Cineplexus

The King's Speech ★★★★½

When you go see a movie that's based on a true story, especially one based on a particular person's life, there's no promising the the story is going to have that fuzzy movie feeling. Real life doesn't usually have a classic three-act story arc. The ending of a biopic often peters out or just ends abruptly.

This is part of what makes The King's Speech so wonderful. It has all the touching gravity of a true story, but still moves along and captures your attention like a work of total fiction. This is probably because the writers made the wise decision to focus on a particular (and particularly volatile) chapter in the main character's life. And what a main character! Set in the 1920s and '30s, the film focuses on Berty (a terrific Colin Firth), aka Britain's King George VI, father of Queen Elizabeth II.

Having lived in the shadow of his brother Edward and his formidable father (a king, after all, makes for a pretty intimidating role model), King George V, Berty (as his family calls him) must overcome his lifelong feelings of inadequacy in his country's proverbial hour of need. This is not as simple a task as it may sound – the would-be king has suffered from a severe stutter for nearly all his life, and no Royal Speech Therapist or Vocal Doctor to the Crown of any type can seem to help. Having more or less given up hope, Berty's wife Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter, who, my dad observed, looked "prettier" than she has in many of her recent crazy roles) turns to an outsider, a speech therapist not sanctioned by the throne. Geoffrey Rush makes a typically spirited turn as Lionel Logue, the unorthodox specialist who breaks with the typical royal-subject deference guidelines and becomes a true friend to the future head of Great Britain.

The King's Speech manages to simultaneously tell a true story, make speech therapy dramatic and exciting, stir up the patriotic emotions tied to World War II and facing up to Hitler's Germany, all while leading up to a breathtaking climax disguised as a long, slow radio address. It succeeds beautifully. This one should serve as a lesson to biopic makers everywhere.

Revisiting W.

I just turned on the TV and W. (which I reviewed when it was released in 2008, "Two Movies About Jerks. In Chief.") The scene was one where Bush and his cabinet are discussing entering into war with Iraq, the infamous "pre-emptive strike" and even more infamous "Axis of Evil" speech.

I was struck myself by how great the casting is in this movie. Looking around the room, the nuanced expressions of everyone in the room (including Don "Rummy" Rumsfeld, who says he doesn't "do" nuance) immediately evoke the political history and leaning of these now nearly-mythical figures. In retrospect, I think the movie is worth watching for just this scene.

The Social Network ★★★★½

In the wake of The Social Network, it would be easy for me to wax poetic about the ubiquity of Facebook. To be sure, it’s pretty fascinating that a website with humble Harvard dormitory beginnings is now something omnipresent enough to provide the key way many of us keep our pulse on our community of contacts. But The Social Network is less about the behemoth Facebook has become than about its earliest days. It’s not a biopic about a website, afterall; it’s the story of Mark Zuckerberg, the boy whose silly face used to be plastered in the upper corner of every page of Facebook. Remember, back in the spring of 2004 when you saw his name all over that site? What’s that? You don’t remember? Okay, I tease. Part of the thrill of The Social Network for me is that I was a junior in college (we call them “third years”) when University of Chicago became one of the first handful of schools to be a part of the Facebook world. It was an exciting time, and I remember it clearly. Word of the site spread like a plague through the campus; you had to be invited to join, but that wasn’t a problem, since everyone could invite everyone else. It was a matter of days before virtually everyone in the college was on - this at a school whose reputation for social backwardness make Harvard seem like Florida State.

The pride I feel at being there for the first wave, so to speak, of this monumental, ever-changing experiment is the crux of inclusion/exclusiveness impulse that The Social Network presents to us. Zuckerberg, it suggests, was able to recognize and capitalize on the need to be a part of the club, but not one that “just anyone” can join because he felt that need as much as anyone could. Just a nerd desperate to be noticed, but also an aloof narcissist, he extrapolated that everyone felt what he was feeling, and jump at the opportunity to create a tangible circle of friends and contacts. He was right, and the rest is history.

The story of The Social Network is based on history (and Ben Mezrich’s book, The Accidental Billionaires), but it is likely not something you’ve heard before. A movie about a website sounds dull; a movie about the brilliance, excitement, cheating, and double-crossing that bred the world’s youngest billionaire, on the other hand…now that’s a movie. And that’s The Social Network. Well acted (I was especially impressed by Justin Timberlake, who plays Napster guy Sean Parker), exciting, and often funny, the film only falters in its occasional tendency to portray the Winklevoss brothers (whose idea may or may not have been the base for Facebook) as the blue-blooded whiney villains of many an ‘80s teen comedy. They aren’t really antagonists here. In a way, Zuckerberg is both the protagonist and the antagonist. Some may balk at the breakneck pace of the witty banter (think Gilmore Girls, in an episode where Rory and Lorelei need more server space and program in Perl while intoxicated). Yes, the sparkling dialogue is delivered at a pace at which no mere mortal could possibly operate, but it still sparkles.

Those who are well-versed in Facebook will be treated to a few in-jokes and neo-nostalgic references, and the film is full of fun details (Zuckerberg's blog is on Live Journal, and it's called "Zuckonit"; the movie presents these things to us visually but doesn't call attention to them) but anyone could enjoy it. This movie might still be interesting even if Facebook were just a figment of the screenwriter’s imagination. That’s quite an acheivement, but thank goodness it’s not really made up. Otherwise, how would I tell everyone how much I liked it? Email? Writing a letter? Gimme a break. I’m gonna Facebook it.

Julie & Julia ★★★★

Hey, It's on Netflix Instant Watch.

Biopics are tricky things. When the inspiration for a film is a real person's life, there's a severely limited range of possible outcomes, and the opportunities for plot points. Nora Ephron's latest film, Julie and Julie, has a unique way of dealing with the often static or clumsy nature of the biopic. Instead of telling one story, it tells two – those of the eponymous Julie, a reluctant, almost-thirty government worker who starts a cooking blog in 2002 Queens, and of Julia Child, the famous chef and co-author of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, the book that serves as the blueprint for Julie's blog.

The film is based on a book of the same name, but since I haven't read it, I can't speak to how faithful the adaptation remains, nor do I know how the book handled the "Julia" part of the story. As fascinating and remarkable a subject as Julia Child was bound to have a film made about her eventually, and her scenes in this movie are unfailingly charming. Both stories, in fact, are interesting and engaging, well cast and marvelously acted (of course) by Amy Adams and Meryl Streep. But it's the intersection of the two stories, their parallels despite 50 years of separation, that reveal the art of the movie's 2-story device.

Julie and Julia isn't a perfect movie; it has some moments of forced conflict, including a scene where a personal crisis for Julie is resolved by her personal discovery that she is "a bitch," and the film ends with a truly odd and abrupt freeze-frame, but maybe I'm being picky. The real issue here is that the movie is bound to seem saccharin to some, as sweet films often do. But touching films don't have to be silly, and this one isn't. There is a moment near the end of the film when a potential publisher cooks a dish from the manuscript of French Cooking, not yet knowing that she's about to produce one of history's most famous cookbooks. As she leans over for a second taste of the delicious product of her labor, engrossed in her labour, a bit of wine sauce splashes out into the pages of the recipe. It's a moment that anyone who loves to cook would savor. Sure, it's sweet. But for my part, I don't mind sweet, especially when it comes from the kitchen.

Public Enemies ★★★½

There's always a sheepish excitement in the air when a movie is filming in town. For those of us that live outside of Hollywood or Toronto, it's kind of a rare thrill that reminds us of the glitz and allure that cinema has had since it's early days. There's that goofy feeling that only a brush with fame can provide. In Chicago, the experience is surprisingly rare; any major films shooting in the city are typically heard about more than seen, as they do their business on the outskirts of town, late in the evening, or otherwise out-of-sight.

Not so with Public Enemies. Shot in several different locations, the film used the Windy City as it's home base, and appropriately so, as John Dillinger did live and die here. When the film was shooting, it did so on largely his real home turf, meaning that tons of Northsiders had to avoid walking onto the set for several weeks last year as they went about their business. A nuisance for some, I know that many were willing to overlook it because of the sheer cool-factor of having Johnny Depp hanging out on your street corner, not to mention Christian Bale's exodus from the dark depths of Lower Wacker to the relative sunniness of Lincoln Park.

Grim and dangerous, there's little sunny about Public Enemies, but it certainly has a cool-factor of its own, thanks to the great performances we've come to expect from actors like Depp, Bale, and Marion Cotillard (see La Vie en Rose, please). The costumes, makeup, and music are all spot on, and the added effect of the sets make one wonder how the producers were able to afford a time machine to send the cast and crew back to the 1930s. This is even true for scenes set in Chicago, where somehow the most familiar streets have lost their modernity. It is truly something to behold.

Perhaps it is this high standard the film has set for itself visually, and for its nuanced characters, that left me wanting more overall from the script and editing. We're told the story of a stretch of John Dillinger's life that's interesting, but so long that it must be recounted through often disconnected anecdotes. He's in prison, he's out of prison, he's in Indiana, he's in Chicago, he's in Florida, he's back in prison again, he's…well, it's not hard to find oneself wondering how he managed to get from one scene to the next. Characters are often introduced with an abundance (J. Edgar Hoover) or dearth (Baby Face Nelson) of fanfare that's inconsistent with their importance to the script. Entire scenes exist simply so we get to hear a single "classic" Dillinger quote.

All of this creates a notion that John Dillinger was a complex and interesting – even likeable – man, that Melvin Purvis (Bale) was trying to compensate for having a ridiculous name, and that the '30s were a hell of a time for anybody fortuneate enough to have a little of what money there was to go around. But Public Enemies fails, as so many biopics do, to hold together as a great film in and of itself, absent of its subject's (in)famous greatness. That said, it's hard to imagine any film living up to the grandeur of this particular character, and many of the moments recreateed here are truly spectacular. How perfect, for example, is the parallel tthe film offers us between the film Dillinger sees in the Biograph before he's shot (Manhattan Melodrama) and Dillinger's real life as a criminal? Leave it to Hollywood, I guess, to create that kind of magic. Hollywood…or Chicago.

Milk ★★★★½

I cannot tell a lie: one of the primary reasons I was excited to see Gus Van Sant's latest film was the prospect of seeing James Franco making out with dudes. It's embarrassing, really, given the gravity of the film's subject matter, but how was I to know? I knew of Harvey Milk vaguely as a politician and activist, but that abbreviated impression failed to convey the positively Greek nature of his life and tragedy. In fact, if the story told in Milk is truly the life story of Harvey Milk, there is hardly a life imaginable that was more suited for the screen.

In addition to telling the story of the eponymous gay activist-turned-elected official, the film documents the San Francisco birth of the Civil Rights Movement That Dare Not Speak Its Name. Like many pictures about cultural revolutions, it proves a timely reminder of how far we've come as a society and how far we have yet to go.

Milk isn't just a moving story; it also features astonishing and nuanced performances by the whole of its giant cast, including Mr. Franco (who, disappointingly, only makes out with a rather dorky-looking Sean Penn), Emile Hirsch,  Josh Brolin, Diego Luna and, most notably, Mr. Penn himself, as evidenced by his Golden Globe and Oscar nominations. 

Spoiler alert: anyone who shows up at the theater hoping to see some Franco/Hirsch, Franco/Luna, or Hirsch/Luna action will not get his or her wish. Such a person will also feel a certain amount of shame for wishing so little of an amazing cast and story as the film winds quietly toward its sad and surprising climax. But there will be no regrets. Take it from me.