"Irrational Man" and The Week in Reviews

[I review Woody Allen's new movie "Irrational Man" and DVDs "Tangerines" and "Serena."  The Book of the Week is "Bright Lights, Big Ass," a Millennial's view of life in the Big City .  I also bring you up to date on "My 1001 Movies I Must See Before I Die Project" with the classic film about getting old, "Make Way for Tomorrow"]



Irrational Man

In this new Woody Allen film, Abe Lucas (Joaquin Phoenix) is the new professor of Continental Philosophy at Braylin, a small liberal arts college in Rhode Island.  He is not a happy man until he finds a new purpose: committing the perfect crime.

When Abe arrives at Braylin, everyone is all atwitter because Abe is a famous writer with an exotic past.  However, Abe is having an existential crisis calling his own path in life, philosophy, nothing more than "verbal masturbation."

He embarks upon a relationship with one of his students, enthusiastic, wide-eyed A-student Jill Pollard (Emma Stone), while at the same time having sex with one of the other teachers, married but bored Rita Richards (Parker Posey).  Jill has a boyfriend, Roy (Jamie Blackly), but is drawn to Abe's dark, brooding personality. 

What is it with women and the sad types? As many women do, she thinks she can fix him.  But nothing makes him happy until Jill and he overhear a woman in a booth behind them at a restaurant complaining about her custody issues and how unfair the judge is being to her.  The idea comes to Abe that for the greater good, he needs to get rid of that judge.  Creating the perfect murder gives Abe a new reason to live.  He is even able to rationalize that what he is doing is the the right and moral thing to do.

Unlike many of Woody's recent films, this film has a plot.  He has tackled murder mysteries before, "Match Point," being one.  Here Woody casts his eye on the lengths people will go to to find meaning in their lives.

Nobody does tormented like Joaquin Phoenix and he gets to twitch to his heart's content here.  His monotone delivery is in keeping with the characters angst and I couldn't take my eyes off of the decided beer belly he has given his character.
Must be all of that single malt Abe seems to love.

And no one plays wide-eyed like Emma Stone, because she has the biggest eyes of today's young actresses.  She appears to be Woody's latest muse ("Magic in the Moonlight").  He seems to always need one.  The last one was Scarlett ("Match Point" and "Scoop"), and then most famously Mia ("Alice") and Diane ("Annie Hall" and others) with Mariel ("Manhattan") and Penelope ("Vicki Christina Barcelona") and others along the way. But that is understandable because Woody writes great roles for women, because it's obvious he loves them, though his neuroses obscures exactly how he feels about them. 

Parker Posey has been an indy darling for years and is starting to look it but she puts in a great performance.  One couldn't help but wonder why she never broke through into superstardom.

There are certain things you can always count on with a Woody Allen movie:  He will put one out every year, it will have black and white opening and closing credits, there will be jazz (this time Ramsey Lewis), a young beautiful muse (as mentioned earlier), a life is meaningless theme and biting satire, Woody Allen Style.  Woody Allen is not a happy man either.  His views on life have always been existential, but it doesn't matter, because he is also a very smart and funny man.

Rosy the Reviewer says...a smart movie for smart people.

***DVDS***

You Might Have Missed

(And Some You Will Be Glad You Did)

Tangerines (2015)

As the Georgian-Abkhazian (1992-1993) conflict breaks out in Georgia, Ivo (Lembit Ulfsak), an Estonian, has stayed behind to help his neighbor harvest his tangerines.  He is minding his own business until soldiers from conflicting sides are wounded on his doorstep.

Most Estonians living in the Georgia region have left since the war between the Georgians and Chechens began.  But Ivo and another farmer, Margus (Elmo Nuganen), have stayed behind to tend to their tangerines and they aren't bothering anyone.  The tangerine orchard belongs to Margus, but Ivo makes wooden boxes to contain the tangerines. Together they will harvest them. However, when  a scuffle breaks out on the road in front of Ivo's house between the two opposing sides, all are killed except two who are left wounded, one Chechen, Ahmed (Giorgi Nakashidze), and one Georgian, Niko (Misha Meskhi).  Ivo rescues them and tends to them in his house.

Ahmed swears that as soon as he is better he is going to kill Niko, but out of respect for Ivo, says he won't do it under Ivo's roof.

An uneasy alliance develops between the two.  When they do finally get the opportunity to kill each other, the story takes an unexpected turn.

It's a familiar story showing what can happen when opposing forces can sit down together as humans.  Take politics out of the equation and we are all the same.  When we can see inside the everyday lives of each other, our humanity comes out.

This film was  nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2014.  It's a quiet film directed by Zaza Urushadze that is all about Ivo and his humanity.

Rosy the Reviewer says...a familiar story told in a touching, unfamiliar way.

(In Estonian and Russian with English subtitles)





Serena (2013)

George Pemberton (Bradley Cooper) has a thriving timber business but his life becomes complicated when he meets Serena (Jennifer Lawrence).

It's 1929 and George has a thriving timber empire in South Carolina.  He goes to Denver and meets upper-class Serena.  They fall in love fast and hard.  They get married and George brings Serena back to his lumberyard in the country.

Serena's father was also a timber man so Serena wants to be involved in George's business. She can give and take as good as any man.  However, George's cronies are not happy about that.  At the same time, there is talk about turning the Smokey Mountains into a National Park, which would definitely hurt George's timber interests.

The sheriff (Toby Jones) is trying to get Pemberton's land for the national park.  He offers him $400,000.  Pemberton wants a mil.  Buchanan (David Dencik), George's friend, is secretly brokering the deal for the sheriff and Serena is suspicious and tells George he "needs to do something."  She plants the seed that Buchanan needs to have an "accident."

When Serena discovers she can never have children she becomes obsessed with a child one of the mountain girls had with George.  The out of wedlock baby is a constant reminder to her of her inability to bear a child and when she finds that George has kept a picture of the baby, she loses it.  Serena is a jealous cow and George starts to get the picture.

Galloway (Rhys Ifans), a strange, quiet loner becomes Serena's henchman his blind mother prophesized that a woman would save him, so when Serena does in fact save him he feels he must pay her back.  Serena goads him into killing the child.

Where did this movie come from?  Jennifer Lawrence AND Bradley Cooper.  How did this movie slip everyone's notice?

This is Jennifer Lawrence as you've never seen her.  She and Cooper supposedly had a "thing" during the making of this movie and their chemistry is palpable.

Directed by Susanne Bier and based on the book by the same name by Ron Rash, it's very much like the Gene Tierney film, "Leave Her To Heaven," featuring an obsessive psycho woman who doesn't want to share her man with anyone, not even a child.  There are some plot twists you can see coming a mile away.  It's a predictable psycho girlfriend drama, but it's enjoyable because of the star power chemistry between Cooper and Lawrence.

Rosy the Reviewer says...a bit of a Lifetime Movie feel to this one, but it's still an engrossing story starring two of our biggest stars.  If you like Southern Gothic, you will like this.

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

296 to go!

Make Way For Tomorrow (1937)

When an elderly couple lose their house and neither of their five children can take both of them in, they are forced to separate.

Lucy (Beulah Bondi) and Bark Cooper (Victor Moore) have five adult children but when they lose their home, none of the children step up to house the both of them.  Each goes to a different child's home 300 miles apart, forcing them to separate for the first time in 50 years of marriage. This is the 1930's when a long distance phone call was a big deal and very expensive.

It becomes apparent right away that both parents are an annoyance to their children and are in their way, disrupting their lives.  The children are condescending toward the parents.  Bark seeks friendship with a local shop owner to whom he confides: "I sometimes thin children should never get beyond the age that you tuck them in every night." The separation is supposed to be only for three months, but when the child who was going to take both of them renigs, they are forced to separate seemingly for good:  Bark to California and Lucy to a nursing home.

The message seems to be and acceptance that though parents like to think that their children love them, like them and will feel gratitude for all that was done for them, in the end, the generation gap is such that there is no understanding or even patience from the young toward their parents when they age.

This same theme and storyline was adopted to great affect in the recent John Lithgow-Joseph Molina film "Love is Strange," which I reviewed back in January and the classic Japanese film "Tokyo Story" also tackles this issue.

Why it's a Must See: "In this one-of-a-kind masterpiece by one of the greatest American directors...Leo McCarey's direction...is beyond praise.  All of the actors are expansive and natural, and the generosity McCarey shows toward his characters is unstinting...There is nothing contrived about McCarey's handling of the story, and thus no escaping its poignancy."
---"1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die"

McCarey directed many classic films:  "Going My Way," "Duck Soup" and "An Affair to Remember," to name a few, but this was McCarey's favorite film. When McCarey won an Oscar for his film "The Awful Truth," he told the Academy they had given him the award for the wrong film.

The film begins with a quote on the screen: "Honor thy father and mother," but if the title ironically implies that when we get old we need to be carted off to a nursing home to "make way" for the younger generation, then just shoot me now!

Rosy the Reviewer says...a classic film that still resonates today.  A must-see for adult children and their parents.

***Book of the Week***

Bright Lights, Big Ass: A Self-Indulgent, Surly ex-Sorority Girl's Guide to Why It Often Sucks in the City, or Who Are These Idiots and Why Do They All Live Next Door to Me? by Jen Lancaster (2007)

What it's really like to be young and living in the big city.  "Sex and the City" it's NOT!

Of course, this is Chicago we are talking about here, not the Big Apple, but Lancaster is the author of "Bitter is the New Black."  Anyone who writes a book with a title like that, I'm there!

Here she disabuses the reader of a Carrie Bradshaw life in the Big City.  Manola Blahniks?  Not likely.  Lobster and champagne for breakfast?  What a laugh!  It's more like shopping at "The Holy Trinity (Target, Ikea and Trader Joe's)," rude neighbors, unemployment and Lucky Charms for breakfast.

The one drawback is that this is a pop culture book that is eight years old.  Might as well be a 1000 years as far as TV and the Internet go, but some things have no timeline:  feeling fat, going to the ob/gyn (which we ladies all know is no fun), working as a temp, watching too much TV when we know we should be working and the fear that we are really shallow human beings (thinking that while watching really bad reality TV like "Bachelor in Paradise*" and telling your Hubby to pipe down).

Rosy the Reviewer says...it's a self-deprecating, sometimes hilarious and bitchy satiric look at how unglamorous city life can be.  If you like snarky pop culture essays from a Millennial, you will like this.

*I updated the reference because you probably wouldn't remember the ones she mentioned: "Temptation Island" and "Paradise Hotel."  I am now going to go into the bathroom and talk to myself in the mirror for being shallow.

  

Thanks for Reading!

That's it for this week.

See you Tuesday for

"What I Have Learned from Magazines"

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Check your local library for DVDs and books mentioned.

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

Find the page for the movie, click on "Explore More" on the right side panel and then scroll down to "External Reviews."  Look for "Rosy the Reviewer" on the list. Or if you are using a mobile device, look for "Critics Reviews." Click on that and you will find me alphabetically under "Rosy the Reviewer."

Why Have A Dog?

While I am on a roll with my "Why Have a...? series: "Why Have a Husband?," "Why Have a Wife?," and my most recent post, "Why Have a Child?, I thought a natural progression would be...Why Have a Dog?  Because when your husband or wife and child leave you, your loyal, loving dog will still be there.

Here are the pros to having a dog:

• They are good drinking and TV watching companions

 

• They are fun to dress up

(My dogs have starred in several  of my blog posts: My popular take on the Dicken's classic, "A Christmas Carol," "My Life Story, by Mildred Pierce (The Dog, Not the Movie)" and my classic, "How Well Do You Know The Classics?")

Here are two of my favorites from that last one.  See if you can guess the books:

 

(Here's a hint:  "NO MORE WIRE HANGERS!)

 

 

Here's a hint:  "Cuckoo" is in the title.

• They are fun to tease

 

(Don't you wish you could have this hot dog? Well, you can't)

• They are fun to hug

• They can be a deterrent to burglars

• They can provide needed exercise for you

 

• It's fun to watch their antics

 

 

 

 

(What is he doing to her?)

• Staring into their eyes, you see their unconditional love

So are there any cons to having a dog?

• If you drink with your dog, you run the risk of his developing a drinking problem.

• Dogs can be a deterrent to burglars but if they believe that EVERYONE coming to the front door, INCLUDING YOU, is a burglar, big problem.

 

• Every time you put your shoes on, they think it's a walk

• It's like having a toddler in the house forever. 

A dog's brain is supposed to be akin to a two-year old's.  Now think back on what it was like to have a two-year-old in the house.  You used the word "No!" a lot.  Toilet-training was a big issue (and for some dogs a lifelong one).  Two-year-olds don't have much respect for your property.  You can't go away and leave them for days at a time.

• Most dogs shed

Except poodles which is why poodles are the best dogs.

• They get up on the furniture

• They can be expensive

We have already told our dogs that if they need any medical procedures that cost over $1000, it's sayonara.


But for my money, the pros of having a dog in my life far outweigh the cons.

I have had dogs all of my life and if you would like to meet them all, check out my blog post "To All The Dogs I've Loved Before."


As I said then and still believe now, dogs have been a comfort in times of grief, fulfilled a desire to love and take care of someone, and they are a great source of amusement.  I have also learned from them.


But as I contemplate what a dog is good for, it didn't occur to me that my dogs might have an opinion about ME!


Hubby recently told me about an article that talked about things dogs hate.  Uh...

• They don't like to be teased

• They don't like to play dress up

• They don't like to be hugged

• They don't like you to stare into their eyes

Oops.


Before I go, I think we should examine the issue of why have more than one dog.

One dog is wonderful, but then you might worry that little Fido will be lonely when you are away, so you think two dogs would be great.  And you are probably right.

But three dogs?  No!

One dog is a companion to you, two dogs are companions to each other, three dogs are...A PACK OF DOGS!

 

This is what it's like every single morning when I come down the stairs.

They literally "hound" me for a treat! 

So there you have it.  The joys of dog ownership. 

Oh, I forgot.  It's not PC to say you OWN your dog.  You are a dog guardian.  So it should be dog guardianship. Remember that.

Stay tuned for the next addition to the "Why Have a....?" series: 

Why Have a Cat?

On second thought, forget it. 

I can't think of any reasons to have a cat.

 

See you Friday

for my review of Woody Allen's

 

new movie 

 

"Irrational Man" 

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."

 

If you enjoyed this post, feel free to 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

"Ricki and the Flash" and The Week in Reviews

[I review Meryl Streep's new movie "Ricki and the Flash" and DVDs "It Follows" and "Night Moves."  The Book of the Week is "Missoula" by Jon Krakauer.   I also bring you up to date on "My 1001 Movies I Must See Before I Die Project" with Ingmar Bergman's early film "Summer with Monika"]



Ricki and the Flash

 

A woman, who left her family to become a rock musician, returns to help her daughter get over her heartbreak.

 

Ricki Rendazzo (Meryl Streep) is an aging rocker, playing with her band The Flash in a Tarzana dive bar at night and working as a checker at Total Foods (read: Whole Foods) by day.  She gets a call from her ex-husband, Pete (Kevin Kline) in Indianapolis, and he tells her that their daughter, Julie's (Streep's real life daughter, Mamie Gummer) husband has left her and she is not doing well, and he asks her to come and help.  Since Ricki (real name Linda Brummell) hasn't been much of a mother so far or back to visit often, she is reluctant.  But she goes.

 

Diablo Cody's script sizzles at a reunion dinner when the whole family gets together - Ricki, Pete, Julie and her two brothers, Josh (Sebastian Stan) and Adam (Nick Westrate)- and the pent up emotions about theirabsentee mother are released.  It's funny and it's sad, but Ricki remains unapologetic about following her dream.  Later when she laments to Pete about being left out of the family and everything she missed and he reminds her that she left motherhood to become a rock star, Ricki asks "Can't you have two dreams?"

Is Meryl Streep a believable rock star?  Not really, but she is Meryl - frickin' - Streep.  She learned to play a guitar in a month, sang all of her own songs and gave her character the Streep treatment and by the time the film was over, I was a believer.  And she looks damn good for a sixty-something.

Kevin Kline and Streep first worked together back in 1982 on "Sophie's Choice," which was Kline's big screen debut and won Streep an Oscar.  Their chemistry is apparent and Kline holds his own with Streep as her ex-husband, Pete, who seems to still have some ambivalence about the end of their marriage.

Rick Springfield is handsomeness personified.  I used to be a huge fan until I read his autobiography and found out what a womanizing cheater he was most of his life.  But he is aging well and gets to do some guitar solos, though he isn't given much else to do as Streep's love interest.

Mamie Gummer, Streep's real life daughter, does a fine job as Julie, Ricki's heartbroken daughter,r but she does not seem to have yet inherited her mother's acting chops.  She overacts at times, but she is still young and if she sticks to acting, has time to hone her craft.  What better teacher could she have?

Audra McDonald plays Maureen, Pete's wife and Julie's step-mother.  Audra has Tony Awards and Emmys under her belt and more than holds her own in a great scene where the mother and step-mother try to mark their territories. 

But this is Streep's show.

She gets some good speeches about the inequality of parenthood.  Why is it OK for a man to pursue his dreams and his children understand and still love and respect him and consider him a good father?  But when a mother does it, woe to her.

Despite all of this star power and direction by Academy Award winner Jonathan Demme ("Silence of the Lambs") and a script by Academy Award winning Diablo Cody ("Juno"), the film doesn't really break any new ground about the mother/daughter relationship or the expectations of mothers vs. fathers or absentee mothers, but by the time this film was over, I was questioning my own mothering skills and tearing up and that is Meryl working her magic. I also have to say that am also a fan of most films about mature adults aimed at mature adults and will always be because I am one of those.

Speaking of which, there are certainly some negatives to being a Baby Boomer. For one, if you are one, that means you are getting old, and second, Baby Boomers are blamed for everything that is wrong with the world by the younger generation.  But on the upside, there are now so many of us that studios are finally making some films we can relate to, such as "5 Flights Up," "The Clouds of Sils Maria, "Mr. Holmes" and this one, so I am a fan. 

There are some premise issues e.g. if Julie hates her mother so much, it seems a stretch that Pete would ask her to come out and help her daughter.  Likewise, not sure that selling a Gibson SG guitar would pay for airfare for five people, especially last minute airfare these days.

But despite that, the acting is great, especially Streep who has that "thing," that "thing" that draws you in and won't let you go, and the story is engaging. 

Rosy the Reviewer says...it's a feel good movie and if you are a big Meryl Streep fan, you will love this.

 ***DVDS***

You Might Have Missed

(And Some You Will Be Glad You Did)

It Follows  (2014)

 

A young woman has a sexual encounter that somehow transfers an unknown force to her that follows her with evil intent.

What makes a good horror film?

A seemingly benign location such as a lovely tree-lined suburb with sidewalks and modest homes, ominous music, stark cinematography and a young girl in jeopardy.  Voila!

The movie begins with a young girl running erratically around her neighborhood, saying goodbye to her parents and then driving away in a car only to be found dead later on a beach, her body grotesquely mangled.

Fast forward to our heroine, Jay (Maika Monroe, who I really liked in "The Guest") swimming in her pool.  She has a new boyfriend, Hugh (Jake Weary). All seems to be going swimmingly until they have sex.  He chloroforms her and ties her up (I couldn't get over her having matching underwear.  She must have heeded her mother telling her to always wear nice underwear in case you get hit by a car. In this case, the warning must have been in case you get chloroformed and tied up).

When she wakes up Hugh tells her he passed her the "thing that follows" and if it catches her, it will kill her. 

So it seems if you have the "thing that follows" you need to sleep with someone in order to get it to follow someone else. Talk about paying the price for sex!  He warns her to never go to a place with more than one exit and then drops her unceremoniously back home.

I don't mean to make light of having a demon passed on to you, but just imagine someone only wanting to have sex with you to pass on a demon.  Sheesh. Talk about spreading a disease through sex.  Now we're spreading demons?

But this is not so much about paying the price for sex, but rather the moral dilemma of passing something on to someone that you know will harm them and that is Jay's dilemma, because she is actually a very nice girl.

Soon our heroine starts noticing people following her. They are seemingly innocuous, slow moving people only she can see.  But they are not lovely people.  Some have bloody clothes. There is one wearing just one sock.  I question their fashion choices.

This stands as a testament to what kids get up to that their parents don't know about. Jay hits on everyone she can to try to have sex with someone so she can get rid of the demon. She also tries to find the guy who passed it on to her and she enlists her friends to help.

I am having fun with this, but it is actually quite a creepy, terrifying film that appeared on several "Best Picture" lists in 2014.  The cinematography is awesome, the actors are believable, it has a fantastic score and the script and direction (David Robert Mitchell) are all first rate.

The obvious metaphor here is that sex can be deadly, or at least, ruin your reputation. But it also seems to be saying what you do to others can also follow you, and, since this was filmed in the suburbs of Detroit, - you can flee a crumbling city so you don't have to deal with anything unpleasant, but "it follows."

Rosy the Reviewer says...If you like smart horror films or John Carpenter's "Halloween," you will like this.  I loved this!





Night Moves (2013)

Three radical environmentalists plot to blow up a dam.

Jesse Eisenberg (Josh) and Dakota Fanning (Dena) team up with Peter Sarsgaard (Harmon) to blow up a dam in Oregon to release the water to nature. 

Josh is a quiet guy living on a commune.  Dena is a rich girl who we discover is out of her depth, and Harmon is an ex-vet.  All are involved in the radical environmentalist movement.

The first half of the film is slow and methodical as the three plan to blow up the dam and prepare for the execution. There is tension as they drive their boat "Night Moves" to the dam in the dead of night and set the bomb.  However, the second half picks up speed in the aftermath as things start to go wrong and distrust, jealousy and murder creeps into the equation. 

Here are some themes: People who care about the environment, peace and love, still succumb to human nature - the will to survive makes you do bad things despite your values. Be careful who you team up with for a cause.  Zealots can be nutters.  Loners often choose causes to give their lives meaning.

And there is some irony in the tragic ending - it takes place in a woman's Zen therapy salon.

Written (with Jonathan Raymond) and directed by Kelly Reichardt, an indie darling ("Wendy and Lucy," "Meek's Cutoff"), this film raises the question:  is saving the environment more important than human life?  

This is a departure role for Jesse as the character of Josh is a darker character than we have seen him play in the past.  Fanning and Sarsgaard are also good as usual, but it's Reichardt's direction that stars as she creates a quiet but scary atmosphere in which to explore the psychology of activism, leaving us with much to think and wonder about.

Rosy the Reviewer says...a thriller with a message.

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

 

297 to go!

 

Summer with Monika (1953)

An erotic portrayal of young love and an early example of Ingmar Bergman's artistic vision.

Harry works in the stock room at Forsberg's, a ceramic shop.  He's a bit of an incompetent dreamer. Monika (Harriet Andersson) is a bit of a forward girl who loves the movies and dreams of a Hollywood romance.  She meets Harry (Lars Ekborg) and they fall in love.  When Harry is fired from his job and Monika's life becomes untenable at home, they escape with Harry's Dad's boat to a Swedish archipelago (Orno Island) and spend an idyllic, romantic summer there that epitomizes young love.

However, reality sets in and their love is tested when Monika becomes pregnant and they return to Stockholm to face their responsibilities. They marry. Harry takes his responsibilities as a husband and father seriously and pulls himself together to provide for his family.  Monika, however, is uninterested in the baby, hates having no money to spend on clothes and wants to party.  Monika is not a very nice girl.  Things don't go well for either of them, but Harry will always remember that "summer with Monika."

From the way Harriet was filmed, you can tell Bergman was infatuated with her. In fact, he had an affair with her in the later weeks of filming.  He said that there had "never been a girl in Swedish films who radiated more uninhibited erotic charm." But in addition to his infatuation, Bergman has also created a defiant female character who rebelled against convention, something little seen in movies of the 1950's.

This is an early Bergman film, but his artistry was already apparent:  shots framed by windows, his use of light and shadows.  This is what is meant by "colorful black and white." Some of the close-ups where the characters look directly at the camera were innovative for the time and herald Bergman's later films "Persona" and "The Passion of Anna." When Monika stares defiantly into the camera near the end of the film, you wonder if she is rebelling to assert her independence or slipping into a wanton life.

Why it's a Must See: "Nowhere in all of Ingmar Bergman's films is sensual joy more overwhelming than in the long, island-set section at the heart of [the film]...Much of this passion derives from real life -- Bergman had just discovered the twenty-year-old Andersson...The film is virtually a love poem to Andersson; she was to become one of Bergman's favorite actresses, appearing in eight of his films."
---1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Rosy the Reviewer says...A must-see for Bergman fans. 
(In Swedish with English subtitles)

***Book of the Week***

Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town by Jon Krakauer (2015)

Krakauer examines the crime of acquaintance rape on college campuses and illuminates why it is often not taken seriously by law enforcement and why it is so underreported.
 

Missoula, Montana is home to the University of Montana.  It is not a huge town, but between January 2008 and March 2012, The Department of Justice investigated 350 rape allegations reported to the Missoula Police Department. Few of these reports were handled properly, actually victimizing the rape victim a second time by questioning her honesty. Krakauer turns his critical eye to what happened in Missoula and carefully documents the issue of campus rape.

"College age women are not raped because they are promiscuous, or drunk, or send mixed signals, or feel guilty about casual sex, or seek attention. They are the victims of a terrible crime and deserving of compassion from society and fairness from a justice system that is clearly broken."

Krakauer is the author of "Into Thin Air," about the 1996 Mt. Everest disaster and "Under the Banner of Heaven," a look at extreme religious belief, among other riveting works of nonfiction and here turns his powerful documentary skills to a huge problem.

Many of us see rape as being attacked by a stranger in a dark alley, when in fact most rapes are perpetrated by people known to the victim.  "Date rape" and "Acquaintaince rape" are even more insidious than a vicious attack by a stranger, because the victim often comes under more suspicion than the perpetrator, especially if she is sexually active, was drunk or was attacked by a popular football player.  So it's no wonder that this crime is so underreported.

Here Krakauer tells the stories of several women who were "date raped" or a victim of "acquaintance rape" while students at the University of Montana. Their cases were made all of the more difficult for them because the perpetrators of the crimes were well-liked University of Montana football stars.  No one could believe those boys would have to rape someone to have sex. Because they reported the rapes, the women had to suffer being vilified and shunned in addition to the PTSD, shame and physical traumas they suffered from the rape itself. 

At the end of the book, Krakauer explains why he was driven to write this book.  In 2012 a personal friend told him that she had been raped in her teens and, then, later in life sexually assaulted by a family friend.  As many women do, she did not report it and pushed the assaults away by working obsessively, drinking too much and having indiscriminate sex, which is now recognized as "trauma  recognition," a sexual acting out that is a by-product of the rape experience where women blame themselves and believe they deserved to be raped.

"After Laura told me about what she'd endured, I was angry with myself for being so uninformed -- not only about her ordeal but about non-stranger rape in general. So I resolved to learn what I could about it...Writing this book was an outgrowth of that quest."

"Rapists rely on the silence of their victims to elude accountability. Simply by recounting their stories and breaking that silence, survivors of sexual assault strike a powerful blow against their assailants."

Krakauer is one of the best nonfiction writers alive, my personal favorite, and he is at his best when he is telling the personal stories of his subjects.

Rosy the Reviewer says...this is not as riveting as "Into Thin Air" or "Under the Banner of Heaven," but it's still good and an important book.  We all need to be educated on this issue.

Thanks for Reading!

 

That's it for this week.

See you Tuesday for

"Why Have a Dog?"

 

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