review Archives - Page 44 of 64 - Ramblin' with Roger

Video review: Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

Miss Pettigrew sneaked into the cinema and watched a scene from a film before being tossed out.

In anticipation of what turned out to the only snow day I’ve ever had from work, I went to the library and took out seven DVDs. The Wife, the Daughter, and I voted on the picks, and Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day was the consensus.

My spouse was surprised that I didn’t select the film higher since it features Amy Adams, who she seems to think I have a bit of a crush on. (Well, maybe…)

From the IMDB:
Guinevere Pettigrew [Frances McDormand], a middle-aged London governess [in 1939 London], finds herself unfairly dismissed from her job [without severance pay]. An attempt to gain new employment catapults her into the glamorous world and dizzying social whirl of an American actress and singer, Delysia Lafosse [Adams].

Miss Pettigrew was initially aghast with the actress’s lifestyle and many suitors, but soon she becomes indispensable in helping her get out of jams. Moreover, they discover a commonality.

It’s an OK, likable, not great but not awful movie, yer basic 2 and a half stars out of 4. I enjoyed seeing Lee Pace, who was the star of a 22 episode TV show I watched called Pushing Daisies from 2007-2009.

What was more interesting was watching the deleted scenes and recognizing why that shot was trimmed – the elevator scene originally was WAY too long. Oddly, though, there’s a scene totally removed and I think it was a mistake. It involved Miss Pettigrew sneaking into the cinema and watching a scene from a film before being tossed out. Not only did that explain how she could fake it in Delysia’s circles, but it also explains the line Miss Pettigrew delivers, which seems to come out of nowhere in the finished product.

The other interesting extra was learning how the book was optioned three times to be a movie, once shortly after Winifred Watson’s novel was published in 1938, once in the 1950s, and again in the 2000s, with Miss Watson getting paid each time. Perhaps she was the real survivor like Miss Pettigrew.

Movie review: I Am Not Your Negro

“‘I Am Not Your Negro’ is important. And urgent. And almost certainly unlikely to be seen by the people who would benefit from it most.”

I saw I Am Not Your Negro at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany a couple weeks ago with my wife and a friend. I wrote a decent review, which I have managed to lose. So I’m cobbling together something else.

From Rotten Tomatoes:
“In 1979, James Baldwin wrote a letter to his literary agent describing his next project, Remember This House. The book was to be a revolutionary, personal account of the lives and successive assassinations of three of his close friends- Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. At the time of Baldwin’s death in 1987, he left behind only thirty completed pages of his manuscript. Now, in his incendiary new documentary, master filmmaker Raoul Peck envisions the book James Baldwin never finished. The result is a radical, up-to-the-minute examination of race in America, using Baldwin’s original words and flood of rich archival material.”

I remember watching James Baldwin on the Dick Cavett Show, one of the clips used in this movie. Peck uses the choices of film segments very impressively. It’s not just video from 1965 when Baldwin debated William F. Buckley. It’s bits of old movies, and scenes from Ferguson, Missouri.

As my buddy Ken Screven wrote, “Even though Baldwin died in 1987, and much of his words contained in the movie reach back 50 years, the issues Baldwin talks about are still with us, raw and festering in the minds of many of Trump nation… This is a significant spotlight on an America we thought no longer existed.”

Interestingly, the RT critics’ score is 98% positive, but the viewers’, only 84%. Bill Goodykoontz of the Arizona Republic wrote: “‘I Am Not Your Negro’ is important. And urgent. And almost certainly unlikely to be seen by the people who would benefit from it most.” Rick Bentley of the Fresno Bee: “Whether it’s Baldwin speaking or the readings done by Samuel L. Jackson, ‘I Am Not Your Negro’ pulls no punches. It’s painful for a society that declares itself to be educated to be forced to look at how ignorant it has been and remains.”

The one caveat, I suppose, is that maybe America should all go out and buy it on DVD, because there were more than a few times in the watching when I thought, “I’d like to see that part again.” Here is a trailer of the Oscar-nominated documentary.

Video review: Where To Invade Next

After the 2008–11 Icelandic financial crisis, bankers were actually prosecuted.

The movie Where To Invade Next appeared briefly in theaters in New York City and Los Angeles at the end of 2015, but was booked for general release in February 2016. Unfortunately, Michael Moore, the writer/director/star, caught pneumonia around that time, forcing him to cancel activities to promote the film.

Then in May 2016, he emailed MoveOn members, offering them a copy of the video for a donation to the organization, and “tens of thousands… responded.” I was one of them.

The premise of the film is that Moore would “invade” particular countries, and “steal” their best ideas. In Italy, for instance, he interviewed well-paid workers with guaranteed vacation and paid parental leave.

France had delicious-looking school meals and frank sex education. Finland’s education policy, according to the Minister of Education, involved almost no homework and no standardized testing. In Slovenia, the President note that students, including those from other countries, can get a tuition-free, and therefore debt-free higher education.

The Germans have labor rights and a work–life balance, while engaging in an honest national history education about its past, especially regarding the Nazis. Portugal has a rational drug policy and has abolished the death penalty. Norway’s humane prison system applies even to the maximum-security facilities.

Tunisia touts women’s rights, including reproductive health, and women were very important in the drafting of a new constitution in 2014. In Iceland, where women have been in power, the world’s first democratically elected female president came about after a general strike by women.

Of course, the kicker is, in each of these cases, the countries had originally “stolen” the ideas from the United States. For instance, after the 2008–11 Icelandic financial crisis, bankers were actually prosecuted. This came directly from the playbook of the United States after the savings and loan scandal of the 1980s, and in stark contrast with how the US dealt with its subsequent fiscal disaster.

I’ve seen several of Michael Moore’s documentaries. Where To Invade Next is more fun, and far less preachy, than some of his recent films, as he shows what other countries’ choices look like compared with the American dream that seems so difficult to achieve. Yet it doesn’t paint those other countries as total utopias.

Certainly, some will find his examples superficial – I find them even more compelling as the movie progresses – but given the way many Americans know so little about the world outside their borders, this would probably be helpful primer. Not incidentally, there’s a bit about tearing down the Berlin Wall. People from all political stripes may find the film intriguing, a source of conversation even more relevant in light of recent political events in the United States.

MOVIE REVIEW: 20th Century Women

I feel as though, in real life, I actually had met characters like these once upon a time.,

If I were to say that 20th Century Women was a quirky film, which it is, that wouldn’t tell you much. So I’ll you what the woman sitting in front of me at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany told me when the lights came up: “You must really have liked the movie. You laughed a lot.” And I did.

The storyline is about a 55-year-old divorced woman named Dorothea (Annette Bening) trying to raise her 15-year-old son Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann) and keep the boardinghouse she runs from falling apart in 1979 Santa Barbara, California. One tenant, the young photographer Abbie (Greta Gerwig), is dealing with a potentially devastating medical crisis, while another, the repairman William (Billy Crudup) is seemingly enigmatic to his landlady. Julie (Elle Fanning), the 17-year-old who lives down the road, is at this home more than her own.

While these are specific people, I feel as though, in real life, I actually had met characters like these once upon a time, or maybe I WAS a character like one or more of these, especially in that era. The film meanders at times, but the actors are universally solid, especially the Bening character, who tries to act as though she’s got it all together, unfazed, understanding almost to a fault.

Some stupid review in the National Review complains: “20th Century Women is really a politically correct emotional biography of that 21st-century anomaly: a non-gender-specific male.” In fact, Mike Mills, the writer-director who had made the lovely movie Beginners, was creating a film that was a reflection of his own growing up in a female-dominated household, as he noted on Charlie Rose in December 2016.

Some movies I can say, “I’m sure you’ll like it,” or not. This film I’m not that sure about for you, but I’m glad I went.

Book review: Never A Dull Moment

Jimmy Page explained, “The audiences were becoming bigger and bigger but moving further and further away.”

I received the David Hepworth book Never a Dull Moment – 1971: The Year That Rock Exploded two days before Christmas. I finished the 286-page book before New Years Day.

The premise is that the pop period ended with the Beatles signing essentially their divorce papers from each other on 31 December 1970. Hepworth, who turned 21 in 1971, says that year saw “an unrepeatable surge of musical creativity, technological innovation, naked ambition, and outrageous good fortune that combined to produce music that still crackles today.” The era of rock was born.

Sometimes, he would make references to other cultural events of the time that seemed random, but eventually, it would somehow connect. Hepworth used a few Britishisms that I did not initially pick up on, but I figured out most of them in context.

The book is arranged by month. The albums referred to in that period might have been recorded then, or released then, or the artist was on tour. And not all would become internationally famous. In March, Led Zeppelin was doing tours in small clubs, because as Jimmy Page explained, “The audiences were becoming bigger and bigger but moving further and further away.” Meanwhile, Nick Drake was well-regarded but lacked the stage charisma to become the success his talent might have suggested.

The May chapter details the Rolling Stones’ move to France. “Sex and drugs and rock n’ roll” were never more true. The year Mick Jagger got married did not seem to alter his omnivorous appetites. Meanwhile, Carly Simon was linked romantically to Cat Stevens and others. Later chapters touch on unlikely pairings, such as Leonard Cohen sleeping with Janis Joplin, though he later regretted writing a song about it.

Many things we now take for granted were born in this era. The benefit concert was born with George Harrison’s efforts on behalf of the people in Bangladesh. Since it had never been done before, certainly on that massive scale, mistakes were made, and George became a resource for those planning similar ventures.

Greatest hits albums became much more lucrative, from the Stones and the Who, for instance, presaging the unlikely resurgence of the Beach Boys’ catalog a couple of years later.

I’d write more, but I’ve decided instead to write about some of the albums of the period, and my reaction to them, once a month – I’m already behind!

If you enjoy the albums of the period, and it’s likely that you probably do, even if you were born years after ’71, you’ll enjoy Never A Dull Moment, which has been positively reviewed everywhere I checked, after reading it, of course. I lived through the period and I learned quite a bit.