Films featuring
Keira Knightley

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

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★★★★★[/types]]

Before the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, the practice of shooting two sequels in quick succession had a short and unspectacular history. In the eighties, they tried with the Back to the Future movies and, while those sequels had some charms, they were pale imitations of the original. These efforts, however, were masterpieces compared to the Wachowski brothers’ follow-ups to The Matrix, which managed to completely suck all of our good will for the original into that blank space behind Keanu Reeves’ eyes.

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Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

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★★★★★[/types]]

In Hollywood, success comes with its own peculiar brand of curses, most notably the expectation that one will follow that success with a sequel that will match, if not vastly exceed, the creative and commercial accomplishments of the original. Since any successful film is a matter of artistic and technical alchemy outside the control and understanding of us mere mortals, it’s little surprise that most sequels end up being pale, stunted, mutated offspring of the first movie. Continue reading →

Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl

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★★★★★[/types]]

Back when I was a lad, “Pirates of the Caribbean” was about the only cool ride left at Disneyland when the E tickets were all gone or the line for Space Mountain stretched to some time next Tuesday. It was either “Pirates,” “Small World” or head for parking lot. If you had suggested back then that the ride would be made into movie and that movie would not only not be rated G, but the lead actor would also pattern his character after a member of the Rolling Stones, Walt himself probably would have risen from the grave to personally throw your hippie ass out of the park.

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Pride & Prejudice

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★★★★★[/types]]

Jane Austen’s 1813 novel has almost been anointed as the “mother of all romantic comedies.” Certainly, its plot, in which the two protagonists disguise growing affection behind barbed language and outward contempt for each other, is now a well-trod path and was so even in Austen’s day. Lizzie (Keira Knightley) and Mr. Darcy (Matthew Macfadyen) are very much spiritual descendents of Beatrice and Benedick in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing.

It also has to be one of the most adapted novels in cinema history, with eight film versions, including this one, and three television adaptations. Joe Wright’s 2005 film manages to do a masterful job of compressing the novel’s plot into a reasonable two-hour running time. The movie manages to do justice to the film’s characters, Austen’s language and major themes within the confines of a feature length film.

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