p e n g u i n d e v i l

Honestly, before this movie I’d never even heard of the Frost/Nixon interview. Frost/Nixon is based on a play (generally a good sign) that was based on an actual interview between Richard Nixon and David Frost in 1977. It is filmed as a retelling of the interview, featuring dialogue similar to that of the actual interview, it is also in the style of a documentary about the interview and the work leading up to it. In both aspects, I found Frost/Nixon to be very compelling. The idea that a frank interview with this “most disgraced” former president actually took place I found to be fascinating in itself, and with the great script and an all around great cast… Frank Langella as Nixon, Michael Sheen as Frost and a great supporting group (most notably Kevin Bacon as Jack Brennan and Matthew Macfadyen as Frost’s producer), made the film quite enthralling.

Old Tricky Dicky is tremendously well played as Langella makes one sense the power and confidence that Nixon (theoretically) exuded and he actually comes across as a somewhat sympathetic character. Scenes they show of the real Nixon (not nearly as handsome as Langella) and reading a bit about the actual background of the interview make it seem that maybe Nixon wasn’t as sympathetic as he is portrayed here… But it does make for a better story.

I imagine that the literary license they take is perfectly reasonable. The details changed, I imagine, were to make the movie flow better and to help focus on the interview itself, which is the real meat of the story… And they seem to stick to the content of the interview pretty fairly accurately.

And, for some reason that I don’t recall, I watched a movie called The Skeleton Key. As a Hollywood thriller, I wasn’t expecting much from it, but I actually thought it was pretty good. A young lady named Caroline is hired by a family’s young Lawyer, Luke, to care for an aging stroke victim at the old plantation house that he shares with his hostile and distrustful wife. Of course, it becomes obvious to Caroline that there is more going on in there than the lady of the house wants to let on to… A secret room in the attic, lingering relics of an old couple named Mama Cecile and Papa Justify, some Hoodoo and an old record led Caroline to realize that the old man is trying to tell her something and that maybe his condition is actually due to some nasty spell, rather than a stroke. Her attempts to help him and find out what is going on lead her down a dangerous path, and a path that leads to an interesting and unanticipated (by me, at least) twist. All in all, much more interesting and involving movie than I had expected.