Posts tagged Robert Downey Jr
“Sherlock Holmes” Deconstructing Holmes
Dec 30th
Deconstructing Holmes
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
SHERLOCK HOLMES takes one of the most famous of all fictional characters, the brilliant but eccentric London detective created in the late 1800s by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and turns him into a modern-day action hero.
The setting is still London in the late 1800s, but Robert Downey Jr.
plays Holmes as just as much a martial-arts fighter as a brilliant thinker.
And Jude Law plays Dr. Watson, Sherlock’s partner, colleague, and writer of Sherlock’s famous cases, as just as much an equal in the martial arts as Holmes is.
To steal a line from somebody else, “This is not your great-grandfather’s Sherlock Holmes.”
In fact, Watson himself may be onto something, because a major subplot in this mess of a movie is that Dr. Watson is engaged and preparing to move out of their digs at 221B Baker Street.
The fault, Dear Audience, lies with the writers and the director, Guy Ritchie, known for his rock-’em, sock-’em modern-day British crime-caper comedies, but most famous for being the recently divorced husband of Madonna.
When the movie opens, Holmes is in a foul mood, and Watson says to Mrs.
Hudson, the woman who keeps their rooms as tidy as she is allowed to, “He just needs another case, that’s all.”
The last case that Holmes had and presumably solved was three months ago, but before he acquires a new case, Holmes is invited to dinner in a restaurant with Watson and his fiancee, Mary, who insists that Holmes examine her at the table and tell her what his observations reveal about her.
To say that it doesn’t go well would be the understatement of the 19th century.
Holmes eventually gets a case that involves black magic, a midget, a plot to rule England and to reacquire the United States, and Holmes’s female nemesis, Irene Adler, played by the beautiful Rachel McAdams.
Yes, this movie is more like a James Bond adventure than a story about the Sherlock Holmes we have come to know, love, respect, and admire.
The movie is preposterous, the story is preposterous, the action scenes are preposterous, even the acting is preposterous.
And, unfortunately, the ending has all the earmarks of a sequel in the works.
SHERLOCK HOLMES is a silly deconstruction of the four novels and 56 short stories that we have read and loved.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
Sherlock Holmes – Movie Trailer
Dec 26th
The mysterious action-adventure, “Sherlock Holmes” staged by the renowned filmmaker Guy Ritchie for Warner Bros. Pictures and Village Roadshow Pictures. Robert Downey Jr., the legendary detective borrows its shape, and Jude Law plays Holmes’ reliable Mr Watson, of Sherlock Holmes as a doctor and war veteran actively supported.
“The Soloist” Could Have Been Better
May 14th
Could Have Been Better
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
THE SOLOIST is based on a true story, and yet it comes across as if the filmmakers weren’t exactly sure where they wanted the focus to be.
It stars Jamie Foxx as Nathaniel Ayers and Robert Downey Jr. as Steve Lopez, two men whose lives change dramatically when they meet each other and become friends.
Lopez is a columnist for THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, and one day he encounters Ayers in a park playing beautiful music on a violin that has only two strings.
Lopez thinks that Ayers could be the subject of an interesting column, writing “violin guy” in his notebook for ideas, and he begins finding out all he can about this homeless man with amazing musical talent.
He learns that Ayers had been a student at the Juilliard School of Music, but had dropped out before graduating. And when he tracks down the sister of Ayers in Cleveland, she asks him why he is interested in her brother, and Lopez says, “Everyone has a story, and it’s interesting.”
The sister tells Lopez that Nathaniel had become fascinated with music when he was a young boy and after that there was no more football, no more baseball, just music. She says, “That was all he did, just music.”
We see flashbacks to when Ayers was a kid that show his fascination and also to when he arrived in New York City to attend Juilliard, which also give us an indication as to why he dropped out before graduating.
Lopez begins writing some columns about Ayers, which cause one reader to send him a cello that she can’t play anymore to give to Ayers, because the cello was his first instrument of choice.
Lopez involves himself even more into the homeless man’s life, managing to obtain an apartment for Ayers, cello lessons for the first time in three decades, and even to arrange for Ayers to attend a rehearsal for a Beethoven concert.
However, things don’t always go the way Lopez plans them, and the relationship between Ayers and Lopez takes a turn for the worse.
Because we see so many details of Lopez’s life at home and at the office, we begin to wonder if the filmmakers wanted to tell the story about Lopez or about Ayers.
THE SOLOIST is good, but could have been better.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”