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Okay, admit it. When you heard that Oliver Stone was going to make a movie about the events of September 11, 2001, a lot of you rolled your eyes and thought, “Oh, my God, what’s he going to do now?” Was he going to have Richard Nixon rising from the grave to plant explosives in the twin towers? How were the Grassy Knoll gunmen who killed John Kennedy involved? And how did it all tie back to the Vietnam War?
Surprise. Continue reading
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I was sorely tempted to let my imaginary twin brother, Larry, write this review, but he was partaking of one of his many philanthropic pursuits, leading a deer hunting trip for a group of kids from the Braille Institute, and hasn’t been seen since.
Adaptation has a great deal in common with the other Charlie Kaufman films, mainly in how it plays with reality like your cat played with that gopher it caught in the back yard. While it’s “officially” based on the non-fiction book The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean (Meryl Streep), the movie is actually about Charlie Kaufman’s unsuccessful effort to write a usable script from the book, as well as about the author’s relationship with the subject of the story, a self-styled botanist named John Laroche (Chris Cooper). The other storyline revolves around Charlie’s fictitious twin Donald and his attempt to become a screenwriter like his brother.
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Nicholas Cage seems condemned to narrate movies in which he stars, beginning with Raising Arizona. No less than two movies last year made similar use of Cage’s vocal talents, Lord of War and now The Weather Man. Why is it about Cage that causes people to cast him in this type of role so often? His voice does have a unique hang-dog quality, sort of like a kindly bloodhound character from an animated Disney movie.
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Lord of War is a black comedy that labors so hard to be ironic it forgets to be funny. It’s better than the misfired Deal of the Century, but it still fails to engage your outrage because it views its subject through the amoral eyes of Yuri Orlov (Nicholas Cage). Whatever the aims of the filmmakers, the audience ultimately empathizes with the hero, undercutting the film’s condemnation of gunrunning.