally confirm, and gives it a compelling, beach-read feel. Kind of ‘Judith Krantz-meets-Antonia Fraser.’ Gregory’s novel should make a good leap to the screen. Secondly, it has three very strong actors playing The Boleyn sisters and Henry. Lastly, the costumer and set designer must have had killer budgets, because every inch of screen is alive with color, beautiful light, delicious gowns and fabulous castle interiors. This really should have been grand, if not great.

One cannot really dog this movie for running roughshod over history, because sometimes it must be done in the name of effective storytelling. But even if I was not altogether factual (it’s emphatically and inexplicably not), it falls short of the most important level. The actors playing the lead roles are just not enough.

Consider that despite Henry Tudor’s enduring legacy as a paranoid villain of epic dimension, in his early reign he was widely recounted as a magnificently charismatic, energetic, and attractive man who could charm a room (and a country) with his storytelling, his extemporaneous poetry and song, his love of dance, and his abilities as a cultured conversationalist. That king is not in this movie. Eric Bana is attractive and charismatic. But not in this movie.

This Henry is tepid and one-note — not particularly powerful, and not particularly commanding. That two indisputably lovely ladies fell in love with him can only be attributed to his wardrobe, which is absolutely gorgeous. He stamps his fist on a a table and insists he wants his council to find a way out of his marriage, damnit.  Ooooh, scary. (and just where did they hide Cardinal Wolsey? Leaving him out of this story is like leaving Louis out of Casablanca.)

Scarlett Johansson executes the role of sweet, compliant Mary Boleyn prettily. This version of the sister who is first prostituted out by her monstrous uncle and father to bed the king is perfectly pliant and willing … just as Mary is reported to have been. Johansson uses the same guileless expression and wide, trusting eyes and smile that she used in Girl With a Pearl Earring — and to much the same effect. But not much more.

Anne Boleyn has been portrayed as a pawn in her family’s bid for power and influence, as a heedless firebrand bent on making her own name in a man’s world, and a desperate gambler playing for her life after her male relatives coldly forced her into a deadly game. Natalie Portman either cannot decide which Anne she is portraying, or she is just not a big enough presence to carry off the storied Anne Boleyn. Narrowed eyes and vituperative remarks do not a legend make.

Making it all somehow worse, the director (Justin Chadwick, of Masterpiece Theater’s excellent “Bleak House” 2005 adaptation) sets up each personal tete-a-tete by shooting it through curtains, through a crack in a door, half-glimpsed from behind a post or pilaster. Are all these encounters supposed to be secret? Why, when there is absolutely nothing about the way this story is told that implies secrecy? Characters are almost laughably overt and lacking in subtlety. Henry does nothing to hide his affairs. Anne’s uncle, Thomas Howard, baldly announces his plan to shove Mary and Anne into the king’s bed to all involved. Catherine of Aragon (by most accounts a preternaturally dignified and polite monarch) marches up and declares Mary and Anne to be whores in hearing of the entire court. The sly camera work is contradicted by the ham-handed story and script.

The story of Anne, Henry, Mary and the changes wrought by their strange, damaged relationships deserves a better attempt than The Other Boleyn Girl.

Michael Clayton

    Slickly packaged and produced legal thriller with a very satisfying payoff. It’s handsome visually (the NYC shots as well as the countryside vistas are photographed beautifully), and the score helps tie your stomach in knots. The plot is not so complex that you get distracted trying to keep details straight. We’ve seen this story told many times in similar legal thrillers, but you never really get that till after the credits roll and …after a few beats, you think…wait, I’ve seen this before, right?

Two things help this movie seem better than it really is: Tilda Swinton and Tom Wilkinson. Both play powerful, hard-nosed lawyers representing huge, impersonal corporations (Wilkinson is the biggest of bigwigs at Huge Big City Law Firm, and Swinton is head legal counsel for Mean, Bad, Soul-Less Chemical Company). Both fall apart spectacularly.

Wilkinson does so following a moment of clarity during which he sees how twisted and wrong his entire life’s pursuit has been, and lays the groundwork for a massive, expensive, public mea culpa. Wilkinson captures his shaky zeal, his disheveled, child-like wonder at his new-found vision, his crafty enthusiasm as he shakes off his co-worker’s (Michale Clayton — employed by the firm to clean up just such messes as Wilkinson represents) desperate efforts to contain him. Swinton does not so much fall apart at she implodes. Her tenuous hold on her composure slips and her own icy carapace cracks as she wades deeper and deeper into shit. She becomes a high-pitched, twitching mess. The entire scene on the phone with the cool, efficient hitman she plans to employ is intensely uncomfortable. Overly polite, halting, falsely bright and casual — it is so very apparent that she’s sickeningly out of her league but out of control.

Good movie. Not great. The fact that everyone fell all over each other to kiss this movie’s ass tells me that maybe there is just such a quagmire of shitty movies out there, that even the B/B+ ones seem like God’s Gift to Cinema.

More Film Couples

• Oscar and Felix (Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau) in The Odd Couple. This is another one that’s so iconic, it almost flies under the radar.
• Frodo and Sam from The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. I’m totally kidding. I love LOTR but I fast-foreward through everything to do with those two Keebler Elves . They’re emotional, messy crybabies. But I re-play all the Aragorn-the-Hot-Slut parts, and the gnarly-creature battle scenes.
• Fay Wray and King Kong. I’ll go so far as to include corny Jessica Lange asking Kong, “Hey, what’s you’re sign?” in the 70s remake. But NO Naomi Watts and her bunny face emoting at me for 11-minute stretches.
• Dorothy Michaels and Michael Dorsey both played by Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie. See what I did there? I found a way to talk about one of my favorite movies while weaving in a clever interpretation of the term “Film Couples.” I win! Is it Hoffman who is responsible for turning what could have been a cheesy lightweight movie into a genuinely funny and real character study of what it really takes for one guy to become a better man? Maybe it’s the smart, snappy script. The frantic, paranoid perfomance of Teri Garr? Bill Murray’s snarky, sincere sidekick? I don’t care. I love Tootsie.

Best Film Couples: Part One

Ask 10 people what are the best film couples and you will get 10 different answers. This is my list. Get your own.

• Carey Grant and Ingrid Bergman in Notorious. The gold standard by which all romantic film couples are judged. Scary-hot, tense, dangerous. My pulse races just thinking about it. The definition of chemistry.
• John Michael Higgins and Michael McKean in Best in Show: As Scott Donlan and Stefan Vanderhoof, the Tribeca-dwelling shih tzu owners who finish each other’s sentences, sing their dogs to sleep, and comically and poignantly describe how they met (“The great American love story…On the marquee…writ large: US!”). They are just beautiful together.
• John Malkovich and Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Liasons. Tragic, creepy, and moving. Two of the saddest death scenes ever.
• Butch and Sundance (Had to be said)
• Brad Pitt and Edward Norton as Tyler Durden and The Narrator in Fight Club. The embodiment of that whole”You complete me” shtick.
• Ruth Gordon and Bud Cort in Harold and Maude. We should all be this lucky.
• Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed in It’s a Wonderful Life. Chalk up another one for chemistry. An excellent script helps too, as do really professional actors who know how to become their characters.
• Diane Keaton and Woody Allen in Annie Hall. Opposites attract, and a sense of humor is more effective than good looks any day. Here is the proof.
• Doris and Rock in Pillow Talk. Ding! Ding! Ding! This example has all the ingredients: Good looks, humor, great script, tension, chemistry to BURN, camaraderie, excellent acting, great characters. You cannot help but fall in love with these two. To her credit, Doris Day had magical chemistry with James Garner and most of her other co-stars as well.
• Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot. Just for the scene on the yacht alone, these two rank. Honorable Mention goes to the couple of Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in the same movie.
• Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek in Desperado. Once upon a time, couples made no bones about their intentions. No mincing words, or lighthearted banter. Just get right down to it and set the place on fire.
• Maggie Gyllenhall and James Spader in Secretary. The official offbeat choice of this list. Not every couple is mainstream. Clearly not this one. But they are completely believable and compelling.
• Warren Beatty and and Natalie Wood in Splendor in the Grass. Angst! Tragedy! Good actors! He is another one who can work up the steam with his co-stars: Julie Christie, Faye Dunaway, Diane Keaton. I think he might have been f^cking them off screen as well. Please. Like you wouldn’t.
• Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver in The Year of Living Dangerously. This is a smoking hot couple whose romance takes on a much deeper meaning and understanding when it is tested by making hard, moral choices in the middle of war. Great scene in the rain.

I’m not done. Back with Part Two later…..

Things I’ll Be Doing Instead of Watching the Academy Awards

• Watching that iconic example of Academy Awards irrelevance obsolescence excellence, Miss Julia Roberts in Erin Brokovich. Yes. Sarcasm on the heavy.
• Making home-made gnocci with browned-butter sage sauce.
• Telling my kids to get back in bed NOW.
• Folding laundry
• The household budget. Ugh.
• Worrying. Just general, non-specific worrying, with a side-order of fretting and cuticle ripping.
• Throwing another log on the fire on this rainy evening.
• Watching DVDs: Planet of the Apes (Cahrlton Heston version), Donnie Darko and Fight Club. Is that a killer lineup? I hope I can stay awake that long.

There Will Be Blood

Saw this with my two sisters who could not have more opposite taste. I sat between them. One muttered under her breath all the way through…disgruntled, angry, sarcastic. She did not like this movie. The other one giggled nervously at all the same parts I was , stifling nervous laughter and fighting goosebumps. It’s hard to say “I liked this movie.” But I did not hate it at all.

It’s impossible to divorce the movie from the acting and the photography. The directing and the look and feel of the movie made me think of Terence Malick. Sort of Badlands and Days of Heaven…long silent shots, jarring dialog, and a hinky feeling that all is not well. And it’s not. There is almost no backstory to these characters that populate the early-California landscape.

As Daniel Plainview (protagonist played by Daniel Day Lewis) progresses along his path to becoming a severely disturbed misanthrope, I kept on asking myself, What is your problem? You never really find out, and I actually think it was better that way. His is a hard personality to get a bead on. But as bad as he is, nothing is worse than the Pentecostal young preacher who serves as his foil. So irritating, smarmy, smug, and cloyingly grotesque is this guy that I sort of understood Plainview’s dramatic reactionwhen they would meet. For my part, each time the preacher came on the screen, I would think, O please no. He’s sickening.

Plainview is murderous and hateful. The preacher is just contemptible.

Two things: The score is as jarring as the dialog. Hornets buzzing in your head alternating with fraught silences and discordant instrumental phrasing. Also, the dialog in this reflects the freaky madness that is brewing beneath the surface of these characters. They may look like normal people, but they do not talk like normal people. The dialog had me squirming and laughing nervously. Especially that last scene (“I drink your milkshake! I drink it up!”) F R E A K Y. Daniel Day Lewis is repellent and magnetic. No small feat. Totally watchable.