Tina's December Movies 2010

My movies this month ranged from horrifying to heroic, with some good old ones and some good new ones. All in all, not a bad way to end the year. Stay tuned for my list of the best movies of 2010.

Numbering picks up from last month.

123. Unstoppable (@Hillsborough with Dee & Sheila) – Denzel Washington and Chris Pine have an interesting first day working together as the engineer and conductor on a freight train assignment that starts out slowly and ends up with them trying to stop a runaway train in its tracks. Based on a true story, the unmanned train hurtles through the Pennsylvania countryside, threatening the small towns in its path with both speed and its highly combustible cargo. As a former PR professional in a major corporation, I must admit some eyebrow raising over the stereotypical portrayal of corporate stupidity, particularly with the CEO handling the call about the potential disaster while on the golf course. I'm hoping that some dramatic license applies here, because it is hard to believe that the railroad employees could be either that idiotic or that heroic. If you are looking for a relaxing time at the movies, please miss this train. But if you like heart-stopping action, all aboard! 4 cans.
124. The Man From Snowy River (TV) – This western (as in Western Australia) really isn’t about a man but about a young man facing life on the rugged plains of Australia without his father, killed by stampeding horses. He hires on as a hand on the ranch of American Kirk Douglas, in a dual role as a rancher and a miner who befriends the young man. This is not the kind of movie I like, but it isn’t a bad movie. There’s just not much in it to admire beyond the typical cowboy stereotypes (ridin’ and ropin’ and drinkin’ and the young man growing up nobly). I don’t think that wild horses – which play a prominent role throughout the film – could drag me into seeing it again. 2½ cans.
125. Young @ Heart (TV) – My father always said that you are only as old as you feel. In this engaging documentary, a group of senior citizens may feel old, but performing in a Northampton, Massachusetts, choral group called Young @ Heart keeps them young and active. Group leader Bob Silman challenges them with contemporary tunes from Sonic Youth, James Brown and the Pointer Sisters, and, while it takes them a bit longer to master the lyrics that it might have 50 years ago, they get it down and make it funky. This movie demonstrates the importance of having a purpose, of loving what you do and of having the support of friends, especially as you age. The show must go on. I think my father would have liked this movie. I know I did. 4½ cans.
126. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (TV) – The horrors of the Holocaust hit ever closer to home in this view of WWII through the eyes of the 8-year-old son of a German commandant. When the family leaves Berlin for the father’s new assignment in “the countryside,” the boy leaves behind his friends and wants to explore the nearby “farm.” He encounters an 8-year-old Jewish boy in what is not a farm at all, but a concentration camp run by his father. Despite the barbed wire between them, the two boys strike up a friendship with frequent visits and snacks provided by the German. Young and naïve, he doesn’t see the evil referred to by others in Jews, and he plots to help his friend. The pace quickens considerably at the end of the movie, as the family frantically searches for their little lost boy. Harrowing and moving, this film gives a new perspective to evil. 4½ cans.
127. Sophie’s Choice (TV) – If you’re going to have Holocaust month at the movies, you might as well go all in with this classic, which I had never seen. Meryl Streep is a Polish refugee living with her American boyfriend (Kevin Kline) in a Brooklyn boarding house when aspiring Southern author Peter McNichol moves in to form a friendly threesome. Her very existence has resulted from a series of choices, and she has secrets she cannot bring herself to share. Streep won the Oscar for her role here, and she really demonstrates her ability to become the character she portrays. In Brooklyn, she lives an almost normal life, trying desperately not to let her past overtake her future. In the scenes depicting her experiences in a concentration camp she is thin and frail, her skin nearly transparent and her eyes sunken and scared. The secrets and the realities are too much for anyone to bear. I don’t know how I managed to miss this movie for all of these years (it came out in 1982), but it was worth the wait. 5 cans. And I never want to see it again.
128. The Leopards Take Manhattan (HBO) – A welcome break from the Holocaust movies, this short HBO documentary is the counterpoint to “Young @ Heart.” Here a group of preteen percussionists from Louisville are put through their paces by devoted Diana Downs, a music teacher with an unconventional approach. You don’t have to know how to read music to be a Leopard. You just have to be willing to listen, to learn and to share, as each student begins to understand his or her part and works with another student to pass it along. We get to see an enormously appealing and diverse group of enthusiastic kids taking their first airplane trip, racing over the Brooklyn Bridge and falling on the ice at Rockefeller Center as they experience New York while in town to participate in a jazz concert. If you have HBO and a half an hour, you really should watch this movie. It is joyous. 4½ cans (5 if it had been longer).
129. The Black Swan (Montgomery with Dee and Angela) – Dear Tina: You know all those macabre movies (like “Psycho,” “The Shining” and “Carrie”) that you wisely avoided all these years? You should have listened to your instincts and missed this one, too (hey, if Natalie Portman can “wrestle” with two personalities, I can talk to myself). This movie is director Darren Aronofsky’s (“The Wrestler”) bizarre ballet, featuring fantasy, paranoia and a pencil-thin cast of real characters, headed by Portman in a role bound to get her an Oscar nomination. Barbara Hershey as her live-in Mom trumps any Mama Rose stage mother ever seen. I’m only grateful that my favorite sister was not along for this jaunt to Crazytown. You’d now have to take me kicking and screaming to see Swan Lake. 3½ cans for the art of the movie, but I wanted to walk out about 10 times. As Mom used to say, “Whatever happened to Andy Hardy?” Indeed.
130. A Christmas Story (TV) – After a harrowing turn with “The Black Swan,” this movie provided welcomed relief. For this Jewish girl, it just wouldn’t be Christmas without this Jean Shepherd classic. A wacky family, a tongue stuck to a metal pole, a pack of turkey-eating dogs, a leg-shaped lamp and a boy and his BB gun combine to ensure Happy Horidays for all. Fa ra ra ra ra, ra ra ra ra. 4 cans and a roasted duck.
131. The King’s Speech (@ Princeton, with Nancy and Hank) – Though she feared this story of the stammering King of England would be a British version of the Mel Tillis story, my favorite sister agreed to let it be our Christmas Day movie, extending a long tradition that has included everything from “The Godfather” to “Where Angels Go Trouble Follows” to “Dreamgirls.” She would tell you that the whole thing would have run 30 minutes if the poor King (Colin Firth) could just spit out the words. Of course, the fact that the film broke twice (just as King Edward was about to abdicate) merely extended the time and the frustration – in her eyes. The story was interesting, the acting first rate, but I would have to agree it was trying to hear him trying and trying to speak. So much for the King’s English. Geoffrey Rush as the speech coach (with a face that only Mrs. Potato Head could love) becomes more of a therapist and friend than merely a coach. His exchanges with the recalcitrant King bring welcome humor to an otherwise drawn-out period piece. At the end, we kept waiting for Porky Pig to pop out on the screen and declare with his own stammer, “That’s all folks.” 4 cans from me (Nan grants a mere 3, being generous, she says), maybe more if we had seen every scene, but maybe not, either.
132. Field of Dreams (TV) – This movie is director Phil Alden Robinson’s elegant elegy to the power of a dream, to the relationship between a father and his son and to the beauty that is baseball. Would-be farmer Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) plows under his Iowa cornfield to create his own baseball field after he hears a voice telling him, “If you build it he will come.” Luckily for him, he has an extremely understanding wife (the feisty Amy Madigan) who supports his strange but compelling need for this private field of dreams. One by one, led by Shoeless Joe Jackson, old-time ballplayers come by and play for Ray. An odd odyssey, this beautiful film is moving and poetic. 4 cans.
133. Tin Men (TV) – If you like director Barry Levinson’s “Diner,” you’ll like “Tin Men.” Ordinary men, all of whom sell aluminum siding, hang out at a diner and a nightclub, have inane conversations about topics like the lack of realism on “Bonanza,” and plot ways to con homeowners into buying aluminum siding, whether they need it or not. One day slick Richard Dreyfus pulls his brand new Cadillac out of the dealership when the car is hit by Danny DeVito. Each man vows vengeance on the other, with their actions escalating until Dreyfus woos DeVito’s wife. DeVito, on a losing streak, is hounded by the IRS and his boss and faces the Home Improvement Commission for his deceptive sales practices, so losing his wife is the least of his troubles. Not a great but an amusing movie, “Tin Men” cons its way into your heart. 3½ cans. And they’ll throw in storm windows if I up that to 4 cans.
134. Finding Nemo (TV) – I found Pixar’s animated feature clever but a bit drawn-out. It didn’t help that I watched it over a three-day period on a channel with commercials. But at least I found Nemo at last. 3 cans, though the characters might object to the whole tuna scale.
135. Guarding Tess (TV) – Shirley MacLaine plays Tess Carlisle, feisty former First Lady and first class pain-in-the-ass to Secret Service Agent Doug (Nicholas Cage), who heads her security detail. She never goes anywhere and treats the agents like waiters and servants, yet she won’t allow poor Doug to return to Washington for a more interesting assignment. The beloved First Lady isn’t even beliked by the men who guard her, but somehow she and Doug finally connect. A contrived plot, and Cage – not my favorite actor by far – looks like he has indigestion for most of the movie, but it has a kind of sweet ending. 3 cans.
136. The Fighter (in Hillsborough w/ Hank) – With a crack-smoking brother as his trainer, a shellacked-hair mother managing him and a Greek chorus of white trash sisters bugging him, boxer Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg) has more battles outside the ring than inside. He hooks up with barmaid Charlene, a tough talking chick played by Amy Adams in a role decidedly different from her turns in “Enchanted” and as a nun in “Doubt.” With her encouragement and the help of a jail term for spaced out brother Dicky, Micky finally sees some success in the ring. When Dicky’s time is up and he and Carmela Soprano (that’s who Melissa Leo most resembles in her role as the mother-manager) want back into Micky’s life, the real battle begins. Wahlberg sacrifices his body and most of the good lines here, with Christian Bale as daffy Dicky nearly stealing the show. I never thought I’d see a boxing movie without enough ring time, but “The Fighter” almost makes the boxing look easier than life outside the ring. 4 cans.
137. Pirate Radio (HBO) – When the BBC bans rock music broadcasts in the 1960s, the alternative for a bunch of music-loving DJs is to spin The Who, the Hollies and Hendrix from a boat off-shore called Radio Rock. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is the only American amid the motley crew of British musical renegades, battling – literally – top stay afloat while mean government guy Kenneth Branaugh tries to silence them. Quirky and endearing, and with an ending that is nearly an homage to “Titanic,” this movie rocks. 3½ cans.