Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Tina's June 2015 Movies

June brought a dozen movies to my list, some fun, some charming, and some not really worth seeing.  As always, numbering picks up from the previous month, and movies that I had not seen previously are marked with an asterisk.  Ratings are based on a scale of 1-5 cans of tuna, with 5 being the highest rating.

JUNE
65.  From the Terrace (1960) – Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward star in this melodramatic adaptation of the John O’Hara novel about a wealthy but unhappy married couple.  He is the scion of a modestly wealthy family which doesn’t love him.  She is from a much richer family and he doesn’t really love her, either.  What he loves is his work at an investment bank on Wall Street, a job he “fell into” by rescuing the partner’s grandson.  They become fabulously wealthy and attractive and yet are miserable together, though she lusts after him (and settles for her old boyfriend instead).  He doesn’t even understand how unhappy he is until he meets and falls for a much less complicated, pretty woman (Ina Balin) and her life.  Will he give up everything for the chance of finally achieving happiness?  Tune in and find out.  This movie and “The Young Philadelphians” are two of my favorite Newman movies.  I love Paul Newman!  4 cans.
66.  School of Rock (2003) – I’ll give this fluffy little movie a passing grade mainly because of the A+ performance of Jack Black as the star.  Black plays Dewey, an out-of-work, slacker musician, too obnoxious to remain in the band he started and posing as a substitute teacher under a friend’s name.  He takes on a group of private school students, introduces them to music and his passion for it, and forms them into a credible rock band.  This is where the movie runs off the rails for me, since I have to suspend my sense of reality in watching him get hired as a teacher in the first place, and then get these kids on board.  Still, Black is at his John Belushi best as he wins over the students, the administration (yet another role for Joan Cusack) and the competition.  3 cans. 
67.  Grand Central* (2014) – As a New Jersey native, I have always been relegated to entering New York by train via dreary and perfunctory Penn Station.  Its much more splendid cousin is Grand Central Terminal, the beautiful beaux arts building across town that is both a destination and gateway into the city for millions of people who arrive by train from places all over the country.  This beautifully-restored building represents the confluence of art, architecture and engineering, with its ceiling of the stars, carvings, magnificent arched windows and a state-of-the-art transportation system – after all, it is first and foremost a train station.  But within its airy confines, it is the home of shops, restaurants, markets and multi-million dollar clocks, each made from a single piece of opal and which, collectively, have served as the meeting point for millions of people.  The station had fallen into disarray by the 1970s and there was consideration of knocking it down (the current iteration is the third terminal built on the site).  But the cautionary tale of the destruction of a once-grand Penn Station caused city historians and people who appreciate the value of preservation (including a major role played by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis) to restore the building and enhance its glory.  I followed up the experience of seeing this movie by meeting a dear friend there a week later so we could explore its wonders.  I’m so glad I was inspired by the movie to take a walk from Penn Station to the aptly named Grand Central.  4 cans.
68.  Doc Hollywood (1991) – Manic Michael J. Fox is at his smug Alex P. Keaton best in this fish-out-of-water tale of Dr. Ben Stone, a hotshot doc who is Hollywood-bound when he crashes his sports car into a fence in small town Grady, SC, and is sentenced to community service.  He has to fill in for the grumpy old town doctor and gets to meet the town’s colorful characters – the family who come to him so he can read them letters since they can’t read; the farmer who gives him a pig in lieu of payment; and the attractive ambulance driver.  He’s bound for the big bucks of plastic surgery but falls in love with Lou (Julie Warner), the driver, and the laid-back but warm lifestyle of the locals.  Will he head to the Hollywood Hills? Or will be stick around for the Annual Grady Squash Festival?  Tough one to call.  This movie is a major dose of charm, especially Fox and Warner.  4 cans.
69.  I’ll See You in My Dreams* (2015) – “I’ll See You in My Dreams,” I said to the kid at the ticket counter as I plunked down my $8, “but don’t take it personally.”  But this film is personal.  Carol (Blythe Danner) is a widow of 20 years who lives quietly with her beloved dog Hazel and is very settled in her routine.  She sets the alarm for 6, gets up, reads the paper, does her errands, occasionally plays bridge with her girlfriends, drinks a lot of wine, sits in the house by herself and generally lives a lonely existence.  However, two men enter her life and change things up a bit, making her rediscover the woman she once was.  Lloyd (Martin Starr) is the much younger pool guy (nothing happens beyond a friendship) and Bill (the silver and foxy Sam Elliott) meets her at the retirement community where her friends live and he asks her out.  He turns out to be a really good guy, and she can start to think about changing her life.  But life is not always as we plan it.  This is a heartfelt movie, at times touching and amusing – a far cry from those big-budget blockbusters you can find at the multiplex.  I’d love to hang around with Carol and her old friends (Rhea Pearlman, June Squibb and Mary Kay Place), minus the speed dating sequence.  3½ cans and a couple of large glasses of wine.
70.  Love & Mercy* (2015) – Brian Wilson: Musical genius.  Tortured soul.  As someone with no musical ability, I cannot even imagine what it must be like to have music in your head and try to translate it into a cohesive, complex sound, but that was the genius of the man behind such classic songs as “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” “Good Vibrations” and “God Only Knows.”  But Wilson, the heart and soul of the Beach Boys, was the victim of abuse – first by his father, who abused him physically and emotionally, and then by the charlatan psychologist, Dr. Eugene Landy, who kept Wilson drugged and firmly under his control for decades, estranged from his family and convinced that he was a paranoid schizophrenic.  If you didn’t know this story was true, you would never believe it.  But Wilson heard music in his head (among other things he heard), and eschewed his early hits about sun, sand and surfing to turn out the iconic “Pet Sounds” and set a new standard for popular music, backed by the power and grace of the famed studio musicians, The Wrecking Crew.  Paul Dano as a younger Wilson and John Cusack as the older version give remarkable performances as a man always on the edge of losing it all.  Elizabeth Banks plays the woman who sees his pain and finally is able to get him freed from the burden of his “caretaker,” Landy.  How Brian Wilson survived his private hell and turned out some of the most memorable music of the century, well, God Only Knows.  4 cans.  
71.  Standing in the Shadows of Motown (2002) – And speaking of back-up bands, the Funk Brothers were to Motown what the Wrecking Crew was to the West Coast sound.  A group of talented, mostly jazz, musicians, the Funk Brothers worked at Berry Gordy’s Motown Studios and created that distinctive Motown groove that appears on every artist’s record from that era, from Smokey Robinson to Marvin Gaye to Martha Reeves.  Most came from the South, and many ended up in Detroit to work in the burgeoning automobile industry, but the veritable assembly line of hits that was Motown in the 1960s was a better fit for them than Chevrolet.  Even the most ardent fan in this documentary can’t name the members of this crew, because they were largely anonymous and ever changing.  But take the bass work of James Jamerson or the beats of Benny Benjamin or the piano of Joe Hunter and let them work and the result is the soundtrack of my youth.  When Gordy abruptly abandoned Detroit for Hollywood in 1972, he left behind these huge contributors to Motown’s success, and the sound was never the same.  Like the recent documentary “20 Feet From Stardom” that focused on the anonymous back-up singers behind so many hit records, this movie looks at these men and their contributions as a group and as individuals.  Several more contemporary artists are paired with them to recreate the songs they made famous.  4 cans.
72.  Back to School (1986) – From the esoteric to the sophomoric, my electric taste in movies covers a lot of territory.  This comedy is my favorite Rodney Dangerfield movie, surpassing even the classic “Caddyshack.”  Dangerfield is plus-size clothing mogul Thornton Melon, a man so rich he gets into his son’s college by writing a big check to build the college’s new business school.  He enrolls to be closer to his son Jason (Keith Gordon), brings along his faithful factotum Lou (Burt Young) and proceeds to take over the school, doling out “Shakespeare for everyone” and remaking the dorm to look like a bachelor pad.  His interest in the professor played by Sally Kellerman is thwarted by her teaching schedule, so he tells her to “call me some time when you have no class.”  The whole movie is filled with Dangerfield witticisms, low-brow comedy that is entertaining nonetheless.  Today’s top box office draw, Robert Downey Jr., plays Jason’s best and only friend in a way that his rise to stardom would never have been predicted.  Adrienne Barbeau is Melon’s wife in the opening sequence, and her appearance, while brief, is memorable.  Not a thinking person’s movie to be sure, but plenty to make me smile.  
3½ cans.
73.  Spy* (2015) – If you can buy Melissa McCarthy as an “action hero” in this comedy, you must be willing to believe she could be an accomplished marksman, able to drive motorcycles and fast cars, fly helicopters and airplanes and run down a street in high heels.  You have to overlook reason and logic in movies like this in order to enjoy them.  Here McCarthy is Susan Cooper, a CIA desk jockey whose mission is to convey information to the master spy played by Jude Law, a man with whom she is in love.  When circumstances at the agency change, Susan goes undercover to catch the bad guys and girls (Rose Byrne, also McCarthy’s co-star in the uproarious “Bridesmaids”).  Rather than try to kill Byrne’s character, Susan should just shave her head and remove the thousand pounds of hair on it.  (There is a funny line about her hair breaking her fall.)  The plot gets very convoluted, but the audience is there mostly to hear McCarthy swear like a sailor, make incredibly complex and hilarious statements about others and keep a legion of stunt women in work.  If you are looking for relatively mindless entertainment, I recommend Spy.  3½ cans.  But not as funny as “Back to School.”
74.  Midnight Run (1988) – Before action comedies started to kill people and blow things up every 30 seconds, there was this version, starring Roberts DeNiro as a bounty hunter who is trying to deliver fugitive accountant Jonathan (Charles Grodin) back to the bail bondsman (Joe Pantoliano) in time for trial.  Jonathan is a genuine pain in the butt, and DeNiro is working this big payday as his last.  There is great chemistry between the two opposite types as they board planes, trains and automobiles in this combination buddy/road comedy.  DeNiro looks great, constantly puffing on cigarettes and being chastised for it by Grodin, whose character has crossed up the Chicago mob boss and stolen his money only to give it away for philanthropy.  There is plenty of adventure and amusement.  4 cans.
75.  Music of the Heart (1999) – Meryl Streep plays real-life music teacher Roberta Guaspari in this story of a woman who teaches elementary school students to play the violin in an inner-city school in East Harlem, NY.  What are the chances these kids from impoverished backgrounds will be interested or able to learn this instrument?  Streep’s teacher conveys such love and affection for the music and the experience for the kids, even as she is tough and demanding of them.  Under the category of “Meryl can do anything,” it sure LOOKS like she is actually playing the violin.  This may not be her greatest work, but if you can get through this movie without goosebumps, a tear in the eye or a lump in the throat, then you have no heart.  Here’s to the importance of the arts in our educational system.  3½ cans.
76.  The Oranges* (2011) – Vanessa and Nina (Alia Shawcat and Leighton Meister) are best friends as kids, but the relationship doesn’t survive through high school.  Their parents, David and Paige (Hugh Laurie and Catherine Keener) and Terry and Cathy (Oliver Platt and Allison Janney), are also best friends, with the men especially close.  So when the prodigal Nina begins an affair with her former friend’s father, all of the relationships are thrown into upheaval.  Never mind that the marriage between David and Paige was on the skids anyway.  This affair is enough to drive Paige into abandoning her Christmas caroling plans!  This is an earnest attempt at comedy/drama, but so lightweight that it never fully succeeds in either.  Mostly, it is just awkward, and the moral dilemma posed by the relationship-shattering affair (and the May-December romance) is never really resolved.  Move along, folks, not much to see here.  2 cans. 

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