DVD Review: Frost/Nixon [Blu-ray]: Frank Langella, Michael Sheen, Sam Rockwell, Kevin Bacon, Matthew Macfadyen, Oliver Platt, Rebecca Hall, Toby Jones, Andy Milder, Ron Howard, Peter Morgan: Movies & TV

Apr23

DVD Review: Frost/Nixon [Blu-ray]: Frank Langella, Michael Sheen, Sam Rockwell, Kevin Bacon, Matthew Macfadyen, Oliver Platt, Rebecca Hall, Toby Jones, Andy Milder, Ron Howard, Peter Morgan: Movies & TV

Posted by admin | on 23 April, 01:32 AM

Amazon.com
Sounds like a good match: a historical drama from the author of The Queen, but with an American subject in the generational wheelhouse of director Ron Howard. And so Peter Morgan’s Tony-winning play morphs into a Hollywood movie under the wing of the Apollo 13 guy. Morgan’s subject is a curious moment of post-Watergate shakeout: British TV host David Frost’s long-form interviews with ex-President Richard Nixon, conducted in 1977. It was a big ratings success at the time, justifying the somewhat controversial decision to cut an enormous check for Nixon’s services. The movie adds a mockumentary note to the otherwise straightforward style, having direct-to-camera addresses from various aides to Frost and Nixon (played by the likes of Oliver Platt, Sam Rockwell, and Kevin Bacon); these basically tell us things we already glean from the rest of the movie, adding unnecessary melodrama and upping the stakes. In this curious scheme, the success of Frost’s career, which could bellyflop if he doesn’t get something worthwhile out of the cagey, long-winded Nixon, is given somewhat more weight than the actual revelations of the interviews. Even with these questionable storytelling decisions, there’s still the spectacle of two actors going at it hammer and tongs, and on that level the movie offers some heat. Michael Sheen, who played Tony Blair not only in The Queen but also in another Morgan-scripted project, The Deal, is adept at catching David Frost’s blow-dried charm, as well as the determination beneath it. Frank Langella’s physical performance as Nixon is superb, and he certainly can be a commanding actor, though veteran Nixon-watchers might find that he misses a certain depth of self-pity in the man. Both actors were retained from the original stage production, a rare thing in Hollywood–and probably Howard’s best decision of the project. –Robert Horton

Product Description
From Academy Award-winning director, Ron Howard, comes the electrifying, untold story behind one of the most unforgettable moments in history. When disgraced President Richard Nixon agreed to an interview with jet-setting television personality, David Frost, he thought he’d found the key to saving his tarnished legacy. But, with a name to make and a reputation to overcome, Frost became one of Nixon’s most formidable adversaries and engaged the leader in a charged battle of wits that changed the face of politics forever. Featuring brilliant portrayals by Frank Langella and Michael Sheen, Frost/Nixon is the fascinating and suspenseful story of truth, accountability, secrets and lies.

Near Perfect Filmmaking,

By Chris Luallen DVD Review: Frost/Nixon [Blu ray]: Frank Langella, Michael Sheen, Sam Rockwell, Kevin Bacon, Matthew Macfadyen, Oliver Platt, Rebecca Hall, Toby Jones, Andy Milder, Ron Howard, Peter Morgan: Movies & TV carrot. V47081519 (Nashville, Tennessee) -
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Frost/Nixon (DVD)

After the Watergate scandal and his subsequent resignation, Richard Nixon (Frank Langella) is living in relative seclusion back in California. But, following a lucrative interview offer from British talk show host David Frost (Michael Sheen), Nixon sees an opportunity not only to make some easy money but to return himself to the public spotlight. Meanwhile Frost, best known for chatting with celebrity lightweights, views this as a chance to gain fame and respectability as a journalist in America.

Frost is encouraged by his research aides to go hard after Nixon. But instead Frost throws softballs for the first three interview segments and is easily overwhelmed by his more experienced adversary. Then, on the night before the final interview, Frost receives a strange phone call from Nixon, who basically goes off on a drunken rant. Frost, smelling blood, decides to take a more aggressive approach and on the final day Nixon ends up making humiliating admissions about his role in the Watergate cover-up, perhaps cementing his tarnished legacy in American politics.

How much you enjoy this movie will probably relate to how much interest you have in the subject matter. But there is no doubt that this is one of those rare motion pictures that reaches near perfection in terms in filmmaking. The acting, especially by Langella, is superb and the sense of dramatic timing is impeccable. The small details were also well handled, such as film’s spot on depiction of the 70’s and Nixon’s bizarre fascination with Frost’s Italian leather shoes. This is probably the best directorial outing in Ron Howard’s career. Highly recommended.

Beauty and the Beast,

By Mr. O. Buxton “Olly Buxton” DVD Review: Frost/Nixon [Blu ray]: Frank Langella, Michael Sheen, Sam Rockwell, Kevin Bacon, Matthew Macfadyen, Oliver Platt, Rebecca Hall, Toby Jones, Andy Milder, Ron Howard, Peter Morgan: Movies & TV carrot. V47081519 (Highgate, UK) -
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Frost/Nixon (DVD)

What a mightily enjoyable film.

Frank Langella renders Richard Nixon as slower, older and heftier than he really was; somewhere between a punch drunk prize fighter and a waning silverbacked gorilla, snorting and puffing at the attentions of a glad-handing young dilettante. Michael Sheen plays that glad-handing dilettante, British talk show host David Frost in truth a little unevenly: at times caricaturing his bouffant mincing drawl like an effete Austin Powers, at times a spookily accurate rendition, at times a diluted one not a million miles away from the same actor’s celebrated portrayal of British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

But this unevenness is I think demanded by the script which asks us to believe the same man was by turns the sort of international playboy shagadelically chatting up first class posh girls over the mid Atlantic, a superficial chancer prepared to take on any assignment including (quel horreur!) hosting an Australian chat show, an impulsive bluffer forced into a desperate fundraising measures by a rash commitment which he couldn’t back up and an incisive political analyst, able finally to pull Richard Nixon limb from limb when it seemed all was intractably lost. I have a suspicion Frost wasn’t really any of things, at least not to anything like the degree suggested here.

But that is what good drama requires, and in this way and in others the dramatic archetypes on which the screenplay was surely based occasionally show through. In a historical drama the screenplay writer’s job is to extrude from the intractably interwoven fabric of fact a recognisable narrative when in reality one never existed. Ron Howard does this artfully but is almost too successful for his own good. The narrative prescribes a perfect “confronting the monster” trajectory, with all the phases and characters clearly articulated: henchmen, damsels, wise counsel, facilitating assistants, a call to challenge, early success, dramatic reversal and then triumph out of certain defeat.

But real life, as they say, doesn’t follow the script. Now it might just be that the Nixon interviews really did play out in so dramatically perfect a fashion, but you do have to wonder how much additional fictionalising the screenplay involves. A thoroughly implausible drunken midnight conversation, in particular, had the ring of a dramatic as opposed to historical device.

That said, for the very same reason, the Frost/Nixon is extremely entertaining and has piqued my interest enough to find out some more. Special mention should go to the extremely effective secondary cast: Sam Rockwell - not that long ago Zaphod Beeblebrox - all but unrecognisable as Frost’s excitable and overly-principled anti-Nixon researcher, Kevin Bacon’s typically assured and unflashy portrayal of Nixon’s chief of staff Jack Brennan and Toby Jones’ creepy portrayal of Nixon’s weirdo PR Guy, Swifty Lazar.

Well recommended.

Olly Buxton

One of Howard’s very best.,

By G.V. “Gerry” DVD Review: Frost/Nixon [Blu ray]: Frank Langella, Michael Sheen, Sam Rockwell, Kevin Bacon, Matthew Macfadyen, Oliver Platt, Rebecca Hall, Toby Jones, Andy Milder, Ron Howard, Peter Morgan: Movies & TV carrot. V47081519 (Mexico City, Mexico) -

This review is from: Frost/Nixon (DVD)

I went to see this movie based on the reviews and the people involved (star and director) but after watching it I realize the subject matter is the least relevant thing about it. Simply put, this is a terrific character study that just happens to be about a former president and a celebrity interviewer, very much unlike, say, THE CURIOUS CASE OF BEJAMIN BUTTON which is all about its subject matter and a screenplay that’s about nothing. I would have never imagined a portion of David Frost’s life would make a worthwhile movie but the sections of this movie dedicated solely to him are just as interesting as Nixon’s even though Michael Sheen sounds just like Austin Powers. In conclusion, this is a must see film even if neither Frost not Nixon sound like a couple of people you’d care to spend a couple of hours watching.
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DVD Review: Frost/Nixon [Blu ray]: Frank Langella, Michael Sheen, Sam Rockwell, Kevin Bacon, Matthew Macfadyen, Oliver Platt, Rebecca Hall, Toby Jones, Andy Milder, Ron Howard, Peter Morgan: Movies & TV sharebookmarx

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