Good Liars

Wholesome psychological thriller with great Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren but containing a few bloopers. The action is set in 2003 when the characters should be in their mid-seventies, not in the late eighties as now, but the cars in the movie are modern. A boy, future McKellen character, who grew up in Nazi Germany, i.e. without much contact with English speakers, learnt English so flawlessly, including the accent that he can credibly impersonate an Englishman after the war. The writers could have easily made English counterintelligence officer a Dutchman or a Czech. Finally, fifteen-year old boy--before the sexual revolution--without much experience, raped a girl in a house full of people. To expose him as a complete scum it would be more believable if he extorted sex for not promising to report her parents to the Gestapo and then betraying them all the same.

Catherine the Great.

A big mistake, even unprofessional behavior, was noticed by the critics in the decision of Helen Mirren to play 34-year old woman in the beginning of the movie being herself 74 years old. Furthermore, aging Katherine was portly. But it could be overlooked if the script could give her excellent acting abilities to rise to the occasion.

Some things clearly manifest ignorance. Catherine and Potemkin have a ship voyage around Crimea amidst ice floes. Soldiers bow instead of saluting. Christian Orthodox women of the court do not wear headdresses in the Church as if they are whores in a brothel. But the most grotesque is the emergence of the then non-existing state of "Germany". There were two German states among major European powers at the time: Austria or Holy Roman Empire and Kingdom of Prussia and dozens more among the second and third-rank powers. Most of the time, Austria and the Prussian Kingdom, nominally the vassal of the former, had confrontational relations and, at least, three shooting wars, which allowed Russian diplomacy some room for maneuver between them. But the gravest shortcoming is that authors poorly understood the spirit of Enlightenment and the values of Enlightened Absolutism.

Refusal to show Catherine's counterparts Joseph II of Austria who participated with her in her travel through recently annexed Malorossya (core of the future Ukraine) and Friedrich II--both partners in the division of Poland--threw Katherine out of context of her fellow enlightened despots of the period. The debauchery of her court was scandalous enough but, certainly, no match for the sexual appetites of  the French King Louis XV and his courtiers.

I assume that modern Hollywood, in place of the enforcers of the Motion Picture Production Code has a Committee on Disparaging the Russkies by the Ministry of Truth because such episodes were commissioned in the movies with or without relation to the plot, but talent shines through all committees and personal prejudice. No amount of twisting historic and geographic realities in service of a racist abuse put Mark Rylance's acting out of commission. And Tom Stoppard's writing talent made a passable movie out of pretty unfilmable Anna Karenina despite all his attempts at caricature as a loyal Czech.

Knives Out.

The best whodunnit I watched in a long time. In the beginning, Daniel Craig sometimes slides into English drawl from a Kentucky accent but this is all right. The movie even imitates Agatha Christie in the sense that his character is American version of Belgians stereotype in France for "slow". (Not my observation, but good, anyway).

Lighthouse

The duo of Dafoe and Pattinson is superb, the camera work is magnificent, monologues of a drunken captain in the spirit of Melville are well wrought. Allusions to the H. P. Lovecraft, Hitchcock's "Birds" and the Greek tragedy are well placed. And all that for what? To show two men on a desolate island to drink themselves into oblivion.

Ad Astra.

The movie heavily borrows (some will say plagiarizes) on a brilliant and unappreciated "Solar" and lacks the humor of the "Martian". The authors probably recognized that the plot was too thin for the blockbuster and added two clumsy and plot-unrelated episodes with lunar pirates and with apes taking over the Dutch spaceship. Why in these days and age they would not have humanoid robots to explore dangerous objects? I posted this still to illustrate that laser light as any electromagnetic signal travels 6-7 hours to Neptune.

                                         

Official Secrets

Not so much of a movie but a theatrical play shot on film with the excellent duo of Keira and Ralph Fiennes. Their understated, matter of fact, performance is sublime. Supporting cast is also great. While one can duly expect it of Ralph, Keira Knightly with years turned from another pretty face with an English accent of "Pirates of the Caribbean" into a formidable performer.

But the movie, similarly to much weaker and formulaic "Post" with Meryl Streep demonstrates not the real image of the British media, judiciary and even intelligence--where everybody knows that Blair Administration is an assorted collection of liars and psychopaths--but rather how they want to see themselves. In that vein, the final scene of split of Fiennes, and his antagonist, the Crown Prosecutor is mundane. Much better ending would be they giving "high fives" to each other and going fishing together.

Where'd you go, Bernadette?

Linklater forever engraved his name into the cinema history with technical innovation of a feature animation by the live actors in his "Waking Life". He is also stands apart from other American directors that his movies frequently do not tell story of violence and murder. But his overtly "sunny", polyannish outlook in the current film clouds the conclusion of Bernadette. It is always better to survive personality issues with deep pockets. Cate Blanchett is great as always.