A TRIO OF REVIEWS
DREAMGIRLS, THE LAST KING OF
SCOTLAND, LITTLE CHILDREN
By Joel Johnson
As you
can see as you read through the titles, I’ve been working hard to catch up
on the end-of-the-year Oscar wannabes. I wrote my reviews prior to the
announcement of the Oscar nominations, but thought I would comment on them
since they were released before I submitted my reviews. These three films
all have been rewarded with Oscar nominations. Dreamgirls has
received eight—Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress, Art Direction, Costume
Design, Sound Mixing, and for three of the five nominated Original Songs.
This is the most nominations for any one film for this year, even though the
film was not nominated as Best Picture or in the other major categories of
Actor, Actress, Direction, or Screenplay. I suspect that this may reflect a
general Academy perception—mirroring my own—that Dreamgirls has
elements of a great film, but doesn’t quite have a central performance or
the overarching creative genius to be melded into one. The Last King of
Scotland received one nomination (Forest Whitaker as Best Actor) and
would have to be the early favorite to take home the statuette. Little
Children received three (Best Actress, Supporting Actor, and Adapted
Screenplay). Although Little Children is not a Best Picture nominee,
it is being recognized for both a strong central performance and the
creativity that makes it a whole work of art. Congratulations to all the
nominees and best wishes for hearing your name announced on Oscar night.
DREAMGIRLS
Directed by Bill Condon; written for the screen by Bill Condon, based on the
Broadway production, book by Tom Eyen, directed and choreographed by Michael
Bennett; director of photography, Tobias Schliessler; edited by Virginia
Katz; music by Henry Krieger, lyrics by Mr. Eyen; choreography by Fatima
Robinson
With: Jamie Foxx, Beyoncé Knowles, Eddie Murphy, Danny Glover, Jennifer
Hudson, Anika Noni Rose, Keith Robinson, Sharon Leal, and Hinton Battle.
Rated PG-13. Running time: 131 minutes
A
revelatory performance from Golden Globe Supporting Actress winner Jennifer
Hudson and rousing concert performance pieces from the girl group Dreamettes/Dreamers
(Hudson, Beyoncé Knowles, Anika Noni Rose, and then Sharon Leal after Hudson
is dismissed from the group) are the highlights in this effort to bring a
stage musical about a Supremes-like girl group to the big screen. Golden
Globe Best Supporting Actor winner Eddie Murphy is also solid as a wild and
vulnerable James Brown-like performer. James Foxx has the pivotal role of
Curtis, the up-and-coming wheeler-dealer who moves from car salesman to
music mogul. Curtis is the engine who drives this story, but the film fails
to fully develop the film’s most interesting character. Beyoncé Knowles has
the unenviable role of embodying the less talented and less interesting
Deena Jones (think Supreme Diana Ross) whose attractiveness and malleability
is seen by Curtis to be easier to sell to mainstream America than the
heavy-set, volcanic soul singer Effie White (Hudson). Although she spends
much of the film underplaying her own star-power, Beyoncé is allowed to
unleash her talent on “Listen,” which is her personal rebuke to her
control-freak husband Curtis. The film follows two alternating stories after
Hudson’s Effie leaves the group. First it follows the rise to fame of the
girl group under the direction of Curtis’s heavy hand and the inevitable
chafing against that heavy hand. This is counterpointed by Effie’s struggle
as a troubled single mother trying to reinvigorate her music career. The
film is mostly very entertaining with terrific Motown music from perhaps the
most dynamic period for rock ’n’ roll music. Aside from its failure to focus
on its most interesting character, the film has prosaic sequences when its
songs simply try to move the story along. These failed most glaringly when
the actors try to sing their dialogue. It is, however, at its best when it
simply gives Jennifer Hudson a song to put across to an audience.
THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND
Directed by Kevin Macdonald; written by Peter
Morgan and Jeremy Brock, based on the novel by Giles Foden; director of
photography, Anthony Dod Mantle; edited by Justine Wright; music by Alex
Heffes
With: Forest Whitaker, James McAvoy, Kerry
Washington, Simon McBurney, Gillian Anderson, and Adam Kotz. Rated R.
Running time: 121 minutes
1/2
The
Last King of Scotland is based on Giles Foden’s novel, and screenwriters
Peter Morgan and Jeremy Brock and director Kevin Macdonald (Touching the
Void) have produced a film that is colorful, passionate, and chilling.
Despite the title, this film is definitely not about Scotland. It is a film
set in Uganda in the 1970s, and it is most definitely about Uganda’s
notorious dictator Idi Amin. Forest Whitaker, as Amin, delivers a powerhouse
performance that has already earned him several Best Actor awards, including
a Golden Globe. Technically, Whitaker’s Idi Amin is actually a supporting
character because the main character is a young Scottish doctor named
Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy).
Rejecting the invitation to join his father’s staid medical practice,
Garrigan decides to go wherever fate, his finger, and a spinning globe
decide. We next see the adventurous Dr. Garrigan on a bus chatting up
attractive young African women. He eventually arrives at a medical mission
in Uganda run by Dr. Merrit (Adam Kotz) and his beautiful wife Sarah
(Gillian Anderson). Nicholas is a product of the early 1970s ethos of “sex,
drugs, and rock ’n’ roll.” (The soundtrack includes several vintage
needle-drops.) Nicholas is unintentionally looking for trouble and finds it
when Idi Amin, the leader of the recent coup, comes to a nearby village. As
Amin rallies his countrymen, Nicholas is receptive to the energy and passion
in his speech. This might have been the end of their association except that
Amin is in a car accident, and Dr. Garrigan is summoned to provide medical
care. Amin is impressed with Nicholas’s decisiveness, his medical skill,
and, shedding light on the film’s title, his Scottish heritage. Soon a car
is sent to summon the young doctor to the capital Kampala to be Amin’s
personal physician. Amin is garrulous and charming toward Nicholas, but
there’s also a dark side to his personality. The audience, with the benefit
of history, knows that Amin’s paranoia will result in a savage bloodbath
that will cost hundreds of thousands of lives. The film gradually and
shockingly reveals this horror.
The
film is a diptych, portraying both an insidiously evil leader and someone
who succumbs to that leader’s charms—sharing his guilt. McAvoy’s Nicholas
Garrigan is a flawed, yet basically decent character. His major sins are
misplacing his trust and making unwise, even reckless decisions. He finds
himself both culpable in Amin’s purges of anyone suspected of disloyalty and
accused of disloyalty. Whitaker’s performance dominates the film with his
uncanny physical resemblance to the real Idi Amin as well as his ability to
make Amin’s megalomania and humanity absolutely believable. McAvoy’s
performance as a weaker and physically smaller fictional character has
difficulty counterbalancing Whitaker, but the result is an accurate
portrayal of our susceptibility to all the forms of suasion used by
self-appointed saviors. This is a very compelling film that succeeds in
dramatizing a nation’s anguish and agony despite a modest budget.
LITTLE CHILDREN
Directed by Todd Field; written by Todd Field
and Tom Perrotta, based on the novel by Tom Perrotta; director of
photography, Antonio Calvache; edited by Leo Trombetta; music by Thomas
Newman
With: Kate Winslet, Patrick Wilson, Jennifer
Connelly, Gregg Edelman, Noah Emmerich, Jackie Earle Haley, Phyllis
Somerville, Ty Simpkins, and Sadie Goldstein. Rated R. Running time: 137
minutes
Actor-turned-director Todd Field (In the Bedroom) joins forces with
novelist-turned-screenwriter Tom Perrotta (Election) to produce a
follow-up to his Oscar-nominated first film. There is clearly no evidence of
sophomore jinx even if Little Children may fail to duplicate In
the Bedroom’s five Oscar nominations. Field’s strength as a
director comes from his respect for the source material and a dramatist’s
capacity to provide the elements and the opportunities for superb
performances from his actors. Field focuses on his actors, and they have
rewarded him with great performances, making the most of even brief screen
time to appear as real human beings as opposed to flat portrayals. This is
direction that does not draw attention to itself. To be fair, Field has
assembled an outstanding cast of experienced actors led by four-time
Oscar-nominee Kate Winslet (Sense and Sensibility, Titanic,
Iris, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), Oscar-winner
Jennifer Connelly (A Beautiful Mind), and Emmy and Golden
Globe-nominated Patrick Wilson (Angels in America).
The
title of the film is Little Children, and two young child actors
(Sadie Goldstein and Ty Simpkins) are prominently featured, but the focus of
the film is not on them. It is on the child still inside all of us, despite
how big we grow and how old we become. This is not, however, a treatise on
childlike wonder but more a revelation of our childish selfishness and
neediness. In essence, the things that shape us that we never seem to
outgrow.
Set in
a small community in Massachusetts, the film initially starts like a
documentary, effectively using the voice of Will Lyman (narrator of PBS’s
Frontline and Nova) to set the stage. Sarah Pierce (Winslet) is
making the difficult adjustment from being a graduate student and a
full-time academic to just being a housewife and Lucy’s mother, a role for
which she feels inadequate. Winslet delivers a terrific performance that
makes Sarah sympathetic despite her flaws. She finds a kindred spirit for
her fish-out-of-water experience in former high school athlete and would-be
lawyer Brad Adamson (Patrick Wilson), who is taking care of his young son
while his wife Kathy (Connelly) works as a documentary filmmaker. Their
relationship is the centerpiece of the film, but via Brad’s relationship
with retired cop Larry (Noah Emmerich), we are led to paroled child molester
Ronnie McGorvey (Jackie Earle Haley). This type of character is infrequently
portrayed in film and, even more rarely, is portrayed with much sympathy.
Here he is portrayed as a fully rounded human being persecuted by his
community in the name of protecting little children so that he has little
opportunity to live any semblance of a normal life. Ronnie is, as he tells
his mother (Phyllis Somerville), “not a nice person,” but his portrayal is
provoking as to how we, as a society, protect vulnerable children and
rehabilitate this class of offenders back into society. Haley has
been nominated for and won several awards as a Supporting Actor for his
role. Field clearly has a gift for dealing with the shadings in our
humanity. He knows how to attract fine actors, give them strong material,
and let them use their talents to the fullest. This film meanders a bit, but
that just helps it feel more like real life. This is an outstanding film
that stays with the filmgoer long after the credits roll.
