Tag Archives: Bill Condon

Tale of Three Pretties

Kiss of the Spider Woman

by George Wolf

Trusting Bill Condon to bring the Kiss of the Spider Woman stage musical to the big screen is an understandable choice. With Dreamgirls, Chicago and even Beauty and the Beast, the man has shown he knows how to write and/or direct the necessary pop and pizazz.

He brings both again this time, just enough to offset what’s lacking on the political intrigue side of the ledger.

Based on the 1993 Tony Award-winning adaptation of Manuel Piug’s 1976 novel (which also spawned the 1985 film version), Condon’s Kiss keeps the core story intact. It’s set after Argentina’s coup d’état in the late 70s, when the military dictatorship began rounding up scores of political opponents.

One of these activists, Valentín (Diego Luna), is sharing a jail cell with Molina (Tonatiuh), a window dresser who has been convicted of “public indecency” with another man. To brighten their spirits, Molina begins regaling Valentín with the plot of one of his favorite movie musicals starring the glamorous Ingrid Luna (Jennifer Lopez).

All three actors impress in multiple roles, as Condon crafts the fantasy song-and-dance numbers with the staging, visual panache and aspect ratio to recall the golden age of Hollywood. Shifting often from lavish sequence to jail cell squalor, the film’s two plot lines begin to mirror each other, and some layers of love, loss, and sacrifice grow stronger than others.

The fantasy throwbacks, queer and Latin influences pull each other along nicely, but Condon never quite establishes the prison as a setting with real grit or tangible danger. Granted, it’s tricky to walk this line without recalling too much Man of La Mancha. But the lengths which Condon goes to differentiate the worlds visually only makes those slippery tone shifts more curious.

Is it entertaining? It is, even at just over two hours. JLo is award-worthy yet again, Luna is quietly heroic and Tonatiuh (Carry-On) delivers a smashing and star-making breakout turn. Give in to them all, and Kiss of the Spider Woman can get you lost in the fantasy.

Big Top PT

The Greatest Showman

by Hope Madden

In so many ways, The Greatest Showman is a wildly inappropriate vision of the life of PT Barnum—a politician, spokesman for temperance, abolitionist and, above all things, an outsized promoter and self-promoter. He’d been all these things for decades before he dipped his toe into the circus industry, but what fun is that story?

Let’s rewrite. We need romance, lessons, heartwarming children and resolvable, tidy drama. Barnum as a tot, working dirty-faced and split-shoed besides his father, tailoring for Dickensian clients and wages. But he has dreams. Big dreams.

Yes, the film simplifies the actual story of Barnum’s life to its barest lessons-to-be-learned minimum. The oversimplification spills into the core conflict (of many) in the man’s actual history: his presentation and monetization of “human curiosities.”

But maybe that’s where this movie is closest to the truth. It is selling you an enjoyable time, spinning your head with breathless setpieces, color, glamour, surprise, happiness. Sleight of hand. And at the same time selling the tale that, no matter how Barnum may have used these people for his own profit, this is really a story of empowerment.

“Some critics might have even called this show a celebration of humanity,” says Barnum’s harshest critic, New York Herald writer James Gordon Bennett.

As genuinely if superficially enjoyable as The Greatest Showman is, there is something unseemly in embracing so tidy a view.

Still, Hugh Jackman—maybe the most charismatic performer in modern film—is in great voice in yet another big, big musical. His earnest likeability and exuberance convince you to disregard your instincts on this film just as surely as his Barnum uses the same tactics to lure uncertain outcasts out of the shadows and onto the stage.

Michelle Williams fares less well as Barnum’s wife Charity, saddled as she is with the bottomless devotion and forgiveness that is the mark of the underwritten spouse character. Rebecca Ferguson mines for emotional clarity in a small role and a magnetic Keala Settle is a natural fit for the heart and soul of Barnum’s “curiosities.”

Director Michael Gracey, working from a script by Jenny Bicks and Bill Condon, crafts a Moulin Rouge-esque vision that transports you, which is appropriate when tackling the life of PT Barnum.

It also works to convince you that all this—the spotlight, the manipulation, the exploitation, the laughter and the admiration—was the best possible thing for Barnum’s performers.

Barnum might have liked that spin, too, but maybe that’s the problem.





Ask the Dishes

Beauty and the Beast

by George Wolf

Word is, the early plan for Disney’s live-action remake of their 1991 classic Beauty and the Beast did not involve a musical production.

Um, that’s crazy.

That soundtrack from Alan Menken and Howard Ashman is in the team picture of Disney’s all-time best, and director Bill Condon politely reminded studio bosses that without it…what’s the point? Sanity prevailed, and Condon brings the familiar tale to life again with a lush, layered, often gorgeous vision, celebrating the brilliant songs that helped make the original the first animated film to garner a Best Picture Oscar nomination.

Condon’s directing his first musical since the excellent Dreamgirls, and he hasn’t lost the instinct for staging a show-stopper or two. His camera pans and zooms during “Gaston,” revealing a village full of buoyant choreography, while the title song gets an intimate, classic treatment that builds upon a possible decades long investment in these characters.

“Be Our Guest,” the early request from various castle housewares to the captive Belle (Emma Watson), emerges as a joyous Catch-22. We can’t wait for Lumiere (Ewan McGregor) and the gang to start singing…but it is a hard act to follow.

Watson delivers a spunky Belle who’s more industrious than the animated version, yet at times bland next to the gregarious Gaston (a scene-stealing Luke Evans) and the often distracting face of the Beast (Dan Stevens). Even as wondrous visuals fill frame after frame (see the 3-D IMAX version if you can), CGI facial features can’t quite keep up, and choosing this tract over makeup artistry feels like an ambitious misstep.

The supporting cast, including Emma Thompson, Ian McKellan, Kevin Kline, Audra McDonald and Josh Gad, is delightful at every turn, and shows more welcome diversity from Disney. The brouhaha over the sexuality of LeFou (Gad) proves as inane as expected, though it does add some sly gravity to Gaston’s campaign against the Beast. As he rallies the villagers by exclaiming there is “a threat to our very existence!” Gaston leans in to LeFou and asks, “Do you want to be next?” Well played.

Add to this a diverse array of townspeople, two high-profile mixed-race couples, and LeFou’s partners during the dance finale, and Disney’s path to progress grows more concrete.

Devotees of the original Beauty and the Beast will have their nostalgia rewarded, but Condon’s vision has the flair and substance to earn its own keep. Though not quite as magical, there is something here that wasn’t there before.

Call it maturity, call it pizzazz….or just ask the dishes.

Verdict-3-5-Stars

 

 

 





Riddle Me This

Mr. Holmes

by Hope Madden

The last time the great Ian McKellen donned the lead role in a film for director Bill Condon, he was rightfully nominated for an Oscar. In their collaboration Gods and Monsters, McKellen played director James Whale in his waning years, trying to remember for himself and articulate for others the difference between who he was as a man and who the world believed him to be.

Director and star tread a similar path with their latest effort, Mr. Holmes. A 93-year-old Sherlock faces his mortality and – worse still for the brainiac detective – encroaching senility. Attempting to battle enfeeblement, he tries to remember the details of his final case – facts clouded by the published story and subsequent film written by his longtime friend, Dr. Watson.

Though the film does stalk a mystery, don’t expect clues, lurid suspicions and a tidy conclusion. Rather, Condon’s effort, based on Mitch Cullin’s 2005 novel A Slight Trick of the Mind, puzzles over bigger questions about morality, fallibility, regret, and the regenerative power of storytelling.

The retired sleuth spends his waning years in a Sussex seaside farmhouse tending bees and basking in the admiration of Roger (Milo Parker), the son of his housekeeper, Mrs. Munro (Laura Linney).

Linney feels slightly miscast as the put-upon housekeeper, aware of her own intellectual limitations and envious of her son’s affections for her employer. Her accent is off-putting and her intelligence is perhaps too fierce to be believably buried inside this character, but she certainly finds the frail humanity beneath Mrs. Munro’s sturdy exterior.

The tale is a bit soft-hearted and not nearly as cerebral as fans of the sleuth might hope. Don’t expect the expected – there is no Watson, no deerstalker, no pipe. Sherlock’s deductive prowess does come into play now and again, but even as logic continues to form and inform his actions, he’s developing an admiration for emotion – even for fiction.

Condon’s pace is slow and his storytelling is not as crisp as it should be, but McKellen soars nonetheless. With effortless grace and honesty he delivers a turn full of fear, courage, regret, need, and joy. It’s a masterful performance.

Verdict-3-5-Stars