Beat the Drum 2003
113 minutes Musa is a nine year
old Zulu boy, who is orphaned when a mysterious disease kills both of his
parents and many others in his village.
To help his grandmother, he walks and hitchhikes to Johannesburg, 400 KMs away, to try
to earn enough money to help her buy a cow and care for his siblings and many
others orphans in the village. He’s
helped, off and on, by a kindly trucker.
The film examines the heartbreaking effect AIDS has had on the poor and
underprivileged children of Africa and also of the resistance among adults to
learn about the disease and protect themselves.
.
Being Flynn
2012 101 minutes This is based on the acclaimed memoir of
poet and playwright Nick Flynn. His father
abandoned his family when Nick was a small child, and he has not seen him for
many years. When Nick encounters him,
destitute and alcoholic, while working in a homeless shelter, he wants no part
of him, but eventually a relationship develops.
Robert De Niro is fantastic as
the father.
.
Bernie 2011
98 minutes I picked this up on
Netflix Instant View because it had Shirley MacLaine. She doesn’t disappoint, as she plays the rich
widow in a small town who is so mean and nasty that someone ought to put her
away. Bernie, the smiling mortician,
choir leader and civic activist, tries to make friends and eventually marries
her. Finally he does what everyone in
town wanted to do and kills her, but despite the suspicious nature of her
death, no one wants to think ill of Bernie.
This black comedy is based on real-life events.
.
The Company 2007
195 minutes There was too much material
for a movie in the 897 page book so they turned it into a miniseries. It’s about the CIA during the cold war,
particular their search for the mole in their ranks. It’s pretty good.
.
Copenhagen 2002
117 minutes This is a BBC
production of the 1998 play by Michael Frayn that imagines what might have been
said in the famous meeting in September 1941 between Danish physicist Niels
Bohr and his former research assistant, German physicist Werner Heisenberg.
There is a third character, Bohr’s wife, Margrethe, who has come to
dislike Heisenberg, because he represents Denmark’s occupiers. She has a lot to say. A critical and unanswered question is whether
Heisenberg, who
headed up atomic research in Germany in WW II, intended to succeed in his research during the war or to delay until
it would be too late for it to be weaponized.
Viewers will learn a lot about physics
-- Heisenberg discovered the “uncertainty
principle” and Bohr made important contributions to quantum mechanics and other
theories -- but the unanswered political questions are
more interesting and perhaps more within our grasp. You can get the disk from Netflix or watch it
in seven parts on You Tube. If you get
the disk, don’t miss the prologue and epilogue with Michael Frayn. They will help you understand why he wrote
the play and will add go the questions you will already have about the meeting
after you’ve seen the play. Daniel Craig
plays Heisenberg and demonstrates that he is a lot more than James Bond.
.
Dehli 6 2009
An American born Indian takes his mother back to her native Delhi. He doesn’t intend to stay, but he falls in
love with the culture and chooses to stay where his roots are
.
The Dictator 2012
83 minutes This makes the case
for avoiding films with Sasha Baron Cohen.
.
The Eagle 2011
114 minutes A Roman centurion
sets out with one slave to try to recover the eagle lost by the Ninth Legion commanded
by his father. They penetrate deep into
Pict territory, secure the eagle and try to flee. Eventually they are saved by the survivors of
the Ninth, who escaped the legion’s massacre and have gone “native” for some
years but now see a chance to return to the Roman army. It’s a nice attempt to recreate a society in Scotland
about which we know almost nothing. The
exploits of the centurion and his slave are a bit too fantastic to be
convincing.
.
Gene Kelly: Anatomy of a Dancer 2002
87 minutes This is a must see look at the genius behind “Singin’ in the
Rain,” “On the Town” and “An American in Paris.” And there’s a lot more, including footage from Kelly’s “Pal Joey.” Until I saw
this film I had no idea how dominant Kelly was in the dance world through his
whole long career. Don’t miss it.
.
Love Never Dies 2012
121 minutes This is the sequel
ten years later to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Phantom of the Opera.” Webber oversaw the filming of an Australian
company’s production of this musical.
The costuming and sets are incredible and the pacing, thanks to director
Patrick Sullivan, is superb. One scene
flows into another, alternating action between two or three characters with
production numbers that take off from what a Coney Island show may have looked
like in 1905. My ear isn’t good enough
to judge the singing, but I enjoyed it. One downer is the microphones that the
principal singers have to wear, presumably because the film was shot in a real
theater rather than on a sound-stage. The
first one I saw was on the forehead of Christine’s mother, just below the
hairline. It looked like some kind of growth, maybe a
cyst. Then I started to notice similar
lumps on the foreheads of the other singers and realized what they were. Despite the disfiguring lumps on the singers
foreheads, see this film; it’s the best translation I can recall of a stage
production to a movie.
.
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows 2011
128 minutes Robert Downey Jr.
and Jude Law do the honors as Holmes and Watson in this sequel to their 2009 flick. It’s exciting and Holmes and
Moriarty go over the falls at the end, but somehow it’s just a thriller and has
little to do with the detective and the doctor invented by Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle. Maybe that’s just as well,
although effective updates are possible; see Benedict Cumberpatch’s Holmes on
the BBC and PBS. If Downey and Law do
another, I will see it because I like them both very much no matter whom they
are playing.
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