Shut Up & Sing

Grade: B

Three years ago, I didn’t know who the hell the Dixie Chicks were. This past summer, I went to see them perform at Madison Square Garden.

Gee, I wonder how that happened?

Standing on a London stage within days of the Iraqi invasion, lead singer Natalie Maines told the assembled crowd the singing group was “ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas,” referring to George W. and his relationship to their home state. Free speech took a beating – record sales plummeted, country-western radio stations boycotted their music, cd’s were burned and death threats were issued. The Dixie Chicks made a virtually unprecedented move – and refused to apologize.

Charting the last several rocky years of their career, this adequate if uninspired documentary displays the Chicks in all their strident, chagrined, disbelieving, naïve yet principled glory. Far from politically sophisticated or media savvy operatives, a gut reaction to an appalling war lands them in hot water which they are neither expecting nor prepared to contend with. Unwittingly turned into poster girls for un-Americanism overnight, they heroically stand tall and together when most would point fingers and shrink away.

Ignorant hicks and nose-picking nationalists (sorry, no other characterization accurately describes) stand outside stadiums and concert halls with misspelled signs and misplaced patriotism. Tour sponsors panic, right-wing television pundits publicly masturbate, shameful fans desert in droves…and the Dixie Chicks write an album in response that is so heartfelt, dignified, raw and moving it literally redefines their careers and launches an entirely new fan base. Just for the record, these are extraordinarily talented singers, musicians and songwriters, and Natalie Maines has one of the purest voices one is likely to ever hear – yes, she also has a big mouth and a “take no prisoners” attitude, but when she mutters “What a fucking idiot” while watching the President attempting to show the group some sympathy while nevertheless supporting the boycotts, she displays a piss and vinegar bravado that is hysterically funny and outrageously endearing.

The film inexplicably goes back and forth in time to no real effect, becomes tedious when showing off the various husbands and cherub children scampering all over the place, and veers into Pennebaker territory while charting writing and recording sessions. Recent footage of escalating casualties and Bush’s falling approval ratings also try just a tad too hard to suggest Chick prescience. Still, the unfaltering sisterhood and stalwart support that exists between these three women is impressive, formidable and touching.

The film ends at the “scene of the crime” – the same London theater where an offhanded comment sent Americans into an internationally embarrassing hissy-fit – with an act of “censorship be damned” defiance that is awesomely impressive indeed.

At the concert I attended last summer, some guy in the crowd received enthusiastic cheers when he displayed a sign that stated “I’m Gay But I Still Love Chicks.” Me too.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0811136/

Marie Antoinette

Grade: C+

Some boys take a beautiful girl,
And hide her away from the rest of the world.
I wanna be the one to walk in the sun.
Oh, girls, They wanna have fu-un.
Oh, girls, Just wanna have fun

Director Sofia Coppola translates an historical period piece into a tale of adolescent angst, insecurity and self-gratification, demonstrating that film directors can be every bit as self-indulgent as teenagers. The vistas are stunning, the pageantry glamorous, the royal courts resplendent, yet there’s something inexplicably strange, unconvincing and off-kilter about it all.

Versailles makes for quite the decadent landscape. Marie Antoinette, married at fourteen to secure a relationship between Austria and France, is initially chagrined but quickly mortified by her isolated life of minute-by-minute control, ceremony and observation. Court hierarchy determines which lady will dress her with which piece of clothing. The royal couple eats every bite of food as per protocol and in front of an audience. The newlywed’s wedding night is a thing of prayer, procession and participation by the court. Coppola’s conceit is that teenagers of one generation are just like teenagers of any other generation, and that a royal court must have been a straightjacket for anyone longing to be a free spirit. Mildly intriguing, occasionally whimsical and often filled with conventional scenes shot from fresh perspectives, the film nevertheless overwhelms its spin with heavy-handed flourishes and jarring weirdnesses. Blaring rock music repeatedly jolts one out of time and place (there go those rabble-rousing, misunderstood kids again) historical reference is barely alluded to and never integrated (why are the townspeople showing up at the palace with torches and pitchforks, again?) and the passage of time barely exists (the film spans 24 years but might as well span 24 months). The fact that Marie likes to spend money and live high on the hog, and a cute spin on the “let them eat cake” line she may never have actually delivered fails to elucidate how quickly she seems to spiral from being loved by everyone to being despised by royals and peasants alike.

Kirsten Dunst is initially charming, ultimately one-note, and truth-be-told a bit in-over-her-head playing our heroine from the ages of 14-38 yet always looking in her twenties and never adding much variety to her portrayal – Antoinette’s motivations never appear more than an inch deep, and Dunst fails to dig far enough beneath the surface to convince us otherwise. She is surrounded by a motley crew of the most oddly-cast actors, from Jason Schwartzman as a nebbishy Louis XVI to Rip Torn as a country-western Louis the XV to Saturday Night Live’s Molly Shannon (who mercifully doesn’t shove her fingers under her armpits and smell them) as a Lady of the Court. All of them look and sound like they’re playing dress up, and the acting is uniformly off, deadpan, and of the wrong time and place. Coppola doesn’t even bother trying for anything sounding remotely French, yet accents run the gamut regardless.

The film is not without its humor and its graces (especially in the first half as Kirsten is introduced to the elegantly confining world of the court) and Coppola’s cinematic eye shows off Versailles in all its glorious debauchery. But sadly, I walked into the film knowing very little about Maria Antonia Josefa Joanna von Habsburg-Lothringen – Marie Antoinette for short – and walked out a couple of long hours later none the wiser.

But damn Cyndi Lauper would be so proud.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0422720/

The Queen

Grade: B+

Queen Elizabeth II portrays herself in this docudrama tracing the Royal Family’s response in the days following the death of Princess Diana.

That’s how good Helen Mirren is.

Stoic, wry, tenacious, rigid, Mirren is the thing itself – a woman of a certain time, a life of obligation, ceremony, formality and seclusion, caught completely off guard by a public expecting personal emotion and public grief. And all for a woman they never really knew, and the Royals didn’t especially like. She expects more of her people – the stiff upper lift persona the world has come to know – and is betrayed by a modernism she doesn’t purport to embrace or understand. Sympathetic in her naiveté, unlikable and unapologetic in her aloofness, release of emotion is so pinched it’s virtually indiscernible, any display of anguish confined in her eyes.

Michael Sheen is a Tony Blair man of the people, frustrated by the Queen’s miscalculations and downwardly spiraling poll numbers, but unabashed in his admiration for the genuine leadership, dignity and sense of history and survival she comports. He is a brilliant political animal, surrounded by gleefully opportunistic carnivores (including his wife, played by a deliciously disrespectful Helen McCrory) struggling to plug the dike of popular discontent until the crown gets its act together. Alex Jennings’ Prince Charles seems genuinely overwhelmed by sadness when the news arrives, a mortal among wax figures, but transparently calculating in his attempts to gauge the people for personal and political gain. James Cromwell and Sylvia Syms are equally hard as nails as Prince Philip and the Queen Mother, so unsympathetic, aristocratic and annoyed by all the folderol they make Elizabeth more human by mere comparison.

Filmmaker Stephen Frears has an impeccable knack for showing the anguished vulnerability behind the brick façade (who will ever forget Glenn Close’s single tear in his “Dangerous Liaisons”), a sophisticated skill in abundance here. He interweaves real footage seamlessly and to great effect, reminding us of a state of national mourning the likes of which weren’t to be seen again until 9/11 (perhaps inexplicable and incomparable, but the footage of lit candles, displays of public crying and oceans of flowers speaks for itself). While the film is a bit too staid and mannered for its own good, when Elizabeth finally walks among her people it is a bond that is remarkably symbiotic and quietly moving. Subject and Ruler are forged together in a way those of us from a republic couldn’t possibly begin to understand and appreciate, but we are given a rare glimpse into a relationship of derision and adoration that has lasted the ages.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0436697/

Little Children

Grade: B+

The Director of In the Bedroom delivers yet another film flawlessly acted and filled with human insight, yet flawed by a screenplay that tries to encompass too much about too many things and winds up just a touch too filled with a sense of its own self-importance.

Tennessee Williams would blush from the suburban sultriness of it all. Amidst the jealously judgmental whisperings of the other moms, two strangers meet in a playground and find their own merry-go-round in one another. Kate Winslet takes one's breath away as a woman in a sexually regressive and emotionally vacuous marriage who feels equally numb toward her own child, Patrick Wilson is distractingly sexy as a stay at home dad who would probably prefer the role of child than parent. Throw in a sex offender returning home after a prison stint and an ex-cop suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, and you get the R-rated version of Wisteria Lane, replete with punchy voiceovers telling us what people are thinking and feeling at the most intimate and inappropriate of moments.

Cold even when its steamy, distant yet compelling, broodingly funny and hysterically dark, the audience is kept at arm’s length as individual passions and proclivities sweat from every pore and childlike needs and emotions bubble over – one can almost hear the inner child screaming “I want it, I want it, I want it” under the cool mature exteriors. All this while the adults push their children on swings, suggestively lounge with their children at the community pool, and horde craving moments together during nap time. Every grownup suffers from one form of arrested development or another – basic immaturity and an inability to fulfill adult responsibilities, isolated detachment from one’s child, parental dependency, porn addiction and sexual deviance all find representation. Director/Screenwriter Todd Field fails to connect all the dots, and disparate storylines never form a cohesive or convincing whole, but the acting is so fine, the longing so universal, and the canvas so ambitious one is riveted and entertained by this passion play regardless.

Winslet gives the best performance of her career as a suffocating woman who chooses to leave her career to stay with her child, then spends her days longing for the husband she detests to return home at the end of the day. Wilson is simply too good looking to be such a good actor, but he suffuses his character with boyish sex-appeal and charming immaturity while never letting us forget he is very much an adult trying to fake his way through a very adult world. Jackie Earle Haley disappears inside his tormented pedophile, as disgustingly creepy as he is innocently pitiable. Everyone’s internalized insecurity manifests itself in indignant outrage, a general metaphor for life, relationships, and Congress. In the end, we’re all children waiting for someone to find us with our hand in the cookie jar.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0404203/