The Queen

RATED: PG-13 for brief strong language
RUNNING TIME: 103 MINUTES
PLOT: This movie is a revealing, witty portrait of the British royal family in crisis immediately following the death of Princess Diana. The setting for this fictional account of real events is no less than the private chambers of the Royal Family and the British government in the wake of the sudden death of Princess Diana in August of 1997.

STARS: Helen Mirren (Queen Elizabeth II), James Cromwell (Prince Philip), Alex Jennings (Prince Charles), Sylvia Syms (Queen Mother), Michael Sheen (Tony Blair).

Gord Burt 4.5 Stars

Everyone who was alive at the time remembers where they were when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. For this generation, that frozen moment belongs to Princess Diana, a woman taken far too early who did immeasurable good and suffered greatly.

The Queen slips audaciously behind the famous walls of Buckingham Palace, Downing St. and Balmoral Castle to catch Queen Elizabeth and Prime Minister Tony Blair in action. Both these personages, of course, still occupy those positions. This docudrama chronicles the Queen’s 45th year in power and Blair’s first.

The Queen zeroes in on the traumatic week in August 1997 following Princess Diana’s death in a Paris car crash. Making us a fly on the wall of the planet’s most-watched household, and portraying them as fallible human beings, the movie delivers quite a kick. The film, a fascinating mix of gossip and historical perspective, examines the clash of values, rituals and traditions versus media savvy and political ambition, that leads to a crisis for the British monarchy.

Helen Mirren gives an Oscar worthy performance as Queen Elizabeth. She initially comes off as a relic of a bygone era with a direct link to Queen Victoria herself, but over the course of the week, she emerges as a queen with dignity and durability. She is a woman dedicated to doing her duty, but who needs to cope with a newly discovered shift in values. Mirren is superb in finding those telling moments where the royal mask drops to reveal the flesh-and-blood woman.

Diana’s death was to Tony Blair what 9/11 was to George Bush, an event that defined the style of his administration. Charles recognized that, what Diana knew - how to reach the common person, how to work the media - was also present in Blair. In one of the script’s several references to the present day, Queen Elizabeth tells Blair that “one day, quite suddenly and without warning, the same thing (public displeasure) will happen to you,” rendering the Prime Minister speechless.

We see Diana as the entire world saw her, through television and photographs. We also see how vast her exposure was and how obsessive the camera and numerous eyes were with her.

Erin Harde 4 Stars

It may be up for some Oscars, and feature a stunning performance by Helen Mirren, but when it comes down to it, The Queen tickles that same fancy that the tabloids do. It’s a glorious two hours of spying on the royal family behind the castle walls as they cope with the aftermath of Princess Diana’s death.

It’s a film to fan the voyeur fire, ironically the same one that killed Diana. Our only excuse is that it’s fiction pieced together by snippets of the truth. There is no real harm in us devouring every word and expression Elizabeth II utters, so we’re free to enjoy it.

The Queen recounts Britain’s fury with the royal reaction, or lack thereof. While newly elected Prime Minister Tony Blair gained even more popularity in his public statements about the People’s Princess, the Queen faced the startling statistic that one in four Britons would abolish the monarchy in favour of a republic. And as that realization hits her, it becomes easier to sympathize with her and the decades of tradition that inform her every move.

Mirren has incredible presence as the Sovereign. She makes the queen’s power felt with just a few words or a gesture. Watching Blair nervously fumble through the protocol, and her scathing looks at his mistakes and his wife’s crooked curtsey is a laugh. But the lighter moments are rare. Mirren exercises her best acting in the scenes where there is no dialogue at all, and we’re forced to attempt reading the queen’s mind. There is a curious metaphor about a stag and the monarchy, but its meaning is up for interpretation. When she speaks, however, there is no questioning her intent, as Blair finds out repeatedly.

Charles turns out to be a surprising champion of communicating outright with the public, but he too becomes a eunuch in the presence of his mother. Special care is made to leave William and Harry in the background, and their faces are never once revealed. The Queen stays focused on its title character and her constant struggle to balance tradition and modernization. Tabloid stories conclude at the end of the page, but this film has no tidy ending, leaving us to ponder the direction of the monarchy.

Letters from Iwo Jima

RATED: R for graphic war violence
RUNNING TIME: 141 MINUTES
STARS: Ken Watanabe (General Kuribayashi), Kazunari Ninomiya (Saigo), Tsuyoshi Ihara (Baron Nishi), Ryo Kase (Shimizu), Shidou Nakamura (Lieutenant Ito).
PLOT: The story of the battle of Iwo Jima between the United States and Japan during World War II, as told from the perspective of two good friends serving in the Japanese forces, who watch helplessly throughout various battles as their comrades are killed.

Gord Burt 5 Stars

Few creators have multiple opuses. Clint Eastwood’s magnum opus was supposed to be his 1992 Oscar winning Unforgiven. But he upped the ante with Million Dollar Baby and then with Flags of Our Fathers. He’s outdone himself once again with Letters from Iwo Jima.

In Letters, Eastwood tells the story of the Battle of Iwo Jima from the Japanese perspective. It can be viewed as a bookend to Flags, or on its own. Either way, it’s an unprecedented cinematic masterpiece by Eastwood. Each film is good. Together, they’re remarkable.

Letters is a sorrowful and savagely beautiful film that can stand in the company of the greatest war movies. The film is the stylistic twin of Flags but is different in feel due to its intimacy and locations. Neither shirks from carnage, nor revels in it.

Flags dealt with the American view of Iwo Jima with emphasis on the famous flag-raising photo and its aftermath. Letters delivers a more intimate and genuinely human account of the battle. And though both films showcase the ferociousness of the war, Letters offers a more historically sober rendition of the events in which over 18,000 Japanese troops died and only 216 were captured.

Unlike Flags, Eastwood spends more time exposing the back-stories of the soldiers and, more interestingly, the claustrophobic cave surroundings they were forced to live in during the 40-day battle.

Eastwood’s style is simpler here, more stoic and subdued. In the first hour, before the carnage begins, we learn about the people on the island and why they are there, but it’s when the characters start to die that the movie comes alive. The slow pacing pays off as you get a sense of what it felt like to be trapped inside the mountain, parched, starving, on the verge of being killed by men you couldn’t see with officers vowing to kill you if you tried to surrender.

Eastwood’s depiction of the horrors of war and the atrocities committed on both sides is quite shocking. If Flags is more complex in its ambitions and structure, the leaner, simpler Letters is even more emotionally devastating. Superbly acted, it looks beyond politics into the hearts and minds of the men we needed to call “the enemy,” and lets us see ourselves.

Erin Harde 4 Stars

Following up his recent World War Two epic, Flags of Our Fathers, Clint Eastwood brings us a brand new perspective on the same battle Flags was centered around. Letters from Iwo Jima offers the unique opportunity to watch the fight for the Japanese island from the viewpoint of its defenders.

Other directors might have painted it as a film about the enemy. In Eastwood’s world, there appear to be no heroes or villains, only unimaginable situations thrust upon innocent young men, who are equally horrified by what they see and must do. Eastwood is gracious in his distribution of blame. In both Flags and Letters, soldiers have names and families. They’re not just numbers or targets, which makes it all the more heartbreaking.

While Eastwood pulls key scenes from Flags and provides the Japanese answer to them, like the cave of Japanese soldiers killed by their own grenade, and the young American who was tortured, Letters is its own movie. Flags focused more on the aftermath of the flag raising, while Letter rarely leaves the island except for a few flashbacks of the former lives of two soldiers and the formidable General Kuribayashi. Ken Watanabe, always a treat, earns his stars as the one leader with real vision, which leads to dissension in the ranks and needless deaths.

Kazunari Ninomiya’s Saigo is the soldier whom we put our faith in and cheer for. He’s not naïve about his fate – no Japanese soldier holds any illusion about returning home. Yet, his innocent face, ability to maneuver out of deadly situations and back story make him very endearing. It’s devastating as he sees his few friends die all around him, especially the ex-Kempaitai soldier who, having just poured his heart out, decides to surrender and is murdered by Americans at close range.

General Kuribayashi’s flashbacks show him in America being honoured at the finest dinners with society’s elite. Eastwood asks the toughest question through a bubbly socialite who is confounded by the notion that if Kuribayashi was pitted against her husband in war, Kuribayashi would kill him because it is his duty. And that’s what the war comes down to – duty, the duty to kill each other even though they’d be friends in another time and place. It is this kind of skill, the ability to engage, rather than just entertain, that makes Eastwood and his movies so brilliant.

Alpha Dog

RATED: R for pervasive drug use and language, strong violence, sexuality and nudity.
RUNNING TIME: 117 MINUTES
PLOT: Based on a true story, a teen drug lord from Los Angeles kidnaps a boy to collect on his brother’s debt. Endless partying ends abruptly as the situation spiral out of control.
STARS: Emile Hirsch (Johnny Truelove), Justin Timberlake (Frankie), Ben Foster (Jake), Anton Yelchin (Zach), Amanda Seyfried (Julie), Bruce Willis (Sonny Truelove), Sharon Stone (Olivia).

Gord Burt 4 Stars

Based on true events in 1999, Alpha Dog is the story of Jesse James Hollywood (played in the movie as Johnny Truelove by Emile Hirsch) who targets the younger brother of someone who owes him money. In real life, Hollywood ran from police and was captured in Paraguay in 2005.

The film begins as a virtual assault on the senses, immediately making Johnny and his crass, loud, spoiled friends thoroughly unlikable. But as the movie continues, it becomes friendlier, and Frankie and Zack (the kidnap victim) are downright hilarious at times. But there’s a dangerous naiveté running beneath all the laughs, and Alpha Dog goes from grin to grim as the wrong moves mount. Consequence is inevitable, and it’s ugly.

It’s interesting to watch a movie in which the criminals are incompetent and scared. Most of the time, bad guys in films are equal parts genius and tough guy. Drug dealer Truelove plays at being a sophisticated badass, but when it comes down to it, he’s a poser. He’s not smart; he’s a coward, bully and he’s scared of guns. There are several times when he has a chance to pull the trigger but doesn’t and it isn’t because he’s decided to use restraint. Johnny plays the role of the gangsta until one of his many unintelligent decisions puts him in a situation in which the real-world consequences are severe. Suddenly, the games are over and he runs out of options.

Director Nick Cassavetes should be commended for the unflinching manner in which he tells the story and forgoes the perfectly happy ending. Crackling with an abundance of outstanding performances from some of today’s best young actors, Alpha Dog is topped with wrenching turns from two wily veterans.

Sharon Stone and Bruce Willis (two actors who are better than they get credit for) mostly frame the film in surprisingly powerful interviews, but it’s the kids who steal the show. The movie may be best known as singer Justin Timberlake’s film debut, and he turns in a fantastic performance as Frankie, Johnny’s best friend. Hirsh is one of the best young actors today and the rest of the cast includes Ben Foster, Anton Yelchin and Dominque Swain.

Alpha Dog isn’t a happy movie, but it’s dramatically solid and the impressions it leaves and ending it delivers will not be easily shaken.

Erin Harde 4 Stars

As movie culture continues to migrate toward sugar high movies that keep you entertained for two hours and then quickly leave your system, Alpha Dog is movie meat that will stay with you for days.

This is the true story of a young L.A. drug lord’s rule over a bunch of dumb stoners. He keeps them knee deep in dope and women and they obey his every whim, no matter the gravity of it. It plays out like any real life tragedy-turned blockbuster; you know what’s coming, hope you’re wrong, and uncomfortably wait for the inevitable. In the case of Alpha Dog, the incident isn’t so notorious that the end is clear cut, but only the overly-optimistic will be surprised by the outcome, a scene that will haunt you for days.

The story unfolds between different timeframes jumping between the present and the events leading up to Johnny Truelove’s final request. Determined to make one of his customers pay up, a violent, psychotic user who is too insane to submit to threats, Truelove and his cronies kidnap the man’s 15-year-old brother. The kid, who comes from a wealthy background and a mother who refuses to wean him, sees it as an opportunity to break free from the nest and cut loose.

Sharon Stone expertly flies off the handle upon discovering her son’s gone missing. Her final interview is heartbreaking, almost as devastating as the crime that led to her three suicide attempts. Bruce Willis is equally adept in his role as the arrogant, unapologetic father ultimately responsible for raising a son capable of such crimes, many of which are the crimes of the father too.

As one of Truelove’s minions, Justin Timberlake plays Frankie, a genuinely nice guy who is criminally spineless. Timberlake is surprisingly good. At first the role appears to merely be the sidekick, but it develops nicely and really gives the pop singer a chance to shine. Anton Yelchin, who plays the ‘stolen boy,’ is so sweet and naively trusting, you want to reach through the screen and snatch him away from his captors. Instead, the movie forces us to squirm through the final moments and continue digesting them for days after. Excellent though it is, a little more sugar coating might have made this film go down easier.

Night at the Museum

RATED: PG for mild action violence
RUNNING TIME: 105 MINUTES

PLOT: Good-hearted dreamer Larry Daley, despite being perpetually down on his luck, thinks he's destined for something big. But even he could never have imagined how big, when he accepts what appears to be a menial job as a graveyard-shift security guard at a museum of natural history.
STARS: Ben Stiller (Larry Daley), Robin Williams (Teddy Roosevelt), Dick Van Dyke (Cecil), Mickey Rooney (Gus), Mizuo Peck (Sagajawea), Owen Wilson (Jedediah), Steve Coogan (Octavius)

Gord Burt 3.5 Stars

Trying to get kids to go to a museum over their holiday vacation might be a little easier after seeing Night at the Museum.

Ben Stiller plays Larry Daley, a dreamer always looking for a get-rich-quick scheme (he invented the Snapper, which was outdone by, you guessed it, the Clapper!) who gets a job as the museum’s new night guard to convince his ex-wife and young son he’s dependable and to avoid eviction. What he doesn’t know is that the museum comes alive the moment the sun sets.

On his first night on the job, the T-Rex skeleton springs to life, followed by tempestuous Mayans, and fire-obsessed Neanderthals. Statues walk, stone idols talk and a virtual what’s-what from the animal kingdom, including a cantankerous monkey, show Larry who’s boss.
Robin Williams as Teddy Roosevelt (in a surprisingly understated role) warns Larry, “The more you know about the past, the better prepared you are for the future,” and Larry soon studies up on The Idiot’s Guide to Attila the Hun.

Night at the Museum is full of smart performers doing fun and silly work. Perhaps the funniest performance is by Ricky Gervais who plays the twitty museum director. His scenes are small marvels of inarticulate blithering and goofiness.

The trio of retiring guards who advise Larry on his appointed nightly rounds include Bill Cobbs, Dick Van Dyke, and the unstoppable Mickey Rooney, who at this point resembles the world’s oldest, angriest troll. All Rooney has to do is enter the frame and fix Stiller with beady eyed stare to provoke copious amounts of laughter. Van Dyke’s timing is as sharp as ever, although director Shawn Levy waits until the closing credits to let the man dance and that’s a shame. Van Dyke is an artist and a living legend; let him strut his stuff.

Night at the Museum won’t ever be confused with fine art, but it’s an unexpectedly fun ride and the big payoff, that history turns out to be way cooler than its reputation suggests, is even more gratifying.

Erin Harde 3.5 Stars

Anything but static and boring, Night at the Museum dusts off the prized, yet typical exhibits in the Museum of Natural History to reveal a lively cast of famous characters from the past. And with Robin Williams as President Teddy Roosevelt and Owen Wilson as cowboy Jedediah, they really are characters.

Ben Stiller is the unsuspecting, bumbling night guard desperate to keep his new post after a string of failed careers. He is warmly welcomed to museum by the quirky trio of aging night watchmen, including Dick Van Dyke and Mickey Rooney, who take advantage of both Larry’s and the viewer’s naivety. They have something sinister hidden in their skin folds, which helps deepens a fun, if shallow plot.

Watching Larry handle one crisis after another as “history comes alive” is a hoot. Arrogantly ignoring the instructions handed down by his predecessors, Larry completely loses control, cowering before a frisky T-Rex skeleton, being urinated on by a naughty monkey and being tied to the tiny tracks of a model railroad by hundreds of miniature cowboys.

His attempts to reason with the animated wax figures and crafty critters land him in an even more complicated impossible scenario, as most of Stiller’s movies do. In addition to proving himself competent in front of his unruly charges, he must win the respect of his young son and explain the latest disaster to the museum’s manager, played by Ricky Gervais, creator of The Office in Britain. Gervais brings his hilarious stuffy, power tripping psychobabble to the role, but if you’re not familiar with his previous work, it might lose its zest.

Stiller and Wilson don’t pull off the same comic chemistry they usually have, but it’s likely because they occupy roles of different stature, literally. Wilson is the sidekick in this film, as is Williams, a shame considering they tend to earn more laughs than Stiller. Yet, his awkward struggle to bring harmony to the museum’s inhabitants and foil the plot of the aging caretaker trio is entertaining enough to make this silly story worthwhile.

Rocky Balboa

RATED: PG for boxing violence and some language.
RUNNING TIME: 103 MINUTES

PLOT: Former heavyweight champion Rocky Balboa steps out of retirement and back into the ring, pitting himself against a new rival decades after his initial glory.
STARS: Sylvester Stallone (Rocky), Burt Young (Paulie), Antonio Tarver (Mason Dixon), Geraldine Hughes (Marie), Tony Burton (Duke), Pedro Lovell (Spider Rico).

Gord Burt 4.5 Stars

In the mid-1970s a struggling actor/screenwriter named Sylvester Stallone wrote the screenplay for Rocky over a weekend, convinced the studio to let him star in it and then filmed the entire movie in under a month. A legend was born. Rocky went on to become one of the biggest hits of the decade, even winning an Oscar for Best Picture and setting the stage for five sequels of varying quality.

Now at age 60, Stallone went back to the drawing board and wrote another screenplay as passionate and as personal as the first one. Perhaps knowing full well he would be ridiculed for doing Rocky Balboa, he turned in a story about an aging fighter who goes back into the ring for one final fight. Think what you will about Rocky Balboa, but this is arguably the best film in the series since the original.

The acting in the film is better than expected, with Stallone bringing the Rocky from the first film spliced with some rousing inspirational monologues when the moment is right. Burt Young’s Paulie is still Paulie. On the other side of the ring, unlike past Rocky foes, Antonio Tarver’s Mason Dixon is proud, but not overly flashy or cocky. There’s few Apollo Creed-worthy one liners, no Clubber Lang-style antics and the evil of Ivan Drago is completely missing. He’s just a guy trying to get respect in the profession he’s most gifted in.

The obligatory training montage is there to get the goosebumps going. The end fight is simply amazing. It’s set-up as if you’re watching a pay-per-view, and then as the rounds roll on it becomes more and more stylized as both fighters pound the heck out of each other. It’s an epic battle, but not like previous Rockys, which went from the realistic to the cartoonish by the time the final fight rolled around. The fight is never pretty; the punches are not overly done and when the final resolution is reached, it feels realistic.

If the measure of a man is in his heart then Rocky Balboa has that by the truckload. For 103 minutes it will show you dreams can still come true if you simply believe in them and will them into being. Those expecting a disaster on the level of Rocky V will instead be treated to the season’s most delightful surprise.

Erin Harde 3.5 Stars

It’s sentimental, worn out and completely unnecessary, but Rocky Balboa poses an irresistible question, which almost justifies the movie’s existence. Who would win if a sports legend of decades past fought the greatest in the sport today?

No matter your sport or game, it’s an intriguing thought. As this sixth chapter in the Rocky saga pits the viewers’ curiosity against good taste, the latter takes a good pummeling, forcing us to anxiously wait through the marquis fight to see who comes out victorious.

If the whole movie focused its energy on building up to the fight, Rocky might have rated higher among its predecessors. However, it starts off as a clip show, a 30-minute rerun of the Italian Stallion’s younger days as he revisits his old haunts and the graveyard where Adrian is buried. She fades in and out throughout the movie, reducing him to tears while his brother-in-law berates him for living in the past.

Having lost his fortune in the last installment, Rocky now owns and manages an Italian restaurant, which draws in boxing fans to hear their host regale them with stories from the ring. Rocky also struggles to bond with his son, a spineless pencil pusher who lives in his father’s shadow. The son is shallow, and resentful of his father, so Rocky pursues a more fulfilling paternal relationship with Steps, the son of little Marie, who was introduced in the original Rocky.

Establishing all of these relationships takes another half hour and it’s not until the second half of the movie that the plot really begins. A sports show features a digitally constructed fight between Rocky and Mason Dixon, the current champ. The fight becomes the subject of water cooler talk and Rocky is soon approached by Dixon’s managers to fight for real. Cue the training scenes and the theme song. It’s predictable and cheesy but still entertaining. And you have to give Sylvester Stallone credit for maintaining washboard abs even at 60.

The exhibition match has the same intensity of a heavyweight title fight, and of course is symbolic of Rocky’s grit and determination both in and outside the ring. Although the outcome is a bit surprising, it’s a satisfying end to both the movie and the franchise, unless the Stallone has a geriatric match planned for Rocky’s retirement years.