Auteur Ex Smackdown: Will Madonna or Guy Ritchie Have the Better-Received Fall Film?
This coming winter will bring us two major showdowns: Glenn vs. Meryl in the Best Actress race, and now ferocious exes Madonna and Guy Ritchie are officially duelists: Her W.E. debuts Dec. 9, and his Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows follows up on Dec. 16. Place your bets now: Which of these dubious, aggressively modern "old-fashioned" films will critics and audiences enjoy/tolerate more?
First, here's Madonna's W.E., an unofficial adaptation of the esteemed children's book The English Roses (if you ask me), in all its watercolored, scone-nibbling bliss:
And as we just posted, here's Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows -- or as I call it, The Ham of the Baskervilles.
I can't believe I'm doing this to my sweet panther sorceress Madonna, but I think Sherlock's Meta-score will top hers. Critics will be willing and primed to accept the nonsense whizzbang of Sherlock's adventures, but there's no prefacing Madonna's waterlogged pretension. Every character in W.E. looks more static than the last, and I can't say Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law lack personality. Ugh, why! Why does Madonna's movie have to be so bad? Why! I thought I'd seen the worst of it in I Am Because We Are, but no, now accents, crinkly royal smiles, and that stupid fucking monogram have to come into play. I've worked too hard for Madonna to blow this. I tolerated American Life for this queen. I think I even called Jesus Luz "potentially all right" once. Is anyone else even remotely upset by the outlook of this bomb? It's the unsightly hydrangea of the season, and now Arthur Conan Doyle's Adderall-addicted, gunpowder-fed step-grandchildren are better than it. This? This is true blue sads.
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Comments
The day Madonna makes a film that gets well received, hell will have officially frozen over.
I thought W.E. was the unofficial adaptation of the White Girl Problems twitter feed...
Madonna is such a black hole of bad filmmaking abilities she nearly sucked all the good directing skills out of Guy while they were married. He went from Snatch and Lock Stock to Swept Away and Revolver. Since he's left, he's slowly getting his mojo back with Rock N Rolla and Sherlock.
This is going to be no contest. Ritchie by a mile.
You would list Holmes as an example of him getting his mojo back?
Yeah, Mr. Ritchie easily wins this one. Madonna will just have to go find another young Brazilian to suck the life force out of.
this article is very very orrible!!!!!! I saw W.E. at Venice Film Festival and I can say that it's a great movie with powerfull pathos and great performance by Abbie Cornish and Andrea Riseborough (just awarded with Hollywood Award for best spotlight actrees)...I don't know what film the writer have seen, but I'm sure that it's no the same I've saw. ORRIBLE JOURNALIST!
This is reminiscent of that time the Alien versed that Predator, because no matter who wins this particular battle, we all lose.
You complete me.
Oh yeah. Holmes was nowhere near as good as Swept Away. Point taken. (rolls eyes)
Holmes may not have been the some amazing indie film like Lock Stock, but it's better than the stuff during his slump, so yes, I consider it part of his comeback.
Well, seeing as how he made it AFTER RocknRolla, it seems he's regressing.