Alexander :
Director’s Cut 2004 167 minutes
I don’t know how much research went into the costuming and choreography
of the battle scenes but it’s fun to watch.
I don’t think Oliver Stone was able to introduce any conspiracies that
we didn’t know about already. We know
the story, we know Alexander was
brilliant but strange, so just sit back and enjoy the spectacle, especially
Angelina Jolie.
Army of Crime
(L’Armee du Crime) 2009 133
minutes This is the story of
Armenian-born Missak Manouchian, a woodworker and political activist who led an
immigrant laborer division of the French Resistance in Paris on 30 operations
against the Nazis in 1943. You will not
see a more nitty gritty film about the resistance
The Artist 2011
100 minutes I wasn’t sure of
what to expect other than this was likely to be about the demise of the silent
movie era. The whole thing was just
right. The male superstar had plenty of
opportunity to demonstrate the incredible skills that made those wordless films
so interesting and the girl who falls in love with him just as she is being
discovered as a rising star in talkies demonstrates all those crazy talents
that made the films of the 1930s so popular.
And the girl’s rescue of the silent screen star’s career is quick, corny
and pure Hollywood, just as it should be.
I loved it.
Black Sun: The Nanking Massacre 1995
90 minutes This is a
Chinese propaganda film, which attacks
the Japanese for their brutality at Nanking in WW II. The attack is richly deserved and will be
around for as long as Japanese continue to deny the facts and make pilgrimages
to Yasukuni Shrine to honor the war criminals inurned there. This film uses photographs and newsreel
footage and then stages reenactments of what may have happened. It’s 90 minutes that is so brutal that I
can’t recommend anyone actually see it.
There are many other films about Nanking that make the same points about
Japanese brutality, but focus on the heroic efforts of Jonathan Rabe and others
to save as many as they could.
Born to Be Wild 2011
40 minutes IMAX An excellent documentary that captures the
unique connections that developed between two scientists and the orphans of two
species, orangutans in Borneo and elephants in Kenya.
Bride Flight 2011
129 minutes In the 1950s three
young Dutch women become acquainted on the long flight to Australia where they
are to be picture brides. On the flight
all three also meet and sort of bond with an Australian cowboy. Their marriages do or don’t work out as they
get on with their lives, but all three are later affected in some way by
contacts with the cowboy. Maybe it’s a
chick flick, but it held my interest.
Broken Hill 2009
102 minutes Tommy McAlpine, a
teenager who dutifully works for his father on his sheep farm and plays on the
high school soccer team his father coaches, wants to become a composer. When an American girl gets him and herself in
trouble for a prank, both are sentenced to community service. He chooses to try to form a music group at
the local prison. The girl is reluctant,
even contemptuous, but eventually buys into the idea and turns out to be an
excellent piano player. Few of the
convicts have much musical talent, but he writes music that takes advantage of
what they can do, wins a competition, the respect of his father and, of course,
the girl. The Australians make nice
movies.
The Clowns (I
Clowns) I only got to see a part of
this before Netflix pulled it from Instant View, but where could you find a
better combination than Federico Fellini, a circus, some famous Italian
clowns and Anita Ekberg buying a
panther. I can hardly wait for it to
come back around.
The Flying Scotsman 2006
102 minutes This is a biopic
about Graeme Obree, a Scotsman who won the 1993 and 1995 world bicycling speed
championship on a bike of his own design.
For his prototype, dubbed “Old Faithful,” he did actually use some parts
from his front loading washing machine.
He was competing against bikes that cost as much a half a million
dollars to develop. The way he did it
was to look at the ergonomics and aerodynamics of cycling and adjust
accordingly to make the bike fit what the body could do most efficiently. An arm position that he invented was later
used by others to win seven championships before it was outlawed as
“dangerous.”
The Hunger Games 2012
142 minutes This has elements
of The Lord of the Flies, The Truman Show,
gladiatorial combat in the arenas of ancient Rome and Survivor, the reality TV show, which I have never watched. In an authoritarian society sometime in the
future, the government picks a young man and a young woman from each of its 12
districts each year, trains them as “tributes,” interviews them on live TV to
develop patrons for the more attractive tributes and then forces them into a
fight to the death in a fenced, wooded preserve. It’s a game and the game continues until only
one of the 24 survives. The tributes
have trackers embedded in their forearms.
The team running the game can follow their every move on live TV, and
they broadcast whatever seems most interesting to the public, which laps it up. The gamers have the capability to interfere
to help or hinder individual tributes, and patrons may send help to the tribute
they favor. Our heroine, Katniss, who
looks like a younger Ashley Judd and is just as tough, is played by Jennifer
Lawrence, a relatively new face. She
gets through to the end without killing anyone except in self defense, i.e.,
she never initiates combat, and she confounds the authorities in charge to such
extent that she manages to save the life of Peeta,the young man from her
district. The smarmy TV host is played
by Stanley Tucci – with hair and what hair it is. Donald Sutherland plays the evil, heartless
president (or himself, whatever).
The Iron Lady 2011
105 minutes The bio starts near
the end when Margaret Thatcher is suffering from some dementia and has trouble
remembering that her fun-loving and supportive husband has passed away and that
she is no longer prime minister. There
are flashbacks to when she first ran for Parliament and was forming herself as
a rock ribbed conservative. She would be
comfortable leading the Republican far right in this country today. Next we see her when she first gets to
Parliament and has to overcome the old boys’ network – “the lady doth screech
too much.” Her debate performance is
Meryl Streep at her best. Some MPs
recognize her talent and help her to remake herself into a formidable force and
to win the party leadership and become prime minister. When economic troubles loom, she prescribes
austerity, even over the reservations of her conservative colleagues, and then,
despite Britain’s economic problems, leads the charge into the Falkland Islands
war. All of this is interspersed with
Maggie trying to deal with her dementia.
It’s a movie about conservative politics, women’s rights, and
Alzheimer’s, and does a fine job of defining just who Margaret Thatcher was.
Milton Glaser: To
Inform and Delight 2009 73 minutes
Milton Glaser is the designer who came up with “I Love NY” and 100s,
maybe even 1000s of other designs that you will recognize. He is on screen most of the time in this
documentary along with his work, all of which truly is delightful and so is
he. I can say this is the best art film
I have ever seen, and, among the artists with whom I’ve shared a lifetime,
Glaser is the one I most admire.
Much Ado About
Nothing 1993 110 minutes The timing has been shifted to what looks
like early to mid 19th C.
Kenneth Branaugh and Emma Thompson star as Benedick and Beatrice and
Branaugh directs. It took me a while to
warm up to Thompson’s performance, but eventually I could buy into it. What can one say about a play that has been delighting
audiences for over 400 years. This one
is fine; the banter and puns come off well, as they should with a cast that
also includes Kate Beckinsale, Denzel Washington, Michael Keaton and the
nefarious Keanu Reeves. Robert Sean
Leonardo was someone who looked familiar, but I didn’t know him by name. He was fine as Claudio, but how hard can that
be?
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