Grace of Monaco (2014)

My wife picked this film from a concourse of choices for a Sunday movie night. I’m not surprised from her choice, but it adds to a good discussion on casting and what to do and not to do with chosen actors for a project like this. The cast consisting of Nicole Kidman, Tim Roth, and Frank Langela surrounds Grace Kelly turning from movie star actress to princess of Monaco. And it proves to be a harder transition for the new princess with relations between France a little shaky. Nicole Kidman as Grace Kelly was a good choice for casting, and even Tim Roth pulls out his Monaco – French accent beautifully. I thouroughly enjoyed Roth and Kidman on screen together. It’s nice not to see him in a stand-off dropping F-bombs everywhere.

The dilemma with this film was a poor use of supporting characters and actors cast in them. One example I want to focus on right now is Frank Langela as Father Francis Tucker. Many times in this film, Tucker gave so much meaningful advice and counsel to Grace and that’s about it. Grace never takes his advice. It’s as if he were part of the wall. The movie could have gone on without him and it wouldn’t do anything to the plot. The second person I want to focus on is Count Fernando D’Aillieres played by the greatest Derek Jacobi. He plays the count who has to turn Grace into a princess or Monaco won’t take her seriously. This was a bad use of Jacobi because he’s only in the movie for five minutes. Talent like that is too good to be a small part. Olivier Dahan and his team could have combined a few roles into one character and that would mean more to Roth and Kidman on screen. A mediator for all. But still see it. It sells Monaco very well.

Nicole Kidman in “Grace of Monaco”

Reservoir Dogs (1992)

This hour-and-a-half drama is full of tense stand-offs where we don’t know who’s going to die. I was on the edge of my seat the whole movie! This is by far one of Quentin Tarantino’s best films and the most simple. It involves a handful of crooks who suspect that one of them is an undercover cop after a robbery gone bad. It stars Michael Madsen, Harvey Keitel, Steve Buscemi, and Tim Roth. A lot of these guys weren’t well known, but Reservoir Dogs got them going with how serious and funny they were together on screen. Again, intensity!

The best thing about this film is that it keeps an active audience. It definitely kept me guessing who the cop was. And when I did find out, I wasn’t prepared to react to it. And Tarantino pulled our strings by killing off key characters unsuspectingly making us react to them. He is so good at telling us a story and getting us to care about the characters. This is a very important skill to have as a writer and a director.

One item here involving movie making methods in this film that makes Tarantino movies so good is that it’s non-linear. The film takes place after a diamond robbery and throughout the entire film we see flashbacks of all of the characters prior to the robbery. Most of the dialog from the characters after the robbery is about the robbery. See the trend? They talk about details, events, and doubts about the robbery giving us, the audience, a pretty good idea what happened. Some movies like “Vantage Point” (2008) attempt to go into different perspectives and non-linear approaches as “Reservoir Dogs”, but it got old and became a broken record. “Reservoir Dogs” is not a broken record. It’s an addictive puzzle.

Michael Madsen (L), Harvey Keitel (M), and Steve Buscemi (R) in “Reservoir Dogs”