The King's Speech

The King's Speech seems like it might be prestige-for-its-own-sake Oscar-bait, but sometimes movies like that are actually really good. Such is the case with The King's Speech, which tells the story of King George VI's troubles with his speech impediment and how an Australian therapist named Lionel Logue helped him overcome it, as well as how they became friends in the process. The script nudges history around here and there to make the story fit a traditional narrative structure a bit better, making the time of his therapy cover a broader period of history and ignoring some of the less-noble aspects of some of its characters, but much like in the film's main rival in the Oscar race, The Social Network, some adjustments to the true account of what happened are acceptable if it makes for a more entertaining film. And The King's Speech does damn well at that.

The script is quite good, keeping a nice pace as it sets the characters up and then ramps up both the intensity of the training and the political circumstances Prince Albert has to worry about on parallel tracks, always building up to the climactic scene where the two come together. It was a surprisingly funny movie, with some pretty snappy banter between the two men, with some of the dialogue taken directly from Logue's journals. Despite the humor, there's also plenty of more dramatic material where required, exploring what caused the king to develop a stammer in the first place and also selling the grave situation of Hitler's rise looming in the background. The direction is also noteworthy, as Tom Hooper filmed the movie with a lot more verve than was necessarily required with this kind of movie. Nothing about is exactly mind-blowing or unique, but it helped keep the movie from ever seeming dull.

And of course, the performances are all generally brilliant as well. Despite having to stammer his way through the whole movie, Colin Firth gives a pretty commanding lead performance as the king, and he does so well with the impediment that you almost forget he's acting. He also convincingly pulls off struggling under the weight of his growing responsibility - there are a lot of aspects to the role, and he nails all of them. Geoffrey Rush is also great as Logue. It's not nearly as difficult a part, but without good work by both men then the interesting dynamic between the two would never have worked. Helena Bonham Carter is good as the king's very supportive wife, and Michael Gambon and guy Pearce are both regal and menacing as his somewhat less supportive father and brother. It's not that they don't believe in his ability, it's just that they don't understand the difficulty of his situation, and it's a delicate balance that they get right. So The King's Speech manages to be a fairly uplifting underdog story while still having the weight of something darker, due to the terrible things that we all know are waiting for the characters just a few years after it ends. The formula is pretty easy to see, but formulas can be fine when they're pulled off so well by everyone involved. I certainly wouldn't have any qualms about it winning Best Picture.

Intolerable Cruelty

Cruelty has a reputation as one of the Coen brothers' weaker films, and the early scenes seemed to signal that, with a generally unfunny and too-silly opening scene featuring Geoffrey Rush as a cuckolded TV producer. Luckily things got better once the lead characters played by George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones are introduced, and while it is one of my least favorite movies by the Coens, that's only because their catalogue as a whole is so damn good, while Cruelty is merely mostly enjoyable. It's also the last movie of theirs I haven't seen, and it was nice to finally plug up all those gaps.

So the movie is a romantic comedy, but it definitely doesn't play like a romantic comedy of the era. It's more of a classic screwball comedy that's been run through a Coen filter, and while it results in a movie with a low bar to jump, they vault it with a fair amount of grace and style. In some ways it's a very typical movie with obvious and less-than-inspired romantic story beats, but I think it's intentional how standard those scenes are, as they're included merely to acknowledge the fact that that's the kind of movie they're making. It's one of only two films where they shared screenwriting credit with others and was followed by their only direct remake, which leads me to believe it was maybe something of a slow period for them creatively. While the work isn't their most original, it's still distinctly theirs with things like the brief snippets with the head of Clooney's firm and the Wheezy Joe character that you would never see if one of the other directors who was previously attached to the story had ended up making it.

So while it is something of a cliche story, it still works because the Coens have such a distinct style and the cast is pretty outstanding. George Clooney manages to make an asshole divorce lawyer into a charming protagonist, and Zeta-Jones is alluring and likable despite her motivations for most of the movie. Billy Bob Thornton pops in in a great dual role that he knocks out of the park, Cedric the Entertainer is amusing with somewhat limited material, and Freddy might be the best character Richard Jenkins ever played in a Coen movie. The dialogue is sharp and rapid-fire in that old style, and the way the movie blends that classic kind of comedy with more modern developments like pre-nup agreement shenanigans just worked for me. When the movie actually wants the sentimental side to work it does, and before that there's a great tension when you know things aren't going the way they should and you're just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Not everything worked out, but I had a good time watching it. And the music choices were good too. Not a bad movie at all.

It's the last day of the year, so here's some housekeeping work I have to do:

In case you haven't noticed, I've started writing for a website called Player Affinity. I am in charge of the PS3 section and I also contribute to the TV side, and here's the reviews and features I wrote or contributed to that I haven't already linked to here:

PS3
The PS3 Awards
The Other Games of 2010
This Year's Best PS3 Games So Far
The PS3 Team's Favorite Controversial Games
The PS3 Team's Favorite Horror Games
Is It Okay to Play as the Taliban in Medal of Honor?
Why I Like Single Player Games

TV
The Office episode reviews
Costume Contest
Christening
Viewing Party
WUPHF.com
China
Classy Christmas

Also, along with the PA.com responsibilities, I've actually just started a new full time job that actually makes me money, so I simply don't have the time anymore to post on this blog as often as I have this year. I'm not going to stop, but I'm doing a few things to limit the workload. The first is probably no more baseball posts. When I first started the blog, I intended to use this section more, but the truth is I don't have that much to add to the discussion with all of the great dedicated sites and blogs there are out there, and it's fairly incongruous to talk about sports like once a month when this is otherwise basically all entertainment reviews. Another thing is no more music reviews. I actually expect the amount of music I listen to to increase with a hopefully stable income, but the fact is I've never gotten comfortable writing about the subject. I just don't know how to say what I like or don't like about songs the way other people do, and I don't enjoy having to do it. I'll still make lists, but I doubt there will be anymore full reviews.

When it comes to TV and comics, I'm going to stop posting about individual seasons or trade paperbacks of older titles. If they're still running, I'll write a single post about what was already released after I've caught up, and if they ended before I got to them, I'll sum up the whole thing in one go. Posts about current things will continue as usual. I'll see how this all goes at first, but hopefully cutting out some of the stuff that I've traditionally done as filler will help out a lot. Before the blog was almost a job, but going forward it will be more of a hobby. Who knows, maybe the writing will be better when I don't try to make myself do it every day.

Finding Nemo

I feel like the first several Pixar movies were good but not quite exceptional like their more recent output, and Nemo sort of marks that transition to true brilliance. It's not a favorite, but it's really quite good, capturing the right combination of humor, excitement, and heart. I guess they really figured things out when they started making things sad. The movie doesn't linger on it, but the opening scene where Marlin loses his wife and most of his children is probably harder than anything else the studio had done to that point, and it works very well to inform the character for the rest of the film. Marlin searching all over the ocean for his son isn't a terribly different story from say, the toys trying to rescue Woody after he gets stolen, but the knowledge of that earlier tragedy gives everything a greater weight and urgency. You want him to find Nemo because you know it will destroy him if he doesn't. One of the best family relationships the company has done.

It doesn't take over the whole movie though, as there's plenty of opportunity for the expected clever action sequences and windfall of entertaining celebrity voices. Sequences like Dory reading the address by the light of an anglerfish and escaping from the seagulls in the beak of a pelican are a lot of fun, and while I think having famous people do voices because they're famous can be damaging in pointless, everyone here seems really well cast. Albert Brooks and Ellen DeGeneres make a good leading pair, it's surprising hearing a very young Shane from Weeds as the titular character, Willem Dafoe is entertaining as the gruff leader of a group of aquarium fish including Brad Garrett and Allison Janney, and you'll probably hear a few more recognizable voices at some point. It's a nice looking film if not as eye-popping as what they've done in the last few years, and it tells its story and wraps it up at a very nice pace. Not my favorite animated movie, but a pretty good benchmark for what family films should aim for.