Tag Archives: capsule movie review

Mud ~ A Capsule Movie Review

Posted on May 12, 2013 by allen0997

Mud ~ A Capsule Movie Review By Allen Kopp

Mud is a contemporary story set almost entirely on an unnamed Arkansas river. Fourteen-year-old Ellis lives with his parents on a sort of houseboat and they make their living from the river. His parents are decent people but they seem unhappy. His mother wants to separate from his father and move into town. Their way of life on the river is coming to an end.

One day when Ellis and his friend Neckbone take their boat to an apparently uninhabited island on the river, they discover a boat, intact, about twenty feet off the ground lodged in a tree. It came to be there from a recent flood. When they climb up into the boat, they find signs that someone has been living in it. Soon after, they meet a man who is known only as Mud (Matthew McConaughey). He is dirty and hungry but friendly. Ellis is drawn to him and wants to help him but Neckbone is more skeptical. Mud makes a deal with Ellis and Neckbone whereby they will help him get the boat out of the tree in exchange for his .45 caliber pistol. He plans to use the boat to escape up the river, but first he is waiting for someone to come to him, a girl named Juniper (Reese Witherspoon), with whom he has been in love since he was a child.

Mud has to hide out on the island because he has killed a man who had wronged Juniper. The man’s brother and father are after Mud, intent on killing him. They are terrorizing Juniper because they believe she knows where Mud is and can lead them to him. If Mud can get the boat out of the tree and get it in running order, he and Juniper can run away together, he believes.

When Ellis and Neckbone see Juniper, they see why Mud loves her. Ellis begins taking letters to Juniper from Mud and generally helping Mud in any way he can in his plan to escape. They devise a plan whereby they will take Juniper to Mud, but she doesn’t show up at the appointed time. This is when Ellis begins to see things as they really are. Juniper is just a floozy who will take up with any man. She says she loves Mud but Ellis begins to doubt it. The perfect love that he thought held Mud and Juniper together doesn’t exist at all. He begins to see that Mud has only used him and Neckbone. This disappointment parallels the disintegration of his own family and their way of life on the river. Even his own romance with a slightly older girl named May Pearl ends in disappointment.

Mud is a story about the South that might have been written by William Faulkner or Erskine Caldwell. It’s a coming-of-age story but also a story about friendship, family, and lost love. There are no special effects, no computer-generated razzle-dazzle. Just believable characters and solid storytelling.

Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged Allen Kopp, capsule movie review, Mud. Bookmark the permalink.

The Great Gatsby ~ A Capsule Movie Review

Posted on May 11, 2013 by allen0997

The Great Gatsby ~ A Capsule Movie Review by Allen Kopp

The Great Gatsby stars Leonardo DiCaprio as the fabulously wealthy, mysterious Jay Gatsby and Carey Mulligan as Daisy Buchanan, the woman who Gatsby has lost and attempts to regain, with tragic results. It is told by Gatsby’s one true friend and confidante, Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire), who innocently falls under Gatsby’s spell. The Great Gatsby is directed by Baz Luhrmann in a grand visual style (remember Moulin Rouge a few years ago?) that never gets in the way of the story. There have been other film versions of the venerable American novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, but this one is by far the best.

The story is set in the 1920s. No other decade could have spawned such a story. Not only did the 1920s roar, but they also boomed. There were fabulous amounts of money to be made. It was a time of great optimism. The bubble seemingly would never burst. Jay Gatsby is the perfect figure for the times. He lives in an enormous seaside “palace” on Long Island. He drives a custom-made yellow convertible. He gives lavish parties that he doesn’t attend but observes from a distance. He conducts shadowy business deals over the phone. Because nobody knows much about him, he is the object of much speculation.

Five years earlier, at the end of World War I (before Gatsby made his fortune), he had met and fallen in love with one Daisy Fay of Louisville, Kentucky. Daisy loved him in return but was not going to marry a man without money. She ended up marrying a brutish lout of a man named Tom Buchanan, heir to one of the largest fortunes in the country, and they took up residence on Long Island.

During the five years that Gatsby and Daisy are apart, he never forgets her and never stops believing that the two of them can be together, even though she is married to another man. Now immensely wealthy, he buys the estate just across the bay from Tom and Daisy and spends a lot of time standing on the pier looking across the bay, reaching for the green light that represents for him what is unattainable. He gives lavish parties, to which nobody is invited but goes to anyway, because he’s hoping that Daisy will just “appear” at one of them. Nick Carraway, callow and humble bond salesman, rents the caretaker’s cottage near Gatsby’s home and befriends Gatsby. Learning that Nick is a cousin of Daisy Buchanan, Gatsby gets Nick to arrange a reunion. When Gatsby and Daisy meet again, the old spark of five years earlier is reignited. Will she divorce Tom and marry Gatsby? In the end, it seems she hardly knows what she wants.

Fans of Fitzgerald’s novel, of which I am one, will not be disappointed with this movie adaptation. It is faithful to the novel but, for me, the best thing about it is its lavish visual style. It is, first and foremost, a visual experience (in 3D, no less), especially for those who know the story so well and know what is coming. My favorite scene is Gatsby’s party with everybody happy and dancing to Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, with fireworks exploding in the sky. I want to see it again.

The Great Gatsby does not have a happy ending but it couldn’t have been any other way. The grand future that Gatsby envisioned with him and Daisy happily in love is not meant to be. The bubble always bursts, but it sure was fun while it lasted.

Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged Allen Kopp, capsule movie review, The Great Gatsby. Bookmark the permalink.

The Place Beyond the Pines ~ A Capsule Movie Review

Posted on April 27, 2013 by allen0997

The Place Beyond the Pines ~ A Capsule Movie Review by Allen Kopp

The Place Beyond the Pines is an ambitious, complex story that is in fact three interwoven stories about how people’s lives can interconnect in a way that seems like fate. It begins in the 1990s with blond-haired, tattooed bad boy Luke Glanton (played by Ryan Gosling), who is employed as a stunt motorcycle rider in a traveling carnival. We don’t know much about his past except that is probably unsavory. When he reconnects with an old girlfriend named Romina (Eva Mendes), he discovers that she has had a baby by him, a son named Jason. He wants desperately to win Romina back and to play a part in Jason’s life, but Romina has moved on. She has another man in her life and she knows that Luke is not the sort of person that anybody can depend on.

Desperate for money to prove to Romina that he can provide for her and their son, Luke turns to robbing banks with a male companion. His excellent motorcycle riding skills allow him to get away easily. He pulls off a few robberies without a hitch but, as expected, his good luck runs out. He meets his end at the hands of a young police officer named Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper), who, it turns out, has an infant son about the same age as the child that Luke has fathered with Romina. Avery is injured but victorious in his violent encounter with Luke Glanton and is hailed as a hero.

We learn that Avery Cross is more than a police officer; he’s also a lawyer and the son of a distinguished judge. As a police officer, he’s exposed to a level of corruption on the police force that he can’t stomach. He uses his position as an injured hero and as the possessor of knowledge about his fellow officers to advance himself to the position of assistant district attorney. He knows how to play the game.

Fifteen years later, Avery Cross is emerging as a player in state politics. He is running for the office of attorney general and is no longer married to the mother of his son. The son, AJ, is now a pouty, mumbling teenager in high school. He meets another seemingly troubled boy at school to whom he is drawn for some reason. We learn that this boy is Jason, the son of Luke Glanton and Romina.

Jason, as a seventeen-year-old, is much like Luke Glanton, the father he never knew. He steals drugs from a pharmacy and has an explosive temper. He is going to come to a bad end. He gradually learns who AJ is and, more importantly, who AJ’s father is and the role he played in Luke Glanton’s death fifteen years earlier. He’s wired like a time bomb.

For the serious moviegoer, The Place Beyond the Pines is thoughtful, intelligent and well-written, with enough twists and turns to keep the viewer engaged. It’s no surprise to me that it’s not playing at the multiplex in my neighborhood, where you can see all the latest G.I. Joe movies, chainsaw movies, and special effects-laden action-adventure movies. It’s the kind of movie that’s worth seeking out, wherever it might be playing, even if it’s at an “art” house in a part of the city where you’d really rather not go. (The whole time you’re watching the movie, you’re probably thinking at the back of your mind: Is my car really safe parked there?)

Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged Allen Kopp, capsule movie review, The Place Beyond the Pines. Bookmark the permalink.

Midnight Cowboy ~ A Capsule Movie Review

Posted on March 24, 2013 by allen0997

Midnight Cowboy ~ A Capsule Movie Review by Allen Kopp

Midnight Cowboy was made 44 years ago, in 1969. That was the year man first set foot on the moon. You’d think we would have at least conquered Mars by 2013, but the space program went awry after that. I guess after the moon there wasn’t much interest in taking that next step and, anyway, politicians in Washington were busy (and still are, but on a much larger scale) squandering obscene amounts of our money for their “constituents” back home so they will be sure and get re-elected next time. (The more “entrenched” a politician becomes, the more “powerful” and corrupt, but that’s a different story.) If all the money that has been wasted in Washington in the last 44 years had been used for space exploration, we probably could have conquered all the planets in this solar system and might have encountered some kind of intelligent life elsewhere, since there isn’t much of that here.

So, think of Midnight Cowboy being made in 1969 in this atmosphere of bold adventuring. We had conquered the moon for the good of mankind. There was no telling what would come in the years that followed. We would see people colonizing Mars in the way Europeans colonized the New World in the 16^th and 17^th centuries.

Midnight Cowboy was, in itself, a bold adventure in moviemaking. When you come to think of it, who wants to see a movie about a dimwitted, though physically gifted, Texas dishwasher named Joe Buck who goes to New York City to become a male prostitute and befriends a nasal-voiced bum with a runny nose and a limp named Ratso Rizzo? (His real name is Enrico Salvatore Rizzo; he doesn’t like being called Ratso.) That’s just too repellent, isn’t it?

Well, it turned out that a lot of people wanted to see it because it’s a terrific movie with an intelligent script and great acting (a fascinating gallery of secondary characters, including Cass, the wily dame who pulls a fast one on Joe Buck; Mr. O’Daniel, the street preacher who Joe Buck is tricked into believing is a pimp; Townie, the mama-obsessed old queen who is in New York for a little fun, damn it!) and is made with such care that it just has to be good. When it came out, it generated a lot of controversy because it was given an X rating and it was just so different from what had gone before. (Isn’t that what “art” is all about?) Changes that were taking place in the world were being reflected in the entertainment industry. (Soon the X rating was taken up by the pornography industry and was no longer used for “legitimate” movies.) When the Oscars came out for 1969, Midnight Cowboy was named Best Picture of the Year, with good reason.

If there’s ever an award for Best Actor in a Lead Role Playing a Bum, Dustin Hoffman wins it hands-down for playing Ratso Rizzo. He lives in a derelict building that has been marked for demolition. He steals overcoats in theatres. His skin has an unhealthy sheen. He’s filthy and his hair is greasy. He has a game leg and a bad limp. His voice is an annoying nasal whine. But, in spite of all these things, he makes us feel for him. Underneath the dirt and squalor is a person we recognize. We somehow end up liking him and wishing he would get well and live a happy life.

No less impressive is Jon Voigt as Joe Buck, the naïve Texas hustler. When he leaves his dishwashing job in Texas and boards a bus for New York City, we know he is headed for some heartbreak. He is a babe in the woods. The first few people he encounters who are supposed to pay him for his services don’t work out the way he hopes; he ends up spending more money than he makes. When he runs out of money and is put out of his hotel room, he casts his lot in with Ratso Rizzo, who had swindled him out of some of his money when they first met. From then on it becomes a story of survival and friendship and the desire for a better life. (If only they can make it to Florida and escape the New York winter, everything will be all right.) These two characters are possibly the most memorable pair of misfits ever captured on film.

Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged Allen Kopp, capsule movie review, Midnight Cowboy. Bookmark the permalink.

Oz the Great and Powerful ~ A Capsule Movie Review

Posted on March 10, 2013 by allen0997

Oz the Great and Powerful ~ A Capsule Movie Review by Allen Kopp

Oz the Great and Powerful takes place before The Wizard of Oz, so there’s no Dorothy or Toto, no Cowardly Lion, Tin Man, or Scarecrow. There are, however, a Wizard, flying monkeys, the Emerald City, Winkie Guards, Wicked Witches (yes, more than one), singing Munchkins, a hot-air balloon, a cyclone, and a land as beautiful as heaven must be where just about anything might happen.

The story begins in Kansas in 1905 in a carnival. (The first fifteen minutes or so of the movie are in glorious black and white, on a narrow little screen to look the way movies used to look before there was such a thing as wide-screen format.) Oscar Diggs (played by James Franco) is a not-very-convincing carnival magician. It seems he has a penchant for the ladies and finds himself in some trouble when he tries to romance the strong man’s wife. With the strong man in pursuit, he jumps into a waiting hot-air balloon to get away. A fierce storm is brewing just at that time, so the balloon, with Oscar in it, is swept away to parts unknown. Oscar thinks he is going to die, but he finds himself in the magical Land of Oz where everything is different from what he’s used to and where everything is not as it appears. (At this point the screen expands to its usual enormous size and the black and white becomes color.) Right away he discovers that the people of Oz believe he is the long-awaited Wizard that will save them from evil. (Is there a Christ parallel here, or is that just my imagination?)

Oscar learns that when he becomes Wizard, a huge storehouse of gold and treasure will become his. The catch is that he must kill the Wicked Witch to become Wizard, or at least destroy her wand, which will render her powerless. He doesn’t know how he is going to kill the witch, but at least he doesn’t have to do it alone; he has Glinda the Good Witch to help him (who believes in him when he hardly believes in himself), along with Little China Girl (whose legs he glues back on) and a sympathetic flying monkey named Findley. From then on, the story is about the struggle between good and evil.

Oz the Great and Powerful is, according to the credits, based on the works of L. Frank Baum and not on the 1939 The Wizard of Oz, which is, apparently, all tied up with copyrights, including the ruby slippers that Dorothy wears and the wart on the Wicked Witch’s chin. In 3D, it’s expensive-looking and that’s because it’s expensive (two hundred million dollars). The filmmakers have given the Land of Oz depth and dimension and have made it a beautiful place to visit, unless, of course, you are an old crab, don’t like going to the movies at all, and would rather stay at home and watch TV.

With the Wizard installed on the throne as the Wizard of Oz and the Wicked Witch effectively out of the picture (at least for the time being), the Wizard should be expecting a visit any day from a certain Dorothy Gale and a few of her unusual acquaintances.

Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged Allen Kopp, capsule movie review, fiction, Oz the Great and Powerful. Bookmark the permalink.

Double Indemnity ~ A Capsule Movie Review

Posted on February 14, 2013 by allen0997

Double Indemnity ~ A Capsule Movie Review By Allen Kopp

Bored 1940s California housewife Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) uses her bewigged allure to get malleable insurance salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) to help her kill her repulsive husband for the insurance money and for “love.” After Phyllis and Walter execute as neat and ingenious a murder as has ever been committed to celluloid, their happiness is short-lived. Astute claims investigator Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson), who works with Walter, does not believe the story that is being put forth about how Phyllis’s husband died and contests payment of the insurance money. As the story progresses and as the figurative noose tightens around Walter’s neck, we learn that Phyllis is not all we thought she was (or not all Walter thought, which is the same thing) and has only been using Walter to attain her ends. She has been messing around with her stepdaughter Lola’s boyfriend, Nino Zachetti, and has probably murdered before. And will murder again if she gets the chance.

Double Indemnity is a genre film and is the best of its genre, which can loosely be classified as film noir. It was made in 1944 and appropriately reflects the cynical wartime mood the country was in. It is such a perfect movie (if such a thing is possible) that seeing it for the first time is something of a revelation. Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray and Edward G. Robinson are at the top of their form. Screenwriters Billy Wilder (who also directed) and mystery novelist Raymond Chandler take a good story by James M. Cain and make it even better. It is a perfect example of lean writing without any fat. Down to the tiniest detail (cinematography, music, art direction), Double Indemnity is meticulously and beautifully crafted. On a high-definition TV (as broadcast by TCM), it is as clear and crisp as if it was made yesterday instead of sixty-nine years ago.

Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged Allen Kopp, capsule movie review, Double Indemnity, short story. Bookmark the permalink.

Zero Dark Thirty ~ A Capsule Movie Review

Posted on January 28, 2013 by allen0997

Zero Dark Thirty ~ A Capsule Movie Review by Allen Kopp

I wasn’t going to see Zero Dark Thirty because I had the idea that it was political propaganda, but when I actually saw it I found that it’s neither political nor propaganda. If anybody gets credit for killing Osama bin Laden (the most hated man in America since Adolf Hitler), it’s not politicians or political parties (as they would have us believe), but the Central Intelligence Agency.

In Zero Dark Thirty, a young female CIA operative known only by the name of Maya (played by Jessica Chastain) arrives in the Middle East. She witnesses first hand an “enhanced interrogation” of a known terrorist. She doesn’t like what she sees but she knows that such tactics are necessary to procure the intelligence that will lead to the high-level terrorists who want to kill Americans and annihilate Western Civilization. When one of the suspects pleads with her to help him, she tells him he can help himself by telling them the truth. As the main “interrogator” says: “When you lie to me, I hurt you.” These scenes are not easy to watch.

Maya focuses more and more on finding and killing Osama bin Laden. She knows, or believes she knows, how to interpret the intelligence that comes her way that she believes will lead to Osama. (She states that, in her eight years in the agency, she has done nothing other than pursue Osama.) She encounters resistance from her boss in the agency (and others) nearly every step of the way. She seems alone in her zeal to get Osama and in how she thinks it should be done. I gather, although I don’t know for sure, that Maya is a fictional character, a composite, of CIA operatives who, through their persistence and dedication, led to the ultimate goal.

Finally, after a ten-year search, intelligence reports seem to indicate that Osama is staying in a “complex” in Pakistan with a small retinue of wives and children. Maya is alone in her belief that Osama is there; some of her colleagues believe there is a “soft” 60% chance.

The highlight of Zero Dark Thirty is the daring nighttime raid on the complex in Pakistan where Osama may or may not be living in seclusion. (We know, of course, in retrospect, that Osama was there and was killed.) It was an enormous gamble that paid off.

Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged Allen Kopp, capsule movie review, Zero Dark Thirty. Bookmark the permalink.

Mama ~ A Capsule Movie Review

Posted on January 20, 2013 by allen0997

Mama ~ A Capsule Movie Review by Allen Kopp

I love a good horror film with a literate story that doesn’t involve scantily clad teenagers being menaced by a hatchet-wielding maniac. Some recent examples of good horror films that come to mind are The Others, The Ring, The Haunting in Connecticut, Drag Me to Hell, and Insidious (all involving the supernatural). A new one that can be added to the list is Mama, a pretty good fright fest with a modern-day ghost story rooted in a tragic event of the nineteenth century.

When Mama begins, a man named Jeffrey DeSange has just gone on a murderous rampage, killing his wife, among others. Distraught over what he has done, he kidnaps his two small daughters (Victoria, age three, and Lily, age one). When he is fleeing with them on a mountainous snowy road, his car skids in an isolated area and goes off a steep embankment. Jeffrey, Victoria and Lily are not hurt, but the car is wrecked. Jeffrey takes Victoria and Lily from the car and begins walking with them in the woods, coming upon an abandoned cabin. Once inside the cabin, he plans to kill Victoria and Lily and then himself. When he has the gun held to Victoria’s head and is about to pull the trigger, something (or somebody) jumps him from behind. From then on, we don’t see Jeffrey anymore.

Five years later, Jeffrey’s brother, Lucas, believes somehow that Jeffrey, Victoria and Lily are still alive somewhere and is searching for them. (Jeffrey and Lucas are both played by the same actor.) Miraculously, Victoria and Lily are found, living in deplorable conditions in the abandoned cabin where we last saw them five years earlier. Many questions remain unanswered.

Lucas and his girlfriend Annabel (played by a barely recognizable Jessica Chastain, who seems to be in about every other movie these days) want to take Victoria and Lily and raise them as their own. Victoria, since she is older, is able to assimilate back into the real world, but Lily, who was only one at the time of her disappearance, still remains like an animal. She walks on all fours part of the time, won’t sleep in a bed or sit at a table, and doesn’t speak. She seems rooted to her old life in the woods.

When Annabel tries to show Victoria affection, Victoria tells her to stop because “she” is watching and will be jealous. We learn by degrees that “she” is a ghost, a sort of mother figure that kept Victoria and Lily alive in the abandoned cabin for five years.

Victoria and Lily refer to the “ghost” as “Mama.” In life, Mama was a mental patient with a baby in the 1870s. She escaped from the mental hospital where she was being kept and took her baby from the orphanage. While being pursued, she ran into the woods to a rocky promontory overlooking a lake. She jumped into the lake with the baby, but the baby got caught on a tree limb sticking out of the cliff and died, never making it into the lake. Mama drowned in the lake alone, without her baby. As someone in the movie explains, a ghost is a twisted emotion that has never been resolved. Mama is a ghost who can’t find rest because she is forever seeking her baby. She finds, instead, Victoria and Lily.

Of course, Mama wants to reclaim Victoria and Lily, while Lucas and Annabel want to keep them. In the film’s dramatic, special effects-laden conclusion, Lucas and Annabel attempt to reunite Mama with the skeletal remains of her baby, but that isn’t what Mama wants. She wants Victoria and Lily.

Scoffers will scoff and laugh and laughers will laugh at Mama (they always do), but those of us who know a good story when we see one will enjoy it, no matter how implausible. If you can stop being sophisticated and suspend disbelief for about an hour and forty minutes, you’ll have a good time.

Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged Allen Kopp, capsule movie review, Mama. Bookmark the permalink.

Django Unchained ~ A Capsule Movie Review

Posted on January 2, 2013 by allen0997

Django Unchained ~ A Capsule Movie Review By Allen Kopp

The new movie Django Unchained is directed by Quentin Tarantino. Those who are familiar with the work of this director know that his movies are inspired by samurai films, “spaghetti westerns” from the 1960s, and exploitation films of the 1970s. Whether you like Quentin Tarantino’s films or not, you have to admit there’s nothing else quite like them.

Django Unchained is entertaining, violent, bloody, intelligently written, long (two hours and 45 minutes), funny at times (as when the vigilantes are trying to decide whether or not they should wear hoods to cover their faces), and completely implausible. Admirers of Quentin Tarantino will think it’s a masterpiece, while others will be put off by the spurting blood, exploding heads, and simplistic moral tone. It has lots of riding and shooting, just like a western, but it’s set in the pre-Civil War South, so it’s technically not a western. Also like a western, there are good guys and bad guys (the bad ones are really bad), and we know from the outset exactly which is which. It’s a story about retribution, about the good people giving to the bad people exactly what they deserve.

Dr. King Shultz (played by Christoph Waltz) is a native of Germany who ended up, somehow, in America and who speaks excellent English, although with a slight German accent. He is a onetime dentist, now a bounty hunter. He delivers the dead bodies of escaped criminals to the U.S. authorities and receives payment for it. He is seeking (and finds) a slave by the name of Django (played by Jamie Foxx) to help him locate three brothers from a certain plantation where Django lived. After Dr. Shultz finds and kills the three brothers, he discovers that Django has an aptitude for being a bounty hunter, so they become partners. They travel around together, with Django pretending to be Dr. Shultz’s valet. Dr. Shultz learns that Django’s one desire in life is to find his wife, Broomhilda, from whom he has been separated for many years.

The search for Broomhilda leads Dr. Shultz and Django to Mississippi to a plantation named “Candie Land,” owned by one Calvin Candie (played by Leonardo DiCaprio). Calvin Candie is not a nice person. He is, in fact, the villain of the story. He and his simpering sister own slaves and they don’t care how badly they are treated. He owns Broomhilda, the young woman that Django seeks.

Dr. Shultz and Django just can’t take Broomhilda and leave with her. Calvin Candie is a powerful man and he would see that Broomhilda is found and returned to him, and there’s no telling what punishment he would mete out to her. Dr. Shultz, to hide his and Django’s real reason for being at Candie Land, pretends to be interested in purchasing a Mandingo wrestler, a demonstration of which affords yet another opportunity for some exaggerated violence. The winner of a Mandingo wrestling match kills the loser with a hammer, which the spectators enjoy immensely.

Django Unchained ends with a shootout to end all shootouts, with predictable results. Retribution is delivered on the evil, with many bodies torn apart by bullets and enough spurting fake blood to fill a swimming pool. When Django shoots Calvin Candie’s silly sister from the staircase, he blows her ass all the way into the next room. If you think she deserves it, you’re probably the kind of person who will enjoy this film.

Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged Allen Kopp, capsule movie review, Django Unchained. Bookmark the permalink.

Les Misérables ~ A Capsule Movie Review

Posted on December 28, 2012 by allen0997

Les Misérables ~ A Capsule Movie Review By Allen Kopp

I have never seen the stage version of the musical Les Misérables, so I don’t have a lot of basis for comparison, but I think the movie version works very well. It has everything I want in a movie and more. It is a complete escape from reality; I haven’t ever seen anything like it before; it’s a touching story about redemption; the characters are nothing like any real people I know; it’s beautiful to look at. Most of the dialogue is sung by actors who don’t usually sing in the movies they’re in, and there are at least two very memorable songs (“I Dreamed a Dream” and “Bring Him Home). It is, of course, based on a classic of world literature, Victor Hugo’s massive 1862 novel of the same name, which has never been out of print in 150 years.

Les Misérables is set in France during the turbulent years of 1815 to 1832, the time it takes for a small girl to become an adult. It is about a man, the fictional character Jean Valjean, who is utterly lost but finds redemption through an act of kindness directed toward him. He has served “nineteen winters” in a brutal prison for petty theft. (He stole a loaf of bread because he and his family were starving.) He is granted conditional parole but escapes. He finds refuge in a convent, where nuns and a kindly priest care for him. One night when everybody is asleep he steals some silver plates and flees. When he is captured by the police, he tells them the priest gave him the items he has stolen. The police take him to the convent to confront the priest, who tells them that Jean Valjean was welcome to take the things he stole and gives him a pair of elaborate candlesticks to go with them. This is the act of kindness that changes Jean Valjean’s life.

He “turns away from hatred,” regains his health after the terrible conditions in prison, and “turns his life over to God.” (After that, his life is as directed by God.) He becomes a successful businessman, owning and operating a factory that employs women, specifically a young woman named Fantine, who will play a significant part in his life. Fantine is unjustly fired from the factory (unknown to Jean) and has to turn to prostitution to support her small child, whose name is Cosette. (One of the highlights of the movie is when Fantine [played by Anne Hathaway] sings “I Dreamed a Dream.”) When Jean discovers what has happened to Fantine, she is dying. He promises her that he will take care of her daughter—that she will never want for anything as long as he lives.

In the meantime, Jean Valjean’s past catches up with him. He meets again, by chance, Inspector Javert (played by Russell Crowe), who recognizes him from his prison days and knows that he skipped out on his parole. Javert believes he is duty-bound to send Jean back to prison, in spite of the smallness of his crime and the twenty years he has already spent behind bars.

In the coming years, Javert continues to obsessively pursue Jean Valjean, who always manages to stay just one step ahead of him. Meanwhile, Cosette has grown to adulthood and lives with Jean Valjean as his daughter. She has fallen in love with a young leader of the “June Rebellion” named Marius. Through a twist of fate, Jean is able to save Marius’s life. Through another twist, he spares the life of Javert when he is given the chance to exact revenge and kill him.

If you are tired of the banal “romantic comedies,” sequels, franchises such as James Bond and Spiderman, animated 3D movies for the under-six set, action-adventure movies, and the mindless drivel that passes these days for entertainment, don’t miss Les Misérables. Movies like this one don’t come along very often.

Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged Allen Kopp, capsule movie review, Les Miserables. Bookmark the permalink.

Literary Fictions

Tag Archives: capsule movie review

Mud ~ A Capsule Movie Review

The Great Gatsby ~ A Capsule Movie Review

The Place Beyond the Pines ~ A Capsule Movie Review

Midnight Cowboy ~ A Capsule Movie Review

Oz the Great and Powerful ~ A Capsule Movie Review

Double Indemnity ~ A Capsule Movie Review

Zero Dark Thirty ~ A Capsule Movie Review

Mama ~ A Capsule Movie Review

Django Unchained ~ A Capsule Movie Review

Les Misérables ~ A Capsule Movie Review

Search

Links

Follow “Literary Fictions”