Becoming Santa

When two shows from the same year are given the same score on this blog, I think the previously expressed protocol says they should be listed in alphabetical order, which is why Becoming Santa tops this list. And anyway, it is the holiday season. Ho Ho Ho and away we go.

Here is what I have watched since I posted my last list. [The ratings I give are on my own number system which is explained at the link on the sidebar].

Becoming Santa -2011 (3.0). A pleasant surprise, this well-made documentary about a forty something man with no family left, shows how he decides to spend the holiday season volunteering his time as a Santa Claus and then gets professional training from a Santa Claus school and starts becoming the Santa man. In the course of the film, we enjoy the sincerity, gentle humor and marginally cynical personality of our hero as he has his costume made, selects and attends the school, meets other Santas and spends a holiday season at various events as Santa Claus. The history of the Santa tradition is documented and the meaning of the Santa spirit for adults and children is shown in touching ways.

Boardwalk Empire (Season Two) – 2011 (3.0).  The Prohibition Era takeoff on The Sopranos continues with a few new characters, escalated violence, loss [euphemism] of some old characters and the prosecutorial process starting to zero in on Atlantic City. Some of the freshness is off the series, but the story moves along and makes it difficult not to grit out the violence and start season three when it comes to DVD, just to see what happens next.

A Separation – 2009 (2.9). Winner of the Best Foreign Film Oscar, this Iranian drama tells the story of a contemporary couple with a sixth grade daughter. They live with the man’s father, who has Alzheimers, but the woman wants to leave Iran to find a better life for their daughter. The man will not leave his father and refuses to let the daughter go, so they engage the legal system to get a separation and the woman goes to live with her parents. Desperately seeking a caregiver to watch his father, the man quickly hires a woman in-law of a friend of his wife, but she is incompetent and comes with her own problems and those of her husband. Almost like a documentary, we follow these people without music as they struggle with their marriage, the education plans for their daughter, the care of the father and the additional problems brought on by the caregiver and her husband. Along the way we see different ways in which moral decisions can be approached, religiously, ethically and by the civil law system.

Doc Martin (Season Four) – 2009 (2.9). The series perks up as the story arc moves along with Doc working on his hemophobia, struggling with his newly complicated relationship with Louisa, considering a move back to London and being pursued by an old flame.

The Dust Bowl – 2012 (2.8). On PBS from Ken Burns, an interesting subject told in the standard Burns fashion, with interviewees recalling the experience from childhood memories. Again, interweaving the stories of several people is a bit confusing and the anecdotes get repetitious, especially without any technical expert interviewees or enough in the way of historical context. This should have been cut down to two hours from four, or the extra time could have been given to providing more general information and less survivor interviews.

The Women on the 6^th Floor – 2010 (2.8). Set in Paris in the 1960s, this French film had potential for development of the initial story about a stuffy older businessman married to an insecure country girl turned socialite, and the disconnect with the Spanish maids who live upstairs [the reverse of the English Upstairs Downstairs] in the man’s ancestral home in an old apartment house [condo type]. The comedy was true to life in showing the different lifestyles. Unfortunately, the story took a turn for the worse when it veered off to follow the man’s romantic interest in his maid.

Patrik, Age 1.5 – 2008 (2.8). A gay couple think they are getting a one and a half year old boy to adopt in this Swedish movie, but the boy is really a teenager of 15. The men, who are adapting to living in their new hetero neighborhood, have trouble in their relationship and the boy is homophobic which adds to the problems. Well-acted and decently directed, the film starts a little slow but has some humor, sadness and enough drama to keep its audience.

The Pope’s Toilet – 2008 (2.8).  Based on the true story of a 1988 visit by the Pope to a small Uruguayan town on the border with Brazil,this Spanish language film centers on a poor man who smuggles goods over the border by bicycle in return for payment by competing corrupt smuggling lords. The battle between competing lords often catches the bicyclists in the middle and they lose the goods and the money they were to make. The man has a sympathetic wife and a teen daughter who wants to study to be a journalist. The poor villagers prepare sausages and other food to sell to pilgrims, especially better off Brazilians, who will come to see the Pope, and our hero gets the bright idea to build a public toilet and charge for its use. From the tile one might think this is a broad comedy, but it is actually a fairly gritty drama of these poor villagers and of the man and his relationship to his wife and daughter.

Alice – 1990 (2.8). A lesser film written and directed by Woody Allen, this tells of a devout Catholic girl who married a rich man and lives the life of a spoiled wife and mother of a young pampered child. Complaining of yet another ache, she is referred to an eccentric Chinese herbalist who identifies her problem as an unsatisfied heart for which he prescribes a succession of special herbs that introduce a fantasy element as she dabbles with an affair, re-evaluates her marriage and decides what she wants to do with the rest of her life. Not too heavy and not too light, this movie is watchable but ultimately does not have much to say.

Doc Martin (Season Three) – 2007 (2.8). Dropping off a little more, this season sees a new policeman with even more quirks, a silly detour with Auntie Joan, no sensitivity training for the Doc, the same disproportionate amount of medical emergencies and a continuation of the awkward relationship between the Doc and Louisa, which cools and then warms and then might be headed for really serious turf.

Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story – 2009 (2.7). Made for cable TV, this earnest biopic tells the true story of an African-American boy who overcame tremendous obstacles to finally realize near in middle school that he was actually smart and could learn. He went on to become a world renowned pediatric neurosurgeon, pioneering many wonderful surgeries. Trying to cover all personal and professional stages of such a life in a straightforward 90 minutes is a scriptwriting challenge, and this movie, by trying to cover some of all the stages, inevitably had difficulty finding the right balance of time to spend at the various life stages. It probably would have been better to concentrate on his handling of a major case in the impending prime of his career, with flashbacks for the relevant back story telling us how he got where he did.

A Series of Series

Catching up on a season or two of a TV series takes time and explains the delay in posting this movie list, which includes a trio of series, the silent Oscar winner, an early talkie classic and a few uninspiring  fill-ins.

Here is what I have watched since I posted my last list. [The ratings I give are on my own number system which is explained at the link on the sidebar].

Modern Family (Season Two) – 2010 (3.1). A good TV series should get better in the second season, after the characters have become familiar to the audience and the writers can get deeper into the nuances and development of their personalities. Modern Family met this test and was not only funnier but more genuine feeling about the relationships between the various family members. As explained in one of the special features, the producers have limited the use of guest stars so as not to distract from the main characters, which is a good idea when the show has a diverse ensemble already.

Upstairs Downstairs – 2010 and 2012 (3.0). Trying to follow up on the classic series from decades past, this nine episode version shown on PBS has a new family taking over the abandoned residence and hiring staff to set up the household. Once again, the upstairs Lord is part of the elite class and the servants below are mere underlings, yet all have their own stories which sometimes intermingle. There seems to be an inordinate amount of famous persons in history passing through the episodes and much less time spent developing the characters that was done in the original. There is probably more pressure on the modern producers to grab the audience with plot than there was in the days of the original, and the new series may not have succeeded sufficiently to enable a third season. The story line covered the time from 1936 to the beginning of the war with Germany, so it would be interesting to see what happens to the characters during the war.

Modern Family (Season One) – 2009 (2.9). Three diverse branches of an eccentric family generate lots of laughs with their quirks and foibles as they struggle with their issues, but always manage to end up on a positive note of family unity. I haven’t watched situation comedy TV for years, but the praise for this series induced me to give it a try. I almost bailed out after a few episodes because it seemed repetitious, but it was funny enough where I watched the whole season.

Doc Martin (Season Two) – 2005 (2.9). The local eccentrics lose some of their freshness in the second season and the unsettled relationship of the Doc and school teacher starts to feel a little stale, but then there are visits from the Doc’s parents and the teacher’s  father that shed light on the back story and make both characters more sympathetic. We also get more of a connection with the personal life of the village policeman and the new receptionist. Doc’s brusque way with patients leads to an inquiry and the possibility he may undergo sensitivity training.

The Artist – 2011 (2.8). I have seen many silent movies through the years and read a fair amount about the history of film making during those early years, so The Artist was not anything new to me. The fact that such a film was made in this day and age was a surprise, but the fact that Hollywood embraced it at the Oscars was not. For Hollywood, watching the film was like a nostalgic look at favorite old home movies. The film has done reasonably well at the box office, I am not surprised that it was not a chart topper, because general audiences would not fully appreciate the quality of this nostalgic tribute to the silent screen.

The Girl on the Bridge – 1999 (2.8). French director Patrice Leconte makes movies in which the characters talk a lot, yet they always seem to be moving along, maybe without much conventional story but I always find the talk and story appealing enough to hold my interest. This one is a little quirky as a young girl who can’t say no to men is talked out of a suicidal bridge jump by a knife thrower in need of a new target. While following them on this new partnership, we are invited to contemplate what makes for a lasting hookup and what role luck plays in our lives.

The Blue Angel (German Version) – 1930 (2.8). At first this first German sound classic seems like just a vehicle to show Marlene Deitrich in garters, but once the prudish professor played by Emil Jannings becomes smitten with the nightclub entertainer we realize it it a movie about his downfall. Deitrich is so appealing as the sweet but wise girl he falls for and then she is so appalling as the wife who humiliates him. It is easy to see why she became a star.

A Voyage Round My Father – 1984 (2.7). The reason to watch this Brit TV movie is to see Laurence Olivier in the twilight of his career showing his acting chops playing the self-centered blind barrister father of John Mortimer (creator of Rumpole of the Bailey), on whose memoir the movie is based.

Rango – 2011 (2.6). This clever PG rated animated take-off on spaghetti westerns includes lots of classic cinema related homages all done with high quality animation, but the story itself was not that interesting and the cleverness never seemed to jell into anything memorable.

The Return – 2003 (2.4). The outdoor locations in this Russian movie were scenic in a way, yet ultimately bleak, and the same could be said for the script. Two sons, maybe 15 and 12, who never knew their father, come home one day to find he has suddenly appeared from a 12 year unexplained absence. The older boy wants to be thrilled by the prodigal father, but the younger one wants answers. The father takes them on a fishing trip to a remote island and acts like a survivalist military instructor, though there is a slight undercurrent of wanting to be a loving dad but not having the slightest idea of how to do it. Good acting and direction can’t make up for a story that takes almost two hours to tell us practically nothing.

This and That

More of the 2011 Oscar nominees have been coming in from the library, as has Larry David’s CYE, Jack Nicholson in About Schmidt (of which I was reminded by a retirement book I read), and the first season of Boardwalk Empire from HBO. Via Netflix streaming I finished WWII with Foyle and watched some National Geographic shows on Africa before their stream expired.

Boardwalk Empire is a bit in the vein of The Wire, but not quite in the same league. The actor who played Omar in The Wire is what led me to Empire, but his role so far is much smaller in Boardwalk.

Here is what I have watched since I posted my last list. [The ratings I give are on my own number system which is explained at the link on the sidebar].

Boardwalk Empire (Season One) – 2010 (3.2). Based on true characters from the early days of Prohibition, this series centers on the Republican Boss of Atlantic City corruption and also tracks the intertwining stories of his cronies, lovers, fellow politicos, gangsters and Revenue agents. CGI enhanced sets enhance high production values and the story follows a definite arc that maintains and increases interest. Being from HBO, there is the requisite graphic violence, nudity and profanity, though most of it is appropriate to the story.

Foyle’s War – (Season Six) 2010 (3.1). As the War has ended, the series concludes with Foyle finally officially retired, but still solving War related crimes. His sergeant carries on as a new detective in a neighboring jurisdiction, his driver gets engaged and as Foyle heads for America, we learn that his family may be bigger than we thought, even as his RAF son seems to have disappeared from the story.

Foyle’s War - (Season Five) 2008 (3.1). Resigning for good becomes a problem for Foyle as the War winds down, but crime continues. Much of the personal story arc is basically abandoned but the War related mystery heart of the series centered on Foyle continues.

About Schmidt – 2002 (3.1). After retirement, Omaha actuary Warren Schmidt (Jack Nicholson) realizes in his loneliness that he is bored and depressed and makes a few changes in his life, about which he writes to his six year old foster child in Tanzania using language as if he were writing an adult. His efforts to get along better with his only child, a daughter in Denver, who is about to marry a man Warren believes is wholly unsuitable, are frustrating. Honest in its portrayal of the boring platitudes that fill our lives, the film manages to be properly paced and interesting, at least to men of a certain age like me.

Foyle’s War – (Season Four) 2006 (3). The series seems to slip a little, as the Yanks show up to help fight the War, offering some new material in the first episode, but the other three don’t offer much new about life on the home front. Interesting story arc lines are dropped as Foyle’s son is gone and barely mentioned, the hint of Foyle’s openness to love is not followed, his driver has a melodramatic brush with death by a mysterious disease and the sergeant’s domestic quandary is brought to a swift end. Tired of meddling from incompetent superiors, Foyle considers resigning.

Curb Your Enthusiasm (Season Eight) – 2011 (2.9).Pretty much the same with some episodes filmed in NYC, with still too much profanity but the same quirky humor. Larry David says he’ll know when it is time to call it quits. We’ll see.

Death and the Civil War – 2012 (2.8). Using techniques like those of Ken Burns, this American Experience PBS documentary tells how the US Civil War changed many attitudes toward death and toward the role of government, all brought about by the massive numbers of men killed in the battles, the inability of the military and the communities near the battlefields to deal with the bodies, the push of dedicated individuals to get the Federal government involved in solving the problem and the assumption by the Federal government of this new responsibility. An interesting subject, though morbid, gets a straightforward but somewhat pedantic treatment.

The Descendants – 2011 (2.8). This movie is a slow starter with characters of no particular appeal, but staying with it allows the relationships to grow a little. There is not a lot of drama in the plot until almost the very end as final goodbyes are said to the woman who has been taken off life support and is about to die. The Hawaii setting and subplot about selling ancestral land to developers are apparently intended to give a laid back contrast to the tension of the story, but they are not integral and maybe even distract from the central story.

The Iron Lady -2011 (2.8). Better than expected, this biopic of the political career and later years of Margaret Thatcher covered the main events by flashbacks, while using the hallucinatory character of her deceased husband for gentle continuity. The performance by Meryl Streep was Oscar worthy without being over played or seeming too virtuoso. The script did not offer much more on her personal life or give any context to her politics, but Thatcher did not seem to have a personal life of much interest and her hard-nosed conservative politics seemed to ignore context anyway.

Africa: Desert Odyssey – 2001 (2.8). This National Geographic series episode followed a nine year old boy taking his first six month camel journey through the Sahara with the men of his community who trade  salt for other goods. The journey to get the salt covered most of the episode, while the trading for other goods and return home were given very little screen time.

Africa: Leopards of Zanzibar – 2001 (2.8). Part of a National Geographic seven part series, this movie tells of young divers who make their living fishing for octopus and lobster in the beautiful waters off their island home, but whose passion is their amateur soccer team, the Leopards. After winning the island championship on fields of sand, the team raises the money for a trip to Dar-es-Salam on the mainland to play in a tournament in a grand stadium with grass turf.

Africa: Treasures of the South – 2001 (2.8). This National Geographic series episode follows various black people in South Africa, a young woman who is the first female to work in the gold mines where she is an explosives expert, three elderly bush sisters who are allowed to return to their ancestral home which is now on a game preserve, an old miner who wants to leave the mines in order to spend all his time with his family in his home village, and young women employed in rugged mountains cutting down non-native pine trees which endanger beautiful native flowering plants.

Africa: Voices of the Forest – 2001 (2.8). This National Geographic series episode told of a Baka (Pygmy) village whose people were relocated to the edge of their indigenous rain forest in Cameroon and the problems they encounter hunting for food and dealing with loggers cutting down valuable hardwood trees.

Hugo – 2011 (2.7). Wonderful sets, excellent cinematography, fine direction, but another poor script. According to the special feature, the book on which this movie is based was quite extensive and the script was “streamlined”, or more probably bowdlerized. The role of the station inspector was expanded to a point of over absurdity. After a fantastically cinematic opening sequence the movie quickly slows down and meanders before eventually working its way around to revealing the quest of the young protagonists and then morphs into homage of a pioneer French filmmaker. The true story of the filmmaker would make a good biopic, but Martin Scorcese directed kids and dogs for the first time in order to make a movie his young daughter would be able to see. Seeing the movie in 3-D would make it even more stunning visually, but could not improve the script.

Albert Nobbs – 2011 (2.2). Oh no, another tour de force acting job in a movie where the star co-produced and co-wrote, but thankfully did not direct. What a new story, a woman pretending to be a man in order to gain employment. Why an actress playing a man of limited emotions is supposedly so challenging is hard to fathom. This movie is absolutely boring for the first half and then barely tolerable as a wisp of a story finally starts to emerge just in time to end in a whimper.

Newer Weaklings

 After an August spent mostly outdoors, I have started screening some of the 2011 award nominees which are now coming from the library and confirmed what I expected – it was a lean year. Scripts seem to be the weak link. Production values are high, acting is not a problem and direction is adequate, but a movie cannot rise above a poor screenplay. These movies are often too lengthy, probably because the editors couldn’t rearrange and snip an inherently bad script into something better, so they just left it alone. Maybe another manifestation of the problem is the overuse of established actors in cameo and bit parts. Their appearance is distracting from the story, and the money paid for the use of their name in marketing the film would have been better spent paying some good writers to come up with a better script. Ironically, as scriptwriting classes and software have expanded, scripts seem to have worsened.

Here is what I have watched since I posted my last list. [The ratings I give are on my own number system which is explained at the link on the sidebar].

This Is What Democracy Looks Like – 2000 (3.3). Using footage from scores of people who filmed in the streets during the 1999 demonstrations against the WTO at their meeting in Seattle, and integrating subsequent interviews with participants and organizers, this documentary was put together by local media activists and does an inspiring job of presenting what is obviously a more genuine telling of what happened than what was shown by the mainstream media. The prospect that this would become a model for labor, environmentalists and social activists to unite in effective opposition to corporate tyranny enabled by corrupt or incompetent government is tremendously heartening. The reality that it has not yet happened is profoundly disappointing. The special feature interviews with Noam Chomsky and Vandana Shiva are lucid and especially informative. You can watch the movie on line at YouTube.

Foyle’s War – (Seasons One and Two) 2003 (3.2). This British mystery series is stylish as expected and covers an interesting time, the early days of WWII on the home front, when emotions are high and there is fear of a German invasion. Our widowed police detective has to cover murders on the home front while intermeshing with war related matters. The story arc includes his son who is a young RAF pilot, his sergeant who is a disabled war vet and his driver who is a young woman in military service. The stories involve new crimes each episode and all take their time to develop before a clever solution is found perhaps a bit too rapidly to give the viewer a chance to figure it out, especially since the clever police always seem to have a little more information than we do. 

Foyle’s War – (Season Three) 2004 (3.2). The mystery aspects of the series continue in the same vein, but with each episode we are learning about new ways that people coped with and capitalized on (legally and criminally) what took place on the home front in the early stages of the war. The story arc involving the son and the female driver heats up and there is a hint of Foyle opening up to the possibility of an interesting woman coming into his life.

Midnight in Paris – 2011 (2.9). Owen Wilson takes over the Woody Allen role while Woody just directs this romantic comedy about an American writer engaged to the wrong woman, in which the couple visits Paris with her parents and the man ends up wandering around on his own and being taken back in time to Paris of the 20s, where he interfaces with the creative celebrities and meets a woman with whom he is a better match. Despite winning the screenplay Academy Award, the script is nothing new, except for one twist that comes before the predictable ending. The Beauty of Paris is well captured by the cinematography, the celebrity characters are fun and entertaining and the overall experience of the movie is quite pleasing.

The Help – 2011 (2.8). This movie about the struggles of African-American domestics in 1960s Mississippi seems like it was rushed into production to capitalize on the popularity of the novel on which it is based and the presence of a President Obama in the White House. The subject is certainly worthwhile and interesting but for all the extra length of the film there is an uneven feeling that important things were shorted while trivial received too much time. The family relationships of the domestics with their own children and with the men at home or in their own community were barely shown. In fact the role of white men was seriously downplayed, including the omission of scenes of sexual harassment and physical intimidation. The script had no dramatic flow beyond the question of when other domestics would agree to tell their stories to the young white woman who was writing a book about domestics. Some of the problems with the script can probably be traced back to the novel and some are from the adaptation which was done by the director, a rather inexperienced childhood friend of the novelist. The infamous chocolate pie incident was in “bad taste” [pun intended].That the movie is passable is due to the inherent appeal of the domestics themselves and of the fine performances by the actresses who portrayed them.

Moneyball – 2011 (2.7). Using computer generated analysis to identify undervalued baseball players enabled General Manager Billy Beane of the Oakland team to build a top team with a bottom level budget. This story was told in a very good non-fiction book which I enjoyed reading and it could have made an equally interesting documentary. Unfortunately the choice was made to film it as an overlong drama, and it does not work very well. The statistical analysis at the heart of the story is glossed over in the script, but is not replaced by anything dramatic. The significant back story of Beane’s unexpected failure as a player is only touched on piecemeal. The conflict with the on field manager falls flat. Beane’s personal life is barely touched except for a few cloying scenes with his daughter. The resuscitated players, the old scouts, the computer expert and every other character seem to have no personal stories, except for the one old All Star player in the twilight who Beane asks to become the leader in one brief scene and then who then tries to offer leader type encouragement to another player in another brief encounter. Read the book.

Monsieur Lazhar – 2011 (2.7). Surprisingly, a one man play is the basis for this foreign Oscar nominee French Canadian piece about an Algerian immigrant who takes over as teacher for an upper elementary school class whose teacher has committed suicide. The movie takes place in and about the school and in other locations, so it never feels stage bound. The acting is good and the kids are realistically appealing. It is a slow moving film but of reasonable length. There is some drama but it is seriously underdeveloped. This is a very introspective story as the students and teachers awkwardly deal with the death and the immigrant deals with his own issues which he keeps to himself. It would be interesting to see and compare the play.

1981 – 2009 (2.7). In the year of a title the family of a sixth grade boy who is a bit of a dud moves to a new area in Quebec. This movie primarily follows his adjustments to his new school and classmates and secondarily shows the effect of the move on his parents and younger sister. The movie is pleasant enough, perhaps because it liberally borrows bits from other films and TV shows, but the bottom line is there is nothing particularly memorable or informative here. The acting and direction are a little better than the script.

The World According to Monsanto – 2008 (2.7). The filmmaker in this Canadian TV documentary used Google as a source of information about what Monsanto has been doing to effectively take ownership of the world food supply by dominating and aggressively extending biogenetically engineered seeds. Traveling the globe to track down the Google sources, and then  interviewing farmers, activists, scientists and public officials, and showing the damage done by Monsanto, the movie makes a strong case against the corporation. However, sometimes the science is a little technical and repetitious and one wishes some of that screen time had been spent on presenting more about who actually runs Monsanto, such as the Board of Directors, and who are the largest owners of shares and what is being done to attack the company from within, by shareholder resolutions and whistleblower support, and what is being done to try to mount a viable defense against this monolith.

Sliding Doors – 1998 (2.7). Gwyneth Paltrow plays a woman living parallel lives after she misses a subway train in one version and catches her boyfriend in bed with another woman, while in the other version, she misses the train and misses catching him in the act. The script cleverly intertwines the two lives and manages to hold attention, but ultimately does not really have anything to say beyond the obvious.

Once Were Warriors – 1994 (2.2). A drama from New Zealand about domestic violence in a modern day Maori family and a strong woman who manages to rise above it, should have provided an opportunity to celebrate the history of Maori culture, inform viewers of the prejudices and politics that impact the modern Maori, inspired victims of domestic violence to break out of the cycle and shamed perpetrators into mending their ways. This movie did none of these and instead stereotyped the Maori as alcoholic perpetual partiers, ignored prejudice and politics entirely, made the victims unsympathetic and left the perpetrators intact. That this list of failures was accomplished with a bad script, poor direction and amateurish acting should not be surprising, and is certainly disappointing, especially since some people have actually praised this movie.