Posts tagged Richard Gere
“Amelia” You Won’t Be Enthralled
Oct 29th
You Won’t Be Enthralled
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
AMELIA is the story of Amelia Earhart, the first woman to perform a number of flying accomplishments in the Twenties and Thirties, and she is played stunningly by two-time Academy Award winner Hilary Swank.
Unfortunately, if the film were a jet airplane, it would have to be called a flameout, whereas everyone involved with it and many in the audience were hoping that it would soar to wonderful and exiting heights.
Part of the reason is that we know how the story ends, and so there is hardly any suspense at all.
Another part is the construction of the film. It jumps back and forth in time and setting without warning, so that the audience is disoriented along with being dissatisfied.
As a matter of fact, the opening scene takes place in June 1937 in Miami, Florida, at the beginning of Earhart’s ill-fated attempt to be the first woman to fly around the world.
Then we jump back to April 1928 in New York City and see the preparations for Earhart’s first flight across the Atlantic Ocean, in which she didn’t fly the airplane, but was just a passenger, although she was named the “commander”
of the flight over two men who did the actual flying.
Now, some of these jumps are identified by titles for the audience, but others aren’t, and scenes from Earhart’s final flight keep being thrown into the somewhat chronological story at this point.
We see Earhart’s relationship with publisher and promoter George Putnam, played by Richard Gere, and the first time he asks her to marry him, she says, “I don’t want to get married, George. I’m not the marrying kind.”
However, they do get married, only without the part in the marriage vows about “obey.” Earhart says that she can’t promise that.
We also see Earhart’s relationship with flying instructor Gene Vidal, played by Ewan McGregor, the father of Gore Vidal, who appears in the film as a young boy.
Also, many shots of beautiful scenery are thrown in that have nothing to do with the story but just look pretty.
All in all, the film is too melodramatic, but without much drama and certainly without any suspense.
AMELIA might teach you something you didn’t know about Earhart’s life, but you won’t be enthralled with it, whereas I wanted to be enthralled.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
Amelia – Movie Trailer
Oct 23rd
Hilary Swank and Richard Gere star in director Mira Nair’s biopic tracing the life of famed aviator Amelia Earhart — who made history in 1932 by becoming the first woman ever to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. The trip made the aviatrix a national celebrity — with help from her publicist George Putnam (Gere), whom she fell in love with and eventually married. Their union was tested, however, as Earhart developed feelings for contemporary Gene Vidal (Ewan McGregor ), and the couple’s marriage faced the ultimate tragedy years later, as Earhart’s fierce independent spirit spurred her to attempt to fly around the world — a venture that infamously shrouded her in mystery, as the pilot simply vanished after crashing into the Pacific Ocean. Christopher Eccleston and co-star in the Avalon Pictures production.
“Nights in Rodanthe” What’s the Point?
Oct 2nd
What’s the Point?
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
NIGHTS IN RODANTHE is the latest film to be made from a novel by romance novelist Nicholas Sparks, and if the films are true to his novels, then I would have to say that Sparks has a problem with endings.
The film doesn’t have a problem with casting, as once again Richard Gere is teamed with Diane Lane in a love story.
However, you have heard of a “meet cute”? Their characters “meet long.”
Rodanthe is a little village on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and the film begins with Adrienne Willis getting ready to leave her home and go to Rodanthe for a weekend in order to take care of her best friend’s home, which is a bed-and-breakfast smack-dab on the beach.
But when her estranged husband arrives to pick up their two teenage children, he surprises and shocks Adrienne by saying, “I want to come home.”
Meanwhile, we see Dr. Paul Flanner finish selling his house in Raleigh and traveling to Rodanthe for the weekend, and we see how just getting there is an adventure.
Paul checks in, saying he might stay as long as four nights, and because he is the only guest, he takes his food from the dining room into the kitchen to eat with Adrienne, saying that he doesn’t want to eat alone.
Well, we can all see where this is heading, can’t we? And when a storm hits and they secure the house against it together, they are drawn toward each other even more.
Now, there is a back story for Paul, and he is in Rodanthe for more than just a weekend vacation, but this serves only to slow down the inevitable ending, right?
Wrong! The back story creates the ending, which is completely unexpected and not true to everything that comes before it. It is not so much a cheap ending as it is a “cheat” ending.
The film is manipulative, because it wants to create a specified feeling in the audience, but it goes on much too long and has that cheat ending.
In fact, you could even say that it is too schmaltzy and has an unsatisfactory ending, but all in all, we have to ask ourselves, what is the point of movies and stories like this?
NIGHTS IN RODANTHE left me asking “What’s the point?”
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”