Movie Review, Let's Play Two...

It's Oscar time, and with thanks to Ernie Banks, my title points out that the award fare is out and about in quantity at your local gigaplex. So in the interest of kickstarting some blogging on here, not to mention that because I felt like standing in line to pay outrageous prices to catch the wafting smell of Metamucil and the occasional chirping of someone's cellphone that they were too stupid to turn off, I undertook two cinema experiences in the last week.

Slumdog Millionaire - A definite spin on your "local boy makes good" theme for the Western audiences. Not quite the Horatio Alger type of hero, unless bilking tourists was a method from those stories that I forgot about. Jamal is forced, under extremely painful coercion, to detail how a virtually illiterate teenager got to the verge of winning a fortune on the Indian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. The backstory, laid down by question, is somewhat artificial in that as the story goes in order by question, so does the chronology of the life of Jamal. The struggle, the love interest, the rise to a dramatic finish, etc. That the ending is a little too easily-arrived at matters to me not in the least. I was so bitterly enchanted by the young Jamal and Salim (Jamal's older brother) as they struggled for their very survival in the harshest of landscapes that I will forgive the story for assuming Jamal would keep these minutiae in his head. The middle years did not enchant me quite as much, except for the circumstances by which Jamal was forced to forge a life separate from those of Salim and Latika, the apparent love of Jamal's life. It was the reaching of the present day, the absolute purity the protagonist shows in a situation that should be intensely stressful, and the decisions made by the antagonist that lead to his predestined downfall, that put this movie over the top. While I have not seen every Best Picture candidate, I can see how this one is coming on strong in the weeks leading up to the ceremony.

Frost/Nixon - I just finished watching this one, so forgive me if the thoughts have not yet finished becoming cohesive. I have not seen the award-winning play that preceded the movie, nor was I of an age to have watched the original interviews. However, I watched a couple of clips on Youtube (gotta love it, dontcha) so I am gratefully aware that a least a decent portion of the script is taken directly from the interview. We get a look of how a fairly lightweight TV personality managed to engage the only U.S. President to resign from the Presidency in a series of one-on-one interviews, and how both men variously triumphed at times in achieving their goals. Both leades reprise their roles from the play. Michael Sheen is engaging as the public personae of David Frost, and powerful enough as the struggling, doubting version of the man as well. Frank Langella, who previously won a Tony for his role as Richard Nixon, at times made you think this was Nixon. After views clips of the actual interview, I was even more impressed at this performance. If there is a definitely major award coming this movie's way, though, I think it should go to Ron Howard, for nicely giving actual footage of the time, progressing through the story, and using post-interview "follow-up" with some of the major players from both camps to serve as chapters for this movie. The selling point for me, I think, is that Howard allowed us to savor the people's victory of getting an admission of wrongdoing from Richard Nixon, the President, while allowing the viewer to be somewhat sentimental, because we have not been allowed to forget about the pain of Richard Nixon, the man.

Plans for more movie-watching are afoot, Watson...