Alexander -- 2004 -- R

This extensive film covers essentially the rise and fall of Alexander the Great in a style that intercuts elements of a documentary with standard drama of dueling storylines. One storyline begins in Alexander's youth and follows him until he becomes king. The other starts at his first battle as king and follows him to his death.

With only a couple of minor hiccups at the beginning of the film, mostly due to the tri-fold skippage of the style from documentary told by one of Alexander's generals to the two other storylines, the film flows pretty well after the first half hour is over. I watched the director's cut which boasts a run time of nearly three hours. It comes top about 2 hours and 38 minutes without the credits.

Though it ran long, the film occasionally tried to do too much. It had multiple relationships for Alexander to go through including those with his mother, father, wife, male lover, generals, his army, and his people along with an ongoing inner conflict with himself. Tackling all of these relationships along with delivering a solid war movie caused the relationships to founder here and there as the movie progressed, which some taking off very well and then falling away as the movie went on.

What happened over and over again when a new relationship was introduced is a quick rundown of how the relationship works and some conflict inherent between that relationship and the rest of Alexander's life. Beyond this, the matter is dropped until needed and then there is relatively little development, just a little plot that uses what was established. In fact, a lot of the development is attempted through the documentary portions rather than viewing the character interaction. In my opinion, this hurts much of the character progression, but it does keep the film moving.

Overall, if you are into Greek history or historical or war dramas, it works well from the angle, but as a straight drama, I think it falls a little flat.

Evita -- 1996 -- PG

In 1996, this film was nominated for a dozen Oscars including best picture. It lost most of them against The English Patient. The English Patient!!! This movie was robbed. It won best song to which Andrew Lloyd Webber quipped, "I'm so glad the English Patient didn't have a song in it."

I admit to loving the musical long before I saw the movie. I've seen it on stage and have both the original recording as well as the Broadway version, so I am obviously going to be a critic of this one. The movie version was incredible. That which would translate was translated, and tht which wouldn't wasn't. They brought back some material that was cut from the stage that worked incredibly well in a new context.

One big change was the movement of "Another Suitcase in Another Hall" from the mistress of Peron to being sung by Eva. While some criticize this move, the mistress was nothing more than a mirror of Eva, and giving that much time to a non-character is ludicrous in a film. It worked on stage since it gave the actress playing Eva a break. The context it was placed in in the film worked very well though.

The new song continues to bring tears to my eyes every time I hear it. The actors do an amazing job with it, and allow that suspension of disbelief even though they sing through the whole thing. That's an accomplishment. The power surging through this story as it comes to the end is wonderful. It should have won Best Picture. It was robbed.

Lawrence of Arabia -- 1962 -- PG

This is the longest theatrical movie I know of topping off at 217 minutes (227 with the Overture, Entr'acte and Exit Music). The theatrical edition of Return of the King only runs 200 minutes (the extended edition run 250, making it the longest overall I know of). This movie was so long, there is an intermission scripted into the movie so people get a potty break at about 140 minutes into it.

NOTE: I did learn that The Ten Commandments clocks in at 220, so it is technically longer, but it doesn't have the music, so it could go either way depending on whether you want to count the music.

That aside, this movie is very well-paced. It flows easily from point to point and T.E. Lawrence's plight is well-conceived and believable. He is a man who came from the British army to Arabia and ends up uniting several warring Arabian tribes in an effort to place Arabia under their rules instead of Britain's. 

The only complaint I have is the unbelievably long (but picturesque) riding sequences. 30 minutes could have been cut from the final product if there weren't so many camels walking across the desert shots. There was a full 7 minutes devoted to a tribe leaving their village to go to war. It got real old real fast. 

Beyond this, however, it did earn a well-deserved best picture award in 1962, along with 6 others and proves to be overall a very good film.

Goodfellas -- 1990 -- R

Ah, the inspiration for Animaniacs "Goodfeathers." I laughed at several points during this film for that reason alone, but I digress.

I'm not sure to what to make of this one. We're mostly cheering for the bad guys -- our hero being a boy who grew up wanting to be a gangster and dragging his family into the business with him. It runs like a series of tableaus of his life starting from when he was young and moving through his life until the end of his relationship with the wiseguys. One the one hand, we have great character development, and know very well who is who and why they act the way they do. That being said, on the flip side, the voiceover does 90f the explanation of why stuff happens. Maybe that's my beef. As soon as we get into the film, the voiceover reminds us that we're watching one.

It does give us some solid characters that we do feel for on some level, and it does give us the life of Henry and his family to follow as he winds through his trials and pitfalls working for Paulie and the rest of the crew. Through the latter part, it just becomes him working to support his family, and at some points it is very touching.

I do have some difficulty feeling very sympathetic for him or anyone else though. Business aside, he places the business before his family at many points and even has a few girls on the side that he supports as well.

It ends well enough for how it ran, and it does make sense. I understood this to be a contrapunctual film to the romantic mafia The Godfather presents. This one is more of a gritty, down to earth kind of film that says "this is how it is; deal with it." On that level, it works well.

Marie Antoinette -- 2006 -- PG-13

I guess I'm one of the slow ones who doesn't get it. This film won some stuff and was nominated for some other stuff, but I found most of those nominations and wins have to do with costumes and production design, which, I'll have to say, were quite good. My overall opinion of what I look for in a film, however, showed it to be lacking in what it takes for a film to survive through the ages. It was directed by Sofia Coppola, daughter of esteemed writer/director of The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola, but it appears in the case of this film, the apple didn't land anywhere near the tree.

This film starts out very well with the transfer of young Marie from Austria to France to wed the prince over there, Louis, in an effort to bring peace to their nations. The transfer and wedding goes off without a hitch, but apparently Louis and Marie don't make a connection...literally. Their marriage goes unconsummated for years after the legal act is done. They sleep together, but never "do it." This, naturally, upsets everyone involved in both France and Austria as her purpose as the wife of a king-to-be is to produce an heir and a few back ups, so the royal family does not end with Louis. Well, no sex means no heir.

So that's an interesting start, and I'm sure it's a historical fact and such that this occurred (I'm no history buff, but hey, movies ALWAYS tell the truth, right?). Personally, I would have liked to have seen at least some measure of effort on the part of Marie to get Louis moving. It would have made for some nice tension and conflict between them with her trying to jump his bones, and his pushing her off. She has the motivation to do it; pressure from everyone on every side saying "your marriage and our lives are in jeopardy unless you do it with him," so I was waiting for a good argument and shouting match or something from them. Instead, we get "I'm tired" "Okay." Here's where dramatic license takes precedence over historical accuracy. I don't care if they never argued; I'm falling asleep here.

The bigger problem with this film comes in with what is used to fill the screen time when we're not being bombarded by letter and problems related to the issue of no action. We get lots and lots of parties. This film might as well be called "The Many Parties of Marie Antoinette" because that is a good 75% of this film. It actually got really boring watching her go to party after party after party. I know this aspect of her life is important, and it does help to shape her character really well, but these scenes needed to be a lot shorter catching only the high points and leaving out the rest of the nonsense.

As for pacing, nearly every scene goes on longer than it should. As I'm watching it, I start thinking, "okay, this scene is over; let's move on." A few seconds later, it does, but it should have moved on before we reached the point when it was over. Trimming the end of each scene would have probably cut a good 5-10 minutes out of the film and created a piece that at least moved quicker. This film could have easily been shortened to 90 minutes and been a breeze to watch; instead, we're treated to a flick of over two hours, and we feel every minute.

Finally, we all know how the life of Marie Antoinette ends...I am no history buff, but that fact is ingrained enough. Knowing how she dies is enough to give some tension to the end of this movie, but guess what...it never happens. The people might be storming the palace, but Louis and Marie get into their carriage and ride off. Roll credits. Whoa. A modernized and stylish biography of Marie Antoinette and no guillotine. There's something wrong here. Maybe guillotines aren't PG-13 material.

What went right? The presentation of this film is definitely Oscar-worthy. We get 17th century environments with a 21st century feel. Instead of string orchestras, we get each party overdubbed with modern rock music. Most of the film is scored with a rock orchestra, with very little period music. Actions of the characters are very 21st century in nature as if she took the nature of the activity from back then and updated everything to make it presentable to modern audiences while retaining the values of the earlier era. Very clever. Very stylish. Very wonderfully done.

So, we get a cool update of an old story, but one that misses the mark considerably in terms of storytelling. It could have been much better had we been given more of the story and less of the parties. Trim about 30 minutes out of it, and we just might have something here. How'd it win Best Film somewhere? I dunno. Nepotism got her into the industry, right?