Sunday, January 9, 2011

"THE FIGHTER" -- Sunday, January 10 -- ****

'The Fighter" is a good movie about the need for a boxer "Irish" Micky Ward (played by Mark Wahlburg) from Lowell, Massachusetts to break free from the destructive relationship with his brother Dick Eklund (played by Christian Bale) once the "Pride of Lowell" (now beset by self-destructive habits including drug addiction),  his family and his own lack of confidence.  It is well-acted and well-written -- and for me, a bit hard to watch.  Not because of the fighting violence, but also because of the family dysfunction that plagues the mild-souled fighter and from which he is loathe to break free.  But break free he finally does -- though not quite in the way I might expect.  His love interest (Amy Adams) is a truth-teller and spit-fire and helps him see the light, but in the end, it is on his terms -- and unexpected ones, at that.  The story is woven around a documentary and is well told and well filmed and directed by David Russell.  Four stars from me.

"The King's Speech" -- January 10th, 2010

Fantastic movie.  Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush are wonderful and the film is extremely well made.  The core of the film is the relationship between the soon-to-be George VI of England in the 1930's and his speech therapist -- without whom it seems the stuttering Windsor prince (who is to be king by default) is unable to connect to his soon-to-be subjects.  The title of the movie refers both to the king's actual ability to speak and to the particular speech he needed to make in order to rally the English to war in 1939.  The delivery of this speech is the culmination of the movie -- and a wonderfully climactic one.

Although the mode of connection between the two men is speech, it is at base a therapeutic relationship.  The speech therapist, Lionel Logue (whose journals have evidently just been discovered) is an Australian -- a lower-middle-class-professional Australian, at that.  Logue insists on working with his secret royal client on a first-name basis -- calling him "Bertie" -- and tries to break through the painful walls of formality, sterility and cruelty surrounding his famous client.

The result is an honest and vulnerable human relationship that allows for the flowering of the man who really wants, despite his trepidations, to fulfill his responsibility to family and country (as opposed to his famously abdicating brother, the Prince of Wales, who leaves the throne to be with "the woman he loves"). 

Fantastic, as I said.  Five stars, Marie's Movies.