All Is Lost 2013
106 minutes Robert Redford at
age 78 plays a man sailing alone in the Indian Ocean. When his boat is badly
damaged in a storm, he uses his maps and his sextant to try to make his way to
a shipping lane where there will be some chance of rescue. During the night the boat collides and
eventually sinks. He salvages what he can
and continues on in a life raft. What is
extraordinary here is the way a great actor can hold our attention without
dialog or interaction with another person.
Also of note is that Redford was willing and able to take on the
considerable physical demands of playing this role. It’s different; a film not to miss.
.
Anchorman: The Legend
of Ron Burgundy 2004 94 minutes
I got this because I’m waiting to see Anchorman II. Ron Burgundy is a male chauvinist pig
anchorman of a San Diego TV station in the 1970s. When a feminist reporter comes on board with
a whole batch of new ideas, all hell breaks loose. Pretty funny as it always is with Will
Ferrell.
.
Antwone Fisher 2002
120 minutes A navy psychiatrist
played by Denzel Washington playing Denzel Washington helps a young sailor
overcome anger issues that had led him to a life of crime before he joined the
navy and more trouble once he was in the service. Washington helps the young man find his real
family and a catharsis that leads him to a career as a Hollywood screen
writer. Based on a true story.
.
Attack on Leningrad 2009
110 minutes This is a Russian
film about a British woman who insisted on being included in a group of
journalists that was to be flown into Leningrad to report on the German siege
of that unfortunate city. She misses the
flight back, loses her purse with her identity papers and is basically stuck
there for the duration. Worse yet, the
Leningrad police are embarrassed that they have lost track of her and report
that she is dead. Since she is “dead,”
her obit reveals that she is the daughter of a white Russian general. At that point the NKVD is interested. Not only is she stuck in a death trap where
the only likely outcome is starvation, but if she surfaces, the NKVD will kill
her. She is befriended by female police
officer and a Russian family. Eventually
she sacrifices herself to save the life of a 12 year old boy. It’s an interesting plot and well acted, but
even more interesting is simply the recreation of the horror that the Germans
deliberately inflicted on the starving city.
.
Before the Fall (Napola)
2004 110 minutes Friedrich Weimer’s father opposed his
entrance into the National Political Academy (NaPolA) at Allenstein, so
Friedrich forged his father’s signature on the permission slip and hitch hiked
to the school. He was recruited because
he was a talented boxer and school officials ignored the obvious forgery. NaPolAs
were basically high schools for training new members of the Nazi
Party. There were about 40 of them. The culture involved heavy indoctrination
and a lot of sanctioned bullying by upperclassmen. Friedrich wanted to go there because he saw
it as a ticket to admittance to a university.
Friedrich gets one on one instruction in boxing and is successful in his
matches, but his friend Albrecht, whose father is a dedicated Nazi and a senior
military officer has problems with the whole thing and therefore with his
father as well. Eventually he commits
suicide during a really stupid and dangerous training exercise which required
the students to swim below the ice on the lake from one hole to another. Friedrich throws his last fight and is expelled.
.
Blue Jasmine 2013
98 minutes Cate Blanchette’s
character was so repulsive that I had to quit after about 30 minutes.
.
The Brothers Grimm 2005
118 minutes Jake and Will Grimm
travel from village to village posing as exterminators of magical creatures,
but really they’re con artists.
Following them incognito is a whole team of fellow con artists who
create the special effects the brothers need to convince villagers they have
destroyed whatever evil thing has been plaguing them. In this film they come up against the real
thing. It’s pretty good, and it should
be since Matt Damon and Heath Ledger agreed to be the Grimms.
.
The Burbs 1989
102 minutes Who knew that Tom
Hanks used to be young? It’s a suburban
cul de sac, except for one run down vacant house. When some mysterious new people, the
Klopek’s, move into the vacant house,
neighbors start to wonder what’s going on.
Ray and his friends go over to meet them. They are strange, and Ray and his friends
aren’t satisfied. One of their other
neighbors has suddenly disappeared.
While the Klopeks are away, they check out the back yard and then the
house. Their suspicions are entirely
uncalled for. The neighbor who
disappeared is brought home in an ambulance.
He’d been in the hospital after a heart attack. The investigators are starting to doubt,
but……
.
Empire of Silver 2009
113 minutes This is “a sprawling
epic” about the Kang banking family who controlled much of China’s monetary
wealth at the end of the 19th C.
Like many Chinese films, the street scenes really are epic, but the story
not so much. A point of interest is that
the way the Kang’s made their money was transporting silver from one city to
another under heavily armed guard. Paper
money gets introduced by the Qing dynasty, but that doesn’t work out.
.
Farewell to the King 1989
114 minutes Nick Nolte plays Learoyd
, an American soldier who deserts and escapes from the Philippines during the
Japanese invasion and ends up in Borneo, where he is adopted by a Dayak tribe
of headhunters who consider him sacred because of his blue eyes and his intricate
tattoos. Soon he learns their language
and becomes their king. When the British
send teams into Borneo to persuade the tribes to join the war against the
Japanese, Learoyd refuses until his own tribe comes under attack. It’s pretty good for a jungle movie but there
are some problems about authenticity, the most glaring is that not only do the
women cover their boobs but they do it with a garment that looks like casual
wear designed in Paris.
.
The Hunger Games:
Catching Fire 2013 146 minutes
This one is more of the same and has even more technology than Part I,
but that first film was better. Nevertheless it has Jenifer Lawrence, who may
be the best young actress in the business.
Stanley Tucci is even more smarmy as the emcee at Hunger Games events.
.
Inside Llewyn Davis 2013
105 minutes When it’s the Coen brothers, you know it’s
going to be different. Llewyn Davis is
very loosely based on Dave Van Ronk, a Greenwich Village musician who was
sometimes called the mayor of MacDougal Street.
Davis is a mildly talented song writer, singer and guitarist who gets
gigs when he can, sleeps on friends couches and generally thinks no farther
than tomorrow. The film opens in the
winter of 1961 with him singing at the Gaslight Café in Greenwich Village. After his set, he’s told there’s someone out
back who wants to see him. When he steps
into the alley, a mysterious stranger nearly knocks his teeth out and puts him
on the ground. The man says it’s payback
for his big mouth. Davis doesn’t know
what that means and neither do we. We
follow Davis for a week or so during which he makes an abortive trip to Chicago
where he turns down the offer of a pretty good job as a backup in a famous
club, because he only works alone. He’s
hyper sensitive about his talent and totally irresponsible. We circle back to the same scene in the
Gaslight Café, only this time we see him mocking a middle aged woman who is
singing and playing a zither. This time
when he walks out in the alley and gets flattened, we understand that the
stranger is the zither player’s husband.
The end.
.
The Iran Job 2012
95 minutes This is a documentary
about Kevin Sheppard’s 2008-09 season playing for an Iranian professional basketball
team. There’s not a whole lot of basketball,
but his team was the first new team to make the playoffs in its first year in
the league. Needless to say, Kevin and
his 7’ 1” Croatian teammate had a lot to do with the club’s success. There’s a lot about the complicated private
lives of Iranians, which might come as news to some viewers.
.
Knight and Day 2010
109 minutes This is all just
too confusing, but it is pleasant to watch Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz. Cruise kills lots of people. Diaz get drugged a lot. Go to Wiki and read the plot. It’s a trip.
.
Mitt Romney 2014
There is footage of Romney here from his first effort to get the
nomination in 2008 through the 2012 campaign.
I guess we learn who he is and we certainly see the inside of a lot of
hotel suites. One thing you can’t take
away from him is his dedication to his family and theirs to him. If I could be a fly on a wall, I’d find some
other wall.
.
Mercury Rising 1988
A nine year old autistic boy cracks the USG’s top-sec ret code when an
unapproved test matrix gets published in a puzzle magazine. A much younger Alec Baldwin makes an
excellent villain as he tries to find the boy and kill him to protect the code
and the nation. It’s up to recently
demoted FBI agent Bruce Willis to stop Baldwin.
.
The Ninth Gate 1999
133 minutes Johnny Depp plays Dean Corso, a book dealer
motivated only by money. He is hired by
Boris Balkan, a collector, to find a copy of a rare demonic book, The Nine
Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows.
Along the way he finds that the collector has assigned a young woman
skilled in the martial arts to protect him.
There are actually three copies of the book, and one must have all three
to learn the secret of the Ninth Gate.
Eventually Balkan thinks he has the solution and immolates himself
trying to make it work. Corso figures
out the procedure and the film ends as he prepares to learn the secret. A Roman Polansky Gothic mystery.
.
Patriot Games 1992
116 minutes I hadn’t seen this
since it first came out. It was just as
good as the first time. Harrison Ford playing
Jack Ryan foils an IRA attempt on the lives of the British Royals and so the
IRA comes after him – never a good idea.
.
Salinger 2013
123 minutes Considering how
reclusive Salinger became, this documentary does a pretty good job of telling
the viewer who he was. Martin Sheen,
Gore Vidal and John Cusack discuss how Salinger influenced them.
.
There Be Dragons 2011
121 minutes When a present-day
journalist investigates Opus Dei founder Josemaría Escrivá, he uncovers a
surprising link to his own father, Manolo. Manolo and Josemaría were childhood friends
who followed different paths when the war broke out. There are some excellent scenes of action
during the Spanish Civil War and some real drama as Escrivá escapes over the
Pyrenees into France.
.
Three Kings 1999
115 minutes It’s Desert Storm in
1991 just after the ceasefire. When
three American soldiers find a map concealed on an Iraqi prisoner, they think
it shows the way to a cache of Kuwaiti gold looted by the Iraqis. They should have turned it in but instead
decide to get the gold for themselves. A
major played by George Clooney moves in on their action and there’s no choice
but to cut him in. They find the gold,
but there are complications. While they
are perfectly safe from the Republican Guard as long as they keep the
ceasefire, they can’t hold back when the guards murder a woman right in front
of them. They are outnumbered many times
over by the Iraqis and have to flee, but one of them gets left behind. They negotiate with some rebel refugees to
help them get their comrade back and in return they divide the gold with the
rebels and promise to help them get over the border to Iran. Clooney makes sure an American journalist
catches up with them on the way to the border to witness what they are doing so
that their superiors don’t court martial them
-- they’ve broken almost every
rule in the book.
.
The Tourist 2010
103 minutes This is really
complicated. Angelina Jolie plays an
Interpol agent whose lover is Alexander Pearce, who owes the British Government
744 million pounds in back taxes. In a
Paris café she gets a note from Pearce telling her to pick up a man on the
train to Venice and create the suspicion that he is really Pearce. It’s known that Pearce has had plastic surgery
to change his appearance. She chooses Johnny
Depp, an American tourist on his way to Venice seeking solace for a broken
heart. An informer in the police station
alerts Reginald Shaw, the mobster from whom Pearce stole 2.3 billion pounds
that Pearce and Jolie are on the train.
Shaw goes to Venice and starts looking for Pearce. It all works out in the end. Shaw and his men are shot by the police, the
744 million gets paid by check ,land Depp/Parce and Jolie sail off into the
sunset, well maybe during the sunset since Venice is on the east coast.
.
The Twilight Samurai (Tasogare Seibei) 2002
129 minutes Seibei Iguchi, a
recent widower, is heavily in debt, and uninterested in the martial aspect of
being a member of the samurai class. His
attention is focused on caring for his two daughters and ailing mother. There is a woman he would like to marry, and
she would be willing but he is too poor.
When his clan leaders demand that he take a dangerous assignment, he
cannot refuse. He is ordered to kill
another samurai who has been disloyal to the clan. Iguchi is actually very skilled, and he
succeeds in his mission, but reluctantly.
When he returns home, she is there.
This is really a movie about the end of the samurai era.
.
Zelary 2003
148 minutes In 1940s
Czechoslovakia, Eliška is a nurse who works alongside her lover, Richard, a
respected surgeon. Due to the rising
pressure of the Nazis, an underground network has formed to help those in
danger of persecution. Richard is one of
several doctors taking part in the resistance.
Eliška is a messenger between
contacts. Eliska donates her blood to
save the life of injured mountain-dweller Joza. When the Gestapo discovers the resistance
group to which Eliska belongs, she's forced to seek refuge with Joza, leaving
her urban life behind and starting anew in the remote mountains. To maintain her cover, she goes through a
wedding ceremony with Joza. Over time
she begins to appreciate him, and they start to live as a married couple. Then the Russians come to “liberate”
them. While Joza is busy helping his
fellow villagers find cover, he is shot and killed. Later the Russian commander apologizes, but
Joza is still dead. In the last scene, a
much older Eliszka returns to the village with Richard to show him where she
spent the war. Besides being a good
story, the film gives the viewer some understanding of what life was like in a
Czech mountain village in the 1940s.
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