Tag: Gary Oldman

October Viewing – 6

photog Movie Reviews, Reviews, Science Fiction / Fantasy, SF&F Movie Reviews , , , , , , ,

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) – A Science Fiction-Fantasy Movie Review

First of all, I assume everyone knows the plot of Dracula, so there will be no spoiler alert.  I’ve been wanting to review this movie for a while because I read that it was pretty good.  Well, pretty good is in the eye of the beholder, I guess.

This movie is all over the place.  First off look at some of the cast members:

Gary Oldman as Count Dracula

Winona Ryder as Mina Harker

Anthony Hopkins as Professor Van Helsing

Keanu Reeves as Jonathan Harker

So, you can imagine the range of acting ability here.  Oldman and Hopkins do the best they can with the script and dialog but Reaves and Ryder … are Reaves and Ryder, so you can imagine.  Keanu is especially notable for his amazing 19th century British accent.  I keep expecting him to exclaim, “Whoa!”

Alright, so let’s talk about the approach to the Dracula story.  Apparently, by the movie’s name, director Francis Ford Coppola intended for this film to be seen as adhering, to some extent, more closely to Stoker’s novel than most other versions.  I read the novel many, many years ago but from what I remember there were no nekkid vampire women sexing up Jonathan Harker at Castle Dracula.  And, granted, unlike many other versions of the story, the end of this movie does take place where and how it occurred in the book, but Coppola added Mina Harker into the climax to close out her romance with Dracula.  That’s not Stoker.  Also, the movie starts off in the 15th century with Vlad the Impaler renouncing God because his wife (who is also played by Ryder) committed suicide and therefore she cannot go to heaven.  And because of all this, we are supposed to see Dracula as a sympathetic character and at the end he gets this redemption scene where instead of looking like this decrepit bat-like thing he turns back into young and relatively handsome Vlad and dies the beautiful death (well, he still gets his head chopped off but he does get a nice moment).  So, Bram Stoker’s Dracula?  Some yes and a lot no.

The special effects are pretty good for 1992.  And the sets and costumes look like they cost a bundle.  I didn’t hate the whole movie.  I rather enjoyed most of Hopkins’ Van Helsing and a lot of Oldman’s spoken part was well done.  I think what I objected to was Ryder’s absurdly emotional scenes with Dracula.  I guess we’re supposed to imagine that the Mina Harker character must have some kind of psychic link to Vlad’s dead wife and this compels her to fall hopelessly in love with the undead and mostly repulsive looking creature that has very recently murdered her best friend, Lucy.

So, let’s say there is some kind of twisted logic to this take.  But since this is framed as a Christian legend, complete with crucifixes and holy water are we supposed to add in an un-Christian example of reincarnation?  And somehow God is going to forgive Vlad for four centuries of murdering people because Winona Ryder loves him?  I could be wrong but I don’t think that’s how it works.  Someone named Vlad the Impaler is going to need a much stronger advocate than that when he gets to the Pearly Gates.

Alright, I’ll put all my quibbles aside.  What’s the verdict?  Well, since this is a Dracula movie then as a Dracula movie it provides blood and gore, a castle with frightened Transylvanian peasants nearby, a vampire that can turn into bats, wolves and mist and is attractive to female victims and a final scene with a stake and even a decapitation.  So, successful, I guess.  But Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder?  That’s not helping.

Oppenheimer (2023) – A Movie Review

photog Movie Reviews, Reviews, Science , , , ,

I finally got around to watching this movie.  This won’t be a full review because I don’t think I can be completely fair to the movie.  Christopher Nolan has been a big-time director for a good long while.  His Batman trilogy earned gazillions of dollars and was actually very good.  Now this movie is a very different animal.  I don’t think it is supposed to be entertainment in the same way.  It’s a biopic and a historical recreation of a very important event, the Manhattan Project; the invention of the atomic bomb.

As the story of the Manhattan Project, it is fascinating and compelling.  The biopic is a combination of experiences.  Oppenheimer himself is very odd duck.  From his own admission he was not a great physicist like Fermi, Einstein or Bohr.  He was a dilettante who found himself surrounded by the generation that invented quantum mechanics and became their interpreter and project manager in shepherding all the pieces needed to allow the US military to get the a-bomb in 1945.

And we hear his history as a retrospective because the movie is really the story of how Oppenheimer; this critical individual in the ushering in of the nuclear era, loses his US government security clearance due to his former association with communists and other less reputable individuals in his circle of friends.  We are also led through the less than honorable path of his love life.  And we see how his concerns about the dangers of nuclear weapons seem somewhat inconsistent depending upon where his role in producing the bomb stands.  While ensconced in the project he seems not at all conflicted.  But once he and his colleagues have handed over the bombs to the Army and the spotlight is no longer on him, his qualms grow exponentially.  As a viewer of the story, this seems clear.

The movie is populated with famous names and faces, some of them very hard to recognize.  Robert Downey Jr. is Lewis Strauss, Oppenheimer’s implacable foe who hounds him out of the government circle of influence.  Emily Blunt is Kitty Oppenheimer, his wife.  Matt Damon is Gen. Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project.  Josh Hartnett is Ernest Lawrence, a Nobel-winning nuclear physicist.  Kenneth Branagh is the brilliant physicist Niels Bohr.  Tom Conti is Albert Einstein and weirdest of all Gary Oldman is Harry S. Truman.

And there’s all kinds of good acting.  I especially enjoyed the “physicists seemingly engrossed in the endless details of making a weapon out of their incomprehensible mathematical equations.  There is a critical scene where Edward Teller, the father of the H-Bomb stops the project when his calculations seem to indicate that there is a very high probability that setting off a fission bomb could ignite the whole atmosphere of Earth and end all life on the planet.  That is a pivotal scene where eventually even Einstein is consulted.

And the climactic Trinity test scene in the desert is very effective.

But it’s a three-hour movie and that means we see quite a bit of J. Robert Oppenheimer and I have to admit I didn’t find him the most sympathetic character to follow for that three-hours.  It’s a good movie.  But I ended it wishing it had been more about Matt Damon’s character and that’s an odd feeling for me.

Darkest Hour – A Movie Review

photog Movie Reviews, Reviews , , , , , ,

I remember as a kid seeing Winston Churchill’s funeral televised.  I knew who he was from the old early morning presentation of Mike Wallace’s “Biography” series.  I knew he was our ally during WW II and that he had rallied his country when the rest of Europe surrendered to the German military juggernaut.  Later I read some of his speeches and read about his earlier history during WW I.  But I didn’t imagine at this point that a good movie about his time as Prime Minister would come my way.  I am happily surprised to have been mistaken.

I finally got a chance to watch “Darkest Hour” tonight.  It has the look of a period piece and the feel of a film made from a stage play.  There are set pieces and dialogs and very little filmed outside of buildings.  I didn’t think Oldman was given a close resemblance to Churchill and the difficulty of understanding him when he is mumbling during certain scenes is considerable and I think purposeful.  And there is a particular scene in a subway car that is completely fictional and that includes a Jamaican man in the scene who seems to have been added for the sake of diversity or inclusion that seems anachronistic.

Put all that aside.  I thought it was a great evocation of the desperation of the time and the fateful choice of Churchill stepping into this darkest hour of British history.  His flawed and idiosyncratic personality rubbed almost everyone the wrong way and his pugnacious courage was at odds with the war-weary British government in the post-WWI era.  His relationship with Neville Chamberlain and King George VI are highlighted to show how he contrasted with those in government but the evolution of the war and the need for someone with the will to persevere in the face of Nazi blitzkrieg success becomes his inevitable platform from which to energize the Parliament and the people of England to take up the frightening struggle of all-out war.

Many of the scenes take place in underground bunkers where military and government teams are meeting and analyzing incoming war reports.  There is a definite claustrophobic feel in much of this.  And the frailty of Churchill’s age is highlighted when he seems overwhelmed by the infighting within his own war cabinet.  But all of this only magnifies the achievement when he resolves on what will be his path forward and what must be done.  The final speech in Parliament is stirring.

Highly recommended.