THE first time I saw a Jude Law movie was when I watched Enemy at the Gates. A Russian story set in World War II, Enemy at the Gates production cast English-speaking actors to act as Russians because it’s an English production. This is the first movie that I personally saw the talent of this dude. Jude Law is adorable speaking English with the heavy r accent which is a total departure to the non-rhotic accent he has accustomed to during his entire life.
Actually, Enemy at the Gates is not his first acting job and neither is it his first challenge in acting. Oscar-winning director Anthony Minghella of The English Patient cast Jude Law opposite Matt Damon in 1999’s The Talented Mr. Ripley. This time, Jude Law’s challenge was to play the saxophone. And he did it very well that MTV Movie Awards gave him an award for that.
But The Talented Mr. Ripley was all about Mr. Ripley (played awesomely by Matt Damon) and Jude Law was just a supporting actor for that. Yet director Anthony Minghella at this up and coming talent who grabbed the MTV Movie Award and so he took Law back into his fold again to be in Cold Mountain. As far as I can recall, Cold Mountain was the most heart-wrenching performance of Jude Law to date. It’s the straight version of Brokeback Mountain yet it has some action elements in it. But the action scenes here are totally different from that of Enemy at the Gates which is a movie intended to be void of emotion. Here in Cold Mountain, every moment in the action scenes have their equivalent emotional intensity.
After those three successive serious movies, Jude Law deserved a break. But what a break he had when he was cast opposite the great late Laurence Olivier in a light pulp fiction movie called Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow which depicts a futuristic picture of 1939 New York.
Following Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Alfie was commissioned to reprise the role of Alfie. To my mind, casting him in a lame duck comedy was really wrong. I never enjoyed Alfie the character in the film because he was such a braggart. But there’s one redeeming factor in the movie though. At least, Jude Law and Susan Sarandon had onscreen chemistry.
BEING an American, one of the things that fascinate me is our non-rhotic speakers across the Atlantic, the British. It’s too bad we booted them out of the country. And so, one of the things that I like are watching Sky News, listening to British songs and viewing movies that portray London. I cannot get over and over the voices of the Sky News newscasters and how they know how to pronounce words without pronouncing the r. I cannot fathom why they drive to the right.
One of the movies that I have enjoyed watching just this January was National Treasure: Book of Secrets because it portrayed a car chase scene in London that culminated with one of the bad guys in the River Thames retrieving a treasure that was thrown by Nicolas Cage after he had made a copy of it. In previous years, I have enjoyed such movies as Thunderbirds and Rise of the Silver Surfer which also portray the River Thames in the middle of London. In Thunderbirds, a monorail was submerged at the bottom and little Tintin (played by pre-High School Musical Vanessa Hudgens) has to rescue the passengers inside the monorail. In Rise of the Silver Surfer, River Thames was dried up amidst the backdrop of the recently-installed London Eye. Perhaps they may want to make a movie someday portraying the beautiful City Hall of London.
Dominating the Brit charts ironically is not a Londoner but a mainland European, Robyn. Now that’s as far as I can go about the current edition of the Brit charts because there’s not much of them right now, I’d rather go back talking about movies about London. One of the lovely English actresses that I can’t get tired of watching is Keira Knightley. Keira may not have a charming bosom but her face is sure seductive. Her earlier movies, The Hole and The Jacket, were pretty goody-goody teenage stuff but she has since redeemed her image with stellar roles in later endeavors. The first significant movie that I like is in Star Wars of course where her facial features are being compared with the equally magnificent Natalie Portman. Next, Keira stood her ground as the romantic partner of Orlando Bloom in the Pirates of the Carribean series. But the real big break came when she became Guinevere opposite the rough gentlemanly Clive Owen as King Arthur. Then Pride and Prejudice and Atonement came along and the rest is history. Keira will forever be remembered now as a household name in all of English glory.
Another lovely English actress that I like is Kate Winslet. Prior to her Titanic days, Kate starred in the Ang Lee period piece Sense and Sensibility opposite Winona Ryder. Also before Titanic, Kate starred in the movie Jude. Now there’s really something about this lady. She’s really a committed actress at heart because in Jude, there was a scene that she butchered a pig with all its carcasses coming out.
