Monday at the Movies - January 28, 2019

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.” This week, two films wildly different in tone and yet unmistakably British in their sensibilities.

The Death of Stalin (2018) – Few people can make me laugh as hard as Armando Iannucci, he whose British series The Thick of It can’t be enjoyed on a single viewing because you’ll miss half the jokes while splitting your sides at its creative profanity and monumentally madcap antics. After Iannucci ravaged the mundanely moronic ("All roads lead to Munich") in the lead-up to the Iraq War in Thick of It’s spinoff film In the Loop, he turns his satirical eye to the Soviet Union in the wake of Josef Stalin’s death and finds the Communist Party in chaos, beginning with the puddle of urine in which the party leader’s corpse is found. The cast is as unpredictable as the punchlines – we now live, folks, in a world where Steve Buscemi plays Nikita Khrushchev (and yes, Virginia, there is a “bury you” joke). Meanwhile we’ve got Jeffrey Tambor as the melancholy Georgy Malenkov, ill-suited to the leadership role he inherits; noted Shakespearean Simon Russell Beale as the oily Lavrentiy Beria of the secret police; and Jason Isaacs as Georgy Zhukov, all too eager to lead his army into open revolt. It’s a cast of all-stars (including Rupert Friend and Andrea Riseborough as Stalin’s children), but the biggest draw is the film’s pitch-black humor, depicting Stalin’s worst atrocities as something akin to a Karl Marx Brothers film. There are moments when one is not quite sure whether to laugh or recoil in horror, as when an executioner just gives up halfway down his line of victims, but Iannucci is quite successful at capturing the ambient paranoia that comes from not knowing who to trust in a totalitarian regime – and the absurdity when a brood of vipers is forced to try to trust one another.

Paddington 2 (2017) – With the benefit of hindsight, Paddington 2 might well be one of the best films of 2017. A film like this has no right to be as charming, intricately constructed, or genuinely emotional as Paddington 2 manages to be. Now that the well-mannered Paddington (Ben Whishaw) has taken up residence in London, he goes in search of a birthday present for his Aunt Lucy, only to find the perfect pop-up book out of his price range. After a series of odd jobs, Paddington is framed for the theft of the book, landing unceremoniously in a Victorian-era prison where he befriends the entire population – including prison cook Knuckles McGinty (Brendan Gleeson) – through the powers of civility and marmalade. Paddington 2 is even better than its predecessor, somehow more earnest now that it’s dispensed with the need to explain how and why an affable bear is living with ordinary people. Instead the filmscape is opened up to boundless adventures where Paddington’s relentless cheeriness persists, undaunted by his circumstances. Whether he’s shoved into the role of accidental barber or whether he finds himself teaching a prison how to make orange jam, Paddington is so endearing that it’s almost a personal offense when something unfortunate befalls him; “how dare they,” I said aloud at one point, “how dare the filmmakers do this to such a nice bear!” For all the antics and charm that the film possesses – really, I cannot overstate just how charming this movie is – it has an astonishing emotional depth rooted in Paddington’s love for his Aunt Lucy, and the film’s final moments are guaranteed to get you teary-eyed in a way that I thought only Pixar had been able to capture with computer-generated characters.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” Stay tuned for Wednesday’s final Batman animated review!

Monday at the Movies - August 13, 2018

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.” This week, a pair of movies that are – shall we say – exceedingly British.

Paddington (2014) – Despite my reservations that the titular bear was neither as cute as the Peggy Fortnum illustrations nor voiced by Colin Firth, I found myself captivated by the shameless whimsy and defiant British-ness of Paddington. In the case of the former, the bear looks much better in motion than he does in still photos, charmingly expressive; on the matter of the latter, Ben Whishaw is a fine Paddington, imbuing this unique bear with a roguish innocence that never misses a giggle when he pulls a marmalade sandwich from under his hat. There is something striking about the way writer/director Paul King (no relation; himself helming his first movie, a remarkable moment) manages to capture the madcap logic of a children’s story, in which a renegade shower massage can flood a bathroom while a sinister taxidermist (Nicole Kidman, between proud mouthfuls of scenery) plots to stuff and mount a living creature for a surprisingly well-developed and narratively integrated reason. I was also impressed at how artfully developed many of the film’s gags proved to be; for instance, a mishap with a handheld vacuum cleaner establishes the strength of the device for a pivotal and deft setpiece late in the film. For a character as prominent and marketable as Paddington Bear, it would have been exceptionally easy to make a lazy film that cashes in on the character’s adorable reputation, but it was quite apparent that everyone involved on Paddington cared deeply about the character and his legacy, and it strikes me that they have done right by him.

Victoria and Abdul (2017) – Here’s a film that offers Judi Dench the chance to be alternatingly heartwarming and cantankerous for two hours while breathing life into one of Britain’s most prominent figures (returning to a role, incidentally, for which she was nominated for an Oscar in Mrs. Brown). If that’s not a recipe for a good time at a film, I haven’t found one, because Judi Dench is riveting in this “mostly” true story about Queen Victoria’s friendship with an Indian subject, Abdul Karim (Ali Fazal), who becomes a teacher (“munshi”) and a confidante in the regent’s final years. Victoria and Abdul is funnier but no less delightful than I anticipated, taking a wry postcolonial approach to the British Empire, acknowledging its dehumanizing aspects in a sobering scene with Abdul’s friend Mohammed (Adeel Akhtar) but also highlighting Victoria’s efforts to learn more about her subjects, even if her naiveté is somewhat charming (“This mango is off,” she repeats in one notable scene). The cast is rounded out by Tim Pigott-Smith, Michael Gambon, Paul Higgins, and Eddie Izzard, all of whom play their xenophobia rather broadly in a quintessentially British tongue-in-cheek interrogation of prejudice; it’s all Izzard can do not to twirl his mustache as Victoria’s eldest son, horrified that a lowborn subject has his mother’s ear in a way he never has. The film is irrevocably and undeniably Dench’s, though, equally enthralling while asleep at tea or while insisting that her faculties have never been sharper, in a single-take monologue that lays bare in equal measure her insecurities and accomplishments. It’s a powerhouse moment in a potent performance, a real shame that she was snubbed at last year’s Oscars.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you next week!