From My Collection: Shakespeare in Love Movie Review

I just recently rewatched Shakespeare in Love and it was a s good, if not better than I remember it. John Madden’s film of the fictional and comic fantasy of how the greatest romantic tragedy in literary history came to be was my favorite film of 1998. I saw it Christmas Day, part of a moviegoing tradition I diligently maintained from 1997 through 2005, and then again a few weeks after. I bought the DVD in 1999 and have watched it a few times over the years and now I have the Blu-Ray (yes, I’m a dinosaur) so I can enjoy it in HD whenever I please. I was one of few people to accurately predict its victory in the Best Picture Oscar contest. In the Oscar pool I used to manage, only three people out of about thirty made that pick over Saving Private Ryan.

Enemy at the Gates Movie Review

This review was written in March 2001 and is presented here for the first time.

Jude Law is an actor who exudes tremendous energy in any role he takes. He became a star and earned an Oscar nomination in The Talented Mr. Ripley as an American playboy living the high life in the south of Italy. In Enemy at the Gates, a new film by Jean-Jacques Annaud, he plays a Russian soldier during WWII elevated to hero status by his skills as an expert marksman. In every scene, Law boils with intensity and sinks deep within the story.

The story (based loosely on fact) is of a young soldier in the Russian army helping a tired nation fend off the Nazi regime at the Battle of Stalingrad. The opening battle sequence will warrant comparisons to Spielberg's harrowing invasion of Normandy in Saving Private Ryan. Both are bloody and seem to be completely futile attempts at victory even though we know that the Allies won at Normandy and that the Russians halted the German advance at Stalingrad.