Old Man @ The Movies

I saw THE IRON CLAW with my daughter the day before we flew to South Carolina for Christmas with most of my family, missing only my grandson, his wife, and my only great granddaughter who live in Denver.  It is a film about professional wrestling and was, no surprise based on a true story in which the father and three sons were world class pro wrestlers. My daughter pointed out that it starred Zac Ephron, whom I will never recognize, who was so heavily muscled, she didn’t know who it was at first.  The Iron Claw is a wrestling move created and named by the father which involves putting pressure on the opponent’s head with your hand, presumably rendering him helpless.  I was never a fan of pro wrestling; I don’t consider it a real sport.  And that the story is filled with one tragic event after another, I didn’t care.  My film-making and film-loving grandson chided me for not recognizing the quality film-making in this one.  It had a lot of action and poignancy but it just wasn’t for me

I’m in a nostalgic mood after viewing WONKA.  I fondly recall nights when I read stories to my children at bedtime.  One of their favorites was Roald Dahl's "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," which was reread many times. And I liked both movies made of the book, with Gene Wilder and Johnny Depp playing the role of Willie Wonka.  I liked the latest version as well, but not as much.  It is a charming musical fantasy depicting Willie in the early days of his career, trying to establish himself as a master chocolate maker.  Willie is played  okay but not great by someone named Timothée Chalamet, whom I must have seen in other roles but can’t recall which.  Willie arrives in the big city (London?), attracting large crowds on the street peddling his chocolates with his singing, dancing and feats of magic, but is driven away by police who follow the orders of three evil rival chocolateers.  He is conned into debt along with others by an evil innkeeper.  Willie obviously overco

I just didn’t like EILEEN. It wasn’t because it was dark, in sets as well as characters. I thought it was just plain weird and for what I presumed to be a psychological thriller, nothing made sense. Eileen, an odd young girl living with her troubled father, is employed by a local prison for children (I was unable to tell what her job was). When a new psychologist, Dr. Rebecca, played by a glamorous and unrecognizable because of the darkness blonde Anne Hathaway, is hired, the two form what might be termed an unholy alliance which may be sexual in part. The plot takes a sharp turn to the left when Rebecca confesses a horrific and unlikely transgression which puts them both in an uncomfortable situation.  And then the movie ends abruptly, with cars and trucks moving down a highway. Don’t ask me what that meant.  I didn’t write the script.  In a not surprising ranking because I think critics may be as weird as the movies they applaud, they gave the film an 82% thumbs up.  Audiences proved

Going to the movie today felt like homecoming because of all the familiar actors in the film.  I expected to see a movie entitled Eileen, but they changed times at the last minute and there was only one other film playing at my arrival time.  What I saw was one of those 20th anniversary films, which I remembered seeing back in 2003.  Easily recognized cast members started with Hugh Grant and Bill Nighy and included Laura Linney, Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Liam Neeson, Keira Knightly, Billy Bob Thornton, Colin Firth, and even Rowan Atkinson in a small, funny sequence.  LOVE ACTUALLY, which I am certain many of you saw too, was a bunch of love stories, each of which was resolved to the audiences satisfaction, I’m sure. Some poignant, some funny.  For example, Hugh Grant portrays the newly elected Prime Minister of England, where all the action takes place, who falls hopelessly in love with a young staff member and doesn’t do anything about it until late in the film.  The same timing an

I have been traveling and I considered  myself very fortunate that the local theater was playing a film I was anxious to see and was not scheduled to play in my home town.  There has been a lot of hype about this one because it was about an icon in American music, Leonard Bernstein, and because it was written, directed and starred in by Bradley Cooper.  To put it bluntly and mildly, I was disappointed.  In my opinion, it was more about establishing Cooper as an icon than it was a depiction of the genius of the renowned composer/conductor Lenny.  I felt MAESTRO made the musical genius appear to be a fraudulent, insincere and flamboyant man rather than the one who was responsible for the beautiful West Side Story among many, many other remarkable accomplishments.  The start of his career comes when he is awakened by a telephone call informing him that a last minute problem required that he be the substitute conductor of the New York Philharmonic that day.  As he joyously scurries to get

I had a choice of two films and opted not to see THE SHIFT because it sounded like a religious and/or metaphysical one, and I just couldn’t handle that now.  So I surprised myself by going to see the latest version of  the Japanese monster whom I haven’t seen since the original (which I remember viewing as a comedy because of the crude depiction of the monster then).  And, surprisingly, I liked it, subtitles and all.  The Japanese have improved their film making, and they seem to have turned compassionate because GODZILLA MINUS ONE is more about humans and love than it is about the monster wrecking Tokyo.  At the end of World War II, a young kamikaze pilot goes awol from his duties and lands on a tiny island which just happens to be attacked by Godzilla.  He survives and makes his way to Tokyo, a city devastated by the war, and encounters a young woman wandering with a baby she found deserted.  Although he doesn’t seem to approve of her actions, they end up living together with the chi

After the dark, depressing, violent and sad movie I saw yesterday, I was anxiously looking forward to a movie described as “comedy, horror”.  It had its funny and light moments for almost half the movie and then turned into what i can only describe as a WTF bizarre fantasy, dark and depressing drama starring the usually off beat and strange  (to me) Nicholas Cage.  He did a very good job as Paul, a scruffy bearded, balding, faithful, nerdy family man (wife and two daughters), who is a boring tenured college professor teaching what sounded like a very boring and obscure or obtuse subject.  Over a short period of time, he becomes famous nationally snd internationally because he begins to appear in thousands of people’s dreams, just standing around doing nothing.  He becomes a celebrity who wants nothing more to do than write s book on his teaching subject, but an advertising or promotional agency has bigger plans for him commercially.  A young assistant at the agency confesses that she h

Yesterday I saw what I guess is Hollywood’s first of the year Christmas movies.  They may have missed the true meaning of Christmas in SILENT NIGHT, which might have been named Silent Movie, because there is not one line of dialogue in this film.  The only sounds are music, including Silent Night, car chases and crashes, bullets firing, screams and either police radio broadcasts or local newscasts on the radio.  And surprisingly, no voices works and is effective in this too violent pre-holiday movie.  A man, his wife and young son are playing in the yard of their home when two gangs drive recklessly down the street shooting at each other.  Unfortunately one or more stray rounds hit the little boy and kills him and others pierce the throat of the father.  The rest of the film depicts the recovering father, morose and angry, engaged in a punishing fitness program, learning hand-to-hand combat with a knife and learning to use a variety of guns to seek revenge on the gangs, one of whom he