My thoughts about movies and TV shows I've been watching

See also my blog on books: Elliot's Reading

Monday, July 31, 2017

Who wouldn't want to watch Eight Days a Week, but is it really a great movie?

Of course Ron Howard's Hulu movie, Eight Days a Week: The Touring Years, is fun to watch; how can you not like the extensive archival footage of Beatles' live performance, from the early days in Liverpool and Hamburg through the first live concerts in Europe the the U.S. to the stadium concerts of 1965 and 66, and finally to their impromptu rooftop performance - their last performance as a quartet apparently. Great footage, great music, some moments never seen before, and Howard keeps the talking heads to a minimum - just a few contemporary comments from Paul and Ringo and from a few others, including Elvis Costello. That's all good - great as an archival exploration, great for the music, but as a movie? It feels flat and unawakened; I completely agree w/ comment AW made to me that the movie lacks a point of view. Yes, we see the arc of their lives - how fame came at them so suddenly, how it became impossible to do what they loved to do which was simply to perform their music, how the were forced to become studio musicians and were all the better as such, for a time (the movie does not dwell on this, which is fair, as it's about the "touring years"). But we don't really come out of this with any advanced knowledge; there's little or no insight into the struggles of their personal lives, in particular broken marriages and increasingly heavy use of Rx. Obviously, this was the price Howard had to pay to get the cooperation of the reps and families of all 4. But overall it comes off as an old-fashioned PBS masters' show, flourishing amid the abundance of archival material, but not as a thoughtful, original piece of documentary cinema.

Sunday, July 30, 2017

A good, informative Einstein biopic though could have used more science and less schmaltz

For better or worse the National Geographic 10-part series on the life of Einstein, Genius, seems to be wrestling w/ its identity throughout: Is it a biopic? Or a Hallmark movie? By the end, it's a little bit of both; personally, I would have liked a more faithful adherence to the facts, details, and most of all ideas (and ideals) of Einstein's life. But I also have to say that the series does a great job in examining Einstein's personality, without undue hagiography: We see his intellectual genius of course and see his thoughts emerging through the early years of disgrace and disappointment (still incredible that he could not get a university job and wrote his breakthrough papers on relativity while he was a clerk in the patent office!), his struggles against anti-Semitism particularly in German but also in the scientific community at large, and mostly his troubled relationships with family, with women, and esp w/ his first wife. Clearly, E was not a genius when it came to relationships, though he does get some good lines when he tries to reconcile with his first wife, Malleva. In the 2nd half of the series, his struggle to get visas to travel to the U.S. is the highlight, as well as his wrestling w/ his lifelong commitment to pacifism v the need to annihilate the Axis powers - and of course his struggle w/ the idea that the atomic bomb is the practical application of his theoretical research. There's some good scenes about the corruption of German science during the war - and about the race between Germany and US to develop the a-bomb. Some things are left unclear, however, in particular the Moe Berg spy episode and the plot to kill Heisenberg (seemed out of "left field," and not really part of the E bio but too good to pass up). I also suspect E's role in persuading an American official to issue thousands of visas to German Jews may have been overstated. Unfortunately, in the final episodes the mood becomes rather sappy as E reconciles to an extent w/ his children and befriends a 10-year-old girl who has lots of questions about science; is this based on any real incidents? Doubtful. I would have liked more on the Russian spy who become his mistress for a time - how much did she learn from the old man? Was her truly never suspicious of her motives? And I'd have liked more explanation of his theories - in other words, more science, less schmaltz - and the series could have given us some updates on the lives of the main characters post 1955 (E's death). All that said, it's an entertaining series and gives a good outline of the contours and detours of E's life.

Wednesday, July 26, 2017

An excellent portrait of a genius in development

Finding the National Geographic 10-part series on the life of Einstein, Genius, to be far better than I'd expected, esp after a somewhat meandering first episode. By episode 2 the series settles into a chronology of AE's life, but with an inventive narrative that occasionally moves around in time (appropriate for the subject, right?) in a fluid and careful manner, in fact one of the best uses of narrative jumps in time that I can recall in any miniseries or movie. The focus is, somewhat surprisingly, on AE's personal, domestic life, particularly his difficult courtship of wife "Dolly" - like him, a gifted physics student, who gives up her own work to raise his family, take care of his eccentricities, and help him as at the least an assistant on his revolutionary papers. One of the important issues the series explores is whether she received proper credit for her work - with a comparison w/ Marie Curie, rightly credited in her partnership with her husband and their work on radium. Yes, there are some cornball scenes w/ dialog that obviously never took place and never would; yes, it's kind of funny to hear all these forced German accents; yes, it could do w/ a little more explanation of AE's various theories and ideas - but the series does give the sense of a genius in development, struggling with a range of issues, not just intellectual, but love, marriage, family, career, politics, and of course anti-Semitism. Halfway through and looking forward to next 5 episodes.

Friday, July 21, 2017

Any reason to watch The Wizard of Lies?

Where to begin with the Barry Levinson HBO film The Wizard of Lies, a take on the Bernie Madoff and his criminal scam? First of all, I literally could not bear to watch beyond the 2-hour mark, my brain was turning to Swiss cheese. Does a Levinson-De Niro duo have carte blanche to include in the final v every single scene that was filmed? This movie - about a story very familiar to most people, by the way - makes the same point repeatedly, to numbing effect, and draws out scenes such as son Mark's suicide interminably for no good reason. The point of the film: Madoff was a heartless, self-centered, cruel, crude, scam artist who duped many people including many who should have been wiser or more circumspect with their massive investments. The film also argues that the Madoff children and spouse knew nothing about his scam; that's plausible, but their ignorance was in part a willful blindness. So be it - I can't see the purpose of this highly unentertaining movie unless it could give new insight into Madoff, his family, or even the SEC's notorious failure to investigate the Madoff enterprise. Why not, for example, something about Madoff's childhood or his youth? Instead the movied is dead-weighted with leaden dialog (I admit that De Niro does a good job as always, even w/ some really bad scripting) and a supporting cast that ranges from the bland (the 2 sons), the ridiculous (Michelle Pfeiffer straining w/ a NY accent, almost comical!), the obscene (an especially crude Hank Azarian). What watch this movie? Perhaps to see how far Levinson has from the entertaining simplicity of Diner and the good sense of plot and pacing in his films of, gulp, 40 years ago.

Thursday, July 20, 2017

A dark comedy that holds you beginning to end - Fargo Season 3

Season 3 of Fargo maintains its quirkiness right to the end; it's a rare mini-series drama in that (despite the jokey disclaimer that fronts each episode: This is a true story ... - I get it, did you have to go back to this every time!) we don't believe in for one second, nor are we meant to do so. The characters, except for the lead, detective Gloria played by the excellent Carrie Coon, are cartoonish versions of, by turns evil incarnate and bumbling naivete. The plot, though the gears click, is ludicrous - a blood-bath of brutal killings and finance schemes - yet it keeps us loving along, alternately laughing and hiding our eyes. You've got to love the strength and determination of the petty thieves, esp Mary Eliz Winstead as Nikki Swengo, Ewan McGregor's double role-playing (the brother Stussy), and David Thewlis as VM Varga, the sleaze who puts the squeeze on Stussy's parking-lot empire and turns it into a $200-million holding off-shore company. I can't say that this series is morally enlightened, or enlightening, but it's a comic romp in the darkest manner that plays out among the seemingly kindly and innocent people of great Midwest - and by the way the photography of the winter scenes in Minnesota is consistently engaging and, in its dark way, quite beautiful, much like Fargo itself.

Monday, July 17, 2017

A movie about medical science, race, journalist - worth watching

The HBO film The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (George C. Wolfe, dir.) is a drama in part about the amazing story of the eponymous black woman who died in Baltimore in the 1950s in her early 30s and whose genes were the first that medical scientists were able to keep alive after the woman's death - these genes have been used for decades in the development of many significant medical advances and cures. Throughout, Lacks had been anonymous (the genes were known as HeLa, but her name had never been revealed supposedly to protect patient privacy) and her family was not only never compensated for or given a share in any profits from the sale of her genes but in fact never even knew that she had been part of a scientific experiment. When her adult children learn of this ca 1999, they barely understand the concept - they think their mother has been "cloned" - and they are furious at the Johns Hopkins Hospital for its callous indifference to the family. This story all came to light thanks to the research of an intrepid journalist, Rebecca Skloot (played by the excellent Rose Byrne), who worked closely w/ the family to write the book about HeLa on which this movie is based; the work did not go smoothly by any means, as the surviving daughter, played very well by Oprah Winfrey, proved difficult and unstable and other family members were at times hostile and suspicious. Strangely, the movie is more about Skloot than about H Lacks, which some may see as yet another appropriate of her heritage - but Skloot's attempt to learn about the person behind the story does give the movie a narrative arc and the appropriate tension. The narrative is a little hard to follow at times, w/ so many characters introduced quickly, but there are several dramatic highlights and it's such an unusual story - about medical science, racism, journalist - it's worth a watch.

Sunday, July 16, 2017

Excellent documentary about a young man with autism

Roger Ross Williams's documentary Life, Animated is a powerful, emotional, and honest account of the struggles of one young man, Owen Suskind, and his family to help him overcome severe autism that transformed him into near silence at age 3. Over the course of his life - at the time of the film he is 23 - he struggles, along w/ heroic efforts by his parents and older brother and by several teachers and case workers, to make contact with others and to live a happy and fulfilling life w/ some independence. A significant aspect of his personality is that he takes great solace from and finds meaning in Disney animated movies, about which he is somewhat of a savant. Evidently, the clear resolution of crises and dilemmas helps him (and others like him - he founds a Disney movie club at his school for children and young adults w/ special needs) make sense of his world and of social relationships. Touchingly, he in particular identifies with the "side kicks." Some of the scenes of Owen interacting with classmates, particularly with the "sweetheart" Emily, are sweet and painfully touching. One highlight is a brief speech Owen makes at an international conference on autism, in which he says that people think those with autism don't want contact w/ others - but that's not true, he says. We just don't know the clues to help us make this contact. So sad. There's no easy or obvious answer for Owen or others like him, but he's blessed with a great family that can support him emotionally and to an extent financially. The movie is based on the book by his father, Ronald Suskind; Williams does a great job letting the story tell itself, staying in the background, never intervening in the scenes he's recording, keeping interviews with experts to a bare minimum.

Tuesday, July 11, 2017

A film worth watching for the cinematography alone: Quai des Brumes

We were perhaps the only people in the history of Air France to watch from among the many movie suggestions Marcel (?) Carne's 1938 drama Quai de  Brumes (Port of Shadows), but so we did. Despite the ridiculous viewing conditions w/ a screen in the facing seatback, we could still see that in some ways this is a great movie. The story of a deserter from the Army who seeks refuge and a new identity in the port city of Le Havre is pretty much a straight-out melodrama, but what sets it apart from so many is the fantastic cinematography: Carne shoots much of the picture on location and out of doors, beginning with a foggy night when a truck driver picks up a hitchhiker on the highway shoulder, then many moody b/w scenes of the harbor, the boats at work w/ the crews loading freight, the isolated shacks along the quay - you could pretty much watch it in silence just of the look of the settings. The story is OK, if a little hard to follow at times, and Carne lightens things up a bit with the motif of a stray dog who has attached himself to the protagonist. The air of darkness smothers the plot itself never learn why the soldier (Jean Gabin) deserted, except that he says he's a "wanted man" - he seems to have developed scruples about killing, a problem in the Army, no doubt. On the downside, the romantic subplot is idiotic, but w/ Gain and his love interest, who is supposedly only 17 (!), way way too old for the parts, and fight scenes are without a doubt the worst "stage fights" I have ever seen - worth watching for the comic ineptitude alone. The film is a curiosity at best, but was a fore-runner of other alienated French (and American) anti-heroes; for ex., it's easy to draw the connection between the conclusion of this film and Belmondo dying in Jean Seborg's arms on a bloody Parist street some 20 or so years later.