Robot & Frank

When someone goes out of his way to recommend a film to me, I hesitate to see it. What if I think it stinks and I hurt that person's feelings?

Someone went out of his way to recommend Robot & Frank to me. 

Here's the story: it's the near future. Dracula (Frank Langella) has given up his vampirism and is now a sad, lonely old man with dementia. The highlight of his week is walk to the local library, where he flirts with librarian Janet Weiss (Susan Sarandon). Oh, to be young and living in a castle again!

Anyway, Langella's son (James Marsden) worries about him, so he buys him a semi-anthropomorphic robot to help out around the house. Langella regains his vigor and decides to reembark on a previous career (with the robot's help): high-end jewel thief.

That's about the time I fell asleep. When I woke up, the third act was getting started. I gutted it out, but I never got into the film.

I fell asleep because Robot & Frank never gave me a reason to care about Frank, beside the fact that he was played by an actor who had once delivered one of cinema's greatest Transylvanian counts. Since I didn't care about him, I didn't care about what happened to him. When I returned to the film after my short doze, nothing happened to change that fact.

Sorry, buddy. I wish had liked it.

Frost/Nixon

FROST/NIXON captured my imagination from beginning to end. It took interesting people through definitive moments in their lives and the life of the nation, immersed us in their stories, and executed the impossible task of generating tension in a scenario whose conclusion we already know. And it does it while avoiding the talkfest trap so common to adaptations of successful plays.

Look, Nixon's interesting and we all know Frank Langella can act. So the movie's two strikes up in the count coming right out of the pen. But David Frost, the vapid talk show host who gets lucky with a big fish? And Michael Sheen to play him? Well, Sheen's a revelation. In THE QUEEN, he *was* Tony Blair, with all that entails. In FROST/NIXON, he does a David Frost whose shallowness hides depths of ambition and desperation that may be hidden even to himself. This guy's got range, and he also just got on to my "actors to watch" list. He makes David Frost, cheeseball tv performer, a hero the audience can get behind, and we relish the comparisons and contrasts with Langella's controlled, savvy, but lost Nixon.

Director Ron Howard handles those comparisons and contrasts, the heart of the movie, simply enough for a mainstream audience yet maturely enough for smart people like us. His direction, never flashy, borders on documentarian; and it gives the picture the realism it needs while remaining cinematic.

This is a quality film.

Dave

While DAVE may, technically, be a romantic comedy in that it's romantic and everything turns out right in the end, it isn't particularly funny. It's, well, it's congenial and comfortable, like a golden retreiver that puts its head on your knee, looking for a scratch behind the ears.

DAVE stars the eminently likeable Kevin Kline as the titular character, a regular guy who doubles for the President on the fateful night when the Chief Executive goes down with a brain anyeurism. Before he really knows what's happening, he's been pressed into service as a stand-in President by marvelously evil Chief of Staff Frank Langella (in a career-resurrecting performance). Wouldn't you know it, Dave's a better president than the President. Add in some domestic conflict with an estranged first lady (Sigourney Weaver, excellent as usual), some fuzzy politics about full employment, and some wonderful character moments with Charles Grodin as a small-time accountant who advises his friend to "Get out of here as fast as you can," and you have a congenial, comfortable romantic comedy that's as warm as as pair of good slippers.

DAVE works for many reasons, not the least of which being the balance between Kline's charm and Langella's menace. Kline's one of the most likeable actors working today, and he uses that likeablility to make us buy speeches and moments that we'd reject from a lesser actor. Langella strikes just the right chord of menace for a romantic comedy - scary enough to create dramatic tension, yet not so evil as to blow the film's mood. It's great work, well directed by Ivan Reitman, and the whole thing is a pleasure to watch.

As far as romantic comedies go, it's a classic.

Dracula (1979)

The 1979 DRACULA has a few strikes against it. Its Jonathan Harker is a charisma sump, its Mina is utterly unremarkable, and its effects border on the ridiculous. Nevertheless, the production has one thing going for it, and that one thing is enough to carry all the dead weight: Frank Langella.

Langella’s Dracula is neither hideous lich nor creepy eurotrash. He's supercool; a real lady killer who has charmed his way through the centuries and isn't about to be stopped by doddering old Van Helsing or his bumbling pal Harker. Don't get me wrong: Olivier is fine in his pay-the-bills portrayal of Van Helsing, and he does have a terrific moment when he almost succumbs to Dracula's will, but Langella just plain shines here.

What a pleasant surprise.