Woman In Gold

Films about the Holocaust come out every year, so when a film about the modern impact that dark time in history is made, you would get quite excited to see how this event still affects so many people to this day. And while I'm not at all adverse to seeing an intense legal drama (both To Kill a Mockingbird and A Time to Kill are great legal dramas), that backdrop may not work as well here.

Woman In Gold takes place in 1998, when young, struggling lawyer Randy Schoenberg (Ryan Reynolds) is introduced to his mother's Austrian friend Maria Altmann (Helen Mirren). Maria's sister has recently died and she has found some letters that her sister sent to the Austrian government asking about the restitution of her family's paintings that were stolen from her family by the Nazis, namely the famous Gustav Klimt portrait of her aunt, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I. Maria enlists Randy's help in the legal case and while at first he is reluctant, he soon decides to help. The pair travel to Vienna, where a symbolic conference is being held on the restitution of these types of artworks and they begin their case. Whilst in Austria, they meet investigative journalist Hubertus Czernin (Daniel Brühl) who helps them with their research.

This movie staggers along at an odd pace. At times you are being swept up in the progress that Randy is making with the case and at other times it slows right down, as Maria and Randy share a tender moment of understanding and while that sounds completely normal of a drama, it happens at odd and inopportune times. Randy's wife Pam also shows up, but only at times when Randy is having a crisis of faith and needs some outside direction. The film makes a big effort to not have to use subtitles the whole time as Maria does not wish to speak German whilst in Austria, but then this extends to the other non-American characters speaking to each other in English, even on Austrian TV. I feel like this was a bit lazy and could have been changed.

The film also features flashbacks to Maria's youth in Vienna, both before and during the Nazi occupation. Here she is played by Canadian actress Tatiana Maslany and her husband Frederick is portrayed by Max Irons. These sequences show how serene her home life was before the Nazis, but are also quite open in showing the brutality of the Nazis. Also when the couple are fleeing Austria, the tension and fear they felt comes through.

Ryan Reynolds carries most of the acting in this film and has really been showing his dramatic range in the past few years (presumably to drop the stigma attached with The Green Lantern). Even in shots that aren't particularly focused on his character, he shines with his subtle performance. Helen Mirren on the other hand, plays the character similarly to the ones she has over the last couple of years, especially her role in The Hundred Foot Journey. Tatiana Maslany does a much better job playing the younger version of Maria and is full of emotion. Daniel Brühl brings incredible emotion to the role of Hubertus and Katie Holmes supports the main cast well.

Woman In Gold offers enjoyable viewing, but doesn't try too hard to make a splash. There are some emotional scenes, but not enough to make the entire film one that you will cry the whole way through. Just like in Dumb and Dumber there is a joke about the confusion between Austria and Australia.

Man of Steel

Did you ever wonder who pays for the reconstruction of a city after superbeings have destroyed it? Have you ever wondered why people don't recognise Clark Kent as Superman with glasses? If you answered no to both of those questions, then Man of Steel is the movie for you.

After a lengthy sequence on the world of Krypton, Jor-El (Russell Crowe), a scientist, sends his firstborn child (and first naturally born child of Krypton in a thousand years) away in a spaceship due to the imminent destruction of his home planet. Meanwhile, leader of a military coup, General Zod (Michael Shannon) fails to obtain a codex containing the DNA structure and ends up getting banished to The Phantom Zone (a type of black hole).

Thirty-three years later on Earth, Kal-El (Henry Cavill), after being brought up as Clark Kent in a small town in Kansas (never referred to as Smallville in this movie), is a drifter, floating from job to job, saving people where necessary. When he hears about a possible discovery of an alien spaceship in Canada, Kent travels there and finds the ship, resurrects his father's consciousness with a key and learns about his origins.

In doing so, Kent alerts Zod, who has been searching for Kent/Kal-El, bringing him to Earth. Zod realises that Earth is a prime location for beginning a new Krypton, thus dooming this film to the Superman curse of all these films being about real estate (seriously, look it up, every superman film has a plot or subplot about real estate).

Although the plot of this film is weak, both the superb acting and striking visuals and action sequences redeem the film. Henry Cavill (The Tudors) brings a depth to Superman that was missing in Brandon Routh's hollow performance. He has a certain charm that I believe Superman should possess and there is a true chemistry between him and his Earth parents, Jonathan and Martha Kent (Kevin Costner and Diane Lane). Amy Adams (Doubt) is the perfect choice for Lois Lane. She is believable enough to play such a strong and independent reporter to Lawrence Fishburne's Perry White.

I found Michael Shannon's (Revolutionary Road) performance as General Zod to be good, although at times I felt his character was annoying, especially at his most persistent moments. On the other hand, Russell Crowe was fantastic at playing a role made famous by Marlon Brando. His gruff Aussie accent was not out of place as the Kryptonian accent was all over the place.

Zack Snyder (director of Watchmen, 300) is great at comic book adaptions and here he does another fantastic job, especially with the backing of Christopher Nolan, fresh of the back of his Dark Knight trilogy.

The action in this movie, especially the fighting scenes between Kent and the other Kryptonians, was believable and enjoyable to watch, although as I mentioned before, someone is going to pay a lot of cash to rebuild Metropolis.

Verdict: An all in all enjoyable movie to watch despite some weak points. I look forward to see what Warner Bros is going to do with the other DC characters ahead of an Avengers-style JLA movie.