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bobspez
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Monday (2020)
Good film.
I enjoyed this movie. In some parts the movie seemed a bit far fetched, but was interesting and suspenseful at times. I thought this movie was going to be set in Athens, Georgia, USA, so I was surprised it was set in Athens Greece. I can see a couple of 30's something expats being in this situation. This movie could have been anywhere. The characters are basically universal. While he comes off as kind of irresponsible and immature, she turns out the be the more manic and irresponsible one. But its a love story and I could see it happening, though maybe not as crazily as it did. Still I was satisfied with the film and was glad I watched it.
63 Up (2019)
Not bad, a bit of an anti-climactic and predictable at this point.
I was really looking forward to seeing this latest installment. I finally got to see all of it through dubious means as there was no legitimate way to view it, and when I finished it I felt a bit of a let down. I'm 11 years older than the group, having just turned 74, and have watched these installments from the first one to the present. I felt this was the least interesting of the entire series.
Here's a few thoughts I came away with. 1. People are pretty much the same. They all got pretty much in life what they sought and are basically who they have always been. Whether they ride a bicycle or a Rolls Royce, they all have adapted to their circumstances and probably all have similar amounts of satisfaction with their lives. 2 Their lives were quite ordinary regardless of class or money. They all found their niche and partners that suited them. 3. Their lives are all winding down. Their days of creating their lives and careers and families are pretty much over, they are now on the way out, making room for the next generations. 4. There were no big surprises in this episode. Their lives mirror the lives of so many people I know and have known. 5. The child is most definitely the father of the man. I was just commenting the other day that I am basically the same person as I was at 5 years old. The blueprint was there and never really changed. The same seems true for all the participants in the series.
Once Upon a Time in... Hollywood (2019)
My new favorite Tarantino film.
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bobspez
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Saw it on cable last night. A great movie. Probably my new favorite Tarantino movie and I haven't like his more recent efforts. To me it was like an homage to Hollywood, to the movie business, to the 1970's. And maybe an homage to Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski who were living the Hollywood dream. Great acting, beautifully shot, great music, really captured the LA and Hollywood of the time. Loved the Hollywood happy ending too. If only ... who can say what would have been.
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)
Interesting but stupid, maybe the worst film I have ever experienced.
The good thing about bad movies in the digital age is you can turn them off quickly and pick something else. The bad thing about this bad movie is that each of the 6 episodes is beautifuly photographed and fairly well acted, so they suck you in, but at the end of each of the six 20 minute or so long vignettes, the Coen Bros. hit you with a rancid pie in the face, a terrible tacked on ending, seemingly intended to irritate and disappoint the viewer, an ending that is silly, or pointless, or grotesque and depressing. Why would they do that? I haven't a clue. Why did some reviewers enjoy it? I don't have a clue. To me it's a sick practical joke played on the viewer. A six course meal laced with tomaine at the bottom of every dish. I don't know if I was more irritated with the Coen Bros. for making this film or myself for not turning it off after the first or second vignette..
Jane Fonda in Five Acts (2018)
Was disappointed in Jane as a person
Unlike some of the other reviewers who have a political axe to grind I was a big fan of Jane Fonda and especially her trip to Hanoi during the Vietnam war. I always thought she was incredibly brave and unlike all the other peace protestors she was the only one who didn't just talk about peace but did something to show what that war was doing to Vietnamese and to Americans alike. By the time I finished watching the documentary I thought a lot less of Jane than I did before I watched it. It seems Jane always had to be in the spotlight, either on screen or on stage or speaking at a rally. She must have craved the attention and adulation fiercely. To get it she left three men behind, as well as her children, pursuing a life of meaningless activism, speeches, conferences, marches, etc. that did nothing to change anything but stoked her ego. She seems to be completely devoid of any self awareness. In the documentary, Peter Fonda says of his father, the only way Henry Fonda could have been a good father is if someone gave him a script that said "I love you son." She seemed not to notice how many parallels there were between her father's life and hers - multiple marriages, being a movie star, leaving family behind to chase their own agendas, attempt late in life to reconcile with their daughters, putting forward a false image of the perfect family.
I thought it odd that in the documentary Jane said not one word of her half sister the painter Frances de Villers Brokaw, 6 years older than Jane, who was her mother's daughter by a previous marriage and was in several of Jane's childhood family pictures, and who died in 2008. She talked about the trauma of her mother's death by suicide but never even mentioned her half sister who must have felt equally traumatized. Likewise there was no real time given to her partner of 8 years, Richard Perry, whom she broke up with in 2017.
Jane was step mother to Roger Vadim's daughter for 8 years but apparently when she left Vadim, she cut off all relations with his daughter with whom she had been so close. Jane was a totally different person with each of the important men in her life. A wholesome ingenue for her Dad. An international film star and sexpot for Vadim, an activist living an impoverished lower middle class life with Tom Hayden, and a billionaire's celebrity wife for Turner. From what I could see she discarded people who had been close to her with each of her transformations. This documentary came off as a vanity piece, for Jane. But to me she came off as a self centered, driven, ultimately confused and self deluded chameleon.
Still Dreaming (2014)
Interesting Documentary
I was drawn to watch this documentary because I had performed at the Actors Fund Home in Englewood NJ more than 20 years ago with a volunteer variety show. On weekends we visited senior centers, retirement homes and hospitals and put on an Ed Sullivan type variety show with various song and dance acts by the volunteers. The crowd at the Actor's Home was the toughest we ever faced, with a few female audience members booing and yelling out "You Stink" during our performance. It was a bizarre but memorable experience. The following week we performed at a mental hospital and were treated like rock stars, our most appreciative audience. An equally bizarre and memorable experience.
With these memories in mind I looked forward to what I expected would be a bizarre documentary and to some extent it was, but it was also heartwarming and very human as well.
The prospect of performing Shakespeare's "Mid Summer Nights Dream" is met with enthusiasm as well as anxiety by the home residents. The two young directors have six weeks in which to put together a performance and are often as bewildered as we were when we performed there. I got a real kick at some of the testier challenges the directors had to cope with from the residents. It becomes evident that the residents have a variety of physical and mental impediments to the performance. Most of the actors have to perform with a script in their hands but Dimo Condos, a leading character in the play, shows himself to be a true dramatic actor, memorizing his lines and working on his delivery during walks in the woods. Some of the residents show real skills despite their age and years of inactivity at their craft. One resident who plays piano is a masterful musician.
Along the way, the prospect of being in the play proves too much for some of the residents, but most make it through and perform a much better than expected play to an appreciative audience of family and friends. A very film, reminiscent of a 1930's musical. Despite all the obstacles the show must go on.
Jeremiah Tower: The Last Magnificent (2016)
Sketchy story full of holes.
The story relates that Jeremiah studied Architecture at Harvard until he was 30 and then was supposedly cut off financially by his family. There is no information at all about his parents or family, except they were wealthy and often traveled first class around the world with Tower in tow, but left to his own devices.
Wikipedia states his father was a managing director for a film sound company, and that Jeremiah went to school in Australia, Connecticut, England, and at Harvard, and that when Jeremiah's grandfather died, Jeremiah was cut off financially.
The film gives us Tower as a person emerging without family or connections at the age of 30, moving to California and getting a job at Chez Panisse in Berkeley. The film jumps from Jeremiah leaving Chez Panisse and starting up the fabulously successful Stars Restaurant in San Francisco.
According to Wiki, after leaving Chez Panisse he spent the next 6 years working at various restaurants in the Bay area."He worked at the Ventana Inn at Big Sur beginning 1978, taught briefly at the California Culinary Academy, and revived the dying Balboa Cafe in San Francisco in 1981. In 1982, he became head chef and co-owner at Berkeley's Santa Fe Bar and Grill. In 1984 Tower opened Stars Restaurant, his passion and greatest success.
According to wiki Tower also "opened branches of Stars restaurant in Oakville (Napa Valley), Palo Alto, Manila, and Singapore." He was also busy with a number of other ventures according to wiki including "the Peak Cafe in Hong Kong in the 1990s, as well as various related ventures in San Francisco including a more casual cafe, an upscale bistro, and a kitchenware shop, and celebrity endorsement contracts, including one for Dewar's Scotch. In 1998, Tower sold a part interest in the Stars restaurants to a Singapore real estate company, but the new owners closed the restaurant in 1999.
The film tries to give the impression that Tower was a man of mystery who disappeared from the world after leaving Stars for unknown reasons. But it is more likely his multiple ventures were ultimately financially unsustainable.
Wiki also has some information on his whereabouts during his years out of the spotlight. "Tower moved to Manila for a year, then to New York City for four years, then Italy and Mexico. In 2014, he was hired as executive chef of Tavern on the Green in New York City, but he left in April 2015, after six months."
The thing that I get from this movie is there were a lot of holes in the story. In many ways I get the impression that Tower manufactured much of his own history, or lack of it. Apparently he was a motivated and talented chef, but overextended himself in business and wound up being able to pack up all his possessions in 4 hours and place them in two bags in a pickup truck.
While the film seems like an interesting love letter to Tower from Bourdain, it just reeks of BS to me. It portrays him as a sort of Great Gatsby, a man of wealth and taste and mystery. In fact he lived a life of great pretense, success and failure. The most honest moment in the movie seems to be when he says at the end, I'm writing a book, about how to be a well mannered idiot.
Women of '69: Unboxed (2014)
Interesting perspective of the impact of the '60s from alumni of Skidmore class of '69
I found this interesting as I graduated from UCLA in 1968. I also visited family in NYC in '65 and '67 and spent a couple of weeks in Boston in '69.
At the time I felt the East Coast was a couple of years behind the West Coast in terms of the social revolution. It was an interesting time because our high school years were pretty firmly rooted in the 1950's and our college years were firmly rooted in the cultural revolution of the new music, clothes, attitudes, politics and morals.
By 1970 the dream of the cultural and political revolution as depicted in Easy Rider was pretty much over, what remained was sex, drugs and rock and roll, and needing to find a job.
Being in a public college, the University of California, I don't think the majority of students there were thinking about their place in the world as these ladies were. We were thinking of surviving, getting out of school and getting on with life (with the draft hanging over your head if you were a male).
This documentary made me remember that I had very little success in forming relationships with college girls. I mostly dated girls who went to work after high school, secretaries, clerks, etc. In 1973 I married a girl who worked as a secretary, and have been married to her for 43 years now. To me the college girls seemed somewhat neurotic and confused. Working girls were down to earth, easy to talk to, liked to dress up, look pretty, and go out and have a good time. They didn't have anything to prove.
This movie seemed to reinforce that impression as many of the participants seemed dissatisfied with their lives. They achieved success in the world of work, but many seemed to feel they paid a price in terms of family and relationships.
The Lost Son of Havana (2009)
A sad tale of loss and regret.
I found this to be a sad movie. I tried watching it a second time but couldn't finish it. Maybe because like Luis, I left my family and friends in my early 20's to seek my future, and like Luis I met my future wife, had three kids, and except for a couple of short visits the first few years, never returned. Also Luis was 67 when he made the documentary, and I was 67 when I saw it.
There are amazing scenes of his days of major league glory and his reunion with his parents who Castro permitted to come see their son play ball. And the one scene of him laughing and happy in Cuba is at the ball game he is there to "coach" as his pretend US team gets trounced by the Cuban team. Otherwise he appears to be a man tiptoeing through a snake pit, on a trip that he feels he must make but which brings him more anguish than pleasure. At one point he says he doesn't know what the reunion will bring, he doesn't know if he should laugh or cry. He seems very uncomfortable with every meeting and conversation. He takes no pleasure in Cuban food or drink or music or scenery. To him it's a graveyard of lost people, family and friends. He had a nice rental van. Why not take his family to the beach for food, and drink and a party. Why not visit some restaurants or even a tobacco plantation. He does none of this. He just sits in the corner and mopes.
Thomas Wolfe said "You can't go home again" and anyone who has tried, knows it is true. You are different and the people and places which have not aged a day in your memory are totally different as well. I would have liked to have seen more of Luis' life here in the states after 1982, when his major league career ended, up to the present day. We are told he has a wife and three children, but the last 25 or so years of his life in the States is never mentioned. Does he now have grand kids, friends and family and a good life in the US? We will never know. It would have presented some (hopefully) happy counterpoints to Luis' mostly anguished reunion with his Cuban family and friends. As it is we are left with a man who "wants to see Cuba before he dies" and does. His family is not told he is coming to Cuba. He tiptoes in and he tiptoes back out. He brings a few modest gifts and gives his family a few dollars and we are left with not much more than his immense sadness.