Old Man @ The Movies

The day after Thanksgiving my daughters and I saw THE HOLDOVERS, which I now dub an almost feel good movie.  I say ‘almost' because I wasn’t completely happy with the ending.  But it was a fine, old fashioned kind of comedy and dramatic movie, beautifully acted by the always excellent Paul Giamatti and a first class cast.  In the one, Giamatti is a curmudgeonly ancient history teacher in a New England prep school who is not dearly loved by his students or the administration.  The holdovers are those students who, for one reason of another, are not going home for the Christmas holidays, and Giamatti is given the unenviable task of “baby sitting” them, an unhappy situation for everyone involved.  There are only two other people at the school, a maintenance man and a cook to prepare meals for all.  The cook, who has recently lost her son in Vietnam,  seems to be the only one willing to tolerate Giamatti and his attitude and actions.  Eventually only ...

On Thanksgiving morning my daughters and I went to see MAY DECEMBER, and I had no clue as to what it was all about.  I suspected it was about a romance between two people who differed somewhat in age.  It was, to put it mildly, more than I bargained for.  It was about two people who differed in age all right — in this one Gracie, a woman with twin high school students and played by a blonde Julianne Moore,was exposed nationally and perhaps internationally 20 years before for having an affair with a seventh grade boy and who eventually divorced her husband and married the 7th grader.  Were you able to follow all that?  She is being interviewed by Elizabeth, played by Natalie Portman, an actress who is going to be playing the part of Gracie in an upcoming film.  I’m really not a prude but I have to believe Hollywood can come up with better subject matter than this one. It was well acted and the pace was reasonable, but I was jolted by some of the events....

I had a banner holiday weekend seeing three movies — one alone and two with my daughters.  My solo movie was NAPOLEON, and as usual, it was too long.  I admit that I never knew much about the emperor and what I did know I’ve long forgotten, so I cannot challenge the accuracy of events the movie depicted.  It had spectacular scenery, particularly the many battle scenes and traced his life from the battle at Toulon to his second exile by the British to St. Helena.  The central theme of the film is his tempestuous relationship with Josephine, and even though he divorced her because she was unable to bear him a son, he appears to have loved her his entire adult life.  Joachim Phoenix played him as an egocentric bully but a dedicated warrior who led his troops in all their engagements.  He never once put his hand in his jacket as I remember from all the artistic renderings of him.  Frankly, I liked him better as Johnny Cash or the Joker.  It was entert...

I know I must have seen an early Hunger Games film, because Jennifer Lawrence was in it, but I didn’t remember anything about it.  Which is why I read synopses of the film in an attempt to understand what was going on.  They didn’t help, so the bottom line is, I was clueless.  From what I  gathered from reading, this takes place 60 years before all the other films.  The leading man, Coriolanus Snow, is the son of a once powerful family who is trying to restore the family’s position and reputation by participating in some way with the games , a cruel, vicious spectacle which has captivated the world he lives in.  The leading lady, Lucy Gray, is a player in the games, survives all the violence,  and is declared the winner (I am guessing that Corio cheated somehow to let her win).  They are sent in disgrace to a remote district and it is too complicated to try to explain more, but it felt like there was a hint of another episode in the works. The goo...

The movie I saw yesterday was very familiar.  How many films have been made in which the underdog manages to turn a bad situation into a good one.  They are typically inspired by true events.  Rudy comes to mind, as do Miracle, Rocky, Remember the Titans and even the classic Cinderella.  And many seem to happen in sport. NEXT GOAL WINS is the latest, and it is about soccer (or football in most of the world).  In a movie populated by unrecognizable (to me) actors, a unemployed professional soccer coach reluctantly accepts the job of coaching an untalented team in American Samoa.  They are so untalented that they have never scored a goal in world cup competition and lost one game by the all-time record score of 32-0.  I really don’t have to tell you more; this one fits the formula of underdog movies and has some fun and amusing segments along the way.  It was a welcome change from any of the movies I have seen over the last couple of months.  T...

Sometimes I wonder about those people out in La La Land.  What were they thinking when they made a Thanksgiving film, with a locale of Plymouth, Massachusetts, entitled it THANKSGIVING, and made it one of the goriest horror movies imaginable with the serial killer roasting one of his victims for Thanksgiving dinner.  As if that wasn’t bad enough, they filled it with terrible actors whose main dialogue consisted of repeating the F word and worse constantly.  Perhaps it was the sound track or my hearing aids, but they spoke their lines as if their mouths were full.   And to add insult to injury, some of them tried to speak with a Boston accent and it was abysmal. This was simply an awful movie, with a ridiculous plot and no excuse for being filmed in the first place. Fortunately, I was continually distracted by members of the audience leaving the theater periodically for a bathroom break or to go to the concession stand or just to avoid watching this disaster. Nee...

I have to admit that I really had no clue as to what was going on in the latest release by Marvel Studios.  I know there were loud noises and dynamic music and characters being bathed in blinding light throughout the film.  I believe there were three women featured — Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel and a third very young Marvel, who lived with her clueless parents, identified as Kamala, who did not resemble the vice president.  I know that Samuel L. Jackson, with a patch over one eye, seemed to be in charge of something involving the three Marvels, but that was the sole takeaway I took away from THE MARVELS.  As the only one in the theater at 1 pm and told that I was seeing the 3D version, I was disappointed that this version looked no different to me than any other film I have viewed recently.  What happened to the things flying off the screen towards the audience that used to be the hallmark of 3D movies?  The most gratifying thing about the movie was that it ...

I knew my string of actually liking movies was due to end, and it did today with a loud thump! Yes, I saw a ridiculous movie today.  Yes, and it was really called IT’S A WONDERFUL KNIFE.  Yes, and it was really a horror movie version of the wonderful holiday classic It’s a Wonderful Life.  But no, it didn’t star jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed, and it didn’t have a whimsical angel trying to earn his wings.  Instead it featured a vicious killer, who stabbed a lot of people while wearing a hooded white outfit and a featureless white mask.  The mindless plot featured a dim witted high school girl who saves her little town of Angel Falls (get the reference?) by killing the homicidal maniac.  The following year she is dispondent because her life hasn’t changed and she wishes she had never been born.  Without the help of any divine creature, she gets her wish and she wanders around a town radically changed and as in the case of Jimmy Stewart, no one knows her, ...

Are you ready for this one?  I seriously doubt it.  I don’t know why I chose to see JOURNEY TO BETHLEHEM because I find most religiously-themed movies too religious.  I was not only pleasantly surprised; I was absolutely delighted.  The settings and scenery were perfectly done; the cast was well chosen and in very good voice; and the songs were appropriate and much better than the ones in Jesus Christ Superstar.  And there was comic relief supplied first by the angel Gabriel when he gave Mary the good news and then by the Magi in search of the baby Jesus.  They even sang a song entitled “Three wise guys”.  And there was an ongoing gag about myrrh.  Yes, they took liberties with the story, but not to the detriment of the occasion.  In this film, Mary fights against marrying Joseph, the man her father chose, because she wants to be a teacher. Then, when she reveals that she is bearing the son of God (she is nor believed), Joseph’s father calls ...

It’s been a while since I saw a French film, and I was anxious to once again hear the language that I thought I was fluent in years ago.  So I went to see ANATOMY OF A FALL, a psychological thriller.  Major disappointment was it was mostly in English because the main character, the wife, was a German, educated in the U.K., and was more comfortable in that language.  She is married to a Frenchman, they live in a chalet somewhere in the snow-covered  French Alps, and they have a teenaged son.  Both husband and wife are writers.  We first meet husband Samuel when he is  discovered by son Daniel dead and lying in the snow outside their home. Then there is an intensive investigation of the death — accident, suicide or homicide? — and eventually the wife, Sandra, is indicted for his murder and stands trial.  The French courtroom scenes are intriguing highlighted by the jousting between prosecutor and Sandra’s lawyer.  There are many revelations abo...

I admit I was never a fan of Elvis Presley, and I know little or nothing about his life; so this film, written and directed by Sofia Coppola, was a revelation and eye-opener for me. Too, I know of only one movie I saw that was Sofia’s — Lost in Translation — and I thought that was weird.  With those confessions out of the way, I turn to PRISCILLA, which was adapted by Coppola from Priscilla Presley’s autobiography.  To my mind, it makes it impossible to know what is fact, fiction, real or imagined memories of Mrs. Presley or figments of imagination from the writer/director/producer.  Or both.  Nonetheless, it was a good film, with excellent performances by actors in the roles of Elvis and Priscilla.  It begins when Elvis was in the Army in Germany and Priscilla is a ninth grade student, living with her military family there.  She is introduced to already famous Elvis who, according to the script, lives in a house there and entertains lots of friends.  ...

I was pleasantly surprised and enjoyed watching THE MARSH KING’S S DAUGHTER simply because it was like an old fashioned psychological thriller, and it was well acted, particularly by lead character and heroine Daisy  Ridley, as Helena.  This is the story of a family of three living in the wilderness of a forest, surrounded by swamp. The young daughter, Helena, is at odds with her mother but adores her woodsman father, known as the Marsh King, who teaches her how to exist in the wild.  When her mother runs away, Helena is brought back to civilization and adapts, getting married and having a daughter of her own but without revealing anything about her past.  She learns that much she believed of her past was wrong, and when she learns her father escaped from prison, she must find a way to make things right.  I admit I’m a sucker for old time thinners which is why i liked this one.  The critics, as usual, disagreed with me for only 36% gave it s thumbs up, and ...

Still no real choices to see, so I went to FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’S at noon yesterday.  It was one of those movies that either the producers or the theaters thought would be a blockbuster because it was playing every half hour from ten a.m. to 10 p.m.  I was one of two people in the theater at 12.  I should have stayed home or limited myself to one night at Freddy’s.  It was billed as a horror movie and scary.  Not so.  A very disturbed young man who lives with and cares for his young sister and desperate for a job takes one at an abandoned formerly successful pizza and entertainment center as night security guy.  There are weird looking, cartoonish animatronic characters populating this place. He is haunted by an event that happened when he was a teen.  His younger brother was abducted and never found when he was supposed to be taking care of him. At Freddy’s he is befriended by a female police officer (why I don’t know) and is hounded at home by ...