Author: Mary Beth

In theaters.

So this is embarrassing. I spent the past week buried in a freelance project, and Sunday night, when Sean suggested that we both take a break from occupational overachievement and go to the movies, did I suggest that we check out one of the many Oscar nominees I haven’t seen—The Fighter or The Illusionist or, god help me, Blue Valentine? No. No, I did not. Instead, I immediately proposed that we go watch Jason Statham shoot people while being unflappably cool in what I knew to be a thoroughly mediocre B-movie. I’m not proud of this, but I can’t say I regret it.

In theaters.

At first, the subject of The King’s Speech seems embarrassingly trivial. With World War II looming, soon to give rise to all manner of suffering and pain and death, this is a movie about a ludicrously privileged man fighting a speech impediment, a figurehead trying to become the very best figurehead he can be. Unchallenging, relentlessly pleasant, it screams “middlebrow.”

And yet, somehow, it finds its way to something meaningful. Colin Firth delivers a masterful performance as the ludicrously privileged king in question, revealing the vulnerable man underneath the stiff formality, but The King’s Speech accomplishes more than simple humanization. It directly confronts the fact that the king is a figurehead—powerless, seemingly pointless. Underneath the pleasantries, this is a movie about what it means to be a figurehead, what makes a good one, and why it might not be so trivial a position as cynical snobs like, oh, me might believe. The King’s Speech might not be edgy, but it’s more provocative than I first credited.

In theaters.

I am officially reversing my stance on Westerns. Previously, I’ve been dismissive of what I perceived as an inherently archaic genre celebrating “the violent, lawless wilderness breached by the noble forces of civilization.” Even Westerns that rejected that model seemed trapped in the paradigm, like Dances With Wolves, which reverses the polarity but is, in many ways, just as simplistic. The brilliant, prematurely canceled TV series Deadwood—with its much more complicated, nuanced view of the conflicts between “wilderness” and “civilization”—made me reconsider, but I eventually judged it the exception that proves the rule. But True Grit has finally convinced me that it’s quite possible to tell a Western without that problematic wilderness/civilization binary overwhelming the drama.

The nineteenth-century frontier setting in True Grit, Joel and Ethan Coen’s new movie, is entirely traditional—it’s a place of adventure, danger, and possibilities—but there’s not the sense of it being a place of darkness in contrast to light elsewhere (or vice versa). Maybe I overestimated the weight of the baggage from decades of Westerns past—or maybe I’m underestimating it now—but Grit feels alive and free in a way I hadn’t expected from the genre. I’m happy to be wrong.

In theaters.

My brother didn’t much care for Black Swan. He said the characters were less archetypal than one-dimensional, the story just a string of tired clichés, and the tone a discordant mess of ostentatiously Serious Drama and stereotypical horror tropes. I myself enjoyed the hell out the movie, but I couldn’t disagree with any of that—except, perhaps, the last part. The tone never struck me as discordant because I never took Black Swan seriously. If director Darren Aronofsky wanted his ballet extravaganza to say something meaningful and insightful about art or perfectionism or gender binaries—and I suppose he did—I don’t think he succeeded in that. But so what? I don’t care about his intention. Regardless of what it what it was meant to be, Black Swan is an absolutely decadent melodrama, amped up to a shriekingly high pitch, resplendent with all of Aronofsky’s mesmerizing cinematic style. That’s enough for me.

In theaters.

I’ve heard numerous people snidely describe Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final installment of the Harry Potter series, as one long chase scene, but that description actually implies more sustained intensity than either the book or the movie (at least Part 1) actually has. Sure, there are suspenseful sequences, but most of the time, Harry, Ron, and Hermione are neither chasing anyone nor being chased themselves. Instead, they’re in hiding, bickering endlessly as they wander about the wilds of Britain. 

That fitful pacing, with its odd spasms and drifts, didn’t bother me much on the page, but it’s glaringly, hilariously obvious on screen. All the beautiful, extended landscape shots just reinforce how little is going on, and the squabbles among the central trio feel overdone and melodramatic, to put it mildly. This is not a movie that could stand on its own without the full weight of the series behind it—but then again, it doesn’t have to be. As a vehicle for cameos from alumni of the previous films, it works well enough, and screenwriter Steve Kloves adroitly sets up the final showdown of Part 2. Even those long landscape shots, extraneous though they might be, truly are beautiful.

More than anything, though, Deathly Hallows, Part 1 is an opportunity to re-experience the book and showcase the young actors who have improved so much over the course of the series. If you’re a sentimental enough fan to appreciate it on those grounds, you’ll probably like it. If you’re not, you won’t. And if you’re somehow not familiar with the series (who are you?), you won’t get anything out of it at all. (Incidentally, because I am incredulous of the idea that someone could be both interested in this movie and ignorant of its source material, I’m going to discuss what would, in another situation, be considered spoilers. Recently awakened coma patients, consider yourself warned!)