Finding Forrester (2000)

"Did you ever enter a writing contest?"
"Yeah, once."
"Did you win?"
"Well of course I won!"
"You win like money or something?
"No."
"Well, what did you win?"
"The Pulitzer."
-Jamal Wallace and William Forrester.

The great Sir Sean Connery officially announced his retirement from acting in 2003, the same year that The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was released. Connery was unhappy with the making of that film, which led to his decision to retire. The movie was surprisingly dull, but Sir Sean was perfect casting as Allan Quartermain. If the film does indeed prove to be his final screen appearance, at least history will be able to say it was a great part, even if the movie itself couldn't be called that.

Before Gentlemen, though, Connery had a wonderful role in this movie as the title character, reclusive writer William 1Forrester. On a dare by friends, teenager Jamal Wallace (Rob Brown) goes into Forrester's New York apartment and, after initial hostility, Forrester offers to help Wallace with his writing skills.

This leads to an improvement in Wallace's grades at his school, as well as suspicions of plagiarism from Wallace's professor Robert Crawford (F. Murray Abraham), who is an acquaintance of Forrester.

After turning down Wallace's invitation to watch him play a basketball game at Madison Square Garden (Forrester's anxiety issues keep him from being part of a crowd), the recluse agrees to meeting with him at Yankee Stadium late on night. It is here that Forrester tells him of his personal family drama, which led Forrester to writing his book Avalon Landing.

The two fall into conflict, though, when Wallace uses the beginning of one of Forrester's essays in his class, even though he promised him that the work would never leave his apartment. This leads to Crawford accusing Wallace of plagiarism, although Wallace is told that the charge will be dropped if he wins the state championship, which he does not!

But this does not stop Wallace from writing an essay to Forrester about friendship, which Forrester receives thanks to Wallace's brother Terrell (Busta Rhymes).

This leads to Forrester reading the essay himself at a school contest, which results in great applause from the audience. He also reveals to Crawford that Wallace had permission from him to submit his previous essay. As a result, the plagiarism charge against Wallace is dropped, to Crawford's chagrin.

A year later, Wallace learns that Forrester died of cancer. His lawyer (Matt Damon) informs Wallace that Forrester has left him the manuscript for another novel and wants Wallace to write the foreword for it.

When the movie was released, Connery told Roger Ebert that the movie was similar to his classic film The Man Who Would Be King (1975) in that, at its heart, it was a story of friendship. Indeed, the real meat of this story comes from the friendship which forms between Forrester and Wallace, in the same way that King's greatness comes from the friendship between the characters played by Connery and Sir Michael Caine.

It is also nice seeing Connery share the screen again with Abraham, as the two previously acted together in The Name of the Rose (1986).

The only complaint I have with the film is that Anna Paquin doesn't have much to do as Wallace's classmate Claire Spence. I suppose this was better, though, then having her and Wallace go through the motions of often found in dramas about schools.

I must also say that this movie, while given limited release, redeemed its director Gus Van Sant as his previous film was the ill-fated remake of Psycho (1998).

Noises Off (1992)*

"Like the band playing on as the Titanic sank."

-director Lloyd Fellowes.

Like Sidney Lumet's adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express (1974), this film has a cast & director that's a dream roll call. The director is Peter Bogdanovich, who, like William Friedkin, achieved great fame from the films he made in the 1970s but whose clout minimized in the decades since.

Happily, Bogdanovich has kept working, from directing underrated flicks such as The Cat's Meow (2001) to writing and directing documentaries on fellow filmmakers such as John Ford and Alfred Hitchcock.

This film, based on the 1982 play of the same name by Michael Frayn, is a play within a play.

Lloyd Fellowes (Michael Caine) is prepping his second-rate theater troupe for the opening night of the sexual farce Nothing On. His cast-fading star Dotty Otley (Carol Burnett), her pompous lover Garry Lejeune (John Ritter), insecure Frederick Dallas (Christopher Reeve), alcoholic Selsdon Mowbray (Denholm Elliott), optimistic Belinda Blair (Marilu Henner), and ditzy Brooke Ashton (Nicollete Sheridan), whom Fellowes has had an affair with-keeps forgetting their lines and cues, as well as mishandling the props.

Behind the curtain, Fellowes has to deal with the equally incompetent production assistant/understudy Tim Allgood (Mark Linn-Baker). With opening night approaching, Fellowes certainly has his work cut out for him, which isn't lessened when his stage manager Poppy Taylor (Julie Hagerty) informs him that she's pregnant with his child.

By the time opening night arrives, the crew more or less perform adequately, but their relationships with each other have deteriorated to the point where they practically try to kill each other when not onstage (in some cases, even when they are onstage). This makes their performance in Cleveland particularly unforgettable. As their scheduled performance in New York City approaches, Fellowes ends up simply begging for it all to be over.

Having never seen the original play, I can't say whether I agree with the critics who have said that this film version isn't up to par. What can't be denied, though, are the laughs that are generated by this dream cast.

*Thanks to Sarah for recommending I review this film.

Without a Clue (1988)

"Moriarity knows I'm the only match for his evil genius."
"Are you sure he's not trying to kill me?"
"Of course not! He knows you're an idiot."
"Thank God!"
-Dr. John Watson & Sherlock Holmes



Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic character Sherlock Holmes has had many cinematic adaptations to his name practically since the beginning of the cinema. One of the most famous adaptations were the ones made by Universal in the 1940s with Basil Rathbone as Holmes, although, curiously, only the first of these (1939's The Hound of the Baskervilles) was an offical adaptation of a Conan Doyle Holmes story while the rest had more contemporary settings (Rathbone's Holmes battles Nazis, for one thing), similar to the recent series Sherlock which also has the great detective and his aide, Dr. John Watson, in a modern-day setting.
Other memorable Holmes adaptations include Hammer Films' take on Hound of the Baskervilles (1959) in which Peter Cushing played Holmes and was the first Holmes movie in color. Sadly, Hammer's plans for more Holmes adaptations fell through. The 2009 Sherlock Holmes was also memorable with Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law making a surprisingly good team as Holmes and Watson. There were even episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation devoted to Holmes.
Hands down, though, the best of the Holmes adaptations was the British television series starring Jeremy Brett as the detective. This series, which ran from 1984 to 1994, was a big hit across the world and is the closest to the spirit of Conan Doyle's series. It was during the run of this series that Without a Clue was released. Like the Brett series, this took place at the latter half of the 19th Century. This film, however, was a comedy with a unique twist: Holmes was merely a figurehead and Watson was the one who really solved the crimes behind the scenes.
As the good doctor (Ben Kingsley) explains to his editor (Peter Cook), he helped an investigator solve a murder some years ago, but gave credit to a fictitious detective because Watson was aspiring for a job at a prestigious university and feared that crime-solving on the side would diminish his chances of obtaining such a position. As it turns out, Watson didn't get the job but did get an audience wanting to know more about Holmes. To that end, he hires an actor named Reginald Kincaid (Michael Caine) to play Holmes, who basically takes all the credit for the detective work Watson does and writes down for the Strand Magazine. To the public, including the jealous Scotland Yard inspector Lastrade (Jeffrey Jones), Holmes is the best detective in the world and Watson is just backup.
When the film opens, though, Watson begins to be wary of "Holmes" due to the latter's excessive ego, which is matched by his excessive womanizing, gambling, and drinking. Watson, at one point, kicks him out of his Baker Street flat, but basically comes crawling back to him when Lastrade informs him that the government wants Holmes to solve a mystery threatening the British Empire's economy.
The mystery involves the disappearance of a treasury employee and the trail eventually leads them to Prof. Moriarity (Paul Freeman), who knows that Watson is the real genius while Holmes is a moron.
When they attempt to capture him, Watson is seemingly killed, which eventually prompts "Holmes" to solve the case on his own.
Caine and Kingsley are a wonderful match and many of the film's laughs come from them. Holmes fans may even view Watson's apparent death as a case of art imitating art as Holmes apparently died in The Final Problem only for public pressure to force Conan Doyle to resurrect him in The Empty House (although The Hound of the Baskervilles was published in between those two stories). The film also reflects the love/hate relationship Conan Doyle had with his creation. For years, he wanted to wash his hands of Holmes and be known for other work, just as Watson wants to be rid of Holmes and be known as "John Watson- The Crime Doctor." In both cases, though, public demand just wouldn't allow it. Rumor has it that Conan Doyle was knighted only after he promised the King he would resurrect Holmes.
While some may not be surprised at the outcome of Watson's apparent demise or the involvement of femme fatale Leslie Giles (Lysette Anthony), this is a delightful, ambitious take on a classic literary figure which simply came at the wrong time.