Battle of the Sexes, directed by Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris, written by Simon Beaufoy, 2h 1min
For most of us, this is a very familiar story. Loud-mouthed Bobby Riggs, 30 years past his prime, challenges Billie Jean King, the top female tennis player and ardent feminist, to prove even he can beat the best women players.
The movie takes you behind the scenes of what became a total spectacle in the Astrodome with King entering on a flowered float and Riggs wearing a Sugar Daddy candy outfit.
What the trailers and ads for Battle of the Sexes don’t tell you is that there is a major subplot about King’s first relationship with a woman. Even with some gratuitous bedroom scenes, the movie needs the diversion. There is not enough about the tennis to carry a whole film, particularly since anyone who sees it probably knows the outcome of the match.
There are decent performances by Emma Stone as King and Steve Carrell as Riggs. Elizabeth Shue is very well cast as Riggs’s society matron wife. But without much drama – we know King wins and that she is gay – and at two hours, the movie drags. And because strength and technology give today's players such power, the tennis seems especially uninspired.
Grade: C+
American Made, directed by Doug Liman, written by Gary Spinelli, 1h 55min
Barry Seal (Tom Cruise) is an airline pilot and so bored with his job that he puts his plane into a dive just for the fun of it, throwing passengers and stewardesses around the cabin.
Aware of his ability and his restlessness, the CIA contacts Seal to run reconnaissance flights over Central America. After he becomes a courier to deliver U.S. money to Noriega in Panama, he is recruited by the Medellín drug cartel to shuttle cocaine to the states.
Ignoring his drug involvement, the CIA moves Seal and his family to a small town in Arkansas where they can train the Nicaraguan Contras that he and his crew fly in. Seal is making so much money that he has overwhelmed the small banks in the town of Mena and has to bury the excess cash in his back yard.
What he doesn’t realize is that he is in way over his head. A great pilot, but naïve, Seal is a target of the DEA and a pawn of the drug cartel, the CIA and even Oliver North, already plotting Iran-Contra.
His demise is assured, but the movie is so well written and well paced that you are totally entertained. Cruise is Cruise, but he’s perfectly cast as a guy with some abilities and some smarts, just not enough of either.
Don’t stay away from this because you don't like Cruise with his limited range and idiotic Scientology, like I almost did. Nothing deep here, just a lot of fun.
Grade: A-
Victoria and Abdul, directed by Stephen Frears, screenplay by Lee Hall, based on the book by Shrabani Basu, 1h 51min
Why should you care anything about Queen Victoria? She presided over the creation of the relatively short-lived and cruel British Empire, and her starchy, intolerant mien named an era that seems dated and ridiculous today.
But not so fast! It doesn’t have to be relevant if it’s a good enough story and this is. More a vignette than a full feature, Victoria and Abdul is the mostly true tale (as the introduction tells us) of the curious relationship between the Queen of England and one of her subjects, a poor young Indian who previously was a clerk in a prison.
Her husband Prince Albert has been dead for decades, and Victoria despairs of her craven court’s posturing. Slurping her soup and falling asleep at the sumptuous royal meals, she has lost all zest for life and is profoundly lonely. The handsome Abdul Karim (Ali Fazal), delivering a commemorative coin, catches her eye.
He soon becomes her confidant and closest advisor, driving the rest of the court and her son, Bertie, the future Edward VII, mad. The struggle between Abdul and her courtiers, and its racial undertones, provides the small amount of tension in the plot.
The movie is carried by Judi Dench as the Queen. From her sloppy table manners to her girlish delight in Abdul, Dench gives Victoria a dimension that may be more fanciful that factual, but it’s necessary to make her human and the relationship with Abdul believable.
The other strength of the film is the marvelous re-creation of the costumes and grandeur of late 19th century court life. As affected as it all is, the pageantry of that era, like the ducal splendor of Downton Abby, holds a special fascination for us democratic colonists.
Grade: B+
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