Aces High 1976
108 minutes This is an old movie
and it looks it. There are WW I
airplanes, but not enough is seen of them – a lot of the aerial action shows
close-ups of pilots gritting their teeth as they shoot their machine guns. The basic story is that the squadron
commander, an experienced pilot, has to continue as usual, while watching one
new pilot after another die within a week or two of reporting for duty.
Deadfall 2012
94 minutes Addison and his
sister, Lisa, are heading up an ice covered highway towards Canada. A third person is driving. Lisa is in the back seat counting stacks of
bills. The car skids and leaves the
road. The driver is killed, but Addison
and Lisa are unhurt. A policeman sees
the wreck and gets out of his cruiser to check it out. Addison shoots him in the face. Addison divides the money and tells Lisa to
get up on the road and hitch a ride, while he takes off on foot through the
woods. No one knows she has been with
him, and she is to deny knowing him until they meet up in Canada. Jay has just been released from prison for
throwing a boxing match. He stops by his
promoter’s office to claim his share of the money from the fight. The promoter attacks him, a mistake because
Jay has not forgotten how to throw a right.
The promoter hits his head as he goes down and may be dying. Jay calls 911, jumps in his pickup (no
explanation of where he got it on his first day out of prison), and heads north
where, of course, he finds Lisa on the road half frozen and in the middle of
nowhere. She asks him to drive her to
Canada. He declines but says he will
take her to the next gas station. When
they get there they find the road north has been closed for the night because
of the storm. They spend the night
together and the next day he agrees to take her to Canada, but first he wants
to take her for Thanksgiving dinner to meet his parents . Meanwhile there is a manhunt for Addison. He has been busy. He has killed a hunter and stolen his snow
mobile, spent the night in a cabin after killing the abusive husband who had
driven his wife out into the snow, killed two of the three police officers who
have come to check on the abused wife, and forced his way into Jay’s parents’
home. Jay and Lisa arrive and eventually
the police. Addison doesn’t survive. Maybe this is Jay’s story, but we see more of
Addison, a villain with some redeeming qualities. He loves his sister, and he doesn’t kill
kids. Sissy Spacek played Jay’s mother –
she plays everyone’s mother lately – and Olivia Wilde was nice to look at, but
I ended up wondering why I had watched this movie.
The Impressionists 2006
Two discs This is a DVD of a
four part BBC series. The first three
parts dramatize the life of Monet and those around him, principally Bazille,
Renoir, Cezanne, Degas and Manet. It is
loaded with incidents and details that are familiar to art historians. The fourth part is more a documentary on
Monet’s style, in particular his ongoing attempts to capture on canvas the
light of a moment. I came away with an
even greater respect for Monet as an innovative artist and as a person.
In the Valley of Elah 2006
121 minutes This is not an easy
film to watch. Tommy Lee Jones is on
camera for almost every scene, and he is magnificent. He plays a retired military policeman and the
father of a young soldier who has just returned from Iraq and now seems to have
gone AWOL. After the son’s dismembered
body is found in a field, Charlize Theron is equally impressive as the sexually
harassed police detective who insists on taking the case despite the objections
of her superiors and the opposition of the military police, who would like to
make the case disappear. In the course
of the investigation by Jones and Theron we learn a lot about what the war did
to the young men and women who fought in it, and it’s not pleasant.
Love in the Time of
Cholera 2007 139 minutes
There’s not much about cholera here.
Javier Bardem plays a young telegraph operator who fails to win the hand
of the daughter of a rich and ambitious businessman. She marries another and he waits for her
husband to die, which he does after 51 years.
Bardem fills in the intervening time with affairs and assignations with
over 600 women – he keeps score in a little notebook. With the husband out of the way, he resumes
his suit and eventually she succumbs.
Not my kind of story, but the costuming and the makeup to age the actors
are amazing, and although the producers say they didn’t have a big enough
budget to shoot a full blown period piece, they did a remarkable job of
recreating turn of the century Cartajena.
Nobody’s Fool 1994
110 minutes Paul Newman plays
sully, a 60 year old construction worker, who rooms in Jessica Tandy’s
house. As a young man he walked out on
his wife and one year old son, perhaps because he feared that he couldn’t be a
better father than his own abusive parent.
Eventually he becomes friends with his grown son and dotes on his
grandson. Melanie Griffith flashes her
boobs for us while she and Newman are flirting.
Bruce Willis with hair is Griffith’s husband and runs the construction
and renovation company where Sully works – when he feels like it. Paul Newman is always worth watching, except
in Quintet, of course.
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