Albert Nobbs 2011
113 minutes Glenn Close plays a
woman who has disguised herself as a man since she was raped at age 14. She works as a waiter, saves her money and dreams
of opening a shop. She thinks she will
need a wife as a partner but has no idea what relations between a man and a
woman are all about. It all ends
badly. I found it a little boring.
.
Cadillac Records 2008
109 minutes This is the story of Leonard Chess, a bar
owner who decided to become a record producer when he realized that the African
Americans, whose music he admired, had no representation and no way to reach
the market and be recognized. He founded
Chess records and fostered the careers of Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, Etta James
and many others; working with Chess many of them attained their ultimate goal,
the opportunity to “cross over" and reach white audiences as well as blacks. Apparently he ran the operation on a shoe
string and often paid his singers with Cadillacs instead of money. Biopics can be dull or annoying or both but
this one is worth seeing.
.
Contraband 2012
110 minutes When his
brother-in-law runs afoul of a drug lord, a former smuggler who has gotten out
of the game and is running a legitimate small business installing security
systems gets dragged back in to make one more run to save the brother-in-law’s life and his own and his
wife and son’s. Mark Wahlberg never
disappoints. Everything imaginable goes
wrong and everyone wants him dead, but he improvises and he and his crew end up
rich and able to go straight again.
.
Extremely Loud and
Incredibly Close 2011 131 minutes
Fourteen year old Oskar Schell has a wonderful relationship with his
father, played by Tom Hanks, until his father is killed in the 9/11 attack. Together they solve mysteries that take them
all over New York City and especially Central Park. He is estranged from his mother and sure she doesn’t
love him. Oskar is sure his father has
left him a message and when he finds a key in an envelope with “Black” written
on the outside, he sets out to contact the 400 plus families in NY named Black
to see if he can find the lock that the key will open. Part way through his quest an old man, who
doesn’t talk, shows up living at Oskar’s grandmother’s apartment and soon joins
Oskar in his quest. Oskar finally finds
the owner of the key and learns that it has nothing to do with him or his
father. Oskar is good at keeping secrets
and all through his quest he has kept a secret about the phone calls his father
made from the World Trade Center.
Finally he tells his mother and she confides in him that she has
followed every step of his quest in order to protect him and that the old man
is his grandfather, who was so overwhelmed by the tragedy of Dresden that he
stopped talking and broke off contact with his family until the tragedy of 9/11. Apparently the grandfather’s story gets much
fuller treatment in Foer’s novel on which the film is based. Thomas Horn is amazing as Oskar in his
betrayal of a bereaved kid on the fringe of autism.
.
Forever Strong 2008
131 minutes This is another
mostly true sports story. Rick is a star
player on his father’s rugby team until a DUI lands him in a reform school in
Utah. It happens that the reform school
is in a town that has the perennial champion high school rugby team with, of
course, an amazing coach, Larry Gelwix. The
school arranges for Rick to join the team.
At first Rick resists the discipline, the dedication to fair play and a
lot of rah rah motivational stuff, but eventually he buys in. Rick’s father had been a star player on the
Utah team but blew out a knee just before they played for the national
championship and lost all opportunity for athletic scholarships and a
professional career. He has spent his
whole life resenting what happened to him and the continuing success of Gelwix. The reform school releases Rick and his
father brings him home to play for him and to reveal the Utah team’s plays and
tactics. Rick will play but refuses to
betray his old team. His teammates frame
him for possession and he is sent back to the reform school. He plays against his father’s team in the
national championship game and is targeted over and over by his father’s
players for hard and hardly legal hits.
Nevertheless, Utah wins and of course father and son and Gelwix are all
reconciled. Pretty standard stuff but
pretty well done.
.
Iron Monkey 1993
86 minutes Iron Monkey is a
kung fu master who steals from corrupt local officials to feed the poor. He’s also the town doctor. When a traveling physician who is also a kung
fu master comes to town, the officials hold his son hostage until he can
capture Iron Monkey. Naturally they
eventually team up and clean up the town.
Some interesting kung fu effects.
It’s a kung fu movie.
.
The Man Nobody
Knew: In Search of my Father CIA
Spymaster William Colby 2011 104 minutes
I found this film boring and couldn’t stay with it. One could do a lot better by reading about
Colby on the Internet. Among the
comments I found in a quick and sloppy search was an objection to Colby fis’s
conclusion that he committed suicide: “Anyone
that (sic) is interested in what actually killed this honorable man should read
Zalin Grant's "War Tales" available online for free. All evidence
actually points to murder. “
.
Metropolis Restored 1927
148 minutes It’s 2026 and
workers live below ground in regimented slave-like conditions and the rich live
above in leisure a futuristic city. I
thought I was only going to watch a few minutes of this but I pretty much stuck
with it as Director Fritz Lang invented one special effect after another.
.
Nell 1994
113 minutes Jodie Foster plays
Nell, a young woman who had never been far from her grandmother’s backwoods
cabin and had never talked to anyone but her grandmother and a twin sister that
had died in childhood. No one in town
knew she existed. When the grocery
delivery boy finds the grandmother dead and reports back to town, the sheriff
and Dr. Lovell (Liam Neeson) go out to recover the body. They discover Nell and discover that she has
developed her own language which only the grandmother could understand. After that it’s a competition between Dr.
Lovell, who wants to protect Nell, and the psychologists in the city who want to
bring Nell and examine her like a lab rat.
Jodie Foster was nominated for an academy award for her performance.
.
Picasso and Braque Go
to the Movies 2008 62 minutes
Maybe I was too sleepy when I watched this, but I really couldn’t figure
out how they made the connection between cinema and Cubist paintings.
.
The Producers 2005
135 minutes What would life be like without Mel Brooks? I have to say that this started so slowly
that I almost considered giving up, but once it was underway it was incredible. I saw the earlier version years ago but only
vaguely remember it except for “Springtime for Hitler.” I don’t think I will ever forget this one.
.
Saint Ralph 2004
98 minutes Because I attended a
Catholic boy’s school, everything in the film was all too familiar. It’s a pretty good story. Ralph is fourteen, his father was killed in
the war, his mother is very ill and falls into a coma and Ralph is living alone
in his parents’ house, supporting himself by gradually selling off the
furniture and appliances. He pretends
that he lives with his grandparents, who are actually deceased, and one of his
classmates forges any necessary notes to his teachers or the headmaster. Ralph makes a bargain with God that if he
wins the 1954 Boston Marathon, God will bring his mother out of her coma. It turns out the cross country coach had been
Canada’s fastest marathoner in 1936 until he blew out a knee two weeks before
the Olympics. He agrees to coach Ralph
on the condition that he not mention miracles – the headmaster considers Ralph’s
bargain to be blasphemy and is totally opposed to him running the marathon. He doesn’t win but he comes in second in the
closest finish ever. His feat is so
incredible that the headmaster can’t take action to send him to an
orphanage. His mother wakes up a few
weeks later.
.
We Bought a Zoo 2011
126 minutes This is based on
Benjamin Mee’s memoir about buying and saving a run-down zoo. The film stays close to the wacky original
except that the venue is moved from Scotland to Southern California. Everything is predictable. The teenage son hates the place until close
to the end, the preteen daughter adapts instantly and totally, the staff is a
bunch of weirdos who happen to love animals.
I never could figure out how they got paid. And there’s the malevolent zoo inspector who
harasses them and threatens their chance of reopening and taking in some
revenue. It was nice but kind of so so,
after all that hype.
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