Harry & Meghan: A Royal Romance. The Television Movie

HARRY & MEGHAN: A ROYAL ROMANCE

There was a time, my dear children, when Prince Henry of Wales and his wife, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, were not just admired but genuinely loved by the public. This was long before Megxit, long before With Love, Meghan and long before videos of Her Royal Highness twerking while nine months pregnant with the fifth in line to the British throne as her backup dancer. Harry & Meghan: A Royal Romance is the first of three films chronicling the early married life of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. This first part of the Sussex trilogy has some awful acting, awful casting, awful story, awful dialogue and awful plotlines. It is also surprisingly awful all around.

After brief visits to the childhoods in 1997 (where 12-year-old Prince Harry is struggling with the grief over his mother's death) and 1993 (where 11-year-old Meghan Markle is struggling against sexism in television commercials), we get down to the main story in 2016. 

As a side note, Harry & Meghan: A Royal Romance premiered in 2018 a week before their wedding. 

Meghan Markle (Parisa Fitz-Henley) is a highly successful television actress who exudes feminist power. She in her first scene tells her director (Kurt Evans) that she won't turn her character into a flirt, she asks for changes in the script that suggests she is being coquettish and won't do another scene where she emerges in a towel. A friend sets her up on a blind date while she is in London for work. Meghan, leery of blind dates, has only one question: "Is he nice?". Harry (Murray Fraser) has only question: "Is she hot?". On their date, she scolds the Prince of England for being 40 minutes late. Despite this, an instant attraction develops, helped by their mutual traumas (his mother's death, her struggles against racists).

Harry's older brother Prince William (Burgess Abernethy) and sister-in-law Catherine (Laura Mitchell) look on with wariness at the budding romance. "She's American. She's divorced. Her mum is black. She makes Wallis Simpson look like Dame Judi Dench," the Duchess of Cambridge remarks to her husband's brother. For her part, Meghan is also wavering on pursuing a romantic relationship with Harry. "Glass ceilings, not glass slippers," she confides to her makeup artist. 

However, Harry will not be denied. He keeps wooing his divorced, biracial actress, even going dressed as a frog to a Halloween party for the Suits cast and crew. Here, as they enthusiastically anticipate Hillary Clinton becoming the first female President of the United States, Meghan shows her moxie by standing up to Harry's bullies. He returns the favor by standing up for her to his father, then-Prince Charles (Steve Coulter) and the Cambridges for their racism against Meghan. Through it all, Meghan wavers between her feminist principles and her desire for love until she finally agrees to marry Harry.

This will involve getting permission from Harry's granny, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II (Maggie Sullivun), who has a surprise of her own about the Windsor's own racial heritage. With that, Harry & Meghan can conclude their royal romance on a joyful note.

It is not surprising that television networks, in this case Lifetime, wanted to cash in on this story. As Harry & Meghan: A Royal Romance was essentially rushed into production so as to coincide with the royal wedding, one can see how poor the entire production was. Terrence Coli and Scarlett Lacey's screenplay is sometimes filled with scenes and dialogue that are howlers of comedy. 

Perhaps the nadir of A Royal Romance's script is when Harry and Meghan go to the Suits cast and crew Halloween party. I get that the frog costume was meant as some kind of joke for our Frog Prince. Meghan, for her part, was dressed in a pantsuit and wearing a Hillary Clinton mask. When Harry removes his frog head to have a drink at the bar, he is verbally harassed and mocked by a Suits crew member dressed as a pirate (Corey Schmitt). "Your grandmother can kiss my ass," he mockingly tells Harry. It is at this point that Meghan literally unmasks herself, causing our drunk pirate to literally cower in fear. "Meghan, I didn't realize it was you," he says, trembling. 

The whole thing is hilarious. I understand that he is a Suits crewmember and that Markle may have some sway in whether or not he keeps his job. However, the idea that this man in full pirate costume is bold enough to mouth off to a member of the Royal Family but is left shaking by his actress girlfriend seems wildly off. That she was dressed as Hillary Clinton lends an extra air of the absurd. It is not so much that the scenario emasculates Harry and shows Meghan as almost a warrior queen. It is in how Menhaj Huda directs the scene that makes it all the more hilarious.

A Royal Romance is filled with such oddball dialogue. You hear Prince Harry fiercely objecting to the suggestion that Meghan shut down her blog, The Tig, or at least stay away from commenting on contentious topics like Brexit. Harry as portrayed here must have been totally bewitched by Meghan if he, with a straight face, could call The Tig "a community of inspiration". He then tears into his father, brother and sister-in-law for suggesting that Meghan may not be royal wife material. "What you say what you really mean. It's not just that she's opinionated, divorced, and an actress," pause for effect, "It's that she's African-American". 

This is a strange accusation to level insofar as even in A Royal Romance, the closest anyone has come to make any vaguely racist comments was Catherine when she pointed out that Meghan's mother Doria (Melanie Nicholls-King) was black. A Royal Romance leans in on how so many in royal circles objected to Meghan due to her race. "Do you think she'll (the Queen) let her grandson marry a black girl?" a reporter heckles Doria. Harry at a wedding berates Lady Victoria (Barbara Wallace) for wearing a blackamoor brooch. "It's a symbol of our imperialist domination in Africa, something we should well apologize for, not flaunting," he berates the befuddled, fussy old woman.

I do not know the reason why A Royal Romance opted to use "Lady Victoria" rather than Princess Michael of Kent, who did wear a blackamoor brooch when attending an event where Meghan, then Harry's fiancée, was also present. Also, the incident was not at a wedding but a Christmas gathering. Granted, those are not important details to the story. 

It does, however, reveal a thread in A Royal Romance that race was a major factor in the family's objection to Meghan. It makes it all the stranger given that the Queen reveals that the Windsors themselves are of mixed-race through Queen Charlotte, wife of George III. Sure, there are seven generations and two hundred years between Charlotte and Harry. Sure, the claims that Queen Charlotte was of Moorish heritage are based on an ancestor of Charlotte's that was eight generations prior to her. Details, details. Yet, I have digressed.

In terms of performances, A Royal Romance is one of horrifying levels. Perhaps the worst is Burgess Abernethy as William. Somehow, despite being only 31 years old when the film was made, he looks well past fifty. He looks and sounds absolutely nothing like the then-Duke of Cambridge. Laura Mitchell looked more like Sarah Brightman than Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge. She, like Abernethy, were given leaden lines to read, and both recited them with the enthusiasm and conviction of bored individuals. Steve Coulter's Prince Charles at least had the good fortune to not be on screen long enough to leave a mark. 

He does, however, have a prophetic line. "The monarchy must remain dignified," he admonishes his son when it comes to Meghan's outspoken manner. I wonder if anyone involved in A Royal Romance thought of that line when they saw Meghan Sussex twerk in a hospital delivery room as a way to induce labor.  

Murray Fraser, to be fair, at least came close to sounding like Harry. He did not look anywhere near to him though. His performance was in two modes: sad or scowling. When he isn't missing Meghan or still struggling with the aftereffects of his mother's death, he is going off against racism all around him.

The best of the lot is Parisa Fitz-Henley as Meghan. She both looks and sounds like the Duchess of Sussex. She also manages to make most things believable. Some scenes do not work to be fair. "I worked too hard to be my own woman," she scolds Harry when he releases a statement defending her against "racist trolls". That, however, is the fault of the script, not of Fitz-Henley. She did the best she could with what she was given. She did do a good job, even if at times her "I AM WOMAN" manner came off as more spoof than authentic.

Harry & Meghan: A Royal Romance does remind me of another television movie chronicling the courtship of Harry's father. Like with Charles & Diana: A Royal Love Story, Harry & Meghan: A Royal Romance is at times unintentionally hilarious, dreadfully acted and bad entertainment. 

Who would have imagined that A Royal Romance would lead to this? 

2/10

Karate Kid: Legends. A Review (Review #1980)

KARATE KID: LEGENDS

I have in the past expressed puzzlement over how Ghostbusters became a franchise, with various film and animated series spinning from the first film. I now turn to another beloved 1980's film that also created its own universe. Karate Kid: Legends is the newest entry into an unexpected franchise of four previous films and a television series. Curiously, I saw both the first Ghostbusters and The Karate Kid when theaters reopened after the forced COVID shutdowns. I was surprised at how long both films were. Yet I digress. Pleasant enough, harmless enough, Karate Kid: Legends pretty much coasts on said legends.

Li Fong (Ben Wang) moves from Beijing to New York City due to his mother (Ming-Na Wen) taking a new job as a doctor there. She also wants to move Li away from her uncle Han (Jackie Chan), who has been training his great-nephew in kung fu. While Dr. Fong does love Han, she blames in part for the death of her other son, killed in a stabbing after a kung fu tournament by the person he defeated. For his part, Li is still deeply traumatized by his inaction during the stabbing but still yearns to learn kung fu.

It takes approximately less than a week for Li to meet pretty Mia Lipani (Sadie Stanley) and gain a bitter enemy in Conor Day (Aramis Knight). Conor is the five-borough champion in kung fu. He is also tied to loan sharks who are putting the squeeze on Mia's father, retired boxer turned pizza restauranteur Victor Lipani (Joshua Jackson). Victor has decided that only a comeback to the ring will help get him enough money to pay off the loan sharks and maybe have some left over for Mia's education.

As Mia and Li begin a slow dance of romance, Li finds it difficult given that Mia and Conor have had a bad romance in the past. In exchange for teaching her Mandarin, she shows Li New York. For her part, Dr. Fong hires Alan Fetterman (Wyatt Oleff) to tutor Li on his math, and he becomes an unofficial friend and love advisor. 

Things come to a head when Victor's near comeback is thwarted by sucker punches that leave him close to death. The trauma of Li's brother's death returns, along with the guilt and anger from Mia. Also returning? Han, who has come to train him. Han, however, is not alone, for he eventually talks Han's late friend Miyagi's favorite and best student to help him. With that, Li trains with both Han and Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio). Will their training help Li defeat Conor and save Victory Pizza? Will Li find redemption and romance? Will Daniel delight in New York pizza with his frenemy Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka)?

The most that I can in favor of Karate Kid: Legends is that children, mostly if not totally unfamiliar with what came before, will like it. A couple of them cheered and applauded at the conclusion of the Li/Conor match on a New York City rooftop. Perhaps I can be positive also in noting that Rob Lieber's screenplay managed to integrate Han from the 2010 Karate Kid reboot/Jaden Smith vanity project into the overall Karate Kid mythos. It might even merit extra points in how Karate Kid: Legends did not include Jaden Smith at all.

I would be remiss if I did not complement some of the cast. Of particular note are Wang and Stanley as Li and Mia. Individually and together, Wang and Stanley did well in the film. Wang was charming when playing romantic with Stanley, a mix of innocent and almost arrogant goofiness. He handled the action scenes well too. Stanley, who to me looks like a younger Jennifer Lawrence, did not lean heavily into a Nuw Yawk accent, which was a plus. She too was charming as Mia, mostly balancing a sensible girl with someone who was aware of her own mistakes.

That is not to say that Wang and Stanley did not stumble at times. When attempting to play dramatic, both of them looked a bit exaggerated. However, that is not a dealbreaker in the overall positive performances that they gave.

What is harder to accept are both the adults and the overall story. While watching Karate Kid: Legends, I began to wonder who Victor Lipani was. He looked and sounded familiar, even with a bizarre New York accent that seemed very forced and unnatural. It took a while, but I finally realized that it was Pacey from Dawson's Creek. It is unfair to think that given that Joshua Jackson has had a solid career post-Dawson. It is not his fault that I can only remember him from a teen soap from over twenty years ago. What is his fault is the exaggerated tones of Victor's speaking. He was not convincing as this Brooklyn/Bronx boxer.

It also does not help that Karate Kid: Legends seems almost a bit of a Karate Kid remake with Li as Mr. Miyagi and Victor as Daniel-san. Long stretches of a surprisingly short film are taken up by Li training Victor to get him into shape for his comeback. Try as the film might, we are not invested in Victor's story because we should be invested in Li's story. 

Add to that how in other ways, Karate Kid: Legends still plays like a greatest hits album from a cover band. Conor is nothing more than a combination Johnny Lawrence pre-Cobra Kai and Terry Silver from The Karate Kid: Part III. I cannot say anything about Aramis Knight's acting ability because there was no character in Conor Day. He was EVIL from the first shot, and his efforts to be brutal at times veered towards comical. In some ways, it must have been the easiest money Knight could have made. His performance consisted of nothing more than posing and making faces, an antagonist needed because the film needed one.

I find that Karate Kid: Legends barely ties into the overall Karate Kid universe. Daniel LaRusso could easily have been written out without affecting any part of the film. Moreover, the way he gets involved is by a very thin thread. Why he opts to go to New York after saying that he wouldn't the film never answers. I know that Han is supposed to be Mr. Miyagi's good friend, but is that enough for Daniel to fly out and train some kid he does not know? Macchio is just there for nostalgia bait. 

Chan did better as Han, having some moments of drama and humor. I cannot say comedy, for the times that Karate Kid: Legends tried for laughs they fell flat for me. A training scene where Daniel and Han are debating their methods while causing Li to continuously fall was meant to be funny. It felt forced.

All that and more can be blamed on director Jonathan Entwistle. He was enamored of split-screen montages set to pop music. There were endless such scenes. By trying to be a bit flashy with the look, Entwistle only succeeded in drawing attention away from whatever heart Karate Kid: Legends was aiming for and more about how clever things can be. Having a video game ping sound whenever points are scored at the five-borough tournament is a little cringey. 

Finally, I think that while Macchio could have been removed without affecting the film, minimizing Ming-Na Wen's role to almost nothing should be thought of as the greater sin. 

Karate Kid: Legends is well-intentioned and harmless enough. It does have some funny bits (Mia calling Li "the Chinese Peter Parker" and a running gag about Li ordering "stuffed crust" from the pizza puritan Victor are pleasant). However, it is not as good as it could have been. Karate Kid: Legends fails to live up to its title.

DECISION: C-

The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks: The Television Documentary

 

THE REBELLIOUS LIFE OF 

MRS. ROSA PARKS

The popular image of Mrs. Rosa Parks is that of a demure, respectable middle-aged seamstress who, after a long day of work, decided that she would not move from her bus seat to the back of the bus so that a white man could sit where she was at. That image is not entirely true, for Mrs. Parks had long been active in the civil rights movement and not a random citizen. While not exactly spontaneous, this act of civil disobedience was not preplanned either. The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks reveals someone who was far more than the popular image. Radical, sometimes surprisingly prejudiced herself, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks blends past and present in sometimes cumbersome ways.

Rosa McCauley grew up with strong antipathy towards mistreatment of any kind due to her black heritage. Even though she had white ancestry herself with her grandfather being light-skinned due to being biracial, Rosa harbored deep animosity towards whites. It was so strong that she initially rejected Raymond Parks because of his own light skin, finding him too white looking. However, Mr. Parks had two things in his favor: extensive social activism work and a car.

The Parks soon found themselves part of the NAACP, where Rosa was the secretary despite her hesitation. Her activism and knowledge grew. She also found a new world when she attended the Highlander Folk School for more training on combating segregation. Here, she found that not all white people were awful. Then came December 1, 1955.

From that one moment of defiance cascaded a series of events that would change the nation. One can make a trail from Mrs. Parks' arrest and the Montgomery bus boycott down to the eventual fall of Jim Crow legislation barring blacks from full citizenship. That, however, was not the end of the story for "Mother Parks". She supported radical causes such as the Republic of New Afrika, a black separatist movement that wanted both reparations and a separate nation made up of U.S. territory. 

On the personal side, the stress of the bus boycott played havoc with the Parks' finances and safety. Opting to join the Great Migration, they resettled in Detroit where she continued to balance attempting to support herself and her family with various honors and tributes. There were terrible moments, such as when a young black man broke into her home and assaulted her. There were also moments of triumph, such as when she was presented with the Congressional Gold Medal. The ultimate honors came postmortem, when she lay in honor in the Capitol rotunda and when a statue of her was placed in Statuary Hall.

The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks is in keeping with how Parks was in life: unapologetic and militant. One of the interviewees referred to the 1967 Detroit riots as "the Detroit Rebellion of 1967". Other interviewees were quick to add that we have new voter suppression laws according to them. Directors Johanna Hamilton and Yoruba Richen have a firm viewpoint.

I however wonder if other, less positive aspects were papered over. Parks had a perhaps understandable animosity towards whites in her early to middle years. However, that little mention is made on how her initial rejection of Raymond Parks was based on his color is surprising. We do learn that Claudette Colvin, a teenager who similarly refused to give up her seat, was rejected as the test case because she was deemed too dark-skinned to be a sympathetic defendant. Mrs. Parks, with lighter complexion, was seen as a better fit. 

It is terrible but sadly a sign of those times that Colvin's skin color was a factor in the local NAACP's decision to wait for another test case. However, that Parks found a man initially unsuitable because of his own skin color is to my mind distressing. We also have footage of her stating that after interacting with white liberal activist Virginia Durr, she found that not all white people were bad. I was reminded of when Malcolm X had a similar revelation when performing hajj, finding white Muslims who embraced him as a brother. 

There are other revelations in The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks that are more disheartening. In the 1963 March on Washington for example, women were essentially excluded. Daisy Bates, who was instrumental in organizing the integration of Little Rock High School, was the only female speaker and that speech was very brief. A. Philip Randolph, a prominent civil rights activist and labor organizer, had Mrs. Parks wave to the crowd. The local NAACP also essentially shafted the Parks by providing no funds despite the immense financial boon they got from them and the Parks' hard economic situation.

As a side note, that the Parks struggled financially all their lives post-boycott while the leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement have reaped a lavish lifestyle is not touched on. Granted, the current BLM movement was not the subject of the documentary. However, as the subject of how the civil rights leadership gladly used the Parks to get publicity and funds but balked at so much as helping the Parks themselves was raised, it would have made for an interesting comparison. 

We do get some fascinating bits of information about Rosa Parks. Her brother Sylvester was once taunted as a child by a white child, but Rosa, who was with Sylvester, had either the courage or the temerity to threaten that child. She said that she would rather be lynched than accept mockery for being black, a courageous stand.   

There were some elements that brought the documentary down. LisaGay Hamilton narrates Mrs. Parks' words, and her narration was fine. I did, however, wonder why she was billed I think almost if not every time Parks' words were used. I do not understand why we needed constant reminders on who was reciting Mrs. Parks' words. Up to a point I can see why, but Hamilton did not sound like Mrs. Parks, and I think once or twice would have worked just fine.

The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks does not shatter the image of this lone, courageous woman who took a great stand by remaining seated. It does give us a more complex portrait of the icon, where her radical beliefs run counter to the image of a sweet little old lady. These revelations neither detract nor diminish her extraordinary act. They do put them in the context of her life experiences up to December 1, 1955. Mrs. Rosa Parks was more than one day, one bus ride. The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks gives us more of her story, shining a light on the full range of her beliefs. 

5/10

Blood Diamond: A Review (Review #1979)

BLOOD DIAMOND

I have found that, on occasion, filmmakers will couch a message in their films. Blood Diamond uses a lot of action as a way of informing us to the evils of illegal diamond trading to finance wars. A bit heavy-handed and far longer than it should it, Blood Diamond has one particularly good performance and one serviceable one to make it worth seeing.

Sierra Leone, 1999. Humble fisherman Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou) lives quietly with his wife, two daughters and son Dia (Kagiso Kuypers). Things are peaceful until the Revolutionary United Front, an armed group attempting to overthrow the government, storms into his village. They kill and maim the population, with Solomon being spared due only to him making for a good slave.

His task, along with other men, is to search for diamonds. These diamonds, known as conflict or blood diamonds, will be smuggled from Sierra Leone to Liberia, where they can be certified as conflict-free and thus legal for sale. Diamond companies, aware of the deception, will then buy them and either keep them in vaults to increase demand or create jewels for the international market. Solomon has found a very rare pink diamond and attempts to escape with it, hoping to use it to buy his family's way out of Africa. Caught by the evil Captain Poison (David Harewood), Solomon has the first of many fortunate escapes when government troops find the rebel camp and is arrested.

In jail, Poison's loud revelation of Solomon's find catches the attention of Rhodesian mercenary David Archer (Leonardo DiCaprio). Archer, a gun and diamond smuggler, gets Solomon out of jail and is desperate for him to tell him where Solomon buried the pink diamond. Solomon wants nothing to do with Archer or that cursed diamond. When Sierra Leone's capital of Freetown falls to the RUF, however, Solomon agrees to work with Archer in exchange for Archer helping locate Solomon's family and get them out.

Easier said than done, for Archer is under pressure from his former commander and frenemy Colonel Coetzee (Arnold Vosloo) to get the diamond too. Archer wants the diamond to finance his own way out of Africa and plans to betray both Solomon and Coetzee. He, however, had not counted on American journalist Maddy Bowen (Jennifer Connelly). Investigating the connection between blood diamonds and the powerful Van De Kaap family/diamond corporation, the beautiful Vital Affairs Magazine reporter has Archer slowly questioning his life choices. 

Solomon and Archer, having joined forces, now go to find the pink diamond. Solomon, horrified that Dia has been brainwashed into being a RUF child soldier, attempts to rescue his son. That ends in disaster, but luck is still with Solomon and Archer. Will Solomon and his family escape this nightmare? Will Maddy expose the evil Rudolph Van De Kaap (Marius Weyers) and his aide Mr. Simmons (Michael Sheen)? Who will live and who will die?

I am sure that I saw Blood Diamond when it was released. I, however, do not remember it being as long as it is. At nearly two-and-a-half hours, Blood Diamond is a surprisingly long film. This is a major flaw in Blood Diamond (no pun intended). Charles Leavitt's screenplay (with story by Leavitt and C. Gaby Mitchell) has a curious habit of going on either going on tangents or attempting almost to make two films. For the former, there is when Archer, Solomon and Maddy stumble onto the school of Benjamin Magai (Basil Wallace). Magai has rescued child soldiers and provided refuge and education for them. When looking for Dia, Magai goes with them and ends up getting shot but not killed by child RUF soldier Dead Body. Magai's cheerful, almost naive manner is bizarre given how he should know how traumatized and indoctrinated the child soldiers are.

He does survive, but once he's helicoptered to the hospital, we never see or hear from or about him again. Was he there just to remind us how amputations of African de facto slaves began under the Belgian King Leopold II? Leopold exploited Africa for his own gain, but how he is responsible for creating RUF child soldiers or the RUF leaders using alcohol, drugs and mental manipulation to both terrorize and indoctrinate children no one answers. 

As stated, Blood Diamond also seems to want to make a whole film about child soldiers. A surprising amount of time is taken up by Dia's turn into a RUF zombie. In a very curious choice by director Edward Zwick, the film cuts between a group of journalists coming across the aftereffects of a RUF/government battle and the training and manipulating of Dia and the other children. This decision to go from the journalists to the child soldiers and then back to the journalists undercuts both stories.

In fairness, Blood Diamond did precede Beasts of No Nation, which is also about African child soldiers, by almost a decade.

Both Leonardo DiCaprio and Djimon Hounsou received Oscar nominations for their performances in Lead and Supporting Actor respectively. This was DiCaprio's third nomination out of a current six (one win) and Hounsou's second and currently final nod. Hounsou's nomination was well deserved. 

His performance is exceptionally strong as the father caught in these terrible circumstances. Hounsou brings Solomon's continuous shock and determination to survive to life with great compassion. I questioned both his stubborn insistence on total honesty even when it harmed him and his apparent stupidity in trying to rescue Dia with only a vague plan. However, one can sympathize with Solomon, who is put in terrible circumstances and attempts to do the best that he can.

DiCaprio is a bit hit-and-miss. This was a banner year for DiCaprio who had a nomination for Blood Diamond while also starring in that year's Best Picture winner The Departed. Perhaps the Academy gave him a nomination for Blood Diamond over The Departed because his Afrikaner accent was slightly more believable than his Boston accent. Technically, Danny Archer was Rhodesian (what is now Zimbabwe) and not South African, but he did grow up in South Africa. DiCaprio is an actor who apparently went through an "accents showcase my versatility" period. While his Afrikaner tones were not awful, they did at times feel a bit forced and mannered. It comes across as an actor trying too hard. I think we are meant to focus on Archer's evolution from merciless mercenary to more compassionate person. He did a good job of that, good not great. However, his accent is again someone trying too hard. 

This is especially the case when DiCaprio shares scenes with Arnold Vosloo, who is South African. While he is best known as Imhotep in 1999's The Mummy, Vosloo was quietly effective and menacing as Colonel Coetzee. It is a shame that Vosloo was not given the Archer role. I understand why: Leonardo DiCaprio can open a film, Arnold Vosloo cannot. However, I think Vosloo would not have struggled with the accent the way that DiCaprio did. 

I wonder if the Connelly character was even necessary. Was she there to provide Archer with something of a love interest (the film does have them appear to be interested in each other)? Would it have made the film better if Bowen had been a man? Out of the three leads, this was probably the weakest.

The subject of blood diamonds seems to have been pretty much forgotten now. Whether it is due to the various conflicts no longer ongoing, the overall market being more effective in monitoring conflict diamonds or a lack of interest I cannot say. It is not a totally lost opportunity to mix a serious message with a lot of action. Blood Diamond did a serviceable job, but it is far too long to reach the levels it aspired to. 

DECISION: C+

Dead Man Walking: A Review

DEAD MAN WALKING

There are some issues that are very contentious that stir up fierce passions. Abortion is one such issue. Another is the death penalty. Dead Man Walking does something rare: provide balance between the opposing views. It is not a screed against or for execution, but a journey to find the humanity among the victims and victimizers.

Sister Helen Prejean (Susan Sarandon) works among the Louisiana poor at Hope House. She has been corresponding with Matthew Ponselet (Sean Penn), who is on death row for the killing of teenagers Walter Delacroix (Peter Sargaard) and his girlfriend, Hope Percy (Missy Yager). She agrees to help him with his final appeal.

Sister Helen meets Ponselet in person. She also brings attorney Hilton Barber (Robert Prosky) to attempt to change the sentence to life in prison, which is what the other man convicted of the Delacroix/Percy murders received. Their efforts fail and Ponselet will be executed. 

While Sister Helen is opposed to the death penalty, she also has the chance to meet Walter and Hope's parents. Earl Delacroix (Raymond J. Barry) is more receptive to seeing Sister Helen than his wife, the agony of their only child's death eventually breaking up the marriage. Clyde and Mary Beth Percy (R. Lee Ermey and Celia Weston) are under the mistaken idea that Sister Helen has come around to support the execution. None are pleased to see Sister Helen serve as Ponselet's spiritual adviser as the execution date grows. Through her work, Ponselet finally takes responsibility for his actions. She is able to be with him until the actual execution. Wiser, having seen both sides now, Sister Helen can now help Earl Delacroix find his own way back.

I think many would be leery about the subject matter of Dead Man Walking as it stood. Knowing that Tim Robbins (who wrote and directed the film) and his then-partner Sarandon were the people behind the project might also give some people pause. Robbins and Sarandon were very much politically active at the time, so the thought that Dead Man Walking would be some anti-death penalty lecture might cross a viewer's mind. However, Robbins, adapting Sister Helen Prejean's book, did something extremely wise.

It humanized both sides.  

Had Robbins and Sarandon merely wanted to make a purely anti-death penalty film, it would have fallen into the trap of painting Ponselet as almost a victim. He could have been portrayed as innocent. The focus could have shifted to his own suffering mother (Roberta Maxwell) and his brothers. However, Dead Man Walking took the time to have Sister Helen meet and talk to Earl Delacroix and the Percys. She saw them not as monsters baying for the blood of Matthew Ponselet.

She saw them as deeply grieving parents, ones who wanted justice for their children and felt that Ponselet's death would be that justice. The scenes with Earl and the Percys, as they talk about Walter and Hope, are difficult to watch. Robbins includes flashbacks to their killings as the parents talk to Sister Helen, which I imagine is what she is seeing in her mind. 

At one point, Clyde Percy firmly berates Sister Helen for siding with that "monster". Dead Man Walking makes the case that Matthew Ponselet is a terrible man, but not a "monster". He is a racist and a murderer who comes to repentance and acceptance only at the bitter end. However, he is also a human, with a family that loves him and a daughter that he will never see. 

At the same time, Dead Man Walking also shows that the Percy and Delacroix families, along with those who side with them, are also human. They have lost loved ones, had their lives wrecked perhaps beyond repair, and are left to live their lives with this permanent pain. It is not that they want to inflict pain on the Ponselets. They may not even want that eye for an eye that is quoted by them. They just want peace. 

Tim Robbins' script does well in guiding the viewer through a complex subject that does not tell one what conclusion to reach. At the execution, Matthew Ponselet asks forgiveness of Mr. Delacroix and tells the Percys that he hopes that his death will bring them peace. He also says that he thinks killing is wrong, no matter who does it. When he is executed, we see Walter and Hope reflected. It may be a bit poetic, and perhaps this is either symbolism or Matthew's vision. It works so well that one can read all sorts of things into this scene. 

Dead Man Walking is well-directed by Robbins as well, earning one of the film's four Oscar nominations. There are no big dramatic scenes, no grandiose rages or self-righteous speeches in favor or opposed to someone's view. It is, in fact, a surprisingly quiet film. 

Sarandon, the film's only Oscar win for Best Actress, is very quiet even when Sister Helen is firm. She communicates so much with her eyes, expressing deep sympathy for the parents who lost their children. She is comforting but also realistic, carrying a quiet strength throughout. Sister Helen, however, is not afraid to be firm when needed. Near the end, she quietly but firmly tells Matthew that he bears responsibility for his actions. Other actresses or directors might have made this a big scene, one where there is shouting and grand movement. Dead Man Walking has Sarandon speaking firmly but still in relatively hushed tones. She is not sotto voce, but she is not yelling either. That makes it more effective.

Penn, the third Oscar nomination (the film's fourth being for Bruce Springsteen's closing title song) also does well as Ponselet. He too does not rage, though he shows anger. That makes his final scenes where he tearfully breaks down all the more effective. Perhaps the Louisiana accent was a bit much, but that is a minor point. Everyone else in the cast was ably guided to where the film did something that should be standard: have us see the characters and not the performers.

There are moments of levity to ease the tension, but they are built into the story. Sister Helen and her fellow Sister, Colleen (Margo Martindale) are discussing where to bury Ponselet. Sister Colleen points out that the first available grave is to a deceased sister who left her fiancee at the convent and swore never to so much as touch another man. Now she was going to spend eternity next to one. After a brief pause, the two nuns burst out laughing. It is a natural moment, and one that cuts the tension of the situation.

For a film that runs a little over two hours, Dead Man Walking moves very fast. Perhaps the score with vocalizations by the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Eddie Vedder, was a bit much. The same goes for Springsteen's song, which I was not big on. I do not know if having Tim Robbins' brother David write the score was a good or bad thing. 

In retrospect, Dead Man Walking is well-crafted, ably acted and surprisingly balanced. Whatever your views on the death penalty, it is worth watching Dead Man Walking to give some thought to the opposing view.

DECISION: B+

La Vie en Rose: A Review

 

LA VIE EN ROSE

In the history of the Academy Awards, only two women have won the Best Actress Oscar for non-English films. The first is Sophia Loren for the Italian film Two Women. The second is Marion Cotillard for La Vie en Rose, the French biopic of chanteuse Edith Piaf. I have high praise for Loren, who transcended her beauty to reveal a brilliant, heartbreaking performance.

I truly wish I could say the same for Cottillard, but I cannot. In both the performance and the film, La Vie en Rose did not make a case on why the Little Sparrow was worth following for almost two and a half hours. 

La Vie en Rose jumps from the final days of Edith Piaf (Cotillard) to her early days and her rise (and various stage falls) to become the definitive French singer. Piaf, born Edith Gassion, lives in grinding poverty at the end of World War I. Her trampish, destitute mother sings on the shabby streets of Paris. Edith's father, currently fighting in the war, takes his little girl to Normandie, where she is looked after by his mother, who happens to be the madam of a brothel.

As a side note, I think this is the same background as comedian Richard Pryor, but I digress.

Edith becomes the pet of the whores, in particular Titine (Emmanuelle Seigner). Titine cares for Edith when Edith temporarily goes blind and later recovers, thanks in part to their devotion to Saint Therese, which Edith carries for the rest of her life.

Life is hardscrabble for Edith, who sings on street corners for change. Her life takes a turn when cabaret impresario Louis Leplee (Gerard Depardieu) spots her and builds her into Edith Piaf. She seems on her way until Leplee is murdered by gangsters. Owing to her past association with gangsters, she is suspected of being an accessory but has no involvement. With her career threatened, she turns to songwriter and voice coach Raymond Asso (Marc Barbe) for help. Asso pushes Piaf not just vocally but physically, training her in diction and body movement, convinced that she could be la plus grande chanteuse dans toute la France.

In between her musical triumphs, Piaf has an ill-fated love affair with boxer Marcel Cerdan (Jean-Pierre Martins), gets hooked on heroin, goes through rehab, meets Marlene Dietrich (Caroline Silhol), who astonishes her by telling her how Piaf's singing evokes Paris to her, and then lives out her last day.

I am sure that there are people who, when they think of Edith Piaf, they will recall how she was called "that crazy Mexican lady" in Bull Durham. La Vie en Rose serves to clarify that she is not Mexican but French. Apart from that, I found it a slog, wishing that this thing would end.

As we go through Piaf's life hither and yon, I can understand how director Olivier Dahan (who cowrote the screenplay with Isabelle Sobelman) wanted to get away from the standard biopic treatment. There are usually two ways to make a biopic: a birth-to-death coverage of someone's life or a specific time period that covers a major turning point in the subject's life. Better Man is something like the former, Hitchcock is something like the latter. La Vie en Rose seems to want it both ways: cover the entirety of Piaf's sadly brief life while hitting on major turning points (her discovery by Leplee, her affair with Cerdan, her final day). I think that in retrospect, it might have been better for La Vie en Rose if it had opted for one of those methods rather than try to go halfway one route, halfway another.

I might have been dozing off at certain points, but I think that the structure in La Vie en Rose sometimes obscured who some of the people Piaf interacted with were. There is the character of Doug Davis (Harry Hadden-Paton), who I gathered was Piaf's American boy-toy whom she ended up getting killed when, on almost a whim, she ordered him to drive her to see her childhood home during a heavy rainstorm. Who is Doug? Why is his death basically unimportant? 

I am not well-versed in Piaf's life, but from what I saw in La Vie en Rose, as an adult she always looked disheveled and inches from falling, be it the gutter or on the stage. The film starts with her giving a concert in New York, where the ambulance is ready for when she collapses. Near the end, she jokes that people have come to see her fall and she hasn't yet. Unsurprisingly, she does shortly afterwards. It is to where I wondered if her collapses from emotional or physical exhaustion were there for show. 

In terms of performances, I was not won over by the Gallic charms of Marion Cotillard. She is a fine actress who has appeared in American films such as Inception and The Dark Knight Rises. I found her performances overwrought even if it was Edith Piaf, a woman forever falling apart. I saw Cottillard make a lot of faces, keeping her head titled almost always on one side. I, however, did not see Edith Piaf. I saw an almost cartoonish parody, exaggerated and almost hysterical in every sense of the word. While I will concede that losing your lover unexpectedly in a plane crash would leave one distraught, Cotillard's performance here did not touch me or move me. It was all that I could do to stop myself from howling with laughter at how almost operatic she was.

I will say that this section did have one good moment when in her grief and mad running through the hotel, the transition to her performing Hymne a L'Amour was good. I also thought it was good of the film to include Piaf singing in English, particularly the title song, which I think more people know because of Louis Armstrong's cover.

Cotillard is the show, but I found it almost unhinged to where I wondered that Piaf could not have been that overwrought and at times downright loony. Depardieu did well as her first mentor, and Barbe did as well as the stricter Henry Higgins like Asso. The Cerdan-Piaf romance worked well too, thanks to Martins. Here, Cotillard came across as more human rather than the slightly crazed woman about to literally fall apart in front of everyone. 

I was not won over by La Vie en Rose. I thought it gave me no insight into the Little Sparrow. I will say that while I think it deserved its Best Makeup Oscar win, I wonder how weak that year's field was to have Cotillard's mugging win Best Actress. 

Many people think La Vie en Rose is great. I do not. What would I say to those who think highly of La Vie en Rose and think that I am wrong? Non, je ne regrette rien...

1915-1963

DECISION: D+

Wonder Woman (1974): The Television Movie

WONDER WOMAN: THE TELEVISION MOVIE

Film and television adaptations of Wonder Woman have been hit-and-miss. The 2017 film was successful critically and commercially. The 2020 sequel, however, was neither. On television, the 1975-1979 Lynda Carter series and its theme are still fondly remembered. The 2011 attempted reboot on the other hand was such a disaster that not only was it not picked up for series, but the pilot was also never aired. In the various attempted and realized adaptations, people forget that the year before Carter donned her satin tights, another Wonder Woman television series was planned. Wonder Woman is such a bizarre project that one should watch it only to marvel at how anyone in front or behind the camera thought that any of it was good. 

A television movie meant as a test pilot, Wonder Woman stars Cathy Lee Crosby as Diana Prince. She is an Amazonian who has made the great sacrifice to leave Paradise Island to go to the world of men, where there is evil at work. A notorious master criminal named Abner Smith has uncovered the identity of thirty-nine covert agents and will sell them to the highest bidder, putting all of them at risk. He will give the names back to the U.S. for $15 million, with them having three days to meet his ransom. While head spook Steve Trevor (Kaz Garas) has various men working on the case, he needs his secretary Diana Prince to go to France for a "dental appointment".

Once there, everyone knows that she is super-spy Wonder Woman. That includes Abner Smith's chief henchman George (Andrew Prine), who has both murderous and erotic designs on our heroine. She thwarts these assassination attempts with surprising agility and intelligence. No number of hired assassins or snakes sent to her various hotel rooms will stop Diana from pursuing Abner Smith. 

The ransom is agreed to be paid, as time is running short. It is an attempted trap to get Abner Smith to finally reveal himself, which he gladly does so when he captures Wonder Woman. The notorious Abner Smith (Ricardo Montalban) is charming and elegant. He also does not want Diana killed. George, already bitter that he has been rebuffed, chafes at the directive. However, George has an ace up his sleeve: renegade Amazonian Anhjayla (Anitra Ford), who has joined forces with George. Has Wonder Woman met her match? Will Abner Smith get away? 

The curious thing about Wonder Woman is, that apart from her origins on Paradise Island, there is absolutely nothing special or powerful about Diana Prince. Screenwriter John D.F. Black and director Vincent McEveety failed on every level to make Wonder Woman interesting. They decided that Diana had no great powers. Instead, she was in many ways almost ordinary. Moreover, a lot of Wonder Woman makes no sense.

Everyone working for Abner Smith knows who WW is, yet no one at the agency did. The various efforts to assassinate Diana range from bizarre to downright laughable. A group of men in one scene enter a moving elevator from above, and she is able to defeat them so easily that one thinks the scene is pretty pointless. Another time, a snake is sent to her hotel room. I will not diminish the threat of a potentially venomous snake. I will, however, question why Wonder Woman would open a box sent to her room so casually. I also have doubts on whether or not you can remove this threat by having Room Service send over a dish of milk.

I will also question why Abner Smith did not simply kill her when she goes into an obvious trap at a rented mansion. Is it even worth bothering at this point to wonder why "Abner Smith" seems such a ludicrous name for a master criminal? I wonder if George ever called him "Lil' Abner" behind his back.

Perhaps I can begrudgingly say that there is one semi-good moment of wit. When George and Diana are having dinner, George openly says, "Let me make love to you". Diana asks why. After pointing out his own virtues, Diana replies, "You misunderstood me. I didn't mean why should you want to. I meant why should I?". 

However, in all other respects Wonder Woman is oddball. Apparently, Abner Smith's plan was to kill Wonder Woman by trapping her in a sealed room and sending multicolored lava to smother her. This is after she has to follow a burro to find Abner Smith's hideout. A burro that Abner Smith sent Steve Trevor. A burro who is released with the ransom money by using the words, "Corras rapido, por favor", which translates from Spanish as, "Run fast, please". 

We never get an explanation as to who Anhjayla is, or how she managed to hook up with George (interpret that any way that you wish). She and Diana have a battle of javelins that essentially ends in a draw. "You know as well as I do that we will face each other again", Anhjayla tells her frenemy. I figure that was a tease for the hoped-for television series. We will never see this promised confrontation.

All the better, as Wonder Woman has some woeful acting. For most of Wonder Woman, Ricardo Montalban is deliberately kept off screen, with only his hands and voice to appear on camera. He's hamming it up for all its worth, delighting in the chance to be cartoonish. He was, I think, fully aware that Wonder Woman was not a pilot for a series but camp, silly and illogical. Pity that no one else got the memo. 

Former tennis pro Cathy Lee Crosby, I think, did the best that she could with the material. However, there was very little to show that she could have carried a full series. She as at times blank and wooden as Diana Prince. Fortunately for her, she recovered from this error when she later cohosted the television docuseries That's Incredible! but here she could not communicate much. Again, to be fair, Black's script and McEveety's directing were not helpful. 

Everyone else save Montalban gave a bad performance. Garas' Steve had little to do. Jordan Rhodes, who played the smitten agent Bob, was in one scene and added nothing to even a tease for a future romance or at least comic flirtation. Andrew Prine as George was done in not just by his overall bad performance. George is also a rather repulsive man. I get that as a male chauvinist pig he was meant as the opposite of Diana's enlightened woman. However, he was lousy no matter whom he interacted with. Anitra Ford's Anhjayla, like Crosby, I think tried to make this seem interesting. 

I think Wonder Woman, if seen at all, will be as a curiosity, a reflection of its time with "women's lib" becoming more dominant. This is not a good version of the superheroine, and it is good that they opted against a series which would have flopped. You've come a long way, baby, but when it comes to Wonder Woman, you had a little more way to go.

2/10

Thunderbolts*: A Review

THUNDERBOLTS*

When I think on Thunderbolts*, the newest episode of the world's longest and most expensive soap opera, I don't think "why" so much as "who". The "who" is both as in "who is this made for?" and "who are these people?". Thunderbolts* is not terrible. It just was there.

Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) is so tired and so bored with her job of being a hitwoman and agent to CIA director/Tulsi Gabbard lookalike Valentina de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). She wants out, or at least assignments that don't require killing and destruction. Valentina, facing impeachment for her nefarious work, agrees and has her take one last assignment: destroying a secret lab to cover up de Fontaine's nefarious work.

Ah, beware those last assignments, for this was really a trap to get all of de Fontaine's rogue agents to kill each other off. In a case of Spy vs. Spy, Yelena's intended target of John Walker/ex-Captain America 2.0 (Wyatt Russell) is there to kill Ava Starr/Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen). Ghost is there to kill Antonia Dreykov/Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), who is there to kill Yelena. Out of this international Mexican standoff, only Starr manages her task. Exactly how random man Bob (Lewis Pullman), who is also in the lab, fits into all this we do not know.  

De Fontaine, along with her excessively loyal aide Mel (Geraldine Viswanathan), is stunned to find that Bob is alive. He was a new experiment that managed to live, delighting de Fontaine. Not delighting her is how the other agents also live and are now on the run. Bob's powers are growing, but will de Fontaine manage to make use of them to starve off impeachment? 

Into this comes Yelena's father, Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian (David Harbour) as well as Congressman James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes (Sebastian Stan). They join forces when they see that de Fontaine will not stop until they are killed and she gains full control over Bob. Bob is now de Fontaine's newest creation, Sentry. Sentry/Bob, who has struggled for years with both self-esteem and drug addiction, now grows both more powerful and more dangerous. He has the power to plunge people into shadow, requiring the newly formed Thunderbolts (Alexei naming them as such in honor of Yelena's childhood soccer team) to enter Sentry's void to sort out his issues. Will de Fontaine manage to get away with her new plan of "the New Avengers"? What of the mysterious outer space craft that the New Avengers/Thunderbolts see on the screen in the second post-credit scene, with a Number Four prominently displayed on it?

I do not know if it is a good thing that, while watching Thunderbolts* (the asterisk apparently to signal their unofficial name versus the New Avengers moniker), I actually wanted de Fontaine's plan for them to kill each other off to work. In a sense, it did: Taskmaster was killed. However, I think by now the issue with Thunderbolts* or any upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe film is that you need to know so much of what happened before that if you don't, you will be lost. At the minimum, you won't care. I remember Yelena and Alexei from Black Widow. I've seen de Fontaine before. I have seen Bucky before (and as a side note, never liked him). 

However, Thunderbolts* really expects the audience to have an almost encyclopedia-level knowledge to know or even remember who the characters are. Ghost appeared in Ant-Man and the Wasp, which was seven years ago and who hasn't to my knowledge or memory been part of the MCU since. Black Widow was four years ago. That was the first appearance of Taskmaster. She pops up and is popped so quickly in Thunderbolts* that it is a puzzle on why she was there at all. There is brief mention of events from Captain America: Brave New World, which was a mere two months ago, so I guess that is an improvement. I never saw the Disney+ show The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, so this is my first introduction to John Walker. As such, I had a lot of filling in to do. 

For those complaining that Thunderbolts* is the B-Team of the MCU (and to be fair, the closing credits naming them as such was a nice touch), I would offer that the MCU is digging deep into the barrel if your antagonist is Valentina de Fontaine. Julia Louis-Dreyfus' take on the character has always been more comedic in my memory, a bit of a bumbler who tries to be some sort of master manipulator and fails at it. I do not know if Louis-Dreyfus or director Jake Schrieder actually tried to make de Fontaine a true villainess. However, when Louis-Dreyfus as de Fontaine exclaims, "Righteousness without power is just an opinion," the audience laughed. Was that intentional? 

The end result for me was that de Fontaine did not come across as a genuine threat. She came across as a smug, obnoxious twit who has inexplicable political power.

One thing that I found also inexplicable is why Thunderbolts* was edited the way that it was. The film cuts between the four-way Mexican standoff in the lab and the Washington, D.C. soiree that de Fontaine is throwing. I think that Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo's screenplay wanted us to connect the two events. I just think that the back-and-forth did not work. I also do not know how Alexei went from being a limo driver in Mother Russia to a limo driver in Washington, D.C. who conveniently overhears de Fontaine's plans for the human targets. What exactly are the odds that Alexei would be the limo driver? 

Worse is how what is meant as a tense action scene with Walker, Starr and Yelena escaping in Alexei's limo, the button that Alexei hits does not launch a missile but starts playing Ginuwine's Pony. It is enough to give MCU humor a bad name. 

Again, when Thunderbolts* wanted to be exciting and dare I say sincere, it did not work. When Sentry goes rogue and becomes Void (whom I called Shadows because that is what he looked like to me), a lot of it had me rolling my eyes. Of particular note is when the various New Avengers started saving people from Sentry/Void's purging. All I could think of was, "if these people do not have enough sense to get out of the way when objects are flying about them, they kind of deserve to be crushed". By the time we get to Void's surreal world, I was as bored as Yelena was.

I think Yelena's boredom was actually Florence Pugh's boredom with being in Thunderbolts*. I'm sure that she was well-paid for her lack of efforts. She reminded me of Madeline Kahn's performance in Blazing Saddles to where she would make for an excellent Lily Von Shtupp parody. Given that Kahn's character was meant to be a Marlene Dietrich parody, I do not know whether that is a compliment or insult for Pugh. 

Harbour was appropriately hammy as Alexei/Red Guardian. Thunderbolts* has two nepo babies: Wyatt Russell (son of Kurt and Goldie Hawn) and Lewis Pullman (son of Bill). I am not familiar with the previous work of either. I think Russell commended himself well as the obnoxious "Junior Varsity Captain America" as de Fontaine mockingly calls him. I was not impressed with Pullman, though to be fair Bob was not a particularly great character. Like another 2025 nepo baby, Pullman looks a bit too much like his father to let me fully separate them in my mind. Stan, John-Kamen and Viswanathan were fine but again, limited by the script. 

The mid-credit scene was bad (Alexei harassing a random grocery shopper to show her his face on a Wheaties box) and the post-credit scene was there to connect Thunderbolts* to the upcoming Fantastic Four: First Steps. I did not hate Thunderbolts*. However, I did wonder that with them being the New Avengers, how will that work with the Young Avengers teased in The Marvels? In the end, to my mind Thunderbolts* are not go. 

DECISION: D+

Conquest (1937): A Review (Review #1975)

CONQUEST (1937)

The saying "behind every great man is a great woman" is usually not applied to the two wives of Napoleon Bonaparte: the Empresses Josephine and Marie Louise. In fact, the phrase, "Not tonight, Josephine" is used as a byline for turning down sex. However, can that phrase be applied to one of his mistresses? Conquest is surprisingly embracing of adultery and out-of-wedlock childbirth, shocking at a time when the Hays Code was being enforced. Lavish if a bit overacted, Conquest is better to look at than to watch.

Countess Marie Waleska (Greta Garbo) is devoted to her much older husband Anastas (Henry Stephenson). She, however, loves three things: her brother Paul (Leif Erikson), Poland and the Emperor Napoleon (Charles Boyer). She sees the Emperor as a champion of the people, one who will restore an independent Polish state. Her ardor is so great that she sneaks into his camp, where Napoleon is enchanted by this beauty. As fate would have it, Anastas has arranged an audience with Napoleon at a ball, where the Emperor and the Countess begin a flirtation.

The Polish aristocrats essentially pimp Marie out for Poland, begging her to use her feminine wiles to seduce Napoleon into reestablishing Poland as an independent state. Soon, they become lovers and then they fall in love. Anastas has his marriage annulled and Napoleon divorces Josephine, which works out for Marie, who is expecting a child. Unfortunately, Napoleon has opted to marry a Hapsburg princess to create a new royal bloodline. Marie does not tell the Emperor of his new child, though she does tell Napoleon's mother Laetitia (Dame May Whitty).

As Napoleon rises, falls, is exiled to Elba and then attempts a comeback, Marie eventually goes to him and reveals their child Alexander to him. Will our lovers be truly together, or will history conspire to keep them apart?

If anything, Conquest is lavish with a capital L. The film received two Oscar nominations, one of them for Best Art Direction. It more than earned that nomination, for Conquest has grand sets that sometimes overwhelm the audience. Of particular note is when at the Emperor's welcoming ball. The palace is opulent and massive, filling the screen with its grandness. 

Even in scenes that do not require such visual splendor, Conquest delivers. An effective moment is during the French retreat from Russia. Napoleon is berated to his face by a soldier who initially does not recognize him. The sets provide a plausible Russian winter, which gives the scene an extra touch of sadness at how Napoleon's arrogance has led to misery for his men.

The second nomination was for Charles Boyer as Best Actor. Here, I will quibble with the nomination. I found his performance acceptable. He does have some good moments, such as when attempting to learn to dance. The sight of the Conqueror of Europe attempting to cut a little rug brings a touch of levity to something as opulent as Conquest. The aforementioned scene of his retreat is also effective. However, for the most part, I found Boyer a bit exaggerated as Napoleon. 

He and Garbo had an unofficial battle of accents (his French vs. her Swedish), and while they are playing foreigners, it does lend an accidental level of humor; sometimes their scenes together seemed a bit overly dramatic. A case in point is when Marie goes to Elba to reunite with Napoleon and introduce him to his hereto unknown son. As Napoleon goes on about his decision to return, they both started becoming almost unrealistic in playing her disillusionment and distress to his blind ambition.

I think today people would look upon Garbo as also slightly exaggerated in her manner. However, she more than makes up for any overacting with her luminous quality. As she sees Napoleon ride off, Garbo's tearful eyes glisten, making her look more beautiful.

The supporting cast was better, particularly the female supporting players. Marie Ouspenskaya and Dame May Whitty are not in Conquest long. However, they both lend Conquest a bit of humor to what could have been a stodgy period film; there is a great scene where Napoleon calls on Marie. Ouspenskaya, as the addled Dowager Countess, does not recognize the Emperor and thinks that he is merely the corporal Napoleon told her that he was. While playing cards, the illogic of the Dowager Countess' beliefs builds to a humorous rage, with her violent anger and threats to call on Louis XVI to deal with this impertinent soldier almost charming.

The same goes for Dame May Whitty as Napoleon's mother. Initially hostile to his son's newest mistress, her imperious manner soon gives way to an almost motherly affection. Whitty also has a great scene with Boyer when Napoleon is on Elba, advising him that looking through his telescope won't bring France any closer. 

The male supporting cast did not fare as well, all of them coming across as stiff and grand.

Conquest is worth watching for the grand sets and the beauty of Greta Garbo. You also have fun turns from Marie Ouspenskaya and Dame May Whitty to enjoy. While I found the leads a bit overly dramatic, I think Conquest met its goal to tell its story of epic love. 

1786-1817

DECISION: C+

Piccadilly: A Review (Review #1974)

PICCADILLY

A blending of East and West is found in Piccadilly, where Anna May Wong showcases her unique, extraordinary charm and talent. 

The dance duo of Jim (Cyrill Ritchards) and Mabel (Gilda Gray) are the king and queen of the Piccadilly entertainment district and its namesake club. However, Piccadilly Circus impresario Valentine Wilcot (Jameson Thomas) receives loud complaints about being served his meal in a dirty dish from a portly customer (Charles Laughton in an early role). To Valentine's horror, he discovers that the kitchen staff is being distracted by hoochie dancer Shosho (Anna May Wong). She struts her stuff joyfully, but an enraged Valentine fires her.

Valentine, who is also Mabel's lover, pushes Jim out of the show to showcase his star attraction. That suits Jim fine, as he wants to try his luck in America and has been rebuffed by Mabel. Unfortunately, Mabel has also been rebuffed by the audience, who want the duo and are not big on Mabel. In desperation, Valentine tracks down Shosho to the Limehouse district. He hopes that a Chinese-centered act will draw in audiences. Shosho agrees on condition that her boyfriend Jim (Kim Ho Chang) be her accompanist.

Shosho's dance is a hit, so much so that she essentially replaces Mabel as the Piccadilly Circus Club star attraction. Shosho also replaces Mabel in Valentine's affections, but how much so Mabel does not know. Things come to a head when Mabel spies Valentine going to Shosho's flat for a visit. There is a confrontation between Mabel and Shosho. During it, Mabel faints and Shosho is found murdered.

Whodunit? Was it Mabel? Maybe Valentine? Can Jim be behind Shosho's killing? The trial reveals its secrets, until we learn that Life Goes On.

Piccadilly is an inventive film visually, which we see right at the opening. The opening credits appear via the scenery, with the title appearing as a sign on a double-decker bus. Mabel and Victor's dance routine has strong camera work, being very free flowing. Other scenes, such as a woman spying inside a bar with various ethnicities mixing and the actual killing, are equally dramatic in terms of their visual style. This is a very beautiful looking film, with sequences that look quite impressive.

Director Ewald Andre Dupont should get praise for making Piccadilly visually attractive. He also should be given some credit in how he directed the performers. Anna May Wong showed herself a very charismatic and natural actress in the film. Her first scene where we see her joyfully dancing reveals Shosho to be free and easy, delighting in life.

As Piccadilly goes on, we see Wong's magnetic personality come through. She can be playful and vampish. She can also be moving and heartbreaking. The defiance she presents when confronting Mabel reveals a strong, independent woman. We also see that horror and terror as she realizes that she is going to be murdered. Unlike many actresses from the silent era, Wong was not given to exaggerated facial mannerisms. Instead, she is luminous and intriguing as Shosho, this woman who loved the dance but danced too close to the fire.

As stated, Dupont deserves some credit in how he directed his actors. I mentioned how Wong stayed away from grand, theatrical gestures. Granted, her final scene where she is killed may now look a bit overdone. However, as her character is being murdered, you can forgive some great dramatic manner. That exaggerated silent film acting style goes to Gilda Gray. There is a scene where Gray's Mabel is laughing, if memory serves right, when Mabel is dumped by Valentine both professionally and personally. The scene made Mabel's hysterical laughing exactly that in every way possible. Gray seemed exaggerated even for the stereotype of silent film acting. The other actors ranged between Wong's naturalism and Gray's exaggeration.

One issue that I had was with what is meant as a twist in the murder case. I never accepted it as plausible. That knocked Piccadilly down a bit for me. I also was a bit puzzled on the manner of Shosho's death. If memory serves right, it looks as if she was shot at on two separate occasions versus merely murdered. That might be due more to the editing than the film itself.

These, on the whole, while making it fall a bit do not take away from how strong Piccadilly is. Anna May Wong proves herself a strong and charismatic actress in Piccadilly. She and the film should be better known and remembered.  

DECISION: B+

Our Son: A Review

OUR SON

Luke Evans is a rarity in Hollywood. He is an openly gay actor who for the most part has stayed clear of playing gay characters. He tends to play characters who are either straight (such as his turns in Dracula Untold and the live-action Beauty and the Beast) or where his sexuality is unimportant (such as in the live-action Pinocchio or Fast & Furious 6). As such, Our Son is outside Evans' normal filmography. Perhaps Our Son is well-intentioned. I just would have liked it to have been better.

After thirteen years of marriage, book publisher Nicky (Evans) and his partner, former actor and now stay-at-home dad Gabriel (Billy Porter) are finding themselves drifting apart. They have different parental philosophies when it comes to raising Owen (Christopher Woodley), who is Nicky's biological son but whose surrogate mother is black. Poppa Gabriel is very nurturing, while Daddy Nicky is stricter when it comes to things like letting Owen sleep in their bed despite him being eight. 

Now things come to a head when Gabriel confesses two things: desire for another man and how he no longer loves Nicky. They openly though calmly fight about Owen in front of their friends, including lesbian couple Claire (Liza J. Bennett) and Judith (Gabby Beans), who are about to have a gender-neutral baby of their own. Nicky now has to try and raise Owen by himself, no easy feat given how he has pretty much shunted child raising to his spouse Gabriel. For his part, Gabriel has no real way of supporting Owen, though there is the possibility of working for their mutual friend Matthew (Andrew Rannells). 

As the custody battle between Gabriel and Nicky begins, both men struggle with their feelings of whether he will be the best choice for Owen or not. Nicky also begins exploring the world of clubs again (Gabriel already having strayed into a brief extramarital affair with the object of his desires). Who will end up having primary custody of Our Son, Owen?

Our Son is the gay version of Kramer vs. Kramer, with Luke Evans playing the Dustin Hoffman part and Billy Porter playing the Meryl Streep part. There are so many similarities between Our Son and Kramer vs. Kramer that one is within his/her rights to think that screenwriters Peter Nickowitz and Bill Oliver (who also directed) watched the latter and took notes to see how to adapt it to a gay setting. I am not saying that Nickowitz or Oliver actually or literally stole from or used anything from Kramer vs. Kramer. 

I am saying that for me, there were scenes and situations from Our Son that reminded me of Kramer vs. Kramer. Daddy Nicky, like Dustin Hoffman's Ted, cannot make breakfast for his son. Poppa Gabriel, like Meryl Streep's Joanna, leaves his spouse because he does not love him anymore. Owen, like Justin Henry's Billy, can be a bit insufferable where I thought he would be better off being put up for adoption. To be fair, Our Son makes both Nicky and Gabriel at times so awful as parents that Owen would probably be better off being raised by Isabella (Nuala Cleary), the very sensible and patient babysitter who comes around every so often.

Perhaps I am being too harsh, as Our Son makes the case that Nicky is a pretty clueless and absentee dad, and Gabriel is almost the perfect mother. Nicky is not, for example, overly devastated that Gabriel confesses to desiring another man. He seems more perturbed that Gabriel did not ask permission to pursue an extramarital affair, suggesting to the audience that they have an open marriage. That, at least, was the impression that I was left with, which is a very bizarre one. 

In terms of performances, Our Son had me at times laughing at what were meant as serious, somber moments. A fight between Nicky and Gabriel which was meant to be devasting in the emotional revealing had me chuckling. I think it has to do with how earnest everyone was playing the scene. Despite everyone's best efforts, it came across as parody. More laughable was when Judith was giving birth to their gender-neutral Sheila. Granted, I have never witnessed or given birth myself, but Judith's facial expressions coupled with her stating, "IT HURTS!" made me wonder why either of them did not think that it would not. Haven't they invented drugs to dull the pain? 

I think highly of Luke Evans, who is very skilled in almost everything that I have seen. I think that he gave it his all in Our Son. It is unfortunate that the end result made Nicky into a total wimp. Evans was nothing but weepy and forlorn in the film. I understand that Nicky was upset about the prospect of losing Owen, but he was not that involved prior to the breakup. As such, his reaction seems to be more out of character. He was even a bit bitchy when the subject of Gabriel's career came up, dismissing his former spouse's claims of an acting career as being nothing but upstate summer stock. The only thing that I got out of Evans' performance was my surprise at how tatted Evans is. 

This is, I think, one of the first projects where I have seen Billy Porter take a major role (I remember him from 80 for Brady, which was traumatic enough without him). I think he too tried to match what he thought of as a major drama. It never worked for me, though, as if Porter was trying too hard. 

I will say that I thought Woodley as Owen did a decent job, even if at times he came across as whiny and obnoxious. 

"It must be hard fighting for the right to marry and then just ending up in a divorce court like everyone else", Nicky's nephew Max (Will Coombs) essentially scolds his uncle when Nicky finally tells his religious family about the breakup. I am perplexed on the thinking that, once same-sex marriage was legalized, such relationships would be permanent and immune from things like a breakup and now custody battles when only one parent could be biologically related to a child. I think Our Son came with noble and sincere efforts. It just did not work for me. 

DECISION: D-