Movie Review Catch Up

Here are short reviews of 4 current films I've seen in the last two months that I haven't gotten around to do longer reviews of:

Australia - Big sweeping story with an odd tone. It's trying to be Gone With the Wind. It's set in 1939 (the year Gone with the Wind came out) and makes lots of references to the Wizard of Oz which also came out that year. Nicole Kidman plays British Lady Sarah Ashley who goes to the Faraway Downs cattle ranch in Australia to find her husband who's been there a long time. Well he's killed and there's a rival ranch that's buying up all the cattle to monopolize the market. One thing leads to another and Lady Sarah is participating in a cattle drive to save her farm. It's let by a drover played by Hugh Jackman. He's all Australian and they bicker and ultimately fall for each other. There are also aborigines who have to be careful to avoid the Austalian authorities because it's common practice to take their children to be brought up "western". Nullah is an aborigine boy on the drive and his father is a witch doctor. Lots of color, lots of big scenes. There's also an invasion by the Japanese in the second half of this almost 3 hour film. See, it's trying to be Gone With The Wind, and Red River and Rabbit Proof Fence and Out of Africa. I really enjoyed the cattle drive a lot but the rest didn't quite sweep me off my feet.

Milk - This is a nicely done, straight up biography of Harvey Milk, who in the 1970s became the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California. The film covers about 8 years of his life. He moves to San Francisco with his partner, opens a photography store and becomes a gay rights activist. The film gives a taste of what life in the Castro at the time was like, show's Milks various campaigns for office and the effect they had on his personal life. As he says in the film "It's not an issue, it's our lives". Sean Penn gives a wonderful performance as Milk and Josh Brolin does the same as Dan White, his fellow board member and killer. I had some minor complaints (it drags a little at times and I'm tired of seeing Tosca in films) but they would be quibbling. It ended with photos of the real life persons next to their characters in the film. I wish all biographies would do this. It convinced me their fashion choices weren't just those of the costumer.

Frost/Nixon - This is another play brought to the screen, this time by Ron Howard. It covers the famous television interviews with Richard Nixon by David Frost in the late 1970s. Frank Langella plays Nixon and Michael Sheen is Frost, roles they both played in the stage productions in London and on Broadway. The plot includes the setup of the interviews through to the end of them. Frost was little known in the US at the time and had difficulty raising funds to do the interviews. Having finally set it up, then came the interviews themselves and how was he going to get something interesting from Nixon. I don't remember the real event other than that it happened. My understanding is that there are some changes made for dramatic effect and some quotes moved from one day to another which gives more weight to them. Nevertheless, the story was interesting, the characters had depth, the two lead performances were strong. They aren't really impersonations of the real life people as much as they manage to capture their essence. In spite of the fact the film is mostly conversations in hotels and offices and a house, there's enough movement and outdoors stuff that it feels more exciting than a cramped play. It all leads up to one look on Nixon's face and the film does that so well I'm wondering how it was done on stage. I learned that Nixon had an agent, "Swifty" Lazar who looked like the 6 flags guy, and apparently that's accurate. The pivotal phone call is apparently fiction.

Revolutionary Road - is based on a famous 1961 novel by Richard Yates I'd never heard of. Frank and April Wheeler (Leonardo Dicaprio and Kate Winslet) are suburbanites living in Connecticut in 1955. He has an office job he hates and she's depressed with her life as a homemaker and mother of two. April dreams of moving the family to Paris and Frank agrees, then life intervenes. There are lots of arguments with screaming and shouting and crying. Then there are scenes with co-workers and neighbors where they try to hide their troubles. I found the film a mixed bad. I thought the dialog was natural during some fights but contrived in others. He was a little too Jack Nicholson at times, she was convincing in some scenes not so much in others. Some found the characters two dimensional, but my comment was they had long scenes where the actor just stood there emoting, so that's supposed to make them 3D, right? In spite of the early praise of the performances, only Michael Shannon got an Oscar nomination for this film. He plays the son of a neighbor who's been institutionalized for mental illness who visits the Wheeler's a few times. I can say this with confidence: many films would be improved by adding an insane character.