movies Archives - Page 21 of 118 - Ramblin' with Roger

Wakanda Forever non-review

Namor

I saw the movie Black Panther: Wakanda Forever back in November. Yet I didn’t review it because, in some ways, I found it almost unreviewable.

It was challenging to separate the death of T’Challa from the passing of the first film’s star, Chadwick Boseman. Even before the film was released, ABC-TV was plugging the stars, writers, and director on a primetime special, saying they were trying to make sure they honored the late actor. It succeeded at that.

Think Christian ran a spoiler-laden but touching piece, Mourning Chadwick, Mourning T’Challa, back in November, which you should read unless you haven’t seen the film. Back in 2020, the publication ran Chadwick Boseman’s Sacrifice.

Also, there was a pre-review by Joshua Adams, who made a point of NOT reading any analyses of the new film. He commented that “some of the reactions towards the support of the first film left a bad taste in my mouth.” Specifically, “all the people (across the political spectrum) who implied or asserted that Black Panther was only popular because of black identity politics.” While I had not thought about it before, I got that feeling too.

The other factor is that I went to see Wakanda Forever at the neighborhood Madison Theater. The marquee did not reflect that the film was even playing there. As a result, I was the ONLY person in the theater. I’m not much for private screenings because I like getting the audience’s reactions.

Namor

The one part of the film I will comment on is the introduction of Namor (Tenoch Huerta Mejía). He’s not exactly the villain, as he’s trying to protect his homeland. The emperor of Talokan, a hidden undersea kingdom, offers to fight with the Wakandans against the folks threatening both of their cultures.

The Mayan ancestry backstory worked for me. It was compelling and as logical as a narrative about a secret group of underwater humans could be.

They are not the blue people that Bill Everett drew in the 1940s and again in the 1970s. I’m a huge fan of that Sub-Mariner published by Marvel and its predecessor. As I’ve noted, the comic book universe and Marvel Cinematic Universe are destined to be different, and I’m all right by that.

I read a reprinted column that the late Greg Hatcher wrote about Batman, where he counted eight different iterations, and that was just between 1964 and 2005.

Back to the film, maybe it was the lack of an audience in the cinema, but I started to find the fight scenes, which were well-choreographed, not so interesting, except for the one-on-one near the end. still, it was well done, and I’m glad I saw it.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever received decent reviews, 84% positive on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s done over $446 million at the domestic box office.

Movie review: She Said

#MeToo

In late November, my wife and I saw the new movie She Said at the Landmark cinema Spectrum 8 in Albany. It’s about New York Times reporters Megan Twohey (Carey Mulligan) and Jodi Kantor (Zoe Kazan), who broke the story that helped drive the #Metoo movement, especially as it applied to the Hollywood establishment.

It felt like real journalism, partly because of the shots inside and outside the Times offices. Among the big takeaways is that good journalism is difficult, time-consuming, and expensive.

Finding the information and getting people to go on the record about sexual assaults by powerful people that took place years ago is difficult. When there are non-disclosure agreements involved, it’s even harder.

Add to this the reporters trying to have a semblance of a real life, with husbands and children – which felt genuine – and you also get the struggle of being working moms.

We liked it. The acting by the leads and by Patricia Clarkson, Andre Braugher, and others was uniformly solid.

Compare and contrast

My issue is that it was a little too low-energy. I could not help but think about the film Spotlight. The stories are similar, the real-life story of a great northeastern newspaper – the Boston Globe – taking on a powerful institution – the local Roman Catholic church – over abusing the less powerful.

Spotlight, though, was tenser. In She Said, Harvey Weinstein offered threats of retaliation on the phone. But in Spotlight, it felt that if the reporters didn’t get it right, their investigative unit might have been dismantled, and the paper excoriated literally from the pulpits. In Spotlight, the movie made me feel that a lot was at stake; She Said proclaimed it but was less successful in presenting it.

Still, I would recommend She Said. It ought to be seen. It did a terrible box office, despite decent reviews. There were fewer than a dozen people at our Thursday matinee, two men and the rest, women.

Movie review: Devotion (2022)

high flyers

The newish film Devotion, which my wife and I saw at the Spectrum 8 Theatre in Albany in early December, is based on a true story that was the subject of a bestselling book.

Elite US Navy fighter pilots were being trained in the early 1950s. One was a black man, Jesse Brown (Jonathan Majors), training close enough in Rhode Island to occasionally visit his wife Daisy (Christina Jackson) and their cute daughter. Things during training seemed surprisingly uncomplicated. But Brown feels inner turmoil, understandable when one is The First/The Only.

One of the other pilots is starting to forge a friendship with Brown, Lieutenant Tom Hudner (Glenn Powell). The plot gets more interesting when some men are on shore leave in France. Much of it involved a Famous Movie Star and other US military folks who are less comfortable with a black wingman.

Ultimately, the airmen are deployed to the Korean conflict. The airmen, especially Brown, are very good at what they do. Ultimately, stuff happens, and if you’ve read the book or most reviews, you have an idea what.

Most reviews are correct, with 81% positive on Rotten Tomatoes. One critic wrote, “It’s committed to the hallmarks of the genre, for better and for worse.” This is spot on.

It’s a good film, and I’m glad I saw it. It’s not extraordinary except for the very detailed use of the aircraft, some of which were borrowed from aeronautic museums. The look and the flying felt real.

Too much Devotion

Incidentally, I disliked the generic title devotion, which had been used as the titles of films in 1931, 1945, 1995, 2005, and 2013. The book title was Devotion: An Epic Story of Heroism, Friendship, and Sacrifice by Adam Makos. Maybe Heroism, Friendship, and Sacrifice would have been less boring.

The 2022 Devotion was not a theatrical blockbuster, with less than $20 million in ticket sales, which is unfortunate.

2022 Kennedy Center Honors

George Clooney, Amy Grant, Amy Grant, Tania León, U2

As is my tradition, I note the honorees for the 2022 Kennedy Center Honors. Once again, I am very familiar with four of the five selected in this 45th class and the fifth, not at all.

I vaguely remember George Clooney from shows like Roseanne and Sisters, though I seldom saw The Facts of Life.

Nor did I see him on another show. Nevertheless, he won me $1,200 on JEOPARDY in 1998. A VIDEO DAILY DOUBLE: “Hi, I’m Jason Alexander. This actor co-starred with me on a sitcom called E/R before starring in the medical series ER.” Something I must have read in People magazine or Entertainment Weekly got stuck in my head when Clooney first started playing Dr. Doug Ross.

Subsequently, I saw or heard him in several movies, such as Up In The Air, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Descendants, Gravity, and Tomorrowland. He directed and appeared in Good Night and Good Luck and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.

He was the executive producer of Far From Heaven and producer of Argo and August: Osage County.

When I saw Alison Krauss and Union Station in Albany in 2003, Dan Tyminski noted how his wife enjoyed hearing his voice come out of George Clooney’s mouth when the actor “sang” Man Of Constant Sorrow in the 2000 film O Brother, Where Art Thou? I have had the soundtrack for two decades, though I saw the film during the COVID lockdown.

“George Clooney is co-founder and co-President, along with his wife Amal, of the Clooney Foundation for Justice.”

Contemporary Christian and pop singer-songwriter

I may have only one Amy Grant album, a vinyl recording of The Animals’ Christmas with Art Garfunkel. It was written by Jimmy Webb.

She was the first self-identified singer of Contemporary Christian Music to go to #1 on the pop charts. There were “Christians” who were HORRIFIED that Amy was doing pop music, such as Baby, Baby. Oh, please.

Amy married musician Vince Gill in 2000. She’s been active in philanthropy for her entire career.

A legendary singer of soul, Gospel, R and B, and pop

I must have learned that Gladys Knight won Ted Mack’s The Original Amateur Hour TV show from reading Ebony or Jet when I was growing up. She was eight in 1952.

Gladys Knight and the Pips had minor hits on minor labels, most notably Every Beat Of My Heart in 1961 (#6 pop, #1 RB). She left the group in 1962 to start a family but rejoined in 1964.

The group signed with Motown in 1966. It always felt that the label didn’t know what to do with the act. Berry Gordy wouldn’t let the Miracles release I Heard It Through The Grapevine, but was OK with the Pips doing so. It became a big hit for the Pips (#2 pop for three weeks, #1 RB for six weeks); it is my favorite version of the song.

Gladys Knight and the Pips did have other hits on Motown, notably If I Were Your Woman (#9 pop, #1 RB) and Neither One Of Us (#2 pop for two weeks, #4 RB). But they also were recording the same songs that The Temptations were also getting.

Their move to Buddah generated their first #1 pop hit (for two weeks), Midnight Train To Georgia. More Top 5 hits followed. She had an active solo career and acted as well.

Cuban-born American composer, conductor, and educator

Alas, Tania León is the honoree I do not know beyond what’s in the KCH bio.

Iconic Irish rock band

In 1988, I told a friend of mine that The Joshua Tree by the band U2 was one of my desert albums. My friend said one couldn’t put a one-year-old album on such a list. Maybe not, but I still like it quite a lot.

Lead singer Bono and his wife of 40 years Ali Hewson, were recently interviewed by Norah O’Donnell for CBS News’ Person To Person with U2’s Bono. He talked about his new book “Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story.” He shares how the band – he, The Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen Jr. – stayed together for decades and much more.

Here are some songs: Beautiful Day, One, When Love Comes To Town with B.B. King, I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For (Rattle and Hum version), Where the Streets Have No Name, and Sunday Bloody Sunday.

Watch the show!

The Kennedy Center Honors took place Sunday, December 4th, at 6:30 p.m. in the Kennedy Center Opera House. It will be televised Wednesday, December 28th, on CBS. We watch it every year.

Performer Jeff Goldblum is 70

Brown Shoe

I’ve been following the quirky career of Jeff Goldblum for a very long time. While I saw him in early films such as California Split (1974), Nashville (1975), and Annie Hall (1977), I think I first really knew who he was in the remake of The Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1978).

I may have been one of the 14 people who watched Tenspeed and Brown Shoe (1980), in which “a con-man [Ben Vereen] and an accountant-wanna-be private eye [Goldblum] team up to fight crime.” It didn’t catch on despite being written by Stephen J. Cannell, the scribe of The Rockford Files and The Greatest American Hero.

He appeared in The Fly (1986) and Earth Girls Are Easy (1988) with Geena Davis, his wife from 1987 to 1991. After playing Jeff Goldblum in The Player (1992), he appeared in one of his franchise films, Jurassic Park (1993). I’ve only seen that first film. However, I’ve read he’s one of the only reasons to see Jurassic World Dominion (2022).

Jake Coyle of the Associated Press wrote in June 2022 that the actor has not been defined by his roles in Jurassic Day or Independence Day. “It’s more that Goldblum, in putting his own idiosyncratic spin on them, marks the characters, rather than the other way around.”

TV cop

This is true in Law and Order: Criminal Intent (2009-2010), in which he played detective Zack Nichols for a season. His character, like the man himself, plays a bit of jazz piano. And then he reprieved the role in, of all things, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver in the Civil Forfeiture episode (2014) at 14:07.

Goldblum was great as Deputy Kovacs in The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) and the Grandmaster in Thor: Ragnarok (2017). He also voiced Duke in the animated Isle of Dogs (2018).

I haven’t seen The World According to Jeff Goldblum, but I suspect it’d be entertaining. As Coyle noted: “Chaos and harmony feature prominently in most conversations with Goldblum, an ever-riffing, cosmetically attuned raconteur.” he shows up playing

Heck, even his commercials for Apartments.com are a bit off-center. But he can also be serious, as this clip from Finding Your Roots shows.

Happy 70th birthday to Jeff Goldblum.