Movie review: "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel"

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Partner and I saw the preview for “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” several months ago. We began salivating at the mere sight of Judi Dench and Maggie Smith and Tom Wilkinson, and agreed on the spot that this was a must-see.

 

 

We made our pilgrimage to see it this weekend, as did lots of other oldsters. (I heard the lady behind us say: “It looks like an AARP meeting in here!”) We were seated behind a whole row of Red Hat Society members, who’d pulled out all the stops fashion-wise: not just red hats, but red scarves, red feather boas, red sequined purses, red fascinators. Throughout the theater there were wheelchairs, and walkers, and lots of querulous discussions about not being able to hear the dialogue.

 

 

But, my goodness, once the film started, you could have heard a pin drop in there.

 

 

The movie is a lot of fun. It follows seven people who decide to take a chance on a retirement hotel in Jaipur, India: Judi Dench as a sweet impoverished widow, Maggie Smith as a tough bigoted hip-replacement patient, Tom Wilkinson as a retired judge with a haunted look, Bill Nighy and Penelope Wilton as a married couple on the lines of Richard and Hyacinth Bucket, Celia Imrie as a sassy flirt, and Ronald Pickup as a funny old satyr.

 

 

I’m not going to give you too many spoilers, but I can safely tell you that everyone finds India to be a life-changing experience. I can probably tell you also that there is at least one death, but (if you’re like me) you’ll be surprised when it happens. Dev Patel, from “Slumdog Millionaire,” is the hyperactively charming hotel manager; he’s adorable, if a little puppyish and bouncy. (Of course, in comparison with his co-stars – who have about 500 combined years of stage and movie experience – he’s bound to seem a little juvenile.)

 

 

The movie’s a fairy-tale, naturally; it’s absurd; it would never be like this in real life. India is presented as a kaleidoscopic whirl of life and color; one character refers to it as “squalid,” but we never see the squalor, only the charm.  As an American, I found the setting charming; I don’t know how I’d have reacted if I’d been an Indian. (I felt this way about “Outsourced” too, both the movie and the TV series; I thought they were great fun, but I wondered uneasily the whole time if I was enjoying the culture-clash stuff in the wrong way.)

 

 

But, back at the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, pretty much everything ends happily, and even dinosaurs like Partner and me need our happily-ever-after movies.

 

 

So pop in your dentures and grab your cane and go see it.

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Movie review: “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol”

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Partner and I trundled off to the Lincoln Cinemaworld yesterday to see the new Mission: Impossible movie.  Normally I do not rush right out to see Tom Cruise movies; his personal life creeps me out, and I’m always afraid that Scientology is suddenly going to erupt out of his head and kill everyone in the vicinity.  But the previews looked entertaining, so –


Well, it’s a lot of fun, actually.  It never slows down for a moment.  There really aren’t any extraneous scenes; everything is plot-driven, and I never had any trouble figuring out what was happening, even when people were wrestling in the dark or chasing one another through a blinding sandstorm.


Partner pointed out that Tom (who’s also listed as producer) really doesn’t get mixed up with mediocre projects.  Tom takes care of his own image and products pretty scrupulously (with a few memorable clunkers thrown in; remember “Vanilla Sky”?)  The movie is beautifully directed by Brad Bird, who has mostly done animated films up to now, and who brings a beautiful floating quality to the cinematography.  The acting – well, Tom is mostly doing stunt work in this one.  His acting here appears to be mostly based on Mark Harmon’s character in “NCIS,” who registers most of his emotions by squinting cryptically off to one side of the camera.  (Harmon usually purses his lips as he does this; Cruise parts his lips in a sort of incredulous smile.  At least it’s different.)  Simon Pegg, of whom I am very fond, plays Comedy Relief; he overdoes it a little, but in a movie with this much going on, I suppose you need a maximum dose of everything.  Jeremy Renner, whom you will recall from “The Hurt Locker” and “The Town,” with his off-kilter good looks and nice dramatic intensity (and massively developed forearms, which I assume he built up while playing Hawkeye in the upcoming “Avengers” movie), adds most of the dramatic interest.  And Tom Wilkinson, of whom I am very fond, has a (sadly) brief role.


The movie made me nostalgic.  It reminded me of staying up late when I was a kid to watch the original “Mission: Impossible” on TV, with Peter Graves and Martin Landau and Barbara Bain.  It had a lot of the same improbable gimmicks: the clocks ticking down to zero while our heroes are trying to rewire the bomb, the disguises, the unheard-of gadgetry, the elaborate deceptions foiled just because someone arrives at the hotel ten minutes earlier than planned.  There’s a James Bond element too: the international espionage thing, the breathless scampering around the world (Budapest! Moscow! Dubai! Mumbai!).


And there’s a joke running through this movie that I sort of enjoyed: the equipment keeps breaking down.  The magical mask-making machine short-circuits; the communications network drops their calls; even the thing that’s supposed to self-destruct in five seconds needs a bop on the head from Tom.


The theater wasn’t very full yesterday: apparently everyone was watching that new exorcism thing.  But “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol” is a romp, and a perfectly acceptable way to spend the afternoon. 


(Note: as the movie ended, we heard a woman behind us sobbing.  My goodness!  Some people take their movies so seriously!)

Don't worry, Movie Lady. Tom will be back in another Mission Impossible movie.

I guarantee it.

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Movie review: "The Debt"

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Partner and I saw “The Debt” this past weekend. We mostly went for Helen Mirren, who is good in pretty much anything she does. (If you haven't seen “The Queen,” drop your needlepoint and rush out to rent it, or something.) For once, I didn't know the movie's plot in advance; I only knew generally that it involved some Israeli Mossad agents who were reactivated to complete some unfinished business.

Who doesn't like a spy thriller? A good spy thriller, I mean, with a little subtlety: good, and evil, and the huge gray area in-between. And huge symbols: the Iron Curtain, the Berlin Wall. Drab central-European landscapes and nondescript cities – Prague? Budapest? Berlin? Churches, dilapidated castles . . .

You know I hate suspense. I usually make a point of learning the ending in advance, just so I don't have to suffer. Well, I didn't see this one coming, so for once I had the pleasure of being surprised. The movie has a very neat twist about halfway through, which I did not expect.

But: the story is morally very cut-and-dried, good and evil, Mossad versus Nazi-butcher-in-hiding: how much more clear-cut can you get? We know who's good and who's evil.

But, then again, no we don't.

There are some big plot holes here, which require some major suspension of disbelief.

But, in this movie, it's all about the casting.

Each of the three main characters is seen in 1965 and in 1997, and so we require two actors for each. David, the sensitive soul, is Sam Worthington (who spent most of his time as a blue long-tailed alien in “Avatar”), and also Ciaran Hinds, who was the imperious Julius Caesar in the TV series “Rome.” Both are staring and vulnerable and very moving. Stefan, the pushy officious leader, is Marton Csokas, who was Celeborn in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, and who's very good (and also very handsome, and nice in a tight t-shirt) here, and also as Tom Wilkinson, that really stellar actor who can do pretty much anything. And Rachel, the key member of the group, is Jessica Chastain (whom I only recently met in “The Help,” as a vulnerable young housewife), and in later life, Helen Mirren, about whom I need say very little.

Lovely, all six of them.

But I need to say a word about the wonderful (and heretofore unknown to me) Danish actor Jesper Christensen.

His was a difficult role: a reworking of the Josef Mengele story. We first meet him as a doctor in East Berlin in 1965, and he is considerate and gentle and kind. We know he has butchered babies and children, back in the concentration camps; we try to keep all of that in mind. But he is enormously manipulative, and ultimately vicious. He uses his voice, his soft gentle reasonable voice, to accomplish everything. Early on in the movie, I thought: My god, he's the serpent in the Garden of Eden. He's using words to make these nice young people doubt themselves, and do things they shouldn't do.

This movie: it's a good old time in the cinema. There are some nasty bloody scenes, but you can shield your eyes. I did.

Go see it.

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