Emma Roberts (niece of Julia) stars in the movie based on the popular book by Lois Duncan about an orphaned brother and sister who rescue stray dogs.
Andi (Roberts) and Bruce (Jake T. Austin) have bounced around from foster home to foster home since their parents died. No one wants them because they insist on staying together. They are currently living with nasty would-be rock stars (Lisa Kudrow and Kevin Dillon), who padlock the kitchen cupboards, as their sympathetic social worker Bernie (a terrific Don Cheadle) tries to find them a better situation. They do their best to take care of their beloved dog Friday, even if it means lying, cheating, and stealing.
When Friday runs into an abandoned hotel and meets up with some stray dogs, the kids decide to turn it into doggie heaven. Bruce, a mechanical whiz, rigs up machines to handle the dogs’ needs (eating, exercise, and going to the bathroom) and their fondest desires (racing to see who’s at the door, riding in cars, howling at the moon). With the help of some new friends from the pet store and the neighborhood, they round up all of the local strays, creating their own family of humans and canines. And that is when things start to get out of hand.
It goes on a little too long, but the kids are appealing, the contraptions are very funny, the dogs are adorable, and the affection, loyalty, and resilience of the characters is touching and inspiring. It’s a family treat.
More than 30 years after he resigned from office, Richard M. Nixon has transcended politics and history and become epic. He has been portrayed on film by Anthony Hopkins, the man who won an Oscar playing Hannibal the Cannibal. And his trip to China has been the subject of an opera, the art form most suited for larger-than-life stories of melodrama and scope. Nixon is like a Shakespearean character, the ability and ambition and the tragic flaws of Richard III, Lear, or Othello.
No one work of art or history will ever contain this man of extraordinary contradictions, but in one of this year’s best films, based on the Tony award-winning play, writer Peter Morgan, director Ron Howard, and actors Frank Langella and Michael Sheen take a pivotal moment in Nixon’s life and make it into a gripping story of the craving of two very different men for power and acceptance and how it plays into a contest of wit and will that becomes a larger story of accountability and meaning.
Richard Nixon was all but exiled to his house on the ocean in San Clemente following his resignation from the Presidency in 1974, relegated to working on his memoirs and finding excuses not to play golf. British broadcaster David Frost was also in a kind of an exile following cancellation of his New York-based talk show, relegated to lightweight celebrity interviews and presiding over televised stunts. Both were desperate for a way to get back into a position of influence. Frost proposed a series of interviews, even though he had no background as a journalist or historian. And Nixon accepted, in part because Frost had not background as a journalist or historian and in part because he would get paid $600,000 and a percentage of the profits. Negotiated by uber-agent Swifty Lazar (a shrewd Toby Jones) and widely criticized as “checkbook journalism,” the payment may have been unorthodox but it was most likely one of the most important factors in eliciting the unprecedented level of candor from the former President, not because of the incentives but because it shifted the balance of power from the subject to the interviewer.
It was also a stunning example of the precise conflict at the heart of so many of Nixon’s failures — his desperate need for approval. He accepted the interview as a way to try to regain his reputation as an elder statesman and remind America of his accomplishments and value. But once again, as it did in 1960 in the first televised Presidential debate, he was defeated by television, but what a character refers to as the power of the close-up. In yet another of this film’s infinite regression of paradoxes, the close-up that most exposes Nixon comes closest to creating sympathy for him. It is one thing to read about the evasions and cover-ups and corruption. It is another to see his face, the desperation, the soul-destroying awareness of how far he was from what he wanted to be.
Staged like a boxing match between the aging champ and the upstart, Howard and Morgan show us the combatants in training, sparring, retreating to their corners for some splashes of water, and then back into it, each going for the knock-out punch. They manage to create sympathy for both men without any shyness about their flaws. Both have some monstrous qualities but neither is a monster.
Sheen and Langella, after months performing together on stage, fully inhabit the roles and are exquisitely attuned to each other. Langella has the more showy character, but Sheen is every bit as precise. Watch the way he orders his lunch. In a millisecond he conveys all of his skills and all of his vulnerabilities. Even in the middle of an important conversation with his producer he stops and gives his full attention to the person behind the counter at the cafeteria and he orders in a way that perfectly demonstrates his charm, his showy self-deprecation, and his need to be noticed and approved of by every person on the planet.
And then there is Nixon, that infinitely interesting jumble of contradictions. Langella shows us his glimmers of self-awareness that cannot add up to meaningful insight. Morgan has taken the privilege of a writer to make it truthful without being accurate in every detail. For one thing, it has better dialogue. Morgan’s “The Queen” was another story of politics, celebrity, history, and conflict between two strong public characters (the younger one played by Michael Sheen) . As he did there, his selection of the elements of the story he wants to highlight and explore allows him to make this men not just historical figures but symbols of duality and contradiction and ultimately to deliver some over-arching messages about what it means to be human.
Usually when a movie has a limited release with no ad support it means that test audiences hated it and the studio has decided to cut their losses. But once in a while it has nothing whatsoever to do with the quality of the film and that is the case with I Could Never Be Your Woman. The title is awful, but the script and cast are great and the movie is a quiet gem.
Michelle Pfeiffer plays Rosie, a television studio executive responsible for a sitcom called “You Go, Girl!” with a demanding star. The show’s appeal is fading and its cast has outgrown their roles — though they are still playing teenagers, most of them are married with children. In order to refresh the show and broaden its appeal, Rosie adds a new cast member, Adam (Paul Rudd), an appealing and talented young actor. He is interested in her but she is reluctant to respond because he is younger than she is and because she is still protective of her feelings following her divorce. Rosie’s relationship with Adam is endearing and appealing, but in every way the heart of the story is Rosie’s relationship with her middle-school-age daughter Izzie (Saoirse Ronan, the young girl who was nominated for an Oscar in “Atonement”). Rosie counsels Izzie about life in general and a boy in school in particular and the tenderness and understanding of that relationship is beautifully conveyed.
But it never got any support from the studio. Even the trailer doesn’t do justice to the film. It looks sit-com-y.
The movie got caught in completely unrelated financial problems at its studio and never got a real chance in theaters. I am hoping that Rudd’s recent success will inspire audiences to seek out this film. It is uneven (though I love Tracy Ullman, I would have cut her scenes as Mother Nature). But it has a deft script, smooth direction from Amy Heckerling (“Clueless”), world-class performances, and a real feeling for the mother-daughter relationship. And Pfeiffer is an extraordinary actress. This film really gives her a chance to shine as a professional, a mother, an ex-wife, and a woman who is surprised and delighted to find out that she can still be surprised and delighted. Audiences will find themselves surprised and delighted, too.
If there is ever an Oscar category for best performance by an article of clothing, the red tie worn by the title character in this film would be the clear winner and the rain coat would most likely be the runner-up.
This film version of the innovative and influential comic book owes much more to writer/director Frank Miller than to the man who created the character, Will Eisner. Miller, who revitalized Batman as The Dark Knight and co-directed “Sin City,” based on his own comic book series, itself in part inspired by Eisner’s subversive noir stories.
The Spirit is is something more than a man but something less than a superhero. Once he was Denny Colt, a cop, but something has happened that gives him special power and special responsibility. His great love is the city and he serves as its masked and mysterious protector. But there are also women, many of them and all utterly captivating and utterly captivated by him — his childhood sweetheart, the doctor who patches him up, a rookie cop. And there is a super villain, Octopus (Samuel L. Jackson), a guy who has developed a potion for giving him something on the brink of immortality. He has the same kind of special powers of healing that The Spirit does. And he wants something that will give him everything he needs to become all-powerful but it was in a box that got mixed up with something also very valuable but much more mundane.
Miller misses the forest for the trees here with luscious, insouciant images that sizzle and tantalize but finally detract from any sense of story, purpose, or character. I’ve seen lava lamps with more of a plot. And for an action movie it all seems very posed and static. Comic books, with their panel-bound drawings, provide a more muscular sense of motion than Miller does here. He pays more attention to the sole of The Spirit’s shoe than he does to anything that would connect us with the character or even connect the characters do each other. Everyone is arch. Everyone just poses. They might as well be trying out for “America’s Next Top Model.”
And Jackson is not just over the top. He is over whatever is over the top. As his sidekick, Scarlett Johansson is completely out of her depth and it is uncomfortable to see her floundering to try to look predatory. In the title role, Gabriel Macht is outdone by his clothes. The only watchable performance is from Eva Mendes as Sand Serif, the bad girl who could only have a heart of gold if she stole one.
Eye candy can only go so far. Archness is not the same as irony. Style is not the same as substance. Miller captures the letter, but what this film is lacking, in every sense of the word, is the Spirit.
iCarly is a cute Nickelodeon series about a girl named Carly (Miranda Cosgrove) who creates her own web show called iCarly with her best friends Sam and Freddie. The series incorporates content produced by the viewers. I’ve got copies of the new DVD (Season One, Volume 2) to give away to the first four people who send me an email at moviemom@moviemom.com with “iCarly” in the subject line. Tell me what you like best about iCarly!
. The title is awful, but the script and cast are great and the movie is a quiet gem.