Grand Canyon; The Great Gatsby; Iron Man 3; The Kings of Summer; The Mighty Quinn; Now You See Me; and Surviving Hitler: A Love Story

Grand Canyon   1991   134 minutes  On his way home from a Lakers game, Mac, an immigration lawyer played by Kevin Kline finds himself at the mercy of a gang after his car breaks down in a bad part of LA late at night. The gang is talked out of its plans by Simon, a tow truck driver played by Danny Glover. Mac is so grateful that he sets out to befriend Simon, despite their having nothing in common.  Meanwhile Mac’s wife Claire, Mary McDonnell, finds an abandoned baby while jogging and becomes determined to adopt her.  They have a teenage son and were beyond thinking about having another child until this happened.  Steve Martin plays Davis, a producer of violent action films who completely changes his outlook after he is shot in the leg by a mugger.  What this is about is the life changing quality of seemingly random events.  It’s well worth seeing.  The screenplay was nominated for an Oscar and Ebert loved it.

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The Great Gatsby   2013   143 minutes   After I watched the 2013 version with Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby, I went back and watched the 1974 version with Robert Redford.  I was expecting to prefer the Redford version, but in the end it’s a tossup for me.  I think I never realized just how sordid the basic story line is, and both versions kind of dragged in places.  Mia Farrow makes the better Daisy and I preferred Sam Waterston to Toby MacGuire as Nick Carraway.  Both are worth seeing but somehow the magic is gone.
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Iron Man 3  2013   130 minutes   How do you resist a flic with a cast that includes Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Kingsley and Don Cheadle?  Well, try.  Yes, this had some interesting special effects, but most of the time I couldn’t figure what the heck was going on.
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The Kings of Summer   2013   93 minutes   It’s a coming of age movie.  Three teenage guys leave home, build a shack in the woods and try to live free from parental control.  It lasts about a month until Joe, the leader, invites his girlfriend to visit.  It’s well worth seeing.
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The Mighty Quinn   1989   98 minutes   This is early Denzel Washington.  All the little quirks are there, but who knew he can sing and play the piano?  He is Xavier Quinn, the Chief of Police on a Caribbean island, who tries to find a balance between the interests of the law and the local culture.  His best friend is a suspect in a murder, there is a big pile of stolen money around, and there are a couple of very dangerous mainland types who may be intelligence agents or just hired killers.  It was O.K.
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Now You See Me   2013   116 minutes   Four street magicians, including Woody Harrelson as a mentalist who can hypnotize anybody, are brought together by an unknown benefactor to develop the ultimate Las Vegas magic show.  For their closing illusion, they rob a Paris bank from right there on stage.  When it turns out the bank really had been robbed, Mark Ruffalo is the FBI agent assigned to investigate.  Morgan Freeman plays Thaddeus, a former magician who now makes his living revealing the “secrets” of other magicians’ tricks.  All the way through it’s like, nothing is as it seems.  The name of the game is revenge and retribution.  Despite the complexity of the illusions performed by the “four horseman,” the best one was in the very beginning when one of the street magicians has a woman pick a card.  He makes sure it’s the 7 of diamonds.  Then he throws the whole deck up in the air and points to a nearby building where the lighted windows form the 7 of diamonds.  This film supposedly had mixed reviews, but, for me, it just couldn’t get any better.
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Surviving Hitler: A Love Story   2011  65 minutes  This documentary tells an amazing story.  In 1934 Jutta, a 15 year old girl, met Helmuth Cords, also 15.  Together they tried to cope with living in Hitler’s Germany.  This became more difficult when Jutta learned she was half Jewish.  She avoided being transported and both she and Helmuth participated in the Valkyrie Plot and lived to tell about it.  They were the first couple married in Berlin after the war.  Much of the movie consists of Helmuth’s 8mm films shot in the late 1930s and during the war and of extensive interviews with Jutta, still a beautiful and well spoken woman well into her 90s.  This is about the best thing I have seen about life in Germany under Hitler.