Year:  2011
Genre:  Horror, Thriller
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Hilary Swank, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Christopher Lee, Lee Pace, Aunjanue Ellis
Director:  Antti J. Jokinen
Run time:  91 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     I know that someone, somewhere, thought women would flock to theatres…or maybe the DVD store…to see the re-teaming of Hilary Swank and Jeffrey Dean Morgan.  After all, they were in one of those Ultimate Chick Flicks, P.S. I Love You.  (Remember him – he was the Irish-accented pseudo-Gerard-Butler she hooks up with toward the end?)  So they got the big name, Hilary Swank.  Then they got the suitable, bankable co-star from a previous hit.  Check and check.  Now…to make the movie.

     And that’s where this whole thing falls apart.  The casting seems to have been more important that the script or the story or the set design.  (Christopher Lee is added to the cast to provide some horror-movie credibility, but sadly not to add anything at all to the story or the other characters.) 

     The story is about a gorgeous young doctor (Swank, who does a very good impression of a gorgeous young woman) who rents an amazingly affordable apartment in a terrific location from a charming landlord (Morgan) after a bitter breakup with her ex.  She and Morgan begin a tentative, casual romance that turns out to be terribly creepy when it turns out that he is…terribly creepy.

     From there, you can likely write the rest of the story yourself.  He spies on her through the walls, then escalates.  (On the plus side, this involves a fair amount of naked Hilary Swank – maybe that’s why I gave it three full stars.)  He gets creepier and meaner, he does more and more stalkerish awful things, and eventually kills some people and then there’s a final showdown which feels like it lasts 33 minutes of the 90 minute run time and it’s all so very…usual.  I’ve seen this very movie many times before, and it has almost always sucked.  The Resident is no exception.

     Now, here’s my biggest complaint.  If you’re a film maker just starting out, and you want to make a movie starring your three buddies from film class and your grandmother, you make a movie like this one.  If you have two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank in the cast, wouldn’t one expect a little more effort?  Maybe a good script, an interesting twist on the standard story, even a little interesting decor? 

     If I was playing house-league basketball in Ottawa, and all of a sudden my team acquired LeBron James (he’s taking his talents to a high school gym in Ottawa!), I wouldn’t immediately join the NBA and take on all challengers.  I would need to build a team of adequate players around him, and devise a game plan, and actually TRY.  No one can make something succeed all on their own.  And even if Swank is the best actress in the world, she can’t even come close to saving this piece of crap.  Although her fresh-from-the-bath scenes DO help a (very) little.

Year:  2010
Genre:  Documentary, Sports
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Georges St-Pierre, David Loiseau
Appearances:  Rich Franklin, Joe Ferraro, John McCarthy, Keith Jardine, Matt Serra, Steven J. Wong  
Director:  Steven J. Wong
Run time:  95 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     Ostensibly, The Striking Truth is a documentary about two MMA fighters.  It follows Georges St-Pierre over a period of several years as he rose to the top of the Ultimate Fighting world.  It also follows David Loiseau over that same stretch, as he topples from the top and ends up being dropped from the UFC roster.  I say ostensibly, because really this is a documentary about St-Pierre.

     Loiseau actually has a much more interesting story.  In interviews with MMA folk, like Big John McCarthy and Showdown Joe Ferraro, the film makes the case that in terms of talent and skill, Loiseau was one of the best ever.  But self-doubt and panic attacks derail his career while the camera follows.  The suggestion is made that perhaps he doesn’t “have what it takes” – the mental toughness and so on – to really be a great fighter.  The problem is, Loiseau’s problems seem to be shown here just to point out that Georges St-Pierre DOES have what it takes – the character, the toughness, the guts, whatever.

     In fact, The Striking Truth spends more time showing us Georges St-Pierre’s house (it has a fancy stove, you see…and he has a chef…) than it does showing us Loiseau’s decline and eventual banishment from the UFC.  And while 90% of the film is about St-Pierre, I didn’t feel like I learned anything about him I didn’t already know.  What really makes him tick?  Don’t know.  How did his loss to Matt Serra actually affect him?  Can’t tell. 

     And that’s the problem with The Striking Truth.  Not that it ignores Loiseau (although he could be taken out entirely, and a separate documentary could be made about him that would be fascinating), but that it’s a big long GSP love-in.  The director, Steven J. Wong, is obviously a long-time friend of the fighter, and he shows up every now and then to sing his praises, or to take him on at ping-pong.

     And so we get a portrait of a professional fighter who seems very friendly, and genuine, and extremely likeable.  And that’s about it.  In no way is this a hard-hitting documentary (although it most certainly could have gone that way had they wanted to make something good).  Really it’s not much more than a long episode of MTV Cribs where GSP shows us his childhood heirlooms and his fancy stove.  I’m no fan of MMA, but I like GSP.  I won’t be watching him in his title fight on Saturday in Toronto because I don’t care for the sport, but I hope he wins because I like him.  I just don’t know him any better after watching this documentary, out April 26th from Alliance Films.

     Alliance Films is releasing The King’s Speech on DVD April 19th, and also The Royal Collection box set.  Which contains The King’s Speech, The Queen, The Young Victoria, Shakespeare In Love, and Vanity Fair.  At first, I assumed the box set was being released to celebrate the Oscar success of The King’s Speech (Best Picture, Best Actor for Colin Firth). 

     On closer examination, however, it says quite clearly on the box – this DVD set is being released to commemorate the Royal Wedding!  That Prince William Kate Middleton thing coming up in a couple of weeks.  I guess the idea is that people will buy the box, get their royal on for a couple of weeks, and be extra-pumped for the Big Day involving people they have never met and will likely never pay attention to again.

     I like most of the movies on this set.  I think that some are great.  I hope people DO buy this box set, because a lot of these films are worth owning.  But if you buy it in preparation for the royal wedding, I will think less of you.  Much less.  Just saying.  Anyway, here are the five films, and their accompanying reviews.

The King’s Speech (********8/10)

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Year:  2010
Genre:  Drama, History, Period
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter, Jennifer Ehle, Guy Pearce, Timothy Spall, Michael Gambon, Derek Jacobi
Director:  Tom Hooper
Run time:  111 minutes

     It seems that there is a fairly easy formula to follow when it comes to making a run at a bunch of Oscars.  Make a period piece starring mostly British actors about a British monarch.  (The Queen, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Peter O’Toole, Laurence Olivier, Kenneth Branagh, Vanessa Redgrave…and so on.)  Now, if only there were some way to get Nazis into the movie also, it would be a shoo-in, right?  As it turns out, yes.

     The King’s Speech, of course, deals very little with actual Nazis.  The scourge of Hitler and his war in Europe serve only as the catalyst for the speech of the title.  King George VI (Colin Firth), in 1939, had to speak to all of Great Britain in a radio address on the occasion of the declaration of war against Germany at the beginning of World War II.  In order to make this incredibly important speech, the king sought the help of speech therapist Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush) in an effort to correct his rather pronounced stammer.  Logue’s methods are not exactly traditional, and he insists upon calling the new king by his childhood pet name, Bertie.

     The stutter tends to come out of Bertie only when he is nervous or flustered, which seems to be most of the time.  He and Logue delve deep into his childhood, in increments, over the course of the movie, but it’s never clear whether some childhood trauma caused the stammer, or if there is a breakthrough of any kind on that front.  Really, this is just a story about two men from two distinctly different classes becoming friends and learning to trust each other.  Logue is a failed Australian actor with a certain amount of disdain for the monarchy, Bertie has spent his whole life shielded from the common class by the bubble that surrounds the royal family.

     And that, along with the performances by Rush and Firth, is the strength of the movie.  The class distinctions are drawn expertly, and the attention to detail in the costumes and backdrops is remarkable.  The strange thing for me though is that the King overcoming his speech difficulties is actually the second most interesting thing happening in the film.  At the time, and in the history of the British monarchy, the biggest story of the past hundred years was the abdication of the throne by Bertie’s playboy brother Edward (Guy Pearce) so he could marry thrice-divorced Wallis Simpson (Eve Best).  That was a gigantic scandal at the time, and remains one of the most interesting stories in the history of the British royals.

     The fact that Edward’s abdication and carelessness are treated as a minor subplot irks me a little.  It seems to be thrown into the movie more as a way to show the callousness with which Edward treats Bertie than as a seriously large event.  It’s a minor quibble though with an otherwise terrific movie.  British royalty period pieces always get nominated for Oscars.  But they rarely interest me throughout, and even more rarely do they manage not to bore me.  The King’s Speech is NOT the best movie made this year.  Even though won Best Picture, as it was designed to do.  But it IS one of the best British period films made in a long time.  And that makes it well worth seeing for anyone.

The Queen (*********9/10)

Year:  2006
Genre:  Drama, History, Period
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Helen Mirren, Michael Sheen, James Cromwell, Helen McCrory, Alex Jennings, Roger Allam, Sylvia Syms, Mark Bazeley, Earl Cameron, Tim McMullan
Director:  Stephen Frears
Run time:  101 minutes

     Although Helen Mirren has long been one of the most respected British actresses in the world, it wasn’t until The Queen in 2006 that she attained real international celebrity to go along with the accolades.  A Best Actress Oscar win will do that.  Or maybe it was just that the world needed 27 years to get the taste of Caligula out of their collective mouths.  No pun intended.  Actually hey – this is a royal box set!  Shouldn’t it contain Caligula as well?

     This same year, as Mirren was winning an Oscar for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen, she was also winning several awards for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth I in a made-for-TV miniseries.  That made this her definitive role, almost 40 years into her magnificent career.

     Michael Sheen, on the other hand, stars here in HIS definitive role, one that he managed to score in only his third starring appearance in a movie.  That movie was 2003′s The Deal, helmed by Stephen Frears, a TV docudrama about Tony Blair and Gordon Brown opposing Margaret Thatcher.  His remarkable resemblance to Tony Blair gave Michael Sheen a role for life.  In The Queen, also helmed by Frears, he played Blair for the second time.  And then again in The Special Relationship.  And likely many more times to come.  People are, right now, dreaming up movie scripts about Tony Blair simply because Michael Sheen exists.

     The two are wonderful in The Queen, which is the best movie in this set.  In addition to Sheen and Mirren, a fantastic script from Peter Morgan.  At the beginning, Queen Elizabeth and Blair are just as we expect them to be – almost comical in a way, as our perceptions of the Queen’s regal attitude border on silliness.  Then, halfway through, the tone of the film changes entirely, and we get a deep, serious look at the doubts that plague both protagonists.

     As the Queen herself, Mirren is flawless.  She is not just regal, she exudes authority by her very presence.  And while it may be easy to laugh at the frivolities of the archaic monarchy, it’s a nervous laughter we experience when the subject of the mockery is also a truly intimidating personality.  This movie works beginning to end, and is very close to being absolutely perfect.

The Young Victoria (******6/10)

Year:  2009
Genre:  Drama, History, Period
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Emily Blunt, Rupert Friend, Paul Bettany, Miranda Richardson, Jim Broadbent, Thomas Kretschmann, Mark Strong
Director:  Jean-Marc Vallee
Run time:  100 minutes

     It’s got costumes!  And royalty!  And soul-searching and wistful longing and staring and pageantry!  What more could you ask for in a royalty-themed British-accented period piece?  Well, more Oscars, maybe.  No Oscars for The Young Victoria, which at heart is a pretty pedantic if sumptuous entry into the familiar royals-when-they-were-young category of movies.

     Emily Blunt is suitably icy-fiery as the young Queen Victoria, as she ascended to the throne as a teenager.  Of course, being unmarried, who she chose as a husband carried with it international implications.  All that is fine, but how much actual ruling did she do?  Who cares – the only thing that can make a royalty-themed period piece appeal even more to people who like royalty-themed period pieces is a romance.  In this case, the romantic entanglement comes courtesy Prince Albert (Rupert Friend).

     To be fair, The Young Victoria does, in fact, involve a fair amount of country-ruling.  The only problem is that much of the problems Victoria faces as the young, inexperienced monarch of a country are seen through the prism of the romance, which has to be the central theme of the movie.  The Young Victoria is decent, and had it been actually good, it might have won Oscars.  Costumes, British accents, and romanceromanceromance!  It hit all the bases.  2009 must have been a very disappointing Oscar year for this average movie.

Shakespeare In Love (******6/10)

Year:  1998
Genre:  Drama, History, Period
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Joseph Fiennes, Gwyneth Paltrow, Judi Dench, Simon Callow, Imelda Staunton, Ben Affleck, Tom Wilkinson, Jim Carter, Martin Clunes, Rupert Everett
Director:  John Madden
Run time:  122 minutes

     One of the most undeserving Oscar winners in recent memory was Judi Dench.  Not that she wasn’t fantastic in her role as Queen Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love, but she had about four minutes of screen time.  Best Supporting Actress?  Usually that means you were in the movie. 

     One of the least deserving Best Actress Oscar winners in recent memory was Gwyneth Paltrow.  Not that she wasn’t super-hot in Shakespeare In Love, and passable as the charming Lady Viola who disguises herself to appear as a man in stage plays.  But the role really, in the end, had little substance.  Joseph Fiennes, as Shakespeare, was better.  But he was not even considered for a Best Actor, really.  Maybe because he’s Joseph Fiennes.

     And perhaps the least-deserving Best Picture Oscar winner in decades…Shakespeare In Love!  Oh, it’s a decent movie.  It’s even above-average, and the screenplay really is wonderful (and the screenplay DID deserve an Oscar).  And not to rehash all the bad blood from a decade ago, but here’s a quick list of films that did NOT win the Oscar in 1998…The Thin Red Line, Out of Sight, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Elizabeth, Life Is Beautiful…oh never mind.  Here’s one title to sum it all up -Saving Private Ryan.

     So now that I’ve complained, all over again, about the Oscar travesty of 1998, I will now turn my attention to another complaint.  How come this movie is in the “royalty” box set?  Was it that four minutes of Judi Dench as Queen Elizabeth?  Or does “royalty” now just mean “British people in costumes”?

Vanity Fair (****4/10)

Year:  2004
Genre:  Drama, Period
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Reese Witherspoon, Romola Garai, James Purefoy, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Rhys Ifans, Gabriel Byrne, Jim Broadbent, Bob Hoskins, Ruth Sheen
Director:  Mira Nair
Run time:  140 minutes

     William Makepeace Thackeray’s novel was a biting, caustic satire of the British class system.  Here, Vanity Fair (and its heroine, Becky Sharp) get some serious star power from Reese Witherspoon.  And a serious dumbing-down from screenwriters and directors and producers and everyone else involved with the film.  In the novel, Becky is a very unlikeable, unsympathetic heroine.  At times, even downright detestable.

     In this 2004 movie, Becky has all her hard edges dulled, her more caustic personality traits eliminated, and even at her absolute worst, Witherspoon makes sure that Becky remains charming and likeable.  Which has the effect of completely missing the point of the whole story.  When bad things happen to Becky, we feel like the world is being unfair, and we feel sorry for her.  Poor Becky, things are going from bad to worse!

     That’s not the Becky I expect.  This ambitious, backstabbing, vicious social climber is not to be pitied, she is getting what’s coming to her.  And, in fact, not nearly enough of what ought to be coming to her.  But this movie simply refuses to make her unsympathetic.  Or maybe it’s in Reese Witherspoon’s contract.  “I MUST play a charming rogue at worst!”

     One thing I will say for this version of Vanity Fair – it’s the only movie I have ever seen where the main character is named Becky but she is NOT perky with a pony tail and tight track pants with headphones on.  So…that’s something.  And once again, I would point out that just because it’s a period piece does not make it a “royalty” movie.  That connection is tenuous at best for the worst movie in this box set.

Year:  2010
Genre:  Comedy, Cartoon, TV series
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Trey Parker, Matt Stone
Creators:  Trey Parker, Matt Stone
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     As always, Season 14 of South Park is hit-and-miss.  I like the opening episode, about Tiger Woods and sex addiction and the silliness of celebrities who get caught cheating with all kinds of women and then hide behind it.  I like the concept of the 200th episode celebration, where Tom Cruise leads a class action lawsuit against the town of South Park on behalf of all the celebrities who have ever been mocked by the show.  (That episode turns on a very intriguing idea – Cruise agrees to drop the lawsuit if the town will let him meet the Islamic prophet Mohammed – which of course means they would have to draw him.)

     But there are more weak episodes in Season 14 than there are great ones.  The one where Stan’s father intentionally gets cancer so he can obtain medical marijuana is basically one long giant-scrotum joke.  The Intervention episode with Towlie starts strong but degenerates into a silly summer-camp episode of Scoobie-Doo.  The NASCAR one is weak, the Inception spoof is silly, and the three-episode arc where Coon & Friends battle the giant evil being Cthulhu is serious overkill.

     Of course, there are still enough solid episodes to make this TV set worthwhile.  I liked Scrotie McBoogerballs, an episode that already appeared on the Butters box set last year.  Other standouts are a terrific skewering of social media where Stan battles with his own profile inside facebook like Tron, and one where the casts of Real Housewives of New Jersey and Jersey Shore invade the town, who must turn to Osama Bin Laden and Al Quaeda for help.  Season 14 may not be as good as it has been the last few seasons.  But South Park still rocks.

Years:  1965, 1966
Genre:  TV series, Comedy
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Lucille Ball
Directors:  Maury Thompson, Jack Donohue
Run time:  11 hours, 59 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     For me, The Lucy Show jumped the shark in the very first episode of Season Four.  In that episode, Lucy does not actually jump over a shark, th way the Fonz did in Happy Days, but rather jumps into a tank with killer whales.  Same thing, no?  She fights with dolphins then chases seals trying to get a baseball back for her son.  Then, her son is shipped off to military school and is never heard from again for the entire season.  I guess he was just not working out as a character.

     I guess her daughter wasn’t working out either.  Some vague reference is made to her being away at school, and then she is never mentioned again.  Also gone is Vivian Vance, the second-banana character who added a lot to the previous seasons.  The only supporting character who has stayed in the cast is Mr. Mooney, who bizarrely has been transferred to the exact bank in the exact town in California where Lucy herself has moved.  Without children or any acknowledgement of any years that have passed.

     From there, it’s a series of standard, boring, Lucy-style misadventures with drummers who live next door and variety TV shows and a date with a guy who gets creepily turned on by live music.  Oh, it’s still Lucille Ball, so there are still some terrific moments.  But they are few and far between and I just don’t care about this show any more.

Year:  2009
Genre:  Documentary
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Director:  Werner Boote
Featuring:  Werner Boote
Run time:  95 minutes
DVD distributor:  First Run Features

     I appreciate the sentiment behind Werner Boote’s new documentary Plastic Planet.  I think it’s great that people want to tell the world about the dangers we all face, and the proliferation of plastic is certainly one of those dangers.  The thing is, I’ve seen it all before.  I have seen dozens of environmental documentaries, and several on plastic in particular.  I know that nobody has to tell me how they make their plastic.  I know that there is a massive amount of plastic to be found in the oceans and everywhere else in the world.  And I know that plastic is slowly making everyone sick.

     So what do I do?  It’s impossible to avoid plastic altogether.  I drink out of glass, but the juice comes from a plastic bottle.  I buy groceries in cloth bags, but the cucumber comes wrapped in plastic.  IS there another way?  I don’t know.  I didn’t get any answers from Plastic Planet, not even a suggestion of a way out.  Boote takes on one of the biggest plastic manufacturers in Europe, showing that they don’t care about the studies done showing that plastics are bad for our health.  But so what?  I already knew that, but what I don’t know is how to fix it.

     Boote’s ambush toward the end of the film of the CEO of this plastic company actually annoyed me.  He had already interviewed the same man earlier in the movie, ostensibly before going on his fact-finding mission about plastics.  Then, armed with hundreds of pages of reports detailing the adverse health effects of the stuff, he tries to ambush him at some conference.  It’s the type of tactic that has worked well for Michael Moore over the years, but Moore does it well.  Boote doesn’t come off as earnest or heartfelt here, he just looks like a guy who didn’t do his research when he should have done his research.

     There are some interesting moments when Boote shows people all over the world taking every piece of plastic out of their houses and stacking it in their front yard.  It’s eye-opening – this is how much plastic we have in our houses, whether we know it or not!  But then…nothing more comes of it.  We see the picture, we see the pile of plastic…and we move on to the ocean.  Or a factory in China that makes a particularly dangerous inflatable globe.  Or to India where people rummage through the garbage for plastic.

     The biggest problem with Plastic Planet is that it’s all over the place, and doesn’t really sink its teeth into any one issue or locale.  It shows some devastating effects created the world over by plastic, then moves on.  It shows some terrible and corrupt business practices from major corporations and Chinese factories, then cuts it short and moves on.  A lot of Plastic Planet is important and interesting, but I feel like I’m watching a highlight reel rather than a full game.