A dreary historical yarn

Tag : Melange Knitting Yarn


Goya's Ghosts
Movies such as Spartan-fest 300 and The Other Boleyn Girl make one yearn for historical movies with a little real grit inthem, but Milos Forman's new film probably has too much.

Set in Spain in the late 1700s and early 1800s, this lugubriouspicture revolves around the painter Francisco Goya (StellanSkarsgård), who paints royalty with one hand and produces darklygrotesque satirical etchings with the other. But this story isn'treally about Goya himself, unfortunately. He's really just the linkbetween priestly inquisitor Javier Bardem, even more scary than in No Country for Old Men , and young beauty Nathalie Portman, still trying to live downQueen Amidala. The times are turbulent, the Catholic Churchrepressive and so forth. The two-part structure divides between theperiod immediately prior to the French revolution and then, afteran awkward transition (suddenly we have Goya in voice-over),Napoleon's invasion of Spain 15 years later.

There is a certain amount of interest here, if you can get throughthe plod of the plot and the mélange of different accents, but itis rather dreary overall. -- Shaun de Waal

Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantánamo
Harold (John Cho) and Kumar (Kal Penn) return, stoned and horny,but this time their marijuana habit gets them into deep trouble.Mistaken for Middle Eastern terrorists while lighting up a bong inan airplane toilet, they find themselves incarcerated atGuantánamo Bay. What follows is a gleeful romp through the DeepSouth with rabid government agents in hot pursuit.

The film takes swipe after hilarious swipe at the abysmal state ofrace relations in a United States ruled by a bigoted war-mongeringelite. Harold's docile minority versus Kumar's uppity minoritymakes for some sneaky satire, with Harold's naive trust in thesystem and Kumar's loudmouthed scepticism a post-9/11 comic duet.Employing tasteless humour to achieve social satire is a riskyenterprise. Indeed, the swashbuckling use of racial stereotypes andcasual frat-boy misogyny would scupper the film's good intentions,but for Harold and Kumar's amiable manner and, we learn, fine senseof social justice.