Fresh, unusual comedy about a radio disk jockey, Alan Bird, whose girlfriend moves out on him leaving him disconsolate and at loose ends. He happens to stumble into a war between two ice cream truck vendors, and decides, out of the goodness of his bereft heart, to act as a mediator. The ice cream vendors operate like petty mafioso, destroying each others' trucks and equipment and intruding on each others' territories-- and Alan doesn't really get what he is getting into. He wants to do a radio documentary on them but his manager thinks he's losing his mind. The movie is based on a real "ice cream war" in Glasgow in the 1980's which, however, actually involved drugs (the ice cream trucks were used as a front). And in the real story, there was actually a murder involved, and real violence. "Comfort and Joy" probably suffered at the box office because of it. Always amusing, and unexpected, and well-filmed (Bill Paterson is quite convincing as a DJ). The music, by Mark Knopfler, is excellent.
Bill Paterson, Eleanor David, Clare Grogan, Alex Norton, Patrick Malahide, George Rossi, Rikki Fulton, Roberto Bernardi
Evocative, textured drama about a Polish-Jewish family, the Krichinskys, who immigrate to America in the early 1900's, told from the point of view of the fifth brother, Sam, who is brought over by the first four, because they are family. And they operate as a family, with a family council, and with hard work, and donations to charities, and support for other relatives who immigrate to America, the land of promise and freedom. They do work hard, starting with nothing, and eventually prosper, but the changes to society and technology begin to wear at the family bonds. Marriages, children, and grand-children come along, along with moves to suburbia, and television, and cousins changing their names to sound more assimilated as they expand their business (which eventually becomes one of the first discount department stores). And finally Gabriel, one of the original brothers, is enraged when, one Christmas, they cut the turkey before he has arrived (though he is always late and the younger children are restlessly waiting). Sam ages and eventually ends up in a nursing home and surveys his tiny room and observes that everything he acquired was left behind so he could be in that room. He remembers the beautiful lights and the fireworks when he first arrived, on Independence Day. Beautifully acted and filmed. I did see this film much earlier, but had not entered it in the database.
Leo Fuchs, Eve Gordon, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Elizabeth Perkins, Joan Plowright, Kevin Pollak, Aidan Quinn, Israel Rubinek, Lou Jacobi, Elijah Wood,
Albert Johansson had a wife and a home but he also had a circus, and he left his wife to seduce young Anne with whom he travels in his caravan. When the circus passes through his old home town, he visits his former wife, Agda, enraging Anne, who makes a pitch to a local theatrical actor, who gives him a worthless necklace. It's all very tawdry and wretched, epitomized by the humiliation of the clown who, years earlier, had to watch his wife bath naked with an entire regiment of soldiers, and then march her through the town back to the circus. In the end-- it can't be the end. The circuses always go on forever in this world, and the humiliations, and the insults, the physical pain-- in the end, it's all for the circus, for the moments of joy that are the only redemptive parts of life.
Ake Gronberg, Harriet Anderson, Hasse Ekman, Anders Ek, Gudrun Brost, Annika Tretow
The oldest, most repeated, and most conspicuous blunder in movies and books and song is the failure to dramatize and demonstrate something they wish to assert is truly remarkable about the main character. They tell the audience, instead: just take our word for it. The characters surrounding Herman Mankiewicz in "Mank" do just that, telling us over and over again what a great, witty, brilliant, genius Herman is, and never once demonstrating it. They never even give us passages of "Citizen Kane", which, we are led to believe, was really the product of Mankiewicz's genius-- not Orson Welles's. Of course, the Mankiewicz family having something to do with the production of this film may have had a hand in it. But so did Pauline Kael, who, in "Raising Kane" tried, absurdly, to give credit for "Citizen Kane" to Mankiewicz, in spite of the overwhelming evidence that Welles, who directed, co-wrote, starred in, and produced it -- was the genius behind the film. The fact that "Mank" doesn't even bother to acknowledge Welles' contribution tells you where it's headed. And the fact that the characters keep interpreting scenes in the way they think people think it happened ("why, this will be one of the greatest films of all time!") instead of the way it likely did happen eviscerates the drama. In the meantime, we get to watch Gary Oldman-- who is rarely boring, but is here-- sap Mankiewicz of wit and charisma and personality. But not just Oldman-- virtually everyone in the film, with the possible exception of Charles Dance as Hearst-- seems sapped of energy and light. Any possible sexual tension between Mankiewicz and his attendants is drained away very quickly with a peculiarly chaste and antiseptic attitude towards his state of incapacity-- he's laid up from an auto accident and can't get out of bed. His wife is in New York. His secretary is married- - her husband is in the RAF and missing. We are treated to a lot of how dare you not invite me to a party so I can rage about how much I hate coming to your party. Fincher, for bizarre reasons, filmed in black and white-- no colour version will ever exist-- and adopted mannerisms of 1940's melodrama to no discernible effect: they're just mannerisms. Fincher shot many scenes over 100 times, which, intentionally or not, utterly deadened the performances. This film is a piece of shit.
Gary Oldman, Amanda Seyfried, Lily Collins, Tom Pelphrey, Arliss Howard, Tuppence Middleton, Monika Grossmann, Sam Troughton, Tom Burke, Charles Dance
Powerful, austere drama about two women in Stalingrad in 1945, immediately after the end of World War II. Stalingrad, of course, was in ruins, with enormous casualties from the attempted German invasion. Iya (Beanpole of the title) is a tall, lean, icy-cold blonde with an serious aversion to sexual intimacy. She is looking after Pashka, the son of a dear friend, Masha, but, inexplicably, smothers Pashka to death and disposes of the body. When Masha arrives, she only understands that Pashka died, in his sleep, and immediately decides to have another baby. But she can't, due to injuries from repeated abortions, from her checkered past. She persuades Iya to bear a child for her. Iya has been instrumental in other deaths at the hospital at which she and Masha work as attendants. When a man with severe injuries just can't bear it anymore, she slips into the ward late at night and administers a fatal dose of something, with the tacit approval of her supervisor, Nikolay, whose face radiates the relentless forceful despair of a doctor facing a bottomless queue of mutilation, psychosis, and death. Masha strikes up a relationship with Sasha, whose mother is wealthy-- and has a dog (we learn, earlier, that Pashka would not know what a dog sounds like because all the dogs have been eaten)-- and he wants to marry her and takes her to a disastrous meeting with his parents. If there is any redemption in the film, it is that the two women resolve some of their tensions and seem to find each other in the detritus of a shattered world.
Viktoria Miroshnichenko, Masha Perelygina, Andrey Bykov, Igor Shirokov, Konstantin Balakirev, Kseniya Kutepovna, Timofey Glazkov
Who else would show you 30 seconds of a carpet? Elegiac, beautifully filmed tribute to Davies' memory of detail, and mood, and colour, from his childhood-- specifically, about the age of 11 or 12, as he moved from elementary to high school. Excluded, alone, except for his very likable mother, Bud finds comfort and delicious indulgence in the movies and music, and in his budding homosexuality. Davies doesn't try to explain what it is in him that his classmates made a target of. It just is. And Bud's mother seems to understand on a certain level. Restrained. It's a howl of outrage at circumstance and fate, at times-- how, do you wonder, do people end up in this dreary, oppressive situation? It can't be by their own choice.
Marjorie Yates, Leigh McCormack, Anthony Watson, Nicholas Lamont
Really a bitter, sad film fantasy about loneliness. Jake and his girlfriend Lucy (or one of several names) are travelling through a bleak Oklahoma landscape on their way to visit Jake's parents for the first time. Lucy keeps thinking about ending the relationship and the awkward, weird evening with Jake's family convinces her. Jake's parents are socially awkward, oblique at times, insinuating, though never over the top. Jake's dad comes off very well, but they change from middle-aged to old to young to old again through the evening, and Lucy sees Jake's old bedroom and notes books and movies that are referenced throughout the film. She wants to go home and Jake finally takes her but then stops at a Dairy Queen for freezies-- in the middle of a blizzard, which neither of them consume. He then wants to unload the freezies by driving down a sideroad which ends up leading them to a large school, where a friendly janitor is mopping the floors. The janitor recalls a high school production of Oklahoma, and cast members dance down the hall in a surreal ballet, from the musical. Spoiler alert: the janitor is Jake, and Lucy is his imaginary lover, someone he might have connected with if he had acted differently or had different chances. Jake is old, disappointed with life, lonely, and the entire evening is his imagination of what it might have been like to have a lover. He is thinking of "ending it" in a literal sense, and the evening is his valediction to an unrealized life. In "Oklahoma", a character, Jud, is crude and mean, but hopes to court the lovely Laurie. In the end, he dies on his own knife after threatening the hero, Curly. Jake is Jud, and sings one of Jud's songs at the end, and the entire film is a meditation on the sorry fate of the Juds in the world, disappointed, social isolated, unwilling or unable to engage with the society they are born into. The acting performances, especially Jessie Buckley as Lucy, are outstanding. Long stretches of conversation in the car filled with references to Tolstoy, David Foster Wallace, Pauline Kael, and theories of physics and time. Wonderful but odd film, not for everyone.
Jessie Plemons, Jessie Bukcley, Toni Collette, David Thewlis, Guy Boyd, Colby Minifie, Abby Quinn
Hello.
tommy testee
Book by Robert Heinlein. When this movie was first released it received mostly negative reviews. After a few years, a reassessment seemed to happen and suddenly critics were calling it a hilarious satire of fascist, militaristic attitudes. Were the first reviews really wrong? Sure, it can only be a parody of Fascism, but that does not make the ridiculous b-movie style, or the ludicrous plot, and or the lame dialogue any better. Nor does it improve the acting-- is that supposed to be a parody as well, of bad acting? Of Hollywood B-pictures? Of war films? It might have been if any of the actors were really any good, but giving ample screen time to lovely Denise Richards is about something else. "Robocop" at least was occasionally witty and even compelling (as when Robocop visited his family home), and had an incisive satirical edge to it. "Starship Troopers" never displays that level of intelligence or cleverness. If it's such a parody of militarism, why are the bugs shown to be a real threat? Why is there almost never really a comment on the rah-rah give your life for your species attitudes?
Denise Richards, Casper Van Dien, Dina Meyer, Jake Busey, Neil Patrick Harris, Clancy Brown, Patrick Muldoon, Michael Ironside, Patrick Muldoon
Creepy, disturbing story about a surgeon, Steven Murphy, who appears to have caused the death of a patient because he was intoxicated at the time of a surgery. Years later, he strikes up a relationship with the patient's son, a creepy young man named Martin, who insinuates himself into Steven's family life, meeting his wife, Anna, and children, Bob and Kim. The story is told as a sort of fable or myth, with some surprisingly naturalistic sequences, and other sequences that seem uneasily metaphysical. Steven does call the police, as you would expect, when Martin says something shocking to him, but then he and Anna later consider a shocking courses of action. For most of the film, the characters converse in dialogue is almost stilted and sophomoric. But the tone of the film never waves from it's creepy, insinuating style, including the cinematography that is cool and symmetrical and free of flourishes and gratuitous movement. Performances are uniformly strong. On the other hand, I've never bought the karmic meme: sooner or later, you pay for your sins. And if you don't buy it, the film weakens and becomes little more than a horror flick. I tend to subscribe to Woody Allen's take on the issue in "Crimes and Misdemeanors" where Martin Landau explains to Woody Allen how surprised he was to find that he felt no remorse at all for committing a murder, and, in fact, experienced no consequences for the crime.
Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Nicole Kidman, Raffey Cassidy, Marry Keoghan, Alicia Silverstone, Sunny Suljic, Matthew Williams
If you can look past the controversies, "Cuties" (on Netflix) is actually a very good film, about culture conflict, self-acceptance, and social media's sometimes pernicious effect on adolescents. Best of all, it's not very schematic: there are unexpected twists, a surprisingly respectful turn by a wise Iman, and a strong comment on how our expectations of beauty and appeal can be toxic. Amy is an 11 year-old girl from Senegal living with her mother and brothers in a Paris apartment. She struggles for acceptance from her classmates while learning that her absent father has married a second wife. Among her classmates: the "Cuties": 4 girls that want to enter a dance contest. They initially mock her but she gradually wins acceptance until complications ensure. Meanwhile, her mother, convinced she is possessed, summons an Iman to examine her. The strength of this film, in spite of the somewhat predictable trajectory-- with some genuine surprises-- is the study of adolescent girls, their manners, aspirations, and their viciousness and cruelties. And there are the exceptional performances of the girls: exuberant, confident, and convincingly violent at times. Really a wonderful film.
Fathia Youssouf, Medina El Aidi-Zouni, Esther Gohourou, Ilanah Cami-Goursolas, Myriam Hamma, Maimouna Gueye
Very uneven Italian adaptation of the Jack London novel about a working class stiff who stumbles into the grateful embrace of an aristocratic family-- and a lovely daughter, Elena, and develops a crushing ambition to make himself worthy of marriage by educating himself into a writer. In the process--which has its twists and turns-- he becomes disillusioned, and rejects all collective ideologies, while still supporting at least one socialist cause. The first part of this movie is compelling, and the acting is brilliant, but the last 40 minutes or so is a relentless exposition of the title character drinking and alienating those who care for him (including some who shouldn't) and feeling sorry for himself. We are treated to "Dead Poets Society" syndrome: he accepts invitations just so he can express how disgusted he is with the occasions, as if people will willingly subject themselves to this kind of humiliation just to gratify some narcissist's ego. Pity-- it looked very good for a while.
Luca Marinelli, Jessica Cressy, Vincenzo Nemolato, Marco Lonardi, Carmen Pommella, Carlo Cecchi
Brilliant creation-- not a "re-creation"-- the Chicago 7 trial before the notorious Julius Hoffman. Quite fictionalized, but, in fairness, it's about the issues, the contrast between Hayden's moderate approach and Rubin and Hoffman's more radical "revolutionary" impulses. Does a great job of summarizing the events leading up to the trial, and then goes into high gear showing the actual trial, before a disappointingly contrived and ridiculous finish-- which doesn't quite harm the whole. All of the main actors, but especially Rylance, Cohen, Lynch, and Abdul-Mateen II as Bobby Seale, are very impressive, and the writing, of course, is brilliant as long as you don't tire of Sorkin's endlessly witty dialogue. How powerful resonance today, with the same debate between Sanders' supporters and Biden's, and they, like the Hoffman - Hayden polarity in "Chicago 7", have reached an accommodation.
Mark Rylance, Eddie Tremayne, Sacha Baron Cohen, Jeremy Strong, John Carroll Lynch, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Frank Langella, Michael Keaton
In the small town of Cayuga, New Mexico, strange sounds drift through the air-waves, picked up by radio and car, and investigated by Fay Crocker and Everett Sloan, who eventually discover the horrifying truth. But the star of this film, and it's major charm, is the relationship between Fay and Everett, who behave more like brother and irritating smart sister than potential lovers. He is into radio and electronics and recording, and she as aspirations, and has just purchased her own tape-recorder. He is also the local deejay at WOTW radio, and he thinks he's on to something after he plays a recording of a strange sound Fay has picked up from the telephone system and asks listeners to identify it. The fun is all in their edgy relationship, their banter, and their challenges to each other. It's hard for films like this to pay off: the suspense is so lovely, so teasing, and you know the film is not going to go way off the rails to give you some cheap special effect at the end. And it doesn't. To it's credit, it ends in the correct consistent tone with which it begins. Long, long takes, long Steadicam shots, detailed recreation of life in 1950's America, with regular discussion about the latest technologies buzzed about in science magazines.
Sierra McCormick, Jake Horowitz, Gail Cronauer, Bruce Davis
Made in 1942! Crisp, witty, well-directed comedy about a theatre company in Warsaw just before and after the Nazi invasion. Joseph and Maria Tura manage the theatre-- and star in most of it's productions. The Germans have turned a local friend, Professor Siletski into a spy and he threatens to turn over a list of underground activists to the Nazis, but a Polish air force Lieutenant, Stanislav Sobinski, who is in loved with Maria, is out to foil his plan. The theatre troupe gets involved, even impersonating Hitler himself. But most of the comedy comes from the genuinely hilarious interactions of Colonel Ehrhardt and his adjutant Sergeant Schultz, who clearly inspired the Klink and Schultz characters in "Hogan's Heroes". This is sophisticated comedy, more complex, and vastly better written than most, and Benny is really quite good as Joseph Tura. Some spectacular scenes of large cast of extras playing German soldiers and audiences.
Carole Lombard, Jack Benny, Robert Stack, Felix Bressart, Lionel Atwill, Stanley Ridges, Sig Ruman, Henry Victor
Suggestive of Bergman but without the inner coherence of most Bergman films. Alexander is married with a step-daughter and very young son. He plants a tree with his young son and then joins his family and some friends for a birthday celebration during which a nuclear war breaks out. He is an atheist but prays to god and offers to give up everything, including his son, if the disaster can be undone. He is told, by the postman, that if he lies with a witch, his maid Maria, the nuclear holocaust will indeed be undone. In the end, we watch his house burn, his family stagger around chasing him, an ambulance appearing (mysteriously-- it could not have been summoned), and his son returning to the tree and speaking his first words in the film, the beginning of the Gospel of John. Is this a serious exploration of religious meaning, and the crisis of faith that must confront atheists? Or a rather incoherent rattling off of symbolic words and gestures that don't really form a parable or metaphor or symbolic idea, but convey a sense of deep seriousness and metaphysical implication? The Europeans, at Cannes, gave it their highest award so they must see something in it. I found that the bargain Alexander makes is lame, and thus the realization of the magic at the end not very compelling. Does Tarkovsky really believe that people confronted with their mortality will come to their senses and believe? Or gloriously lose their sense and believe? His liaison with the witch suggests a moment from "The Seventh Seal" in which the knight asserts that there is a devil, then there must be a god. The house, in the concluding sequence, had to be burned down twice because a camera jammed, and you can clearly see that there is no furnishings in it during the burn.
Erland Josephson, Susan Fleetwood, Allan Edwall, Gudrun Gisladottir, Sven Wolter, Valerie Mairesse, Filippa Franzen
In 1920, a German woman travels to Minnesota to make an arranged marriage with Olaf, a Norwegian farmer who belongs to a tight-knit Lutheran community. Inge is German, maybe a socialist, and not "like" us, says the pastor of Olaf's church. As a result, no one will marry them, and she has to stay with Olaf's friend for a while, and then in Olaf's house while he sleeps in the barn. Eventually, as they spend days together working their fields, they insist to the pastor that they are married in a real sense and he tacitly agrees to look the other way. Many seriously undeveloped scenes, and disappointing sequences in which we would love to see how she navigates her new country, and begins to do chores, and bathes, and cooks, but instead we get a number of trivial and thoughtless set-pieces. At one point, she grabs a scythe, as if to join in the field work, but it makes even less sense at that moment (he's working in the barn) than it sounds like. A redemptive side of it is Inge's character, nicely nurtured along by Elizabeth Reaser: she is credibly brave and impetuous and intelligent enough to regard the religious faith of the community with some skepticism. Unrealized potential in this film.
Elizabeth Reaser, Lois Smith, Patrick Heusinger, Tim Guinee, Paul Sand
Tedious and cheap film version of Roald Dahl's un-childlike story about an association of witches that really, really hate children and plan to do away with all of them in Britain through a potion that turns them into mice (we get a generous helping squished mice in this story). Produced by Jim Henson and shows it: the talking mice don't tickle or amuse, and the other special effects radiation budget limitations.
Jasen Fisher, Anjelica Huston, Mai Zetterling, Rowan Atkinson, Brenda Blethyn, Bill Paterson, Charlie Potter
Tsune Nonomiya is a poor silk factory worker, a widow, with a young son, Ryosuke. One night a teacher, Ookubo, drops by to praise Tsune for deciding to send Ryosuke to high school. She has not-- Ryosuke has lied. But Tsune reluctantly eventually agrees to send him, to save face, and because she believes it will make a success of him. Years later, she goes to visit him Tokyo. She is surprised to discover that he is poor, living in a very simple rented house; she is even more shocked to discover that he is recently married and has a child, and only son. Her disappointment in her son is palpable. But not only is her son a failure-- the teacher, Ookubo, has also moved to Tokyo. He has ended up selling fried pork in another shack near her son's. A delicate telling of familial disappointment, the humiliations of poverty, and frustrated ambitions. As usual, Ozu's film is quiet and prosaic until you realize it has broken your heart.
Choko Iida, Shin'ichi Himori, Masao Hayama, Yoshiko Tsubochi, Mitsuko Yoshikawa, Chishu Ryu, Tomoko Naniwa
From Wikipedia: 'The Protagonist learns that he is now employed by a secret organization called "Tenet," whose mission involves the human race's survival. He is directed to Barbara, a scientist studying objects with "inverted" entropy and thus move backwards through time. She believes they are manufactured in the future, and there exists a weapon that can wipe out the past.' Oh please. The question is, why do any critics take this crap seriously? Nolan postures his material like adult fiction but the premises are all adolescent: they save not just themselves, or their country, but the entire world. The next episode: they save the universe. This is really mostly an action film, long sequences of fights and car chases and explosions, and a 747 crashing into an airport terminal, interrupted by tedious explication that only betrays the ridiculousness of the plot. Multitudes of carefully plotted detail are not a substitute for coherency. It's all just not that interesting, especially when it is populated by "arms dealer in Mumbai" or villain with a Russian accent or sleek attractive smart woman who is overwhelmed with the hero's manly vigor and trusts him with the story of all about her feminine woes. As an astute reviewer noted, don't worry about not being able to follow the action (the sound mix is terrible) because it doesn't matter and won't make sense anyway. Nolan proves once and for all that directors are not necessarily writers.
Elizabeth Debicki, Robert Pattinson, John David Washington, Kenneth Branagh, Michael Caine, Himesh Patel, Dimple Kapadia
Two hours of exquisite banality that will break your heart. The Mamiya family in Tokyo gets by, thanks to Noriko's income as a clerical worker, and her brother's income as a physician. The household consists of Noriko, father Shukichi and mother Shige, sister-in-law Fumiko, brother Koichi, and her brother's two young spoiled sons. Noriko is 28 and the pressure is on, from everybody, to accept an offer. Her boss knows a director of a company, Mr. Manabe, who is well-off but is 12 years older than Noriko. Noriko is not sure she wants to get married in any case; in friendly banter with married friends, she lauds the single life, and her independence. But just as the pressure increases to accept Mr. Manabe's offer, she impulsively accepts an offer from Kenkichi Yabe's mother, to marry her widowed son, a life-long friend of Noriko's, and move to a rural area in Northern Japan. The family is shocked and very disappointed. Without her income, they will have to move to a rural home with Shukichi's elderly brother. They take a family portrait together-- one last time that they will be together before Noriko's departure. Regarded as one of Ozu's greatest films, and one of the greatest films, period, "Early Summer" is touching, sensitive, beautifully composed and paced, and heart-rending in the delicate revelation of attachment and separation, of subtle jealousies and resentments, and the emotionally devastating consequences of seemingly momentary life decisions. One cannot ignore the reverberations of war on the family dynamic either: Shukichi, at one point, alludes to a son who he does not think is ever coming back, though his mother persists in believing he is alive somewhere. Was there ever a more delicate, perfect suggestion of "haunting"? Noriko, in the end, seems to be the only one optimistic about the future, possibly because she has exercised real agency over her future, though it's not clear if she does this to forestall the arrangement with Mr. Manabe, or because she has decided, after all, that she would be happier with Kenkichi.
Kind of a horrifying "Big Chill": a group of former or current friends, with their partners, are invited to an evening dinner party by Eden and David, and it is soon apparent that they have an ulterior motive: Amway? A cult? Within minutes, I noted that all of the actors were cosmetically similar: attractive but inexpressive. Neither great independent film actors, nor name-brand Hollywood types. That should raise suspicions, and it did, and they were fully justified. Will, who was married to Eden until their son died in a tragic accident, is suspicious and we get the obligatory red herring to distract the audience, but clearly his intuition is right. Creepy at times, primarily because the characters don't behave even remotely like real people: they are parts of a horror film convention, and their behavior is more attuned to the cliches of creepy horror films than any real social interaction. When Will suspects that Choi, for example, arrived at the party early and then disappeared, he immediately announces that he is suspicious, instead of seeking a cell phone signal (the house is out of range, apparently, conveniently) and calling him, or, for that matter, Claire, who had the good sense to leave but may have been intercepted by Pruitt. When someone is brutally attacked and others are threatened, they don't scan around for danger-- carrying on conversations instead. They don't ask the obvious questions when strange statements are made by Eden and David and Pruitt. Written by the geniuses behind "Clash of Titans" leading at least one reviewer to express astonishment at the improvement in their work. No-- they are still writing a movie inspired by movies-- not by real humans.
Marshall-Green Logan, Tammy Blanchard, Emayatzy Corinealdi, Aiden Lovekamp, Michelle Krusiec, Mike Doyle, Jordi Vilasuso, Jay Larson, Marieh Delfino, Michael Huisman, Lindsay Burdge, John Carroll Lynch
Original, quirky, very funny film about a black man, Jimmie Fails, trying to squat a house that he claims was built by his grandfather, while the legal owners are off to a legal battle against a sibling claiming the property. Before squatting the house, he lives with his friend, Montgomery, an artist and writer, and his grandfather who is blind (Montgomery describes movies to him as they watch). The house is a star: a gorgeous old mansion with beautiful woodwork and stained-glass windows and a pipe organ. Jimmy just believes he was made for this house-- it must be his. His father, with whom he is distant (are any fathers in any movies recently not distant or absent and at odds with their children?), insists his squatting there is a very, very bad idea. The performances in this film are extraordinary, the cinematography is gorgeous, rich in earth tones in the house, effusively light and more subtle in the exterior shots. The music is stand-out, including a slithering version of Joni Mitchell's "Blue" and "San Francisco" performed by rap artist Michael Marshal.
Jimmie Fails, Jonathan Majors, Rob Morgan, Tichina Arnold, Mike Epps, Jamal Trulove, Danny Glover
Bernadine Williams is a warden for a prison that also handles executions (by drug). She believes in her mission-- but is thrown into a crisis after a particularly disturbing execution goes wrong, and forces her to reconsider her views, and her conviction that the man was guilty. Anthony Woods, the convict, was inspired by real-life convict Troy Davis, whom many believe was unjustly executed in spite of widespread criticism. This affects her marriage, which has become troubled and she keeps her emotional distance from her husband, Jonathan. A subtle, powerful film.
Alfre Woodard, Wendell Pierce, Richard Schiff, Aldis Hodge, Danielle Brooks, Michael O'Neill, Michael O'Neill
David is a gay New Yorker who came out to his parents 9 years previously. His mother, of course, is accepting; his father not so much. Down on his luck (his screenplay is rejected), he moves back home to Sacramento, to live with "other" people: his parents, his sisters. He has also just broken up with his partner, Daniel, whom his family-- aside from his father-- rather liked. David is there to escape his disappointments but also to care for his dying mother, Joanne. Visceral and credible treatment of terminal cancer, and the vicissitudes of strained family relations in a family that really works rather well. Unusually frank depiction of gay sex. They pull together, they fight, they embrace. No caricatures or cheap shots here: just a sensitive, authentic rendering of a crisis that has some healing properties even in the middle of a tragedy. Very good performances, even by Bradley Whitford as the dad, and Molly Shannon as Joanne. Jesse Plemons was a pleasant surprise, expanding his range from previous performances. Touching and worthwhile. Based, I believe, on Kelly's personal experience: his mother died of cancer.
Jesse Plemons, Molly Shannon, Bradley Whitford, Maude Apatow, Madisen Beaty, Paul Dooley, Kyle Lane
Rudy wants to be famous. He is a comedian who uses a shocking proportion of profanities to make pointless jokes about having sex with anything that moves. He may have been a pioneer of rap, and that's not a compliment. He wants to broaden his success to movies in a sequence that is reminiscent of Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland (hey, I know someone who has a barn) constructing their musical shows in another era. I think we are supposed to find the camaraderie of Rudy and his friends heart-warming, but he is such a narcissist that it's hard to find the appeal in that part of the story. The real Dolemite character was a pimp who we would find offensive today and should have found offensive then. "Dolemite" would have been funnier without the cheap shot at critics (clear, real people love the movies and critics are bullshit, which, if truly believed, would not have taken up screen time in the film). and with more attention to the details of how films are financed and made (we see them shooting scenes with the music and sound effects added, and with people in crowd scenes talking, even though that would never happen in a real shoot).
Eddie Murphy, Keegan-Michael Key, Mike Epps, Craig Robinson, Tituss Burgess, Da'Vine Randolph, Snoop Dog, Wesley Snipes, Chris Rock
Directed by Benny and Josh Safie. Searing, biting, sometimes bitch drama about a thoroughly contemptible individual played by a contemptible actor. Howard Ratner is a diamond dealer in debt to about $100k. In real life, such men are warned, and then the collection is turned over to rough individuals who are not authorized to negotiate. But a good chunk of this drama-- Howard negotiating with those mean people who actually want their money back-- taken up by those scenes that seem more intended to display Sandler's alleged acting skills than to advance the plot. Howard has cheated on his wife and then viciously attacked his girlfriend, before trying to reconcile with one and actually reconciling with the other. Howard acquires a rare opal from a mine in Africa and again we are expected to believe that the nasty auction house would argue with him after he is late delivering it rather than simply inform him that he can take his business elsewhere, as they surely would in real life. But where's the fun in that kind of phone discussion? We wouldn't get to see Sandler get frantic and desperate, for an Oscar, if not a deal.
Adam Sandler, Kieth William Ricahrds, Tommy Kominik, Lakeith Stanfield, Maksud Agadjani, Julia Fox, Kevin Garnett, Idina Menzel, Marshall Greenberg
Enchanting-- at times-- animated story about a young man whose severed hand escapes from a lab and roams Paris attempting to reunite with its owner. Seriously. The hand reminds you of "thing" from the Addams family, and the story reminds you of "The Nose" by Gogol, which is probably a better story. Still, "I Lost My Body", when not indulging in a bit of self-pity and narcissism, is at least fresh and winsome and admirably tries for poetry. Naoufel, a boy who was born in Morocco and then adopted by a mean Uncle in Paris after his parents died in a car crash, works as a pizza delivery boy. He's often late, but one day, late as usual, he enters into a charming dialogue with Gabrielle, a customer who tells him he should find a new job, among other things. He is infatuated and indulges in a deception in order to meet Gabrielle. He eventually does charm her only to discover that she is not amused by the deception. The ending tries hard for a transcendently poetic moment but I felt it was handicapped by a discussion of fate held earlier between Naoufel and Gabrielle. Worth a look if only for it's quiet, lovely rendering.
Hakim Faris, Victoire DuBois, Patrick d'Assumcao, Bellamine Abdelmalek
Inexplicably highly praised by Ebert and some other reviewers, follows a young girl, Anna, who takes ill one day, and while convalescing draws a paper house with a lonely boy at the window. She discovers that her doctor is treating a young boy at the same time. She seems to cross over into the world of her drawing where she meets the boy, who has no toys, and can't come down to play with her because she didn't draw a stairs. You see what follows. Intruding on these episodes are memories of an alcoholic father, who is sometimes menacing, and sometimes not. I was not able to get what the writers meant to show me. Is this her nightmare, or memories of real incidents? Or free-floating fantasies about an absent father? Charlotte Burke (Anna) never appeared in another film again-- she says she didn't want to. Elliot Spiers (Marc) died shortly after the film was made, of complications from a malarial infection.
Charlotte Burke, Jane Bertish, Glenne Headly, Elliot Spiers, Gemma Jones, Ben Cross
How do they get away with it? With profuse claims of authenticity and honesty, Disney Studios proceeds to deliver a fabulous deceit about how they lied to P. L. Travers, produced a film that went against her explicit wishes, and how she allegedly ended up moved and approving of a film she hated so much that the decried that no other book of her shall ever be sold to be made into a film. (Leading to another mystery: why would Robert B. Sherman, who helped liberate Dachau as a U.S. soldier, produce such drivel for mass consumption? Did he ever have a sleepless night thinking about whether he'd ever be held accountable for what he did not produce?) Yes, as honest as you can get when you get to choose Tom Hanks to play your founder. Anyway, P. L. Travers famously did not want her book, "Mary Poppins", made into a movie, and she only agreed to allow it if she had script approval. Why? Because she hated how Hollywood bastardized well-known books in the process of making movies of them. What did Disney do? Went right ahead and bastardized her book, and then the Disney Company bastardized the story of how they bastardized her book. "Saving Mr. Banks" tries to tie her story to her troubled childhood, her alcoholic father, and mentally disturbed mother, and Disney allegedly persuades her to approve the script by telling her about his allegedly abusive father, and his own troubled childhood. But Travers was only 3, not 8 when her family moved to Allora. We are sold the idea that the film was kind of an emotional purge for Travers. If only. Of the actors, Hanks is barely adequate, Thompson is undistinguished, the secondary actors are above average. Director Hancock is also responsible for very dishonest "The Blind Side".
Emma Thompson, Tom Hanks, Colin Farrell, Ruth Wilson, B. J. Novak, Bradley Whitford, Jason Schwartzman, Paul Giamatti, Annie Rose Buckley
Brilliant musical combining a multitude of musical styles with an irreverent revision of history, focusing on the career of Alexander Hamilton who, in some visions of heroism, is responsible for the good things in the Constitution and administration of the United States (he established, for example, a central bank, an funding for the army), in opposition to Jefferson and others who placed a primacy on the rights of federated states to manage their own affairs. Terrific, lively, never dull. Miranda is obvious a genius for his music, his lyrics, and his vision.
Lin-Manuel Miranda, Renee Elise Goldsberry, Jonathan Goff, Chris Jackson, Jasmine Cephas Jones, Leslie Odom Jr., Phillipa Soo, Daveed Diggs
Famously adopted by Hand Made Films (George Harrison's production company) after it was rejected by ITC because of the IRA references. Bob Hoskins plays Harold, a British gangster who, like the Corleone clan in "The Godfather", seeks mainstream respectability-- and some legitimacy-- after a career as a violent thug. But someone is trying to sabotage his efforts by setting off bombs in his cars and planting one in his casino. Meanwhile, and American gangster looking to invest in Harold's scheme for turning a run-down section of the dockyards into a casino resort, comes for a visit and begins to have doubts after becoming aware of the bombs. But Harold-- like Donald Trump-- has complete confidence in his command of the situation and plunges into full-scale efforts to track down and eliminate the threat-- only to find that his ruthless but pragmatic character is no match for fanaticism. Generally well-acted and film, but occasionally clumsy or stiff, as if the director hadn't quite mastered the idea but was on the right track.
Bob Hoskins, Helen Mirren, Derek Thompson, Bryan Marshall, Dave King, Paul Freeman, Eddie Constantine
Brilliant fictional recreation of the life of legendary Russian iconographer Andrei Rublev, a monk who traveled far and wide within Russian and painted some of the most esteemed works of religious art during a time of political and social instability. They don't make films like this anymore: a cast of thousands, hundreds of horses, fabulous castles and cities, a recreation of the process of casting a huge bell in medieval times, and the horribly violent incursions of Tarters into the region. Clearly modern rules about the treatment of animals, and the safety requirements for stunt men, were not in place at the time, and it shows. Sweeping vistas and long stretches of philosophical and theological debates, between Rublev, with his humanitarian instincts, and other monks and artists who had become more cynical about human nature. The legendary Greek artist Theophanes is a critical part of these discussions. Some sequences seem unrelated except through the expression of the passion for new and exotic experience and visions of beauty, and depictions of the cruelty of mankind: torture of a criminal, the brutal arrest and punishment of a kind of jester, for his disrespect of authority, a woman who chooses to become a Tarter's concubine because at least there would be enough to eat. Stunningly filmed and brilliantly acted-- a true classic.
Anatoliy Solonitsyn, Ivan Lapikov, Nikolay Grinko, Irina Tarkovskaya, Bolot Beyshenaliev, Hikolay Sergeev, Nikolay Grabbe, Nikolay Burlyaev
Another superior drama by Noah Baumbach about a family with simmering resentments gurgling-- you wouldn't not "exploding"-- to the surface on the occasion of a special exhibition of the father's sculptures. Danny is a bit of a musician, but has been a stay-at-home dad for 17 years while his wife works: she is divorcing him now that their daughter is going to college. Jean is quiet and self-effacing and recedes as her two brothers have it out. Matthew is a wealthy businessman who feels that he has never measured up to his fathers' artistic aspirations. All of them take turns feeling slighted and offended, while expressing love for father, Harold. Wonderfully written and fulsomely acted, with nuance and subtlety, and conviction (with the exception of one scene in which the brothers vandalize a car owned by a man who exposed himself to Jean when she was younger).
Ben Stiller, Adam Sandler, Grace Van Patten, Dustin Hoffman, Elizabeth Marvel, Emma Thompson, Judd Hirsch, Adam Driver, Candice Bergen
Compelling true story about a young escort's disappearance and murder in a remote, gated community in Long Island. She calls 911 and the police do not respond for an hour (they say--with some credibility-- that she did not give them any direction or location). Her body is found only after her mother and other mothers of missing call-girls (most of whom advertised in Craig's List) hold a vigil and meet the press. "Lost Girls" is not a pamphlet, however. The mother, Mari, is no angel, and her other two daughters are no props for her virtue; the police look incompetent and corrupt. The neighbors are a mixed bag and one of them seems to be leading Mari to a suspect only for her to discover that he and the "suspect" have been having a feud for years. Fascinating glimpse into the hostile subculture of an exclusive Long Island residential area, where one or more serial killers dumps bodies because they can count on little scrutiny. Very well acted and written and reasonably accurate.
Amy Ryan, Thomasin McKenzie, Gabriel Byrne, Lola Kirke, Oona Laurence, Dean Winters, Reed Birney, Kevin Corrigan
Allegedly a powerful depiction of complex racial attitudes in America. I think it might have meant to be that, in that it does have complexity and ambiguity, but the predicaments presented are somewhat contrived and unbelievable. For example, Luce writes an essay on Che Guevara that his English teacher considers provocative, even though the assignment was to write an essay on an important historical figure. Nowhere does the teacher, Harriet Wilson, distinguish between violence as a subject and violence as an objective in the essay. Luce is a former child soldier from Eritrea who has been adopted by Amy and Peter Edgar; he is black; he is athletic. He is also a bit arrogant and just a bit contemptuous of the well-meaning liberal parents and teachers who want to "help" him. We are asked to believe that his Asian girl-friend would make up a story about being raped and then deny just to humiliate Luce's teacher, and that an allegation of rape against Luce would be treated as of secondary importance to the essay, or having illegal fireworks in his locker, or pranking his teacher's house.
Naomi Watts, Octavia Spencer, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Tim Roth, Norbert Leo Butz
Yeah, we all like Jon Stewart; mostly. But this embarrassingly inept production should not have seen the light of day. Gary Zimmer is a Democratic strategist who sees a video of a macho liberal farmer and decides he is the perfect avatar for an electable Democrat (shades of Bill Clinton). He offers to manage his campaign for mayor, bringing huge donations and "expertise", while Faith Brewster, a Republic strategist is drawn in to support the incumbent Republican mayor. The biggest problem in "Irresistible" is that Stewart's film about the evils of compromised values has surrendered to the Hollywood canard that you can't portray any actual specific political positions or you will offend the half of the potential audience that doesn't subscribe to them. And for a commentator who decries condescension in politics, Stewart is totally condescending to both Faith Brewster and Gary Zimmer, who both so unbelievably rude and credulous that the film is drained of any real suspense or even a moment of belief. Disappointingly shallow and trivial.
Steve Carrell, Rose Byrne, Chris Cooper, Brent Sexton
Marvelous, quiet, superb film about two lonely men travelling with trappers in Oregon sometime in the 19th century. Otis ("Cookie") is a skilled cook from Maryland whose parents died when he was young. King-Lu is a Chinese immigrant who ran afoul of some Russian traders and murdered one of them. They meet and form a friendly alliance, living in King-Lu's hut. When a local big shot brings in the first cow in the region. King-Lu suggests stealing it's milk in the night, and then, after discovering Otis' "oily cakes" steers them into business, selling them to the locals for a good price. The "oily cakes" look a lot like Dutch Oily-Boilen. Eventually, of course, their larceny will catch up with them. The story ends enigmatically, as if it cannot be advanced beyond a poetic image of their friendship and mutual support, of their place in time and history, and of the fundamental need of all men to make a living, honest or not. Beautifully acted and directed, with startling fidelity to historical milieu, in buildings and costumes and close-attention to the details of life for people in this time. Nobody makes films like this except Kelly Reichardt, and perhaps Agnes Varda and some other European art film directors. John Sayles or Robert Altman, perhaps.
John Magaro, Orion Lee, Toby Jones, Scott Shepherd, Lily Gladstone
Mia Hall has a promising future as a cellist, a new hot boyfriend in a punk-ish band (though what they actually play in the movie is pretty dreary pop), and good family. A sudden accident kills her parents and mortally injures her adorable little brother, while she is in a coma (predictably beautifully inert-- can't have her injuries affect her looks!), and the obligatory soulful black nurse urges her on, to choose to live. She exists as a ghost in these proceedings, wandering around the hospital, finally getting around to investigating what happened to the others, but everything in this movie is projected narcissism: the only thing that matters is that she gets to be lovely and loved by her desperately concerned boyfriend, and template-grandparents. What undermines the drama is the unavoidable awareness of the intelligent viewer that her boyfriend, as the lead singer of a hot new band, is going to be faithful to her, and that she won't meet anyone after high school who might be more interesting anyway.
Chlose Grace Moretz, Mireille Enos, Jamie Blackley, Joshua Leonard, Stacy Keach
Inferior Spike Lee: it's almost as if he asked himself, who am I kidding, and then proceeded to make a cliche'-ridden caper movie hoping for a big pay-day. The wretched plot: four Viet Nam vets decide-- out of the blue, I guess-- to reunite and return to Viet Nam to recover a box of gold bars which, of course, were to be used by the corrupt government for nefarious purposes-- and which they stole and hid when the military cargo plane carrying it was shot down. Along the way, of course, various conflicting parties want in on the loot, and various personal crises arise, including the arrival of a son who wants to make sure dad doesn't get into trouble. The action proceeds with little logic and much predictability, and highly improbable developments (they find the gold when someone going to bathroom stumbles upon a bar) and ridiculous honorable self-sacrifice (by members of a group who are in for the loot) and then the absurd redemptive act (donating the proceeds to hip charities). Lots of allusions to other Viet Nam films and, notably, "Treasure of the Sierra Madre", not always flattering to Lee or the originals.
Delroy Lindo, Jonathan Majors, Clarke Peters, Norm Lewis, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Melanie Thierry, Jean Reno, Johnny Nguyen
By today's standards, this is very melodramatic, and would be cliche-ridden if it hadn't, in fact, invented most of those cliches. It turns out that Dr. Frankenstein and his monster survived the explosive ending of the first "Frankenstein" and are now approached by another mad doctor, Pretorius, whose main function, I believe, is to dramatically relieve Dr. Frankenstein of the taint of evil by embodying it himself. He persuades Frankenstein to create a bride for his monster, who is wandering the countryside striking terror into the villagers, so he can know love and breed a race of supermen. The monster meets a blind man who treats him kindly, in order to reveal that it is pernicious society that embodies the real evil in this story. Terrific sets and costumes, and Elsa Lancaster is wonderful as the potential mate, but it's still melodrama with some redemptive aspects to it in the discussion of science and virtue.
Boris Karloff, Elsa Lancaster, Colin Clive, Valerie Hobson, Ernest Thesiger, Gavin Gordon, Douglas Walton, Una O'Connor, E.E. Clive, O.P. Heggie
A #metoo film of unusual subtlety and grace: Jane works in the offices of a film production company, handling appointments and errands for her philandering boss. She has only been there two months or so when she becomes aware of him taking advantage of young wannabe actresses, sending them to hotel rooms, taking them with on junkets. She decides to do something. We understand that she is a bit naive, and the HR person she talks to isn't stupid or uncaring. This is a quiet, detail film, showing us her work, her irritations, her awareness of office dynamics, and her growing revulsion at her bosses behavior. Fine-tuned performances, credible dialogue, and unremarkable editing and camera work-- just a fine, serious, intelligent film about a serious issue.
Julia Garner, Matthew Macfadyen, Makenzie Leigh, Kristine Froseth
A camp 3 hours north of New York City for children with disabilities was started in the 1950's. By the end of the 1960's, it had become dominated by "hippy" types and practiced a kind of visionary empowerment approach that gave the participants a powerful sense of liberation and community. For most, it was the first time in their lives they felted accepted and respected and liberated. Many of these individuals later moved to Berkeley and became involved in a movement to legislate rights for the disabled. The movement achieved a piece of legislation but it was not enacted by either the Nixon or Carter Administrations until, late in the Carter Administration, a sit-in at the offices of Health, Education, and Welfare in San Francisco prompted Joseph Califano to sign the empowering act. The Americans with Disabilities Act followed later and was signed by George Bush. Wonderful if unsteady footage from the camp with interviews then and now of leaders of the movement, all individuals with disabilities, mental and physical. The Black Panthers, incidentally, supplied the sit-in participants with meals(!). Carter disappoints. Conservatives believed the Act would be ruinous economically; obviously, it was not.
Larry Allison, Dennis Billups, HolLynn D'Lil, Judith Heumann, James Lebrecht
Biopic of the late directory James Whale (who made his initial reputation with a staging of "Journey's End"), famous director of "Frankenstein" and "Bride of Frankenstein". Whale was openly gay-- unusual for his time-- and unabashed about chasing young men in and around his lavish Los Angeles home. Not much happens where, except that Whale sets his sights on a sensitive but unambiguously heterosexual gardener. The entertainment value here is the clever and fairly original relationship with the gardener, Clayton, who likes Whale but is repulsed by his repeated attempts to seduce him. Whale's maid, played with tact and taste by Lynn Redgrave, is also somewhat repelled by his open sexual interests but is mostly concerned about his health. David Lewis, with whom Whale had a near life-long relationship, appears and disappears without much explanation about the current state of their relationship. Very well-acted and written and unpretentious.
Ian McKellen, Brendan Fraser, Lynn Redgrave, Lolita Davidovich, David Dukes, Rosalind Ayres, Jack Betts
Reviewers tell you that-- surprise-- Barbra Streisand-- whose every movie is always really only about her-- really can direct and does a splendid job with "Prince of Tides". Don't believe them. Aside from the preposterously unacknowledged problem with the romantic relationship between a client and a psychiatrist (the film tries to escape the issue by making him the brother of the primary patient, ha ha), we are treated to a menu of psychopathology cliches, the pinnacle of which is the idea that learning and acknowledging the truth is therapeutic. And make sure you acknowledge the stunning beauty of the character played by Streisand-- always filmed from the right-- several times. Tom is called one day when the psychiatrist treating his sister for a suicide attempt (author Pat Conroy's real life brother did commit suicide) wants a family member to come to New York to assist with therapy. After Tom does so, a great personal expense (but he does live in a beautiful seaside house-- while unemployed), but he is prickly, so she casually tells him "never mind"-- until she realizes how sensitive the big hunk is. Then they proceed to uncover family secrets, skipping the big one, rape, until nearly the end, without explaining how either Tom or the psychiatrist, Lowenstein, would not be appalled that this fact was left out until then. Well, I suppose we are supposed to think that Tom was repressing it, or just couldn't bring himself to mention it, even after his sister tried to commit suicide. We are told-- but not shown, really-- that Tom's marriage is in trouble as well, but that's nothing an intimate affair with your sister's psychiatrist can't heal. Critics praised Nolte's performance as Tom though I found it unmoving. Blythe Danner is always a class act but Kate Nelligan is wasted. Jeroen Krabbe, as Lowenstein's snobby husband, is merely ridiculous. Jason Gould as Lowenstein's son-- surprise: he is Streisand's real life son, and after auditioning hundreds, was amazingly selected-- is adequate in a predictable role. The music, by James Howard, is worse than dreary.
Barbra Streisand, Nick Nolte, Blythe Danner, Kate Nelligan, Jeroen Krabbe, George Carlin, Melinda Dillon, Jason Gould
Well-written, deliberately cheesie drama about a rich investor whose wife and daughter are kidnapped and killed in a bungled rescue attempt. 15 years later, he meets woman in Italy who strikingly resembles his dead wife, Elizabeth, and courts her and marries her. The weirdness of the first half is kind of winning and entertaining-- well-written-- but the subsequent events stretch even cheesie credibility. Genevieve Bujolds is entertaining to watch in every scene-- except where they absurdly cast her as her own daughter (when young). Owes a lot to Hitchcock, especially "Rebecca". Could any intelligent character, like Lasalle, have reasonably believed that such an elaborate scheme that could have turned on trivial changes to a person or circumstance could have worked? Can anyone read any person's psychological state so accurately?
Cliff Robertson, Genevieve Bujolds, John Lithgow,
"Journey's End" stays with a battalion of British soldiers waiting for a German attack in the front lines near Aisne in World War I. It's not about the grand schemes or the strategies or milestones of the war: it's about the men, waiting with trepidation, fearful, conscious of their small portion of agency in the fate the awaits them. Stanhope is their commanding officer and he has resorted to drink to deal with the despair of knowing the futility and waste of his cause. Each of the men is given life, personhood, existence, and he clearly carries the weight of responsibility. Along comes a young Lieutenant, Raleigh, who knew Stanhope in a previous life-- Stanhope courted his sister, and they went to school together-- and idolizes him. Stanhope is ashamed of what Raleigh will now see and tries to hide his drinking. He is terrified of what Raleigh will write to his sister and demands to "censor" his letter home. From a brilliant play that no one wanted to put on-- except James Whale-- when it was written in 1928, which became a huge commercial and critical success. Exceptional.
Paul Bettany, Sam Claflin, Stephen Graham, Tom Sturridge, Asa Butterfiled, Rupert Wickham
Did DeVito deliberately use up all his artistic chops in the first hour of this travesty just to put the viewer on the wrong path? Did he use up his quota of talent there, and didn't have much left for his performance or the second half direction of the film? All we know is that a relatively smart, literate, artsy film, after an hour, becomes the Ricardos on acid, meant to heave a layer of profound significance onto a slapsticky montage of unfunny insults and vandalism. You can tell about the drift into "significance" by the otherwise inexplicable scenes near the end, of Oliver and Barbara trapped in their house, on the chandelier, in the attic, as they are trapped in their marriage and divorce-- everything is a shambles but they can't let go, can't undo the parts of them that have taken up residence in their souls. That makes the film sound more successful than it really is: by the end, it died on me and became ridiculous, boring and predictable.
Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, Danny DeVito, Marianne Sagebrecht, Sean Astin, Heather Fairfield
The first hour is so good you ask yourself, where has this wonderful production been hiding all these years? And then something dishonest takes over and seeking the unseen approval and excitement of some kind of average audience the story twists and turns into something phony and contrived, beginning with the most conspicuous "white savior" motif I think I've ever seen. Duvall did deserve the praise he received for his portrait of "Bull" Meechum, a man consumed by the military and by his own militaristic image of himself, including the part of the military that accepts mischief and rage as part of the make-up of a hero. (The military approved and provided material assistance to the making of this film.) His family is not enchanted and though "The Great Santini" makes it clear that they love him, they also fear him, and sometimes wish him dead. The complexity of the story must, I believe, be due to the fidelity to the story told by Pat Conroy, who has made it clear that Meechum is his father-- his father has made it clear too, autographing his son's books with "The Great Santini" while claiming that parts of the book are fictionalized. We get richly developed characters, including a rebellious daughter, and a mother who is neither saint nor martyr. But we get a horribly gratuitous subplot about a local black kid, called "Toomer" of all things, who is picked on by a local bully-- Ben Meechum to the rescue! (An unexpected pleasure of "The Great Santini" is the depiction of the heavy, Bull Meechum, as enlightened on race issues.) "The Great Santini" is worth watching, in spite of it's flaws-- it has life and conviction and an Oscar-worthy performance by Robert Duvall.
Robert Duvall, Blythe Danner, Michael O'Keefe, Lisa Jane Persky, Julie Anne Haddock, Stan Shaw, Joe Dorsey
"Lords of Discipline" has a lot going for it: a feeling of authenticity due to author Conroy's experience at the Citadel in North Carolina, a literate script, and a devotion to scale: the scenes with large crowds, like the ball (with over 200 debutantes) are spectacular as more current computer-aided movies can never dream to be. And the rawness of the dialogue: the word "nigger" is used, along with every other vulgarity, exactly as the characters in the film would have used them in their time. The story concerns our hero, Will Mclean, in his senior year at the Citadel, just scraping by after less than sterling years, with the aid of Colonel 'Bear" Berrineau, who has taken a liking to him. The first black recruit, Tom Pearce, is admitted and Berrineau asks Mclean to look out for him. But a secretive cabal of seniors doesn't want Pearce to succeed and set out to haze him so thoroughly that he quits. Until the ending, the story is believable and compelling, but McLean's overly dramatic confrontation with General Durrell is unbelievably and naive. I thought immediately of the ending of "Three Days of the Conder", when Higgins says, "what makes you think they'll publish it?". Most of the principle actors are good to very good; you believe these are soldiers in a prestigious military institution, and you believe that you could be expelled for siphoning some gas out of a friend's car but not for nearly hazing someone to death.
David Kieth, Robert Prosky, G. D. Spradin, Barbara Babcock, Michael Beihn, Rick Rossibich, Mitchell Lichtenstein
Try as you might, you can't overlook Robertson's control of this documentary which is clearly and cleverly calibrated to cast him in as favorable a light as possible, and lays the groundwork for excusing the offenses for which the other members of the band accused him. Robertson is vain and self-serving here, clearly in love with his own image of himself, and clearly aware that any cheap shots at his former band-mates would not be forgiven. So he bends a little to give Levon Helm and Danko their due, while not acknowledging his most serious crime-- keeping all the songwriting royalties for himself by not crediting the other band members fully for their contributions. That said, any documentary that shows us The Band in action, playing, interacting, talking about their music-- will be a treasure, and if you can overlook the self-serving parts, this too is a treasure of archival footage, music, and interviews. Well-filmed and richly endowed with home video and film, this is a rewarding feast for anyone who loves roots music and uncompromising rock'n'roll. All of the members of the band-- and this is extremely rare-- all of them (!) are articulate, thoughtful, soulful, and intelligent. And all of them except Robertson and Hudson gave in to the worst weaknesses of the lifestyle, alcohol and drugs. The fates of Danko, Manual, and Helm cast a sad, poignant pall over the proceedings, but one must bear in mind that the richness of their legacy is partly due to the fact that the Band did survive long enough to grow stale or repetitious. Which brings me to dreary music Robertson himself has produced since the Band died: why is it even in there? It's presence is as mysterious and disconcerting as Neil Diamond's presence in "The Last Waltz". We could also have done with fewer celebrities singing the praises and more of the Band singing what was praised.
Robbie Robertson, Levon Helm, Rick Danko, Richard Manual, Garth Hudson, Martin Scorcese, Ronnie Hawkins, Eric Clapton, Van Morrison, Robertson Dominique
Searing drama about a young girl, Autumn, who finds herself pregnant at 17 and in an abusive relationship. She goes to a clinic for help and we quickly realize it is a pseudo-clinic dedicated to persuading girls not to get abortions. Her friend and cousin finds out and decides to help her go to New York (she lives in Pennsylvania, with serious restrictions on abortions for under-age girls) to get an abortion, where she finds out the local clinic seriously underestimated how far along she was. They encounter creepy men and one decent young man who helps them. A very raw depiction, sometimes genuinely frightening, but never contrived. It is an intimate portrait of a young woman in a predicament navigating her constricted options (at one point she rejects an offer of help that the viewer emotionally urges her to accept-- a convincing, I think, expression of her personality, her fear of being, once again, obligated). Beautifully acted, if not strongly artistic. Balanced and thoughtful and fair, I think.
Sidney Flanigan, Talia Ryder, Lizbeth MacKay, Mia Dillon
Somewhat tiresome, self-indulgent mockumentary about a punk band called "Hard Core Logo", led by Joe Dick, and featuring Billy Tallent, a very good guitarist. Dick reunites the band to do a tribute to and raise money for Bucky Haight, a legendary punker who has supposedly shot himself in the legs and is paralyzed. They tour Canada and the stress brinks out the worst in all of their characters, forces a confrontation between Dick and Tallent. Not without it's charms, and it's attempt to be uncompromising, but a gratuitous suicide at the end, and the utter lack of any idea besides just being raw and offensive diminish it's appeal.
Hugh Dillon, Callum Keith Rennie, John Pyper-Ferguson, Bernie Coulson, Julian Richings, Joey Ramone, Art Bergmann
Though shamelessly borrowed from "The Exorcist", "The Omen", "Rosemary's Baby" and other horror films, "The Blackcoat's Daughter", by Anthony Perkin's son, Oz, is clever and atmospheric and beautifully filmed. The low-budget served it's makers well, with outdoor scenes filmed in Canada in the dead of winter, in Ottawa and Guelph. The story takes place in Catholic boarding school in February. Rose is pregnant by her boyfriend, and neglectful of Kat, the only other girl left in the dormitory for the break. Kat is waiting for her parents to arrive-- but they are dead, killed in a car accident. She resents Rose for going off on a date when she, a senior, was supposed to be keeping an eye out for the freshman, Kat. So Kat turns to the devil, and, possessed by a mysterious evil spirit, turns on the two sisters who prepare their meals, and on Rose. Joan, meanwhile, has escaped from a hospital somewhere else and is headed towards Bramford, the location (and name) of the school. She is picked up by a kindly older man, and his wife, who, it turns out, are the parents of Rose-- 9 years later. Kiernan Shipka is utterly compelling as Kat, mysterious, allusive, smartly restrained. When an priest tries to exorcise her demon, she says "don't go", in the most compelling line in the movie.
Kiernan Shipka, Emma Roberts, Lucy Boyton, James Remar, Gary Ellwand
Powerful relatively authentic portrait of an ambitious broker, Bud Fox, who persuades a rich investor, the infamous Gordon Gekko, to employ him in a number of takeover bids using unethical tactics. Stone gets the culture of the rich, powerful investor class in New York, the perception of wealth and taste, the women, the social relationships. Bud craves wealth and success and will step on almost anyone to get it, at the behest of Gekko. Yet he is sometimes reluctant, because of the influence of his father, a head of the machinists union at an airline. Marvelous scenes of stock brokers in the pit (real footage Stone arranged to get, with his actors inserted among real stock brokers), Gekko's fabulous properties and art, and a girl who decorates the mansions and penthouses of the rich (one of the few unconvincing roles in the film). The turnaround at the end is not completely convincing, and a tad self-righteous. And do we really believe that any of these psychotic characters would really go to jail for their crimes? Clearly Michael Douglas' best film: a riveting performance that deservedly holds your attention, for nuance and subtlety as well as the big picture.
Michael Douglas, Martin Sheen, Charlie Sheen, John McGinley, Hal Holbrook, Franklin Cover, Josh Mostel
Startling, compelling drama and comedy about a randy southern governor running for president, and how his campaign team deals with his marital infidelities and lies while believing in his principles and vision for the country. So we immediately have the complexities of real life. Jack Stanton has an amazing rapport with black people and the working class (epitomized by a wonderful sequence in which he visits a donut shop and chats with the proprietor), and his team really believes that he is the most ethical choice for president, but he is also a serial womanizer. His wife is smart and astute but not a passive victim and she lets loose at times in response to new disclosures. One of his opponents, Governor Fred Picker, is presented as a wonderful campaigner and a person of great integrity- - with a skeleton in his closet. A really remarkable film, far more accurate in terms of the dynamics of a presidential campaign than any film since "The Candidate". Searingly funny at times, and full of insight about the political process, with multi-dimensional characters. Obviously about the Clinton's and written by Klein after his experience following the Clinton campaign in 1992 (you can identify most of the major characters, Carville, Vince Foster, Hillary, Bill) and Picker appears to be Tom Harkin. Marred by an unfortunate sequence near the end when Libby Holden steps completely out of character to provide a lecture of ethics in politics-- after clearly embracing a far more pragmatic and sophisticated view throughout the rest of the movie: sequence that feels like it was imposed on an otherwise authentic narrative.
John Travolta, Emma Thompson, Billy Bob Thornton, Kathy Bates, Maura Tierney, Larry Hagman, Rob Reiner, Adrian Lester
In 1905, a Russian Captain named Vladimir Arseniev was leading a group of soldiers through a remote southern region of Siberia for the purpose of surveying and mapping the area. He met an itinerant hunter named Dersu Uzala who became his guide and friend. Arseniev later published many books about his adventures, his most famous being about Uzala, his guide. The film is about their adventures, including confrontations with tigers and other wildlife, and Uzala's amazing personality: wise and calm, and incredibly astute about the ways of the wilderness, and the way he lived in harmony with his environment. Kurosawa, fresh off a disappointing film that cost him financial support, accepted and offer from a Russian film company to make a film in Russia, and the most extraordinary aspect of "Dersu Uzala" is its location filming, in the wilderness of southern Siberia, including the use of real wild tigers in some of the shots. The wilderness is the star because the acting and narrative are uncharacteristically weak for a Kurosawa epic. Many scenes seem contrived and stagey, and some sequences just don't work at all on any level. In real life, incidentally, Arseniev became a kind of national hero and untouchable by the Soviet authorities, but after he died, his wife was arrested and charged with subversion and summarily executed; his daughter was later arrested and sent to a gulag.
Yurly Solomin, Maksim Munzuk, Mikhail Bychkov, Vladimir Khrulyov
Il Dottore - former head of homicide squad-- just promoted to the government department-- likes to takes pictures of his mistress in poses based on recent homicides, and she seems to enjoy the fantasy. But one day, he really does murder her, and then takes part in the investigation, alternately leading detectives to innocent parties, and, finally, to himself. They are easily led and easily deceived. They refuse to even consider him a real suspect, even for a moment, even after finding his fingerprints all over the victim's apartment, and a witness who saw him leaving the apartment moments after her murder. What is this about? What is Petri's point? I'm not sure, other than to savagely ridicule the ruling classes in Italy, and the intellectual abilities of the police detectives. Yet his won "Best Foreign Film" at the 1970. Must have been a lean year.
Glan Maria Volonte, Florinda Bolkan, Gianni Santuccio, Orazio Orlando, Sergio Tramonti
Maria is "ice-cold", a new employee at a slaughterhouse, an inspector, who catches the eyes of the men but quickly repulses them. Except for Endre, who is patient, and clever, and also has strange dreams in which he is a buck in a snowy forest hanging out with a doe. When a psychologist is called in to investigate who might have stolen some kind of substance used to stimulate the reproductive urge in bulls, and then spiked the drinks at a local bar with it-- Endre reveals his dream to her, and then so does Maria. The psychologist thinks they are playing a joke on her, but they're not: they are in each others' pastoral dream. But Maria is very shy and inexperienced and must try to summon the courage to enter into a relationship, while Endre shows signs of tiring of the chase. Moody, suggestive film, that includes some rather brave sequences of cattle being slaughtered and processed for meat, that provide a jarring, frightening contrast to Maria's delicate manners and Endre's measured discussions with his friends. And intelligent, provocative film that may haunt you for days.
Alexandra Borbely, Geza Morcsanyi, Reka Tenki, Zoltan Schneider, Ervin Nagy, Itala Bekes, Pal Macsai
"While traveling the countryside to locate his nephew, a small town doctor finds himself interacting with people from his past and future". And that's what it's about. Strange, very amateurish (in both negative and positive senses) film follows Chen Shen through his shabby environment, his brother with links to organized crime, his colleague at a local clinic, then on his excursion by motorcycle, train, and pickup through the countryside, with many weird, seemingly insignificant interactions with different people who may or may not be part of his past or future. I frankly have no idea of what the intent was, or how you raise money for such a film, but I kind of enjoyed the views of the small towns and villages he traveled through, and the odd choices of incidents put into the film.
Yongzhong Chen, Yue Guo, Yue Guo, Linyan Liu, Feiyang Luo, Lixun Xie, Shixue Yu
Hallow. What a film! Destardly.
Khalo Kalahsee,
Relentless test of actors adding. More and more. And less and less. And fried eggs.
Bill Van Dyk, Leslie Jones
Relentless test of actors adding. More and more. And less and less.
Relentless test of actors adding
Quietly understated performances underpin intense emotional states in "Louder Than Bombs". Isabelle, a world-famous news photographer, who take great risks in her job, has died in a car accident. Her son Jonah is married and his wife has just given birth. Conrad, much younger, is morose and self-absorbed, and openly hostile to his father, Gene. Gene is emotionally drained, scarred by years of Isabelle's long absences and risky adventures, and unable to reach Conrad except by furtively following him around. The three live with the haunted past, offered us through flashbacks, and struggle to come to terms with each other. They are boldly flawed characters, and audacious normal to us: petulant, self-absorbed at times, and gradually kinder to each other, even if they never come to believe than any of them deserve kindness. A haunting, meditative story, compelling restrained and sensitive. It forces you to accept that nobody has to be pure, or a hero, or a victim, in the stories most of us live.
Gabriel Byrne, Isabelle Huppert, Jesse Eisenberg, Devin Druid, Amy Ryan, Ruby Jerins, David Strathairn, Rachel Brosnahan
Sometimes entrancing fantasy about "primes"-- super Alexa holograms that recreate people from your past. They learn and they are programmed to be pleasant embodiments of your memories and, perhaps, fantasies, about the person they represent. In this case, Marjorie's prime is her dead husband. Walter. She and him chat about their lives and marriage and children. It is clear that her memories are manipulable and selective. She lives with her daughter, Tess, and her husband, Jon (played with mumbly pretentiousness by Tim Robbins). They contribute memories good and bad-- turns out Marjorie was not a great mom. There are dark secrets too, but they don't seem all that connected, unless you attribute more weight to these relationships than I gathered from the movie. If the movie never breaks through to something revelatory or profound, nor does it wallow too much in sentimentality. They all live in a wonderful sea-side house, which detaches the story from a lot of real experience for most people. And neither Geena Davis nor Tom Robbins bring much to the package, though Jon Hamm does well as the first prime. It's a weaker episode of "Black Mirror" stretched to 90 minutes.
Unusual and initially intriguing film about a woman, Ruth, who becomes determined to track down the punk that broke into her house and stole her laptop and jewelry. She befriends a young man (whose dog pooped on her yard) named Tony who joins her on this quixotic quest, going to the police, tracking down the laptop through the GPS, visiting a junk store that sold the laptop and spotting the suspect and tracking his car. Ruth is nice, not one you would expect to be vengeful, and not sure herself what she wants from a confrontation-- by the time she tracks down the robber, she has already recovered her laptop and silver service. And the parents of the thief are also no what you might expect. The people she encounters are developed-- not caricatures-- and the dialogue is witty and fresh. There are unexpected moments that delight-- but then an awful, time-consuming, pointless chase at the end. I suspect they just ran out of ideas but had to make their 90 minute run-time some how. Knocked an 8 film down a couple of notches. Generally well-acted, even Elijah Wood.
Gripping tale of the horrendous tragedy of the August Andree balloon expedition to the North Pole in 1897. Andree was convinced that he could sale a hydrogen-filled balloon for over 20 days with the prevailing winds to the North Pole and then on to Russia or Western Canada. In reality, he had no clue about the prevailing winds, balloon technology, the amount of hydrogen required, how the balloon should be sealed, and what kind supplies might be needed if it landed prematurely. And it did land prematurely-- within two days of launch. Trapped in a hostile, icy environment, Andree and his two compatriots, Nils Strindberg (who was engaged to a lovely young woman) and Knut Fraenkel, and struggled to survive on polar bear meat while vainly trudging south to uncertain locations of caches. It was only 30 years later that their fate became known when all three bodies were located on an inhospitable island not that far, really, from where they started. "Flight of the Eagle" quietly, methodically traces the inception of the plan, the conflict with a skeptical expert who withdrew from the expedition, the women left behind. "Flight of the Eagle" explores rather than fictionalizes, taking what is known from the diaries and letters found with the bodies and expanding our idea of what their final days were like. Haunting, unforgettable story.
Everyone in "King" existed except for Sir John Falstaff, who was based on Sir John Oldcastle by Shakespeare (but who changed his name to avoid trouble with Oldcastle's family). And the Dauphin did not die at Agincourt. Gritty, violent, filthy version of the classic Shakespeare tale of the young prince who matures into a statesman when given responsibility. Except he doesn't really-- he realizes he's been duped (which is probably not historically accurate since he invaded France twice). And he takes after an American action hero when he exacts revenge for his humiliation in the end. Enjoyable film, with a bit more realism than we are used in these sword epics, and a contemptible attempt to "Fonzify" Falstaff by having him turn into a sage adviser-- a development that emasculates the most interesting side of Shakespeare's play. Chalamet is less than adequate, but he's a star so he gets to be in most scenes. The rest of the supporting cast is pretty good.
Obviously written by the director, as another one of those "who needs a writer-- I can write it myself" films. Yes, you do need a writer. Sloppy, rambling story about several children trying to survive in a dystopian city torn apart by drug wars. Estrella, who is 10, comes home one day to find that her mother is gone. Her father, as far as we can tell, never existed, and one does wonder if the director didn't think fathers had any importance anyway. She is drive by hunger to leave her home and join a rag-tag group of boys led by Shine, who only accept her after she seems to have killed a local drug lord. All part of the magical realism employed by "Tigers are not Afraid" to dramatize the predicament of the collateral damage wrought by the gang wars over drugs. None of these scenes are either plausible or plausibly rendered, and the acting by the children is not particularly effective. The seams show: there are sequences that obviously were filmed a particular way to avoid and expensive effect.
Paola Lara, Juan Ramon Lopez, Nery Arredondo, Hanssel Casillas, Ianis Guerrero, Tenoch Huerta
Why did so many sites rate this movie so highly? We don't even get to hear the song? Just 90 minutes of a rather whiny and unlikable character annoy as many people as possible-- even someone who, inexplicably-- is his friend. His wife is divorcing him, he can't handle normal police work, he draws a gun on a colleague, he swears at his childs' teacher: what am I missing? What is it about Jim Arnaud that is supposed to be interesting?
Jim Cummings, Kendal Farr, Nican Robinson, Jocelyn DeBoer, Chelsea Ednumdson, Jacqueline Doke
Based on the stage play, "End of the Rainbow", "Judy" is unexpectedly gritty and downbeat, and relatively free of contrivance and manipulation-- aside from a egregiously manipulative last scene, a performance of the penultimate "Over the Rainbow" that never happened-- and a sidebar about two gay men who invite her over to their house for dinner: they did not exist, and it's a rather cheap attempt to put a bit of politically correct spin on her decline. But now I know why "Judy" was unexpectedly compelling: her family had no participation in the making of the film, and, in fact, Liza Minnelli, her daughter, has publicly distanced herself from it. It is 1969. Garland is broke. Her ex-husband, Sid Luft, is pressing for custody of their two children, Joey and Lorna, at least partly because Judy had to sell her house to start paying down hundreds of thousands of dollars in IRS accounts. Desperately in need of money, Garland accepts an engagement in London for five weeks at "Talk of the Town", a luxurious club. She starts well, acclaimed by audiences and critics, but she struggling with dependence on painkillers, alcohol, and barbiturates. She begins showing up late or not at all, and some performances are slurred and off-pitch. And, oddly, "Judy" ends without either the triumphant comeback, or her death (which is cited as happening six months later). That's a serious compliment to the writer and director: they had the guts to leave you with the consequences, and with Judy's own complicity in her disastrous position. We are presented with the usual culprits, but "Judy" is really about her own failure of character, consequences, perhaps, of the pressures of her career, but also, as shown in contrast to the competence and wisdom of Rosalyn Wilder, the result of her own inability to pull herself together. The tragedy is that a person with her talents and sensibility and character defects would be placed in the circumstances she was, in the hands of the manipulators and exploiters that would destroy her.
John Daglieish
Magical, sensuous film about a young girl, Ada, whose lover, Souleiman, goes away and then returns, in spirit, by possessing another body. Ada loves Souleiman, but is betrothed to Omar.The young men work in construction on a tower but no one has been paid their wages for months so they decide on a risky journey by sea to find work. After he leaves, with other men, Ada learns that he may have drowned at sea and she is urged marry Omar, but on their wedding night, someone sets fire to their bed. A detective is assigned to the case, and Souleiman seems to magically channel himself through his body. As do the other men, who take possession of other bodies in the town and eventually hold the owner of the tower to account and force him to pay their families and then dig graves for their lost spirits.
I always have reservations about movies about writers or musicians or authors which dramatize the terrible suffering they undergo for their art, and their subsequent use of drugs or alcohol to self- medicate. We never get the medication part without the suffering, because then they would like they have a weak character. Though bizarrely nominated for an Oscar, Antonio Banderas badly plays Salvador Mallo (who is really Almodovar), a movie director who, while living a wonderfully extravagant life, suffers various medical or imaginary ailments, which, after pushing him through various revealing experiences, lead him to resume film-making. To me, it is a film proclaiming just how fascinating and interesting the film- maker is, without showing you anything that actually makes him interesting. He drinks and takes heroin. He remembers being a child, singing in a choir, teaching a laborer how to read and write. He develops a sexual fascination for the laborer. He has a written a short memoir which an actor wants to turn into a play, which, from what we see of it, seems quite pedestrian. He is fond of his mother. A former male lover reappears in his life. And that is about it. None of these scenes develop the slightest intensity. Almodovar appears to be indifferent to his own material: he phoned this in. The actors seem to share his indifference.
From the school of thought that holds "who needs a writer? I'll write the damn script". "1917" has one gimmick going for it-- a long, continuous steadicam sequence from beginning to end, which, of course does include a few cheats. Two soldiers, Lance Corporal Blake and Lance Corporal Schofield, are tasked with taking a message to an army group that is isolated and preparing for an attack on a retreating German force. Only, they aren't retreating: they are setting a trap. Wires have been cut, nobody has a hand carrier pigeon available, and Blake's brother is in that army group. They have wind their way through no-man's land and possibly some German lines to get to the division and deliver the critical message. Unfortunately, this becomes a kind of childish odyssey with various cliff-hanging predicaments, plane crashes, lots of rotting bodies, and one cliche ridden scene of near-ridiculousness in which one character is severely wounded and the other, having read the script, acts if death is inevitable so no use binding the wound or such. That all might have been more forgivable had it not been for the insertion of a scene involving a woman and a baby that was absolutely worthy of Spielberg in its mawkish shamelessness. Dig up "Paths of Glory" instead for a much better treat of the era and the war.
Inept and tedious dramatization of the life of Harriet Tubman, with the look and feel of a bad "B" movie from the early 1960's, with characters meeting in danger making googoo eyes at each other instead of watching for approaching danger. Every cliche in the book: wisened old black dude, stilted characters saying "you can't do that-- it's impossible", caricatured slave owners with (almost) twirling mustaches. There is one elegant scene: the mixed race daughter of a slave-owner and slave disguises herself as a boy to drive a wagon right through a posse. Except that the rest of the scene is so preposterous that it is almost comical. Disney owned this story for a while and refused to make it. They would probably like me to believe it was because the script was so bad but more likely they didn't think they would make a lot of money from it. It may well have been the worst movie of 2019, edging out "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood".
As the Joker flees from a hospital file clerk with a copy of his mother's medical records, turns around quickly, looks over his shoulder, looks back to make sure no one is following him. It's the kind of detail in acting totally absent from our double-feature, "Harriet", and it enriches "Joker" with the kind of life and energy lacking from Tubman adventure. This is an origin story: the Joker is Arthur Fleck, a man who has never been happy his entire life. He lives with his mother and earns money as a clown, until a group of thugs beat him up one day. A friend gives him a gun and the next time, he takes action. In the dystopian city, his murder of a group of stock managers hits a chord and people start wearing clown masks in tribute (evoking the Occupy movement unflatteringly). Arthur tries his hand at comedy and is a disaster which gets invited onto the Murray Franklin show. Just after budget cuts have eliminated his therapy sessions and medications. Joaquin Phoenix is brilliant as Fleck, pulling dance moves, a twisted, forced laugh that explodes at the wrong moment, and a touching vulnerability at times: he tells his mother that he has never been happy for a single day in his life. He fantasizes a relationship with a beautiful young mother in his building, just as he fantasizes being a hit on the Murray Franklin Show. This is a very dark film about the very dark corners of human pathology that resists the cliches and sentimental tropes of most Hollywood treatments. And, refreshingly, most of the riot scenes and car crashes are practical effects-- not CGI. Made for $52 million, it may well be the best major film of 2019.
What a movie! Delete this please. Maybe later, after I've tested udate to be the correct Update, while tdate is the date of entry. Edate is the date the movie was seen. And now apparently it is not a gem. And not a not gem either.
In 2008, GM shut down a truck plant in Dayton, Ohio, throwing 3000 workers-- at almost $30 an hour-- out of work. Many lost their homes, their cars, their careers. In 2014, Fuyao, a Chinese auto-class manufacturer, purchased the plant, to the ecstatic pleasure of workers, government officials, and the city, offering "good" jobs and steady employment for at least some of the former auto-workers-- at $12.84 an hour, even after receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in government subsidies. But delight gave way to consternation as the clash of cultures played out in the plant: the Chinese, totally devoted to a "beneficent" employer (shown at a mother plant in China singing anthems to their bosses, and working 12-hour shifts six days a week) found the Americans lazy and self-centred and incompetent. When Sherrod Brown, at the plant opening, declared he would support unionization activities, Fuyao's leader, Chairman Cao, vowed to close the plant if it ever unionized. Pro-union employees were selectively fired and Fuyao spent a million dollars on union-busting consultants who succeeded in scaring a majority of workers into voting against the UAW. Fascinating film because it explores the contrasting cultures and attitudes towards employers, between the hard-boiled older GM workers and the Chinese and their near slavish devotion to corporate success.
Searing documentary about the rise and fall of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, sort of Brazil's Bernie Sanders, who rose from labour leader and activist to President of Brazil. While in office, a major scandal involving kickbacks to politicians by construction firms associated with the oil and natural gas industries exploded. Lula was never implicated but when his successor, Dilma Rousseff, an activist who had once been imprisoned and tortured by the Junta, allowed the investigations to continue, a corrupt politicians and judges conspired to impeach her and remove her from office. Beautifully filmed (especially the drone shots of the capital) and edited, resonant with the current political debate in the U.S. (in a reversal, the left wing leader is impeached by right wing populists), and evocative of the fake news hysteria sweeping western countries.
After watching a documentary on Mr. Rogers (Won't You be my Neighbor), I liked him more. After watching "It's a Beautiful Day..." I liked him less. Mr. Rogers is saintly in the way saints never really are, so he's creepy and condescending in a weird way. He expresses the kind of humility that humiliates rather than elevates. And even Tom Hanks is not that bad of an actor: the vision of the director here is twisted and untethered. She is so devoted to sanctification that she loses sight of what actually probably made the real Mr. Rogers engaging. We are offered a gross fictionalization (Tom Junod never hit his own dad at his sister's wedding, and the screenwriter admitted to Junod “But everything else—the relationship between you and your father and you and your wife—is made up!”) here of an interesting story: a cynical journalist assigned to write a story on heroism for Esquire, meets Mr. Rogers and through a series of meetings and conversations comes to find reconciliation with his alcoholic father who deserted the family when he was young. Heavy-handed is too mild to describe this treatment, which does the real Mr. Rogers no favors. Nor does it honor him or Junod to be portrayed by anemic actors like Tom Hanks and Matthew Rhys, who seems humourless and boring rather than hard-boiled and cynical. In this fantasy, Mr. Rogers even comes to visit the dying father in his home.
Very odd, very random "documentary" on Leon Russell and friends and family and random strangers in and around Tulsa, Oklahoma, over two years from 1972-1974. Blank just kind of roamed around and shot whatever he felt like shooting, including a kid singing "Joy to the World", and a snake eating a chicken, and couple in a boat, and a man eating a beer glass, catfish hunters, and sky-divers, and so on. Long lingering shots of water and sky, over music. A church revival meeting including some intense gospel. A very weird wedding. A completely naked woman with snake around her neck. Some handheld work is merely annoying (no steadicam) and the music is often poorly recorded, but it remains an impressionistic study of strange people, musicians, the city of Tulsa (showing a demolition of an old building) and the social aspect of Russell's music. Kind of a curiosity.
The funniest scene in "Jojo Rabbit" arrives early: the Beatles "Komm gib mir deine Hand" played over large scenes of Nazis hailing Hitler. "Jojo is a 10-year-old would-be storm-trooper working out with the boys and training to defend the 3rd Reich. He has an imaginary friend: Adolf Hitler, who inspires him with rousing speeches, sometimes, but mostly comes off as a 3rd rate comedian. And that's the main problem with this film. What is supposed to be incisive satire too often comes off as sophomoric buddies drinking and riffing off in bad German accents. The accents make no sense: everyone speaks English with a not-too-thick German accent, but all of the writing in books and posters is German. Why? It's not logical, nor is it particularly funny. Jojo discovers a girl hiding in the attic of the house he lives in with his mother: she is Jewish, and he demands that she explain Jews to him. But he doesn't want to turn her in and grows fond of her, and she of him, which, again, is neither funny nor acute. Meanwhile Jojo's former storm- trooper commander, Captain Kelnzendorf, turns out to be a decent guy. Why? Because he is played by Sam Rockwell? It's a film that looks like it should be funny, because it's audacious in making Hitler a comic figure, and because it has heart-warming interludes, and because Jojo is so inept, but if you're going to satirize a heavyweight topic like Nazism, you better be sharp, and Waititi is not that sharp, and Roman Griffin Davis is not talented enough, and Scarlett Johansson is neither funny nor convincing. I can't even begin to guess what she thought the scene where she pretends to be Jojo's father, smearing ash on her cheeks to look manly, was supposed to look like. It comes off as dreck. "The Producers" got it right because the actual production of "Springtime for Hitler" was convincingly rendered, and because Zero Mostel was brilliant as an amoral, conniving producer. Nobody in "Jojo Rabbit" is nearly as effective. Elsa tells Jojo that when one is free, one dances, and then Waititi attempts to pull of a Napoleon Dynamite. It fails. If you think "Princess Bride" is masterful this might be for you. For all others, find the original 1968 version of the "The Producers": it's ten times funnier.
Very unusual, deeply embedded documentary about a woman, Hatidze Muratova, who lives alone in a remote area of Macedonia where she raises bees and sells the honey in Skopje. We see her delicate techniques as she obtains bees from a wild hive and brings them to her own home-made hives and sings to them to welcome them. She also cares for her aging mother, feeding her, and dressing an eye wound. It is a bleak, primitive existence (no power, no radio, no luxuries of any kind), but one that gives her sustenance and a balanced relationship with the world. Until, a family of Turks moves next door (into semi-abandoned stone houses) bringing their cattle and children and noise and disruption. The Turkish family sees her success with honey and decides to take up the vocation, but without her acute sensitivity to the bees, and to the cycle of hives and honey production. They plunge in thoughtlessly, using her expertise at first, then resenting her when she warns them that taking too much honey too quickly will disrupt the lives of the bees an cause them to attach her hives-- which they do. Hatidze at first befriends them and her interactions with the children are charming and awkward at times. The documentary crew remains distant to events, never giving us clues about their own role or relationship with the subjects-- we see a bee land on a very young child, and sting her. We see a child almost drown in the river, and another older child pushed violently into the stub of a fence pole. It's more than a little shocking and disturbing, and riveting. If the best function of documentary is to open up a hitherto unknown world to the viewer, "Honeyland" succeeds in spades. Wonderful. Is it also a commentary on capitalism: the Turks that come into this environment, heedless, almost violent in their desire to exploit its resources? Yes.
It would be generous to give Shults a writing credit for "Waves" which doesn't really feature any writing at all. Much of the dialogue seems improvised, without much regard for actual plot and development. Shults clearly placed a premium on style and emotion and motion, and really, once you step back from the handheld swirling camera work and the intriguing music cues, the plot is very conventional, under-developed, and predictable. Tyler is a senior high school student and a wrestler on the school team. His father is clearly a driver and pushes him to work hard and achieve, because Tyler "asked" for it, and because blacks have to work ten times as hard as whites for the same rewards. His girlfriend, Alexis, alerts him that her period is late but is unable to go through with an abortion, provoking Tyler. Tyler also has developed a serious injury in his shoulder and is advised by his doctor to stop all physical activity until it heals, which could wipe out his senior year and perhaps his scholarship. The pressures mount until he snaps, not entirely convincingly. The attack on Alexis is tidy and compressed into a tableau that makes it feel static and posed. The story then shifts to his sister, Emily who appears to be shunned by classmates and friends because of Tyler's explosion. Along comes a nice young man, Luke, whose own father has been abusive but is now dying of cancer. They begin a relationship that seems free of drama, and Emily helps him cope with his father's decline and persuades him to reconcile with him. If there is an idea in this film, this is what introduces it: reconciliation. But it's not clear to me how this ties in with Tyler's drama. The drama of these scenes is undercut by the improvisation, which doesn't always seem contextualized by an actual story. The acting is very good, but it's like watching someone stay in character even after he or she has forgotten the lines. Unusual in that the drama is about an upper class, hard-working family, that lives in a lavish home. Emily and Tyler both have their own cars. Their father and step- mother's relationship is deteriorating. It's all very tragic but in the end a bit of a fizzle and a waste of some very passionate performances.
Why is the category being so punky? I need to fix that problem some way, some how. And this is added in the search / edit mode on moviespd. And this is added during a second edit.
Beautiful, sensually filmed epic about Franz Jagerstatter, an Austrian farmer who stubbornly refused to take the required oath of loyalty to the Fuhrer when called up for service in Wehrmacht during World War II. The first half is a serenely captivating recreating of rural life in a remote area of Austria in the 1930's, threshing, planting, harvesting, managing livestock, all shown in leisurely detail (one is impressed by the actors' dedication). When Franz is finally arrested and imprisoned, his wife and her sister and his mother carry on, with his three children, all under 6 years old. Through letters and voice-over, Franz discusses his reasons, his conscience, and his determination, and declares that God does not give any man's conscience a pass because he is married and has children. Powerfully poses that fundamental question: is Franz right to impose the consequences of following his own conscience upon his family and village (who hate him for it)? By implication, is every man entitled to determine his own conscience? Nobody agrees with him, not even his own church (which today appropriates his esteemed memory). It is even made clear to him that nobody will know about his principled stand, so he won't even be an inspiration to others (at least, not in his own time). Beautifully filmed, and brilliantly acted, if somewhat slow-moving and self-consciously arty at times. But how can one gripe about that when the artistry is so successful? Some scenes filmed in the real locations of the family's home and bedroom.
Yet another Disney Princess film-- though it tries to make it less conspicuous, and the most expensive animated film in it's day (at $250 million), "Tangled" is reasonably fresh and amusing (especially Maximus, the horse) and relatively free of dreck, for a Disney film. Disney, of course, changed the story. Flynn Rider is no longer a prince slumming among disreputable ruffians, and Gothel doesn't cut her hair and turn her out into the dessert. Disney almost never improves the story, but there's some sense in the sequences, and the innovative combination of CGI and painting works well. Rapunzel is not a passive heroine, but she is completely interchangeable with other Disney heroines like Moana, Belle, Jasmine, Mulan, Anna, and Merida. They are all spunky, skinny, shrill at times, self-doubting until they predictably find confidence.
Intriguing drama about the relationship between Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, who became Pope Francis, and Cardinal Ratzinger, who was Pope Benedict, and became the first pontiff to resign his office while living. Extensive private conversations between the two, based on informed conjecture, in which they argue their perspectives on the church, dogma, social change, and responsibility. Evades discussion of the most acerbic topics-- the corruption of the Vatican Administration and the role of the Vatican Bank in money laundering, but takes up the easy points on abuse and relevance. Bergoglio confesses his role as apologist for the Junta in Argentina when he was head of the Jesuit order, something he appears to have attempted to make amends for later in life. Change is not compromise, he declares, and Ratzinger eventually takes up that idea as he considers resignation. Well written, and beautifully acted by Hopkins in particular (as Ratzinger), if occasionally coy, as when the two popes order pizza in while discussing things in the Sistine Chapel.
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