***½/**** Image B Sound B Extras B
starring Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson, Andy Garcia, Derek Jacobi
screenplay by Scott Frank
directed by Kenneth Branagh
by Jarrod Chambers A convicted murderer on death row, about to be executed. A stolen pair of scissors, he lunges–a woman wakes up screaming. It was all a dream, or was it? The door opens, a flash of lightning, illuminating a silver cross dangling from the neck of an attendant nun.
Image A Sound B+ Extras B+
“New Blood,” “Cruel Sea,” “Time of the Titans,” “Giant of the Skies,” “Spirits of the Ice Forest,” “Death of a Dynasty”
by Bill Chambers Walking With Dinosaurs is such a fantastic idea for a television show that two thoughts kept returning as I waded through it:
***½/****
starring Ralph Fiennes, Liv Tyler, Toby Stephens, Lena Headey
screenplay by Peter Ettedgui and Michael Ignatieff, based on the poem "Yevgeny Onegin" by Alexander Pushkin
directed by Martha Fiennes
by Bill Chambers "When will the devil take me?" he asks rhetorically in a lulling voiceover. The spoiled title character of Onegin (pronounced Oh-negg-in) is waiting on death to relieve him after a lifetime of rapacious, caddish behaviour has left him soul-sick. Martha Fiennes's debut feature is–quite literally–filmed poetry (it's based on the epic Russian poem by Alexander Pushkin), a profound study of regret, of how we confuse shame with guilt.
***/**** Image A Sound B Extras A-
starring Ian McKellen, Brendan Fraser, Lynn Redgrave, Lolita Davidovich
screenplay by Bill Condon, based on the novel Father of Frankenstein by Christopher Bram
directed by Bill Condon
by Bill Chambers Retired filmmaker James Whale (an uncanny Ian McKellen) invites his gardener, a young ex-Marine named Clay Boone (Brendan Fraser), into the drawing-room for drinks and cigars. The scene purposely recalls the one from Whale’s The Bride of Frankenstein in which Karloff’s Creature accepts a lonely blind man’s hospitality, only to sour things by erupting at the sight of an open flame because he’s terrified of fire. Likewise, hulky Clay cuts short his time with Whale when the director’s conspicuous, some might say flaming, homosexuality begins to disgust him. “Same difference,” James tells Clay. “Fear and disgust. All part of the same great gulf that stands between us.”