review Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

Movie review: The Odyssey

“faithful” to the source material?

My wife and I saw the film The Odyssey at the Spectrum 8 Theatre in Albany a couple of weekends ago, and I somehow neglected to write about it. Busyness has its costs.

I’ll admit to never having read the book/books; he also referenced Homer’s The Iliad and other period pieces. So I have no feeling about whether Christopher Nolan was “faithful” to the source material, though I find the debate endlessly fascinating. It’s a three-hour movie, not thirty.

The movie is vast and often impressive, especially visually. I thought the first palace-intrigue, extended scene dragged a bit, though the pacing improved after that.

The action scenes are memorable. Because of my lack of foreknowledge, the Cyclops, many of the storms, and the Circe’s magic narrative took me by surprise. What was particularly striking was the treatment of Circe’s magic; someone suggested correctly that it recalled “the unsettling body horror of David Cronenberg rather than traditional fantasy spectacle.”

Yet I thought the recapitulation of the Troy was what I found most unnerving. It was the point that Odysseus (Matt Damon) seemed to grasp the consequences of the “battle.”

A lot of the debate about the film centered on the religious content. A story from Religion Unplugged pondered, “No Divine Powers: Where Are All The Gods In Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’?” Yet my wife and I spent the ride home very conscious of the film’s faith basis. “Many have noted that [Nolan] conflates aspects of Homer’s religion with Christianity and modernity.” This is a fair point.

Still, it rated a 93% (critics)/97% (fans) positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes. I didn’t love it, but I was glad to see it in the theater, at least until…

Technical difficulties

The real problem, though, was technical – not Nolan’s fault but the Spectrum’s. If you’ve ever played a DVD in a player and it momentarily sticks, you’ll get some idea. It happened a couple of times about 2/3s of the way through. But in the extended consequential fight scene, it happened frequently, not severe enough that we couldn’t make out the dialogue, but it was mightily distracting.

I mentioned this to the ticket seller after the film, and he said he’d let someone know. Meh.

I recently saw an interesting piece in the Boston Globe (behind a paywall): ‘The Odyssey’ and the death of the Hollywood epic. The year’s most celebrated film is destined to be forgotten. “From opening title card to closing credits, “The Odyssey” is a nearly three-hour barn burner, racing from event to event with whirlwind kinetic energy. Blink, and you’ll miss some roaring fire, raucous tempest, or piggy sorceress on the spinning carousel of adventure. Nolan’s film zooms along as though locked into a high-speed drag race with the ‘Fast and Furious’ franchise.

“That’s why it’s so forgettable.” This was not my experience, but time literally will tell.

Even before seeing the film, I enjoyed the story of thirteen-year-old Mason Cufari, from Rotterdam, Schenectady County, who played young Sinon.

Brunello: The Gracious Visionary

Brunello Cucinelli, The King of Cashmere

On its very last day at the Spectrum 8 Theatre in Albany, my wife and I attended a matinee of the film Brunello: The Gracious Visionary, even though I had no idea what it was about.

Per Rotten Tomatoes, it’s “an inside look at the extraordinary life and career of the man behind a luxury fashion empire built on the principles of humanity and artistry,” Brunello Cucinelli.

It’s an odd yet interesting device to have actors show him growing up in a rural agricultural community, while the now-70+ Brunello makes asides about the situation. His family lived on land they didn’t own, so the landlord came by annually, imploring the children not to go to school but to stay home and help their parents. The parents ignored the advice.

Young Brunello excelled at school, especially in math. This would help him play cards, initially with family. But the young man and his siblings still had to come home to do chores. Nevertheless, he found rural life idyllic.

His father and other relatives decided to move to the city and work at the factory. Soon, it was clear that his father was disappointed in the sterile work environment.

Adrift

Brunello was a young man without a plan, hanging around a local establishment and winning money at cards. When he got a girlfriend, he bumbled into a brief gig as a fashion model. His affection for angora wool reminded him of the rabbit fur that he and his siblings would comb out.

When he decided to start a factory, his building design, with windows to the outside rather than sterile walls, arose directly from his father’s unsatisfactory experience. He became “The King of Cashmere.”

Brunello noted in The Cut that making the film he wanted was so that “50 years down the line, when my grandchildren and others look at the movie, for them to say, ‘This is what my grandfather, my great-grandfather thought as he was still alive.'”

There were oodles of celebrity tributes, from Oprah Winfrey, Patrick Dempsey (“McDreamy), Formula One chief executive Stefano Domenicali and others.

Is it hagiography? Well, sure. Does it work anyway? It didn’t for most of the RT critics, who were only 27% positive. IMDb was more generous at 7.2 out of 10, though with more one-star reviews than two- to six-star combined.

But my wife and I liked it for two reasons. It was beautifully filmed by Giuseppe Tornatore, who made Cinema Paradiso.

More importantly, we were taken by the “‘philosopher-designer’ revered for his distinctive integration of humanistic values, craftsmanship, and ethical entrepreneurship.” He called it “humanistic capitalism,” which essentially meant one can make money while encouraging the workers, creating an inviting place to work, etc. When COVID hit, he promised to keep his employees paid for up to two years.

So we bought into the messaging. It didn’t feel particularly self-serving for a guy who’s been in business for a half century. Check out the website, especially the section on the company and the value of human dignity.

Book review: African-Americans in the Wyoming Valley

Wilkes-Barre, PA

On July 7, at the Albany Public Library, I spoke about the book African-Americans in the Wyoming Valley: 1778-1990 by Emerson L. Moss, published by the Wyoming Valley Historical and Geological Society and the Wilkes University Press in 1992.

Why am I reporting on such an obscure book? In part, it’s because it’s been in my collection for a while. Also, it mentions by name a couple of my ancestors.

First off, what is the Wyoming Valley? “It is a historic, industrialized region of Northeastern Pennsylvania consisting of Lackawanna, Wyoming, and Luzerne counties, with Luzerne being the largest in terms of both area and population. The region is historically notable for its role in fueling the American Industrial Revolution through its many anthracite coal mines. As a metropolitan area, it is known as the Scranton–Wilkes-Barre metropolitan area, after its principal cities. With a population of 567,559 as of the 2020 United States census, it is the fifth-largest metropolitan area in Pennsylvania, after the Philadelphia metropolitan area, Greater Pittsburgh, the Lehigh Valley (Allentown-Bethlehem), and the Harrisburg–Carlisle metropolitan statistical areas.”

While not specifically an ethnography, it does “explore cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject of the study. It also… involves examining the behavior of the participants in a given social situation and understanding the group members’ own interpretation of such behavior.”

Breakdown

Chapter I is The Early African-American Experience in America, 1619-1896, which traces the timeline from the origins of slavery in the future USA to the dreadful Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court case. It occurred to me that 35 years ago, knowledge about slavery, especially in the non-black community, was rather sparse. Most of them weren’t reading Lenore Bennett’s Before The Mayflower.

Charles Miner was a pioneer civil rights advocate, elected to the US House of Representatives in 1824 (yes, he was white).

Chapter II, The African-American in Pennsylvania, 1639-1887, noted that William Penn, who founded the future state, was a slaveholder. In 1700, PA passed Black Codes, though a few religious groups opposed the bigotry.

There is a fascinating debate in Congress, including by H.B. Wright from Luzerne County, about why blacks were unfit for war, and that black soldiers would make white soldiers leave the service.

Chapter III, Early African-Americans in the Wyoming Valley, noted that a 1798 census showed 11 slaves and 13 free non-whites in Luzerne County. Nevertheless, there was a strong anti-abolitionist streak in the area, as well as a vibrant Underground Railroad system. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 made things even more troubled. Black people could not vote until after the Civil War.

Chapter IV, Religious Life, and Chapter V, Education, were often intertwined because state laws and local regulations made it difficult to establish schools, leaving churches to fill the gap. Chapter VI, Organizations, focused on social entities such as lodges and the NAACP. and certain YMCAs, where black folks could participate freely.

Relative

Chapter VI is titled First Families Remembered. The first listed was the Patterson Family. As I wrote about here, Samuel Patterson, my great-great-grandfather, who fought in the 5th Massachusetts Colored Cavalry during the American Civil War. Oddly, neither his wife nor his mother is mentioned by name. S.J. later had a very successful tile company. Another family listed was the Patience family, a couple of whom married Pattersons, unsurprisingly.

The Afterward was titled “The Community Today,” which was rather critical of the lack of progress. Appendix A, Remembrances of Blacks in the Wyoming Valley, contained bios of several folks, including some 19th-century weddings. Appendix B (local black members of the US military) and Appendix C (Black business in the Wyoming Valley in 1910) both mentioned SJ Patterson. There were additional sections about medical, legal, religious, and sports figures.

The book is a robust look, especially at Luzerne County black life. Sometimes, one could extrapolate from the specific examples in this book to other northern communities with small but robust black populations.

Surely, the pride in local accomplishments applies to places I’ve lived.

Movie review: Reading Lolita in Tehran

Gatsby”/Lolita/Daisy Miller/Pride and Prejudice

My wife recommended that we go to the Spectrum 8 Theatre and watch the movie Reading Lolita in Tehran. I’m almost always interested in seeing movies unfamiliar to me, so we attended on a Thursday afternoon; alas, only one other person was present.

I will admit that I was unfamiliar with the non-fiction book by Iranian author and academic Azar Nafisi, published in 2003. It is based on her own experiences while teaching English literature at the University of Tehran during the Iranian Revolution.”

The film seems to hew closely to the book, but it does not necessarily follow its chronology. After the fall of the Shah of Iran, Azar (Golshifteh Farahani) and her husband Bijan (Arash Marandi) return to their homeland, expecting more freedom.

Unfortunately, the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini meant a different change. She gets pushback, initially from a young man in her class, who thinks there was nothing redeeming about The Great Gatsby because of the moral turpitude of the main couple – adultery! The country increasingly becomes more restrictive.

“Gatsby” for 1979 was the first piece, followed by “Lolita” (1995), Henry James’s “Daisy Miller” (1988), and Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” (1996).

The professor ultimately gets fired from her position. Society requires the hijab. Her ultimate response was to teach these classes – for women only for a variety of reasons. It’s in those discussions, shown in much brighter hues than much of the rest of the film, that allow great insights about liberation.

My favorite involved Pride and Prejudice, where the professor explains how conveying dialogue and even flirtation in the midst of regimented dance.

Pretty good

This was a good, not great movie. One is already in the movie’s corner going in. The episodic nature of the film didn’t always gel. It was still worthwhile, because, as Peter Travers noted in his 2.5 stars-out-of-4 review, “Today, the book banning strikes a raw nerve in America, the country the women once regarded as a haven for freedom seekers.”

(A recent example: South Florida State College fired an English professor after she assigned a story about a teacher who talks about sex with her students. Now the professor is suing. “The instructor, Vinita Prabhakar, said in an interview that she had taught the story in her classes for nearly a decade without incident.”)

Rotten Tomatoes gave the movie an 86% positive rating, but not enough audience patrons viewed the film to comment.

The film was made in Italy, and some narratives were fictionalized to protect some of the real people portrayed. It was released originally in 2024, but didn’t make it to the US until July 2026.

Movie review: Toy Story 5

Jessie faces Lilypad

My wife and I went to see the movie Toy Story 5 on a weekday afternoon at the Spectrum 8 in Albany because I had to. I’ve seen Toy Story (1995) and Toy Story 2 (1999) in the cinema well before we had a child. When we watched the third film (2010), we didn’t take the kid. For the fourth (2019), the three of us all saw it at the movies, but not together. I even saw a couple of TV specials, Toy Story of Terror! (2013) and Toy Story That Time Forgot (2014). But I never saw the Lightyear (2022) movie.

So I guess I’m as invested in the TS universe as others are in the ones for Star Wars, Marvel Cinematic, or LEGO.

Bonnie, the eight-year-old who inherited Andy’s toys in TS4, is rather content with playtime, which is represented wonderfully in a handmade-looking style. But her parents are concerned. They buy her a new smart tablet, Lilypad, so Bonnie can chat with her dance class members. Has Bonnie outgrown her toys?

On the outskirts of town, Blaze, a nine-and-a-half-year-old, loves animals: a horse, Daffodil, and the family pig, Jimmy Dean. (The name cracked me up.) She has a display of her model horse collection in her room and still enjoys playtime occasionally.

Sheriff Jessie and the other toys, including her deputy, Buzz Lightyear, worry that Lilypad will usurp Bonnie’s attention. The action goes from there, including the return of Woody. A unit of high-tech Buzz Lightyear toys crash-lands on a deserted island, and they too end up in the main plotline.

The cowgirl

This is very much a Jessie story. There’s a brief reprise of When She Loved Me from Toy Story 2 early on, which was a hint for me. How much has the cowgirl mattered over the years?

At the same time, the movie seemed to be set up to bash online technology, yet in the end found a place for it.

Rotten Tomatoes gave Toy Story 5 a 92% (critics)/94% (fans) positive rating. It “largely sidesteps franchise fatigue” through its redirected focus. We liked it a lot, and even got a little, er, emotional. Aside from the core characters, most of the TS tribe was underutilized, but it would have made the story too bloated.

It was strange, though. There was a father and child in the theater, but they left early on, leaving us to see the film by ourselves, which was too bad; I like getting audience reaction.