Year:  2011
Genre:  Kids, Period
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Asa Butterfield, Chloe Grace Moretz, Ben Kingsley, Jude Law, Sacha Baron Cohen, Christopher Lee, Ray Winstone, Emily Mortimer
Director:  Martin Scorcese
Run time:  126 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

                Martin Scorcese has done something that I never thought Martin Scorcese could do.  I knew he could make amazing gangster movies, great rock and roll documentaries, and intense thrillers.  But he’s made a kids movie with no murders at all, and it’s GREAT!

                Hugo is an incredible film, visually stunning and thoroughly charming.  It’s about a little boy named Hugo who lives in a massive railway station in Paris in the early 30s.  His parents are dead, his uncle has vanished, and Hugo runs around the inner workings of the clocks in the station, winding them and making them all run on time.  Hugo is trying to put together a puzzle left for him by his father, he’s running away from the station inspector, and he’s tentatively making friends with Isabelle, the god-daughter of the station’s toy store owner. 

               Together, Hugo and Isabelle set out to solve the mystery that connects his dead father with her god father.  The actors are wonderful, especially Chloe Grace Moretz as Isabelle and Ben Kingsley as her guardian Georges.  But what makes Hugo such a charming and wonderful fantasy is Scorcese’s palpable and infectious love of movies.

                Hugo is, in many ways, as much of a tribute to the silent movie era and film pioneers as is The Artist.  And coming to DVD from Paramount Home Entertainment on February 28th, two days after both movies tied with five Oscars apiece, is perfect timing.  Go out and get this movie.   Hugo is magnificent, and it’s for more than just kids.

     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:  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?  Well, I guess we’ll find out next Sunday.

     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 it will likely win Best Picture next Sunday.  But it IS one of the best British period films made in a long time.  And that makes it well worth seeing for anyone.

“I accuse you gentlemen…of murder!”

     Nightwatching works on many levels.  It is a fine British comedy, with some witty writing and some terrifically funny lines.  It is a compelling and tense murder mystery, where the real culprits behind the murder aren’t revealed to the end.  It’s also an interesting historical drama and biopic about the famous painter Rembrandt as he painted his most famous work, Night Watch.  And it’s a wonderful performance in the role of Rembrandt by an unlikely actor – Martin Freeman.  Now, I know him very well from the British version of The Office, and from his role as Arthur Dent in Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy.  So his performance came as a surprise to me.  It probably did not come as a surprise to him.

     Freeman works in this role because he appears to have supreme self-confidence at every moment while he is on the screen.  His Rembrandt is charming, playful, carefree and yet deeply troubled and pained by the evil he sees around him.  He is a womanizer and a free-spirited scoundrel, but he is also an artist and a genius and someone whose passion for the truth runs deep.  When he gets commissioned to paint the portrait of the members of the local militia, he initially wants to refuse the commission.  Convinced by his wife to just go ahead and do it, for the money, he reluctantly agrees.  But when a murder is committed, and he discovers this same militia are behind it, he paints his accusation against them into the picture.

     What follows certainly takes liberties with the facts of Rembrandt’s life.  I’m sure that not all the events represented in Nightwatching really took place in real life.  But it does follow the arc of the legendary painter’s life, and he does indeed end up in bed with all the women with whom he was reported to have been.  There are tragic moments in the film, as when we learn that one of the militiamen is running a brothel full of pre-teen orphans.  There are some very funny moments, mostly when Rembrandt is being a jerk to the militiamen he doesn’t like, while they tend to be too stupid to notice.  And there are some tense and dramatic moments as the mystery unfolds on screen.

     Also there are murders, conspiracies, paintings, tragic deaths, loves, boobs and a wonderful performance by Martin Freeman.  Who would have thought the guy from The Office could be a serious force in a Shakespearean period piece biopic about one of the greatest painters ever?  Not me.  But I suspect Martin Freeman thought so.  Nightwatching is the best movie I saw this week, and it comes out June 9th from Alliance Films.

“Plenty of people are on to the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness.”

     I’m sure many people will compare Revolutionary Road to Titanic.  After all, both star Kate Winslett and Leonardo DiCaprio as a couple, both involve Kathy Bates…but this would be a mistake.  Revolutionary Road is to Titanic what duck a l’orange is to a quarter pounder with cheese.  It’s like comparing apples and toboggans.  Or something.  The point I’m making is that if you hated Titanic, you might well love Revolutionary Road anyway.  And if you loved Titanic you might well love Revolutionary Road as well.  This movie is a masterpiece.  And it’s nothing like Titanic.  I hated Titanic. 

     DiCaprio and Winslett have most certainly matured in the past eleven years.  LeBron James may have been a terrific player when he was 13, but now he is an artist with the basketball.  Same goes for these two.  Sorry.  Once I start with terrible comparisons I can’t stop.  I think it’s over now.  Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslett are now two of the best actors – ever.  Winslett won the Oscar for The Reader this year, but she was likely more deserving for this film, which is one of the best performances I have seen out of anyone, ever.  And DiCaprio is right up there as well.  They are both flawless in this movie.

     OK, one more comparison.  I recently suggested that watching He’s Just Not That Into You was a lot like reading a book.  A really lousy, unsatisfying and irritating self-help book about relationships.  Revolutionary Road is like reading a book as well.  You know how when you read a truly remarkable, powerful, well-written book, and you finish it, and you set it down and you feel utterly satisfied?  That’s a feeling I rarely get after watching a movie, but this one certainly qualifies.  When it was over, I felt emotionally drained, completely spent, and utterly satisfied.  Then I went back and watched it again, because it’s rare that you can get that feeling in less than two hours.

     The basic premise of the story is that DiCaprio and Winslett are the new, young couple in the neighbourhood.  It’s the 1950s, they are suburbanites, and they are the Showcase Couple in the neighbourhood – young, happy, beautiful, loving and smart.  Kathy Bates plays the real estate agent who found them their house, on Revolutionary Road, and she is magnificent as the lady who holds the couple up to this ridiculous standard of suburbia.  She may as well show them instead of houses, so convinced is she that merely observing this perfect couple would be enough to change peoples’ lives.  And maybe move into the neighbourhood.

     “Our whole existence here is based on the premise that we’re special.  That we’re somehow above the whole thing.”

     In fact, she brings her son to meet the Wheelers, because she seems to think that they have some kind of almost-mystical healing power.  Her son is a mental patient, and he does some crazy things, but at the same time he’s the one character in the movie that makes the most sense.  His scenes are hilarious, but he also serves as a mirror for the couple, reflecting their exact state of mind at all times.  He is the only one in the movie, other than the Wheelers themselves, who understands the fake happiness of 1950s suburbia, who can cut through the BS to the quick of the situation – depression and emptiness and the feeling of being trapped in their own lives.

     “You know, you’re probably lucky you met me.”

     Frank (DiCaprio) is having an affair with a girl at work.  Not a gorgeous girl.  Nowhere near April (Winslett) in the looks department.  But it’s an escape for him from the crushing boredom of his suburban life.  When April finally admits to herself what their situation is, she takes action.  She wants to pack up and move.  Frank, and April, and the kids, can all drop everything and move to Paris.  There, she will get a job as a secretary, support the family, and allow Frank to flourish and do whatever he likes.  The idea is that if they just take off and start over, and if Frank is free to be creative and smart and free on his own terms, he will once again become the Frank with whom she fell in love.  It’s a nice idea.

     Of course, we know that there will be several obstacles to this future imagined happiness.  And the first arises when Frank is offered a promotion at work.  As often happens in life, he gets noticed and celebrated at work the second he decides to go to Paris and stops caring so much about what he does.  The lure of this potential promotion conflicts with the lure of their potential new life.  Then a pregnancy complicates things further.  It’s not immediately clear whether Frank is using the baby as an excuse to stay and take his big promotion, or whether he genuinely thinks it’s better to stay where they are in order to take care of one more mouth to feed.  But his motivation soon becomes clear.  And the crazy guy sure knows what’s going on.

     “It takes backbone to lead the life you want”

     A movie more about the time (the 50s) than about suburban ennui, Revolutionary Road is powerful, depressing, but still somehow exhilirating and inspirational.  The Wheelers seem to buy into their own myth to some degree, but in reality they are just as ordinary and boring as their neighbours.  It’s their inability to face up to this fact that causes their marriage to deteriorate as badly as it has, and nothing they do can fix this.  Moving to Paris is an idea that is just as pointless as getting a promotion – nothing they do will really change their lives, because they are both different people than they want to think they are. 

     The movie is uncompromisingly dark, and depressing, with precious little humour, almost all of it coming from John Givings (Michael Shannon), the crazy guy.  Shannon’s performance is almost the equal of those of DiCaprio and Winslett, and without him this film could be almost intolerably bleak.  But we do get to revel in his incredibly perceptive insanity, and in his mother’s deluded fantasies about the Wheelers, and in his father’s cantankerous no-BS attitude.  Sam Mendes has done a wonderful job with the film, as well as with the actors, creating a suffocating atmosphere in which the Wheelers live, and he allows the actors to shine.

     Every frame of this movie is beautifully shot out, every scene is acted magnificently, and even the music and the lighting are noticeably perfect in creating a tone.  Mendes rose to fame with American Beauty, which was also a film about similar subject matter – suburban dissatisfaction.  But the two movies couldn’t be more different, and Mendes has created his best movie with Revolutionary Road.  It’s a masterpiece, out Tuesday June 2nd from Paramount Home Entertainment.