Drama

End of Innocence

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Bobby
  • IMDb: link

In the style of Grand Hotel, Emilio Estevez (who wrote and directed) brings us a look at the Ambassador Hotel and the people who work and stay there.  It’s not just any day however, it’s June 6, 1968 and Bobby Kennedy is coming to give his last speech before tragedy would strike, and one of the last remaining beacons of hope in his time was extinguished by hatred and violence.

The film follows the guests and staff of the Ambassador Hotel over the period of a day as they work, play, and ready for an appearance, by who many believe will become the next President of the United States.

The characters include the manager of the hotel (William H. Macy), his wife (Sharon Stone) who works as the beauty parlor, and his mistress (Heather Graham) who works the phone bank with her friend (Joy Bryant)  There’s also a Mexican kitchen worker (Freddy Rodriguez) dealing with a racist boss (Christian Slater), and a bride (Lindsay Lohan) who is marrying a friend from high school (Elijah Wood) to stop him being sent to Vietnam.

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Obsession

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Prestige
  • IMDb: link

“Every great magic trick consists of three acts.  The first act is called ‘The Pledge.’  The magician shows you something ordinary, but of course it probably isn’t.  The second act is called ‘The Turn.’  The magician makes his ordinary something do something extraordinary.  Now, if you’re looking for the secret you won’t find it, that’s why there’s a third act called ‘The Prestige.’  This is the part with the twists and turns, where lives hang in the balance, and you see something shocking you’ve never seen before.”
 

The PrestigeThe film opens with Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) on trial for the murder of Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman), who was killed during his final performance.  The magician who gave both men their start (Michael Caine) is present, as witness, to tell the tale.

The film goes back in time, to tell the story of how the two got their start, their tragic marriages (with Piper Perabo, and Rebecca Hall), their competing affection for a magician’s assistant (Scarlett Johansson), and the event which caused the hatred and rivalry between them.

Director Christopher Nolan (Memento, Batman Begins) weaves a marvelous tale of illusion, half-truths, buried secrets, murder, and most of all obsession.  Like this year’s earlier entry The Illusionist the film involves the secrets of an illusion, and plot twists.  The Prestige succeeds where the other failed in that it doesn’t make the twists and secrets the whole story, instead it’s the obsession between the two men, not their secrets, which takes center stage.

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A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Flags of Our Fathers
  • IMDB: link

flags-of-our-fathers-posterOne picture can define everything.  Flags of Our Fathers, the latest from director Clint Eastwood and writer Paul Haggis, looks at how a single photograph changed the war in the Pacific during WWII.  Though it does include some huge battle scenes, it’s more focused on the later years, how the photograph, and the U.S. Government’s use of it, changed the lives of three soldiers forever.

Clint Eastwood is the man, and he has earned the right to make whatever film he wants.  Here the director takes a look at the flag raising at Iwo Jima, and how that one photograph changed the lives of three men and the course of the war in the Pacific.

The film follows the heroes of the Battle of Iwo Gima, John “Doc” Bradley (Ryan Phillippe), Rene Gagon (Jesse Bradford), and Ira Hayes (Adam Beach) from their landing on Iwo Jima to the years after their heroic tour.

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Drugged Out Insanity

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Candy
  • IMDb: link

I’ll start out with a disclaimer, this is not my genre.  Movies about self-absorbed and self-destructive people who destroy the lives, and the lives around them, through their drug addiction usually don’t work for me (though there are exceptions, including this year’s A Scanner Darkly which you can read about here).  The flaw I usual find is strong in Candy, these characters bring the destruction on themselves.  And you know what?  They deserve it.  So why should I care?

Dan (Heath Ledger) is an out-of-work slacker who fancies himself a poet.  Candy (Abbie Cornish) is a smart and beautiful art student who is seduced by Dan’s smile and bohemian lifestyle which includes heroin.  Before long both are hopelessly in love and hopelessly addicted without any way out for either of them.

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Harsh Times at the Theater

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Harsh Times
  • IMDb: link

Imagine if Cheech and Chong cruised around South Central L.A. and Mexico, and one of them was a psychotic Rambo wannabe.  That’s the basic premise, actually the entire plot, of Harsh Times.  These characters have made each of their lives into a long, boring, pointless mess…kinda’ like this film.

Jim (Christian Bale) is an award winning screw-up and psycho.  He spends his days getting high and drunk with his friends in South Central L.A.  Despite his nature, his constant need for violence and total disregard for the law, and severe post-traumatic shock from his time as a soldier in Iraq, Jim wants to be a cop or maybe a Fed.

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