The Remains of the Day

It's a little difficult to describe The Remains of the Day without making it sound veddy British, veddy proper and veddy boring. Granted, it's quiet and reserved. It's also engrossing and surprisingly poignant.

The Remains of the Day works as a subtle critique of emotional repression and the neo-fascist direction taken by upper-class English society prior to World War II. It also clicks as a "non-love story," as it dissects the peculiar mind of a perfect servant. And yes, stars Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson are probably going to be nominated again for Oscars.

Hopkins plays a joyless Jeeves, a head butler who has completely submerged himself into the act of serving. He has an exact eye for detail, and is totally devoted to his master. But he acts like a detached automaton, and his voice registers with the impersonal politeness of a recorded phone message. Even when informed of his father's death, Hopkins keeps working through a dinner party with barely a wrinkle in his demeanor.

His life takes a turn for the romantic, however, when the new housekeeper (Thompson) arrives. He finds himself increasingly attracted to her, but simply incapable of dealing with his feelings. Her youth and livelier manner appeal to him, but he's too repressed to admit to the slightest glimmer of feeling.

Meanwhile, his master (James Fox) is busy selling-out the country. It's 1936, and Fox is desperately trying to make peace between England and Germany. It becomes increasingly obvious to everyone except Hopkins that his master — who's mistaken Hitler for a reasonable man and is advocating appeasement — is a dangerous idiot who's being played for a sap by the Third Reich.

Hopkins, on the other hand, stays busy chasing dust bunnies in the hallway while history unfolds around him.

One of the remarkable feats accomplished by The Remains of the Day is its ability to be emotionally moving while presenting a character who's so thoroughly out of touch with his own feelings.

Much Ado About Nothing

Shakespeare's back and Branagh's got him. Again.

And Kenneth Branagh s production of Much Ado About Nothing is a good, solid piece of work. Too often, people behave as if Shakespeare requires a Ph.D. to be understood. Actually, Old Willy frequently pitched his plays to the rubes in the back bleachers. In his direction of the film, Branagh is reaching for the same mass audience.

The Anglo-American cast of Much Ado is part of that pitch. While Branagh cast many of his chums from the Royal Shakespeare Company in the film, he also sprinkled it with an odd assortment of Yanks. In turn, the Brits have toned down their accents, and the dialogue sounds like a mellow, mid-Atlantic symphony.

The performances are as well-executed as the film itself. As Benedick and Beatrice, Shakespeare's flirtatiously quarrelsome lovers, Branagh and Emma Thompson play off each other with the witty agility of a seasoned couple (which, of course, they are). But it's Thompson who carries the real spark of the film, successfully providing her heroine with fierce intelligence and suppressed passion.

Keanu Reeves' performance, however, is a notable exception to those of his colleagues. As the conniving Don John, Reeves conveys a spooky blank look — as if he is constantly searching for the cue cards.

Much Ado About Nothing is a well made film, but Branagh can't quite overcome the long-standing suspicion that it's minor Shakespeare. The play itself often reads like a mere diversion — a quick comedic study tossed off in a rush. A bit of sex, a little slapstick and a fast resolution.

Despite Branagh's reputation as the wunderkind of British cinema, he is actually a visually weak filmmaker. And, he is often incapable of exploring the material for anything more than the obvious.

Several years ago, when he directed Henry V, he coasted along on the play's grand, epic structure. When he tries to deal with the scaled-down subtleties of Much Ado, his ambitions shrink as well.

Both the strengths and weaknesses of Branagh's film making lie in his derivative approach. Henry V worked, in part, because Branagh found a good model in Orson Welles' Falstaff. In fact, Henry was essentially a sequel to Welles' more complex and audacious masterpiece. With Much Ado About Nothing, Branagh borrows from the populist school of Franco Zeffirelli.

Specifically, Branagh copies Zeffirelli's production of The Taming of the Shrew. But where Zeffirelli effectively pushed the material to extremes, which resulted in a sharp mix of Italian earthiness and farce, Branagh doesn't push far enough in any direction. The closest Much Ado comes to challenging the material is Michael Keaton's truly bizarre performance as Dogberry — but it stems from the actor's sense of high energy.

Still, Shakespeare is Shakespeare, and Much Ado About Nothing has a good feel for the bard's more biting barbs about men, women and the contrariness of love.

My Father the Hero

This review comes with a warning: My Father the Hero is the first comedy I've seen since Car 54, Where Are You? - an experience that's undoubtedly clouded my judgment. My Father the Hero is really just a mediocre, recycled, French farce, but after Car 54, anything looks like a comic masterpiece. Even a Jerry Lewis movie.

A very chunky Gerard Depardieu plays a father who's facing more than just a weight problem. He's been divorced from his American wife {Lauren Hutton, who appears in an inexplicable cameo) and living in Paris for the past five years, which means he's racked up quite an absentee dad record with his 14-year-old daughter(Katherine Heigl), who's been stuck in New York with mommy, pining for her father's attention. Depardieu realizes he has some major lost time to make up for and tries to rectify the situation by taking her on a vacation to Nassau.

The trip is far from a relaxing turn on the beach, however. Heigl discovers that dad is seriously thinking about marrying his Parisian girlfriend (Emma Thompson, in another inexplicable cameo) and becomes mad at him. A lot of other people are, too, because in an attempt to appear more mature, Heigl has convinced everybody that she's really Depardieu's underage mistress, not his daughter. Naturally, it takes him most of the movie to figure out what's going on. (By the way, what is the French term for "dim bulb"?)

My Father the Hero is a minor (no pun intended), contrived comedy that plays like a lost episode of The Love Boat. In fact, Van Johnson should probably be playing the lead in this sucker — Depardieu is largely wasted in a role that primarily consists of his accent and waistline.

But, after Car 54, I can't complain too much about this movie. Snore through it, maybe, but not complain.

In the Name of the Father

Gerry Conlon was once a petty thief in Belfast, Ireland. Today, he's a liv­ing reminder of one of the more ille­gal and high-handed acts committed in recent years by the British government.

In the mid-1970s, Conlon was ensnared in a web of circumstance that resulted in his conviction for an Irish Republican Army bombing in London and serving 15 years of a life sentence — even though British pros­ecutors knew that Conlon was innocent. It would be bad enough if only Conlon had suffered, but many of his friends and family were unjustly accused as well, including Cordon's father, who died in prison.

The new film In the Name of the Father is based on Cordon's case and details the injustice perpetrated on him. The film is fueled by a who's who of currently hot Irish movie types: Gabriel Byrne as executive producer, Jim Sheridan (creator of My Left Foot) as producer-director and Daniel Day-Lewis as star (it even has Sinead O'Connor on the soundtrack). Given the topic and chief personnel, you can under­stand why such a strong sense of militancy underscores In the Name of the Father. All in all, the movie promises to be as dark as Guinness Ale and as thick as Irish stew. And, for the most part, it is.

The story opens onto a typical day in Belfast in 1974. Heavily armed Eng­lish troops are on the prowl for IRA snipers, and Conlon is just dense enough to pick this day to attempt a roof-top robbery, despite the soldiers' presence. Not surpris­ingly, he's mistaken for a sniper and pursued through "sensitive" areas in which the IRA has secretly stockpiled weapons. The local IRA bosses are forced to relocate the weapons, and decide that Conlon deserves a little kneecapping as payment for the trouble he caused them. Thanks to his father's inter­vention, however, the "discipline" goes only so far, and Conlon is spared from being per­manently crippled.

Conlon's family packs him off to London for a while to keep him out of trouble. But the war in Northern Ireland is heating up, and the IRA decides to take the battle straight to England. Bombs start exploding throughout London, and one attack on a pub kills five people. Conlon chooses this unfortunate period to go skipping back to Belfast, unaware that he's a possible suspect in the bombings and is under surveillance by the British intelligence — until British troops show up in his bedroom one night.

In the Name of the Father is a surprisingly taut recreation of the Conlon case, with strong performances by Day-Lewis and Pete Postlethwaite, as Cordon's father. Emma Thompson's fans, however, may feel cheated by her limited role in the movie.

In the Name of the Father contains some minor flaws, but it's a good, strong film nonetheless - be prepared to walk out of the theater feeling outraged.