Movies: Zorro(s), How to Steal a Million

It may seem like we have been watching piles of movies lately, but I'll have you know that I have also been reading books. But that will be another post. B somehow finds time to boogie board as well (he's a maniac). But all that fun and games will be curtailed somewhat as the semester is about to start. And I'm still working regular hours at the East-West Center--more on that later as well. Anyway, to the movies...

How to Steal a Million. More Audrey Hepburn. It turns out that my boss at the East-West Center and her daughter are also big fans of Ms. Hepburn and we have been swapping DVDs. I loaned her my Hepburn movies and she loaned us How to Steal a Million. No intellectual challenges here, but great fun. As so often happens watching Audrey's comedies, I am left wondering: Did women really sleep in all that makeup and those eyelashes in the 60s?

Now, the Zorros. Our Zorro-fest is over for now, unless we find a copy of the 1920 Douglas Fairbanks Mark of Zorro. We watched both of the Antonio Banderas/Catherine Zeta-Jones Zorros within a week or so. The first one, The Mask of Zorro (1998), was great fun. In the Mask, a retiring Zorro (Anthony Hopkins) is passing the torch--or in this case the mask--to a younger Zorro (Antonio Banderas). I had no idea Hopkins was in this (obviously I wasn't the one who put this in the queue) so I was pleasantly surprised. Anthony Hopkins is, of course fantastic, and his presence certainly added a lot of cred. Banderas and Zeta-Jones are also quite good and do a very good job both with the action and with the comedy. In our estimation, this movie is a rare example of a case where the revised ending that they tacked on, after the original ending didn't test well, actually was an improvement over the original. If you are flipping through channels on latenight t.v., and you can choose between this movie and Happy Days reruns, definitely choose this.

The Legend of Zorro (2005) is about as disappointing as one might fear a sequel to be. It feels like it is attempting to be more of a family film, with a painfully cute (spunky!) little Zorro Jr. with big brown eyes, and yet at the same time it impressed us as being more brutal. A strange combination. And the acting? Banderas and Zeta-Jones can only work with what they are given. And Zeta-Jones only noticeably slipped out of her spanish accent a few times. The allegedly French character even occasionally slipped into his French accent. Maybe their characters just all speak English so well that they weren't supposed to have accents... And while the horse totally over-acted, which I think that is often the case with horses, it is only fair to note that he had the accent totally nailed. In summary, there is no reason to watch this. If this is the best thing on latenight t.v., go to bed.