Sherlock Holmes
Director: Guy Ritchie
With: Robert Downey, Jr., Jude Law, Rachel McAdams, Mark Strong, Eddie Marsan
What you think of this film will have a lot to do with whether you have read the Holmes stories. I have been reading them since I was a child, and parts of this film made me squirm.
This is a “re-imagining” of the classic character, which is fine as a general rule, and I shrugged and gave myself over to it. After all, writers and film-makers have been playing with Holmes for years.
Ritchie has directed some highly entertaining and stylish crime movies, and was not a bad choice for this one. But, the screenplay is so in love with its own cleverness and audacity that it forgets that we have certain expectations for its characters.
Holmes (Downey) is portrayed as a shambling Boho slob. In the books, Holmes is a bipolar genius who mopes and self-medicates between cases, when he truly lives in his manic phase. This takes that idea to an extreme, and to the limits of fans of the stories. For example, Holmes indulges himself in bare-knuckle boxing in sweaty cellars. This is accompanied by an imaginative sequence wherein he develops a strategy to win and then implements it. Clever once, annoying by the second time the thing is used.
Better with Watson (Law), who is depicted as a vigorous young man (as in the books) exasperated with his friend’s slovenly and solipsistic life. Watson limps, in keeping with his wound from the war in Afghanistan, although some stories say it was a shoulder wound. He is getting married, and moving to other quarters. Holmes is as petulant as a spurned lover, and the pair resemble nothing so much as a bickering married couple with no illusions left about one another.
The plot is an Edwardian intrigue featuring Lord Blackwood (Strong), who is the center of a black magic death cult. It’s okay. Added into the mix is Irene Adler (McAdams), who is one of the few of Holmes’ opponents who has bested him. Naturally, he loves her, from afar.
The sequel presents itself with the introduction of Professor Moriarty, Holmes’ nemesis, at the very end. I hope, by the next film, that Downey’s wandering English accent and McAdams’ lifeless Adler are tweaked up to acceptable levels.
What the hell, go see it.
B-
Nine
Director: Rob Marshall
With: Daniel Day Lewis, Marion Cotillard, Penelope Cruz, Judi Dench, Sophia Loren, Kate Hudson, Fergie, Nicole Kidman
Marshall directed the film of Chicago, so he has experience with big musicals. The problem with this, besides failing deeply in comparison to its source, 81/2, Fellini’s great film, is that it is so superficial and brassy to the point of vulgarity.
I know that I am in danger of sounding like a cranky old man, but this production, based on the Broadway musical of the Fellini movie, has pedestrian songs and generic Broadway dance numbers. Lewis gives it his all, but the character, a blocked film director with a chaotic personal life, is so superficial that we never feel his agony.
Cotillard, as his wife, is the best thing in the film. She sings beautifully and makes us feel something. Loren, who plays the director’s mother, does fine, as does Kidman in a small part, and Dench as the wardrobe mistress and old friend. Cruz wiggles around in acres of lingerie and sings the lame songs adequately.
Fergie, and I had no opinion of her prior to seeing this, is properly lascivious as a prostitute remembered from the director’s youth, but winds up in a production number which has no real purpose, and which she performs in the overdone style of the film.
I walked out wondering where the Cole Porters and Rodgers & Hammersteins of our time have gone. Anybody know?
This is a mess. Save your money.
D
The Young Victoria
Director: Jean-Marc Vallee
With: Emily Blunt, Rupert Friend, Paul Bettany, Miranda Richardson, Jim Broadbent, Mark Strong
Queen Victoria gave her name to an era of great social conservatism and circumspection. She is pictured in widow’s weeds, and looking like she’s just tasted something bad.
This film wants us to know that ‘twas not always thus. She was once a vigorous girl and young woman, and deeply in love with her husband. Indeed, the queen’s black garments were a permanent mourning for her husband, who died young.
The young queen (Blunt) was manipulated by her mother (Richardson) and her mother’s lover (Strong), who were simply trying to usurp her throne by questionable, but legal, means.
Victoria will succeed to the throne on the death of her uncle (Broadbent), who has one great drunken rant before he shuffles off. Her other uncle, the king of Belgium, conspires to control her by sending Albert (Friend), her first cousin, to woo her.
Much to everybody’s frustration, Albert and Victoria fall in love and he encourages her to resist the forces arrayed against her. The palace intrigues are delicious. Politics, even at that level, is a shark tank.
The acting is very strong. I now believe that Blunt can do anything. She has a flair for light comedy, but her performance here is vigorous and nuanced. Friend is fine, and Richardson and Strong (he’s in about four movies right now) are evil enough, but Richardson has also to be a mom. The writing fails a bit here, not her performance.
This is a good movie, with gorgeous costumes and witty dialogue. Broadbent’s King William is almost Shakespearean. Not a bad way to spend an hour and forty minutes.
B+
Mr. Hulot’s Holiday is playing at the Hollywood Theater. You should see every Jacques Tati movie. He wrote, directed and starred in them, and was a throwback to silent cinema. In fact, you should see Mon Oncle (1958) twice.