Friday, October 7, 2016

"The Magnificent Seven" and The Week in Reviews

[I review the new movie "The Magnificent Seven" as well as DVDs "Genius" and "10 Cloverfield Lane."  The Book of the Week is "The Girl on the Train."  I also bring you up-to-date with "My 1001 Movies I Must See Before I Die Project" with "The Phenix City Story."]




The Magnificent Seven


Bartholomew Bogue and his henchman have taken over the small mining town of Rose Creek, robbing it of its resources and enslaving the locals, killing anyone who questions his authority.  A plucky woman whose husband was killed by the bad guys travels to another town to get help and manages to find seven gunman to help her reclaim her town.

Chris Chisholm (Denzel Washington) is a warrant officer (which I think is a fancy name for a bounty hunter) out looking for criminals when he comes across Emma Cullen (Haley Bennett).  In the cold opening of the film we have already seen her husband get killed by the evil Bartholomew Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard) and his henchmen who have taken over the town.  Emma is looking for help to get her town back and she engages Chris who in turn finds six other men to help her. All having their reasons for getting involved, they return to the town and prepare the townspeople and themselves to take on Bogue and his men.  It looks like an impossible task but you know how these kinds of movies go, right?

This is a remake of a remake.  The first remake was the 1960 film of the same name which turned Kurasawa's original Samurai warrior film "The Seven Samurai" into a western.  If you read my reviews regularly you know how I feel about remakes, so I won't get into that whole thing again.  Let's just say I don't like remakes and since this is not only a remake, but a remake of a remake, you would think that I really wouldn't like it.  But you would be wrong. 

Though there are similarities between the 2016 version and the 1960 version of this film, most notably that they are both westerns with all-star casts, the actual plot is a bit different. Both the original film and the 1960 remake involved bandits robbing and pillaging the town whenever they felt the need.  In this latest version, there is a resident pillager, Bogue, who is terrorizing and exploiting the townfolk and the local farmers. The 1960 film had a romance, this one doesn't, and there certainly were no African Americans or Native Americans as part of the "Seven" in the 1960 remake.  However, the pyrrhic victory remains the same.

As in most westerns/war movies/etc. that involve a group of guys, there is always a mix of personalities and everyone comes with some baggage.  In that way, the two films remain the same with some slight variations on the characters, though despite Chris Pratt and Denzel, for its day, the 1960 film had more big names.

If you were a fan of the 1960 version, you will remember that badass Yul Brynner played the head gunslinger Chris Adams.  Now badass Denzel Washington leads the "Seven" as warrant officer Sam Chisholm; Steve McQueen's failed gambler Vin Tanner is replaced by character Chris Pratt's Josh Faraday, though Josh also likes to do card tricks and blow things up; Bernardo O'Reilly (Charles Bronson), a gunfighter of Irish-Mexican heritage in the original remake, is comparable to the new film's Mexican outlaw Vasquez (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) and Britt (James Coburn), the knife expert is now an Asian character, Billy Rocks (Byung-hun Lee).  And every group has to have a coward - Ethan Hawke plays Goodnight Robicheaux who is having a crisis of confidence just as Lee (Robert Vaughn) did in the 1960 version. A couple of new characters are an almost unrecognizable Vincent D'Onofrio as the mountain man Jack Horne and Martin Sensmeier as the Native American warrior Red Harvest. This latest remake had no comparable character for the hotheaded, inexperienced but very hot and handsome Chico (Horst Buchholz), who provided a love interest in the 1960 film.  No romance in this new one.

So the characters are similar and so is the plot.  So why redo this already classic redo?

I would guess part of the reason could be the dearth of westerns these days, and it's a classic story of good versus evil and fighting for what's right even if the odds are against you.  Plus the studios were probably looking for something that would highlight Chris Pratt who is really hot right now.

I am not much of a western fan.  I think it's because there were just so many of them on TV when I was growing up.  I was more of a sitcom girl (remember "Bachelor Father" and "Ozzie and Harriet?").  My Dad was a western fan so I got my fill of "Gunsmoke" and "Have Gun Will Travel" and "Wanted Dead or Alive."  TV was awash in westerns in the 1950's and 60's.


But I have to say this is an exciting, well-acted story and I enjoyed it.

Haley Bennett plays our plucky heroine, and though I liked that she got right in there with the men fighting off the bad guys, I couldn't get over the fact that every costume she wore had some decolletage or was off the shoulder or showed some cleavage. Not very practical outfits for clomping around in the dirt, riding a horse or shooting a rifle. We didn't have any romance in this film, but we certainly had some cheesecake.

Chris Pratt has pretty much perfected the smirking smart ass character and here he is again.  Denzel is his usual wonderful steady steely badass self and Ethan Hawke is poignant as the troubled ex-Confederate officer Robicheaux. Peter Saarsgard is expert at playing reptilian types and and this part is no exception.

The cinematography is beautiful and, at the end of the film, you are even treated to a little of the iconic instantly recognizable "Magnificent Seven" theme music by Elmer Bernstein made famous in the 1960 film.

Here is a little treat for you while you read the rest of my reviews!
You are very welcome!



Directed by Antoine Fuqua, who has worked with Denzel on "Training Day" and "The Equalizer," with a script by Richard Wenk and Nic Pizzolatto, this film is beautiful to look at and is a welcome addition to the western movie genre in a world where we see few westerns anymore.

Rosy the Reviewer says...if you like westerns and shoot 'em ups, you will enjoy this. 





***Some Movies You Might Have Missed***
(And Some You Will Be Glad You Did)!

Now on DVD






Genius (2016)


A biopic of reknowned book editor Maxwell Perkins who guided the work of Thomas Wolfe, F.Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway while working at Scribners in the 1920's.

You might say, Maxwell who?  Literary films are few and far between these days and when they do occur they often don't do well at the box office.  Not sure what that says about us and our penchant for reading, or lack thereof (see how literary I am using big words)?  So it's strange to see this little film about a man few know today played by one of our most well-known actors, Colin Firth

Though Perkins worked with Fitzgerald and Hemingway and other writers, this film focuses on his relationship with Thomas Wolfe (Jude Law) from the publication of Wolfe's first novel "Look Homeward Angel" to "Time and the River." Wolfe is portrayed as a bit of a nut job and has a relationship with Aline Bernstein (Nicole Kidman), who is also kind of a nut job.  She is not particularly happy about Thomas's success since it cuts into her time with him. You see, she is older and bit insecure about that.

But it's the relationship between Perkins and Wolfe that is the interesting one.  They both influenced the other. Tom's freewheeling lifestyle loosened Max up, and Max was able to calm Tom's writing style down.  You see, Tom has absolutely no problem whipping out a 5000 page manuscript and doesn't want to cut a word of it. Tom is single-minded about his work and it dawns on Max that he too is the same.  Even though there are wives and lovers, this film is about the relationship between Max and Tom and explores the psyches of these two men.  Where Tom's ego was big enough that he thought every word of a 5000 page book was worth keeping, Max was wracked with doubt that his editing made the book better. The movie also explores the question: since Wolfe couldn't edit himself how much of his success was because of Perkins?

Perkins was never a writer himself but he understood writers and what made a good book.  Working with Wolfe was a challenge because Wolfe was so prolific and, er, wordy?  He could knock off a 5000 page book - no problem.  Perkins had to make it readable.  Wolfe was in love with his own words and Perkins was able to get him to hone the book down into a readable one. So who was the genius here?  Wolfe or Perkins?

Perkins lived a seemingly normal life at home in Connecticut with his wife, played by Laura Linney (what has happened to her career?  She seems to play nothing but wives of famous men these days e.g. "Sully") and their five daughters, but when he would go to work in NYC he would be surrounded by literary geniuses, mostly men. 

Perkins was a father figure for Wolfe and his other authors.  There are appearances by Fitzgerald (Guy Pearce), who has to deal with his wife Zelda and his career on the downswing and Hemingway (Dominic West) whose confidence is in contrast to Fitzgerald's lack of it. Perkins was as much father confessor as editor. He was a bit of a father figure to his authors and, with five daughters, they in turn were his "sons."

Jude Law, who was once a great heartthrob and who we don't see that much anymore, does a good job showing Wolfe as a character who was complicated and "so full of life" that after he died (he died young at the age of 38) "there was a great void."  But I found the character annoying. If that was how Wolfe really was, I don't know how Perkins put up with him.  People who are "full of life" can also be a pain in the butt. Nicole Kidman as Aline is also annoying but she is supposed to be and does a very good job of being annoying.

But it's Firth, with Perkins' ever present fedora, who carries the film.  His quiet elegance and patience comes through and he is able to convey Perkins' love for Wolfe, who was probably the son he never had and why he put up with him.

Directed by Michael Grandage with a screenplay by John Logan (based on the book "Max Perkins, Editor of Genius" by A. Scott Berg), one can't help but wonder how this little film ever got made and with such big names.  It was probably in the theatres for about a minute.  But we need these kinds of films and we need to remember the great authors.

Rosy the Reviewer says...an interesting exploration of a time of great literary expression and the man who made it all happen. Now go read a book!





10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)


A woman escaping her past gets into a car accident and when she wakes up finds herself in a bunker with two men who say there has been an apocalyptic chemical attack.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays Michelle, who has left her boyfriend, Ben, and is fleeing in the dead of night.  Few people are around and out of nowhere she is struck by a truck.  When she wakes up she finds herself chained to a bed in a room with an IV in her arm.  She sees her cell phone a few feet away, so she rips out her IV and gets to her phone and wouldn't you know?  The bane of cell phone users existence!  NO SERVICE.

But she isn't going to lie around waiting to find out why she is a captive.  She decides to be proactive. She fashions a knife out of her crutch and then starts a fire in the air vent.  When her seeming captor finally comes into the room she attacks him but he overcomes her and sedates her once again.  When she comes to again, we finally find out that her captor is Howard (John Goodman) and he has saved her from "the attack." He's not sure if it was chemical or nuclear. She soon learns that she is not alone in the bunker with Howard.  There is another person there as well, Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.), a young guy we don't know much about. He eventually shares with Michelle that he's not a smart guy and gave up his sports scholarship to go to college because he feared the smarter kids.  We also learn that Howard is a survivalist and conspiracy theorist.

Howard, Michelle and Emmett are all together in an uneasy alliance.  Howard states the rules:  use coasters on the table because it's an heirloom, put the DVDs and tapes back in their sleeves and no touching. The three settle into a routine of playing games, watching videos.

But little things start happening that make Michelle feel like Howard is not telling the truth about the attack. Michelle starts to remember the accident and suspects that Howard was the one who hit her.  What if he did it on purpose?

One day the air filtration system fails so Howard has Michelle crawl into the duct system to restart it.  While in the space where the filtration system is, she sees a ladder leading up to a skylight.  She can't resist crawling up there and when she gets to the top, she sees the word "Help" scrawled into the glass.  She also finds an earring and a picture of a girl that Emmett recognizes as a girl from his high school who went missing.

Michelle starts working on Emmett to form an alliance against Howard so they can escape and one hour and fifteen minutes into the film there is a big twist.

So the whole crux of this film is this:  is Howard telling the truth - has there been an apocalypse - or is he a perv who has abducted her? 

This is a three-hander, meaning for almost all of the film it's just the three characters, but the film also seems to want to make a metaphor out of Michelle's distrust of Howard and her need to escape from the confines of the bunker, no matter what. Michelle has always run away. Michelle shares with Emmett that she had an abusive childhood and there was an incident where she could have helped a little girl who was also being abused.  But she didn't and she ran away. She has just run away from her boyfriend and is now also trying to run away. Mmmm.

John Goodman started out as the jovial kindly father on "Rosanne" and has matured into character roles, some sidekicks and supporting roles, but lately, more and more sinister types.  I haven't decided if Goodman is a good dramatic actor or not. I will keep you posted.  But Winstead and Gallagher are wonderful young actors.  Winstead has starred in the TV shows "Mercy Street" and "BrainDead" and will be starring in the third season of "Fargo," premiering in 2017.  I think we will also see more of her in feature films. Gallagher also hails from TV shows - "The Newsroom" and the award-winning "Olive Kitteridge" mini-series.

Directed by Dan Trachtenberg, produced by J.J. Abrams of "Star Wars" fame (he also produced the first "Cloverfield") and with a script by Josh Campbell, Matthew Steucken and Damien Chazelle, this film does not have much in common with the first one, except the name, though there was a bit of a tease at the end.  Was it related to the first film?  Not sure.  But this one is not directly related (I don't think), which was a sort of disappointment because I found the first film to be a fresh, original and creepy horror film. However, there are rumors that the name "Cloverfield" is going to become a sort of "Twilight Zone" type of franchise. And who knows?  Maybe there will be others and they will all come together and be related somehow.  In the meantime, this one stands on its own as a creepy little film perfect for a dark and rainy day.


Rosy the Reviewer says...if you are expecting this to be a sequel to "Cloverfield," you will be disappointed, but despite an ending that is a bit much, it doesn't lack for intensity and thrills.


 
 

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

232 to go!

Have YOU seen this classic film?





The Phenix City Story (1955)


Based on a true story, father and son attorneys take on the crime syndicate that has been running their town for 100 years and turned it into Sin City USA.

The film starts with a cold opening of "breaking news," where a reporter is seen interviewing the townspeople about the aftermath of a murder of a nominee for State Attorney General.  The murder has been the catalyst for busting a crime syndicate that had been running the town. The reporter refers to Phenix City rising from the ashes - the name of the city itself being a rather blatant metaphor - but  it's not just a metaphor, it's a real city in Alabama.

After the opening credits, the film flashes back to a dramatic reenactment of a true 1955 story and about how the syndicate was brought down.

Local attorney Albert L. Patterson (John McIntire) is an honest attorney but has turned a blind eye to the corruption in his city, because what can he do?  It's been this way for 100 years.  We know things are bad in Phenix City because we have a sultry singer, a smoked filled room, gambling, jazz and sinister looking guys wearing fedoras. But when Albert's son (Richard Kiley), who is also an attorney, returns from the war, he gets his Dad fired up and they decide to try to make some changes.  But when Albert decides that to make those changes he must run for the State's Attorney General position and get people to vote, the mob, run by good old boy Rhett Tanner (Edward Andrews), is not happy and comes down on him hard. 


I sometimes scratch my had at some of these "1001 movies" I am supposed to see before I die.  Some just don't stand the test of time, in my opinion.  To stand the test of time, the film must have natural acting or at least some innovation that lead to other films following suit.  It must say something significant and the story must be universal to appeal to everyone.

Did this one meet the standard?

Why it's a Must See: "Although its graphic violence was virtually unprecedented in Hollywood, what makes this low-budget shocker truly innovative is its recognition that new content calls for new form. [This film] is a purposely ugly movie, full of ugly rednecks, ugly juke joints, ugly camera angles...Many movies since have portrayed more explicit and elaborate violence, but few have conveyed violence's chaotic force with such intelligent crudeness."
---"1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die"

Let's just say it grew on me.  The acting was a bit over-the-top at times and you might be distracted by the 1950's cars, clothes and clichés, but as the film went on, I was amazed at the brutality and the message is an important one. Get out and vote!

Director Phil Karlson, went on to direct the TV movie "The Scarface Mob" in 1959 which led to "The Untouchables" TV show.

McIntyre, Kiley and Andrews are all faces you will recognize though you might not have known their names and they are journeymen actors who can be counted on to give great performances.  And they do.

Rosy the Reviewer says...if you like films like "On the Waterfront" and "All The King's Men," you might like this film.  And the message is clear. Be sure to vote!



 
***Book of the Week***





The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins (2016)


A woman trying to recover from a bad breakup drinks too much and has blackouts, and as she commutes on the train, fantasizes about the people she sees from her train window until one day she is pulled into a real life murder.

Rachel is in bad shape. She is divorced and getting drunk every day.  And every day she takes the commuter train from the suburbs into London and every day she passes the house where she used to happily live with her husband.  She also watches the couple who lives a few doors down from where she used to live.  She has named them Jess and Jason and fantasizes about the happy life they are leading, a life she once had before her husband cheated and left her for another woman who he married and now lives with in their old house.  And to make matters even worse they have a baby together, something Rachel was never able to do and which started her drinking. 

But one day she hears about a murder and it's Jess.  Except her name isn't Jess.  It's Megan, and Rachel realizes she saw something shocking one day from the train that could help the investigation.  However, when she goes to the police, she is considered an unreliable witness.  Is she?  Has her drinking made her hallucinate?  Rachel tries to untangle what's in her head and finds herself tangled up in a complicated story.

Told from three different points of view - Rachel's, Megan's and Anna's (Anna is the woman Rachel's husband married) - we find out just how bad Rachel's life has become since she split from her husband.  She is drunk A LOT. She wakes up many mornings and can't remember what happened the night before. Each woman gives her perspective as the story unfolds.

Hawkins has a gift for dialogue and makes each woman come alive off of the page.  She uses an effective device for telling her story.  Each chapter has a date and is divided into "morning" "afternoon" and "evening." She starts by introducing Rachel in real time and then goes back a few months to introduce Megan and Anna and as the book goes on, the dates catch up with each other as the three women's lives mesh.  It's a fantastic device that makes the book read like you are watching a movie. 

Speaking of movies, the movie version of this book opens TODAY, October 7th, 2016.  I can't wait to see it!





Rosy the Reviewer says...Before you see the film, read the book.  From the very first page you will be pulled in and will not be able to stop reading, and no matter what you think of the movie, you will always have that great read!  However, after reading you will probably think you should stop drinking!




That's it for this week!
 

Thanks for reading!



See you next Friday 
 

for my review of


"The Dressmaker"


 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 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


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.  Once there, click on the link that says "Explore More" on the right side of the screen.  Scroll down to External Reviews and when you get to that page, you will find Rosy the Reviewer alphabetically on the list.

NOTE:  On some entries, this has changed.  If you don't see "Explore More" on the right side of the screen, scroll down just below the description of the film in the middle of the page. Click where it says "Critics." 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."




 
 

 
 
 
 
 





 

Tuesday, October 4, 2016

"O Brother, Where Art Thou?"

As you may have noticed, I have written about my Mother, my Dad, my sister, my daughter, my son and Hubby.  When I made the announcement about taking a break from my regular schedule of Tuesday blog postings, one of my friends expressed regret and told me I still had many stories left in me. One of the topics she mentioned was my brother.  She wondered why I hadn't written about him.

You see, I have a brother too.

 


But I haven't written about him because I haven't seen or spoken to him since our mother's funeral in 1999 and even then we didn't really speak.  He just said something to whomever was nearby that he hoped he never had to come back to our home town ever again.  My sister hasn't spoken to him either.  And you know what?  We have no idea why that is.  Despite several attempts over the years to reach out and to find out, he has not responded.  So we gave up. 

We know we have a brother out there somewhere who wants nothing to do with us.

I have let it go. I haven't written about my brother because I don't think of him that much.  He doesn't play any kind of role in my life now.  He has never met my daughter, his niece, and only met my son once when my son was four. I asked my son recently if he wanted to meet him again, and he replied, "Why would I want a relationship with someone who doesn't care about his family?"


So like I said, I don't think of him that much.  And when people ask me about my family I sometimes forget to mention I have a brother. But I feel guilty about that...and shame.  Guilt and shame that I am part of an estrangement.  That somehow I am guilty of something that has caused it.  That I could have done something to fix it. 

When I was little, I loved the TV show "Father Knows Best."  I thought our family was just like that family: the wise father, the attractive mother, the older sister called "Princess," Bud, the older brother, and then the youngest girl, "Kitten."  Me.  My mother even called me "Kitten" sometimes.

But for all of my thoughts about my happy childhood and my middle class middle American upbringing that I likened to "Father Knows Best," it wasn't supposed to include the estrangement of my brother.  And yet I have to remind myself that I am estranged from him, which is not usually the happy ending you expect from a happy childhood and a "Father Knows Best" kind of world, complete with dog. 

 



Estranged. 

It's a word that feels very odd to say about my brother, considering the seemingly Norman Rockwell upbringing I and my siblings had - parents who stayed together, church every Sunday, stay-at-home Mom, home-cooked meals, dinner together around a table every night. Estrangement is the kind of thing that happens in families where there is abuse or divorce or some bad thing that happened, right?  But nothing like that happened in our family.  Despite that, though, my sister and I have to accept the fact that we are estranged from our brother, and it is highly likely that we will hear nothing from or about him until we hear he has passed away, if we outlive him.  And I feel some shame about that.

So what happened?  How does estrangement happen? Could I have done something?

When you think about it, it's surprising more family members are not estranged from each other.  Just because we have at least one parent in common, that doesn't mean that we will have anything in common with our siblings, and yet our expectations are high about what a happy family is.  We expect that we are all supposed to love each other and be there for each other no matter what. 

But when you consider that many of us are born at different times in our parents' marriage, sometimes in different generations years apart, that we may be of different genders, that when we become adults we have our own families and might have moved far away, that is a pretty high expectation that we would not only love each other, but actually like each other.  Just as in friendships, the relationships need to be nurtured or they drift away.  That is especially true if siblings move far away, have different life experiences or have lifestyles and beliefs that are very different from each other.

Families are strange institutions with their own hierarchy and roles. 

Birth order plays a role in how close siblings might feel to each other. I was the youngest, my brother was in the middle and my sister was the oldest. My sister was nine when I was born, my brother was 5.  They probably weren't particularly happy to have another sibling to contend with. 


(I don't look particularly happy in this picture either).

Those two were always closer, and I was more of the outsider, the "spoiled brat."  My sister got married and left home when I was 12 and my brother left when I was 14, so as the last kid left at home, I enjoyed some of the perks that my sister and brother didn't. There were always comments about how spoiled I was, especially when I got a canopy bed and my own pink Princess phone.

My brother being the middle child and a boy, though, had its own barriers. I don't think my mother liked boys very much or at least didn't understand them, partly because she had five brothers of her own and was probably tired of all of that testosterone. My sister was very accomplished and was held up to us as the standard.  I was the resident drama queen. He was squished between the two of us girls. Add to that a mother who was not easy to please and resentments will occur.

Likewise, I think the state of your parents' marriage over the years plays a role in how close siblings feel to each other.


My parents were 40 when I was born and by that time I think things were not so good between them.  Though they stayed together for over 60 years, it was apparent to me at the end that they were not particularly happy.  So I believe that the three of us kids had very different experiences with our parents. 


By the time I came along, my parents were probably not only tired of each other, but tired of raising kids. Later in my parents' marriage, when my brother and I were still living at home, my Dad wasn't home that much.  Though he and my brother shared a love of fast cars and guns, my Dad was gone in the evenings. He worked extra jobs to afford his "toys," though I also think some of that was to get away from his wife too. 



Also, when parents pass away, the family unit often falls apart.


In most families, the mother is the person who gets everyone together for holidays and the like, and often when the mother dies, if no one else really cares and steps up to make sure everyone still gets together, the family unit falls apart.  I met a woman recently who was a twin in a family with another set of twins and a sister.  Five children and they all live near each other and yet not only are they not close, they rarely see each other.  She shared with me that when her mother was alive, they would all gather at the family home for Sunday dinner.  Once she died, no one else took on that role and they all drifted apart. 

I can speculate all I want about my brother's estrangement.  I will probably never know the reason.  We can't know what's in the hearts and minds of others, and it's possible that he doesn't even know the reason himself anymore. 

But despite age differences, geography, disparity in lifestyles and beliefs or whatever leads to estrangement, the one thing siblings will always share are memories of each other and the life they shared growing up.



My brother used to love to torment me. 

His bedroom was across the hall from mine and he liked to try to shock me and get a reaction.  One time he called for me to come into his bedroom.  He was sitting at his desk reading a school book and had me come over to look at something in the book.  He asked me, "Do you know what that is?" pointing at a diagram in the book.  I shook my head no.  "That's a mammary gland!" and then he broke into loud laughter.  I'm not sure if I knew what a mammary gland was, but he just thought showing me that was the funniest thing.

He also used to like to tie me up into a straitjacket that he made out of one of his sweatshirts.  Then he would tie me to the end of the bed to see if I could escape.  I think this might have had something to do with a fascination with Houdini, but it was also a source of amusement because I invariably wriggled out.  He would like to show this off in front of his friends as in "See what the little twerp can do?" 

One vivid memory involved hockey in our backyard.  Our Dad would freeze the back yard in the winter so we could skate on it. My brother would let me play when the neighborhood kids came over to skate and he had me play goalie.  One time he told me to put on this special headgear because that's what goalies wore.  So I dutifully let him put it on me but couldn't figure out why all of the teen guys were laughing at me.  My brother had put a jock strap on my head!

So it was that kind of sibling stuff. 

When my brother was a teenager, my mother and he did not get along well and I think some of that affected my later relationship with her because of all of the disrespect I witnessed.  He was so bad, he called her Witch Hazel (a Looney Tunes character) and would come home from school and say, "Hi Haze."  The name probably came from the fact that when she was mad at him she would chase him with a broom.  One time my mother was chasing my brother with the broom and he was headed for the one room with a lock - the bathroom.  Wanting to stay in my brother's good graces, I yelled "Run, Lynn!"  Not a good idea.  My brother made it to the bathroom to lock the door so, frustrated, my mother turned around and whacked me instead! I have since learned to stay out of other people's arguments that included brooms!

But despite all of that, I, of course, loved the attention from my handsome, older brother, even if some of it was negative.

And it wasn't all negative.

 
We did things together: we went to the beach, we went horseback riding together, he let me sleep with him on Christmas Eve so we could go down and see what Santa brought together, we played ping pong and board games (though with the board games, if I was winning he would often say I was cheating and tip the board over!), and he would also impart his teen version of wisdom to me on what guys liked, how I should dress and what I should act like.






One very strong happy memory is sitting on the steps over at our grandparents' house.  They lived kitty-corner from us and we were over there all of the time helping them out and just visiting.  My brother was a  teenager and I was around ten or 11. We were sitting on their front steps and he was passing on some words of wisdom that I no longer remember, but I was giving him my full attention, and after our "talk," I remember him saying, "You know, kid, you're not so bad after all."

It is so sad when families fall apart and siblings no longer speak, especially when you consider all they shared growing up, and unfortunately, it happens more times than we would think. 

But it seems to me that the way to insure that siblings remain close is nurturing the importance of family to our children from a young age. 

I have some cousins who are all very close and have stayed close despite the fact that both parents have passed away.  Yes, most of them still live in or near the town where they were raised and they are all relatively close in age, which helps.  But we already know that living nearby or being close in age does not automatically create closeness.  No, I believe that the main factor for their closeness was their mother, who was a fun person to be around, and who, I think, probably nurtured the idea that the siblings should be close and look out for each other, which they are and which they do. 

But if that doesn't happen, no matter how close in age we might be or where we live, our interests and personalities could be very different.  And if we don't get along or have bad memories, then how likely are we to spend time with our siblings?  Just because we are related doesn't mean we like each other.  Relationships with our family members are really no different from our friendships.  Just as it is with friendships, it you don't work at them and nurture them, they fall away. 

However, if the parents consistently emphasize the love in the family, the importance of being there for your family and what each has in common rather than the differences, then I think siblings will remain close throughout life.

When I do think of my brother, I feel sad about the fact that we are estranged, and I even feel ashamed that our family fell victim to estrangement.  I know my parents would be very sad if they knew, but when I really think about it, it's not surprising considering the different paths we have taken and the fact that our parents have been dead for so many years.

I don't think there is anything I could have done.  He chose his path.  He chose to disconnect. 

I may never know why my brother cut himself off from his family.   At this point, the reason for the estrangement has probably been blown away by the winds of time. But my memories remain.  Memories of a time when we were not estranged.



I write this to close the gap in the family circle and include my brother in my blogging reminiscences. 

My parents would have liked that.  I also write this for all of you out there who may be estranged from a family member too. Perhaps it's not too late for you to make contact again.  If so, then do it.  But if not, there is nothing to be gained by feeling ashamed or guilty.  Unless you know in your heart you had something to do with the estrangement, then it's not your fault.  Even with members of our own family, sometimes we just don't know them, what drives them, how they viewed the life you once shared.

We may be estranged from our family member(s), but that does not negate the happy memories and where we once were: in a shared life. 

I write this to honor those memories, and in turn, I honor my parents.

Now when I think of my brother, I choose to remember him and me sitting on those steps at my grandparent's house and his telling me I wasn't "so bad after all."



I wonder what memories he has of me.





Thanks for Reading!
 
See you Friday
 

for my review of


"The Magnificent Seven"
 
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