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.

What’s Up, Doc

After deciding to power watch Doc Martin on Netflix Instant Play and getting a few episodes into season two, the series, except for season one, abruptly disappeared without the usual week or two warning, causing lots of angry comments to be posted. So, I’ve added it to my library queue and have started watching Foyle’s War on Instant Play. The rest of what I have been watching is about half documentaries, and that’s the better half of a pretty unremarkable group.

I have finished entering all my Netflix movie ratings to my account at the IMDb and also added a few hundred more of the older Netflix ratings to my own movie database. At the end of the year, or maybe sooner, I plan to update the movie lists linked in the sidebar of this blog. When that happens, there will be a posting about the update. Going through the ratings and seeing all the old movies that I really liked, I am tempted to start watching some of them again to see if they still seem that great. They sure should be a lot better than most of the movies I have been watching over the last couple years.

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].

  

Doc Martin (Season One) – 2004 (3.2). After watching bits of episodes of this BBC series the last few years, I decided to start from the beginning. The Doc (Martin Clunes) leaves a London surgical practice to become GP for a scenic fishing village in Cornwall, where he finds a close knit community of somewhat eccentric locals. His aunt still lives there, but he has not seen her since childhood. There is an attractive school teacher for a possible love interest. He takes over the neglected office of the last GP, who died a while back, and is unfortunately saddled with his defiantly incompetent receptionist. Episodes move forward the story of his personal life as he engages with the locals and treats some illnesses which often turn out to be different from what they first seemed.

Woody Allen: A Documentary – 2011 (2.9). The American Masters TV version that I watched is twice as long as the theatrical version. The first part deals with Woody’s childhood and start in show business, phasing into movie making. The last part covers his movies through the years and some of his personal life. Lots of film clips, interviews with Woody and his sister and actors and film critics provide plenty of information on Woody, but nothing particularly new, though he does come across as much less eccentric than the media sometimes has portrayed him.

Guilty Pleasures – 2010 (2.9). Three women who read romance novels, a young Japanese wife and mother who is a ballroom dance competitor, an older remarried woman in England, and a young woman in India who is estranged from her romantic partner are followed in this documentary, as are two American men, a model who poses for pictures used on the covers of these books, an an older man who writes these novels under a pseudonym. I don’t know that I learned much about anything in particular from this movie, but I did enjoy the gentle approach of the young woman filmmaker and found the cutting back and forth between stories of the people to be excellent, whereas such editing is too often disruptive and confusing.

The President’s Photographer - 2010 (2.9). This National Geographic hour long documentary follows the official photographer for President Obama as he captures images of the President for posterity, offering an inside look at Presidential endeavors. The movie also interviews some past Presidents and their photographers. LBJ started this photographic practice and all Presidents since have embraced it, except Nixon who restricted it during his time in office. The thousands of photos these photographers take all become part of the National Archives.

Up Heartbreak Hill – 2011 (2.8). This documentary about the college aspirations of two high school senior track athletes (a boy and a girl) on the Navajo reservation in New Mexico was straightforward in covering the kids, their families and some of the school teachers, coaches and administrators, but it did not explore issues in much depth. We don’t see many movies about young people like these, so while the choice of subject adds to the rating, it could have been better covered.

Crude – 2009 (2.8). For decades, Chevron/Texaco drilled oil from the Ecuadorian Amazon region and then when the government of Ecuador refused to extend the right to drill, an Ecuadorian government sponsored company took over and Texaco conducted a superficial cleanup as part of a deal to hand over its facilities and get a complete release from any liability. Thousands of indigenous people have been involved for almost 20 years in class action litigation against the American company for the environmental, cultural and health calamity it created. This documentary follows a few years of the litigation, led by a young Ecuadorian lawyer aided by an American and funded by an American law firm. The movie includes some denial interviews with Chevron spokespeople, and scenes of the lawyers coming to the US for meetings seeking publicity and support, but most of the footage is of the jungle and village areas and people showing the damage that persists. The film does not explain any of the laws and rules involved in the dispute, nor is the litigation decided by the time the film ends.

Breaking the Maya Code – 2008 (2.8). This documentary is produced and directed very well and tells a fascinating story of the centuries long effort to decipher the abundant Mayan glyphs sculpted into the numerous structures which have been reclaimed from the Central American jungles. Narration, archival footage and some reconstructions combine with numerous interviews with experts to tell how scholars of all levels have contributed through the years to finally being able to understand the writings and learn the written history of the Mayan world. The Maya had significant libraries which were totally destroyed by the Spanish conquerors, except for three or four books that survived. This movie is so thorough in explaining the intricacies of the Mayan glyphs and the details of each step in the scientific quest that it comes across as a little too scholarly for general audiences.

Witness for the Prosecution – 1957 (2.8). Based on an Agatha Christie play, this movie directed by Billy Wilder has a clever script and crisp direction, but the acting and staging is too theatrical. This one is all about the story, which is clever enough to justify the “request from the theater management” during the closing credits not to reveal the outcome of the movie.

My Darling Clementine – 1946 (2.8). Director John Ford returned from the War and turned to his favorite genre for this film, the second time Wyatt Earp appears in the movies. Like most Earp stories, this one is about half true and it has all the classic hallmarks of Ford’s style, plus it mingles a romantic triangle with the expected OK Corral shootout. Henry Fonda is appropriately subtle as Wyatt and Walter Brennan is an effective villain as Old Man Clanton.

Warrior – 2011 (2.7). This movie about two brothers who became estranged when they each went with a different parent when the family split, shows the attention that was paid to getting the details right for the mixed martial arts fight scenes as the two men compete in an elite MMA tournament, with the alcoholic father training one son while desperately trying to make emotional connection with both of them. More attention should have been paid to the script though, which wanders a little aimlessly at first and never goes too far from the tension between wallowing in the past and stepping into the future. The contrast between the viciousness of MMA and the humanity of the fighters is shown, but not adequately explored.

The First Grader – 2010 (2.7). This BBC movie from National Geographic Entertainment about an 84 year old former Mau Mau freedom fighter in Kenya who wants to go to school to learn to read should have been better than it is. The script is the problem, starting slow and using too many flashbacks to tell of the tortures and abuse the man and his family endured in the fight against British colonial rule. The locations and children are authentic as is the story, but the conflict between the people from the different tribes and the fact that some fought for freedom while others served as British lackeys, and which differences were supposed to have been left behind after independence are not developed in a satisfactory way by the script even though they underlie the entire story.

Throw Down Your Heart – 2008 (2.7). The American banjo virtuoso Bela Fleck takes the instrument back to its native Africa in this documentary, travelling to a handful of nations to meet and play music with African musicians. The musical groups offer an interesting variety of sounds and characters, while the charming Fleck manages to blend in quite well, but overall the movie comes across as unorganized and not particularly informative.

The Cutting Edge – 1992 (2.7). A female figure skater is too temperamental to be satisfied with the various skating partners she has tried through the years, and then is matched up with a star college hockey player whose eye injury has ended his hockey career. Predictably, they clash and then develop togetherness. Formulaic, but good chemistry between Moira Kelly and D. B. Sweeney make it worth watching.

Nibbling at the Queue

Three unspectacularly rated [2.9, 2.8 and 2.6] movies from the library are on this list, along with eleven from my Netflix instant queue, so returning to the library has prompted me to also make inroads on my queue. Whatever works to try to find some enjoyable movies.

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].

Together – 2000 (3.2). This refreshingly watchable Swedish movie about a commune in the 1970s is not a comedy, but rather a drama with humor and heart. People openly explore their sexuality, argue politics and try to mend old relationships and start new ones, and as we watch them we are touched, with a couple exceptions, by their honest humanity. Community overcomes loneliness.

Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 – 2008 (2.9). Even for a football fan, a documentary about a 1968 game interspersed with current interviews of the players sounds like a bit of a stretch, but this movie is quite watchable. Both teams were undefeated as they came into this last game of the year and Yale was dominating as expected as the game wound down, but then the game changed and it was a very exciting finish. The interview excerpts are well integrated into the game and it is interesting to see how the men have aged, how their memories have fared and how the game affected their lives at the time and in subsequent years.

Trumbo – 2007 (2.9). The blacklisted writer was an interesting man who was wonderful with words, and this documentary, based on work by his son, captures the man quite well with documentary footage and interviews with his children and some others who knew him and with readings by actors from a variety of his letters. Particularly revealing is the information given on the economic toll Trumbo paid for refusing to co-operate with the 1950s witch hunt; though he did manage to make some money by using other writers as fronts, the ostracism was financially devastating.

The Longest Day – 1962 (2.9). D-Day is shown from the point of view of the Allies, the French underground and the Nazis in this classic epic drama, with the proverbial all-star cast. A few of the characters are iconic to the point of being hokey, but the overall magnitude of the invasion, the anticipation of the excitement and danger by the allies and underground and the confusion of the Nazis are dramatically captured. The movie holds its age well, particularly when we remember this was made long before the CGI enhancements so common in movies today.

Meet John Doe – 1941 (2.9). Frank Capra again celebrates the common man in this movie about a fabricated newspaper story of a desperate out of work man who plans to commit suicide on Christmas Eve. The cynicism behind the story is overwhelmed by public support for the man hired to pretend to be the man, but then there are complications, all with a begging to be realized romance. Very watchable “Capracorn” which holds its age, but this does not rise to the upper tier of his films.

Chosin – 2010 (2.8). In December 1950, 15,000 Marines  at the Chosin Reservoir in Korea were surrounded by 120,000 Chinese troops. Fighting for days in the bitter cold, the Marines managed to extricate themselves, but with great numbers of dead, wounded and frostbite victims losing portions of hands and feet. This documentary uses interviews with several survivors, some personal photos and footage from a Hollywood movie to relate the horror of the experience and how it still is with the men 60 years later, even as they relate the pride they feel for saving South Korea from the Communists.

The Music Never Stopped – 2010 (2.8). Based on a true story, this independent drama tells the story of a young man who became estranged from his parents in the mid-1960s as he moved away to pursue his rock music career, and then came back into their lives 20 years later, suffering from a brain tumor which left him with a memory limited only to the early years of the separation, grounded largely in the music of the time. Working with a professor who uses music as a memory bridge, they try to make connection, especially between the father and son. After an efficient start, the script slows down a little while the musical bridge theories are being employed, but then delivers some emotional connection as we sympathize with the limits the young man must live under and the loss those who love him will experience for the rest of their lives. The father works diligently to make connection with the music his son loves and thereby is able to share in his son’s feelings and understand better what led to the estrangement.

Afghan Star – 2009 (2.8). Pop TV in Afghanistan has an American Idol type competition which grabs the attention of the nation and is the subject of this documentary which follows two men and two women contestants. It is encouraging to see the people joyously embrace the program and celebrate the competitors, but very discouraging to see the backwards male chauvinism and religious chastising theat one of the women is subjected to when she pops a few simple dance moves on camera.

Private Fears in Public Places – 2006 (2.8) Even in his eighties, Alain Resnais still directs a stylish film, this French movie being interweaving vignettes of people struggling with relationships and loneliness. Very watchable with interesting characters, it ultimately ends a little flat with nothing new having been said, but leaving one feeling like it was still worth the time.

The Courage to Love – 2000 (2.8). This made for TV Canadian bio-pic about Henriette DeLille, the educated Creole woman who devoted her life to taking care of the poor and sick in ante-bellum New Orleans was better than I expected. Vanessa Williams did a pretty good job of portraying, without any attempt at an accent, this venerated (officially on the way to possible Sainthood) founder of a small order of nuns still active today. I know there are people who dedicate their lives to serving causes, often based on a belief they are called to do so by God, and this movie managed to credibly portray how Henriette  maintained her dedication even while dealing with the prejudices and politics of the time, family troubles and romantic proposals.

Love in the Afternoon – 1972 (2.8). This French movie is Rohmer’s sixth moral tale, about a happily married man with young children who plays along with a free spirited woman who tries to take their friendship to the next level. He resists even as he enjoys the afternoons he spends with her, and he tries to understand just what it is that he feels and what he will or will not do about it. Typically talkative Rohmer that you either can relate to and appreciate or else be bored stiff.

Top Hat – 1935 (2.6). This Astaire and Rogers vehicle was way too heavy on the lame mistaken identity plot and too short on the dance numbers for my taste, bBut that was the formula the audiences wanted at the time. Fred was the choreographer and primary star, so Ginger did not get her frirst dance number until well into the movie. The DVD has some an interesting documentary film about the movie, as well as good commentary by Fred’s daughter and a film historian.

The Englishman Who Went Up A Hill, etc. – 1995 (2.2). A one trick script, weak acting and clumsy direction make this movie about a Welsh village in 1917, in danger of the local mountain being demoted to hill status by English cartographers, a loser. The only reason to watch is for the picturesque countryside.

The Golden Bowl – 2000 (DNF). Merchant and Ivory have made some wonderful movies, but this rendering of the Henry James novel is not one of them. Predictions of low mediocrity proved more than accurate and after 20 minutes of a muddled script of miscast actors in boring roles, rejection was the only reasonable option.