Arthur Newman 2012
93 minutes A discontented man played
by Colin Firth fakes his own death on a Florida beach to escape his boring job
as a FedEx floor manager and reemerges as Arthur Newman, golf pro. Actually he had been a pro, but whenever he
got close to winning a major tournament, he choked and blew it. It got so bad that he had to leave the
tour. Almost immediately he meets “Mike”
Fitzgerald played by Emily Blunt who is using the name of her
paranoid-schizophrenic twin sister and just wandering from place to place, shop
lifting and taking drugs. They team
up. There’s a better summary than I
could write on Wiki – the url is below—so let me just say that there is more
here than meets the eye. The film really
gets inside of the two principal characters and seems to say a lot about the
stressful and sometimes unsatisfying times in the lives of all of us. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Newman_%28film%29
.
Behind the Candelabra 2013
118 minutes Mike Douglas plays
Liberace and the film chronicles his four year love affair with Scott Thorson,
played by Matt Damon. I didn’t like it much,
but as someone said in the bonus features, after you watch a homosexual love affair
for a while, it becomes just a love affair.
What’s not to like is Liberace who is incredibly manipulative and bitchy
– great performance by Douglas. I don’t
say “Don’t see it,” but I can’t say I liked it.
It was interesting to see Liberace’s stuff and to see how he lived. In the bonus features, they remind us of how
important he was in the early days of television as a performer and innovator.
.
The Bling Ring
2013 90 minutes Based on fact, this film tells the story of
the Hollywood Hills Burglar Bunch, who used the Web to time their robberies of
stars' homes. The teenage gang stole $3 million in cash, jewelry and other
items from victims including Paris Hilton.
The gang consists of four girls and a boy who hangs out with them. At first they’re in it for the thrill of
entering the star’s homes, then for the classy clothes and jewelry, and then for
the money they get from fencing what they don’t keep. Some of the girls in the gang are attractive,
but not as attractive as the girls in the real gang. All in all, it was O.K., but you might want
to watch something else. I watched it because
it was directed by Sofia Coppola.
.
Hollywood Ending 2002
114 minutes Woody Allen plays has-been
film director Val Waxman, who needs just one good movie to restore his
career. When he gets an offer to make a
big movie, his paranoia causes him to go psychosomatically blind. One of the producers is his ex wife played by
Tea Leoni, and she supports him all the way through as he shoots the film
blind. The film is terrible and bombs in
the US but the French love it so it makes money. Val gets his wife back. I’ve been critical of some of Allen’s Acting roles
– never of his directing – but he’s about perfect playing a neurotic film
director.
.
The Reluctant
Fundamentalist 2012 128 minutes
As the film opens a journalist is interviewing Changez Khan, a Pakistani
professor, to see if he was involved in
the abduction of a visiting professor from the US or knows anything about it. I’m already confused. Is he a journalist or a CIA agent. If the former, why is he carrying a gun? Khan insists on telling his story from the
beginning. He was a brilliant student at
Princeton and was then fast tracked to a high level in a hedge fund in
NYC. In the days after 9/11 he was harassed
by the authorities looking for terrorists, realized there was no secure place
for him in the US, and returned to Pakistan.
As he turns to the present, it’s clear he has a lot of issues with the
US, but it’s not clear that he is a terrorist or even a supporter of terrorists
or their ideals. I got the post 9/11
message that we made many mistakes when we went around locking up brown people,
but if there was anything more, I missed it.
.
Star Trek: Into
Darkness 2013 132 minutes
This is the back story of how Kirk and Spock came to be captain and
first officer of the Enterprise. It can’t
compare with the earlier films. One
anomaly is when Spock mind melds or whatever with his dead father to get some
advice and the dead father is Leonard Nimoy who has always been Spock, this
Spock only a little older.
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Videocracy 2009
80 minutes One of the stories in
Woody Allen’s 2012 film To Rome with Love is about how a character played by Roberto
Benigni becomes famous for being famous.
After seeing Videocracy I have
a better idea of what Woody was getting at.
Those Italians are crazy and Silvio Berlusconi has used salacious
audience participation programs on the many TV channels he owns to take full
advantage of their interest in a shot at fame, however ephemeral. His control of a huge share of Italian TV has
helped him become perhaps the richest man in Italy, a three time prime minister
and, until recently, completely bullet proof.
I’ve never seen so many beautiful girls as there are just standing
around in this documentary.
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