The Best of Youth 2003
367 minutes (Yes 6 hours and 7
minutes) Take two really handsome
Italian guys and put them on screen with Rome, Turin and Florence and other
sites in Italy as a backdrop along with a sojourn in northern Norway and you
have a formula that will keep you watching, even though it may take two or
three evenings. The film tracks two
brothers from the 1960s into this century.
One becomes a psychiatrist and the other a rather brutal national
policeman. The psychiatrist’s wife is a
member of a violent communist cell and leaves him when she is given an
assassination assignment. She’s caught
and imprisoned and refuses to see her husband and their daughter. The notes stress the political differences
between the brothers but I felt it was more psychological. It’s worth 367 minutes.
Cloud Atlas 2012
172 minutes It’s hard to know
how to deal with this. Six stories
ranging in time from the 19th C to two different places in the
future are woven together and told in alternating bits and pieces. The story
that was most telling for me was an Orwellian society in the future in Korea,
where young women are cloned to be workers in a fast food restaurant and then,
after 12 years on the job, were destroyed and recycled as food for the next
generation of clones. I guess the
message is human endurance and dignity.
Along the way Tom Hanks plays at least seven different roles and Halle
Berry probably as many. Jim Broadbent
has at least three roles and is incredibly different in each. The same goes for Hugh Grant and others. This is fun to watch despite the totally
different approach to narrative.
Quartet 2012
99 minutes Maggie Smith leads a
list of accomplished actors in the principal roles and a supporting cast of aging
professional musicians. The setting is a
musicians’ retirement home in a beautiful English country house. It’s in financial trouble and depends on the
success of its annual gala performance to make ends meet. Maggie playing Jean Horton arrives to take up
residence just a few weeks before the gala.
She’s unhappy, curmudgeonly and broke but considers herself superior to
any and all of the residents. Some of
them conceive the idea of recreating the quartet from Rigoletto, which Jean had
sung with three of the residents many years before. All had been opera stars. Perhaps Jean had been the most
celebrated. Initially she refuses, and
the rest of the story relates why and then why she changed her mind and why her
first ex-husband changed his mind about her.
My first reaction was: Why do I
want to look at all these wrinkles for 99 minutes? I’m glad I did. This film is a knockout that has much to say
about aging and fame and the power of music.
Dustin Hoffman directed and the actors loved him.
A Separation 2011
123 minutes An Iranian husband
and his wife split up over his decision to stay and care for his aging father
instead of leaving the country with his family.
The father is deep into Alzheimer’s and incontinent. The Netflix notes promise unexpected
consequences from the father’s decision to hire a stranger to take care of his
father, but I found the husband and the situation so repulsive that I couldn’t
stay around to see what happened.
Towards Zero 2007
104 minutes I googled Inspector Martin Bataille to see if he is a
big deal in Agatha Christie’s repertoire, but apparently not. In any event he is brilliant in solving the
murders in this film. The murderer tries
to incriminate himself in order to rule himself out as a suspect and put the
blame on his ex-wife. Bataille tells a
little white lie to trap him. The
mystery and its solution were what you would expect from Agatha Christie. The murderer has a wild and crazy and young
new wife who keeps things interesting. I
started to write “What’s the female form for gigolo?” and then remembered that
all people who act are now actors, etc. so she’s a gigolo.
Twin Sisters 2002
118 minutes When twins Anna and
Lotte are orphaned in 1920s Germany, Lotte is sent to live with relatives who
are farmers and Anna, who has consumption,
to live with rich and cultured relatives in Holland. Over the years Anna keeps writing to Lotte
but the family doesn’t mail the letters.
Meanwhile Lotte, who could already read well when she was six, is denied
a chance to go to school, exploited and abused, and certified as mentally
incompetent so that she can’t escape the farm.
The farmer’s wife tells her that they don’t know Anna’s address so there
is no point in trying to write to her.
By the time they do meet as young adults, Lotte is working for a
prominent German countess and Nazi Party member and pretty well indoctrinated
into Nazism. Anna is engaged to a young
Jewish guy, and Lotte notes her surprise when she sees his picture. They are separated again and don’t meet until
they both visit a spa as very old women.
Anna, whose fiancé died in Auschwitz
wants nothing to do with Lotte, but eventually they reconcile and Anna
dies. This is sad all the way through,
but the film does a very good job of dramatizing the cruelties of society and
the insidious spread of Nazism among people who should never have succumbed to
its evil doctrines.
Won’t Back Down 2012
121 minutes Once in a while a
film comes along which takes on a real issue, in this case failing
schools. Maggie Gyllenhaal plays a
dyslexic mom with a dyslexic daughter who “conspires” with a dissatisfied
teacher played brilliantly by Viola Davis to take over a grammar school,
something the law allows but the school board and the teachers’ union do
everything in their power to prevent. It
is a story well told and worth telling because it may stimulate some real
interest in improving our schools.
Unfortunately, the union and the school board come off more as villains
rather than well intentioned bureaucrats trying but failing to do the right
thing. It’s incredible to see someone as
charming and innately goofy as Gyllenhaal play a serious role in a serious film
about a serious issue.
No comments:
Post a Comment