This is a well done movie. It is sharply written with fully drawn characters and some memorable dialog. One of the characters is one of the most important public figures in 20th Century America, Richard Nixon. It is based in real events and is the adaptation of a successful play. The performances have been lauded by critics, and I concur that they are praiseworthy.

One problem.

It never gets past the “who cares?” moment.

What do we care? David Frost, a smarmy Australian entertainer/television host lands a series of interviews with Richard Nixon following Nixon’s resignation from the Presidency. The two men verbally and psychologically duel throughout the interviews (both on and off the record). In the end, Frost gets Nixon to admit that his approach to the presidency was overreaching and criminal.

And?

We all already know this.

The man was about to be impeached. We know his thoughts on the power of the Presidency were out of whack with reality.

A film should have a purpose. A film without purpose is little more than a entrancing, flashing lights on a wall. This movie is devoid of a moving point. Its not a deep character study given that we learn nothing new about the characters. Its not a political statement since it is surprisingly without an axe to grind - a remarkable feat in the age of BDS. I couldn’t find any reason for this film to exist other than for the sake of just existing.

Again, it is a aptly made film and the performances are good. I just can’t justify telling people its worth sitting through.




Related Reviews:
Presidential movies
Death of a President (2006)
Thirteen Days (2000)


Other Critic's Reviews:
Cinema Dave
Apollo Movie Guide

Labels: film, Frank Langella, Kevin Bacon, Michael Sheen, movie review, Oliver Platt, Ron Howard, Sam Rockwell

I want to thank my friend Ron Nordin for allowing me to publish his review of this recent release.

Labels: film, Frank Langella, guest review, movie review, Ron Howard

Maybe they should also advertise that you'll have plenty of choices of seats at the theater as a selling point.

The team that brought you the gibbering mess that was The Da Vinci Code is back to bore you some more. The problem with this trailer is that many non-Catholics aren't going to understand the relevance of the smoke and probably couldn't place the location, let alone define the Illuminati. Effectively, the trailer simply says, hey it's dark and we're going to show something creepy.

Its possible this is the Dan Brown adaptation that will translate to the screen. Personally, I doubt it, but I've been wrong before. I'm willing to bet this will be The Da Vinci Code with a little more pepper in its step but not a great work. Take a look, watch the teaser below and let me know what you think.





Screenwriter: Akiva Goldsman (I am Legend)
Director: Ron Howard (Cinderella Man)
Actors: Tom Hanks (Saving Private Ryan), Ayelet Zurer (Vantage Point), Ewan McGregor (Trainspotting) and Stellan Skarsgård (Beowulf & Grendel)

Labels: Ewan McGregor, movie trailer, Ron Howard, Stellan Skarsgård, Tom Hanks

Strong performances by Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly support a profoundly moving script by Akiva Goldsman. The film tells the tale of mathematical genius John Nash who struggles with schizophrenia. Intelligent and well produced, this has earned all of the praise it has received.


Related Reviews:
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Mystery, Alaska (1999)
Cinderella Man (2005)


Other Critic's Reviews:
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Movies for Guys

Labels: film, Jennifer Connelly, movie review, Ron Howard, Russell Crowe

Screenwriter: Peter Morgan (The Queen)
Director: Ron Howard (The Da Vinci Code)
Actors: Kevin Bacon (Hollow Man), Sam Rockwell (Matchstick Men), Frank Langella (Superman Returns), Patty McCormack (Shallow Ground), Michael Sheen (Blood Diamond), and Oliver Platt (Casanova)

Labels: film, Frank Langella, Kevin Bacon, movie trailer, Oliver Platt, Ron Howard, Sam Rockwell

Short Review: This thing is as coherent as Keith Richards reciting Naked Lunch.



One has to assume Tom Hanks made this film as a result of his issues with his father, and his own troubles with incontinence. Is it possible that his partaking in this ill-founded attack on the Christian faith is little more than a cry for help? Of course, difficulty retaining the love and respect of one’s father must be devastating. We can all imagine the incontinence must be deeply unsettling for a grown man. How these personal issues have brought Mr. Hanks to make this film, we cannot say. Personally, I can’t say for certain they actually drove him to make this silly movie. But alas, the question about if his wetting his pants and his loveless relations with his father remains. Are those to items connected? We will never really know, but its worth discussing.*

Let’s put aside the spiteful anti-Christian core of this piece and look at the film itself. Thanks to Ron Howard’s uncharacteristically inept handing of the production, this is the only place we need to look to bury this piece forever. This is a complete mess. The opening act promises some intrigue but quickly sours into a convoluted hash of pseudo-history and bad dialog. The fact that the story gets convoluted isn’t inherently bad, The Usual Suspects is a knot of a film but retains its potency. The difference between this film and others such as The Usual Suspects or 12 Monkeys is that this story is convoluted not because the story is complicated, it is because the story is poorly told.

The piece centers around a series of murders which eventually lead the hero Dr. Robert Langdon (Hanks) to reveal a conspiracy to hide the truth about Jesus Christ. As the story goes, Christ rolled around in the hay with Mary Magdalene and had a kid or two.** There’s a vicious group of Catholics here, a gaggle of nasties over there and Hanks with his pompadour and a twiggy French woman are stuck in the middle. The whole deal revolves around trying to find the final resting-place of Magdalene, who is otherwise known as “The Holy Grail”. Actually, her birth cavity is The Holy Grail, the rest of her is apparently just regular ol’ chick. From what I can gather from the foggy plot, the film comes down on the side of turning all of Christendom into Mary Magdalene’s personal crotch cult, which will celebrate her ability to produce the offspring of Jesus. The film points to her as being holy because of their unfounded demand that she was Jesus’ sexual partner while at the same time claiming that said unfounded claims prove that Jesus was not God after all. If having relations denies Jesus his Christ title then how is it that Magdalene is anyone important either? If Jesus is not God then Magdalene is no one more important than the girl selling eyeliner down at your local Wal Mart. With all of the Harvard professors mincing about in the film you’d think one of them would work this out. Then again, Hanks playing one of the aforementioned Harvard professors mispronounces the word “liberry” instead of the accepted “library” (it’s a good thing he didn’t say Nu-clur.) Apparently, we’re not dealing with Harvard’s varsity squad in this film.

The film is long and ultimately pointless. The seething hatred expressed towards the Christian faith is like dropping a turd in an already brimming barf bag. Even if you’re not Christian and don’t mind the clumsy slander forwarded by this film, you’re still stuck with a poorly constructed piece. There is nothing good about this movie. It is both Ron Howard’s and Tom Hank’s worst piece in years and yes I’m including both Turner & Hootch and The Missing. Howard’s direction is episodic and littered with broken pacing. Hanks is almost zombie like as he struggles to find something to do until his character expels another litany of useless facts which may or may not actually be facts. This seems like the work of people with far less experience and talent than those who worked on the production.

For those of you who want to offend Christians, you’ll have to do better. This film, if it weren’t such a huge production, wouldn’t be good enough to be deemed offensive. It’s like having a five year old tell you that they hate you. It’s sad day for those who would spend so much effort to construct something so obtuse and pathetic. Christians who are offended by this, I understand your issue. The fact is we should have pity on those who work so hard to deny the truth. Don’t get me wrong, we shouldn’t take their crap laying down, but we should have some pity. Fools abound in a world dedicated to man’s designs.


* I do not posses definitive proof that Mr. Hanks involuntarily wets his pants. I cannot say for certain that his relationship with his father was anything but normal. This said, he has made a number of films with absentee fathers and others where his character has some issue with urination. If it is reasonable to look at The Last Supper to support unfounded claims against Christ, why is it so far fetched to look at Hanks films to deduce things about his personal life? After all, Da Vinci wasn’t hanging around in the time of Christ, for our purposes we’re looking at the direct result of Hank’s work.

** Since we’re defiling Christ and making crap up to suit our purposes how about a sequel where Langdon finds Jesus’ DNA in some sap and then takes the results to produce a Jurassic Park populated with the prophets? If you don’t like that, how about sending Marty McFly back in time to keep his ancestral grandmother from dating the young Jesus. Think these are silly? They’re no worse than the fiction puked out by this rabble.


Related Reviews:
Tom Hanks movies
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
The Terminal (2004)


Other Critic's Reviews:
Celluloid Heroes
DarkMatters: The Mind of Matt

Labels: anti-Christian, Dan Brown, film, movie review, Ron Howard, The DaVinci Code, Tom Hanks