Tag: review

Movie review: Paris Can Wait

Paris Can Wait looked REALLY nice, with the sights and sounds across France.


Random Final JEOPARDY! answer: Later an Oscar winner, she appeared as the child baptized towards the end of “The Godfather”. Question at the end.

I could have waited to watch the new movie Paris Can Wait. But it was something my wife wanted to see. And it had Diane Lane, who I think is the bee’s knees. So off we went to the Spectrum Theatre in Albany while the Daughter was out of town.

From Rotten Tomatoes:
“When her director husband is occupied with work in Paris, an American woman takes a jaunt with his business associate, a charming Gallic rogue who is happy to squire her on a tour of some of the finest meals in Provence. The first feature directed by Eleanor Coppola, wife of Francis and director of the “Apocalypse Now” documentary ‘Hearts of Darkness’.”

Alec Baldwin is playing pretty much the same role I’ve seen him in another movie, Michael, the distracted husband, who is too busy to see that his wife Anne (Lane) is not particularly engaged in life.

This film looked REALLY nice, with the sights and sounds across France. The food looked particularly great. Yet for much of the time, I just did not care about the heavy-duty flirtation by Jacques (Arnaud Viard).

In fact, in some ways I felt that that Anne had left the controlling neediness of Michael, to the controlling side tripping of Jacques, and I found this actually irritating.

It wasn’t until fairly late in the film that the audience realizes a particular linkage between Anne and Jacques, by which point I did not much care.

Some reviewer suggested that it was that Viard is not classically handsome, but I don’t think that was the problem.

my spouse enjoyed Paris Can Wait far more than I.

Random Final JEOPARDY! question: Who is Sofia Coppola, the daughter of Francis Ford Coppola and Eleanor Coppola. So as Trebek noted, “She had an in in getting the role.”

MOVIE REVIEW: Beauty and the Beast

a smart, independent woman sticking with a partner who’s prone to unpredictable bouts of violence…


The three of us saw Beauty and the Beast on the marquee of the Madison Theatre, not too far from our house. I’d seen the 1991 animated film when it was released, though not since.

Still, I was ambivalent about seeing the live-action adaptation. I feared that it would be, in the words of one critic, “a straightforward retelling of the original, with a few cosmetic changes tacked on to make it look like something else.”

Not so, IMO. Some old songs were in, including one of my favorite Disney villain songs ever, “Gaston,” – Josh Gad’s sycophant is used well here – but other tunes were switched out, making it aurally satisfying.

Maybe it was getting to hear six-time Tony winner Audra McDonald sing very early on, but I bought into the magic almost instantly. Then I got to enjoy Emma Watson in a role other than that of Hermione Granger. There was a dinner scene between the principals which reminded me of some Esther Williams film.

Somehow, I was more intrigued by her rejection of Gaston (Luke Evans) here than in the animated version. This Belle was more clever, with her back story better explained, including her relationship with her father (Kevin Kline) and late mother.

Now, an article in Sojourner points to a fundamental flaw in Beauty and the Beast, and worse in its predecessor: “[It] still ends with the heroine finding her prince charming, the titular Beast, in a way that isn’t entirely healthy. Their relationship starts out with her being held captive in his castle…

“It would take a monster overhaul to fix what’s always been the central problem of this story — a smart, independent woman sticking with a partner who’s prone to unpredictable bouts of violence… That uncomfortable aspect [is] a problem that added musical numbers won’t solve.”

The piece isn’t wrong. Yet I choose to appreciate what joys the film provided. Hearing Stanley Tucci, Ian McKellan, Emma Thompson, and Ewan MacGregor, then seeing them at the end. The one thing I will note is that, in seeing [spoiler?] the Beast (Dan Stevens) transformed to human form, I’d gotten so intrigued by the look of his alter ego that the prince appeared pretty bland.

Movie review: Gifted

Fred, the one-eyed cat, features prominently in the storyline.

The Wife wanted to see a movie that the three of us could all watch, and Gifted seemed to fit the bill. From the IMDB: “Frank, a single man raising his child prodigy niece Mary, is drawn into a custody battle with his mother.”

This is a subgenre where its success is dependent on certain factors. In this case, one is the mutual love that Frank (Chris Evans, Marvel’s Captain America) and Mary (Mckenna Grace, from the TV show Designated Survivor) have for each other, without the kid being so obnoxious that you can’t stand to see him or her on the screen. On that level, the film succeeds.

Of course, one Frank stops homeschooling Mary so she can have friends her own age – all she has besides Frank is his landlady Roberta (Octavia Spencer) – it becomes obvious to her teacher Bonnie (Jenny Slate) that Mary has amazing skills.

Reading the Rotten Tomatoes reviews (64% positive), some critics think that Frank’s mother Evelyn (Lindsay Duncan) is “too vicious to be persuasive, and [writer Tom] Flynn undercuts her morally by stressing her lust for recognition.” That’s not my reading of the woman, as villain. She seems more wounded, estranged from her son, as she had been from her late daughter, and even from her current husband.

Fred, the one-eyed cat, also features prominently in the storyline. Yes, it’s all melodramatic, with a courtroom scene, and a Big Reveal, where Frank has to make a tradeoff to resolve the issue.

Gifted is a relatively simple, straightforward film, somewhat formulaic and almost certainly manipulative. But I laughed aloud more than once – to the irritation of the Daughter – and got sucked into the lives of the principals. It’s not a great film, but enjoyable enough on a rainy Sunday afternoon at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany.

The Heart of Christianity

Marcus Borg uses the term metaphor, not as a negative, “nonliteral,” but as a positive, “more-than-literal.”

Heart of ChristianityIn trying to explain what I believe, in terms of my faith, I found that the right words were not always available. Then I read the 2003 book The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith by Marcus Borg this past winter. My answer became: “Mostly what HE said.”

Borg was a “world-renowned Jesus scholar” who, as the book sleeve notes, is out to reclaim “terms and ideas once thought to be the sole province of evangelicals and fundamentalists.”

As the Amazon description of The Heart of Christianity notes: “Being born again… has nothing to do with fundamentalism, but is a call to radical personal transformation. Talking about the kingdom of God does not mean that you are fighting against secularism, but that you have committed your life to the divine values of justice and love. And living the true Christian way is essentially about opening one’s heart—to God, and to others.”

Borg writes about the “earlier paradigm” of literal Biblical interpretation and heaven-focused. Then there’s the “emerging paradigm” which is “the product of Christianity’s encounter with… science, historic scholarship, religious pluralism, and cultural diversity… it is [also] the product of our awareness of how Christianity has contributed to racism, sexism, nationalism, exclusivism and other harmful ideologies.”
MarcusBorg_1
The emerging paradigm sees the Bible metaphorically…its…’more-than-factual,’ meaning…It doesn’t worry that the stories… are metaphorical rather than literally factual accounts… ‘What is the story saying?'” He uses the term metaphor, not as a negative, “nonliteral,” but as a positive, “more-than-literal.”

He uses Garrison Keillor’s “News from Lake Wobegon” on the radio program Prairie Home Companion as an example. “We all know that Keillor is making them up, and yet we hear truth in these stories.” Borg acknowledges the comparison that the “analogy to the Bible is not exact,” since the latter is “the product of a thousand years of community experience.”

I was inclined to like Marcus Borg, especially when I realized that we had similar experiences: growing up in the “earlier paradigm” church, leaving in confusion for over a decade, and reframing to find our way back. I’m sorry that he died back on January 21, 2015, in a way that I was not before reading this book.

Movie review -Kedi (Nine Lives: Cats in Istanbul)

“I grew up in Istanbul and I believe my childhood was infinitely less lonesome than it would have been if it weren’t for cats.”

For the Daughter’s birthday recently, her mother and I took her and her friend to the Spectrum Theatre to see the documentary Kedi. From the description:

“Hundreds of thousands of cats roam the streets of Istanbul, free, without a human master, as they have for thousands of years. They wander in and out of people’s lives, affecting them in ways only an animal who lives between the worlds of the wild and the tamed can… Cats are such an important part of the city’s personality that everyone who grows up in Istanbul or lives there has a story about a cat—stories that are memorable, sometimes scary, sometimes spiritual, but always very personal. Istanbul-born director Ceyda Torun, in her debut, has created a heartfelt love letter to both cats and the beautiful city of Istanbul…”

Watching this movie, one can gets all philosophical about life. Should cats be owned? (And as someone with two cats, one doubts that they CAN be.)

What is abundantly clear is that taking care of the cats and their kittens bring joy and even healing to those people of Istanbul who are in their lives. These humans more aware of life and their place in it than the average American. “Cats are the mirrors to ourselves.”

The citizens fret that with greater number of sterile highways and high-rises, the very nature of the city will be irreparably altered for the worse, not just for the felines but for the people as well. An apartment-dwelling cats using a litter box are nothing like the street cats.

The director wrote: “I grew up in Istanbul and I believe my childhood was infinitely less lonesome than it would have been if it weren’t for cats – and I wouldn’t be the person I am today. They were my friends and confidants and I missed their presence in all the other cities I ever lived in. This film is, in many ways, a love letter to those cats and the city, both of which are changing in ways that are unpredictable.”

Kedi works in achieving its modest goals. Here’s the trailer.

Ramblin' with Roger
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