Movie Review: Bounce (2000)

Genre: Romance  

Director: Don Roos  

Starring: Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Affleck, Tony Goldwyn  
Running Time: 106 minutes  

Synopsis: During a weather delay at Chicago Airport, advertising executive Buddy Amaral (Ben Affleck) meets fellow traveler Greg Janello (Tony Goldwyn). Buddy gives up his seat on the LA-bound flight to Greg, but the plane crashes, killing all on board. After a guilt-fueled descent into alcoholism followed by a stint in a rehab centre, Buddy seeks out Greg's widow Abby (Gwyneth Paltrow), a fledgling real estate agent now raising two kids on her own. A romance ensues, although Buddy does not reveal to Abby his fateful encounter with Greg.

What Works Well: In bold and confident strokes, the opening sequence at the airport packs an impressive amount of character building and narrative seeding. The premise carries emotional weight, allowing two characters to carry coherent burdens of guilt and grief. Gwyneth Paltrow provides Abby with an impressive range of complexity as a woman still searching for a new normal, and the script (by director Don Roos) adds an edge by empowering Abby to pursue the romance with Buddy after he seeks to pull away.

What Does Not Work As Well: While both primary characters are understandably vulnerable, they also resort to lies and omissions as fundamental script requirements to underpin the easily predictable drama. Ben Affleck's limited emotional range is exposed opposite Paltrow, and the secondary characters are weak. The second half starts to drag and occasionally dips into melodrama, not helped by a running time that could have used a trim.

Key Quote:

Abby: Bouncing. It's like crashing, except you get to do it over and over again.

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Movie Review: Two Lovers (2008)

Genre: Romantic Drama  

Director: James Gray  

Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Gwyneth Paltrow, Vinessa Shaw, Isabella Rossellini, Elias Koteas  

Running Time: 110 minutes  

Synopsis: In Brooklyn, Leonard (Joaquin Phoenix) is bi-polar, suicidal, and living with his parents Ruth and Reuben (Isabella Rossellini and Moni Moshonov). They arrange for him to meet Sandra (Vinessa Shaw), the daughter of Reuben's business partner. She is willing to try a relationship, but Leonard is distracted by Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow), the more glamorous upstairs neighbour. Michelle is a troubled party girl and having an affair with a married lawyer (Elias Koteas), but Leonard nevertheless grows increasingly attached to her.

What Works Well: This is a refreshingly organic romance featuring imperfect people flailing within messy lives. Leonard has failed to launch and is close to imploding, director and co-writer James Gray introducing his protagonist with a jump-off-a-low-bridge half-hearted suicide attempt. Sandra may be a saviour but Michelle is compelling, her maelstrom of clubs, ecstasy, and infidelity shrouding her ability to pursue any rational future. Bypassing romantic movie cliches, the drama seeks next-best options when ideal resolutions are far out of reach. 

What Does Not Work As Well: The commitment to stripped emotions exposes gaps in realism, judgement, and avoided conversations. After the introduction, Leonard's mental health is relegated to an afterthought, and the script conveniently ignores the future prospects of a relationship with the equally fragile Michelle. The stable Sandra is aware of what she may be getting herself into, suggesting a misdirected mothering instinct rather than true passion. The final act reaches for a superficially satisfactory ending riding on a brittle foundation.

Key Quote:

Sandra (to Leonard): I wanna take care of you. I feel like I understand you.

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Movie Review: Proof (2005)

Genre: Drama  

Director: John Madden  

Starring: Gwyneth Paltrow, Anthony Hopkins, Jake Gyllenhaal, Hope Davis  

Running Time: 100 minutes  

Synopsis: After suffering from mental illness for many years, brilliant Chicago-based mathematics Professor Robert Llewellyn (Anthony Hopkins) dies. His daughter Catherine (Gwyneth Paltrow) sacrificed her own university mathematics studies to care for him in his final years. Now Catherine worries she may be experiencing the same mental atrophy as her father. Her sister Claire (Hope Davis) arrives from New York already assuming that Catherine is unwell, while graduate student Hal (Jake Gyllenhaal) goes through the Professor's latter-year notebooks, hoping to find undiscovered flashes of brilliance.

What Works Well: The adaptation of David Auburn's four-character play explores mental decay blurring the lines between reality and willful fantasy, Catherine missing her father, protective of his legacy, resentful that she was left alone to care for him, and now wondering if she is following his unfortunate path. With overbearing sister Claire and well-meaning student Hal acting as catalysts, the intellectual milieu finds time and space for dramatic twists both sharp and poignant. Gwyneth Paltrow's performance exposes unsettled fragility battling with inner strength, allowing Catherine's shortcomings and brilliance to collide into unexpected revelations.

What Does Not Work As Well: The theatrical origins are only partially overcome, and are most apparent in stagey dialogue exchanges. Catherine's mental fog becomes a convenient device to prolong a mystery (related to a potentially groundbreaking mathematical proof in one of the Professor's notebooks) well past the point of impact. Trying to create drama and narrative tension out of mathematical scribbles is an almost hopeless exercise.

Key Quote:

Catherine (addressing the attendees at her father's memorial service): Wow. I can't believe how many people are here. I never knew he had this many friends. Where have you all been for the last five years? I guess to you guys he was already dead, right?



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Movie Review: Hush (1998)

Genre: Suspense Drama  

Director: Jonathan Darby  

Starring: Jessica Lange, Gwyneth Paltrow, Hal Holbrook, Nina Foch, Debi Mazar  

Running Time: 96 minutes  

Synopsis: New Yorker Helen (Gwyneth Paltrow) is in a serious relationship with Jackson (Jonathan Schaech). They head out to meet his widowed mother Martha (Jessica Lange), who lives at Kilronan, the family's horse breeding countryside estate. Martha is full of fake charm and displays a possessive Jocasta complex towards Jackson. Helen becomes pregnant, marries Jackson, and they move into Kilronan to help revitalize the estate. Martha's passive aggressive hostility towards Helen kicks into overdrive.

What Works Well: The overheated family dynamics are never boring, and the running time is mercifully short. Veterans Nina Foch (as Jackson's grandmother Alice, banished by Martha from interacting with the family) and Hal Holbrook (as the town doctor) add a gloss of undeserved quality.

What Does Not Work As Well: This potboiler suffers from overacting (Lange, cigarette and drink over-emphasizing every line), non-acting (Paltrow, monotonously sleep-walking through the role), and under-acting (Schaech, his Jackson seemingly oblivious as his mother devours his wife). Martha's conniving is theatrical rather than astute, the characters behave according to the whims of the script rather than with any conviction, and their evolutions are jarring.

Key Quote:

Alice (about Martha): She was a stable girl, shoveling horse shit!

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Movie Review: Moonlight And Valentino (1995)

Genre: Drama  

Director: David Anspaugh  

Starring: Elizabeth Perkins, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kathleen Turner, Whoopi Goldberg  

Running Time: 105 minutes  

Synopsis: College poetry teacher Rebecca (Elizabeth Perkins) is devastated when her husband is killed by a car while jogging. She receives emotional support from her neighbour Sylvie (Whoopie Goldberg); younger sister Lucy (Gwyneth Paltrow); and ex-stepmother Alberta (Kathleen Turner). Sylvie's marriage is in trouble, Lucy is a morose loner with body image insecurity, and Alberta is an unlikeable Wall Street executive. The months pass, and Rebecca finally perks up when a handsome housepainter (Jon Bon Jovi) appears in the neighbourhood.

What Works Well: The talented cast delivers reliably steady performances, achieving small victories for quiet moments of discomfort and dry humour. The idyllic wealthy suburban setting is quaint.

What Does Not Work As Well: Based on the autobiographical book by Ellen Simon (Neil's daughter), this is an aimless and listless drama. Beneath the soft focus packaging is an unconvincing exploration of grief involving poorly defined characters who fail to transition from glib to genuine. The pacing is languid, few if any insights register, and some late-in-the-day revelations appear out of nowhere and smack of narrative desperation. 

Key Quote:

Alberta: I'd rather imagine a man than know him for sure.

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Movie Review: Sliding Doors (1998)

A romantic comedy-drama with parallel "what if" narratives, Sliding Doors offers two stories and not unexpectedly shortchanges both.

In London, Helen (Gwyneth Paltrow) is fired from her public relations job. On her way back home, two alternative realities are presented: Helen either just makes it onto a subway train before the sliding doors close, or doesn't.

In the scenario where she makes the train, Helen walks in on her boyfriend Gerry (John Lynch) having sex with his secret lover Lydia (Jeanne Tripplehorn). Distraught, she relocates to the apartment of her best friend Anna (Zara Turner) and makes a new start: with a fresh hairdo she launches her own PR firm. She also meets and starts to fall in love with James (John Hannah), who works hard to win her heart but has personal issues of his own.

In the alternative where Helen misses the train, she survives a near-mugging and only finds inconclusive evidence of Gerry's infidelity. She picks up two part-time jobs to make ends meet as Gerry pretends to work on his novel while juggling both Helen and Lydia in his life. But Lydia demands a commitment and starts to sabotage Gerry's secrecy to force the issue.

Presenting two completely different outcomes triggered by a split-second fateful encounter with sliding train doors is a potentially worthwhile gimmick to enliven an otherwise standard rom-com. Writer/director Peter Howitt visually helps to clarify which parallel universe each scene is in, first with a small band-aid (the result of that attempted mugging) then a new hairdo. But otherwise and beyond the obvious you'll-never-know-how-things-could-have-turned-out lessons, Sliding Doors trips over the limitations of its own construction and yields two half-baked stories.

Overall, too much of Helen's life in both universes is dedicated to obsessing about men. The miss-the-train narrative is particularly weak and underdeveloped. Helen exhausts herself with two part-time jobs, and the attention switches to horrid boyfriend Gerry, by far the worst character in the movie, and his increasingly desperate attempts to keep his two lovers apart. Helen becomes a static observer and sorry victim in her own movie.

The make-the-train story is marginally better, allowing Helen to deal with her grief and attempt a fresh start, but new and too-good-to-be-true love interest James keeps a secret for the sole and contrived purpose of introducing predictable late drama.

The London locations are quaint without drifting into touristy terrain, and the music soundtrack is discerning. The performances are seviceable but never memorable, Paltrow content with doe-eyed mannerisms. John Lynch and Josh Hannah are undistinctive, and Jeanne Tripplehorn is frequently over-agitated. Zara Turner as Helen's best friend Anna adds welcome feistiness.

Despite the possibilities, both sides of Sliding Doors lack polish.



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Movie Review: The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

A comedy about family and dashed dreams, The Royal Tenenbaums introduces plenty of peculiar characters but drowns them in uninspiring incompetence.

Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) separates from his wife Etheline (Anjelica Huston), shocking their three young kids Chas, Richie and the adopted Margot. Each of the children possesses genius talent: Chas in business, Richie in tennis and Margot in writing. Meanwhile, Richie's best friend Eli spends all his hours with the Tenenbaums.

Twenty two years later a financially broke but still upbeat Royal learns that Etheline may be falling in love with her accountant Henry (Danny Glover), and reappears at the family home to try and win back her love and make amends with the children.

The now-grown kids are not doing so well. Richie (Luke Wilson) is a has-been tennis prodigy after suffering an on-court meltdown during a competitive match; Chas (Ben Stiller) has become paranoid after losing his wife in a fire, and the still morose Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) is stuck in a miserable marriage with Raleigh St. Clair (Bill Murray), and having an affair with Eli (Owen Wilson).

Directed by Wes Anderson and exquisitely photographed by Robert Yeoman, The Royal Tenenbaums features character quantity and compositional splendour but not narrative quality. While the film exhibits all the typical Anderson quirkiness, the various plot threads never weave together, and the story idles rather than thrives.

The opening is promising, and the emerging potential of genius kids offers no shortage of possibilities. But after the time jump the children emerge as adults who never blossomed, and The Royal Tenenbaums has nowhere to go. Despite a game cast there is limited enjoyment to be found in watching multiple wasted lives weighed down by the luggage of broken hearts, decades-long grudges, neglect and unmet expectations, but this is where the film resides, and no amount of attempted dry humour can save it.

The script lacks a cutting edge, the dialogue is listless, and the characters range from boring to irritating, with none likeable. Attempts to inject some drama and humour include two men (other than her husband) in love with Margot, a suicide attempt, and a brief Benny Hill-style madcap chase. None succeed in enlivening proceedings.

The cast members pose rather than act, in typical Anderson fashion precise symmetrical scene composition more important than individual showiness. The Royal Tenenbaums is always intriguing to look at, but more as a series of paintings than an engaging movie.

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Movie Review: Iron Man (2008)

A superhero origins story, Iron Man modernizes the comic book hero with a savvy narrative inspired by raging cynicism and a world addicted to weapons.

Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is a genius inventor and weapons builder, and the head of Stark Industries, the world's leading armament manufacturing company. On a trip to war-torn Afghanistan with his main US military liaison James Rhodes (Terrence Howard) Tony is caught up in a firefight, wounded and captured by militants. He is kept alive by fellow prisoner and doctor Yinsen (Shaun Toub). Militia leader Raza (Faran Tahir) demands that Tony build him a sophisticated rocket system, but instead Tony and Yinsen secretly develop a small arc reactor to power a protective weaponized suit of mighty armor.

Tony uses his new invention to escape his captors and return to the United States, and having witnessed the ravages of war he is determined to stop manufacturing tools of death. His mentor and business partner Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges) is horrified that Tony could jeopardize the company's profits. Trusting only his personal assistant Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), Tony retreats to his workshop to design and build  a second version of the power suit, determined to develop the capability to put a stop to war.

Directed by Jon Favreau, Iron Man is a sharp action film benefitting greatly from a coiled Robert Downey Jr. performance enjoying the transformative journey of Tony Stark. The origin of Stark as a callous merchant of death gives the character plenty of distance to travel on his way to superhero status, and Downey makes the ride well worth joining.

Refreshingly the film derives most of its joy from personality rather than mayhem, and a large part of Iron Man is about people rather than machinery. Stark's uninhibited and outspoken sarcasm is a deep-seated character trait. This is a man confident in his own abilities and not afraid to speak his mind whether peddling the latest tool of destruction or announcing his intentions to change the course of his corporation. And this being a more-intelligent-than-most origins story, Favreau has the luxury to measure and space out the action scenes, avoiding the sensory overload that commonly plagues the superhero genre.

When it does come to combat and explosions there is no shortage of villains to dispense with, including heartless Afghan militants and more dangerous foes back home. And with the powered suit still in the development stage, Favreau injects plenty of dry humour as things don't quite work as intended and Stark manoeuvres his new invention into the trouble of unintended consequences.

The supporting cast is talent-rich but relatively static. Jeff Bridges, Gwyneth Paltrow and Terrence Howard are game but not provided with enough material to stretch beyond the obvious limitations of their roles.

Fast paced, fun and barbed, Iron Man is an enjoyable blast.

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Movie Review: Malice (1993)

A spicy twisty thriller, Malice offers deceit, greed, hubris, murder and revenge in a potent mix.

In New England, Andy and Tracy Safian (Bill Pullman and Nicole Kidman) are newlyweds, struggling financially as they renovate their old Victorian home. Andy is Associate Dean at a local college while Tracy volunteers at a hospital daycare. Dr. Jed Hill (Alec Baldwin) is a hotshot surgeon, a renowned womanizer, and a new addition to the hospital staff. Jed and Andy were classmates in grade school, and after they reconnect, Jed rents the upstairs floor from the Safians, despite Tracy's reservations.

Meanwhile, a serial rapist and murderer is terrorizing the campus community, and the victims include Paula (Gwyneth Paltrow), one of Andy's troubled students. Detective Dana Harris (Bebe Neuwirth) does not seem to be making much progress in identifying the perpetrator. Andy and Tracy are desperate to have children, but Jed's disruptive behaviour as a tenant does not help their romantic life, and Tracy starts to suffer from regular bouts of severe stomach cramps. With Harris beginning to realize that several of the rape victims were connected to Andy, a medical crisis severely disrupts the the lives of the newlyweds.

Not much else can be given away about the Malice plot. Co-written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by Harold Becker, Malice sets out to deceive and succeeds admirably. Suffice to say that in its final act, the film reveals its hand, and it's a clever, edgy twist, not entirely unpredictable but quite astute nonetheless. The final climax features another surprise, which is perhaps easier to foresee, given the established character motivations. And Malice is a character-driven thriller, where glances, demeanour, individual dynamics and the differences between genuine and socially convenient interactions are carefully constructed and prove to be relevant.

The first hour of the film consists of patient build-up. Becker introduces Andy, Tracy, Jed and Dana, creates individual contexts and conflicts for each, and sets them all up against the backdrop of a serial rapist preying on young college women. The film creates plenty of potential avenues for progress, and leaves all options open as to which one will be pursued. It's a relatively original stance, a story that doesn't telegraph it's real intentions until well into the second half, while maintaining plenty of interest through the lives of interesting and flawed characters.

Many points of friction provide rich territory for the imagination. Tracy used to be Andy's student, and their age difference may be catching up with them. There is a creepy kid next door who always seems to be staring into their bedroom. Tracy and Andy are under financial pressure and dealing with a money pit of a house. Andy and Jed are diametrically opposite personalities, the meek college associate dean and the philandering surgeon, former classmates but never friends. Dana begins to consider Andy as a potential suspect. Jed as a tenant proves to be quite the noisy nuisance. And Tracy's stomach ailment seems to only get worse. Once Malice reveals its central premise, a few of these potential take-off points are revealed to be successful diversionary tactics.

The three lead actors deliver dedicated performances, Baldwin, Kidman and Pullman not setting any new standards but respecting the tone and intent of the script. Veterans Anne Bancroft and George C. Scott get one scene each, Bancroft as a relative of a central character and Scott as a respected doctor. Bancroft in particular is unforgettable, creating in less than ten minutes of screen time an indelible picture of a crusty old woman thriving in her understanding of the conniving mind, while happily wallowing in her alcoholic addiction.

On close examination there are plot holes for sure, and as the film hurtles towards a resolution, the proclivity for violence, skulkiness and episodes of emotions trumping rationality increase. But Malice remains first and foremost an intelligent, enjoyable and sharply crafted psychological thriller.

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Movie Review: The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)

A powerful psychological drama about love and obsession among the idle rich, The Talented Mr. Ripley is a gorgeous journey through the darkest corners of the human psyche.

Tom Ripley (Matt Damon) is a conniving and talented young man living a lonely life in 1950s New York. A confidence artist and an expert at impersonations and forging signatures, Tom is mistaken for a Princeton graduate by boat tycoon Herbert Greenleaf (James Rebhorn). Herbert takes an immediate liking to Tom, and hires him to travel to Italy to convince Herbert's son Dickie (Jude Law) to give up an aimless life of decadent pleasure and return to the US. Upon arrival in Italy, Tom meets and befriends fellow traveler Meredith Logue (Cate Blanchett), and starts to explore the possibilities of his impersonation talents by introducing himself to her as Dickie Greenleaf.

Tom then tracks down Dickie, finding him living at a waterfront villa with girlfriend Marge (Gwyneth Paltrow), and discovers that Dickie is not only a philanderer, but that he also has an expansive and magnetic personality. Tom becomes Dickie's constant companion to the mild annoyance of Marge, and meets Dickie's friend Freddie Miles (Philip Seymour Hoffman), who senses Tom's lack of genuine sophistication.

Tom all but abandons the job that Herbert assigned to him, and instead grows increasingly fond of the carefree lifestyle while becoming quite obsessed with Dickie, believing that they should be lovers. His misplaced infatuation results in violence and bloodshed, and a game of hide and seek across Italy that will put all of Tom Ripley's talents to the test.

An adaptation of the 1955 Patricia Highsmith novel of the same name, The Talented Mr. Ripley is a feast for the eyes and the mind. Working with a terrific cast, director Anthony Minghella captures a decadent, sun-bathed 1950s Italy where rich foreigners gather to enjoy a life of doing nothing. The exteriors are alive with a sense of constant frolicking, while the interiors inhabited by the likes of Dickie, Marge and Freddie are flush with carefree spending.  Minghella finds a particular highlight in an evening at a jazz club, Tom utterly drowning in the pool of Dickie’s charisma as a club teaming with revelers parties into the night.

The opening hour is a study of the insidious charm of evil obsession. Smart as Tom Ripley is, he finds Dickie’s personality and life irresistible, and ultimately, Tom cannot bear the thought of not being a special member of Dickie’s inner circle. The journey from strangers to potential lovers occurs in Tom’s mind, while for Dickie, Tom is just another interesting character to have fun with when convenient and discard when bored.

Tom’s violent tendencies are sparked by the heat of his growing attraction to Dickie, and once he crosses the threshold from subservient and insidious to dangerously proactive, Tom creates the canvass to put his skills to the ultimate test. His ability to mislead, confuse and obfuscate friends and strangers alike carrying him far towards his dream of joining the rich and idle set.

The second half of the film becomes more frantic but ironically loses momentum. Once Tom embarks on a path of fooling all the people all of the time, the movie takes on a breathless chase and deceit posture, and as a result loses the rich focus on character depth. While it is fun to watch Tom weave a complex web of interdependent subterfuge to try and outsmart the Italian authorities and Dickie’s acquaintances, the film shifts from uniquely intellectual to simply clever.

Matt Damon is mesmerizing as Tom Ripley, his eyes always just hinting at a lot more going on in his head than he really wants to lets on. The rest of the cast is stellar, Gwyneth Paltrow traveling furthest from content girlfriend to accusing victim, while Philip Seymour Hoffman lands a delicious and all-too-brief turn as Freddie Miles, the one man to see through Ripley and call him on it with layers of unspoken sarcasm.

Sucked into a life of luxury and seduction, The Talented Mr. Ripley is devious and deadly.

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Movie Review: A Perfect Murder (1998)

A rich businessman plots to kill his cheating wife in A Perfect Murder, a contemporary re-imagining of Hitchcock's 1954 Dial M For Murder.

In New York City, married and independently wealthy socialite Emily Taylor (Gwyneth Paltrow) is having a hot affair with artist David Shaw (Viggo Mortensen). Emily's husband Steven (Michael Douglas), a businessman facing huge losses due to bad bets in the currency markets, knows about the affair and exposes David as a con man with a record of fleecing rich women. Steven confronts David and offers him $500,000 to kill Emily, with the murder to be staged as a botched home invasion.

David agrees, and Steven leaves Emily home alone for one evening, and arranges for David to enter via the servants' door. However, the struggle between Emily and the intruder does not go as planned, leaving Steven with new and unexpected problems: a dead body in his kitchen, detective Mohamed Karaman (David Suchet) on his tail, and blackmail on his growing list of problems to contend with.

A Perfect Murder maintains tension at an enjoyably elevated level, and the Patrick Smith Kelly script generates a steady current of mistrust and betrayal to build up the thriller elements. The pacing is brisk, and the film packs plenty of incident into its relatively compact 108 minutes of running time.

However, A Perfect Murder modernizes Dial M For Murder without coming close to matching it. The exquisite wit and joviality of Hitchcock's original is lost, replaced by pervasive glumness. Steven and Emily are an unhappy, stressed couple, David is a con man pretending to be a hot adulterer, and none of them emerge as sympathetic characters worth caring about. Even detective Karaman is morose, although giving him an Arab ethnicity is a welcome touch.

The plan for the murder is superficial rather than thoughtful, and the cascading subsequent events move away from a cerebral battle to crass blackmail, scratchy tape recordings and hissing threats. The film ends with an explosion of messy violence far removed from the original intent of a finely crafted crime.

Director Andrew Davis does give the movie an impressive shine, and A Perfect Murder is visually appealing. The settings are glitzy, the Taylors living in a luxurious apartment and circulating among New York's elite. Emily works at the United Nations, Steven works in a high-tech office filled with monitors displaying impressive data, and they attend the poshest parties. Paltrow's short and very blonde hairdo lights up any room she enters, in a nod to Hitchcock's love of blonde bombshells.

The performances are adequate, the trio of Douglas, Paltrow and Mortensen going about their business with commendable efficiency, although there is little character depth for them to explore. Douglas is all angry businessman putting on a good face, Paltrow is the abandoned wife oozing demure sexuality, and Mortensen is the fake passionate artist having perfected his schtick to attract bored rich women.

A Perfect Murder is far from the perfect film, but rather a passable foray into the murderous minds of the rich and desperate.

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The Movies Of Gwyneth Paltrow

All movies starring Gwyneth Paltrow and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Malice (1993)

Seven (1995)

Moonlight And Valentino (1995)

Sliding Doors (1998)

Hush (1998)

A Perfect Murder (1998)

Shakespeare In Love (1998)

The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)

Bounce (2000)

The Anniversary Party (2001)

The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

Proof (2005)

Iron Man (2008)

Two Lovers (2008)

Country Strong (2010)

Contagion (2011)

She Said (2022, voice only, as herself)

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Movie Review: Shakespeare In Love (1998)

A flighty fantasy about Shakespeare falling in love and getting a boost of inspiration to write Romeo And Juliet, Shakespeare In Love is a witty Elizabethan romantic comedy somewhat overburdened with riff raff.

In sixteenth century London, celebrated playwright William Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes) is suffering from writer's block while trying to finish a new comedy to be called Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter. The wealthy Viola de Lesseps (Gwyneth Paltrow) admires Shakespeare's work and disguises herself as "Thomas Kent" to audition and win a role in the play. Shakespeare eventually discovers that Kent is Viola, and they start a passionate private affair, despite Viola being readied to marry the financially broke but nevertheless insufferable Lord Wessex (Colin Firth).

His impossible love for Viola unleashes all of Shakespeare's emotions, and he writes the play at an amazing pace, transforming it from a comedy to the aching doomed romance of Romeo And Juliet. In public Viola maintains the persona of Thomas Kent as the play gets ready for the grand opening. But the lovers' secret is about to be revealed, and it will take the intervention of Queen Elizabeth (Judi Dench) to sort out the tangled web of romance, deception, and the outrage of a woman playing a woman's role on the London stage.

Shakespeare In Love is saddled with plenty of peripheral characters contributing a cacophony of noise and colour. While they do add depth, they also add quite a volume of clutter, over-complicating a simple love story and creating no shortage of distractions.

Philip Henslowe (Geoffrey Rush) is the struggling owner of The Rose theatre, Richard Burbage (Martin Clunes) is his rival and owner of The Curtain theatre, Ned Alleyn (Ben Affleck) is a smug actor, Hugh Fennyman (Tom Wilkinson) is a financier turned wannabe actor, and Christopher 'Kit' Marlowe (Rupert Everett) is the other celebrity London playwright. They all get prominent but ultimately inconsequential roles, and are joined by the Queen's officials, an army of theatre actors, and a healthy selection of upper society at the estate of Viola's parents, all milling in and out of every other scene, dressed in expansive costumes and sucking focus and energy away from the central story and bloating the film to over two hours.

Director John Madden does much better when he zooms in on Shakespeare and Viola, and teases out a tender love story between the romantic playwright and the poetry-loving young woman from a well-to-do family. Joseph Fiennes and Gwyneth Paltrow find an immediate chemistry, and the temperature only rises as they start a steamy affair despite Viola's impending marriage to Lord Wessex. The script, by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard, has fun with plenty of side references to many of Shakespeare's plays, but the core focus is on the power of deep love to unlock passionate inspiration, and this is where the film excels. Viola becomes Shakespeare's muse, in a celebration of romance unleashing genius.

Fiennes is filled with the coiled energy of an artist on the cusp of brilliance, waiting for the spark to light his fire. Paltrow won the Best Actress Academy Award for combining rebellion against societal norms with a spirited intensity to pursue the love of a poet. Colin Firth and Ben Affleck deliver relatively cold supporting performances, Firth unable to break out of the confines of a small man demanding an obedient wife, while Affleck just stands around unconvincingly in an attempt to increase interest among American audiences.

Madden successfully creates a bustling London of the 1500s, and does not shy away from external scenes. The streets are populated with throngs of residents going about their business, London an animated mess of normal people occupied by life.  Only Queen Elizabeth's plundering presence disrupts the working class surroundings, Judi Dench winning the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for a couple of scenes worth of ham.

Shakespeare In Love won the Best Film Academy Award for 1998, surprisingly selected ahead of Saving Private Ryan. It remains one of the Academy's most embarrassing moments, a ridiculous victory for crass Award campaigning at the expense of true cinematic greatness. But while Shakespeare In Love may not have been the best film of its year, it is a classy and enjoyably witty romantic fable.

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