1492: Conquest of Paradise 1992
150 minutes Gerard Depardieu
plays Christopher Columbus. At first he
tries to get along with the Native Americans he finds on the Caribbean islands
and then he doesn’t and then he doesn’t get along with anyone. The movie is as sad as the real story. You can skip it.
.
Bright Star 2009
119 minutes This recounts the
love affair of the poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne in the last year or two of
Keats’s life. Fanny’s outfits, which she
sewed herself, were no doubt authentic for the period, but one could wonder why
anyone would wear something that looks that uncomfortable. The movie was boring.
.
Guys and Dolls 1955
149 minutes After reading about
Frank Sinatra in T. J. English’s Havana Nocturne ©2008, it made his
role as Sky Masterson all the more believable.
I think I enjoyed the film as much as I did 58 years ago, even though
almost every element of the plot now feels like a cliché. When I was copy boy at the Denver Post even longer ago than that,
the old guy who was the model for Damon Runyon’s Harry the Horse used to come
in to ask me for the racing results, or at least that’s who the guys on the copy
desk told me he was.
.
Hey Boo: Harper Lee
& To Kill a Mockingbird
2010 81 minutes This is a documentary on Harper Lee and her
incredible first and only novel. I think
I remember she had 11 turndowns before she found a publisher. Since I read the book and saw the movie about
50 years ago it was nice to see some clips along with explanations of their
significance. Lee was not a recluse, but
early on she stopped agreeing to interviews.
Apparently journalists could be as annoying then as they are now. There are some clips from an interview with
Lee’s 97 year old older sister who has a voice that could remove paint. One among many things in the documentary is
the idea that it’s difficult for a writer to continue writing when his or her
first work is a masterpiece. There’s no
place to go but down.
.
Hysteria 2011
99 minutes I guess I would watch
any film with Maggie Gyllenhaal, especially one that says in the opening
credits: “Based on a true story, really.” In London in the 1880s many were saying that
50% of women were suffering from hysteria, and there were many doctors treating
them even though no one could say exactly what hysteria was. In this film a young doctor named Mortimer
Granville has trouble keeping a job. In the
opening scene he gets fired from a hospital for washing his hands, accepting
germ theory and wasting money by changing bandages. He takes a job as an assistant to a Harley
Street doctor who specializes in treating female hysteria. All the doctor does is discreetly give his patients
a massage which results in an orgasm. Many patients ask if they can come more than
once a week. Granville learns the
technique and is doing well until he lets Gyllenhaal, one of the doctors
daughters, bring a woman to the office to have her broken ankle set. She is one of the women housed at the
settlement house Gyllenhaal manages and not the sort of person one sees on
Harley Street. He gets fired. His friend and sort of patron tinkers with
electricity and together they accidentally invent the vibrator. Granville and his friend demonstrate it for
Gyllenhaal’s father and the three of them get rich, in Granville’s case rich
enough to buy the settlement house buildings and marry Gyllenhaal.
.
Ladies
in Lavender 2004 103 minutes
Director Charles Dance based his screenplay on a short story by William
J. Locke. From the very beginning Dance had
hoped to get Maggie Smith and Judi Dench
to play the principal roles. Two
sisters, one a widow the other a spinster, who live in a house on the coast of
Cornwall, find a young man (Daniel Bruhl) washed up on the beach. He is unconscious, and they call some men to
carry him into their house. When the
doctor comes he finds Bruhl also has a broken ankle. He is Polish and speaks some German but no
English. The two sisters care for him
through his convalescence, and Judi Dench, the spinster, falls improbably in
love with him. Both sisters want to keep
him there, but that is not to be. He is
a first rate violinist, and a German woman who is there for the summer spirits
him away. Bruhl, who had never held a violin
before, goes through the motions so well that it’s hard to believe that what
you are hearing, is actually Joshua Bell.
.
Man of Steel 2013
143 minutes I had just finished reading Larry Tye’s Superman
©2012, when I saw this film. It’s
consistent with the whole 75+ years of the Superman story and expands the back story
on the planet Krypton. Apparently
sending the baby Kal El to Earth was illegal, but his parents did it anyway,
and along with him they sent an object containing the DNA of the home
planet. Just before Krypton blew up,
rebel general Zod and his crew were sentenced to an eternity in a prison in a black-hole. Naturally they have now escaped and want to
get their hands on that DNA to recreate Krypton and displace the earthlings. The DNA and everything Superman needs to know
about his past are in an 18,000 ton object buried under the tundra. A hologram of his father, Russell Crowe,
explains everything. Then it’s up to
Superman to deal with Zod. There are lots
of famous actors in this thing, but they could have been better employed
elsewhere. Still, it was sort of fun.
.
Oscar and Lucinda 1997
132 minutes The film is adapted
from Peter Carey's novel which won the
Booker prize in 1988. A feminist
Australian heiress named Lucinda (Cate Blanchett) and Oscar, (Ralph Fiennes) a British
missionary first meet on a ship bound for Australia. Both are addicted to gambling. Once in Australia where Lucinda has bought a
glass factory with her inheritance to protect her independence, she builds a pre-fab
glass church for a remote settlement.
She bets Oscar that he can’t transport it there overland. He does get there, but things don’t turn out as
planned. Perhaps they both lose this
wager.
Robot and Frank 2012
89 minutes Frank Langella, who
did such an amazing job in Frost/Nixon, plays a retired cat burglar living alone
in a small town and maybe just beginning to experience a little dementia. His son, who makes a 10 hour round trip drive
every weekend to check on him, gives him a caretaker robot. At first Frank rejects the robot but soon
finds it to be a good housekeeper and cook.
As they get to know each other, Frank begins to train the robot to help
him in his old profession. The robot is
willing, because as Frank’s caretaker, the robot thinks a project like planning
a robbery will be good for the old man’s mental health. I loved this film.
.
Superman/Shazam!: The
Return of Black Adam 2010 62 minutes
I didn’t know what this animated film was but I took a look on Netflix
just for completeness sake. It was a
comic book. The big surprise was that Billy
Batson/ Capt. Marvel made an appearance to help Superman fight off Black Adam,
a space alien with powers equal to theirs and a moral code which was just the
opposite. I remember that as a kid I
preferred Capt. Marvel because he wasn’t totally invulnerable, and his alter
ego, Billy Batson, was a regular kid, unlike Clark Kent, who was a wimp. I also
remember being disappointed when Capt. Marvel disappeared after DC Comics sued
Marvel Comics for copyright infringement.
DC comics managed Superman carefully so that they were able to keep
going for 75 years and to avoid censors and plain old moral outrage about
violence by maintaining certain standards, including never killing his
opponents. The other three “stories” in
this comic book were just the opposite.
No comments:
Post a Comment