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Posts tagged ‘1950s’

A Beautiful Mind (2001)

beautiful mindDirected by Ron Howard

It was late the night I put this movie in the DVD player, and I wasn’t going to watch the whole thing. But even though it’s not the most action-packed movie ever made, A Beautiful Mind is an extremely gripping movie. As it got later and later (or earlier and earlier in the morning), I kept thinking, “I should really turn this off and go to bed,” but I just couldn’t. I needed to know what happened to John Nash.

So what’s the story? John Nash is a genius mathematician from West Virginia. He doesn’t fit in with all the other Princeton graduate students, mostly because he is completely asocial. He makes a great mathematic breakthrough and gets a job at MIT with the Department of Defense. He meets and marries Alicia, but the top-secret decryption project he’s working on suddenly takes a dark turn.

The Good: The acting was superb. I haven’t seen a lot of Russell Crowe’s movies, and I wasn’t expecting much from him in A Beautiful Mind, mostly because what I’ve seen him in lately is clips from Les Miserables (no, I haven’t seen the whole thing yet, because I don’t want to watch it). Anyway, Russell Crowe became John Nash. I’m always impressed when actors can play a person with a mental disability without overacting. I loved his performance. The supporting cast was great, too. Paul Bettany as Charles, John’s crazy-fun roommate; Jennifer Connelly as John’s wife, Alicia; Ed Harris as John’s government contact; Adam Goldberg, Josh Lucas, and Anthony Rapp as John’s mathematician colleagues; and Christopher Plummer as Dr. Rosen, John’s psychiatrist are all wonderful. I don’t think any of the roles could have been easy to play, but all of the actors did very well.

The costume design was well done, especially since the year in which something happened was rarely given. The clothes were a clue to how many years had passed, and I was very thankful for that. The makeup was good, too. The stars were aged well. I didn’t much care for John Nash’s old look, but that’s because he looked uncomfortably like someone I know, and I couldn’t get past that. But everyone looked definitely, believably older (unlike the people in Giant, which is still my baseline of terribleness when it comes to aging in movies).

The screenplay was good. John Nash’s story could not have been an easy one to tell without giving too much away, but the writers did an excellent job.

The Bad: The music was beautiful, but there were some moments when James Horner copied his own music. At the very beginning of the movie, the music sounded exactly like the music from Sneakers, which I wasn’t even aware James Horner had scored. I had to look it up to be sure. Later on, there are bits from Titanic, which has a brilliant score. It makes me sad that someone who is as obviously talented as James Horner reuses his own stuff.

The Ugly: There wasn’t anything ugly in A Beautiful Mind. It’s a well-made movie that takes a hard topic and treats it sensitivity and tact. Ron Howard deserves major kudos for this movie.

Oscars Won: Best picture; best actress in a supporting role (Jennifer Connelly); best director; best screenplay, screenplay based on material previously produced or published.

Other Oscar Nominations: Best actor in a leading role (Russell Crowe); best film editing; best makeup; best music, original score.

Category:

Best Picture, Drama, Historical, Thriller

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The Hours (2002)

The_Hours_posterDirected by Stephen Daldry

When I saw the poster for this movie, my first thought was, “Wait. It says Nicole Kidman is in this movie, but none of those three women are Nicole Kidman. Why isn’t she on the poster, and why doesn’t the third lady on the poster get higher billing?” So I looked it up on IMDb and realized that the makeup people did an amazing job; they managed to make Nicole Kidman look frumpy.

So what’s the story? Three different women from three different time periods have three parallel days that are all connected by parties, mental illness, and Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway. I realize that doesn’t sound terribly exciting, but it’s a hard movie to sum up.

The Good: Like I said earlier, the makeup artists were amazing. They did a good job making Nicole Kidman look like Virginia Woolf, but they also did a fabulous job of aging Julianne Moore fifty years. Apparently, they weren’t eligible for an Oscar because a little bit CGI was used to make Nicole Kidman’s false nose look flawless, but still. Major kudos to them.

Major kudos also goes to the editors. The director is telling three different stories, but he jumps around from story to story often. The editing had to make that feel seamless and show the parallels in the different stories. It was very well done.

The soundtrack was beautiful, a lovely piano score. I thought it sounded very similar to the music from The Truman Show; sure enough, Philip Glass did the scores for both. But even though it wasn’t the most original, it was so lovely that it made me want to find some sheet music and learn it.

The acting was excellent. Nicole Kidman completely inhabited Virginia Woolf. Julianne Moore played a frustrated 1950s housewife, and Meryl Streep gave a moving performance as the woman of today (or 2001. But that was today when the movie was made.). John C. Reilly played Moore’s incredibly devoted husband, and Ed Harris was a poet dying of AIDS, a former lover of Meryl Streep’s character. Miranda Richardson felt completely natural as Virginia Woolf’s sister Vanessa.

The Bad: This movie is based on a book (which I haven’t read, so I can’t compare anything), and it shows. All three main character women spend a lot of time staring into space. I’m sure that in the novel, they are having deep thoughts, but those thoughts don’t always make it across on the screen. That got annoying.

I also felt like the three stories didn’t fit together as well as they should. Meryl Streep’s character had many parallels to Mrs. Dalloway, even down to the names, and her story dovetailed neatly with Julianne Moore’s, but the only connection that Julianne Moore had to Virginia Woolf was that she was reading Mrs. Dalloway, and I wanted it to be better than that.

The Ugly: Confession time: I struggle with depression. I have been suicidal in the past. I am a woman who doesn’t quite fit in her society. And even with all that, I never felt a deep connection with this movie. Maybe it was because we couldn’t get a deep look at these women’s inner thoughts, but it felt so shallow. The only woman I really felt like we got a good, sympathetic look at was Virginia Woolf; I would have happily watched an entire Virginia Woolf biopic starring Nicole Kidman and Stephen Dillane because they were the only very well-developed characters. That shouldn’t happen in a character-driven movie.

Oscars Won: Best actress in a leading role (Nicole Kidman).

Other Oscar Nominations: Best picture; best actor in a supporting role (Ed Harris); best actress in a supporting role (Julianne Moore); best director; best writing, adapted screenplay; best costume design; best film editing; best music, original score.

Category:

Drama, Historical

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