Eclectic Tastes

This list includes a half dozen streams from Netflix, a new PBS show and several old movies of which the library has only one DVD left. Genres and vintages are another mixed bag, due to eclectic tastes.

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. Clicking on a movie title will open a new browser tab with the IMDb page for the movie.

Bridegroom – 2013 (3.5). [Spoiler Alert - if you click this title link to go to IMDb, the immediate information there includes something which spoils part of the impact of this movie; so it is best not to go to IMDb until after seeing the movie]. This is a documentary about love, families and friends. Love is the strongest message this movie delivers, as it captures the deep love a couple has for each other and how they live it so completely. How family and friends can embrace who a person is, or how they can fail to do so, is a related message. The two messages combine in a third, how family and friends either embrace or reject the person their loved one loves. Using archival footage and photos, together with interviews of one member of the couple and with family and friends who embraced both members of the couple, Linda Bloodworth-Thomason has made a very powerful and moving film. The couple is Shane and Tom, two wonderful young men from small towns in Montana and Indiana. This movie should be part of high school programs on human sexuality and relationships. In an ideal democracy it should be required viewing for anyone voting on banning gay marriage.

The Scarlet and the Black – 1983 (2.9). Based on a true story, this well-done TV movie uses real Rome and Vatican settings to dramatize the cat and mouse game between an Irish Monsignor (Gregory Peck) who is a Vatican official and the Gestapo Colonel (Christopher Plummer) who is put in charge of policing Rome during the German occupation in WWII. After the initially flawed Allied invasion of Italy, many Allied prisoners were able to escape and seek refuge in the neutral Vatican, but the numbers were overwhelming and the Vatican was nervous about endangering its neutrality. As the escapees and Jewish refugees continued to come, the Monsignor fell into the job of heading an underground operation to place them in safe houses in and around Rome. Perhaps to gain access to the Vatican for filming, the movie goes a bit easy on Pope Pius XII, showing him as primarily interested in preserving the historic heritage of the Church but willing to allow the Monsignor to continue his rescue efforts at his own peril in spite of strong threats from the Colonel. This film gets better as it progresses and has a powerful ending personally involving the Monsignor and the Colonel.

The Mark of Zorro – 1939 (2.9). Dashing masked he-man heroes who are alter egos of milk toasts and weaklings have great appeal to a certain type of male [present company included – Zorro was a favorite on TV in my high school days]. This first sound movie version put Tyrone Power in the role of the son of a beloved California Governor who has been deposed by a corrupt regime while the son was away in Spain learning to be a dashing horseman and swordsman. On his return to California the son learns what has happened in his absence and understands that armed rebellion would be too costly in lives, so he cleverly plots the reinstatement of his father without all-out war. The son pretends to be a dandy as cover for his clandestine adventures as Zorro. An efficient script is stylishly directed by Mamoulian and competently acted. This may be hard to find; Netflix does not have it and I was only able to find one copy at the Library, a colorized version that is not garish.

Only Angels HaveWings – 1939 (2.9). Cary Grant runs a marginal air mail and freight line serving an Andes Mountain region and Jean Arthur passes through and falls for him in this Howard Hawks directed adventure. The script is tightly entertaining and the pilots and mechanics who risk their lives are tough with underlying tenderness. The scenes of planes flying are well done and it is not always easy to determine what is a real airplane and what is a model. After 75 years, this is still enjoyable.

Salinger [AmericanMasters] – 2013 (2.8). Ten years in the making, this documentary of the reclusive writer uses numerous interviews of other writers, critics, editors, publishers, celebrities and people whose lives were involved with Salinger, including one former girlfriend who wrote a kiss and tell memoir and Salinger’s daughter. Some archival footage and reenactments are also employed. What emerges does not seem worth the ten year investment if the goal was to find and understand the man. We learn from the start that Salinger was born into wealth and had some major adjustment issues as a child. His combat experience in Europe in WWII was admirable and obviously impacted his psyche as it did all who served there, but in his case it was impacting someone who was already troubled. His giant ambition and ego seemed to be validated by the success of Catcher in the Rye but then became questionably eccentric with his later work and his perverse retreat from the public eye. Ironically he managed to maintain himself in the public consciousness by hiding from the public. Forty years of unpublished work may start to trickle out from the Trust he created in his Will, and time will tell whether it was worth the wait.

Frances Ha – 2012 (2.8). Bouncing around the NYC area hoping to make it as a dancer, a 27 year old from Sacramento, graduate of an upstate New York college, is at times funny, pathetic, flakey and sympathetic in this black and white independent movie co-written by the featured actress, Greta Gerwig, who was nominated for a best actress Golden Globe. The film feels like it accurately captures this stage in the life of its heroine, warts and all.

Brighton BeachMemoirs – 1986 (2.8). Neil Simon wrote this story about coming of age in Brooklyn on the edge of the start of WWII. The family includes the overworked father, his wife, their sons age 18 and 15, the widowed sister of the wife and the two daughters of the widow, one in high school and a younger sickly one. Holds its age well and captures the feel of the time and place with smart dialogue and appropriate troubles being encountered.

Blackfish – 2012 (2.7). Tilikum is an orca responsible for the deaths of three people while he has been in captivity. This earnest documentary uses interviews with former Sea World trainers and other experts to engender sympathy for the plight of these highly intelligent and sensitive prisoners and outrage over how Sea World treats the orcas and misleads their trainers. But the movie does not go enough into the scientific knowledge about these majestic animals nor does it effectively cover efforts being made by activists and regulators to bring about needed changes.

Dumbstruck – 2010 (2.7). There is something delightful about seeing scores of people walking around with ventriloquist dummies. This documentary includes such scenes at a ventriloquist convention and proceeds to follow five people as they work with their dummies and hone their skills, with varying degrees of family support, in pursuit of employment as entertainers. One makes the big time, one has a cruise ship gig that strains his marriage, one is a teenager possibly with potential and the other two are questionable in their prospects. More showing of full acts with the dummies would have enhanced this movie.

Mephisto – 1981 (2.7). A Hungarian production in German language, this drama tells of a moderately celebrated but insecure stage actor during the rise to power of the Nazis. As many of his friends decide to leave the country, he tries to ignore what is happening and then allows himself to become an accommodator moving into collaboration. Intensely concentrated on this one man, the film is much longer than it needed to be and fairly devoid of political discussion.

El Dorado – 1966 (2.7). This next to last movie directed by Howard Hawks, is a marginal vehicle for John Wayne to continue his iconic role of a footloose highly respected gunfighter for hire who always manages to work for the guys in the white hats. He is joined by Robert Mitchum as a drunken sheriff, a crusty old deputy and a young greenhorn played by James Caan. Two young women serve as eye candy.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance – 1962 (2.7). John Ford directs John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart in this story of a US senator returning to the frontier town where he made his reputation by shooting a notorious outlaw. Iconic characters and familiar situations culminate in a not too surprising twist ending. A bit long, but one of the last hurrahs for the two Johns.

Behind the Candelabra – 2013 (2.4). Liberace was an over the top performer, flaming on stage at a time when gays were still in the closet. Based on a book by one of his lovers, who claims to have been the love of Lee’s life even though he was discarded and paid off after just a few years, this movie was intended to be a story of their love. If true, the film did not capture any kind of love, gay or not, that had any audience appeal. Instead, the sight of Michael Douglas and Matt Damon all gussied up played like a comedy and it was next to impossible to see the actors as the characters they were portraying, which was not much of a loss since the characters were so unappealing.

Meek’s Cutoff – 2010 (2.2). In the early days of the Oregon Trail, a mountain man named Meek claimed to know a shortcut through Oregon that bypassed the Columbia River upstream from The Dalles and avoided supposedly troublesome Indians along that stretch of the river. If he did know a shortcut, he had forgotten it by the time in 1845 he persuaded some pioneers to follow him with their wagons as he fumbled his way through the high desert of eastern Oregon. They suffered mightily with bad terrain and lack of water. A recent book chronicles the modern day search for the route they followed, based on diaries kept on the trip by some of the pioneers. Even after recently reading the book, it is hard to find the story in this movie drama. The script which is loosely based on the true story barely explains anything, but instead just shows the fumbling Meek and the anxious pioneers squeaking their wagons through the terrain and finally encountering an Indian, whom Meek wants to shoot but whom the pioneers hope can help them find water. On the positive side, the film was shot in the real locations (though curiously filmed in narrow screen to evoke old western movies rather than using wide screen to show the awesome vastness of the land) and the wagons and costumes looked appropriate.

The movies on this list streamed via Netflix were (though some of the streaming rights may now have expired):

Bridegroom

Salinger [watched on PBS but also available on Netflix streaming]
Frances Ha
Brighton Beach Memoirs
Blackfish
Dumbstruck
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance