The suicide of Robin Williams leaves you scratching your head again. Money, fame, talent. What was missing? Empty? Where was the support network? No one saw it coming? Wikipedia says he was Episcopalian. Good for him. He should be okay. My favorite movie of his was The Best of Times. Robin was very normal in that one. Very human.
Hmm… kind of good, kind of lame. Dinesh D’Souza for anyone unfamiliar with him, is a Republican. That doesn’t make him a bad person, but it does make for a fairly bad film. It would have helped with the power of the message if it had been completely honest instead of just having a Republican perspective.
It focused a lot on the subversive intent of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and their tutelage under Saul Alinsky and William Ayers, but for heaven’s sake, there is a lot more wrong with America than just that bunch. It’s really not a Democrat/Republican thing at all, but D’Souza paints it that way. The Knight on a white charger will be a Republican in D’Souza’s world.
Dinesh does a wonderful job rebutting American history as it is taught now condemning white America. Bolstering our actions as it relates to native Americans, African Americans, Latin Americans and our supposed theft from other countries worldwide. It’s a lot to cram into a couple of hours, but it is invaluable to the generic Republican who is woefully ignorant on these topics (and also for independents like me).
Precious little time was spent on the title’s premise, “Imagine a world without her” (America). That had some potential. The viewer going in felt that the film was going to explore what the world would have been like with America losing the revolutionary war. He went as far as having George Washington being killed on the battlefield, but then he left you hanging. Instead it degenerated into a “Republican good, Democrat bad” show. And while it is true that Democrats have put America in a horrible position, nearly as equally complicit are Republicans. Dinesh also focuses on the Executive Branch and gives the Legislative Branch a pass. Congress is way too guilty for that.
What does give me great respect for Dinesh is the vitriol that comes his way from the Left. As I did a little research on the background of the film and D’Souza, it became clear that liberals truly do revile the man. That right there makes him a peach of a fellow. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
What a nice surprise Million Dollar Arm was. The true story of sports agent J.B. Bernstein who discovers two pitching prospects in Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel, baseball novices from India. This Disney film was best during the India filming and when it focused on the three Indian actors, Suraj Sharma, Madhur Mittal and Pitobash Tripathy. Those three have so much to offer. Bill Paxton as the USC pitching coach was nice also. A bit slow at times, a bit ponderous, but worth seeing.
Jeffery Wright, Skylan Brooks and Ethan Dizon
So I’m walking through Family Video in west Ames the other day, and I spy this odd little gem. I pretty much refuse to watch big budget Hollywood films, you are simply encouraging their stupidity. Just looking at the cover I knew I wouldn’t be watching the usual suspects but some fresh faces.
Skylan Brooks as ‘Mister‘, and Ethan Dizon as ‘Pete‘ worked really well with Jennifer Hudson, Jordin Sparks and others to make a really nice NY location film. I much prefer a “gritty” urban drama that is not a sequel, remake or comic book. An examination of the human condition versus CGI.
Ida (Agata Trzebuchowska) spins a new viewpoint to a familiar story, the Holocaust. This film just covers three lives, a mother, a father and a son who were murdered for their farm in Poland during WWII. It is now roughly 20 years later when the daughter of the deceased is about to take her vows as a nun after growing up in the convent as an orphan. Ida (known as Anna by the nuns), finds out she has a living aunt she must meet before taking her vows.
From her aunt she finds out that she is Jewish, she was given up to the convent because she could pass for a gentile, and might survive. That would be my one gripe with the film, I wasn’t able to figure out how her aunt survived, or why her parents and brother were murdered by the farmer now living on their farm. It may have been explained or is obvious to any Pole, but it sure wasn’t to me.
Bill Goodykoontz in USA Today gave Ida 4 1/2 stars, I arrived at the same rank by giving the storyline 3 stars and the cinematography 5. I hadn’t seen a movie so beautifully shot since The Great Beauty (Italy 2013). Except for a few frames the movie was shot in a square format. That combined with the black and white made for a stunning presentation. After all the widescreen for the past 60 years it was a very artistic change.
There were some intriguing points to contemplate in the film. Aunt Wanda was put-off by the idea of Ida becoming a nun. Wanda also seemed to have quite a bit of knowledge of Christianity. Keeping in mind that the film is set in the Poland in the early sixties, the Soviet Union seems to get a pass for the oppression it grips it’s satellite country with. Plus, you have the age old question, was Wanda an alcoholic because she was a basket case, or vice versa? Did she come to her untimely demise because she had no spiritual anchor, or was it unavoidable considering her circumstances?
Ida (Anna) had the more hopeful story. Though her life was put through this really intense tempest (finding out the fate of her parents and her own heritage while being bombarded by the sensual stimulation of a world she’s never known), she seemed to be able to survive and thrive due to her spiritual foundation. It seemed appropriate when Ida delays taking her vows, and instead experiences the ways of the world. After her exposure to life’s temptations, when she returns to the nunnery it seems to be with no regrets, now that she knows what the world offers is empty promises. You do wonder why she doesn’t try to evangelize her obviously troubled aunt.
In one of the grittiest scenes since Winter’s Bone when Jennifer Lawrence has to remove the hands from her dead father to prove he is dead to the court, Ida, Wanda and the murderer farmer dig up the bones of her parents and brother, place them in a burlap bag and take them to be simply reburied in a family burial plot. The sound of the bones clinking in the bag as she puts them in the trunk of the car struck me as impossibly raw. It really brings home the whole death, murder and mortality thing.
Director Pawel Pawlikowski did such an unpretentious yet beautiful job with this film, it will be interesting to see what the Polish director does with the upcoming Georgian/Russian-language film Kamo about the early career of Joseph Stalin. People from the former Soviet-bloc usually have a much better grasp of what a demon Stalin was, then we do.
“Most films today substitute sex and violence for virtue, and compensate for lack of substance and message with excessive sound.”
Lauren Julien-Box as the young ‘Dido Belle’
Now that was a good film. It reminded me of the year ‘The King’s Speech’ came out. That film so outclassed what Hollywood puts out, as will this one. In a world full of Spidermen, X-men and Godzilla, it is nice to run across a film for adults. If you were to judge by the films at the mall, you would be convinced we are a nation of 12-year-olds. Belle was shown at the Fleur.
While the film is called a work of fiction, the event triggering the major event in the film is real, the 1781 Zong massacre. The coldblooded murder of humans for the insurance money. That event predated Britain’s Slavery Abolition Act of 1833. That was largely the work of William Wilberforce.
Gugu Mbatha-Raw was exceptional as Dido, as was Tom Wilkerson as Lord Mansfield. The writer, which seems to have been in question whether Amma Asante or Misan Sagay, put some lines together towards the end of the film that were truly inspired. Those words put the absolute horror of slavery bare before the audience. The young lawyer played by Sam Reid, and Wilkerson’s judge, did justice to the writing.
As was pointed out to me, why are the British capable of such stellar films and television on a regular basis, and America isn’t?
photograph by DME
So Tim Jenison (of Iowa) wants to figure out how Dutch Master Johannes Vermeer was able to paint masterpieces with out doing preliminary sketches on the canvas first (x-rays) or being able to directly trace (additive qualities of pigment prevent that). Okay, we get that. And he figures out the little mirror tool that will allow him to do that. Okay.
So what does any of that have to do with turning it into a 5 year project by learning to build the furniture for the set of Vermeer’s ‘The Music Lesson’? Learning to create oil painting pigments by hand? Melting glass to make your own focusing lens? Then sanding it by hand??
The FILM seemed like it lasted 5 years! Good night, then to top it off, they didn’t even get into painting techniques! Supposedly the point of the movie! But I do know more now than I ever wanted to about furniture making and grinding glass. Good grief. Everything was shown BUT the supposed point of the movie! I thought sure he would invent the vacuum cleaner also, as it really sucked.
At least a very good Mocha was had at Zanzibar’s beforehand.
[Patrick Ryan, USA Today, 2/28] Ryan does a dutiful article devoid of cynicism on the Mark Burnett/Roma Downey release of Son of God. Bill Goodykoontz, also of USA Today, points out that Burnett and Downey are making a bit of a “cash grab”. They are releasing unused footage from the History Channel The Bible series, reediting it, and making a movie on the cheap.
Maybe I’m being a little too suspicious. Though I didn’t see The Bible series, I assume it had to say the name of Jesus and relate the gospel message. Maybe this movie does mark a turnaround. I’m just a little leery of Downey who for 9 seasons rode a money train with a series called Touched by an Angel, that was purportedly about the Christian faith, but not once mentioned the name of Jesus.
Their idea of redemption was a hair light being shown on the Monica character, and she saying God! in a dramatic tone while the miscreant of the day changed his ways, and by his now being a better person, would warrant a trip to heaven.
Shows like that and Highway to Heaven almost seem to do a disservice to Christianity in my book, but that’s Hollywood. Maybe if the proceeds were being donated to hungry children. Until then, I’ll remain just a little bit skeptical. Hollywood doesn’t mind making a buck off of the Creator of the universe, Jesus, just don’t expect a revival to start from the 90210 zip code.
Oscar Isaac and Ulysses the cat from ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’
Oy. Inside Llewyn Davis gets old really quick. You know a movie is bad when you find yourself leaning forward a lot to rest your back, and checking your watch. I’m thinking the supposed popularity of the Coen brothers, is much like that of the folk music hero hinted at near the end of the movie, Robert Zimmerman, the joke’s on us. I’ve seen a lot of that lately, what with American Hustle, Wolf of Wall Street, etc… crap served up that we are supposed to “ooh and awe” over, when in reality it is theater that has not been thought out really well, or had much effort put into it. No longer, bad is bad, even if the “right” people did make it.
Unable to figure out what I had just seen, I checked out the reviews on IMDB. Many reviewers thought Ethan and Joel Coen keep making the same movie with the same clichés. Many thought the “art-house crowd” would rave about anything these two put out, and if that was the case, the bar had been set way too low. They called it as having no direction, leaving threads left hanging, no character development, no point, kind of a half-baked unfinished slop.
The music was fun, the backstreets of New York were fun, Stark Sands as ‘Troy Nelson’ was superb, the interior location shots were great… it’s just that when the most likeable and entertaining character is a cat, it doesn’t bode well for the movie.
What makes a great movie? It will either come down to stars, script, or the cinematography. There was nothing likeable about the characters, the script was pointless, luckily the cinematography made the movie a 3 or so. I enjoy seeing the off the beaten path side of New York, the architecture and landscape you don’t normally see. But, if you’ve been making movies for 30 years, with all the attendant adulation, you need to come up with just a little bit more. I want my money back.
Judi Dench as ‘Philomena’
This film was a bit of an odd duck. Steve Coogan as journalist ‘Martin Sixsmith’ was superb. Judi Dench as ‘Philomena Lee’ was probably wonderful, she just tends to grate on my nerves. She had two outstanding scenes, one in the confessional and one where she forgave the bastard head nun.
As we all know, Philomena is now searching 50 years later for the son she was pretty much forced to give up as a child herself. Now that I think about it, the film might have tracked down the sperm donor also to see how he felt about the carnage he helped create in these two lives. What we do see is how this event from 50 years ago affected Philomena and her son Anthony, whose adopted parents named Michael.
The film’s center is the convent Roscrea, headed by the evil Nazi nun, Sister Hildegarde. In real life, the nuns probably found it necessary to sell the babies to American Catholics at 1,000 pounds a pop, in order to keep things running, it just looks bad. And they probably had a reason for not having a doctor and drugs available for the births these young mothers went through, but given the way it was portrayed by Weinstein and Frears, it does look rather bad.
The audience is at the mercy of the storytellers. We hope they aren’t misleading us. But mothers and children being allowed to die in childbirth for no other apparent reason than spite, does strain credibility at times, but not others. Institutions as a whole could be rather screwed up back then (if not now). The Boy Scouts and the church were masters at covering up the sexual abuse of boys. It is only in the last 15 years or so that Iowa has had a safe haven law allowing women to drop off their newborn alive to a hospital, no questions asked.
What kind of nitwits were we? “Heaping shame” on unwed mothers? That certainly wouldn’t lead to the abuse of alcohol, drugs or the children now would it? What would we rather they had done, have an abortion? Certainly you wouldn’t sugar coat it, but I do believe a “where do we go from here?” attitude would have been more useful. How do we “pull ourselves up” would have been a good tact.
That could be the message of the makers of the film. You just don’t know. With producer Harvey Weinstein, he does have a history of anti-Catholic films, The Magdalene Sisters, The Butcher Boy, Priest and now Philomena. Since the messenger is questionable, you tend to question the message.
Still, the movie does make you think. The boy who grows up in a well-to-do family in America with unlimited opportunities, did have a different experience then what he would have being raised by a destitute unwed mother in Ireland. You just tend to be a little suspicious, when the only time the name of “Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” is heard, is when it is fairly spit out by the serpent like evil head nun when her treachery is revealed. That just tends to smack of something Hollywood would do, tying it to the most vile scene of the movie. But, as it is also when Philomena forgives the nun, you can also relate it in scope and power to He who forgave all our sins.
Iowa life 