Review: FROST/NIXON / Ron Howard (2008)
December 3rd, 2008 by Scott Marks
Nixon/Frost (2008)
Directed by Ron Howard
Written by Peter Morgan from his play
Starring: Michael Sheen, Frank Langella, Sam Rockwell, Oliver Platt, Kevin Bacon, Rebecca Hall, Toby Jones, Patty McCormack and Clint Howard
Running Time: 122 min.
Photographed by Salvatore Totino in 
Rating: 
If nothing else, Frost/Nixon answers one burning question: Whatever became of Patty McCormack, the pig-tailed demon in The Bad Seed. She’s all grow’d up now and playing Pat Nixon in Ron Howard’s made-for-TV blow-up of the sensational 1977 video dismantling of America’s 37th president.
In the closing minutes of Frost/Nixon, James Reston, Jr. (Sam Rockwell) admits to underestimating what it was that made the Nixon/Frost confrontation such a smashing success: the reductive power of the close-up. If I were Ron Howard, I wouldn’t end the picture by drawing attention to what I’d been doing for the past 115 minutes.
Howard wasn’t the first director to have his fingerprints on this project. Mike Nichols, George Clooney, Sam Mendes, Bennett Miller and even Marty were all in the running. (Everybody’s first choice on every film is Him. I bet Marty even got an offer to direct New York Minute.) Based on a play that was based on a TV interview, Ron Howard was the natural choice. (All kidding aside, Mike Nichols could have done wonders with this script.)
Perhaps the British accent fooled me growing up, but I don’t remember David Frost being this much of a lightweight. (Peter Cook dubbed Frost “the bubonic plagiarist.”) According to Howard’s vision of the events surrounding the historic interviews, David Frost comes off as an unprepared, unengaged, money mad pleasure seeker. Instead of spending the night before the interview cramming for the defining moment of his career, Frost is at the Cineramadome attending the premier of The Slipper and the Rose, a film he executive produced. He was still searching for sponsors days after the interviews began filming.
According to the film, the trio of media heavyweights Frost surrounded himself with were so formidable, the talk show host felt no need to brush up on his Nixon. Veteran reporter Bob Zelnick (Oliver Platt) was Frost’s strategist and executive editor of the interviews. John Birt (Matthey Macfadyen) produced the show and James Reston, Jr., the acerbic Nixon-hating author and lecturer, was hired as Frost’s writer. Reston’s diatribe against Nixon is pitched to a modern audience fed up with the current commander in chief.
Frost had a reputation as a womanizer, but the seemingly fictitious Caroline Cushing character, played by the comely Rebecca Hall, appears to be a composite created by the filmmakers for purposes of eye candy. Ms. Hall quietly stole the show in Woody Allen’s Vicky Christina Barcelona. Under Howard’s lazy eye she does little more than change and model the Nino’s form fitting, authentic to the period costumes.
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Tags: david frost, Film Review, frank langella, frost nixon, frost/nixon, frost/nixon review, michael sheen, Movie Review, Richard Nixon, Ron Howard, Trailer, VideoFiled Under Reviews, Theatrical
“Funny Games” earns jeers from critics and audiences
March 21st, 2008 by Scott Marks
“I know it’s basically Xerography, but please come see my movie!”
The critics rave over Michael Haneke’s useless remake of his own Funny Games:
“The fact that it features fine performances, talented direction and some moments of genuine suspense only makes the end product that much more grotesque and appalling.” — Richard Roeper, Ebert & Roeper
“That this relentless barrage of psychological and physical torture is extremely well made and powerfully performed — Watts hurls herself into her physically demanding role with heroic conviction — somehow makes it worse.” — David Ansen, Newsweek
“Haneke’s assault on our fantasy lives is shallow, unimaginative, and glacially unengaged — a sucker punch without the redeeming passion of punk.” — David Edelstein, New York Magazine
“It’s one of the most repugnant, unpleasant, sadistic movies ever made. No matter what virtues of craft one can find within, no matter what themes lie beneath, Funny Games is aesthetically indefensible.” — Andy Klein, Los Angeles City Beat
“In addition to being borderline unendurable, Funny Games is inexplicable, and I don’t mean in any philosophical sense.” — Joe Morganstern, Wall Street Journal
“I would absolutely defend Haneke’s right to relaunch his broadside on our voyeuristic vices, but he’s not keeping up with the times; he’s behind them. “– Anthony Lane, The New Yorker
Michael Haneke’s attempt to re-trace his steps frame by frame seems to be infuriating just about all who see it, and it’s not just the critics. According to Variety, “audiences have been quick to voice their displeasure as well, loudly complaining during overtly manipulative portions at some screenings.”
America’s disgust delights the folks over at Warner Independent Pictures, the film’s distributor. “We always expected it would have a polarized response,” says WIP bigwig Polly Cohen, who admits she was both repulsed and compelled by the film. “It’s for a very specific audience.”
Is it? Certainly thugs like the ones depicted in the film won’t go near any art house playing this film. Nor will the promise of unrelenting nihilism likely attract the intelligentsia. The only audience Funny Games will draw is most likely to be comprised of curiosity seekers and completists.
The film, which was produced by it’s star Naomi Watts, opened to moderately respectful numbers givin its limited release, generating $520,000 at 289 theaters for a $1,799 per-screen average in its opening weekend. A patronizing Mr. Haneke said he remade the film because American audiences, too lazy to read subtitles, needed to heed it’s message that violence is bad. In spite of that, Ms. Cohen expects it to to do even better in Europe. “We realized with American tastes it could go either way,” she says.
Don’t hold a tag day for Mr. Haneke just yet. Another one of his films is set to be “reinterpreted” for unwashed American audiences. Plans are in the works at Universal studios for a Ron Howard remake of Cache. Let’s see how the director’s ego feels about remakes after Opie’s by-the-numbers version rakes in more money than all of Haneke’s European features combined.
Tags: Critical response, FUNNY GAMES, FUNNY GAMES USA, FUNNY_GAMES_USA, Michael Haneke, Remake, Reviews, Ron HowardFiled Under News