144. Hemingway & Gellhorn

144. (01 Aug) Hemingway & Gellhorn (2012, Philip Kaufman) 53



It's easy to revel in Hemingway & Gellhorn's occasional forays into unabashed romanticism. Philip Kaufman hints at the visual style and sexiness that makes The Unbearable Lightness of Being so masterful. Unfortunately, this telefilm is otherwise too ambitious in scale and structure. Instead of ever even considering scaling back, the script tries to cover entirely too much ground even in a bloated two and a half hour runtime. Wacky color saturations and unnecessary interludes only add to the frustration.

Nicole Kidman gives something of a star turn here, though she's working under less than ideal conditions. Her most impressive moments are delivered in heavy aging makeup with a gravelly voice, disappearing into the character while she's distractingly luminous in the rest of the film. She easily outshines Clive Owen, who has the meatier role in Hemingway. Supporting turns by names like Robert Duvall, Tony Shalhoub and Emmy-nominated David Strathairn are scarcely worth mentioning.

Rogier Stoffers's cinematography, Ruth Myers's costumes and the sets are exemplary.

Best Supporting Actor 2004: Results

5. Jamie Foxx in Collateral- Foxx gives a functional performance some of the time, but he also fails to capitalize any scene that requires more from him.

4. Morgan Freeman in Million Dollar Baby- Freeman gives a painfully standard performance, that although it is not bad it always feels uninspired.

3. Alan Alda in The Aviator- Alda has very little to do but still his performance is effective as he shows both the charm and the cruelty of a career politician.

2. Clive Owen in Closer- Owen although has strong elements particularly in portraying the harsh bluntness of his character, but also lacks in terms of his onscreen relationships with his female co-stars.

1. Thomas Haden Church in Sideways- A very easy win for Church who easily gives the best performance of the five through his great achievement of finding a way to make what technically should be just a despicable character, a endearing one instead.

Deserving Performances:
David Carradine in Kill Bill Vol 2
Michael Madsen in Kill Bill Vol 2

Best Supporting Actor 2004: Clive Owen in Closer

Clive Owen recieved his first Oscar nomination for portraying Larry Gray in Closer.

Closer details the intertwined relationships of four miserable people.

Clive Owen portrays one of these four miserable people a dermatologist who is rather cheeky to say the least. He is not supporting of the other three and really all four actors are lead in this film. This is a performance that a lot of people love, but I can't really join that love for this performance, although I will agree that Clive Owen does give the best performance in the film by far. The problems in the performance though come from the overall chemistry with the rest of the cast really.

I do think one aspect of the character Owen does nail is the bluntness of the character. Out of any other character one can argue he is technically the most honest, even if that makes him seem sort of crueler. Owen does have just the right clear and concise fashion in which he speaks and acts. Owen shows that with Larry he just says things the way he sees them, does exactly what he wants, and will always admit his motivations to be exactly what they are.

Owen has the right directness in his performance that shows the exactly zero inhibitions Larry has when it comes to his life. My problems with performance comes with his chemistry with the rest of the cast not so much with Jude Law as his perpetual rival their mutual dislike for one another is appropriately shown with always a certain underlying intensity between the two in their scenes together. It is really his chemistry with Julia Roberts, and Natalie Portman that I have an issue with.

With Julia Roberts I really did not feel there was much of anything between the two, since I never really saw either actor convey enough of a passion with one another for me to honestly believe their relationship. They are suppose to instantly hit off so much that they are soon married, but aside from Owen being slightly charming their is not a strong enough purpose for it. There is not enough of love or lust shown between the two, making the relationship seem quite underwhelming between the two.

This is also true for his scenes with Natalie Portman particularly in their later scenes with he is suppose to be lusting after here. Owen most certainly tries his best, but there never is a great enough drive in their scenes together to make sense of his intense lust, and even Owen's lust was never quite intense as it really should have been. This is hardly a bad performance though and it certainly has strong aspect, but on a whole it is really less than it should have been.

Best Supporting Actor 2004

And the Nominees Were:

Alan Alda in The Aviator

Thomas Haden Church in Sideways

Morgan Freeman in Million Dollar Baby

Clive Owen in Closer

Jamie Foxx in Collateral

Elizabeth: The Golden Age

“Bring back Errol Flynn” I thought to myself as I sat through “Elizabeth: The Golden Age.” It is beyond me how a film showing England’s defeat of the Spanish Armada could be dull, but that’s what “Elizabeth: The Golden Age” is. A sequel to 1998’s “Elizabeth” (has it really been almost 10 years?), I found the film surprisingly dull, more concerned with keeping ornate sets and costumes in full view of the camera, instead of using all that fancy hoo-ha to dramatize the story. It’s dramatically inert to the point of boredom.

This film has nothing to do with history and that didn’t bother me. I don’t go to movies for a history lesson. (Although I’m afraid viewers of the film will walk away with the impression that Sir Walter Raleigh helped defeat the Spanish Armada. The family of Sir Francis Drake should sue).

Because the sets and costumes are so lavish I wish the emotions on display had matched the backgrounds, but everyone’s playing it oh so respectable. Someone like C.B. DeMille would have taken all those sets and costumes, and give us a ripping good show to go along with it.

Stars Cate Blanchett, Geoffrey Rush and director Shekkar Kapur are all back for this second go-around. I enjoyed the first film well enough but have not seen it since it first came out. The sequel deals with Elizabeth’s actions as she faces the threat of the Spanish Armada, while Mary of Scotland (Samantha Morton) is poised to re-claim Protestant England as a Catholic nation.

Spain vs. England. Elizabeth vs. Mary. Catholic vs. Protestant. It should have been dynamic, but instead the material is presented in an almost somnolent manner.

A love triangle of sorts develops between Elizabeth, Sir Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen) and Elizabeth’s favorite lady-in waiting Bess (Abbie Cornish). It put me in mind of the love triangle between Elizabeth (Bette Davis), the Earl of Essex (Errol Flynn) and lady-in-waiting Penelope (Olivia deHavilland) in “The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex” (1939). Blanchett, Owen and Cornish are splendid contemporaries of the above, but I’m afraid here they’re just listless.

Kapur’s direction is unnecessarily fussy. There’s a scene where Raleigh and Bess are performing a new dance for the queen and they are awkward and tentative. Placed in the foreground are huge pieces of furniture and columns as the camera swirls around the dancers. It’s jarring to say the least, and put me in mind of Fred Astaire and Joan Fontaine dancing to “Things are Looking Up” from “A Damsel in Distress” (1937). There, they had the excuse that ingénue Fontaine could not dance, so trees and fences were put in the foreground to hide her awkward dancing. But I didn’t get the reason for it here, but found it might distracting.

And then there’s the score from Craig Armstrong and A.R. Rahman, which represents everything wrong with contemporary scoring. No memorable melodies, everything played at same loud level of intensity. And they say scoring from Hollywood’s Golden Age is obtrusive? Max Steiner and Dimitri Tiomkin had nothing on these guys, but Max and Dimi could write memorable themes in their sleep. I couldn’t remember a single melody here if my life depended on it.

Rating for “Elizabeth: The Golden Age”: A disappointing one and a half star