Two diverse films
By Rama Gaind
ADAPTED from a stage drama by playwright/screenwriter/director John Patrick Shanley, Doubt is set in a working-class Catholic parish and parochial school in New York City in 1964.
Meryl Streep plays the strict Sister Aloysius Beauvier, Mother Superior at a Catholic school in the Bronx, who suspects improper behaviour by Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) towards a 12-year-old student, Donald Miller (Joseph Foster II).
Miller is the school’s only African-American student and altar boy.
It is Sister James (Amy Adams), a young, inexprienced teacher, who observes the closeness between the boy and Father Flynn.
The film’s overall success is due to the fine acting by the cast – particularly Streep, Hoffman and Adams – and the remarkable ascetic cinematography by Roger Deakins.
CLEVER performances by Frank Langella and Michael Sheen, who play disgraced former US President Richard Nixon and British TV host David Frost, unfold in the lightweight film Frost/Nixon directed by Ron Howard.
Talking about Nixon’s time in office and the Watergate scandal, the two met for four historic interviews in 1977.
Howard’s entertaining adaptation of a play by Peter Morgan is an enlightening reflection on compelling political events.
