STARDUST

Director: Mathew Vaughan (Layer Cake, production work)
Starring: Claire Danes, Charlie Cox, Michelle Pheiffer, and the DeNiro

Stardust is a (moderately) fun romp through a modern-style fantasyland. A satire of sorts (although unfortunately it's utterly devoid of any real satirical theme), Stardust tells the story of a young man who enters a magical kingdom and gets swept up in an adventure. Perhaps a better way to put it is that rather than a satire, it's a fantasy adventure with a different tone. It's a tongue-in-cheek romp, rather than another one of those painfully "all-encompassing" adventure that most modern fantasy stories aspire to. Wonderfully in my opinion, the "fate of the world" does not seem to be at stake in this film.

The plot is marginally interesting, although I won't bother with details, as most of them are rather arbitrary. In fact, much of the entire story feels arbitrary. I've never read the source material (a Neil Gaimen book), but I suspect that's to blame. Although it is a director's responsibility to change material that misses the mark, so Mr. Vaughan isn't going to get out of this entirely.

Now despite these script complaints, I will add there are still things to enjoy here. Most of the fun comes from oddball moments (like DeNiro's gay pirate character) rather than gripping story points, but there are enough fun, oddball moments to make up for the plot definciencies. The direction is at times acceptable, but at others it totally fails - more than a couple of scenes were nearly pointless. Even the acting is uneven - Claire Danes gives a fine performance, although Pheiffer does the best job (as an ugly witch looking to regain her lost youthful looks). The boy (nominally the main character) is utterly forgettable. I imagine that this film will appeal mostly to the readers of modern fantasy books - those paperbacks that come in 12 part series with dragons on the brightly colored covers. Beyond that niche however, I doubt there's very much cross-over appeal in this story. The truth is that whatever it's target audience, all could be forgiven if it were just a better done film. As it is, it's just a rather marginally entertaining story, without much of anything to say. It's simply a forgettable work.

Standouts: Cute moments and characters like DeNiro's gay pirate.
Blowouts: Some flawed work across the board, including the basic story.

Grade: C+

CHARLIE WILSON'S WAR

Director: Mike Nichols (The Graduate, The Birdcage, Postcards From the Edge, kinda famous)
Starring: Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Phillip Seymour Hoffman

It's possible that this will be my pick for the most entertaining movie of the year. Is it a great movie? Maybe. I'm not quite sure. I am sure that it's great fun to watch, though, although keep in mind that I find history and politics immensely interesting in themselves. If you do not, I doubt this film will hit you quite as squarely as it hit me.

The story follows one Charlie Wilson, longtime southern democrat (meaning not terrified to go to war like the other species of democrat - the urban coastal democrat). He's a congressman from some nowhere Texas district who has rather seemlessly merged his (quite competent)professional life with a serious taste for women, booze and partying. The film starts with a naked Tom Hanks in a hot tub full of (much better looking) naked women.

This hilarious character then gets swept up in the cause of the Afghan rebels fighting the Soviet union (early 1980s) by a strong-willed conservative donor (Roberts). He then hooks up with the only CIA resource assigned to the situation (Hoffman), and gradually weedles and deals in the US congress to increase funding for our Afghan allies.

I'll make a guess that most of the opposition to the this film will be based on "historical innacuracies". I'll also guess that there are already articles out there by conservative columnists claiming that this film is incorrect showing a democrat (gasp!) leading the military cause in Afghanistan. They'll argue that this was really a Republican Reagan-era operation, and that Wilson was a minor character at best. I'll also guess some others will complain that this film says that we indirectly created the Bin-Laden phenomenon. (Note that this is very much what the film does say, by the way.)

I say that these are arguments are misdirected, however. Yes, Reagan very much did promote military aid for Afghanistan. However, it should be noted that the Carter administration had a very precise plan to get the Soviets involved in a lengthy war in Afghanistan prior to Reagan. That's the thing with telling stories about recent historical events like this. There are a million details that must undoubtedly get lost. The point of the work of art is to get to the center of an issue. It's is absolutely *not* to repeat every viewpoint ever presented on a subject. Believe me, every single one of Shakespeare's histories seriously messed up the actual history involved. Wonderfully that doesn't have much to do with his plays.

It doesn't affect Charlie Wilson's War either. The story here got the crux of the issue correct: A very conservative idea - directly from the Roberts character - is presented to a hilarious dixie-crat, and then we see just how a disjointed American policy is created on an ad hoc basis, bit by bit. We also see how unintended consequences result (Afghanistan as a base for Bin Laden). There you go.

Standouts: Nichols direction, fun script, very good performances.
Blowouts: Sure, it glosses over a lot of recent history to make an entertaining story.

Grade: A-