My son Anthony made a suggestion I am adopting, starting with this list. I am putting my rating for each movie right after the title and date. All my lists have had the movies rated in descending order of my rating, and where ratings were the same, the newer movie has been listed first, with alphabetical order the final tie breaker. But putting the rating up front makes it clearer. Thanks for the suggestion, Anth, which can also serve as a reminder that suggestions are always welcome.
Invictus – 2009. (3.3) The wisely dignified forgiveness of Nelson Mandela is inspiring and the performance of Morgan Freeman in this Clint Eastwood film did a good job of capturing it. Wrapping the story around the national embrace of the South African team in the white man’s sport of rugby was part of the purposeful avoidance of rehashing the past. In this case, we all know the back story, and the movie was rightly primarily about how Mandela demonstrated the leadership that took a racially traumatized nation from the past, into the present and positioned it for the future. The rugby team had a supporting role, as the vehicle of the unity movement, but maybe the film spent too much time on the matches themselves. The anecdotal connections between previously distant blacks and whites were not too sentimental, but I would like to have seen a few of them taken deeper.
The Lost Steps – 2001. (3.1) This Spanish (Argentine?) film tells a story of a young adult only daughter whose family moved to Spain during the reign of the repressive Argentine dictatorship when the girl was too young to remember. Now, twenty years later, a claim is being made that her father was one of the oppressors and her real parents were deceased victims. The movie does a good job of showing how the claim and the evidence tear at the young woman.
Life and Nothing But – 1989. (3.1) Stories about the end times of war, especially from the losing side, always fascinate me. This French movie was a different twist on that theme, telling a tale of an older French officer whose job it was to try to identify the 350,000 unidentified French soldiers of World War I. Almost two years after the war’s end, he is still at the task, while loved ones continue the distraught search for the dead or perhaps for a living shell of a man who does not know who he is. The officer is involved particularly in the search of two young women, one of wealth and one of modest means. The time is coming, the film shows, to choose an unknown soldier to bury under the Arc de Triomphe, and move on. Well scripted and acted, the movie holds it age well. Bernard Tavernier directed.
American Women – 2000. (3.0) This Irish comedy was set in a small fishing village where the young single men decide to advertise in a Miami newspaper for American women to come for a romantic visit and maybe a match. I expected more farce and slapstick but was pleasantly surprised to find a more thoughtfully insightful script, with legitimate humor and some gently effective romance.
Seraphine – 2008. (2.9) This slow and quiet French film tells the story of a village chore woman whose primitive paintings caught the eye of a German art critic at the onset of the First World War. Her true story is curiously interesting and sad. Told straightforward, with gaps in time, the movie is somewhat sensual, but lacks much drama or character development other than in the title character, who though a bit strange throughout, does progress in her eccentricity.
The Village Barbershop – 2008. (2.9) This simple independent film by a young writer director Chris Ford was a decent character study of a crotchety old barber and a spunky young woman beautician who are thrown together by circumstances. Admittedly without drama, it is still well enough done to designate Ford as a filmmaker to watch. Netflix calls it a comedy, but it is more of a dramedy.
Zoom In – 2007. (2.9) I watched this one hour documentary on my new computer via Netflix. The transmission quality was fine except for a one minute stretch where it seemed to stutter a little as my Internet connection probably wavered. The movie covered the Gotham Awards for independent films in 2007, with interviews and award clips. It told a little about the realities of independent film making and how such films can be more individualistic. I have seen some of the films mentioned and was aware of a few others, but also got the names of about a dozen more, which I checked out and only found a couple of them likely candidates to watch. You can appreciate the drive and individualism of an independent movie maker, but that does not necessarily mean you will like the movie that gets made.
Three Brothers – 1980. (2.9) This Italian film was directed by Francesco Rosi, who makes movies with social messages. This tale of three brothers returning to their childhood village in the south of Italy on the death of their mother, was an allegory. The elderly father still lived on his farm, with his memories and peasant wisdom, which intrigued his 8 year old granddaughter, the only other family member who came with the sons. Each son represented social issues: the oldest a judge under death threat from terrorists, the middle son a counselor in a juvenile offender facility and the youngest, a labor agitator inclining toward terrorist tactics. Slow paced, as befits the locale, the movie mixed reality and dreams, but had no drama or character development, neither of which are needed for allegory.
A Woman in Berlin – 2008. (2.8) Anonymously published in 1959, this story of what a German woman did to survive the Russian occupation of Berlin at the end of WWII, caused an uproar in Germany as an insult to German womanhood. The author banned further dissemination during her life. This dramatization based on the diaries she kept and later showed her husband when he returned at the end of the war never grabbed me. Again, I felt I did not know enough about the background of the characters to better appreciate their feelings and actions. Production values and acting were good, but the script left me somewhat confused as to most of the characters.
Conviction – 2002 (2.8) This fact based drama about a repeat offender street criminal who finally decides, encouraged by a volunteer teacher, to pursue educational opportunities in prison and turn his life around is well intentioned and fairly well done, but lacks drama and any in depth character involvement beyond the hero, well enough played by Omar Epps. We know where this movie is going, and it takes us there, but it could have been a much more interesting ride.
Magic of Fellini – 2002. (2.8) This documentary is just under one hour long and consists of a hodge podge of old interview and movie clips. Fellini talks a little himself and the others talk about working with him. The film could possibly whet the appetite of someone unfamiliar with Fellini’s movies, but there is not much here for those familiar with his pictures. The magic of the title is the way Fellini envisioned his movies from his own inner dreams and presented them like he saw and felt them, lyrically and surreal, while still being grounded in reality.
Daddy Nostalgia – 1991. (2.7) This French film told the story of a Brit (well played by Dirk Bogarde in his last movie) who had relocated to the French Riviera and was dying. His daughter (played by Jane Birkin, not the actress Netflix wrote) came and stayed a while with her parents and tried to better understand her father and mother and their relationship to each other and to her. Being of a nostalgia age myself, I was attracted to the subject, but I found it hard to relate to any of the characters. What was most interesting was how the film made living on the Riviera kind of unappealing. The director, Bertrand Tavernier, makes films that are not traditionally dramatic, some more appealing than others.
River Queen – 2005. (2.4) This British movie was beautifully filmed in New Zealand with Maori people portraying the 1850s time of native war against the colonials. The acting was good and the back story was told early – in fact in the first couple minutes of the movie. I am on the line on giving this 2 or 3 Netflix stars, but I really don’t want to mislead anyone by saying I liked it (which is what 3 stars at Netflix means), so I give it my 2.4, which rounded down means 2 stars at Netflix (meaning at Netflix I did not like it). However, if you really want to see New Zealand, the Maori or cute Samantha Morton, which is why I got it, then give it a try. The problem is that the movie has no sense of drama or dramatic pacing. Good opportunities for tension and anticipation are totally squandered or else not even provided by the script. The jerky camera pans in battle scenes are annoying and the music, though good in parts, seems confused in others.
The Sleeping Dictionary – 2001. (2.4) Another exotic location, and another film that is not very good. The plot lines are actually pretty good, but they are not well scripted and the dialogue and characterizations are pretty hokey. Hugh Dancy does well as the lead, a young Brit officer sent to Malaysia in the 1930s, where he falls in love with a half Malay half Brit girl whom he wants to marry, but that is forbidden. The plot has a potentially dramatic twist when the hero marries a British girl and returns to Malaysia, but as with most of the picture, this is a lost opportunity. The paltry ending is the capper for this unfortunate dud.
Marilyn Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing & Charm School – 2005. (2.2) I’m not sure what this movie was supposed to be. If a comedy, it had minimal humor. If a romance, it was feeble. If a drama, it was at first confusing, then boring and ultimately meaningless.
