Movies

I missed Iraq in Fragments when it was at the E Street Theater, but it is on my list. Frat recently caught The Fountain and said it was something along the lines of "epic" and "mind-blowing." The Queen is consistently getting raves and it is awesome to see Helen Mirren catching some Oscar-buzz, especially since she once remarked that the Academy Awards "[is] the creme-de-la-creme of bullshit." We are right there with you Helen. Additionally, I think it is only fair to mention that The Queen is directed by Stephen Frears (High Fidelity, Dirty Pretty Things). You might remember that I spent a whole post gushing about how flawless his adaptation of High Fidelity.

Iraq in Fragments

"Iraq in Fragments succeeds on so many levels that it’s difficult to know where to begin. It works as a stunning piece of cinematic journalism, with director James Longley dividing the film into thirds—one third each for the Sunnis, Shia, and Kurds—and attempting to capture a slice of life reality for the three major ethno-political forces in Iraq. The result is a panoramic portrait of Iraqi society that to my knowledge has never been equaled, or at least portrayed so vividly. The overall picture is not so much hopeless as it is bleak and unsparing. Even the Kurds, the most pro-American, anti-Saddam segment of Iraq, express misgivings and doubt regarding the future of their country—as well they should, if the rest of the film is to believed. The opening shots of Baghdad focus on smoke pouring out of numerous buildings, as the camera moves through the ravages of Iraqi urban life. "Baghdad used to be beautiful," ruminates 11-year old Mohammed, the central player in the first part of the film. Occasionally, the crackle of gunfire can be heard, which the local men react to less with terror than a kind of weary resignation."
[Stylus Magazine]

The Fountain

"If you’re a movie lover who despairs that big-scale filmmaking today consists of little more than a self-cannibalizing system of clichés; if you are fed up with putatively ambitious movies that turn out to sorely lack not just vision but actual brains and actual heart as well, then you need, badly, to see The Fountain, soon, and under the most optimum viewing conditions available. It may well restore your faith in the idea that a movie can take you out of the mundane and into a place of wonderment.

"Describing this picture in terms of transportive qualities will no doubt strike some as a little fuzzy-minded. I should point out, then, that with The Fountain, getting to a place of wonderment isn’t a matter of turning off your mind, relaxing, and floating downstream; the movie is as demanding as it is dazzling."
[Premiere]

The Queen


"Directed by Stephen Frears from a very smart script by Peter Morgan, who helped write "The Last King of Scotland," also about crazy rulers and the people who love (and hate) them, "The Queen" pries open a window in the House of Windsor around the time of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, blending fact with fiction. It begins just days before her fatal car crash in 1997, when the princess, glimpsed only in television news clips and photographs, had completely transformed into Diana, the onetime palace prisoner turned jet-setting divorcee. The transformation was fit for a fairy tale: the lamb had been led to slaughter (cue Madonna's "Like a Virgin") and escaped in triumph (crank the Material Girl’s "Bye Bye Baby"). Elizabeth II wore the crown, but it was Diana who now ruled.

"How heavy that crown and how very lightly Helen Mirren wears it as queen. With Mr. Frears's gentle guidance, she delivers a performance remarkable in its art and lack of sentimentalism. Actors need to be loved, but one of Ms. Mirren’s strengths has always been her supreme self-confidence that we will love the performance no matter how unsympathetic the character. It takes guts to risk our antipathy, to invite us in with brilliant technique rather than bids for empathy. Even Mr. Whitaker’s Idi Amin seems to shed some tears. Ms. Mirren’s queen sheds a few too, but having climbed deep inside Elizabeth II, a vessel as heavily fortified as a gunship, she also coolly takes her character apart from the inside out, piece by machined piece."
[New York Times]