Movies
“The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it's as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues.” ― Moving Pictures
I watch lots of movies sometimes and not so many at others. Here, I want to reflect a little on some of them and keep the memory.
31 Dec 2019: Joyeux Noel
Joyeux Noël (''Merry Christmas'') is a 2005 epic war drama film based on the Christmas truce of December 1914, depicted through the eyes of French, Scottish, and German soldiers. It was written and directed by Christian Carion, and screened out of competition at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival. WikipediaVery well done. I kept thinking of that saying: "Rich man's war. Poor man's fight." What a criminally stupid enterprise is war. What a waste. Naturally, we're in "anniversary" periods for WWI and WWII, so we're seeing lots of war films coming out. This is one of the very good ones. I believe that the story is well known and has been used a basis for other films.
One of my favorite actors, Daniel Bruhl, has an important role -- the German Lieutenant Horstmayer (German 93rd Infantry Regiment).
2 Jan 2020: Uncut Gems
Josh and Benny Safdie directed Adam Sandler in a crime story released 25 Dec 2019.Loud, anxiety-producing, unusual depiction of hustling and gambling. I'm sure it's a very good movie, but not a pleasure. Adam Sandler was extremely good -- all I remember of his acting ability is from Saturday Night Live and the series of goofy movies
Wikipedia
5 Jan 2020: Shoot the Piano Player
Shoot the Piano Player (French: Tirez sur le pianiste; UK title: Shoot the Pianist) is a 1960 French New Wave crime drama film directed by François Truffaut and starring Charles Aznavour as the titular pianist. It is based on the novel Down There by David Goodis. Wikipedia All the movie aficionados (especially the French ones) that I know talk a lot about New Wave cinema. I usually nod and wonder why we're talking about it. However, this time I watched a Truffaut movie and I saw it.
There was a narrator who spoke now and then to bridge the story. There were flashbacks, and sepia-looking shots, sharp cuts and sequencing. According to Wikipedia, Truffaut said he wanted "to make a film without a subject, to express all I wanted to say about glory, success, downfall, failure, women and love by means of a detective story. It's a grab bag."
Fortunately for this film, he put his pieces together in a way that didn't lose me. Probably by stepping back from tight narrative structure he was able to let the viewer focus on various things, downfall, failure, whatever.
Again according to Wikipedia, this movie reflected Truffaut's interest in American film. Which is probably why it seems more accessible to me than the 400 Blows, which was, I guess, quintessentially French. Even after all these years, I am puzzled by some attitudes and the unshared experiences and values.
Anyway, seeing this film was a joy.
8 Jan 2020: 63 UP
Director Michael Apted revisits the same group of British-born adults
after a 7 year wait. The subjects are interviewed as to the changes that
have occurred in their lives during the last seven years. IMDBThis is the latest episode of the Up series ( Wikipedia ). I've seen the first one years and years ago on PBS. It explained why they started, how they picked the kids to follow, and so on. I have also a couple of the others. Probably 42 and 56.
The long arc of these lives is just a bit shorter than my own. It seems that these people started out with easily recognizable class differences, even as small children. They had busy, stressful lives in their 30s and 40s. And, now at the age of 63, they are much more alike. They are all smoothing out.
It was remarkable that the upper class people did not recognize their privilege. At any time. And, it is true that they had to work too. If they didn't, they didn't succeed. But what was striking was that they did not see that they were given so much to begin with. As seven-year-olds, they said they were going to such and such school and then to a certain college at Oxford. And they did. One fellow had a run-down property that he fixed up. We saw him with a shovel and wheelbarrow hauling dirt and muck around a straggly field some years ago. Today, he has a topiary garden and a country manor on the property.
Part of it all is, of course, that the upper class people know about how things can be done -- the gardener had visited Brazil, I think, and seen these huge bonzai trees and wanted to try it. Nowadays, we're having lots of discussions about "privilege" and people just don't see it for themselves. I remember my father had no idea that he was privileged in ways that black people weren't. He certainly understood and believed that discrimination was real and awful, but he didn't see that he profited, only that black people suffered.
14 Jan 2020: Ocean's Eleven
Ocean's 11 is a 1960 American heist film directed by Lewis Milestone and starring five of the Rat Pack: Peter Lawford, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Joey Bishop.Wikipedia
This film is one picked by Jeffrey at Elevations. I think the theme this time around is anniversary films: 1960 -- 2020.
Movie was made while most of the principals were working in Las Vegas. They shot around their work schedule and improvised like crazy. Seems like they had a lot of fun doing the movie.
I was surprised by the low-key performance of Frank Sinatra. He could certainly act. I expected him to be a showboat.
Angie Dickinson and the other women had minor roles. They were extremely in love or at least in heat and very flattering toward the fellows.
17 Jan 2020: Parasite
Wikipedia Parasite (Korean: 기생충; Hanja: 寄生蟲; RR: Gisaengchung) is a 2019 South Korean black comedy thriller film directed by Bong Joon-ho, who also wrote the film's story and co-wrote the screenplay with Han Jin-won. The film stars Song Kang-ho, Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong, Choi Woo-shik, and Park So-dam, and follows the members of a poor household scheming to become employees of a much wealthier family by posing as unrelated, highly qualified individuals.
This film left me thinking about the class differences and whether they are unavoidable. One of the themes is odor. The little boy of the rich people comments that the chauffeur smells like the housekeeper and his art tutor. Then the father comments about the smell of the chauffeur. The family try to figure out how to get rid of the smell -- different detergents, etc. The finale is triggered by how the chauffeur reacts when odor is brought up again.
The emphasis on odor reminded me of a book and older movie: Perfume. Wikipedia The sense of smell was explored in the creepiest way possible. When you think about it, you have no control over your odor. Anyone can smell it. The protagonist in Perfume was interested in the essence of a person -- not just the ordinary odor of people and their clothes and their food, etc. So, you can't change your essence.
The title, Parasite, also made me think about just who is the parasite. I have spent a lot of time and energy in slightly leftist circles of literature and culture, so I'm not unfamiliar with arguments about the rich, the super-rich, and the upper middle class as being parasites. However, in this movie, the enterprising bunch of cuddly con artists who get themselves hired by a very anodyne upper class family are the obvious definition of parasites.
As in 63Up, the upper class does do work. Inequality does reside in the difference of opportunity. And how can someone who has opportunity and works like a demon to succeed understand that she is privileged?
22 Jan 2020: The Day Shall Come
An impoverished preacher who brings hope to the
Miami projects is offered cash to save his family from eviction. He has
no idea his sponsor works for the FBI who plan to turn him into a
criminal by fueling his madcap revolutionary dreams. IMDBDirector: Christopher Morris
We saw this even though the critics were highly polarized -- they either liked it a lot or not at all. I came down on the "good movie" side. It is black comedy (not because there are black people in it), and I liked the over-the-top satire of the FBI and of their raggedy band of deluded victims. One of the tag lines for the movie is "based on a hundred true stories" and I believe it. I know that the FBI has entrapped lots of people who were way out of their depth.Given that I live in an era of "wokeness" and when minorities are freely speaking up and speaking out, I have to check my biases on the issue of color. I found that the black cult members were depicted as dopey, but they were sweet, they were firm in their somewhat confusing conviction that guns were not for them. They were admirable because they were kind and kind of honest. If we have to keep the color discussion lines, the informers and tricksters were brown people. The FBI was unrelentingly white -- as I think they pretty much are (that's my bias). The FBI was unrelentingly powerful and overpowering.
But, this was something more than a black movie depicting black people. It pulled out the hypocrisy of the FBI power structure. The FBI was shown as crass bullies, motivated by promotions and willing to crush hapless victims pulled into their schemes. Power wins the day.
25 Jan 2020: Comme un Chef
Le Chef (2012)
Comme un chef (original title)
PG-13
|
|
Comedy,
Drama
|
20 June 2014 (USA)
A veteran chef faces off against his restaurant
group's new CEO, who wants to the establishment to lose a star from its
rating in order to bring in a younger chef who specializes in molecular
gastronomy.
Director: Daniel Cohen
Writers: Daniel Cohen, Olivier Dazat
Stars: Jean Reno, Michaël Youn, Raphaëlle Agogué
A gentle comedy, good for my French. I've seen Jean Reno in gangster pictures and he is big and menacing. Here, he was big and menacing and not scary at all. I suspect he is a good actor -- better than I thought. He managed to be a calm power center while the predictable script played out.
27 Jan 2020: The Gentlemen
An American expat tries to sell off his highly
profitable marijuana empire in London, triggering plots, schemes,
bribery and blackmail in an attempt to steal his domain out from under
him.
Director: Guy Ritchie
Writers: Guy Ritchie (screenplay by), Guy Ritchie (story by)
Stars: Matthew McConaughey, Charlie Hunnam, Michelle Dockery
IMDbThis is a fun Guy Ritchie movie: lots of stars, lots of too-fast dialogue. More than a little bit of Pulp Fiction absurdity and, of course, violence. Fancy camera work, shifting points of view. Complicated caper upset by luck -- maybe good, maybe bad, but always dumb.
I enjoyed recognizing Charlie Hunnam from Sons of Anarchy.
30 Jan 2020: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
The surviving members of the resistance face the
First Order once again, and the legendary conflict between the Jedi and
the Sith reaches its peak bringing the Skywalker saga to its end.
Director: J.J. Abrams
Writers: Chris Terrio (screenplay by), J.J. Abrams (screenplay by)
Stars: Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Adam Driver
IMBDWhat a disappointment. If you saw the very first 3 episodes all that long ago, you saw everything there, including Carrie Fisher. Same fights, same spacecraft crashes/ chases. There's no story in particular, or least none that they want you to think about. Every plot point and character's moment (if there were any) was rushed. Coincidences, ghosts, and spirits all step in to move the action. Too bad. An ignominious end to a great beginning.
1 Feb 2020: Just Mercy
World-renowned civil rights defense attorney Bryan
Stevenson works to free a wrongly condemned death row prisoner.
Director: Destin Daniel Cretton
Writers: Destin Daniel Cretton, Andrew Lanham
Stars: Jamie Foxx, Charlie Pye Jr., Michael Hardin
I liked the movie. I've been wondering about black movies; some of them seem insulting and some of them are pretty stereotyped, I'm sure. This one was. But, I appreciated seeing black people who seemed like people. I also liked that there wasn't a white savior. There's part of a review below that hit on a lot of what I have been thinking about.
…… Movies like “Just Mercy” spoon-feed everything to the viewer in easily digestible chunks that assume you know nothing, or worse, don’t know any better. They believe that, to win the hearts and minds of racists, you can’t depict any complexity lest you ruin the “teachable moment” the film is supposed to be presenting. It’s unfortunate that these teachable moments are so often delivered in the exact same, tired manner, as if they were meant for people who are perpetually having to repeat the same grade. Making matters worse, the White perpetrators of injustice are so often one-note villains that they allow for plausible deniability by the viewer: “I can’t be racist because I’m nowhere near as bad as THAT guy!” Granted, this is a period piece true story and the film can’t bend its real-life people too deeply into dramatic license, but director and co-writer Destin Daniel Cretton applies a way-too-familiar formula to their personalities.…
18 February 2020: Rebecca
Wikipedia
Directed by Alfred
Hitchcock
Based on Rebecca by Daphne
du Maurier
Starring Laurence
Olivier and Joan Fontaine
Hitchcock's first American project won the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1940. I remember the book -- it was a great romantic, gothic read. I've seen the movie before, and it was faithful to the book as Selznick (Wikipedia tells us) insisted. I've also read "My Cousin Rachel". These books were set so far away in a milieu that I knew nothing of. Imagine having a Mrs. Danvers to run your house and worship you. Seeing it now, I find that Joan Fontaine was excellent as an awkward, out-of-place young girl. Laurence Olivier seems stiff as always and any bending at all seems like a miracle.
5 February 2020: Spy Behind Home Plate
Saw this at the Boulder Jewish Film Festival. I can't say that I knew who Mo Berg was as a baseball player. I loved the mix of footage: some of movies, some of historical sources, some sort of home movies. At some points, the necessity of bringing us all up to date on the the situations risked losing sight of what Berg was doing. But I came away with a great admiration for a Renaissance man.
6 March 2020: My Name Is Sara
IMDB
Based on the true life-story of Sara Góralnik,a 13 year-old
Polish Jew whose entire family was killed by Nazis in September of 1942. After
a grueling escape to the Ukrainian countryside, Sara steals her Christian best
friend’s identity and finds refuge in a small village, where she is taken in by
a farmer and his young wife. She soon discovers the dark secrets of her
employers’ marriage, compounding the greatest secret she must strive to protect,
her true identity.
Director: Steven OrittWriter: David Himmelstein
We saw this at the Boulder International Film Festival. It's been 75 years since Auschwitz was liberated and so there are many films about WWII. We were glad to have seen it. There was a talk-back after and the director answered questions. The acting was below par -- although I was more forgiving of the young girl -- I can imagine being terrified all the time. The others were often unintelligible and awkward. Otherwise, it felt right to the time period. The farm looked right. The town market was probably right too, although I always find farmers' markets odd.
Still no answers to the questions about why. How hating "others" could turn so violent and widespread. It was just acceptable to make fun of Jews, to harass them, to arrest them, and kill them. Of course, the Germans were killing in reprisal for terrorist attacks.
7 March 2020: Mr. Jones
WikipediaDirector: Agnieszka Holland
Starring: James Norton, Vanessa Kirby, Peter Saarsgard
The film tells the story of Gareth Jones, a journalist from Wales, who in 1933 traveled to the Soviet Union and uncovered the truth about the Holodomor, the man-made famine in Ukraine in which millions died.
We saw this film at the Boulder International Film Festival. The framing tale/ device of George Orwell writing "Animal Farm" was weaker than it should have been. It's been so long since I read "Animal Farm" (if I ever did in its entirety) that I didn't make the connection until well into the middle of the film. I can't imagine that many younger people have read it, so some kind of true intro would have made it stronger. There were many gorgeous scenes of the interiors of grand hotels and buildings, lots of monumental windows and pillars and mirrors and golden lighting as the hero passed through them on his mission to get to the Ukraine. The scenes of cold forests and cold plains and cold deserted villages were less striking visually.
Portrayals of the famine and the starving people made the point. I think the other horror of the spying and listening and betrayals and executions and all of trappings of the totalitarian state were underplayed. It seemed that Western politicians were only concerned about their economies -- Lloyd George and those people were hellbent on avoiding war.
Because I lived in France for awhile, I gained a small understanding of what the Russian Revolution signified to people in Europe. A long time ago, I had taken courses in Russian history and lit, but as an American there was nothing to explain why people wanted so much to believe in the Soviet Union. To the point of willfully not believing how awful Stalin was. Of course, Hitler's Jew problem was easily ignored as well. If Hitler hadn't pushed too far, I don't know if there would have been war. No one went to war to save the Jews (and the Roma and the homosexuals and ....). And, in order to fight that war, it was easy to overlook all the millions of people Stalin was killing as well as crushing any glimmer of freedom.
8 March 2020: Those Who Remained
IMDB
Director: Barnabás
Tóth
Writers: Klára Muhi, Barnabás
Tóth, and others
Stars: Károly Hajduk, Abigél Szõke, Mari Nagy Wikipedia
A 16-year-old girl and a middle-aged doctor connect in Budapest after World War II, each mourning their families lost in concentration camps.
A wrenching story of loss and grief. We saw this at the Boulder International Film Festival, and it was the best of the 3 that we saw this year. I'm not used to such slow pacing anymore and it was moving to get in the rhythm. Again, we're talking about Stalinist regimes. These people had all lost someone or everyone. The regime and the Russians had killed thousands and sent them to work camps and prisons where they died. All those weakened, grieving people -- the walking wounded. Two girls in the film need to extend their childhood to recover some of it. Klara can't acknowledge that she is an orphan although she knows it perfectly well. She finds a doctor, Aladar, who is devastated himself, and he recognizes that she needs a father figure. So he is one. In the midst of friends spying on friends and fears about the police and post-war shortages, somehow virtue triumphs. People just figure out how to heal themselves at least a little and how to love each other.
10 March 2020: The Apartment
Wikipedia1960 American romantic comedy film produced and directed by Billy Wilder from a screenplay he co-wrote with I. A. L. Diamond, starring Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray, Ray Walston, … and Edie Adams
This film was part of the Elevations series. An anniversary film -- 1960. It won lots and lots of awards and is on must-see lists. It caught the moment. I remember seeing it, undoubtedly on TV, as a kid.
It shows a corporate work environment that is large, impersonal except when it's gossipy and bitchy. The men are hitting on the women and are as crass as they can be. The women are stereotypical participants -- victims of married men who will never leave their families. The hero is a decent guy who gets pushed around by the alpha males. Jack Lemmon pulls that role off with aplomb. Shirley MacLaine is beautiful and vulnerable.
According to Jeffrey Kash of Elevations, Wilder wrote the script and was fanatical about everyone sticking to every word. Funny. Poignant.
11 March 2020: Beowulf
Wikipedia2007 computer animated film by Robert Zemeckis, written by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avery. Voices by Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, John Malkovich, Angelina Jolie, Robin Wright, Brendan Gleeson, Cripin Glover, Alison Lohman.
The animation is extremely good. The characters are only somewhat distorted and so, you look at them and think: That sure sounds like Anthony Hopkins, but he's better looking than that.
We own the DVD. I was reading the poem and decided that the movie would be more accessible. This semester Alain had it assigned in his history class, so we watched the movie again.
It is better the 2nd or 3rd time.
The context of the myth in 500 CE is that Christianity is moving in. That's why the history class uses it. That's mentioned in the movie, but it doesn't play a large role -- not too entertaining. Evidently, the movie's writers complicated the tale -- Beowulf is flawed, he and the old king both get seduced by the monster and father monsters, the monsters' power stems from the mother's femininity, the evil is the result of the greed and lust of men. Not something the old Danes would have thought, huh?
According to Wikipedia:
some of the changes made by the film as noted by scholars include:
The portrayal of Beowulf as a flawed man
The portrayal of Hrothgar as a womanizing alcoholic
The portrayal of Unferth as a Christian
The portrayal of Grendel as a sickly-looking childlike
creature (somewhat similar to Tolkien's Gollum character), rather than savage
demon monster
Beowulf's funeral
The portrayal of Grendel's mother as a beautiful seductress,
more of a succubus rather, who bears Grendel as Hrothgar's child and the dragon
as Beowulf's child (this is also the case in the plot of the 1999 film Beowulf,
with the exception that the dragon is entirely absent there.).
The
fact that Beowulf becomes ruler of Denmark instead of his native Geatland13 March 2020: Portrait of a Lady on Fire
WikipediaPerhaps the last film we'll see in a theatre for awhile. We were in a theatre with 6 people. Lots of distance.
Director: Celine Sciamma
Actors: Neomie Merlant, Adele Haenel
Opening: At the end of the eighteenth century, Marianne, a young painter, is teaching painting lessons. One of her students asks her about a painting of hers, which Marianne calls Portrait de la jeune fille en feu.
Marianne goes to Brittany to paint a portrait of a young girl, Heloise, being married off against her will. The portrait takes time and they become friends and lovers.
It's a lovely, slow film. For the first time I really understood what the "gaze of man" usually brings to these kinds of movies. This is a woman's film -- there wasn't any men. No one talked much about men.
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