Category Archives: 2018

Gloria Bell

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Gloria Bell            4 stars

Gloria Bell, starring Julianne Moore as Gloria, a middle aged divorced woman who loves to go to clubs and dance to seventies music is one of the most fun movies I have seen so far this year.  It is directed by Sebastian Lelio, who also directed the previous version, Gloria made in Chile, a few years earlier.  In the movie, Gloria seems happy, but she is dealing with her two adult children, who don’t seem to have time for her and have their own problems.  She also is trying to start a relationship with a newly divorced man, who she likes, but soon finds out that he is certainly not right for her.  Through it all, Moore puts on a convincing performance as a woman who is resilient and won’t allow others in her life stand in the way of her own happiness.  I encourage everyone to see this one while it is still in theaters.

Hotel Mumbai

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Hotel Mumbai   4 stars

Hotel Mumbai tells the true story of the Islamic terrorist attack on the Taj Hotel in Mumbai, India in 2008.  It’s a well done presentation of the absolute terror that the victims of the attack went through facing young men with automatic weapons and hand grenades while having no defense other than running and hiding.  It also depicts the acts of heroism that the staff of the hotel displayed in protecting the guests of the hotel, many of whom are quite wealthy.  The movie doesn’t hold anything back as it shows just how horrifying it must be to be to be experiencing such a terrible event.  I remember well the news of the attack back around Thanksgiving in 2008.  The attack seemed to go on forever before the Indian Special Forces finally killed all the terrorists involved.  At the end of the movie we are shown much about the outcome of the story.  In all well over 100 people were killed across the city.  Of the victims in the hotel, half were the hotel staff.  Also, it took 21 months to restore the damage left behind and reopen the hotel.  If you see Hotel Mumbai be ready to feel more tension and dread than you do from any horror movie.

Shoplifters

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Shoplifters          5 stars

I had not heard much about Shoplifters before, last year’s Best Foreign Language film from Japan.  It’s about a very poor family living in a shack in Japan and what they have to do to survive including shoplifting from local stores.  It appears that there is a father, Osamu, a mother, Nobuyo, a grandmother and a teenage daughter and young son.  The couple find a little girl of about five freezing in the cold one night and take her in.  Rather than take her to the police they keep her and care for her as they surmise she was not treated well by her own family.  This movie develops very slowly and I thought that it was a movie mainly about the characters and how they relate to each other without much of a plot, something that shows how the less fortunate live.  However, there are signs along the way that suggest there is more going on here at first glance, so later in the film we learn that there are some hidden secrets that when revealed will test the strength of the ties holding this group together.  I was very presently surprised and impressed with how the film ended.  Rotten Tomatoes rated Shoplifters the second best foreign film of the year after Roma.

Green Book

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Green Book        4 ½ stars

I finally viewed Green Book the much acclaimed Best Picture winner by director Peter Farrelly about Tony Lip, an Italian American bouncer from the Bronx who is hired by Dr. Don Shirley a world class black pianist to drive him on a concert tour that takes them to the Deep South.  Set in the early sixties, the travelers must depend on the Green Book, a travel guide published to allow black people find safe places for them to stay and eat in the days of segregation.  The two very different characters must learn to understand each other and deal with their differences to allow them to safely navigate some of the perils they are bound to face in this time of troubled race relations.  While certainly not a perfect movie, it has certain charms that will please audiences and first rate performances from Viggo Mortensen as Tony and Mahershala Ali as Don Shirley.  While the film touches on issues of racism in America showing us some the effects of it, it is not a deep study of the roots of the problem.  Green Book works best as a human drama showing us the value of trust despite our differences.

At Eternity’s Gate

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At Eternity’s Gate            4 stars

At Eternity’s Gate is director Julian Schnabel’s portrayal of painter Vincent Van Gogh through the last years of his life, when he produced some of his best paintings.  This film stars Willem Dafoe as the master painter in a truly outstanding role.  The story is not told as a typical biopic however, as it includes some very artistic expressions of the emotions that Van Gogh experiences in his life.  Some of these methods may turn off some viewers, but they certainly are imaginative.  Despite the troubles that Van Gogh has, the movie tries to show us the great optimism he has as he tells how he feels about nature and how it can lead people to meaningful experiences and bring us together.  It also shows how he was misunderstood which led to his being placed in an asylum for a period and the alternate theories surrounding his mysterious death.

Diane

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Diane                                    4 ½ stars

I happened upon Diane purely by accident as I was intending to see something different but was foiled in getting to the theater on time.  Diane is a low key movie starring Mary Kay Place as a sixty something woman living in a rural area who selflessly looks after the well-being of those around her who are in need, whether they be sick friends, the poor needing to be fed at the soup kitchen or her drug addicted adult son whose life is a wreck.  At the same time she loathes those who could make their lives better but refuse.  While Diane appears to be a saint there is something in her past that she clearly regrets and has not gotten over how she wronged someone close to her.  This movie is something you don’t see very often in film, a serious treatment of a person from rural America as a realistic subject.  I really got the feeling that this was a real person going through some very troubling times, thanks to the very realistic and emotional performance by Mary Kay Place.  The film was aided by some outstanding performances by the supporting cast as well.  If you run across this film in your search for movies don’t pass this one up.

The Miseducation of Cameron Post

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The Miseducation of Cameron Post          4 stars

I recently saw The Miseducation of Cameron Post, a little seen movie from last year by director Desiree Akhavan and recipient of the Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize.  The film tackles the subject of gay conversion therapy for wayward teens in 1993, which was a prevalent thing then.  It stars Chloe Grace Moretz as Cameron Post, the teen girl caught making out with her female best friend who then gets sent off to a Christian gay conversion camp by her relatives.  The topic has been tackled before but feels real here as Moretz gives a convincing performance that is aided by two costars playing teens that she connects with at the camp.  The camp directors (John Gallagher Jr. and Jennifer Ehle) use half thought out methods on their subjects that seem to mainly make the kids feel badly about who they are.  (Each has to create an iceberg on paper that lists what they don’t like about themselves.)  One nice thing about it is how the film is not all heavy drama but includes several moments of comedy (making it different from Boy Erased also from last year).  Miseducation does show us the pain that these young people go through as they experience what can only be described as abuse.  One scene near the end involving a troubled teen is especially shocking.  See it if you can find it.  It is just too bad that so few people saw it when it hit the theaters.

Capernaum

Capernaum        4 ½ stars

Capernaum is a very intense depiction of life in a poverty stricken city in the Middle East by Lebanese director, Nadine Labaki.  The film was awarded the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.  It tells the story of a young boy of about ten or eleven, Zain, who leaves his negligent parents and lives on the streets to be eventually taken in by illegal Ethiopian immigrant Rahil, where he helps her take care of her baby.  The story is tragic and hard to watch at times as you see this young boy struggle to survive and see how this shapes his attitude toward the world.  The movie has a non-linear structure as it starts showing us a civil trial where Zain is suing his parents for the crime of allowing him to be born into such a terrible place.  It then shows us the background of the immense struggle the characters have to face each day.  The director used all non-professionals as actors in making the movie and allowed the actors to improvise some of the scenes.  The result is a compelling story and one that is hard to watch at many points.  I recommend it for those that can take in such a tragic but real story.

Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Can You Ever Forgive Me?            4 ½ stars

Last year’s fascinating “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” tells us the true story of Lee Israel, a down on her luck celebrity biographer who upon losing her job embarks on a new career of fabricating personal letters of notable writers like Dorothy Parker and Noel Coward.  Written by Nicole Holofcener, directed by Marielle Heller and starring usually comic actress Melissa McCarthy, this dark comedy drama has some of the best writing I have seen in years.  McCarthy plays Israel like a woman that you love to hate.  The character speaks with some very sharp in that comes from a place of rudeness and a bad temper like I have never seen.  The best scenes are those that she shares with her friend in crime Jack played by Richard Grant.  The two of them can trade insults like masters of the craft.  You get the feeling that McCarthy really is Israel including the fact that she is never really repentant about the crimes she has committed.  Melissa McCarthy received a well-deserved Best Actress Academy Award nomination for this one.  Good for her.  The movie also was nominated for best Adapted Screenplay as the movie is based on Lee Israel’s book.

Never Look Away

Never Look Away                                             4 ½ stars

Never Look Away is an epic storytelling of a young German artist who lived through the time of Nazi Germany and Communist controlled East Germany growing as an artist and developing his own special kind of painting.  Its three hour length covers a great span of time from the thirties to the sixties, starting with 10 year old Kurt witnessing a display of “degenerate art” and the horrors accompanying the Nazi’s waging war against the world.  After the war, Kurt, the young man (Tom Schilling) works as an artist for the Communist regime of East Germany producing art of the Socialist workers, but you can tell his talent calls for him to be something better.  Fortunately, he meets Ellie, a young pretty woman supplying new pencils to the artists.  Of course the two fall for each other having secret night rendezvous destined for disaster, given that her father is a former SS Nazi in hiding.  Eventually, the two of them escape to the West at the time of the wall going up where Kurt’s artistic career is advanced with the help of prominent artists of the growing movement of contemporary art.  The movie is at its best when we see Kurt being inspired to do his best work by the beauty of the world around him, but also influenced by some of the horror he has experienced from his younger days.  He develops a way of painting photographic images while blending them together in haunting black and white images.  The story is apparently loosely based on the life of real life artist Gerhard Richter, an admired painter of the 20th century.  Never Look Away was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards and is one that should not be missed.