La Bibliofille Reviewing books, movies, TV, etc.

Jeremy Irvine as Albert Narracott, with Joey

Yes, this tearjerker of a movie has been nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture. And oddly enough, I think, it’s the only Best Picture nominee that I’ve seen this year. I guess I better get myself out to the movies!

But I digress. War Horse is based on a book written by Michael Morpurgo about 30 years ago for young adults. The story is predictable and soppy, but I totally fell for it.

The movie begins in rural England prior to World War I. Ted and Rose Narracott are poor tenant farmers. They live with their son Albert on a hardscrabble piece of land. Ted goes to a local horse auction to purchase a plow horse to help with the brutal work of clearing the stony fields. He comes home, instead, with a beautiful thoroughbred deemed totally unsuitable for farm work. Albert takes on the task of training Joey, who proves himself incredibly strong and determined.

When World War I breaks out, the Tarracotts sell Joey to the army. War Horse follows Joey through a succession of owners and battles. Joey’s strength and intelligence shine through and he survives the war. What happens then, I won’t say. But if you don’t cry at least a little, there is something wrong with you!

War Horse: (Movie Cover)

John le Carre

It’s been many years since I read John le Carre’s master work Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and the other  novels that comprise his  “Smiley Series”.  In these novels, le Carre constructed a complex and realistic world centered on MI6, the British intelligence organization.  Most of the novels in the series take place during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union was the largest threat to Western civilization.

Of course it’s odd that it took nearly 40 years for this movie to be made. There was a British TV adaptation starring Alec Guinness as George Smiley, but that was many years ago. I was concerned that this story is dated and irrelevant to today’s world.  And it is hard to understand how the Russians were so feared by those of us in the West.

Anyway, I found this film to be truly excellent. It was faithful to the book in most ways, of course simplifying and compressing much of the action. The casting is remarkable, and so many familiar actors actually become British spies. The story is intriguing and the viewer really needs to pay attention in order to follow the action.

The head of the MI 6 section known as “The Circus” is Control, played by John Hurt. Believing there is a mole highly placed in the circus, Control sets up an operation in Hungary. When things go very badly, Control and Smiley (Gary Oldman) are forced into retirement. Control dies shortly thereafter, and Smiley is approached by a highly placed government official. He is asked to conduct an independent investigation to discover the mole. With few resources beyond his own knowledge and reasoning, Smiley patiently reconstructs events of the past to deduce who the traitor is.

Although this film is a spy thriller and people do get killed, it is tame by today’s standards. It is really for the thinking film-goer, and anyone who hasn’t read the book will be trying to figure out who the the mole is. So, whether you’ve read the book or not, I recommend this film.

John Le Carré : Three Complete Novels ( Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy / The Honourable Schoolboy / Smiley’s People )

I read all the books, I saw all the original Swedish movies, and now I’m starting all over with the English language version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. This version is faithful in spirit to Stieg Larsson’s novel. The books are so dense and so full of subplots, the movie would have to be incredibly long to fit it all in.

So I would say that director David Fincher and screenwriter Steven Zaillian did a really good job of distilling the essence of the book. At nearly two and a half hours, this movie is long by today’s standards, but it is not too long.

Daniel Craig is too fit and good looking to portray Swedish journalist Mikael Blomkvist. But he is such an excellent actor that if you hadn’t read the book you wouldn’t know that he is supposed to be an ungainly, chain-smoking, coffee swilling middle aged man.

Rooney Mara has won the coveted role of Lisbeth Salander. From what I’ve read, she really did get all of Salander’s body piercings. And she had her hair cut and dyed. Lisbeth Salander bears almost no resemblance to Rooney Mara!

So-yes this movie violent and action packed. For me it was not really suspenseful because I have read the book and seen the Swedish language version of the movie. But my two movie companions seemed to be on the edge of their seats. So that seems to be a good recommendation.  I also recommend TGWTDT. And the next movie, The Girl Who Played With Fire, in currently in development, with the same cast. But I’ll have to wait until 2013 for that.

GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO TRILOGY BUNDLE: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest

The best that I can say about the latest entry into the Sherlock Holmes canon of adaptations is that it is better than the previous Sherlock Holmes movie starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law. There is lots of action and great special effects.

Unfortunately, all this nonsense has little to do with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original super sleuth. For the most part, that Holmes solved his criminal cases using clues that he alone was able to spot and interpret. His importance also lay as a forerunner to many of the great modern detectives of literature, such as Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, and Nero Wolfe.

If you’re looking for cinematic escapism, see Sherlock Holmes. If you’re looking to exercise your “little grey cells” (a la Poirot), read one of Doyle’s books.

The Complete Sherlock Holmes: All 4 Novels and 56 Short Stories

I really wanted to like this movie. After all-it was directed by Clint Eastwood, and has two amazing stars. Leonardo DiCaprio-a perennial favorite, and the relatively new star Armie Hammer. And the subject! J. Edgar Hoover was a fascinating man. Highly intelligent and ambitious, he brought the FBI into the modern era of crime detection. He instituted the first real modern crime lab, and pioneered crime fighting techniques such as fingerprint technology.

But-and this is a big but-he was suspicious and paranoid. He supposedly kept private confidential files on U.S. Presidents and their families, as well as many other figures, both private and public.

I would have preferred that J. Edgar focus more on the people whose lives and careers he affected, and not so much on his supposed homosexual tendencies and cross-dressing. There is enough that was true of Hoover that the speculation into that aspect of his private life was really not necessary.

DiCaprio and Hammer were both amazing in their physical transformation over the years. Hammer plays Clyde Tolson, Hoover’s long time friend and the first Deputy Director of the FBI. Hammer is only 25, but he plays the ill and elderly Tolson so convincingly. Hoover died at the age of 77, and DiCaprio moves and speaks like a sick old man.

J. Edgar is somewhat convoluted, bouncing between time periods. And Naomi Watts was, I think, not a good choice to play Helen Gandy, an early love interest for Hoover and his long-time secretary. There is no explanation for her continued devotion to Hoover, as she seemed to recognize some of his serious lapses in judgment.

So-to see or not to see? Overall I’d say yes, but remember that it is a movie-and it is (mostly) fiction!