:: Saturday, November 22, 2003 ::

The big guns are starting to be rolled in for the holiday/Oscar season. I saw "Master and Commander" and give it a 7 of 10 on the Mikometer. I want to give it a higher position, but I tend to give too high a number to too many films, and in retrospect, perhaps M&C isn't as great an acheivement as Roger Ebert led me to believe after hearing him gush about the film on Ebert and Roeper. First: it's chances for Oscar. I don't think it will rate. I love swashbucklers, although this is more a historical "epic" than a simple "pirate" movie. It is tons better than "Pirates of the Carribean", but falls short of "masterful" to my thinking. The story of Captain Jack Aubrey (I almost wrote "Sparrow") who commands a British frigate, the "Surprise", looking for French to fight during the Napoleonic Wars, it is a rousing tale told with gusto and suspense by director Peter Weir. The film seems somewhat hard to follow at points, and there is a lot of camera buffeting meant to simulate the heaving waves. I'm sure I will like this film better when I get the DVD, (I wanted to rewind some of the movie for plot emphasis). Russell Crowe shows he is today's consummate action guy, and plays a mean fiddle as well. I understand he actually learned how to play violin for the captain's and his ship's doctor's musical interludes. One thing that really kept knawing at me as I watched was that Aubrey's friend, Dr. Maturin , the ship's surgeon, is played by Paul Bettany, who played Crowe's nonexistant room-mate in Ron Howard's "A Beautiful Mind". Next week is Howard's "western", "The Missing".
:: Michael Nyiri 6:00 PM Leave a Comment on this Post ::
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