Tag: drama movies

The King and I

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thekingandi

June 29, 1956
Biography/Drama/Musical
G
United States
Director: Walter Lang

“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.” – Abraham Lincoln

This story takes place in Siam (presently known as Thailand) 1862. A schoolteacher from England, Anna Leonowens (Deborah Kerr), travels to Siam for work after she is widowed with her son Louis (Rex Thompson). She has been hired by King Mongkut (Yul Brynner) to teach his children English and scientific method.

It’s made clear from the beginning that Anna is a strong woman who will not bow in fear to anyone, not even the king. Mongkut is pleased by this, for it shows a strong mind, but throughout the movie, he gets increasingly more annoyed with her. At the same time, however, he appears to prefer her company above all others. Not only is she stubborn with him, but her kind nature never wavers, and he’s as drawn to her as he is confused by her. There is at one point where the English government is threatening to take over Siam because they see Mongkut as a “barbarian”. His first reaction is to fight fire with fire, but Anna cleverly talks him into providing them with a banquet and theatrical entertainment. And by “cleverly”, I mean she turns the words around to make it sound like it’s his idea. The result is the English government seeing how civilized and respectable the Siamese people are.

Anna does teach the children, as is her job, but she also teaches Mongkut. Not just with kindness toward other countries, but also to his subjects. He was raised that a man should take as many women as wives as he can, but a woman needs to be loyal to that one man. One of his many wives, Tuptim (Rita Moreno), is unhappy with the arrangement and runs away to meet with her true love, Lun Tha (Carlos Rivas). She’s captured, and the punishment for betrayal is being beaten with a whip. Mongkut is ready to do it himself and has his guards hold Tuptim on the floor, but Anna intervenes. She basically yells at him, telling him that she can’t believe he would do this and has no heart. He becomes frustrated, tosses the whip away, and storms out. The last we see of Tuptim is her being dragged away by the guards and overhearing that Lun Tha has been found in the river, dead.

Anna is infuriated with how the king and his staff behave – how they are so willing to destroy a life – that she’s determined to take her son and leave. However, Mongkut’s head wife, Lady Thiang (Terry Saunders), informs Anna that Mongkut is dying. Ever since Anna degraded him for being ready to beat Tuptim, he locked himself in his room and refused to eat or sleep. He spends three weeks like that, and Anna goes to see him on his deathbed. She had fallen in love with the people of Siam, and more specifically, the children she’s teaching. They beg her not to go, and it’s interesting to see that they care more about her staying than they do about their father dying. Anna had accused Mongkut of never loving anyone, and in that moment, it sort of shows. He had tried to be a good king and father, but he was doing what he had been taught. During the film, Anna shows him how different life is when one doesn’t treat those around him like slaves.

The end of the movie is Anna deciding to stay in Siam for the children, and the crowned prince, Chulalongkorn (Patrick Adiarte), begins to make proclamations as the new king, starting with celebrating the new year with fireworks and boat races, as well as subjects no longer bowing to the king, but instructing them better ways to show respect that doesn’t create fatigue on the body. As Chulalongkorn is doing this, Mongkut dies with Anna by his side.

This movie is one I’d heard about, but never really entertained the idea of watching. Not really for any particular reason; it just didn’t draw my interest. Why I watched it now is by the request of my dad. So, what do I think about it? Comedy is not in the list of genres this movie has, but I found Yul Brynner to be very amusing. I quite literally laughed out loud at most of the stuff he did with his performance. I was very much enjoying the film up until the end. It had a certain air about it: fun and charismatic. By the end of the movie, however, it just seemed to lose all that. I mean, it’s understandable given the fact that the king is dying, but I was sort of hoping for the fun to last throughout.

Having said that, this movie has an enormous amount of lessons that I think gives it more heart than a lot of films. One is the anti-slavery stance it takes. Anna is very outspoken in her views of how wrong slavery is, of which Tuptim finds most relatable, given her circumstance. Then there’s the pro-feminism aspect, which is apparent from the beginning, especially with Tuptim and how she’s a “gift” for the king, as if she were some object. They make mention a few times throughout about women being viewed as less than men; how their purpose is to please men. Anna comments on how absurd the notion is. Finally, there’s Mongkut’s death itself. While he dies with no one really mourning him, yet celebrating Anna’s decision to stay, it shows how important it is to not treat people as they’re any less significant than you, no matter your stance. Even a king.

I actually really do recommend this movie. The slavery and feminist issues that are brought up rather surprised me, what with it coming out in the fifties. Then again, it’s also based off of the book, “Anna and the King of Siam”, which came out in 1944 by Margaret Landon, which, in turn, is from the memoirs of Anna Leonowens in the 1860’s. Still, no matter how you look at it, The King and I is a very enjoyable film to watch and has a lot that can be taken away from it. I urge you to watch it.

Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera…

If you have a movie you would like me to review, leave a comment or send an email to spoileralertblog@outlook.com with “movie review” in the subject line.

The Game

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thegame

September 12, 1997
Drama/Mystery/Thriller
R
United States
Director: David Fincher

“I once was lost, but now I’m found; was blind, but now I see.” – John Newton

The amusing aspect of this movie is that the spoiler is in the name itself. The whole plot is about an elaborate game surrounding the life of Nicholas Van Orton (Michael Douglas) in a psychological twister of a ride.

Nicholas grew up in a very wealthy family. For all intents and purposes, they seemed very content with their lives. The beginning of the film shows home movies with Nicholas, his parents, and his new baby brother. We see later in a flashback that Nicholas unfortunately witnessed the suicide of his father when he jumped off of the roof of their rather large house. It appears that this event set in motion how both Nicholas and his brother turned out later in life.

Nicholas is an investment banker in Sacramento, California. He has a lot of money, lives in the family home, and is someone who demands respect the second he steps into a room. He’s typically polite, saying “please” and “thank you”, but is obviously a cold and calculated man. He values his work more than anything in his life, which is made clear by the separation of his wife, Elizabeth (Anna Katarina). His brother, Conrad (Sean Penn), is the polar opposite: a meth addict who needs medication for his mental problems, as well as therapy.

It’s Nicholas’ forty-eighth birthday, and Conrad gives him a card that reads “Consumer Recreation Services”, or CRS. He explains that it’s a company who constructs a game for the participants, that he himself has done it, and it changed his life to the point where he no longer needs to take anything or see anyone for his mental health.

Nicholas goes to the local office of CRS and meets with Jim Feingold (James Rebhorn), who has him fill out several surveys. While he’s there, Nicholas also has to go through a physical: hearing tests, visual associations, heart rate tests, and some others. He ends up spending his whole day there, which he’s annoyed by. By the end, Jim tells him that one day soon, The Game would start. When Nicholas asks what The Game is, and all Jim tells him is that it’s different for everyone.

The next day when Nicholas goes home after work, he finds an adult-sized dummy clown in his driveway, in the spot where his father landed when he killed himself. This understandably unnerves Nicholas, but brings the dummy inside, where he finds a key in the clown’s mouth. Also in the clown is a camera, which Nicholas finds out when his TV begins speaking to him, telling him about the steps of The Game, and that the key would be to something he needed, he just needs to keep an eye out for it.

I can’t go into the full details without making this a three-hour-long read, but what I can say is this: in the following days, Nicholas is suspicious of everyone and everything he sees. He even thinks the key is for his briefcase, which he mysteriously can’t open. The Game truly starts at a restaurant he regularly frequents when a waitress named Christine (Deborah Kara Unger) spills a tray of beverages all over him. She apologizes profusely, he rejects it, she calls him an asshole, and promptly gets fired. Nicholas is moved to a different table where a “waiter” drops off a note that tells him to not let Christine get away.

Nicholas catches up with her outside, where she brushes him off, but then a man crossing the street collapses. Christine performs CPR on him while Nicholas hails down a police car. An ambulance shows up, Christine and Nicholas are made to ride in it to the hospital, and when they get there, all the lights in the garage turn off and everyone runs away. Christine is naturally suspicious of this, but Nicholas explains that it’s part of The Game. As they walk through the garage, an elevator door opens , so they get in and push the button for the lobby. When nothing happens, Nicholas takes out the key, turns it in a slot, and the elevator starts to move.

But then it stops, so the two climb through the ceiling and get to the closest floor. Nicholas realizes he forgot his briefcase in the elevator, but the doors have shut, and there’s nothing he can do. They start to head toward a door when Nicholas recognizes the building they’re in: it’s the CRS local headquarters. They trip a laser alarm, which leads to a chase with security, complete with a dog. Ultimately, they get away and go to Nicholas’ office, where he (for some reason) has a shower. Since they got incredibly dirty during the chase, Christine asks if she can wash up while Nicholas calls for a cab.

The next morning, Nicholas wakes up to the sound of his phone. It’s his assistant who’s wondering where he is. He tells her he’ll be there soon, and she lists off calls he’s gotten so far, including from a hotel that has his credit card. He calls the hotel, and they inform him that the flowers have been sent to his room. He goes to the hotel, finds out he somehow already has a key card, and when he gets to his room, there’s an abundance of drugs, porn, and photographs of him and a faceless woman wearing nothing but a red bra, which are surrounding – and in- his briefcase. He does his best to clean up and takes the photographs with him.

After this, he goes back home where he finds the place has been broken into, and there’s graffiti in every room he steps in. At one point, he finds a piece of paper that reads, “Like my father before me, I choose eternal sleep,” and a photo of his father’s suicide. This is what really sends him off the rails. He starts to call the police, but before he can complete it, Conrad shows up in a panic.

They go for a drive and Conrad is on edge, talking about how he screwed up with CRS, that they keep messing with his life, and that he’s even tried to pay them more to make them stop. The car gets a flat tire, and Nicholas moves to get the jack out of the trunk and tells Conrad to get something out of the glove box. When Conrad opens it, dozens of keys labeled “CRS” come falling out, and he accuses Nicholas of being in on the whole thing before running off.

Nicholas finds out where Christine lives by looking up the address where the cab dropped her off. When he goes to her house, she lets him in and says that they can talk. She had been sleeping when he showed up, so says she’ll get dressed. While she’s gone, Nicholas notices that one of her lamps has smoke rising from it. When he looks inside the shade, he sees a sales tag still attached and smoldering from the bulb. He removes it, but burns himself in the process, so goes to the sink to run water over it. However, the water won’t turn on. He gets the feeling of suspicion and looks in the refrigerator, only to find it empty. The books on the shelves are props. The photos in frames are cutouts from magazines. When she returns and he asks her about it, she whispers to him that there’s a camera in the fire alarm. He gets angry, breaks it, and all hell breaks loose.

People from CRS show up in full SWAT gear and begin shooting up the house. Christine and Nicholas escape, and as they drive away, she tells him that she’s an employee for CRS, but is scared of them, and that Nicholas has been conned.

He drives them to a cabin, one that his family clearly owns based on the family photos inside, and Christine makes them tea. He drinks it while Christine explains how CRS is able to scam people by draining their accounts, and Nicholas calls up one of the banks himself to check, but finds that it’s been emptied. He then calls his lawyer, Sam Sutherland (Peter Donat), who has also checked the accounts and assures him that everything is fine. Christine tells Nicholas that Sam is in on it, so Nicholas hangs up. But when he does, his vision starts to blur, and he realizes that Christine has drugged him through the tea.

He wakes up in a coffin-like box in some sort of tunnel. When he breaks out, he finds himself in a cemetery in Mexico. He has no money on him, no passport, and no ID, so he smuggles himself back into America and hitchhikes to Sacramento. When he gets there, he goes to his house and sees that it’s been foreclosed and almost completely emptied. However, there’s one thing that had been left: a book titled “To Kill A Mockingbird”. He takes it and goes to Elizabeth’s house.

Though divorced, Elizabeth never stopped caring about Nicholas, so when he says that he needs to borrow her car, she lets him. There’s a TV playing and a commercial comes on where he recognizes the face of Jim. It’s at this point he figures out that Jim is an actor, so has him tracked down. Inside the book is actually a gun, and he uses it to get Jim to take him to CRS. When they arrive, almost every person Nicholas had come into contact with is there, including the police. Christine is also there, and he tells her to go with him. As he guides her to a door, the SWAT look-a-likes burst in and start firing, shooting Jim as they aim for Nicholas, who’s running outside.

When he gets Christine out and locks the door, he has the gun on her. She asks him where he got it, and when he says it’s his, she tells him that they searched his house. When he says they obviously missed it, she panics and gets on a radio to call for help. All the while, she’s telling him that it’s all part of The Game: that Jim isn’t really dead, all the bullets are blanks, and that Conrad is on the other side of the door with a bottle of champagne to celebrate Nicholas’ birthday. Nicholas isn’t buying any of it, and when the door opens, Christine screams out to them to stop because of the gun, but they come through, and Nicholas fires. The bullet shatters the champagne bottle and hits Conrad in the middle of his chest.

Christine rushes over, where Jim is already trying to help, and Nicholas is trying to wrap his mind around everything. When Jim tells him that Conrad is dead, Nicholas goes over to the side and jumps off. He crashes through two ceilings of glass and lands on a large, inflatable mat. A few men from CRS explain that he needs to be careful: the glass was breakaway, but he could still get cut. Then they help him up and he sees the room full of people in his life: Ilsa, Elizabeth, Sam, and more. Then Conrad comes up to him to tell him “happy birthday” and gives him a shirt that reads, “I was drugged and left for dead in Mexico – and all I got was this stupid t-shirt”.

When Nicholas sees that everything, even Conrad’s “death”, was all part of The Game, he breaks down and hugs his brother. The lesson he learned was that there was more to life than his job, his money, and his father’s suicide. Now, I don’t know how I would feel about being psychologically tortured like that, but it worked for him.

This movie is gripping from beginning to end. Nicholas’ mind is toyed with to the point where he loses sight of what’s real, and believes that The Game is actually a scam to take him for everything he’s worth. As a result, the viewer believes it, too. What we find out is what Nicholas finds out: that The Game is planned down to the very last detail. Jim even tells Nicholas that he was glad Nicholas jumped, because if he hadn’t, Jim was supposed to throw him off the building.

Even though the title of the movie gives away what it’s about, it’s one of those that has the audience guessing right up until the very end. We don’t know what’s actually going on until Nicholas finds out, and it’s a rather unique take on how twists are done. I first saw this movie years ago, but haven’t watched it since, and I have to say, I’m not sure why. It really is a fantastic film, and for anyone who likes thriller dramas, I very much recommend this.

If you have a movie you would like me to review, leave a comment or send an email to spoileralertblog@outlook.com with “movie review” in the subject line.

Seven Pounds

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sevenpounds

December 19, 2008
Drama/Romance
PG-13
United States
Director: Gabriele Muccino
Recommended by: Christyl Johnson Klott

“In seven days, God created the world, and in seven seconds, I shattered mine.”

The story follows Ben Thomas (Will Smith) who works for the IRS as a tax collector in Los Angeles, California. The opening scene is him calling 911 to report a suicide. When asked who the victim is, he replies, “I am.” This sets the mood for the rest of the film, giving the viewer a sense of tension throughout. Ben carries a weight, and you can see it in his face. When he smiles, it never quite reaches his eyes, and the heaviness he emits is evident even in the way he moves. He lives in a beach house where he sleeps on the sofa. It’s completely trashed, where you can tell that he just doesn’t have any care in him about himself.

There are seven people to note in this movie: Ezra, Emily, George, Holly, Connie, Nicholas, and Tim. There is a very specific reason why Ben chose these people, and we will get into them one by one.

The first is Ezra Turner (Woody Harrelson), who works for a meat delivering company, enjoys playing piano, and is completely blind. Ben calls him to complain about the meat he ordered, mostly on how bad it tastes. During the conversation, Ezra is trying to get information on Ben to review the order, but Ben’s temper keeps increasing. When Ezra finally manages to get Ben’s name, a computerized voice announces that there is no order for a Ben Thomas. Ben can hear it over the phone, and realizes that Ezra is blind. This takes the call in a completely different direction, where Ben insults Ezra’s blindness and just him as a person. He’s trying to get a reaction out of Ezra, but it never comes. Ezra is completely calm throughout the duration, and the most angry he gets is simply hanging up. At first, I thought Ben had an overwhelming anger problem, especially after the call when he breaks a chair. Turns out, there’s a far deeper meaning.

Then there’s Emily Posa (Rosario Dawson), who Ben tries to get in contact with. He finds out that she’s in the hospital, and proceeds to follow her around. Naturally, she notices how much she’s seeing him and confronts him about it in the hospital’s cafeteria. He explains who he is and that he needs to audit her, as she’s several thousands of dollars in debt. Throughout the majority of the movie, we learn why: she had to quit her business as someone who makes wedding invitations, cards, and the like due to a congenital heart disease and her hospital bills keep racking up. She’s given less than two months to live if she doesn’t get a donor, and even has to have a nurse at her home. Now, this is a romantic piece, so obviously, Ben and Emily get closer. He shows up at her house to weed her yard and fix a printing machine that seems to not require so much physical labor to operate. At one point, Emily invites Ben over for dinner, and this scene is the only one where we see him truly smile.

The next is George Ristuccia (Bill Smitrovich). He’s not a big character, and we only see him once, but is an important person. George is in the hospital for a kidney transplant, and the exchange between him and Ben is about how good a person George is. He has paid for some kids to go to college (not his own), and when he asks Ben, “Why me?”, Ben responds with, “Because you’re a good man … Even when you don’t know that people are watching you.”

Holly Apelgren (Judyann Elder) is a social services worker who, when we first see her, clearly already has a history with Ben. Again, not a big character, but we find out that Ben had given her half of his liver. As a result, she’s willing to do any favor he needs. What he requests is a name: someone who needs help, but is too proud to ask for it.

This leads us to Connie Tepos (Elpidia Carrillo). This poor woman is in a terribly abusive relationship with her boyfriend and has two children who are stuck in the middle. Holly told Ben that Connie’s boyfriend broke some of her ribs a few months back and even tried to kill her when she attempted to leave a year before. So, Ben goes to Connie’s house and tells her he can help. Unfortunately, most of the dialogue is in Spanish and I couldn’t get the subtitles to work, so I don’t know exactly what they were saying, but was able to get the general impression. When Connie realizes exactly why Ben is there, she becomes angry and kicks him out of her house, but not before he can leave his card with her. A few days later, she calls him from a laundromat, crying, and says that she doesn’t know why she called, but wants to know if Ben really can help. He meets with her, gives her an envelope, and tells her where to go. She drives to his beach house, which has been completely cleaned and furnished, and opens the envelope where she finds a note. He tells her that all she has to do is sign on the dotted line, and the house is hers outright. All he asks is for her to not contact him for any reason and to live life abundantly. She does.

Nicholas (Quintin Kelley) is the one we really know the least about. He’s just a young boy who suffers from what I’m assuming is leukemia. Ben sees him off and on during his trips to the hospital, and decides to donate some of his bone marrow.

The final person we learn about is Tim. Earlier in the film, Emily passes out due to her heart not pumping enough blood to her brain and ends up, once again, in the hospital. She calls Ben and has him tell her a story. He decides on one about a little boy named Tim who wanted to fly. He strapped leaves and branches to his arms, climbed a tree, and jumped off, which led to a broken arm, but an ever-growing passion for flight. When Ben takes Emily home from the hospital, she begins asking questions about his personal life, and he reveals that he went to MIT because he wanted to be an engineer for a space program. I think this is when I started to realize something was off.

The night Emily invites Ben to her home for dinner, his brother shows up. He’s someone we’ve seen here and there, but don’t know too much about until he demands to have his credentials back and keeps calling Ben “Tim”. It’s this moment we see that Ben Thomas is actually the brother, and Will Smith’s real character is Tim, and that he had been impersonating Ben, including working for the IRS.

After the exchange with Ben, Emily and Tim spend the night together, and admit that they’re in love with each other. At this point, she doesn’t know Tim’s true identity. After she falls asleep, Tim runs to the hospital to find out, statistically, how likely Emily has of surviving. When he’s given three to five percent, he makes a decision.

Off and on, we see a man who is a good friend of Tim’s named Dan Morris (Barry Pepper), and during their brief interactions, we know that Dan is aware of what Tim is planning. When Tim leaves the hospital, he calls Dan to tell him that it’s time, then immediately hangs up. It’s very early in the morning, and Dan is just sitting in his bed, crying.

Tim has rented out a motel room, where he’s been living since before giving his beach house to Connie. He returns there and calls up Ezra, where he apologizes for his behavior on the phone weeks before, and that the reason for it was to find out how good of a person Ezra is; if he was quick to anger. He then tells him that a man named Dan would be getting in contact with him and that Ezra could trust him. Then, Tim dials 911, and the opening scene plays again.

Tim told a story about how when he was twelve years old, his father took him and Ben to an aquarium, and that was the first time Tim had ever seen a box jellyfish. His father told him how deadly they are, but Tim thought they were the most beautiful things he had ever seen. He ends up owning some and sets up his own small aquarium for them to stay with him at the motel. After calling for an ambulance, Tim turns on the bathtub, fills it with ice, climbs in, and dumps his jellyfish into the water with him. They, of course, sting him, and stop his heart. The hospital tries to revive him, but are unsuccessful.

Why does Tim do all this? We find out from Ben, who is speaking to Emily, that a year before, Tim was involved in a car accident that claimed the lives of seven people, including his fiance, Sarah (Robinne Lee). The reason for the accident was due to Tim looking at his phone while driving. A few months after that, Ben was in need of at least one new lung, so Tim gave him one.

Ezra needed new eyes, Emily needed a new heart, George needed a new kidney, Holly needed a partial liver, Connie needed out of her abusive relationship, Nicholas needed bone marrow, and Ben needed a new lung. Seven lives saved for seven lives taken.

The ending scene is Ezra playing piano for a group of kids singing and Emily shows up. At the end of the show, she gets his attention, and when he turns to her, she gets to see Tim’s eyes. At first, he’s confused on who she is, but then sees the scar on her chest and realizes that it’s Emily. She’s crying, they hug, and the movie ends.

I told the person who recommended this to me for a review that I was surprised it’s not more well-known. It grossed drastically short of the budget on the opening weekend, though did end up doing well world-wide. I had never heard of it until just recently, and I’m a huge Will Smith fan.

So, what do I think of this film? I’m not much for tearjerkers, but I have to say, starting with the opening scene, I was completely enthralled. It’s kind of hard to follow at first, because, at least for me, I had a lot of questions about what was going on, but the end ties everything together rather nicely. If you like romantic dramas, I do think this is one to watch. It’s heartbreaking, but definitely worth seeing.

If you have a movie you would like me to review, leave a comment or send an email to spoileralertblog@outlook.com with “movie review” in the subject line.