Sound Like A 19th Century Soap Opera, Sense And Sensibility Is An Awfully Good One

Sense and Sensibility shows how women in upper-class Georgian England, though privileged, had relatively few choices in life. Romantics and anyone with a penchant for this author's work will have a ball. This beautiful, humorous movie creates a buzz of excitement around the Dashwood sisters' romantic intrigue. Some of the characters you'll love to hate (the Dashwoods' horrible sister-in-law and gloating Miss Steele), and others you'll absolutely adore (little Margaret Dashwood, the future pirate).

Sense And Sensibility tells the story of the Dashwood family, who, after the death of Mr. Dashwood, lose all their wealth to the son of Mr. Dashwood's prior marriage. The four Dashwood women, the mother and three daughters (Elinor [Emma Thompson], Marianne [Kate Winslet], and young Margaret), must find a way to make ends meet as the elder daughters face the daunting problems of love and romance.

Competing for the affections of Marianne are the dashing playboy Willoughby (newcomer Greg Wise) and the upright Colonel Brandon (Alan Rickman). Meanwhile, Elinor finds herself falling for Edward (Hugh Grant), who, without spoiling the plot, isn't completely forthright with Elinor about his availability. Throughout it all, the high society gossips make everyone squirm with their constant chatter.

Sound like a 19th century soap opera? It is, and an awfully good one at that. But on top of a nicely-crafted story, Thompson has enriched what could have been a dull period piece (see Persuasion for a frightening example of this) with an unexpectedly hilarious series of vignettes that underscores the endless procession of romantic misunderstandings and entanglements that weave through the girls' lives. And oddly, though the romance and courtship of that bygone era is archaic, the scenes are equally relevant today. Of course, it's not all mirth and hilarity: judging from the bawling woman sitting next me, this film can really pull the tears out, too.

Thompson and especially Winslet (who was so exquisite in 1994's Heavenly Creatures are perfectly matched as near opposites who find some common ground as the film progresses. Grant and the other supporting cast members are also admirable. Taiwanese director Ang Lee infuses the film with some variety and cleverness, too. In all, the film really comes together as a whole.

What makes this adaptation so endearing is its loving depiction of the Dashwood family as a high-spirited and supportive clan. One trio of 12-year-old girls considers this a favorite and admits to watching it repeatedly. For them, the movie strikes the same wistful chord as the blockbusterTitanic, and it even ends happily!

"Sense and Sensibility" was the first and one of the least of Jane Austen's novels; she wrote it in 1795, but it was not published for 16 years, until she had found the courage to declare herself as a novelist. It was written by a young woman who ostensibly had little experience of the world - although her fiction proves she missed little that occurred on her domestic stage - and the story reflects that orientation, as a mother and her three daughters wait passively while all of the interesting men in the vicinity disappear on unexplained missions to London.

In a modern story, the women would have demanded explanations.

Forced to rely on the assistance of relatives in order to find shelter and subsistence, Elinor, Marianne, their mother (Gemma Jones) and younger sister Margaret (Emilie Francois) are shuttled from one set of relatives to another. Along the way, the contrary sisters each fall in love with two equally diverse men: Marianne, the roguish Willoughby (Greg Wise); Elinor, the loyal Edward Ferrars (Hugh Grant). A third romantic prospect arrives in the form of the devoted, yet dreary Colonel Brandon (Alan Rickman). However, obstacles soon enter into the picture. Relationships begin to sour and marriage becomes talked in survivalist, rather than romantic terms.

Expectations for Sense and Sensibility were certainly high amongst Austen’s acolytes. Prior to the release of Lee’s film, there had only been one solitary feature-length adaptation of Austen’s works, Robert Z. Leonard’s respected attempt at Pride and Prejudice (1940). In the fifty-five years between the release of Leonard’s Greer Garson vehicle and Lee’s Sense and Sensibility, Austen’s admirers curiously had to make do with less than a dozen British television miniseries. Yet, all of a sudden, six Austen adaptations appeared in the space of two years: including two television miniseries and Amy Heckerling’s Clueless, a modernized revamp of Emma.

In hindsight, there was arguably no better choice suited to recreate Austen’s novel of impulse and reason. Ang Lee’s previous experience in family dramas and comedies offered a foundation for his exploration of the intra-familial dynamics affecting Austen’s Dashwood sisters. Furthermore, as Ang Lee has often suggested in interviews before and after the film’s release, his filmography has frequently touched on the conflicting tensions between 'sense' and 'sensibility': free will versus responsibility to others (Pushing Hands; Eat Drink Man Woman); the fulfillment of personal desires versus society’s moral codes (Lust, Caution;Brokeback Mountain; The Wedding Banquet).

What gives "Sense and Sensibility" its tension and mystery is that the characters rarely say what they mean. There is great gossip within the women's sphere, but with men, the conversation loops back upon itself in excruciating euphemisms, leaving the women to puzzle for weeks over what was or was not said.

As the story opens, the Dashwood estate passes to a stingy male heir, who provides only a few hundred pounds a year to his father's second wife and her three daughters. The widow Dashwood (Gemma Jones) and her girls find themselves torn from the life of country gentry and forced to live on this meager income in a cottage generously supplied by a distant relative.

An Education Comes Close To Perfection: Inspired Casting And Performances

Literature is full of cautionary tales of innocent young women seduced by smooth-talking rakes. Jenny, a dutiful student and a passionate consumer of modern novels and French pop records, has surely encountered more than a few such stories. But at 16 and in a terrible hurry, she seems less inclined to learn from the mistakes of wayward romantic heroines than to join their ranks. “An Education” is rated PG-13. Its sexual implications are not as troubling as they should be.
　　
An Education is set in 1962, the heroine is 16-year-old London schoolgirl Jenny Miller (Carey Mulligan), the only child of conventional, lower-middle-class parents, and the film's title has a double meaning, one scholastic, the other sentimental. First, it refers to her sixth-form work at a Twickenham girls' school, the prize pupil of Miss Stubbs (Olivia Williams), her intense English teacher, and the imminent prospect of winning a place at Oxford that will transform her life. It also refers to the dangerous relationship that begins when David (Peter Sarsgaard), a seemingly wealthy charmer, gives her a lift home in his Bristol sports car one rainy day and that threatens to deflect her disastrously from this liberating future.
　　
The world of the early 60s is well established: this period of Macmillan's "Never had it so good" Britain, immediately before 1963, that pivotal year apostrophised by Philip Larkin, when the Profumo scandal opened up to view a different, more corrupt nation, and the Beatles, the Stones and the great train robbers ushered in the swinging 60s and the permissive society.
　　
This turns out to be both foreseeable and surprising. Jenny makes no secret of her relationship with David, which becomes the talk of her school, attracting the concern of a sad, kindly young teacher (Olivia Williams) and the fierce disapproval of the headmistress (Emma Thompson, taking a practice run at her inevitable portrayal of Margaret Thatcher).
　　
But Jenny’s course is set. It’s not that she’s out of control — quite the contrary. She is deliberately and systematically, with what she imagines to be full knowledge of the consequences, seeking out what the vestigial Victorianism of her era would see as her ruin.
　　
And the era itself is the real subject of “An Education,” which catches Britain around the time when, as Philip Larkin put it in his famous poem, “sexual intercourse began.” There is a bit of that stuff in “An Education,” but it’s more the symbol of other kinds of experience than the reverse. What Jenny craves is not the fact of sex — though she does make sure to schedule the loss of her virginity — but full access to an ideal of sexiness, a world that is the opposite of the boring little England she knows and loathes. Even as David is taking advantage of her innocence, she is, at first unwittingly and then more brazenly, using him to find her way to that world, which she identifies especially with France.

The script is more sophisticated than this précis suggests—an Oscar-worthy effort by the able Nick Hornby (High Fidelity, About a Boy), who adapted the short memoir by Lynn Barber originally published in Granta magazine (and about to be republished with other writings in book form this fall). Danish director Lone Scherfig ( Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself, Italian for Beginners) shows great affinity for the material, a director with a gift for making flawed characters likeable—everyone in the film, no matter how brief his or her part, comes across fully formed—and she gets the little things right. Jenny and her classmates read Penguin Classics in equally classic Tschichold-designed paperbacks; David sports blue serge with narrow lapels, neat pocket squares and too-jaunty trilbys, retrofitting Connery’s Bond with a dab of Niven’s; Jenny’s father, played alternately solicitous and supercilious by Alfred Molina, ties on a frilly apron to protect his pinstripes when helping with the dishes, a costume uncannily suited to his character. Cat’s-eye glasses, bouffant hairdos, patent-leather heels and pocketbooks seem stylish again: The film evokes the period with such affection, we wonder why we gave up nylons, skinny ties and cigarettes.
　　
Ironically, the most accomplished member of the ensemble, Emma Thompson, strikes the film’s only false notes, although it’s not her fault. As the sour headmistress of Jenny’s school, she stands in for the clichéd close-minded parochialism of Britain (and America) before the baby-boomers liberated both countries from the cultural doldrums. It’s a thankless, heavy-handed role and a bit of dreary pontification in a movie that easily could have lapsed into a full-length lecture on moral turpitude.
　　
Hornby and Scherfig, thankfully, eschew sententious sermonizing; in the end, everyone, including Jenny’s parents, conspires in her seduction, and ancient lessons are once again hard-learned. An Education drops a few parables (watch for the one about the money tree!), but the filmmakers allow us to draw our own conclusions about the action unfolding before us. If this tutorial on love and ambition closes with a too-pat ending, well, the pedagogy is happily free-form.

Face/Off Is Above All An Action Thriller

Has there every been a film with a title that almost makes you want to laugh at it? Well, of course there have been, but I think Face/Off beats them all. Sure, the title is awkward, but does it really matter? Absolutely not! Face/Off is full of so many radical ideas that anything it does makes sense. This is one of those films with hugely improbable concepts, but using skillful direction and taking itself slightly seriously, these concepts seem to be possible. Of course, it doesn't take itself completely seriously or it would have been ridiculous. The director, John Woo, takes the audience on a fantastic ride filled with as much action as possible, but also stopping to do something films like The Rock didn't do: it lets us into the emotional aspect of the hero and the villain.
　　
That exchange of faces and identities is the inspiration for "Face/Off," the new John Wooaction thriller, which contains enough plot for an entire series. It's a gimme, for example, that as gravely injured as he may be, Troy will snap out of his coma and force a doctor to transplant Archer's face onto his own bloody skull - so that the lawman and the outlaw end up looking exactly like the other.
　　
This is an actor's dream, and Travolta and Cage make the most of it. They spend most of the movie acting as if they're in each other's bodies - Travolta acting like Cage, and vice versa. Through the plot device of a microchip implanted in his larynx, Travolta is allegedly able to sound more like Cage - enough, maybe, to fool the terrorist's paranoid brother, who is in prison and knows the secret of the biological weapon.
　　
The movie is above all an action thriller. John Woo, whose previous American films include "Broken Arrow" with Travolta, likes spectacular stunts in unlikely settings, and the movie includes chases involving an airplane (which crashes into a hangar) and speedboats (which crash into piers and each other). There also are weird settings, including the high-security prison where the inmates wear magnetized boots that allow security to keep track of every footstep.
　　
Face/Off stars two of Hollywood's best actors. While I am not the biggest fan of Nicolas Cage, I respect him and I think he is very good. John Travolta is one of my favorites, and he gives the best line of the film. Travolta and Cage together, and you have a powerhouse cast. Add them to a Woo film, and you have a powerhouse, blockbuster film. Woo is well known in Hong Kong, and he is gaining popularity in America. He directed 1995's terrific Broken Arrow which also starred Travolta, but as a villain. In Face/Off, Travolta plays the protagonist, while Cage takes on the antagonist.
　　
On top of the film, however, is the cast. Travolta steals the film, even though Cage is the hero throughout most of it. Both of them together make a solid team and it played with the audience's mind because we didn't exactly know who to root for. In one of the most powerful scenes of the film, almost every cast member in the opening credits of the film has a gun pointed at them. It's reminiscient of Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs and the following battle is nail-bitingly tense. Travolta gives the best line of the film during this moment, and I'm not going to spoil it by writing it here. Cage, on the other hand, doesn't quite have as much fun as Travolta does, but how can you when you are the hero? Not to be outdone are Joan Allen as Archer's wife, Eve. Allen gives a wonderful performance which is slightly overshadowed by the two top-billed stars. Gershon is just as good as Troy's ex-girlfriend. Dominique Swain gives a terrific performance as Archer's rebellious daughter, and she actually seems genuine. But Travolta and Cage dominate the film, as they do in almost any film that they are in. Oh yeah, that's Harve Presnell from Fargo as Archer's superior.
　　
Face/Off is rated R for bloody and gruesome violence, plenty of gore (both surgical and not), some nudity from a cartoon, and language. While the film is a little predictable (who couldn't have guessed what the daughter was going to do with that knife?) the powerful performance and wonderful directing are easily able to jump over them. This is one action picture which will be sure to rake in the money, most likely from word of mouth (because, let's face it, it would have to be coming out against Hercules). I'm pretty sure I will see it again, and again. And I can't wait!
　　
It's a fascinating film in so many ways. For example, both Travolta and Cage invest their dual roles with physical subtleties that reflect the other actor's character. John Woo's smart direction makes you really care for the good Sean Archer trapped in the bad Castor Troy. Added to this is a plot that is strikingly imaginative, preposterous, and yet strangely convincing - the actual mechanics of the identity swap have a superficial credibility built on convenient, simplistic explanations. But the film succeeds in overcoming its implausibilities because director Woo offers such a tantalising package. He seems to be saying "accept this and I'll give you one hell of a ride."
　　
You see what thickets this plot constructs; it's as if Travolta adds the spin courtesy of Cage's personality, while Cage mellows in the direction of Travolta. Better to conclude that the two actors, working together, have devised a very entertaining way of being each other while being themselves.