The Brylcreem Boys 1998
102 minutes Ireland, in order to
maintain its neutrality during WW II, interned any Allied or German military
men found on its soil in adjoining stockades in County Kildare. I don’t know if the love triangle in the film
– Irish girl, Canadian bomber pilot and German fighter pilot – has any basis in
fact, but it’s a pretty good story, especially when Jean butler demonstrates
Irish dancing, the highlight of the film.
The film’s title comes from a nickname for British airmen. It’s all worth seeing just to catch up on
this strange bit of WW II history – and watch her dance. And the countryside is just beautiful.
The Concert 2009
107 minutes Thirty years earlier
Andrei Filipov, conductor of the Bolshoi orchestra, was stopped and arrested in the middle of a
performance of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35, proclaimed a
traitor for defying Brezhnev and sent to the gulag with his first violinist,
Lea Strum, and her husband. His crime
was his refusal to fire his Jewish musicians.
His dream then and now was to create perfect harmony with the orchestra
he had led and the unique playing of Lea.
Filipov now works at the Bolshoi as a cleaner and while in the director’s
office he sees an incoming fax from Paris asking the Bolshoi Orchestra to fill
in for a major concert in two weeks, because the LA Philharmonic has suddenly
cancelled. He grabs the fax and arranges
a magnificent scam to impersonate the Bolshoi and give his musicians a chance
to come together again and play in Paris.
He insists on a famous young French violinist to play the solo. You will never see a better film about the
difficulties of being an artist in a totalitarian society. In the last scene, while the orchestra plays,
we see clips of what happens in the future to the orchestra and the violin
soloist who discovers her origins.
Curse of the Golden
Flower 2006 114 minutes
I watched this because the director was Yimou Zhang. The story involves palace intrigues and
dynastic machinations. It’s not very
good. It is worth seeing for the
spectacle when the Emperor Ping’s son attempts
a coup de etat and to see Gong Li as the beleaguered empress.
Enigma 2001
119 minutes Because this is a highly fictionalized version
of what happened at Bletchley Park during WW II, there was some criticism of the
film, but it is a good story even though it doesn’t mention Alan Turing, the real
breaker of the Nazi’s Enigma Code.
Etoiles: Dancers of
the Paris Opera Ballet 2001 96 minutes
As the title indicates, the film is more about the professional lives of
the dancers than about dance itself. It
was interesting, but I found myself skipping ahead.
Howard Zinn: You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train 2004
77 minutes Matt Damon narrates
this documentary chronicling Howard Zinn's commitment to social change. What a thorn he must have been in the sides
of conservatives. He was bright, handsome
and articulate and totally devoted to social change and the betterment of
conditions for the working classes.
Limitless 2011
104 minutes Bradley Cooper plays
Eddie Morra, a sort of messed up young writer who is getting nowhere on his
novel. Just after his girlfriend dumps
him, he runs into his ex-wife’s brother, who gives him a pill that he says will
change Eddie’s life because it will increase his ability to use his brain from
20% to 100%. It does but, when he goes
back for more, he finds the brother with a bullet in his head. He calls the police and, while waiting for
them to arrive, ransacks the apartment looking for more pills. He finds them in the bottom of the stove
along with a big wad of cash. He
finishes the novel in four days and makes such a splash trading stocks and
making a couple of million with money borrowed from a gangster. On the basis of his success in the market,
he’s invited by an oil company executive played by Robert De Niro to evaluate a
merger De Niro is negotiating. It seems
De Niro’s opposite has also been taking the pills but has run out and is
suffering possibly fatal withdrawal symptoms.
Naturally he sends his people after Eddie to get his stash. Also Eddie made the mistake of giving the
gangster a pill. He wants more and also
comes after Eddie. Things do work
out. Eddie has made so much money that
he is able to pay a chemist to make more pills and then synthesize the results
so that he can stop taking them and retain his heightened intellectual
capability. We last see him running for
the Senate and turning down De Niro’s offer to back a run for president – too
many strings attached.
Linnea in Monet’s
Garden 1993 29 minutes
This is an animated Swedish children’s
film designed to introduce the very young to Monet. It’s very well done.
Made in Dagenham 2010
113 minutes In 1968 187 women machinists at Ford’s
Dagenham plant went on strike, asking for equal pay with men doing work at
similar skill levels. The women sewed
seat covers, and when existing stocks of finished seats were exhausted, the
whole plant had to be shut down. Ford,
which employed 40,000 British workers, stonewalled and threatened to pull out
of Britain if the women were given equal pay.
Eventually they caved after the strikers met with the Harold Wilson’s
Minister of Labor and convinced her that not only the principle of equal pay
but also the timing was right. The
strikers got 92% of what they asked for and an equal pay law two years
later. This is really a wonderful
film. It covers the larger issue of
equal pay and also the human costs to individuals and their families. Sally Hawkins is fantastic as Rita O’Grady,
the strike leader -- young, vulnerable and tough as nails. Everyone involved in the film from the
producer and director to the rank and file cast members seems to have made a
project out of this to revive an almost forgotten story and do their bit for
equal treatment of women in the workforce.
Morning Glory 2010
107 minutes Rachel McAdams plays
an innovative 29 year old producer who gets fired from her job producing the morning
news at a local station, because, even though they love her, they can’t afford both
her and the new guy that they think they are hiring “for the future of the
station.” Eventually she gets a trial
for a network morning show. She’s successful
in spicing things up and raising the shows numbers somewhat, but the network
execs still plan to cancel the show. One
of the things she tries is getting a crusty old reporter and former anchor, played
crustily by Harrison Ford, to do not only news but the infotainment that seems
to be necessary from higher ratings in the morning. He refuses.
When she gets an offer from NBC’s Morning Show, Ford decides he wants to
save her and the show at his network. It’s
not only a good story with really great actors, but it’s also something to see
for the crazy schemes McAdams comes up with for morning news segments.
My Architect: A Son’s
Journey: 2003 115 minutes
A documentary on Louis I Kahn’s contributions to 20th C
architecture would have been interesting.
This film seems more like an ego trip for his out of wedlock son,
Nathaniel Kahn.
Parental Guidance
2012
104 riotous minutes Once again
Billy Crystal proves he is a genius. If you
read the standard blurb about this film
-- tech deprived grandparents try to take care of three grandchildren
for a week in the kid’s high tech house and to deal with the various therapists and
specialized teachers their new age parents have arranged for them – you might
be prepared to be bored. Warning:
prepare for just the opposite. A little
old fashioned parenting gets the daughter off the hook for competing for a violin
career that she really doesn’t want, cures the older boy’s stutter and kills and
buries Karl, the younger boy’s imaginary kangaroo friend. The best scene is when the youngest gets on
top of the half pipe during a skate board trial, pees over the side and causes
the world champion to wipe out. But that’s
just a sample.
That’s What I Am 2011
101 minutes A 12 year old boy
thinks maybe his life has ended when the school’s most respected teacher,
played by Ed Harris, pairs him with the class geek for a project. The outcome of that is almost inevitable, but
what one doesn’t see coming is an accusation that Harris is gay. He’s been a widower for 19 years, he is
acknowledged as the best teacher in the school, and he won the teacher of the
year award for all of California the previous year. It starts with one kid just saying Harris is
gay and spreads through the whole student body.
When Harris won’t affirm or deny it, he loses all support from the
faculty and parents and leaves at the end of the school year. In case it’s not obvious that he is not gay,
in one of the last scenes he tells the boy that he never remarried perhaps
because he loved his wife too much.
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