GOOD LITTLE KNOWN MOVIES

                                                                Part 5

As I write this, there is once again hope on the horizon that things will get better. Almost everyone is still hunkered down at home. Movie theaters are still a distant memory. Anyway, for that and other reasons, I offer herewith another batch of movies culled from the recent past by Mr. Movie. Again, these didn’t make much of a splash, but I thought they were pretty good. 

Still Walking (2009) is a drama about a family with a troubled past. There is a rather unbending patriarch, a mother who tries to hold everything together, grandchildren who are not as well behaved as they should be, and children tired of the old ways. There is a gaping hole left by a child who died early, and the grief-stricken young man who desperately wants to atone. At first the family seems strangely oblivious to the situation. But things change, slowly, in a Japanese way.  

Premium Rush (2012) stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a bicycle delivery guy in New York City. It is worth watching for the bike riding alone. Watching him zoom through impossible traffic is, well, a rush. He is given an envelope to deliver that contains a ticket from China to the USA for relatives of his friend. The plot thickens when a dishonest cop tries to steal the envelope. Just go with it. 

Okay, I know that Paddington (2014) is ostensibly a kid’s movie. But you know what? A good movie is a good movie! The stuffed bear from “Darkest Peru,” who speaks and understands English, is adopted by a normal British family. He of course knows nothing about modern society. Highjinks ensue. This charming film features Sally Hawkins, Hugh Bonneville (His Lordship on Downton Abbey!), Julie Walters, Jim Broadbent and an absolutely adorable bear. The 2017 sequel is just as good!

If Helen Mirren has ever given a bad performance I have yet to see it. She pretty well carries Woman In Gold (2015), the true story of Austrian emigre Maria Altman. Ms. Altman is an elderly American who fled the Nazis. The Germans looted art works by the hundreds, including a portrait of Ms. Altman’s aunt which had hung in her Vienna home. She discovers that it is now hanging in an Austrian museum and sets out to get it back. She employs Randol Schoenberg, the grandson of her friends and a very green attorney. I disagree with many critics that Ryan Reynolds is over his head as the lawyer. I thought he was just fine.

If you like quirky titles, you just can’t top The One-Hundred Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window And Disappeared (2015). And this delightful fantasy delivers all the fun you hoped for. Allan Karlson loathes the retirement home where he lives. When he learns the home is planning a party celebrating his 100th birthday he wants nothing to do with it. So he climbs out a window and escapes. A drug dealer asks him to hold a suitcase for him while he visits the facilities. A little absent-minded, Allan gets on his bus with the suitcase and is pursued by nasty thugs and the police. In the meantime, he has various hilarious adventures involving the drug money, and an elephant. 

All of the movies in this article are available on DVD . All are for grown-ups.

                                                           COUNTRY SINGERS

Honky-tonk women, faithless men, broken hearts, momma, trucks- country music touches the inner core of many. Country singer biographies is a genre that Hollywood has done extremely well.   

Walk The Line (2005) is one of the best.  Joaquin Phoenix (Johnny Cash) and Reese Witherspoon (June Carter Cash) did their own singing, and are really good at it. Ten minutes in the actors become the singers they’re playing.  That June saved Johnny from sinking into oblivion from drugs and alcohol is well known, and the movie gets it right. The story is a good one and the music is great.

The film that is perhaps the high watermark of this field is Coal Miner’s Daughter (1980). Sissy Spacek (who does her own singing) is simply marvelous as Tammy Wynette, and Tommy Lee Jones does a good job as her husband and manager. Her meteoric rise from coal-mine poverty to queen of the country stars is told accurately and well.

Sweet Dreams (1985), with Jessica Lange as Patsy Cline, is a step slower but still quite good. The dependable Ed Harris is just fine as her ne’er-do-well husband, and little-known Ann Wedgeworth is superb as her mom. That’s Patsy singing and Jessica lip-synching in this one. 

David Carradine can sing up a storm (he starred in the Broadway hit Will Rogers Follies) and does so as legendary Woody Guthrie in Bound For Glory (1976). Woody’s music is very close to the heart and soul of America..He travels the land singing and fighting for the underdog. “This Land Is Your Land” will always be remembered and sung with pride. This movie is gloriously photographed by Haskel Wexler. 

The quintessential country singer is, of course, Elvis. Though I guess you can’t really put him in the country (or any) category box. Anyway, to date, nobody has made the defining biopic but it’s not too late. This Is Elvis (1981) isn’t even close; it is more exploitational than entertaining OR true. There are several others, none of which seems to me to get it right. 

I’m throwing in a film about a country singer who never was because Robert Duvall’s performance in Tender Mercies (1983) is about as good as it gets. It’s not about a real life, but it oughta be!

All of the movies in this column are available on video and DVD. All are fine for 12 and up. 

                                                                 JANE EYRE

        A devoted fan asked for a column about Jane Eyre movies. His favorite book and story are still beloved by thousands more than 170 years after it was published. There are around seven movies and just as many TV series varying in their faithfulness to the book and in their merit. What to do, what to do? Fear not, Mr. Movie is here for you. 

I’ll start at the top of the line with my own personal favorite. The 2011 version with Michael Fassbender as Rochester and Mia Wasikowska as a perfect Jane is just good enough to eat. Jane’s speech to Rochester about how she is plain and ignored but has deep feelings is just absolutely wonderful. Mia is plain. There’s nothing cute or pretty about her and that is just the way Jane is presented in the book. Fassbender is perfectly dark and brooding, yet very sympathetic when misfortune befalls him. We also have the iconic Judi Dench as Mrs. Fairfax, the kindly housekeeper at Thornfield. 

And speaking of icons, the 1934 version features Orson Welles as Rochester. And of course he pulls off this difficult part with aplomb. I think Joan Fontaine is way too pretty to be a convincing Jane, but the backgrounds in this one are spot on. Lowood, the dreadful school where Jane was a student and later a teacher, feels gloomy and sad. And Rochester’s manor, Thornfield, immediately feels dark and full of awful secrets. (And of course, it is both). 

I also like the 1996 version with Anna Paquin as Jane as a spirited child that awful things happen to. Charlotte Gainsborough is quite fine as the adult Jane and William Hurt is better as Rochester than you thought he would be. In this one, Jane’s awareness that as a poor female orphan she can’t expect much from the world is very much in keeping with the book. Charlotte Bronte’s somewhat tacked-on happy ending is appropriately muted.

I must mention a made for TV series which surfaced in 1983. It had Timothy Dalton (yep, one of the James Bonds) and a pretty much unknown Zelah Clark. This one is 11 episodes long and as faithful to the book as it could possibly be. You can find this series, but you might have to buy it. I can’t find a free one anywhere. 

Some other Jane Eyre versions worth a look include the 1970 with George C. Scott and Susannah York, and a 1997 made for TV version with Ciarin Hinds as Rochester and Samantha Morton as Jane. Morton is a chameleon-like actor anyway, who seems to be able to look as pretty or as plain as the material requires.

Trivia tidbit: Charlotte Bronte had to write under an assumed (male) name to get this thing published. Yep, because of course girls couldn’t write.  So- Currer Bell was the pen name of Ms. Bronte.  

The films in this article are most available as set out in the text. You can find some nice summaries of the story on Wikipedia. There isn’t anything in any of these that would appeal to children. Adults only, please. 

                                                                  JANE POWELL

        If you’re a certain age you may well remember Jane Powell as the chirpy blonde  star of very early MGM musicals. She was a huge hit in the 40's and 50's and she left us recently at the good old age of 92. She was discovered by Hollywood because of her fantastic coloratura soprano voice and girl-next-door good looks. And if you don’t remember, or would like to renew acquaintances, you can see any of her movies through the magic of modern technology. 

Ms. Powell started her career in corny black and white movies with United Artists. Song of the Open Road (1944) is mainly a showcase for her singing, In Delightfully Dangerous (1945) she is a music student who thinks her stripper sister is a Broadway star. Don’t ask.

Things took a really good turn for her career when MGM signed her and started featuring her in ok films. She is the title character in A Date With Judy (1948), charming as a teen mistakenly thinking her Dad is having an affair. In Nancy Goes To Rio (1950) she plays a daughter competing with her own mother (Ann Sothern) both for the same man and for the same part in a play. 

Her big break-out part was on the horizon. MGM was making a musical for Fred Astaire with a questionable  plot about an American brother and sister going to London for Princess Elizabeth’s wedding. To play opposite Astaire they wanted June Allyson (not hired because pregnant) or Judy Garland (ill at the time). They settled on Ms. Powell and had themselves a huge hit. The film contains some of Astaire’s best dance numbers, and some in which Ms. Powell holds her own with the master. Royal Wedding (1951) is still just loads of fun despite its age (70!) 

Three years later Jane Powell knocked it out of the park again opposite Howard Keel in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954). She is Milly, the demure answer to Keel and his six boisterous brothers. She tries to teach the roughnecks how to dance politely with a girl in the song Goin’ Courtin’ . The film’s highlight is the incredibly athletic dancing of the brothers. OK, this film is really sexist. Just get over it and enjoy the music and dancing.

Although Ms. Powell made several more films, Seven Brides was her cinema peak. The Girl Most Likely (1957) is a good enough musical remake of the 1941 film Tom, Dick and Harry. She somehow manages to be engaged to three guys at the same time. 

She actually retired from making films at 29. However, she went on to make lots of TV shows. And she had a nice second career on the Broadway stage, appearing in Carousel, Oklahoma!, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music and many more. 

All of the movies in this article are available on DVD. All are fine for all ages.

  

                                                         THE HOLOCAUST

A very good documentary on American Movie Channel  made the point that Hollywood really danced around the issue of the Holocaust for many years, a situation made additionally strange by the large number of Jews working in the film industry. Did they feel it was just too big? Too rough? Early films touching on the subject even use the term “non-Aryan”, which seems impossibly prissy. In any event, once it got going, Hollywood has done itself proud on what is arguably the biggest human drama of them all.

The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) is the ineffably sweet story of a young Jewish girl hiding out in an apartment owned by sympathetic Dutch gentile friends. Its impact remains strong, but it really only hints at the horrors of the Nazi regime. 

Interestingly, it was a TV mini-series that was the first film to really tackle the subject. Aptly titled The Holocaust (1978), it was strong stuff indeed. Notice that it took more thanr 40 years to face the horror head-on. The film stars Meryl Streep, Fritz Weaver, Ian Holm and Michael Moriarity. It was many people’s first realistic look at The Final Solution. 

Ms. Streep also appears as the title character in the heart-breaking Sophie’s Choice (1982). Kevin Kline and Peter McNichol are fine as her lover and a friend, but it is Ms. Streep’s Oscar-winning performance that carries this wonderful, horrible movie. The choice indicated by the title is a capsule of the Nazi inhumanity. To say more gives too much away. 

        A much more upbeat, uplifting film is Steven Spielberg’s towering Schindler’s List (1993), which won every award in sight. Liam Neeson is the title character, a gentile German businessman who single-handedly saves hundreds of Jews from the Nazi meatgrinder. The casual horror of some of the scenes is beyond appalling.  

Roman Polanski’s The Pianist (2002) is a more personal look at the Holocaust. Adrien Brody, in an Oscar-winning performance, is a world-class Polish concert pianist forced to hide out from the Nazis for the entire duration of World War II. He is saved by luck and the kindness of strangers, most notably a German officer!

Au Revoir, Les Enfants  (Good-Bye to the Children; 1987) is a heart-rending story that Director Louis Malle just had to make because it really happened in his life. His Catholic school in France decided to conceal several Jewish boys, risking the lives of everyone anywhere around.

Denial (2016) is a fascinating film about Holocaust denier David Irving  ( a wonderfully hateful Timothy Spall) suing American author Deborah Lipstadt (Rachel Weisz) for libel in England. Under British law, Ms Lipstadt as the defendant has the burden of proof. So her legal team must convince the court that the Holocaust was indeed real, not fictionalized as Irving claims. 

Shoah (1985) at 566 minutes is just way too long for everyone except true Holocaust fanatics.  

All of the films in this article are available on DVD. And all are definitely for adults only.