Getting Tougher

There are not many movies in my DVD queues that Netflix has but the King County Library doesn’t. The KCL collection is truly extensive and readily available, except for the quite new ones. I have had Netflix mail me a few of those older ones that the library doesn’t have and I can see why the library didn’t bother. These are small independent movies that aren’t very good. It is getting tougher to find a good movie for mailing and I need to get tougher with my Netflix ratings of what I have watched, so I don’t get misled by the Netflix predictions. Barely marginal movies need to slip below 2.5 so I can tell Netflix “2 stars did not like”. Also, rather than just relying on the Netflix prediction, I need to read some of the member reviews to get a better idea of what kind of movie it is, and also take with a grain of salt any prediction based on a low number of member reviews (early raters are usually predisposed in favor of a movie, so they skew the early predictions higher).

This list of 16 movies includes 8 by streaming, and now that I am down to one at a time in the mail from Netflix, the streaming will predominate, though it could diminish again if I start getting movies from the library. For now I have arranged my streaming queue with the highest Netflix predictions at the head and I plan to mostly watch those first.

So again, here is what I have watched on DVD and streaming since I posted my last list. The ratings I give are on my own number system explained at the link on the sidebar. Those watched via Netflix instant view, include “Streamed” after the numeric rating.

Cautiva (Captive) – 2005 (3.6). Twenty years earlier, The Official Story very effectively told a tale of an Argentine woman who suspected that her adoptive baby had in fact been stolen from political victims during the “disappearances” of 1978. This newer movie is just as effective as ithe earlier film as it tells the story from the point of view of a teenage girl coming to realize the parents who raised her may have been participants in such a kidnapping. Well done all around, it is refreshing to have a movie with a script that moves the story along at just the right pace, direction that enhances the film without calling attention to itself and acting that is consistently authentic. This is another winner from Argentina.

Like Dandelion Dust – 2009 (3.2). Another spin on the “happy adoptive parents may lose their young child to the now supposedly reformed biological parents” story, this one is better than I expected and I was surprised to learn from watching the special features after the movie that it is based on a book by a Christian author. The film did refrain from expletives, but it was not religious in tone, in fact the one religious couple actually came across as a bit naïve. Nicely paced and well-acted, without leaving time to explore possible plot holes, the script came across as presenting a real situation that makes you think about what you would do if you were either one of the parents. The six year old boy was a good actor, and seeing Mira Sorvino in another very good performance makes one wish her filmography included better films. 

Bramwell – (Season One) 1995 (3.2) Streamed. Jemma Redgrave plays a young1895 British doctor who starts a free clinic in the East End of London, after being sacked by the male chauvinist doctor in charge of the traditional hospital. She lives with her widowed father, a respected doctor, and is helped with her clinic by a philanthropic widow, a respectful somewhat new male doctor, cranky nurse and capable porter. Though she is inexperienced, she is strong willed and independent, sometimes to a fault. The interesting general story arc is maintained and supplemented by episodic dramas. The image quality is somewhat poor, but the interesting stories make up for it.

The Diary of Anne Frank – 2009 (3.0) Streamed. This Masterpiece version of the story of Anne is quite personalized, narrated by her and presenting her as a precocious teen often so caught up in herself that she was a little hard to take. Though hiding out under the noses of the Nazis is highly dramatic, this movie does not indulge those dramatic aspects, nor does it explore much of the personal dynamics between the other people in hiding. All that is shown is basically what revolves around Anne from her point of view. Though perhaps much truer to the diary, this approach is also much narrower.

Hiding and Seeking – 2004 (3.0) Streamed. With the feel of a home movie, this documentary tells of an American Jewish man born in a WWII refugee camp who is concerned that his adult Orthodox sons in Jerusalem are too closed minded about Gentiles. He takes them to a small village in Poland where a Polish family hid their grandfather and his two brothers from the Nazis for 28 months, risking death themselves. After they find the place and even some of the people involved, one of the close minded ones opens a little, but their narrowness is almost too strong to overcome. The grandfather is too feeble to travel and is ashamed he never contacted the family after the war, and we learn that the silence was hard for the protectors to understand. There is no great profundity here, but some genuine humanity.

FDR – 1994 (3.0) Streamed. The story of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt is so inherently interesting that it would be hard to make a movie about them that was not good. This American Experience documentary did a fairly good job, but does not hold its age that well. Their strained personal relationship is followed through the years and his political career to the Presidency is quickly tracked. The Depression is touched and his relationship with Churchill is explored through WWII, but there is not a lot on the specifics of the politics at play through the Roosevelt years. There is so much material that any attempt like this to touch it all has to fall a little short of the immense possibilities.

Monsieur Hire – 1989 (3.0) Streamed. A middle aged voyeur is discovered by the woman at whom he peeps and then he is surprised when she shows interest in him. Meanwhile the voyeur is suspected in the death of another young woman. This very watchable French film will hold your attention and keep you guessing all the way to its very French ending.

Battle in Seattle – 2007 (2.9). The protests against the WTO meeting in Seattle in 1999 brought unprecedented attention to this international quasi-governmental puppet of multinational corporations. This movie about those protests does a good job of capturing the developing events, concentrating on the veteran peaceful protest organizers, one swat team member and his wife, and a TV reporter caught up in the violence that erupted after anarchists targeted the windows of chain stores and Seattle police efforts to disperse or arrest deteriorated into a police riot. WTO snubs of a representative of Doctors Without Borders seeking low cost medicines and of a delegate from an African nation trying to get more equity for smaller nations were appealing subplots that could have used for screen time, but overall the film conveyed an effective message of the resilience of protestors in the face of unsympathetic corporate greed.

La Mission – 2009 (2.8) Streamed. Benjamin Bratt plays a Mexican-American single dad ex-con now living a stable life as a San Francisco bus driver whose hobby is restoring cars. He is justifiably proud as his son is about to graduate from high school and head for college, but macho dad is shocked to learn his only child is gay. Written and directed by real life brother Peter Bratt and set in their hometown, this drama feels legitimate in showing the struggle of the father to deal with his homophobia, though sometimes close ups of him just thinking uncomfortably slow the pace. There is no pat plot formula here, and that seems more real.

Raising Victor Vargas – 2002 (2.8) Streamed. This movie starts amateurish, crude and awkward as it show Latino teens in a high rise ghetto but then shifts to become a story of the tensions in a family consisting of a devoutly Catholic Dominican refugee grandmother trying to raise three disparate teenagers. The crudity thankfully diminishes, the amateurism assumes a sort of charm and the awkwardness proves honest, but maybe just a little too late.

A Tale of Springtime – 1990 (2.8) Streamed. This typical Eric Rohmer French talkie starts with several minutes without a word spoken, boring, perhaps on purpose. But soon the chats begin, primarily between two women, a high school philosophy teacher and a younger girl who meet at a party and offer each other companionship.  They talk their way through several venues and cross paths with the girl’s divorced father and his young girlfriend. Not a lot happens, as everyone seems to be mulling their situation and their next move, but there are some reasonably interesting conversations. Too bad the bottom half of the Netflix streamed subtitles are cut off – a problem I just reported.

Badlands – 1973 (2.8). Critic favorite Terrence Malick chose this story of a young senseless killer and his teenage girlfriend for his first movie. Despite the disclaimer, the Charles Starkweather case is the obvious source. Incredibly young Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek star along with the open Midwest country that Malick delights in showing. Narrated by the girl, the story is naively deadly, and the film captures that well and holds its age technically, though the shock in 1973 of showing such murders, like the shock over Starkweather in the 1950s, has been greatly reduced by all the screen and real world murders that have occurred since then.

It’s Kind of a Funny Story – 2010 (2.7). This movie about a teenage boy who feels pressure from his parents to succeed in a school for very advanced students, while at the same time struggling with the self-esteem issues and bursting hormones of adolescence is pretty slow starting. When he goes to the emergency room for suicidal feelings, he gets admitted for psych evaluation and finds that all teenagers are being sent to the adult psych ward while the teen ward is under renovation. There are some characters and relationships of interest here, but they don’t show up soon enough and they never get very deep. Add a few mild laughs and a marginal film develops.

Room 666 – 1982 (2.7). This 45 minute documentary was filmed in 1982 in a hotel room at Cannes during the film festival. Wim Wenders set up a camera and 16 directors took turns going to the room and turning the camera on for 11 minutes while they talked about the future of the cinema. Wenders heavily edited the content and years later added a commentary track for the DVD. Only a few of the directors are well known and only a few of the comments are very interesting, but the film does provide a time capsule.

Lebanon, PA – 2010 (2.4). Lots of new people were involved in this indie drama about a 35 year old ad man who goes to a small town in Pennsylvania to pick up the pieces of the life of his estranged father who died suddenly. In the process, he begins to re-evaluate his own life. Uneven, poorly paced and not well fit together, portions of the story had potential, but it never quite developed as the characters seemed like they should be interesting but never quite became fully real. The script left too much of the back stories of the characters for too late in the movie, causing unnecessary guessing about motivations. The most appealing acting and story line was about a problem facing the man’s 17 year old cousin, well played by newcomer Rachel Kitson.

Fly Away – 2011 (2.1). I made the mistake of relying on a Netflix prediction based on a low number of member ratings when I chose this movie about a teenage girl with severe autism and her mother struggling to cope with her. An independent film put together by an all women venture, the film obviously meant well in trying to show how hard the task was for the mother, but the point was belabored with scene after scene of a girl who was really hard to take and a mother who was stubborn and inflexible in not seeing that her daughter needed to be placed where she could get better care. Add to that a cloying man who all but stalks the mother in his total acceptance of the daughter and a final delivery to an idyllic institution and you have a film that really missed its mark.