"Special 2018 Best Picture Oscar Recap"

The 2018 Oscars are this coming Sunday, March 4th!

So here is a handy recap of my reviews for all nine best picture nominees (which just happen to star most of the Best Actor nominees) to help you with your Oscar pool or just to remind you of the Oscar nominated films and which movies you need to see!  

If you want to read the full review and see how I called these films when they first came out, just click on the movie title.  Otherwise, I have added a pithy statement about each for a quick read.

See you at the Oscars and stay-tuned for my "Let's Dish About the 2018 Oscars" post next Tuesday where I get really catty about the clothes, the speeches and the antics.




Dunkirk

Rosy the Reviewer says...will stand as one of the best and most inspiring war movies of all time.





Get Out

Rosy the Reviewer says...an original and often humorous horror film that makes you think.



Phantom Thread

Rosy the Reviewer says...a beautiful film that deserves its Best Picture Oscar nomination and harks back to the romantic films of the past highlighted by an interesting, twisty story and brilliant performances. Speaking of which, this is possibly Daniel Day-Lewis's last performance (he plans to retire from acting but he's said that before so take that with a grain of salt).




The Post

Rosy the Reviewer says...Streep is nominated for Best Actress but this year she ain't gonna win nor will this picture win the Oscar for Best Picture, despite the fact that it's important and timely and resonates in today's political climate.





Lady Bird

Rosy the Reviewer says...a coming of age story that we all can relate to with superb nominated performances.





Call Me By Your Name

Rosy the Reviewer says...not my favorite film. In fact, I think I am one of the few critics who did not feel it but expect it to win for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Darkest Hour

Rosy the Reviewer says...and the Best Actor Oscar goes to...




Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Rosy the Reviewer says...and the Oscar for Best Picture goes to...

The Shape of Water

Rosy the Reviewer says...or the Oscar for Best Picture goes to...

One of the closest races ever for Best Picture!

Good luck and see you at the Oscars! 

I also hope to see you Tuesday 

for a fun post show recap. 

"Let's Dish about the 2018 Oscars!"

If you enjoyed this post, feel free to copy and paste or click on the share buttons to share it on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn, email it to your friends and LIKE me on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/rosythereviewer

Next time you are wondering whether or not to watch a particular film, check out my reviews on IMDB (The International Movie Database). 

Go to IMDB.com, find the movie you are interested in.  Scroll down below the synopsis and the listings for the director, writer and main stars to where it says "Reviews" and click on "Critics" - If I have reviewed that film, you will find Rosy the Reviewer alphabetically on the list.

"Darkest Hour," "Call Me By Your Name" and The Week in Reviews

[I review 2018 Best Picture Oscar nominees "Darkest Hour," and "Call Me By Your Name" as well as one of the nominees for Best Foreign Language Film - "On Body and Soul."  The Book of the Week is "I Hear She's a Real Bitch."  I also bring you up-to-date with "My 1001 Movies I Must See Before I Die Project" with "Mr. Hulot's Holiday."]




Darkest Hour

As the Nazis close in on British troops at Dunkirk during WW II, Prime Minister Winston Churchill must decide whether to negotiate a peace settlement with Hitler or fight on with the lives of hundreds of thousands of troops hanging in the balance.

"The darkest hour is just before dawn." 

There is no record of Winston Churchill having said that, but he faced his darkest hour right before the Nazis were closing in on over 300,000 British troops who had been driven back to the beaches of Dunkirk and faced certain death with little time to decide what to do.  Churchill had two choices. One, negotiate a peace deal with Hitler which would certainly result in humiliation and sanctions against the British people, or fight on, even though defeat looked imminent.

Well, the British were (and are) a tough lot and Winston Churchill was no exception.  Though he was urged by cabinet members to take a peace deal, Churchill was a fighter.  The film follows Churchill as he struggles with what to do and argues his case to Parliament.

Winston Churchill was an unlikely Prime Minister.  He had a scotch and wine for breakfast and champagne for lunch and dinner and probably several other drinks in between.  He was old, overweight, bombastic and uncouth and smoked cigars constantly.  But he was also eloquent, brave and heroic.  However, Churchill was not a popular choice for Prime Minister.  When his predecessor, Neville Chamberlain, was renounced, Churchill only won the post by default. 

This film highlights a bit of British history that we Americans know little about, but it also highlights why Churchill rose to become a folk hero among the British people and later the world. After asking the Americans to help, Roosevelt declined due to our then very isolationist philosophy, and with his own Cabinet against him, Churchill was very much alone. How does he save the British army from mass slaughter? How does he save Britain from Nazi rule?  Dunkirk looms in the background but in this film we never see any of what is going on over there.  This is all about Churchill and it's all about Gary Oldman playing Churchill. 

Oldman has had a wide ranging career as an actor.  He has played Sid Vicious ("Sid and Nancy" - 1986), an out of control playwright ("Prick Up Your Ears" - 1987), Lee Harvey Oswald  ("JFK" - 1991), a vampire ("Bram Stoker's Dracula" - 1992) and Sirius Brown in the "Harry Potter" series, but this portrayal of Churchill is a true tour de force and caps off a legendary acting career, and there was not a smidgeon of Gary Oldman to be found in this characterization.  He truly embodied Churchill. The rest of the ensemble cast, which included Kristin Scott Thomas as Churchill's wife, Clementine; Lily James as Churchill's secretary (an unnecessary character, in my opinion); Ben Mendelsohn as King George VI; and others are all excellent, but this is Oldman's picture all of the way and this is the role that will win him a Best Actor Academy Award.

Though I must say that the make-up also had a starring role in this film.  The prosthetics were amazing, and though I tried, I could not detect where Gary Oldman left and Winston Churchill began.

This was a riveting drama directed by Joe Wright with a screenplay by Anthony McCarten and it's no easy feat making a dialogue heavy film riveting.  The score by Dario Marianelli was also spot on, tense when it needed to be, dramatic when it needed to be but also silent when it needed to be.

In counterpoint to this film, the film "Dunkirk," which opened earlier this year, tells the other side of the story, what was happening on the beach while Churchill and his cabinet tried to decide how to save all of those troops.  The two together would give you the whole picture and would make an awesome movie binge day.

It is a strange coincidence that two movies so closely aligned in story would be released in the same year but despite the fact that they are both about Dunkirk, each tells the story from a different perspective but each is equally compelling about this incredible bit of English history.

Rosy the Reviewer says...And the Oscar for Best Actor goes to Gary Oldman!





Call Me By Your Name

While staying in Northern Italy with his family in the summer of 1983, 17-year-old Elio bonds with his father's research assistant, Oliver, a much older American, over his emerging sexuality and their mutual Jewish roots.

There was a time when Merchant-Ivory films dominated the market for period pieces and sensitive dramas.  Ishmael Merchant often produced (though he was also a director) and James Ivory directed and they were not only filmmaking partners but partners in real life as well until Merchant passed away in 2005.  Along with screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, they won six Academy Awards.  Ivory alone has had four Oscar nominations for his work.

Here Ivory has written the screenplay for this Best Picture nominee (his screenplay is also nominated) based on the novel by Andre Aciman, the story of a young man summering in Northern Italy with his academic American father (Michael Stuhlbarg, who I loved in "The Shape of Water" and who plays a small but pivotal role here) and Italian mother (Amira Casar), who is a translator and has inherited this beautiful house in Italy. 

But seventeen-year-old, Elio (Timothee Chalamet) is bored. It's summer and there's not much to do.  He rides his bicycle into the village, swims in a nearby river with his friends and hangs out with girls, catching a kiss and maybe more when the opportunity presents itself.  He's a typical teenager trying to find himself.

But when Oliver, an attractive and carefree American (Armie Hammer), arrives to stay with the family and work as a research assistant with Elio's father, Elio has to deal with his burgeoning feelings toward Oliver and eventually the two embark on an affair.

I have to say that the acting was excellent (Chalamet and Hammer are both handsome and exciting actors), the cinematography was wonderful and the setting was gorgeous (who doesn't love looking at the beautiful Italian countryside and dreaming about a summer swimming in the river and eating juicy peaches right off of the tree?), but I just could not understand why this film was nominated for Best Picture. And speaking of peaches, there is a scene  involving a peach that made me cringe as I figured out what Elio was going to do with it.  

But why do I question this as a Best Picture nominee? 

Yes, the film was dreamy and arty and evoked a lovely summer love affair, but it was also very slow moving, and I just wasn't sure what the point was.  Yes, it was a coming of age story where a young man was exploring his burgeoning sexuality and yes, it was the 80's where Americans were still very closeted when it came to being gay and yes, it was a lush love story, but the film directed by Luca Guadagnin didn't really develop into anything. Both men bonded over being Jewish, but again, the Jewish experience was only hinted at. Like a summer romance, it happened and then it was over and didn't leave me with much.

Rosy the Reviewer says...this film evoked a sense of time and place, which was enjoyable, but the film as a whole was disappointing.

Streaming on Netflix

On Body and Soul

Endre and Maria both work in an abattoir (that's a nice word for a slaughterhouse) and discover that they are having the same dreams.

This Hungarian film, nominated for this year's Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film of the Year, begins with a buck and a doe checking each other out in a lovely snowy landscape, but lest we get too comfy, the next shot is of cows awaiting slaughter.  This film will not sit well with vegans.

Meet Endre (Geza Morcsanyi).  He is the chief financial officer of the slaughterhouse and likes to stay in his office.  He's not very social.  Then meet Maria (Alexandra Borbely), who has just been hired to be the quality control inspector.  She, likewise, is not social.  In fact, she is so antisocial that she goes about her job and rarely speaks, but when she does she is abrupt and cold.  She is also socially awkward and doesn't like to be touched. She also has total recall.  When asked by a psychologist when she had her first period, she was able to give her the exact date.  She is also able to remember everything that is said e.g. ask her what the third sentence was in a recent conversation and she can recite it verbatim. Maria is definitely somewhere on the spectrum.

And both Endre and Maria are lonely souls. So it's inevitable that Endre and Maria will meet and the device used to bring them together has a humor to it.  It's the most original "meet cute" I have come across. 

Some mating powder has gone missing and all of the workers at the slaughterhouse are called in to be interviewed by a police psychologist.  She asks them all a series of strange questions, one of which is what their last dream was about (not sure how that is relevant to mating powder getting stolen but what do I know?  I've never worked in a slaughterhouse) and when the psychologist realizes that Endre and Maria are having the same dream - they both dream about that buck and doe, she at first thinks they are pulling a prank and confronts them both together.  In so doing, Endre and Maria realize they are having the same dream which basically breaks the ice between them.  Voila!  Meet cute!

Their awkward attempts at getting to know each other are interspersed with scenes of the buck and the doe with each scene, or dream, showing the relationship between the buck and the doe progressing, and just as the buck and doe are thrown together and seem to like each other, so too are Endre and Maria.  But like the buck and doe who fear hunters, so are Endre and Maria fearful about socialization and taking the risk to love.  However, I would say socialization is hardly as scary as someone trying to shoot you in the wild or slaughter you in a slaughterhouse!

Eventually the two bond over their mutual dreams and want to be in love like the buck and the doe.  Our souls are our true best selves but our bodies often betray us. It's not easy to be our true selves and live out our dreams especially in what can be a brutal real life.  Just ask those cows in the slaughterhouse. 

Written and directed by Lldiko Enyedi, the film bobs back and forth between the tranquil landscape inhabited by the buck and doe and the gruesome reality of animals getting butchered. I get it. If we thought animals had souls, would we still eat them?  However, there was just too much detail about what happens in a slaughterhouse for my liking.  I mean long, lingering shots with the blood dripping down like rain on a roof.

Despite the humor (of the dark variety) and the fine acting by Morcsany and Borbely, the characters were just so stunted and strange that it was difficult to relate to them. This was not one of my favorite foreign films, so probably not voting for this one in my Oscar pool this year. 

Rosy the Reviewer says...if a love story about two socially awkward lost souls with a slaughterhouse as a backdrop interests you, you might like this but I found it disturbing.  I think I will stop eating meat.
(In Hungarian with English subtitles)

***My 1001 Movies I Must See Before I Die Project***

154 to go!

Have YOU seen this classic film?




Monsieur Hulot's Holiday (1953)

M. Hulot goes to a beach hotel for a vacation and causes his usual clueless havoc.

I didn't like "Playtime," which also featured the M. Hulot character, and I didn't really like this one either, though it was a bit more fun than "Playtime," because I at least got the story.  "Playtime" was more about the set design and color than there being any kind of actual plot. If you can call it a plot, at least this one had more of one.

The film begins on a humorous note with M. Hulot (Jacques Tati) at the train station.  An announcement is broadcast over the loud speakers but the announcement is absolutely unintelligible and people run back and forth to various platforms as the announcement changes and everyone tries to figure out what is being said.  

That was very funny and I could relate, because we actually had that happen to us waiting for the train from Bologna to Venice.  The announcement came on, it was garbled but it was also in Italian and everyone waiting for the same train as we were took off running to another platform.  However, even if we could have understood what the person was saying over all of the static on the loud speaker, we didn't understand Italian, so we didn't know where to run to and missed our train.  Relating to something personally certainly helps humor, so I found that opening scene very funny.  Alas, it all went downhill from there for me because I am not a big fan of slapstick and M. Hulot is all about that.

M. Hulot is a quiet fellow who means well but for some reason wreaks havoc all around him.  But like Chaplin's Little Tramp, Hulot is also all about poking fun at pomposity and the peccadillos of us humans.  Writer, director and star Tati finds humor in the mundane and M. Hulot's humor come from a series of "bits," as in M. Hulot putting on a hat, taking off a hat, then putting it back on again. The humor is in the visuals, one little humorous bit after another as Mr. Hulot enjoys his vacation at the beach.  There is not a lot of conversation or dialogue, but when sound is used, Tati has fun with it like a screen door making a sound like a guitar every time someone passes through.

I give props to films that use visuals rather than dialogue to advance the story because that is what film is all about, and since M. Hulot rarely speaks, this film is all about visuals.  In fact, there was no dialogue whatsoever for the first 11+ minutes of this film and I still knew exactly what was going on.

As I said, there is also not much of a plot. The film is all about disparate French characters on vacation at the seaside and Tati is making fun of what people do and how they act while on holiday.

You see, watching M. Hulot's antics are not really about the plot.  It's about his good-natured self inexplicably messing things up for other people. It's a series of gags that are comments on human nature.  M. Hulot is someone who can't do anything right. He keeps having mishaps - his car breaks down, he sets off fireworks by accident and basically wreaks havoc on everyone around him but is oblivious to the chaos and always lands on his feet. I know M. Hulot is supposed to be a sort of innocent but I actually find him kind of creepy, lurking around, observing people and never saying anything.  If you are familiar with Mr. Bean, it's like that. To me they are two beans in a pod, I mean peas.

As I said, M. Hulot rarely speaks and dialogue is at a minimum. A device used in both this film and "Playtime," and I imagine all of the Hulot films, is that when there is dialogue it is usually not attributed to any one character.  You don't see mouths moving and words coming out.  Rather the dialogue, what there is of it, is more ambient noise off screen and sometimes it's just unintelligible mumbo jumbo.  It's like a silent film but it uses un-attributable dialogue thrown in over the action just to remind us that it's NOT a silent film.  When you hear a voice, the camera does not seek the person speaking, almost as if the dialogue was added after the film was made, much like a soundtrack.

Another device at work is that most of the film is shot in long shots.  There are no close-ups as if we are also on the beach observing everything.

Why it's a Must See: "This enduring classic of French cinema revealed Jacques Tati, in only his second feature as a director, to be one of the medium's most inventive and original stylists."
---"1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die"

Tati was nominated for an Academy Award for this screenplay in 1956.

This is not a criticism of French culture, but after watching this film I can't help but feel that the French seem to have a strange sense of humor.  How else do you explain their obsession with Jerry Lewis?  But then critic David Ehrenstein lauds this film as "one of the most original -- and hilarious comedies ever made." So go figure.

Rosy the Reviewer says...there is some charm to this film but it's just not my kind of humor.
(In French with English subtitles)

***Book of the Week***

I Hear She's a Real Bitch by Jen Agg (2017)

Jen Agg is a Toronto restauranteur and owner of The Black Hoof, Cocktail Bar, Rhum Corner, Agrikol and Grey Gardens and she shares her views on opening and running a restaurant, fine dining and being a woman in the sexist restaurant industry.

I credit Anthony Bourdain with my interest in restaurants, food and fine dining.  His first book, "Kitchen Confidential" was a real eye opener and his TV shows since then have spurred me to experiment with my palate. So his recommendation that "Whatever Jen Agg says is worth listening to" was enough to lead me to this book and he was right. This book is a wonderful how-to for anyone opening a bar or restaurant, but it's also an inside look at the restaurant industry, the "bro" culture" within it and a really entertaining and candid memoir. 

Agg knew at an early age that she needed to be her own boss and after paying her dues as a bartender and server, she was able to open her own restaurant.  The restaurant business is one of the most difficult to succeed in and she had her failures but now owns several of the most popular and successful restaurants in Toronto and Montreal.

Here she humorously and candidly shares her story of growing up in Toronto, her sexual experimentation and meeting her husband but this book is all about her views on how to open a restaurant and how it should be run. She also blows the lid off of the "bro" culture, the sexism that exists in the restaurant world and how difficult it is for a woman to break through all of that, even as the owner of the restaurant.

Speaking of how a restaurant should be run, Agg has very strong opinions about restaurant service.

Here are a few of her "Commandments" of Restaurant Service - what she expects from her servers - and once you are aware of these, it will change your dining experience for good or ill:

• No lifting glasses to pour water.
• No saying "no problem."  Why would anything be a problem?  Just say 'you're welcome' or 'absolutely' or anything but 'no problem.'
• No saying 'you guys still workin' on that?' This should be so obvious but I still hear servers say it.  Food isn't work.
• Always be positive about bar stools.  Like, don't say in an apologetic way, 'sorry, no tables, but I can put you at the bar,' like it's somehow worse.  It isn't. Make it sound like a win. 'Lucky you, I have these lovely bar stools available.'
• No octopus hands.  Do not grab and carry glasses from the top.  Keep fingers as far away from the rim as possible.  I don't know where yours have been, but I know where mine have been.

And servers shouldn't remove plates until everyone is finished at the table and for you diners: don't stack the plates.  There is a system that the servers follow for clearing your table!

From that you can get a clear idea of Agg's tone and her opinions on how things should be done.  And I agree with her.  After reading those, I dare you to not notice the next time a server breaks one of those "rules."

I also learned what "dropping your food" meant - no, it's not when the server has an accident, it means how the food is delivered to your table.  And salt.  Yes, salt usually makes everything come alive and taste better but she thinks it's overused.  Did you know that some restaurants even salt your dessert?

Agg also has opinions on everything from restaurant critics (a necessary evil) to gin (she hates it) to chefs who yell at their staff (cough, Gordon Ramsay) and for those of you who see yourself opening a restaurant or bar one day, she offers tips on the importance of lighting, great restrooms (she calls them washrooms - remember she's Canadian), bar seats and everything else from walk-in refrigerators to how to handle the clash between the kitchen (back of the house) and the front of the house. 

This is a fun read because Agg has a sense of humor about herself and an interesting story to tell, but it's also an important inside look into the restaurant industry and the sexist "bro" culture that exists and the difficulties that women face in that industry. When a woman has opinions and is running things in that kind of culture, there is a lot of hostility aimed at women and the "B" word gets thrown around. Agg is a feminist but instead of whining about that state of affairs, she re-appropriated the "B" word and formed a one-night conference called Kitchen Bitches where women shared their stories of abuse working in restaurants in hopes to raise awareness.

Anyway, one of the reasons I liked Agg's book so much was the fact that I too have some opinions of my own about restaurants and dining out.  Naturally I wrote about them in a blog post called "My Restaurant Pet Peeves, or How Not To Get the Worst Table in a Restaurant."

When I first moved to Seattle 15 years ago, I was amazed at what a foodie town Seattle was.  Restaurant reviews abounded so I started making an alphabetical list of all of the restaurants I wanted to try (I know, an alphabetical list - but hey, remember?  I'm a librarian) and then slowly made my way down the list. I made it up through "F" and realized many new restaurants with names starting with A-E had opened since I started my "project," so I changed my tactics to listing restaurants by neighborhood and I am still working my way through them all.  If you are ever in Seattle and need a recommendation for a great restaurant, I'm your gal!  

Rosy the Reviewer says... After you read this book, you will never look at restaurants or restaurant service the same way again!  And that's a good thing.  Thanks for the recommendation, Tony!

Thanks for reading!

See you next Friday 

For a 

"Special 2018 Best Picture 
Oscar Recap"

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Check your local library for DVDs and books mentioned.

Next time you are wondering whether or not to watch a particular film, check out my reviews on IMDB (The International Movie Database). 

Go to IMDB.com, find the movie you are interested in.  Scroll down below the synopsis and the listings for the director, writer and main stars to where it says "Reviews" and click on "Critics" - If I have reviewed that film, you will find Rosy the Reviewer alphabetically on the list.

"The Beguiled" and The Week in Reviews

[I review the new movie "The Beguiled" as well as DVDs "Life" and last year's Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Language Film - "The Salesman."  The Book of the Week is "The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and the People's Temple" by Jeff Guinn.  I also bring you up-to-date with "My 1001 Movies I Must See Before I Die Project" with another Jean Vigo film: "L'Atalante"]




The Beguiled

It's three years into the Civil War and wounded Union soldier John McBurney (Colin Farrell) is discovered by a young girl and taken to her Southern school where three sexually-repressed women and three other young girls live.  What do you think might happen?  Gee, really?

Well, you are right.

But before I get into the story, I feel a rant coming on.

I know I ranted last week about sequels.  Well, this week it's about remakes.

This film is a remake of the 1971 film starring Clint Eastwood as McBurney and directed by Don Siegel.  After reminding myself of the first film, from what I can gather there are few changes to this script.  For one, there was a black character, a slave named Matilda, who has been eliminated from the story and director Sophia Coppola has taken some heat for that.  In this film, there is a statement that the slaves had all left, which I thought was strange. And the first film also had a theme of incest and lots more sex which is not present here.  But since the first film was directed by Don Siegel, a director known more for action films aimed at men than films starring women and who purportedly said of this film that it was about "the basic desire of women to castrate men," I can see why Coppola, a woman, didn't copy the first film.

So, anyway, here is the thing about remakes. 

I would think the reason you would remake a film is because the first film was so awesome, you want to update it and see it again.  But then I have to ask, if the first film was so great, why remake it?  Let it live out its artistic life as a wonderful film. This seems to happen most often with films that start out as foreign films.  We Americans just can't seem to handle subtitles. A perfect example of this is the original "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," which was a highly acclaimed Swedish film and made both Noomi Rapace and Michael Nyqvist (who just recently died at only 56) stars. Yes, I know it was in Swedish with English subtitles, but grow up, people.  You can deal with those subtitles. Though the remake was also highly acclaimed, that first film did not need to be remade.  But OK, that remake worked out. But then there is the remake that falls short like "The Secret in Their Eyes," a fantastic Argentinian film that won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2010 and was remade in 2015 as a vehicle for Nicole Kidman and Julia Roberts and was reworked into something unrecognizable, especially since I had seen the original.

So for me, unlike sequels, where it is important to remember what happened in the first film in order to know what the heck is going on in the sequel, for a remake, it works best if you DON'T remember the first film so you are not comparing the two. As I said, Coppola has changed the film out a bit from the first one, and since I saw the first film 46 years ago and can't remember what happened in it anyway, I was able to take this film on face value as a new film. So maybe this isn't really a remake of a film that didn't need to be remade after all, but more a woman's version of the story, a better version since I am not a big Clint Eastwood fan anyway and take issue with Siegel's lame comment....so I guess, never mind.  Sorry I said anything.

So on with the story!

Young Amy (Oona Laurence, a child actress who I remember from "Bad Moms" and who is one of the few that I don't hate) is out looking for mushrooms in the sultry countryside near her Southern school - the Farnsworth Seminary for Young Girls - when she comes upon a wounded Union soldier, who introduces himself as Corporal John McBurney.  He seems harmless enough and Amy has a tender heart, because she loves all living things and I guess that includes wounded Union soldiers, so she helps him up and takes him to her school where six other women and young girls have taken refuge.  These women and girls are on their own because the slaves have supposedly all left and these are the girls who had nowhere else to go.

The school is presided over by Miss Martha Farmsworth (Nicole Kidman), hence the school's name, and classes are taught by Miss Edwina (Kirsten Dunst).  In addition to Amy, the other students are Alicia (Elle Fanning), Marie (Addison Riecke), Emily (Emma Howard) and Jane (Angourie Rice, who is currently starring in the new Spider Man movie).

Though Miss Martha plans to let the local Confederate Army know about Corporal McBurney by tying a blue cloth onto the school gate, an agreed upon alert when Union soldiers are about, she also believes helping McBurney is her Christian duty so they install him on a couch and lock him in the music room where Miss Martha proceeds to tend to his wounded leg. She also gets the idea to bathe McBurney, who has fallen into a sort of coma, so she dismisses the girls who are all agog at having a man in the house and proceeds to give him a sponge bath, almost succumbing to a case of the vapors while doing so.  She gets so turned on that she has to splash her face with cold water.

Thus sets the scene for each woman and young girl to jockey for the attention of this handsome man in their midst, and as they do so, jealousy, sexual tension and eventually violence ensues.  It also doesn't help that McBurney knows his power and charm and uses it to manipulate and insinuate himself into the lives of these women and girls. 

In addition to the sexual repression that reeks from Miss Martha, Miss Edwina is also all aflutter, and when McBurney asks what she would wish for if she could have anything she wanted, she reveals that she would leave the school and never come back. He tells her she is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen, and you know what that does to a woman when a man tells her that, right?  Meanwhile, Alicia is a fascinated teenager and one night excuses herself from evening prayer to go into McBurney's room and kiss him goodnight.  So now we have three women all vying for the attentions of Corporal McBurney.

So you see, not good.  Some very not good stuff is going to happen.

Director Sophia Coppola (who won the Best Director prize at Cannes this year for this film) has adapted this screenplay (this and the earlier film was based on Thomas P. Cullinan's 1966 novel) and created a stultifying and stifling atmosphere ripe for the sexual tension that ensues when these women and girls are confronted with a man in their midst.  And Farrell does a good job of playing the charming McBurney who easily accepts the attentions of the women and girls but when the tables turn shows his ugly side.  And it's not easy creating a character with depth when you are lying on your back for the most of the film, which is the case for Farrell.

Kidman is excellent as the buttoned-up school marm doing her "Christian duty" by caring for a Union soldier but who slowly warms toward McBurney.  Likewise, Dunst does a good job as Edwina who was able to hold in her desires until the man of her dreams appears.  Elle Fanning is also good as the curious teenager who is eventually the catalyst that leads to the final tragic ending. You know how I feel about child actors, but Laurence is particularly memorable as the young Amy who loves her pet turtle and all living things.  Likewise, the other young girls also all play their parts well.

The opening frame of the film when the title appears harks back to costume films from The Golden Age of Hollywood such as "Gone With the Wind" and "Raintree County," and this film has that kind of feel. Coppola is aided in creating the broody gothic atmosphere that is so important to this film by Philippe Le Sourd's beautifully dreamy cinematography  and a moody score based on Monteverdi's "Magnificat" arranged by Laura Karpman.  

Rosy the Reviewer says...I am not going to hold it against this film that it's a remake since I couldn't remember the original, so let's forget the first one and if you like slow-burning Southern Gothic films, you will enjoy this.

***Some Movies You Might Have Missed***

(And Some You Will Be Glad You Did)!

On DVD

Life (2017)

Soil samples from Mars arrive at the International Space Station and when the sample proves to house a life form, all hell breaks loose.

An all-star cast flies around in zero gravity in this sci-fi film that is also a horror film reminiscent of "Alien."  Well, not just reminiscent.  Very much like "Alien." But it not only begs the question "Is there life on Mars," but also asks "Do we really want to find out?"

Sho Murakami (Hiroyuki Sanada), Rory Adams (Ryan Reynolds), Miranda North (Rebecca Ferguson), David Jordan (Jake Gyllenhaal), Ekaterina Golovkina (Olga Dihovichnaya) and Hugh Derry (Ariyon Bakare) are the multinational crew of the International Space Station, representing the United States, the UK, Russia and Japan.  Sho's wife has just had a baby back on earth; Rory is the ship's mechanic; Miranda is from the CDC; David is the crew's medic and was just breaking the record for most consecutive days in space (400+) and is in no hurry to get back having become disgusted with what he saw there; Hugh is an exo-biologist; and I wasn't ever sure what Ekaterina did.  She was some kind of commander.

Anyway, after receiving a sample from Mars they discover an organism that is incontravertible proof that there is life beyond earth.  As they broadcast this find to earth, there is much excitement and there is even a contest where school children compete to name the organism.  The winning name is Calvin.

The film is slow to get started as we get to know the astronauts.  And as Calvin grows, we are lulled into thinking that it is benign.  Think again.  The gotcha moment is coming soon and then its non-stop intensity.  That little bugger Calvin may look like a starfish made out of jello but he is very strong and smart and when he finds his way out of the incubator it starts picking off the crew members one by one.

We lose Rory Adams early on in a very gross scene similar to the one in "Alien," except instead of the alien busting out of Rory's body he gets inside and well...it's not pretty.  I couldn't help but wonder why Reynolds would want such a small part in this film.

Soon the crew loses all communication with earth.  Can this get any worse?

Why, yes it can!  And it does!

Jordan and North must make some difficult decisions.  Can they get back to earth?  And if so, how do they make sure that Calvin doesn't come with them?

Directed by Daniel Espinosa with a screenplay by Rhett Rheese and Paul Wernick, not sure how this movie got lost but it didn't stay in theatres long. Too bad because it's really good and really scary and really gross, if you like that kind of thing.  

There was just one little thing that bothered me, and I am terrible about noticing inconsistencies and mistakes, no matter how small.  Much is made of the children's book "Goodnight Moon" but please people.  From the size and thickness of the book in the movie, you would think that "Goodnight Moon" is a chapter book. It's not.  Like I said, I notice stuff like that.  I know, it's irritating, but I can't help it.

Rosy the Reviewer says...the stuff that nightmares are made of...in a good way!






The Salesman (2016)

When a woman is assaulted in her new apartment, her husband goes on a mission to find the attacker and seek revenge.

I have to admit at the outset, I am a huge fan of director Asghar Farhadi.  I loved his film "A Separation (which rightfully won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2012), I loved his next film "The Past," and this one is no exception, and amazingly and deservedly, also won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film this last year, though Farhadi was not able to pick up his Oscar in person because of Trump's travel ban. 

Farhadi's characters may be Iranian and the films are in Farsi, but the storylines he pursues have no nationality or particular language.  They embody the drama of the daily lives and human emotions that people from all over the world can relate to.

This time, we are introduced to Emad (Shahab Hosseini) and Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti), a married couple who are forced out of their apartment because it is crumbling due to construction next door.  He is a literature teacher and both are part of an amateur theatre troupe that is putting on Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman," so when one of the actors says he has an apartment they can move into, they jump at the chance. 

Soon after moving into the new apartment, Rana leaves the play early, goes home and gets ready to take a shower when the door buzzer goes off.  Thinking it's her husband, she buzzes him in and off she goes to the shower leaving the door open.

Not good.

You see, it is revealed that the person who lived in the apartment before them was a prostitute and the person Rana let into the apartment was a man looking for the prostitute's services.

We don't see what happened, we only see Emad arriving home to find blood on the stairs and in the bathroom and that his wife is in the hospital.

Farhadi is a master at dealing with human emotions and the heart of this film is shame, avoiding shame, which is particularly important in repressive societies like Iran.  Rana doesn't want to go to the police because she feels shame that it was she who unlocked the door and let the man in.  In those kinds of societies, and even in religions here in the United States, rather than people believing that someone is innocent until proven guilty, we have to prove it's not our fault that something happened to us. And revenge and honor killings are also major parts of dealing with shame.  And being humiliated in front of one's family is worse than death. This theme is played out not only with Emad and Rana but later in the film when the perpetrator is confronted.

Emad goes on a mission to find this man who attacked his wife.  Farhadi builds the emotion and intensity that Emad is feeling and when he eventually finds the man we see the rift between men and woman and the repressive chauvinistic society that breeds that schism.

The making of "The Death of a Salesman" is a side-plot, but its story is so key to this one and provides many layers.  One layer is a political one, the difficulty Iranians might have putting on such a potently American play but the other layer is the correlation between the humiliation that the character - Willy Loman - felt in the play and the humiliation being dealt with by the characters in the film. The play also provides an important link to the title of this film and asks the question:  Who is the salesman?

As I said, I am a huge fan of Farhadi's.  The theme of a husband going on a mission to seek revenge for an attack on his wife is a theme that has been done many times before, but in Farhadi's masterful hands, it's new and original. His films are wonderful so I hope you won't be put off by subtitles.  This is an important film.

Rosy the Reviewer says...if you read my reviews, you know what it means when I cry at the end of a film.  I cry when I know I have just seen a really brilliant film.  I cried.
(In Farsi with English subtitles)

***My 1001 Movies I Must See Before I Die Project***

194 to go!

Have YOU seen this classic film?




L'Atalante (1934)

Juliette (Dita Parlo) and her new husband, ship captain, Jean (Jean Daste), start their marriage aboard his ship, L'Atalante, along with first mate Jules (Michel Simon) and a cabin boy.  Not a great way to start a marriage as you will see.

Trying to start a marriage on a barge with a couple of idiots in tow is not recommended.  Everyone seems to be making a move on Juliette.  In fact this film was a bit risque for it's time which would have been pre-censorship, though I don't think the French filmmakers worried about censorship much.

The couple travel to Paris to deliver cargo, enjoying a makeshift honeymoon en route. Jules and the cabin boy are not used to the presence of a woman aboard and when Jean discovers Juliette and Jules talking in Jules's quarters, Jean flies into a jealous rage by smashing plates and sending Jules's cats scattering. Arriving in Paris, Jean promises Juliette a night out and takes her to a dance hall where a man flirts with her and once again Jean flies into a jealous rage and drags Juliette back to the barge. 

However, Juliette is now enamored of Paris and sneaks off the boat to go see Paris on her own.  When Jean discovers this, he decides to leave her behind and casts off in yet another rage.  A series of events befall Juliette who is now abandoned, alone and practically homeless in Paris.  Meanwhile, Jean, who so far hasn't turned out to be a very good husband, regrets his decision to leave her behind and when Jean falls into a depression and almost loses his job, Jules decides he needs to take matters into his own hands and go find Juliette. When he does find her, there is a humorous sweetness to their encounter.

This is the second film in a row directed by Jean Vigo that I have seen and reviewed, and as I said last week when I reviewed "Zero for Conduct," I find some of these early films a slog to get through.  I liked this one better than "Zero," but not by much, though it shows Vigo's progression as a filmmaker.  I can appreciate the early films in their historical context, but these are not the kinds of films where I look forward to the experience. And French humor is an acquired taste.  I mean, let me remind you that Jerry Lewis is a comic god to French people.

Why it's a Must See:  "...Jean Vigo's masterpiece L'Atalante is the cinema's greatest ode to heterosexual passion...Vigo's death at the age of twenty-nine was a tragic loss.  But [this film] crowns his legacy -- and is there any scene in cinema sexier than the magnificent, Eisensteinian montage of Jean's and Juliette's bodies, far apart, matched in postures of mutual arousal, an act of love made possible only through the soulful language of film?"
---"1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die"

Rosy the Reviewer says...geez, maybe I had better watch this one again!
(b & w, in French with English subtitles)

***The Book of the Week***

The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and the People's Temple by Jeff Guinn (2017)

A detailed and fascinating look at Jim Jones, the self-proclaimed preacher and founder of the Peoples Temple, who was responsible for the largest murder-suicide in American history.

I have always been fascinated with true crime and cults and am drawn to books about those subjects.  I just want to understand what makes seemingly normal people murder or join cults.  Yes, Jones had a less than perfect childhood.  His mother was overbearing and probably delusional - she always told Jones he was special and meant for great things, but didn't we all tell our kids that? His father was disabled from war injuries and possibly an abusive alcoholic and Jones was left to fend for himself.  But there are many people with childhoods worse than Jones's who didn't grow up to be megalomaniacs who caused the deaths of over 900 children and adults.

But in addition to my fascination with cults, I also have a sort of peripheral connection to Jones when I lived in California. I lived in San Francisco in the early 1970's and left right before Jones came to prominence in that City and before he moved to Guyana.  I also lived in a remote part of Northern California in the mid-70's, not far from Redwood Valley where Jim Jones moved his congregation from Indianapolis in the 60's.  Though he had moved most of his congregation to San Francisco by then, the Peoples Temple still had ties to the area when I lived there.  Though I never interacted with any of his followers (that I know of), I can relate to the places and the times when Jones and his gospel took root. 

Anyway, Guinn has done an excellent job of researching and presenting Jones's life from his beginnings in rural Indiana to his interest in Socialism and racial equality and his civil rights accomplishments in Indianapolis.  He met and married Marceline Baldwin, the daughter of a Methodist minister, and she was his champion all of her life, despite his failings as a husband.  You see, as Jones built his following and ascended to god status with many of them who called him Father, his sexual appetites also grew.  Such is the peril of power.  And he also had an appetite for drugs which led to his paranoia as he went from preaching Socialism and the need to help others to the evils of the United States government and the end of the world which led him to move his followers to a remote part of Guyana.

When the media started to become interested in the People's Temple and Jones was threatened with a series of articles that would supposedly expose him, he decided it was time to make the move to Guyana and all might have been OK had he not gotten into a custody battle with an ex-lover and her husband over her son, who was presumed also the son of Jones, and whom Jones had taken to Guyana.  That and a group of people worried about the welfare of their loved ones in Jonestown led to the fateful journey of Congressman Leo Ryan, his aides and members of the media to visit Jonestown to check on the child and other Jonestown residents.

Jones had been preaching to his flock that one day they might all have to commit suicide and, though the visit started out well, things all went to hell...and we know how it all turned out as almost all of his followers drank cyanide-laced Flavor Aid.  Ironically, the expression "drinking the Kool-Aid" was spawned from this event, as in those who are forced to change their opinions or do something they don't want to do because of peer pressure.  Knowing where that expression came from, it's a rather offensive idiom and ironically, it wasn't Kool-Aid at all, it was Flavor-Aid.

How does a man who started out to do good in the world turn into such a monster, forcing his followers to kill their children and then themselves?

Guinn doesn't offer any ready answers but he ends the book this way:

"...Was Jim Jones always bad, or was he gradually corrupted by a combination of ambition, drugs, and hubris?  There is no definitive answer: Jones was a complicated man who rarely revealed all of his often contradictory dimensions to anyone.
      It seems certain that, at some level, Jones truly hated racial and economic inequality.  As a teenager he preached against such evils in rough Richmond (Indiana) neighborhoods where he stood to gain nothing by it other than insults and beatings.  In Indianapolis, Jones fought, often single-handedly, to bring about integration in a highly segregated city, and to a great extent succeeded.  Under Jones's leadership, Peoples Temple acted on the biblical precepts of feeding the hungry and clothing the naked...In one of the deepest, most dangerous jungles in the world, one thousand Americans, many of them recent big-city ghetto dwellers who had never so much as mowed a lawn, for almost four years, built and maintained a farm settlement that came very close to being self-sustaining...
      Yet he was also a demagogue who ultimately betrayed his followers...
      But there was something unique about Jones and those who chose to follow him.  Traditionally, demagogues succeed by appealing to the worst traits in others:  Follow me and you'll have more, or, follow me and I'll protect what you already have against those who want to take it away from you.
       Jim Jones attracted followers by appealing to the best in their nature, a desire for everyone to share equally."

And yet...

Here's my take..."Absolute power corrupts absolutely." [Lord Acton)

Rosy the Reviewer says...a well-written, engrossing look at a frightening event in our history and the man who orchestrated it.  This book will stand as the definitive work on Jim Jones and the Jonestown tragedy.

Thanks for reading!

 See you next Friday 

 

for my review of  

 
"The Big Sick"

and

 The Week in Reviews

(What to See or Read and What to Avoid)

 and the latest on

"My 1001 Movies I Must See Before 

 I Die Project."

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