Tina's March 2016 Movies

March Madness had its usual negative effect on my movie watching, so there are only 9 movies to report on this month. However, all of them were movies I had not seen previously (as indicated by the *).  Numbering picks up from previous months, and all films are rated on a scale of 1-5 cans of tuna, with 5 being the top.

25.  The Magic of Belle Isle* (2013) – Let’s start with the fact that I could listen to Morgan Freeman read the phone book and be entranced.  In this quiet film, he is Monty Wildhorn, a wheelchair-bound author whose inspiration for creating memorable characters died along with his wife.  Now he is content to live out his days doing the one thing that he loves, drinking, which he considers a full-time job.  When a relative takes him to vacation at the empty home of a friend, hoping to help him reconnect with his literary roots, he meets the divorced woman next door and her three daughters, who slowly become central to his life.  He and the mother (Virginia Madsen), have a growing friendship that is unfailingly polite, not even using each other’s first names.  They live in a quiet little town on a lake, where the kids are only minimally connected to social media and are encouraged to spend time outdoors and using their imagination.  Without realizing it, this is exactly what Monty needs to regain his spirit.  This movie was directed by Rob Reiner, who is behind some other lovely, languid movies, though best known for rom-com “When Harry Met Sally.”  Freeman is perfection, his character completely true to his roots. Catch this one on Netflix if you can.  3½ cans.
26.  Take Me Home* (2011) – Road or buddy movies are seldom like this one, a quiet, introspective journey across country by a woman seeking to visit her ailing father (and escape her failing marriage) and a man driving an unregistered cab who picks her up in New York City and agrees to her command to “just drive.”  Maybe it helps that the leads – Sam Jaeger and Amber Jaeger – are married in real life, or that Sam wrote and directed the movie.  He employs the right amount of light humor and desperation as you see a budding friendship you can only hope will develop into something more.  Worth a trip.  3½ cans.
27.  Elsa and Fred* (2014) – The filmmakers trotted out old veterans for this movie about love in later life, with Shirley MacLaine and Christopher Plummer playing the leads.  He is a recent widower whose daughter has dumped him into an apartment building with a health care worker he doesn’t need – especially since his intent is simply to stay in bed all day, every day.  But the woman across the hall has other ideas.  Call her eccentric – call her overbearing and obnoxious, to be more accurate – but Elsa is game for living life to the max.  It turns out that Fred needs her kind of care to improve his health.  She is obsessed by the movie “La Dolce Vita,” and would like nothing more than having a sweet life – with Fred as her partner.  Fred seems to relish the attention, and before you know it, the two are having expensive dinners and skipping out on the check – and that’s just the beginning.  MacLaine can play eccentric in her sleep (see “Steel Magnolias” and “Terms of Endearment”), and Plummer is not in the Alps anymore.  Good cast, not a bad story, but I couldn’t warm up enough to Elsa to really enjoy this movie.  3 cans.
28.  Whiskey Tango Foxtrot* (2016) – Suppose you were in the news biz but stuck in a desk job with nothing much about to get you elevated to the next level.  Would your solution to this problem be to get yourself imbedded in a combat unit in Afghanistan?  That’s what Tina Fey’s character, Kim Barker, does in this movie (based on a real story), billed as a comedy/drama largely because of Fey’s rep as a funny woman/writer.  But war is generally hell, not comedy, and this one bears that out.  Kim dodges bullets and the advances of the people she has to interview for stories, all the while living in a dumpy apartment, drinking to excess and looking for the big “get” – interviews with the newsmakers of note.  I found the story different from other “war” movies but repetitive, as we follow Kim’s exploits for several years.  During that time she may have become older and wiser, but her situation remains dodgy and dangerous.  Will she survive?  Will she be a war correspondent forever?  Stay tuned.  Lots of violence, drinking and questionable behavior.  3 cans.
29.  Before We Go* (2014) – Chris Evans forsakes his superhero persona to play a street musician in this sweet movie about two souls who meet and share a long night of adventure in New York.  Brooke (Alice Eve, an actress who reminded me of Elisabeth Shue) is trying to get home to Boston but her purse and money have been stolen.  As she runs through Grand Central Station, she encounters Nick, a former med school student turned musician, who is a nice guy just trying to return the cell phone she dropped while racing by him and his trumpet.  He sees that she is desperate and decides to be gallant and help her.  If you have seen “After Sunset” or “Before Sunrise,” you’ll feel that you have seen this movie before, although it is considerably less preachy and more charming than those Ethan Hawk-Julie Delphy movies.  Nick leads them around New York, trying to round up money to get Brooke to Boston by plane, train or automobile.  Their adventure leads to sharing information about their lives and failed relationships.  It isn’t exactly love at first sight, but you can feel the chemistry between them.  The characters – especially Nick – are charming and seem entirely human, even if they rarely have to take a bathroom break in the after-hours journey.  Evans also directed the movie.  3½ cans.
30.  Everything Is Copy* (2016) – This HBO documentary is Jacob Bernstein’s tribute to his late mother, author/journalist/screenwriter/director Nora Ephron.  Known for her humor as much as her acerbic wit and penchant to control everything, Ephron is best known for writing “When Harry Met Sally,” a rom/com that is in my Top 10 favorite movies.  One of four daughters of screenwriter parents, Nora was born to the business, growing up in Beverly Hills.  She immediately started a career as a writer after college, mainly doing magazine essays but also venturing into daily journalism under publisher Dorothy Schiff of The New York Post.  She drew largely on her own life and probed her contemporaries for their take on relationships of all kinds.  She turned her disastrous marriage to Watergate’s Pulitizer-Prize winning journalist Carl Bernstein into a book and then a movie, “Heartburn,” starring no less than Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson.  She worked for esteemed director Mike Nichols on the screenplay for “Silkwood,” also starring Streep.  This love letter to Nora is propelled by her many erudite friends (as well as former husbands) who knew her well and shared much about her as a friend, colleague and character.  I highly recommend this movie if you have ever seen Nora’s work, or, if, like Nora Ephron, you also hate your neck.  4 cans.
31.  The Program* (2016) – I think it is safe to assume that by now everyone knows the story of disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong.  And although I have seen two documentaries on this subject, somehow I was drawn into this new dramatization of events.  Armstrong was the seven-time winner of the Tour De France, cycling’s premiere event.  Cancer survivor, humanitarian (through his “Livestrong Foundation” and raising millions for cancer research), Armstrong was also deceitful, vindictive and fanatical.  To be on his cycling team meant you had to buy in to “the program,” a carefully plotted and managed regimen of using banned performance enhancing drugs.  So many people were in on the fraud, and yet when they were questioned, they rarely spoke against the megalomaniacal leader of the pack, and, when they did, Armstrong did not merely deny the accusations, he took legal action against their claims.  In this drama, journalist David Walsh (Chris O’Dowd) notices early on that Armstrong’s times have improved in a way that seems impossible, and he suspects drug use.  Getting anyone to go up against the face of the sport, the hero who overcame testicular cancer, was next to impossible for Walsh – until the whole scheme ultimately fell apart.  The pat Armstrong answer that he “has never tested positive for performance enhancing drugs” is shown to be untrue. The fall from grace for Armstrong was steep.  The rise to respectability for Walsh was not quite as dramatic.  We live in an age of deniability, where no one seems willing to take responsibility and own up to their actions.  The defense that “everyone else is doing it” is not enough – in my mind – to justify Armstrong and not only what he did but how he treated people in his inner circle, as he built his own image.  Kudos to actor Ben Foster, who must have dropped his body fat number to zero to play Armstrong, and to the rest of the cast.  Karma is a bitch, and it gets you in the end.  3½ cans.
32.  You’re Not You* (2014) – This Hilary Swank movie is about Kate, a talented pianist who contracts ALS, rendering her increasingly immobile and dependent on others for her care.  She and her husband Evan (Josh Duhamel) get by for a while, but as she needs more care, they hire Bec (Emmy Rossum), a wild child college student who stays out late, shows up late and seems exactly what the straight-laced Kate doesn’t need.  But somehow Bec survives her first few weeks, and as Kate’s condition worsens, Bec’s skills improve.  They form a close bond that grows stronger even as Kate’s abilities wane.  ALS is an insidious disease, and when Kate’s friends early on tell her she’s “just tired” and will get stronger, she has to correct them because that is not the progression.  This movie sometimes feels like a Lifetime Movie of the Week, but the acting is too good for the run-of-the-mill tearjerker.  I loved the growing friendship and trust between the young caretaker and the uptight patient, and I appreciated Kate’s sense of guilt for “doing this” to her vibrant husband, who betrays her.  3½ cans.
33.  Georgia O’Keefe: A Woman on Paper* (2016) – This PBS documentary examines the life and work of the famous American artist O’Keefe, whose charcoal sketches first attracted attention in the 1915 timeframe.  O’Keefe was the mother of modernism among female artists and was influenced by the famous photographer Alfred Stieglitz, whom she later married.  He was the first person to show her work in his gallery.  To look at the color and richness of her work, which shines with simplicity, is to see the evolution of a modern, independent woman.  I have a photograph that I took at the Presby Memorial Iris Garden in Montclair that I always refer to as “my Georgia O’Keefe” because it gets up close and personal with a white flower.  O’Keefe’s style is instantly recognizable, and her influence, even 100 years after she began her career, is undeniable.  I loved watching this movie and seeing so much of her work from her ultimate home, New Mexico.  Her paintings enhanced the beauty of the landscapes that inspired her.  4 cans.