Edward Zwick's "Glory" – Back to Black

Imagine a film about the first all-black volunteer company in the American Civil War, run by a black director, written by a black writer, based on the letters of the real-life black company members from the time.

WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS
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Imagine a film that shows for the first time the authentic voice of the black soldiers, a film that effortlessly combines historical accuracy, structural artistry, and the messiness of real life and war.  Imagine that this film – unexpectedly, but what a wonderful surprise – manages to fit in something of the untold stories of the wives and families of these black volunteers.

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Imagine that the soldiers’ stories are shown honestly, warts and all, with no ego-acting or showboating.  Imagine that just for once in the film, the often repeated story of the white commanders is sidelined and the untold stories of the black soldiers are allowed to be the sole focus.  Imagine that the large scale messy politics of race and war drive the events of this film in an authentically brutal way.




If you like the sound of this imaginary film, stay clear of Edward Zwick’s Glory, as it contains none of these things.  Still, I’m sure they all meant well.

Personal Score: 3/10

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This is part of a series of film reviews where I give my comments on IMDB Top 250 films as a writer. The idea is that over time these posts will build into a wide-ranging writing resource.

For more details about the approach I've taken, including some important points about its strengths and weaknesses (I make no claims about my abilities as a film critic or even the accuracy of my comments... but I do stand by the value of a writer's notes on interesting films), see my introductory post here.

Gore Verbinski's "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl" – Aaarh

There aren’t many Hollywood blockbusters on the IMDB 250 list so it’s strange to be exposed to the full force of a Jerry Bruckheimer production.  Nothing is as it seems – the screen constantly cuts between continents, between A-list stars and stunt doubles, and between reality and CGI.  The sets are big, the stars are big and the music is big.  You could say that, regardless of the content of the script, a blockbuster is a genre of its own with its own genre rules.

WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS
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On the plus side there’s nothing like the spectacle and swagger of a big budget blockbuster.  But no one would mistake Pirates for a work of art.  The characters aren’t allowed to be human.  Keira Knightley's character, Elizabeth Swann, for example, is never permitted to be even slightly mean and the DVD commentaries reveal that any scene that showed her in less than an utterly empathetic light was cut from the final edit.  And then there is the terror of big money Hollywood studios to show anything other than a liberal, love-conquers-all worldview, for fear of scaring away the unwashed public.  Despite Jerry Bruckheimer’s loathsome conservative views, the law breaking pirates are glamorized and the heroine is allowed to get together with her love match – a poor blacksmith – rather than her father’s choice of a high ranking military man.  And these veneer-thin liberal sensitivities are laughably insincere, like the occasion when Knightley’s corset is torn off in time honoured bodice-ripping style, but it’s all okay and girl-powery because it was so tight she couldn’t breathe in it, and removing it was really a rejection of the oppression of women… honest.

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Inspire your baby with the Visual Baby series of picture ebooks.  Original patterns and art designed for young eyes. Try them today by clicking the covers below.

      

"It's the only thing that stops her crying" Katie Alison

"All three of my children love this book"  Janice Peterson

"Moons, trees, leaves... fabulous!" Linda Matson 

Pearl would be an absolutely terrible film if it wasn’t for the barnstorming performance of Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow.  His performance is so well known that there hardly seems any point in describing it.  As it is, Depp lifts the film into two hours of pure entertainment.

Geoffrey Rush as the pirate leader, Barbossa, plays a more conventional pirate than Depp and he gets a few aarh-laden laughs.  The poor devil has pages of terrible dialogue to get through and has to carry a monkey on his shoulder the whole time.  Overall there aren’t as many laughs as you might hope or expect but when they do come they are occasionally funny:

Mr Gibbs: Then, on the fourth day, he roped himself a couple of sea turtles, lashed 'em together and made a raft.

Will Turner: He roped a couple of sea turtles.

Mr Gibbs: Aye. Sea turtles.

Will Turner: What did he use for rope?

Jack Sparrow: [from beside them] Human hair.

[pause]

Jack Sparrow: From my back.




From a narrative point of view, Pearl is downright weird because the whole thing is really the final act of a more conventional three-act pirate story.  The parts where the pirates discover and steal treasure, mutiny against their captain and get lumbered with a curse from old Aztec gold is all told via expository dialogue.  We’re only shown the ending where they nullify the curse and come to terms with the captain they abandoned on a desert island.  This means that there is enough time to show off the actors, particularly Depp, Knightley and Rush, although there are rather more CGI skeleton pirate scenes than I personally would have preferred.

Personal Score: 7/10

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This is part of a series of film reviews where I give my comments on IMDB Top 250 films as a writer. The idea is that over time these posts will build into a wide-ranging writing resource.

For more details about the approach I've taken, including some important points about its strengths and weaknesses (I make no claims about my abilities as a film critic or even the accuracy of my comments... but I do stand by the value of a writer's notes on interesting films), see my introductory post here.

Frank Capra's "Arsenic and Old Lace" – Torture Yawn

Arsenic and Old Lace was based on a Broadway stage show and it is a textbook example on how to not convert a play into a film.

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Almost all of the action remains set in a single split level set – something that makes sense on the stage but which is horribly restrictive on the film.  The reactions of the actors are set at volume 11, all the double and triple takes, all the strained eyeball widening, all the charging up the stairs.  Again, necessary on the stage but on film it has the effect of slapping the viewer around the head for two hours.  Capra must take responsibility for these failings.  The film is nicely shot and framed, with sinister shadows on the walls and good positioning of the actors on the frames, but the stage origins of the film are too apparent throughout.

Review continues below...

Inspire your baby with the Visual Baby series of picture ebooks.  Original patterns and art designed for young eyes. Try them today by clicking the covers below.

      

"It's the only thing that stops her crying" Katie Alison

"All three of my children love this book"  Janice Peterson

"Moons, trees, leaves... fabulous!" Linda Matson 

Torture and mental illness are used as cheap gags, the leading lady (Priscilla Lane) has nothing to do apart from a bit of pouting, the subplot of the leading man (Cary Grant in gurn-est form) being an uber-bachelor who has written books against marriage isn’t developed.  There is a nice juxtaposition of wedding and funeral rituals but that’s about it.

There is a running gag that the murdering brother looks like Boris Karloff, which made sense on the stage where Karloff was the actor playing the part.  As he was unavailable for the film, Raymond Massey plays the role and the joke becomes utterly pointless.




Despite the plot being full of dead bodies and murderers there is no suspense.  We never see the inside of the cellar for example. And the threat from the murderous brother is never remotely scary.  The lack of suspense is a symptom of the unfilmic stage set conversion.

Personal Score: 2/10

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This is part of a series of film reviews where I give my comments on IMDB Top 250 films as a writer. The idea is that over time these posts will build into a wide-ranging writing resource.

For more details about the approach I've taken, including some important points about its strengths and weaknesses (I make no claims about my abilities as a film critic or even the accuracy of my comments... but I do stand by the value of a writer's notes on interesting films), see my introductory post here.

Sidney Lumet's "Network" – Fish in a Barrel

Satire is a tricky genre.  Go in too hard and too straight and you risk ending up like some dreadful university medical student stage show.  Even if you get it spot on there’s a danger that it won’t be future proof and that a few years later the object of your satire has evolved to the point where your original masterpiece falls flat.

WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS
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Sidney Lumet’s Network suffers from both problems but chiefly from the second.  Perhaps it was an astonishing thing in 1976 to highlight the trend of network television to be driven by money and ratings at every level, even in the supposedly factual news department, but today in the age of Fox and the huge number of competing cable channels this is, well, not very interesting at all.  Imagine a two hour film making it clear just how cynical and money orientated TV evangelists have become.  It would be a pointless satire because everyone already knows what’s going on.  And in 2016 the same thing is true about network television channels.  No one mistakes them for an impartial public service.

Review continues below...

Inspire your baby with the Visual Baby series of picture ebooks.  Original patterns and art designed for young eyes. Try them today by clicking the covers below.

      

"It's the only thing that stops her crying" Katie Alison

"All three of my children love this book"  Janice Peterson

"Moons, trees, leaves... fabulous!" Linda Matson 

Dan Gilroy’s recent Nightcrawler is a much more interesting film covering this area because it focuses on what the relentless search for sensation and gore does to the human beings involved, while keeping the satire about our appetite for this stuff much more low key since this is presented as the background of the story rather than its direct subject.

‘You're television incarnate, Diana,’ says a character in Network during one of its many long expository speeches.  And sure enough, Diana is television incarnate.  That’s the beginning and end of her role and that gives an idea of the sophistication of the satire in this film.

Perhaps it hit its mark forty years ago but these days it’s just boring.

Personal Score: 1/10

Follow @MichaelHardach



This is part of a series of film reviews where I give my comments on IMDB Top 250 films as a writer. The idea is that over time these posts will build into a wide-ranging writing resource.

For more details about the approach I've taken, including some important points about its strengths and weaknesses (I make no claims about my abilities as a film critic or even the accuracy of my comments... but I do stand by the value of a writer's notes on interesting films), see my introductory post here.