Posts tagged Kenneth Branagh
“My Week with Marilyn” Delightful and Believable
0December 10, 2011
“Delightful and Believable”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
My Week with Marilyn tells the true story of what must have been every young man’s dream back in the 1950s: spend time on a movie set with Marilyn Monroe and get paid to take care of all her needs and wants.
The time is 1956, the 23-year-old man is Colin Clark, and the movie is The Prince and the Showgirl, which was being made in England.
Marilyn is played wonderfully by Michelle Williams, Kenneth Branagh plays Laurence Olivier, and, yes, that is Emma Watson playing Lucy, a wardrobe assistant working on the movie.
Judi Dench plays an actress in the movie being made, which was based on a play called The Sleeping Prince, and one could ask, “Is Judi Dench in every movie these days?”
Colin says that he will do anything to be in the film business, and he remarks, “Everyone remembers their first job. This is the story of mine.”
Through family connections, Colin is able to get a job as a gofer on the production and is even given the title of Third Assistant Director, a position that nowadays is called Second Second Assistant Director, so that people will stop referring to the person by a rude word that rhymes with “third.”
Marilyn is having personal problems in her life, she is terribly insecure, and she arrives with her new husband, Arthur Miller, along with a large number of handlers who like to keep Marilyn medicated because it is easier to keep their cash cow under control that way.
After Marilyn keeps everyone waiting on the set and slowing down the production, Olivier tells Colin to “Be a good boy and keep an eye on her.”
Then after Arthur Miller leaves and goes back to the United States, Marilyn starts noticing Colin and calls him at all hours when she just wants a friend or to have someone near whom she believes she can trust and is on her side in the conflict that is going on.
Marilyn claims that she just wants to be loved like a regular girl, but Olivier believes that she knows exactly what she is doing, and now Colin is in a very fortunate and privileged position that gets him in trouble with her handlers and other members of the crew.
My Week with Marilyn is delightful and believable.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
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“Thor” Deus ex Machina to the Max
0June 9, 2011
“Deus ex Machina to the Max”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Thor is from the Marvel Studios, which is an obvious indication that it is based on a comic book, even though its roots go all the way back to Norse mythology, in which the title character was the Norse god of thunder, might, and war and who had a magical hammer that returned to him.
So, if you are not a teenager, don’t care for comic books, and not all that interested in Norse mythology, you can skip this one even though it was directed by acclaimed actor-director Kenneth Branagh and stars Sir Anthony Hopkins and Natalie Portman.
No, Hopkins doesn’t play Thor. He plays Odin, the supreme god and the father of Thor.
So, if you do see this movie, don’t be surprised if you recognize elements of Norse mythology, Christian mythology, Shakespearean stories, the legend of King Arthur, and every cliche in the book from bad government agents to the use of “bad cop, good cop” in the form of “bad god, good god.”
Oh, yes, the story switches back and forth between the realm of the gods and here on earth, where Thor becomes banished for his bad behavior.
In other words, he has to redeem himself and learn not to be so obnoxious.
And once that Thor lands in New Mexico, he runs into Dr. Jane Foster and her team of astrophysicists. Or, rather, she runs into him. Twice.
Jane is played by Natalie Portman, and if you think that this role is beneath her after winning an Academy Award, you would be right.
Thor’s hammer lands in the desert, too, and so the story cuts back and forth between the treachery up in the realm of the gods and Thor’s trials down on earth, not to mention a budding and implausible romance with Jane.
For an action movie, there is way too much talk, too, from the narration at the beginning to set up the story to the exposition in the middle that makes you just want to say, “Blah blah blah, already!”
And the title gives critics the chance to say the movie is “Thilly, thorry, thtupid, thuperfithial, and thimplithtic.”
Thor even has an ending that would embarrass the gods, because it is one of deus ex machina to the max, assuming that anyone in this simplistic day and age gets that.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
