Sunday Reviews

Kongye didn't watch much TV on Sunday night. We'll be back later with a special review of the new episode of America's Most Smartest Model, the only show on the TiVo for the whole night. In the meantime, we will review what we did see last night- the trailers before Elizabeth: The Golden Age. We may or may not end up reviewing the film itself. In case we don't, here's an executive summary:
The Golden Age features great acting and some breathtaking visuals; but it doesn't live up to its potential.

As for the trailers, they made us realize that this is going to a be a very weak year for movies. With Elizabeth already a disappointment and the crop of Oscar bait we saw trailers for last night isn't giving us much hope.

Love in the Time of Cholera- So we're watching the trailer for this movie. Everything is looking mediocre. I'm thinking it's probably not necessary to have every popular and good book turned into a movie, especially if you're going to half-ass it and hire actors who are either from South America or look like they could be and force them to do their lines with accents but speak English. That's always been one of my pet peeves. Just pick a direction. Either have your actors speak Spanish or have them perform in their normal voices. The audience doesn't need Benjamin Bratt to put on an accent so that we'll know that they'd actually be speaking Spanish in real life. So we get through the trailer and then comes the funniest part of the night. At the end of it, after they've put up all the other information, with the classical score in the background we get that romantic script font movie studios so adore, and it says.... "with original songs by Shakira." The entire theater just breaks out into laughter. The laughter actually builds as patrons realize everyone else in the room is thinking the same thing and it just gets louder and louder. The laughter lingers long into the next trailer. I'm not sure that's what the studio had in mind.

Atonement- There's a ton of hype surrounding this movie. I'm not convinced by the trailer or the talent working on this. I'm sorry, but the Pride & Prejudice pedigree is not going to win any points with me. At least this Joe Wright adaptation on a romantic novel with Keira Knightley in the lead isn't based on a novel that's been adapted countless times for film and television. Then again, Jane Austen is a lot less annoying than Ian McEwan, so it's really a toss-up which one of these two films is more unnecessary.

Sweeney Todd- Uh, I was excited about this when I heard they were making it. I guess I forgot Tim Burton hasn't made a decent movie in years. Sweeney Todd is supposed to be a musical. The trailer features almost no music. Either this isn't a musical anymore or, as I suspect from the one instance of Johnny Depp singing in the trailer, the cast and Burton screwed up the musical numbers royally and the studio is trying to avoid letting us see how bad this will be.

Charlie Wilson's War- Wow. That's all I can say about this movie. I'm not sure where to start. Perhaps the ad campaign for this is terribly misguided and it will be a fantastic film. If I am to go by the trailer, it will be a giant mess. I don't know where to begin. The premise of the movie is that Tom Hanks plays a Lothario congressman who is manipulated by Julia Roberts (horribly miscast as a wealthy seductress) into single-handedly launching a covert campaign to arm Afghan resistance fighters against a Soviet invasion. In addition to being woefully historically inaccurate, I'm not sure what message this film is trying to send. The trailer would have you believe that the movie will glorify Roberts' cold warrior. At the same time, the trailer has scenes that make us think this will be a Wag The Dog type of satire. While it would be irresponsible and overly simplistic to say that Hanks' actions lead to the rise of the Taliban, it is fair to say that U.S. policy in Afghanistan at that time is not exactly worthy of the Hollywood treatment- unless you're making a movie highlighting foreign policy errors in the tail end of the Cold War. This looks like a total mess. However, even though I despise the overrated Roberts I do enjoy Mike Nichols' work so I'm giving this movie a chance. Expect a long entry on the historical inaccuracies once I actually see it, though.