by Christina Waters | Dec 27, 2014 | Home |
I can’t stop thinking about how perilously close Benedict Cumberbatch is to becoming one of those actors doomed to circle their own groundbreaking performances. Over and over.
With his odd physiognomy and quicksilver reactions, Cumberbatch has given us some compelling geeks, socially-inept geniuses, and brooding, suffering weirdos. But as I look ahead to the roles he is slated to embody in the upcoming TV, stage, and screen pantheons, I am growing uncomfortable. Cumberbatch is about to become a stereotype!
Richard III in a three-part mini-series for TV. Yes, that Richard III! Then there will be Doctor Strange, with Cumby as Strange. He’s already filmed the next season of his eccentric and dazzling Sherlock Holmes. And I know—because I already have tickets—that he will be playing Hamlet (more…)
by Christina Waters | Dec 27, 2014 | Home |
As a devoted Benedict Cumberbatch groupie, it pains me to have to say that even the theatrical genius who dazzled us in Sherlock, and amazed us in Frankenstein cannot raise The Imitation Game—by Norwegian director Morten Tyldum—above the level of a made-for-TV Hallmark special.
Perhaps it was a hopeless task after all, attempting to express on-screen tension and drama about the creation of a code-busting device that anticipated today’s computers. Not exactly the visual equivalent of parting the Red Sea, is it? As mathematical innovator Alan Turing, Cumberbatch offers dazzling micro-gestures via twitching eyebrows, quivering lips, clenched (and unclenched) jaw, not to mention the required sort of physical awkwardness one expects of Cambridge geniuses. But these alone do not a film make. Even the surrounding cast of remarkably good-looking British actors (many recognizable from Downton Abbey) as Turing’s fellow code-breakers (more…)
by Christina Waters | Dec 10, 2014 | Home |
For two and a half hours I waited for something to pump energy, concept, or even engaging visuals into this bloated Hollywood block buster.
And for two and a half hours I waited in vain.
Interstellar is excruciatingly bad. Bad, B A D! Why do I say this? Here’s why! It pops up on our collective event horizon after the following truly engaging films: Alien, Contact, 2001, Gravity, The Right Stuff, Star Wars, hell, even Star Trek, to name but a few. Christopher (Inception, The Prestige) Nolan has gotten his knickers in such a twist paying homage to these earlier, far better films, that he seems to have forgotten that we’ve all seen them too.
We know about wormholes. We’ve seen spaceships leaving earth’s gravitational pull. We’ve watched scientists writing equations at the blackboards that somehow explain how relativity works. The very people who would be willing to sit through a new, highly-hyped sci fi film—for two and a half hours!—would be savvy about these basic space voyager tropes. What was Nolan thinking?!!!!
The only person who seemed to have forgotten these concepts (more…)
by Christina Waters | Dec 9, 2014 | Home |
Apparently while I wasn’t paying attention (i.e. during the second installment of the Hunger Games film trilogy, which I failed to view) Katniss has destroyed the very Games that put her, her buddies and her lumpen no-necked boyfriend Peeta in such deep owl pucky. But at any rate, Mockingjay Part I opens with a glassy-eyed Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) along with her mother and sister living in a giant silo community called District 13 many many levels underground. Somewhere, far away, the malicious leader of all this mischief, Snow (Donald Sutherland) is still wearing white Nehru jackets and wringing his hands like the Roman dictator upon which his character is styled. Donald Sutherland began life as an actor playing smug, cloying smart alecks (M.A.S.H., etc) and he’s never stopped.
I figure I had to watch this phenomenon if I wanted to crystallize my growing insight into the Millennial mind set. Don’t get me wrong. I certainly applaud the actress in Lawrence as much as the next aging girl. But at a certain point in Mockingjay I found myself wincing. Katniss isn’t simply a tough action heroine. She’s the Messiah. And all of the survivors (more…)
by Christina Waters | Dec 8, 2014 | Home |
I expected treacle, but The Theory of Everything turned out to be a beautifully-crafted biopic about astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, his intellectual ascent and his physical decline. Kudos to confident director James Marsh.
Made from a book by his wife Jane—who married Hawking (Eddie Redmayne) while he was a student at Cambridge and stood by him during the entire devastating course of the onset of motor neuron disorder — the film moves swiftly thanks to a superb cast and cinematic expertise. Hawking is a well-known figure, both in the rarified halls of cosmological theory, and in popular culture. His disease, his wheelchair, his electronically-generated “voice”, his impish grin—all are fairly iconic to anyone who can pick up a copy of People magazine.
Smartly photographed and well played, The Theory of Everything, reveals a bit of the back story we’re all keen to discover. As the sympathetic, brave, and ultimately weary wife, actress Felicity Jones is perfect. Her resolve, her deep interest in him and in maintaining his dignity, are all etched on the screen in the actress’ deft and very lightly-drawn portrait.
As Hawking, British theatrical wunderkind Eddy Redmayne outdoes Daniel Day Lewis’ left foot, if you know what I mean. It manages to avoid being the predictable freak show, and yet it also avoids shedding insight into the bold and controversial theories that have made Hawking the stuff off Isaac Newtonian legend.
A nice way to pass a few hours. Watch Redmayne, on the fast track to be next year’s Benedict Cumberbatch.
