Chaplin
Better off silent
A highly underrated film with a lot of political undercurrents...
SYNOPSIS: Jim Carrey plays Peter Appleton, a Hollywood screenwriter whose life comes crashing down around him when he is suddenly blacklisted for communist affiliation. He loses everything, and goes on a drunken binge, where he crashes his car and wakes up with amnesia. He is found and brought to a small town where every young man who went to war in World War II has died, and is mistaken for the son of one of the residents, played with gusto by Martin Landau. As Peter becomes more and more assimilated into the community, he helps his "father" renovate the local movie house, called The Majestic. But then he starts regaining his memory...
Where Shawshank was stark and unforgiving, and Green Mile was mystical, The Majestic is more lighthearted, in the vein of some of the great Capra films like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It's a Wonderful Life. Town life is painted as very idealistic, and the fact that every one of the town's sons is dead makes it a little different than what we've seen before.
This film is strictly an actor's movie, and while Jim Carrey won't win any awards with his performance, it is adequate and does a good job of proving that he just isn't a comedian who makes faces and talks out of his butt. Laurie Holden, as the love interest, does a good job in her role, but I think it suffers by trying to be too politically correct--she is a woman studying to be a lawyer in 1951. That isn't impossible, by no means, but it IS fairly unusual for the time period.
The residents of the town are well-defined and well-acted, especially by Landau, James Whitmore and Jeffrey DeMunn as the mayor.
This obviously is Frank Darabont's first directorial film that isn't a Stephen King film, and he is still proven to be extremely competent. The cinematography is definitely a different style, it's much more grounded with nary a trick shot to be found.
The script does a stellar job of portraying some of the paranoia of the time (which we rarely see) about the witchhunt of the 50s for Americans affiliated with communism. It has a good message, but you wonder if the message is a little out of date in today's society.
All in all, this is a very enjoyable movie, especially on a quiet Sunday afternoon.
SYNOPSIS: Jim Carrey plays Peter Appleton, a Hollywood screenwriter whose life comes crashing down around him when he is suddenly blacklisted for communist affiliation. He loses everything, and goes on a drunken binge, where he crashes his car and wakes up with amnesia. He is found and brought to a small town where every young man who went to war in World War II has died, and is mistaken for the son of one of the residents, played with gusto by Martin Landau. As Peter becomes more and more assimilated into the community, he helps his "father" renovate the local movie house, called The Majestic. But then he starts regaining his memory...
Where Shawshank was stark and unforgiving, and Green Mile was mystical, The Majestic is more lighthearted, in the vein of some of the great Capra films like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It's a Wonderful Life. Town life is painted as very idealistic, and the fact that every one of the town's sons is dead makes it a little different than what we've seen before.
This film is strictly an actor's movie, and while Jim Carrey won't win any awards with his performance, it is adequate and does a good job of proving that he just isn't a comedian who makes faces and talks out of his butt. Laurie Holden, as the love interest, does a good job in her role, but I think it suffers by trying to be too politically correct--she is a woman studying to be a lawyer in 1951. That isn't impossible, by no means, but it IS fairly unusual for the time period.
The residents of the town are well-defined and well-acted, especially by Landau, James Whitmore and Jeffrey DeMunn as the mayor.
This obviously is Frank Darabont's first directorial film that isn't a Stephen King film, and he is still proven to be extremely competent. The cinematography is definitely a different style, it's much more grounded with nary a trick shot to be found.
The script does a stellar job of portraying some of the paranoia of the time (which we rarely see) about the witchhunt of the 50s for Americans affiliated with communism. It has a good message, but you wonder if the message is a little out of date in today's society.
All in all, this is a very enjoyable movie, especially on a quiet Sunday afternoon.
