The King's Speech (2010) Review

             Out of all the fears that a person could have, the one that has been consistently named the most common is the fear of public speaking.  There are more people who fear talking in front of a large group of listeners than there are those who fear snakes, spiders, falling from great heights, and other greater threats to life.  And why is this?  I believe that glossophobia (the technical name for the fear of public speaking) ties into many other common social phobias, like the fear of being judged or the fear of being watched by strangers.  I know that I have a certain amount of glossophobia myself, and it is most prevalent whenever I have to deliver a presentation to a group of professors and students.  I overcome this fear by convincing myself that I am a confident speaker and I know exactly what I’m going to say.

This might be harder to do for other people, especially if they face some sort of obstacle whenever they talk.  Like King George VI, the featured person in the award-winning biopic, The King’s Speech.  King George VI, or Bertie (as he is affectionately called in the movie) was thrust into the role as the King of England, who served as the prestigious face and voice of the British government.  The problem, though, is that Bertie was a stammerer ever since childhood, and speaking effectively in public became an impossibility for him.  It may seem like a small problem for most, but I know enough people who stammer to know that it is one that shouldn’t be taken lightly.  It was especially true for Bertie, whose title required him to make big, important speeches meant to spur a nation into action.

Bertie’s triumph over his detrimental speech impediment is surely an inspirational tale, namely to David Seidler, the screenwriter for The King’s Speech.  Seidler, too, grew up with a stutter, and he considered King George VI as a role model.  Seidler was fascinated by the way this king delivered such impassionate speeches, despite having the same problems with speaking that he had.  Seidler, along with director Tom Hooper, were dead-set on making a movie that accurately and reverently told the story of the king’s journey to the throne.

Seidler and Hooper were very meticulous with the biographical aspects of Bertie’s ordeal.  While this might have appeased history buffs, it does lead to my biggest complaint about the movie.  Since it is VERY based on true events, the movie itself feels a bit slow and predictable.  I don’t think it’s the screenwriter’s fault, nor is it the director’s.  It’s just the way the story plays out.  I mean, it’s a historical movie about a guy giving speeches; it could only be so exciting.  Combined with the brown and gray that is splashed across all of the scenery and costumes, and you could have a rather unstimulating film.  But notice that I said “could”.  While The King’s Speech could easily be chocked up as a dusty old historical drama, the film actually transcends the genre through its brilliant performances and its inspired cinematography.

The star of the film is Colin Firth, who plays the stuttering royalty, Bertie.  Firth won the 2010 Oscar for Best Actor with this role, and it’s not too hard for me to imagine why.  Firth delivers an excellent, extremely thoughtful performance here.  His faux-stuttering is very believable, and his character draws in so much sympathy from the audience.  You can feel, through the way Bertie forces out his short, to-the-point sentences, that this character had suffered a lifetime of ridicule and embarrassment from his speech impediment and that his voice had been silenced for a long time.  He was a vulnerable soul who had to put up a tough front in order to protect his royal family’s name.  Firth’s portrayal of Bertie is truthful, poignant, and easily memorable.

Accompanying Bertie in this film is his speech therapist and “bromantic” interest, Lionel Logue, played superbly by the ever-entertaining Geoffrey Rush.  It’s the developing friendship between Bertie and Lionel that gives this movie its heart.  Lionel tries many times to develop a familial bond with Bertie, by calling him by his first name (a big no-no within the royal family), introducing him to his wife and kids, and sharing deep personal conversations with him.  Lionel is almost a father figure to Bertie, which is played out literally when Lionel allows the king to work on a model plane that his sons were working on earlier.  You get a sense that Lionel is not in this for the money or prestige of helping a member of the royal family.  He simply wants Bertie to overcome his personal demons and accept his marvelous fate as heir to the Royal Throne.  The relationship has many ups and downs within the story, but it never feels contrived or unrealistic; it just feels like a true friendship.

There are other memorable performances here as well.  While I’m not normally a particularly huge Helena Bonham Carter fan, she did give a certain air of elegance into her role as Bertie’s wife, Elizabeth, that is worth commending.  Guy Pearce, whom I’m always happy to see in movies, plays the role of Bertie’s more fortunate brother, King Edward VIII, who was so arrogant and mean to Bertie, I just loved to hate him.  And finally, I want to mention Timothy Spall, who is more commonly known as That Guy from That One Thing.  He had a small and yet important part as Sir Winston Churchill, and I find it funny that he had played that same role before in Jackboots on Whitehall.

I don’t usually gush over cinematography in a film, but I have to say that the camera work in The King’s Speech is FANTASTIC!  There are moments in this film in which I was completely in awe as to how beautiful the shots looked, and that’s saying something for a historical drama that largely takes place in indoor corridors.  In one particular scene, Bertie and Lionel walk through a park together during a thick fog.  The camera follows them and swings around them, and yet it still manages to capture the fog in such a mysterious and foreboding way.  Also, in many of the interview scenes between Bertie and Lionel, the camera locks in at interesting and fixed angles between the two people in the conversation.  While one might consider comparing this style to a Wes Anderson film, I find that there is an energy found in these shots that is unique onto itself.

And remember the brownish-gray scenery I complained about earlier in this review?  Well, sometimes it actually served as a great supplement to the sharp cinematography.  Many of the scenes in this film take place in large, echoing halls and empty rooms.  Yet while the physical space is ample, the camera shots are almost always cropped up to Bertie’s face, especially when he is making a speech.  Shots like these apparently emphasize that while he is physically distanced from his listeners, he still feels the pressure and discomfort of forcing himself to speak to them.  This technique replicates the claustrophobic sensation that Bertie must have faced whenever he had to give a public speech.

Finally, I want to mention the great score for this film, composed by Alexandre Desplat.  The best compliment I could give to a film score is that it perfectly blends into the action of the movie without being noticed, and that’s what the score does in The King’s Speech.  But when it is noticeable, boy, is it stupendous!  In particular, when Lionel is helping Bertie practice for his coronation at Westminster Abbey, the music swells up to an uplifting and joyous pace that can’t help but make you smile.  This is certainly one of the best scores I’ve heard in a movie in a long time.

The story of this movie does not offer much to those who are not history buffs or cinephiles, but those who want to give this film a chance will be rewarded.  I’m sure The King’s Speech will become a required viewing in every high-school British history class in America, but there is so much more to admire about this film besides its historicity.  There are the top-notched acting performances, the energetic and breathtakingly beautiful cinematography, and the wonderful dialogue written by a man with great adoration for the real-life people who inspired this movie.  The King’s Speech is no less than absolutely brilliant and greatly inspirational, and it’s no wonder why it won the 2010 Academy Award for Best Picture.

Rating:  4 Stars

Distributed by The Weinstein Company

            Running Time: 119 minutes

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) Review

5 Good Things About Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

1.         Once again, the production and the CGI effects look very polished.  Plus, practical effects are used alongside a lot of the CGI, adding a little bit of organicity to the otherwise synthetic action sequences.

2.         The cinematography does feature a lot of nice, bright colors all throughout.

3.         I hate to sound like a pig here, but Megan Fox is lookin’ pretty good in this movie.  Megan, if you are reading this, call me!

4.            Gundam Suit Optimus Prime does look very BA at the very end of this flick, with all of his cannons and extra armor.  Too bad he discards all of it almost immediately, but oh well.

5.         This is a good movie to watch if you enjoy putting silverware inside blenders.

20 Horrible, Gut-Wrenching, Facepalming Things About Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen that Make Me Want to Remodel the Walls of My House with My Fists

1.         As it is in the previous movie, the editing is horrendous and sometimes even sickening.  Whereas I could somewhat see what action is happening in Transformers, in this movie, I have no idea what’s going on.

2.         The action and violence makes absolutely no sense, other than the fact that it might impress an 8-year-old’s brain.  The moral of this whole movie is that a hard, robotic punch to the face can solve any problem.  That’s a good lesson to live by, right?

3.         I care about none of the characters in this movie.  NONE OF THEM.  This film makes absolutely no attempt at character depth.  How could I possibly get excited about the violence and conflict if I don’t care about what happens to any of the involved characters?  They could all die and I wouldn’t feel anything.  And do you know why I don’t care about them?

4.         Most of the characters are SO ANNOYING!  Sam, Sam’s parents, Leo, Simmons, the Astronomy professor, Galloway, some of the Autobots, some of the Decepticons, they all unbearable and they all need to shut the hell up!  And whoever isn’t annoying is annoyingly boring, such as Mikaela, Lennox, Epps, pretty much everyone in the special forces, most of the robots, etc., etc.  Just horrible, shallow characters all around.

5.         I hate, HATE, Shia LaBeouf in this movie.  This human squirrel-monkey returns with 3 times the manic overacting he had in Transformers.  How the hell did this idiot become one of the leading action stars of today?!  Josh Duhamel makes more sense as a lead, since his character is the one who is leading the human fight against the Decepticons.  But LaBeouf’s character, Sam, is sort of forced down the audience’s throats as the hero of this whole series.  More on this later.

6.         The script for this movie is, at its very best, horrendous.  I guess the writer’s strike of 2008 was going on when they were working on this script, so Michael Bay actually wrote a good chunk of the action beats and humor by himself.  And boy, how you can tell!  There are needless curse words all over the place, and it just sounds completely childish.  The characters can only say the stupidest, inane crap you can imagine.  The story, in general, feels like it is being told by a drunken frat boy trying to be funny to his dumbass friends, and failing miserably.

7.         And on that same note, the “comedy” in this movie is just plain terrible.  Nothing good to say about it.  It’s all fart jokes, humping jokes, just your basic, tired, idiotic potty humor.  I can’t think of a single joke that worked for me, and anyone who knows me knows that I LOVE my toilet humor.  Everything is so immature and so embarrassing for the writing staff (Kruger, Orci, Kurtzman and Petroni, yeah, I’m calling these losers out!).

8.         The noise, noise, NOISE!  There is so much damn noise in this film!  It’s like putting my ear up next to a car compactor.  And a lot of the noise is random and inconsistent.  One second, a helicopter’s propeller is heard, the next second, the sound is gone and replaced with another sound effect, even though the propeller is still spinning around!

9.         This movie is so loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong.  You’ll be checking your watch at the 1 ½ hour mark, wondering if the film is winding down pretty soon.  Surprise, surprise!  You still have another hour left!  I’ve never seen a movie that took so long to say absolutely nothing.

10.       Despite how well the CGI looks, it is being used to animate very ugly things.  Most of the robots are gunmetal gray and covered with rust and battle damage.  They look very unpleasant.  You will have no idea what’s going on in the giant battles, because body parts and damage are completely unrecognizable.

11.            Interesting female characters?  What the hell are those?!  Almost every woman in this movie is here for exactly two reasons.  I’ll give you a hint as to what they are:  they start with T and A.  And no, I’m not talking about “talent” and “acting ability”.  Mikaela, the female Decepticon, every girl at Sam’s college, they all are objects in here.  They are all eye candy.  None of them contribute to the story, they are all just there to look pretty while the men do all of the movie’s heavylifting.  This movie sets the feminist movement back 20 years, at least.  I’m talking Warrant’s “Cherry Pie”-era here.

12.       Skids and Mudflap.  Imagine, if you will, what would happen if Jazz from the last Transformers movie and Jar Jar Binks had a godless lovechild.  Now, imagine they made a clone of that child.  That is the essence of Skids and Mudflap, who will go down in history as the two worst characters in all of cinema.  I can’t believe that Michael Bay defended them as much as he did.  These two ugly-looking, inner-city bred morons look like they were just picked off from a minstrel show from the 1800’s.  There is so much racial insensitivity radiating off of these ill-conceived dunderheads that you will want to take a shower after watching a single scene of theirs.  Any moment with them is so unpleasant, it’s not even funny.

13.       This is not a kid’s movie at all.  I know that it is PG-13 and all, but you have to admit that this movie is marketed towards kids, and it shouldn’t be.  I’m not usually a prude, but some of the violence that the robots inflict onto each other is kind of gruesome for a PG-13 movie.  Moreover, there are quite a lot of cuss words, sexual references, and derogatory terms being flung around here, due to the terribly written script.  Added with the female and black stereotypes, and you have a very immature, mean-spirited movie.

14.       There’s some sort of a neo-conservative subtext going on with this film.  Optimus Prime wants himself and the rest of the Autobots to stay on Earth and protect the humans from the Decepticons.  However, the U.S. government, with all of their horrible nasty bureaucracy, wants them to leave, because they think that the Autobots are the cause for the Decepticons’ interest in Earth.  Stupid government, run by a newly-elected Democratic president!  What are you going to do without your best chances of survival?  You can’t negotiate with Decepticons!  (Yes, they actually talk about negotiating with Decepticons.)  Also, there was a point in this film in which Megatron knocks down an American flag for no reason whatsoever.  Unpatriotic bastard!  Let’s put a boot up his ass!  That’s the American way!

15.       And while we are talking about this scene, Optimus Prime refuses to tell the U.S. government about the Autobots’ advanced weaponry.  Why?  It is clearly established that human-made weapons are ineffective against the Decepticons.  The reason that Optimus Prime gives is that he is aware of humans’ capacity for destruction, and heavier weapons could potentially destroy the Earth if there was a war.  You know, Optimus, it is kind of hard to sound like the harbinger of peace when you have multiple machine-guns and rocket launchers mounted on your back.  By the way, Optimus, how is that peace thing going in your home planet, Cybertron?  Self-righteous prick!

16.       There are so many damn Transformers this time around.  It was much simpler in the first movie:  a handful of Autobots here, a handful of Decepticons there.  Now, there are Transformers coming out from under the woodwork, and there is not near enough time to establish them or give them interesting characteristics.  I’m pretty sure most of them don’t have a single line of dialogue.  Refer back to #3.

17.       The ending is so anticlimactic.  Optimus Prime comes back to life, he kicks everyone’s ass, Sam and Mikaela kiss, the end.  Could they have at least given us a final battle that lasted longer than 2 minutes?

18.       This movie revealed the one true religion by giving us a glimpse of Robot Heaven.  That’s right.  Sam dies near the end of the movie and he is sent to Robot Heaven.  There, the dead Primes tell Sam that he is the one destined to ruin this franchise – I mean, to save Earth and Cybertron.  So, there you go, Sam is the true hero of this whole franchise, not the battling robots who started all of this crap to begin with.  Why the hell is Sam so special?  He is, after all, “a normal kid with normal problems”, as the lovely script tells us.  And what the hell kind of destiny is that?  Sam’s destined to wake up and stick the Matrix of Leadership into Optimus Prime?  Like no one else nearby could do that?  Damn this movie to hell!

19.       John Turturro shows his ass in a scene.  NEXT.

20.       There are so many moments in this movie where I felt that the characters should have died.  For example, Sam, Mikaela, and Leo are all stuck in a van that was dropped 100 feet in the air by the Decepticons.  The van lands front first into the hard concrete, falls upside down, and yet everyone survived!  HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE!  Also, Sam is beat up and flung around often by the Decepticons, but he no-sells the hit each time and he soon gets back up.  Geez, maybe Sam IS The One!  Or at least he’s the next John Cena.

10 More Horrible Things About Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

21.       Why were Sam’s parents flown to Egypt by the Decepticons?  I understand that they were used to try and trap Sam, but why did the Decepticons fly them all the way from France?  Couldn’t they have just captured and used Mikaela instead?  I guess they had to be there for Sam’s big, obligatory “You gotta let me go, Dad!” scene.

22.       I mentioned this before, but Leo, Sam’s college roommate, is so very annoying!  He spends the entire time in this movie screaming and telling the other characters that they are, in fact, crazy.  Also, he somehow manages to be even more of an unlikable creep than Sam when it comes to girls.  Leo’s only point in this movie is to talk about the Transformers conspiracy, but that is quickly discarded early in the film, making his character ultimately pointless.  Oh, and by the way…

23.            Remember that huge battle that took place in the middle of Mission City?  Remember the millions of dollars of damage that happened and the number of people who witnessed the event?  Well guess what?  The government has covered all of that up!  There is no mainstream consensus that the Transformers even existed, and there are only a scant number of videos taken of the battle posted online.  I have never seen the government do anything this effectively!  Hell, a very similar battle took place in the middle of Shanghai, and everyone is none the wiser!  Good job, government!  I wish you could be this effective in your legislative branch!

24.       When Mikaela catches Sam kissing another girl in his dorm room, she autonomously becomes jealous, despite the fact that he was clearly not enjoying it and the girl was actually a Decepticon.  This misunderstanding lasts way too long in the film.

25.            Mikaela’s line as she kills said Decepticon:  “Kiss this, bitch!”  Ugh.  That hurts.

26.       The whole library scene is just awful.  The characters had no reason to go there, the cinematography was very messy, and all it does is give Michael Bay an excuse to fulfill his lifelong dream and destroy tons educational material.

27.       When the U.S. military collects Optimus Prime’s body, they just plop his dead carcus on the ground, instead of lowering him down with any form of reverence.  No respect, no respect at all!

28.       The midget guard at the Egypt-Jordan border crossing.  Why?  What the hell is funny about that?

29.              The midget guard lets Sam and his gang go on through simply because they are Americans.  I’d like to see you try that at the real Egypt-Jordan border!

30.       There is one, AND ONLY ONE, female Autobot in the entire film with any line of dialogue.  She had one line, then she was immediately destroyed.  What a great female role model!  While she lasted…

10 More Horrible Things About Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, And Then I’m Done, I Swear

31.            Sergeant Epps had a weak throw with an orange smoke grenade, which marked the area for the upcoming air strike, and then he casually tells Lennox about it.  Wouldn’t a better, more authentic reaction be, “RUN!  RUN!  YOU’RE ALL GONNA DIE IF YOU DON’T HAUL ASS NOW!!”?

32.       The farting Decepticon.

33.       The Decepticon with a gun for a penis.

34.       The Decepticon with wrecking balls for a scrotum.

35.            Basically any ridiculous, superfluous Decepticon that I forgot about.

36.       I really thought the tongue-chain thing on the female Decepticon looked stupid.  What the hell kind of purpose does that serve?  How is it an effective tool or weapon at all?  Why is it advantageous for a robot to taste food from a distance?

37.            Humping dogs.

38.            Humping dogs.  The second time around!

39.       Yakov.  Oh my God, why didn’t anyone warn me about this character before I chose to watch this movie?!  He only appears for a few seconds, but his presence resounds throughout the rest of the movie.  He is, without a doubt, the most racist image I could possibly try to comprehend!  I don’t even know what race he is, all I know is that he is brown, he has horrible teeth, he works at a degrading, minimum-wage job at a butcher shop, and his only aspiration in life is to afford new teeth.  WTF, Michael Bay?!  What the hell is wrong with you?!  Have you no shame?!  IS THERE ANYTHING YOU CAN PUT IN THIS MOVIE THAT ISN’T HORRIBLY INSULTING TO ANYONE???!!!!!!

40.       And the absolutely worst part about Revenge of the Fallen, how much money it made.  At around $402 million, it is the 11^th highest grossing film of all time.  Are you kidding me?!  What does that say about us as an American film audience?!  How could we condone such a horrible movie?!  This is one of the worst movie-watching experiences of my life!  Even after all of the bad things about the film that I just listed, I still feel like I am letting it off the hook.  There are so many shitty aspects of Revenge of the Fallen, it probably needs at least a decade of serious film analysis to discover them all.  Plus, it is insulting to many ethnicities, it is insulting to women, and it is insulting to anything with any sort of intelligence.  Please, PLEASE do yourself a huge favor and run away from this film, this filthy, ugly, noisy, annoying, racist, insensitive, shallow, braindead, vapid, nauseating, chaotic, expensive mess of a film!!!!!!

Whew, that felt good.

Rating: 1 Star

Distributed by Paramount Pictures

Studio: DreamWorks Pictures

            Running time:  149 minutes that you will never get back