Tina's May 2017 Movies

Here we go, folks, with a look at the 16 movies I watched this month.  They are rated on a scale of 1-5 cans of tuna fish, 5 being the top mark.  Movies marked with an * are those I had not seen previously, and numbering picks up from last month.

48.  Legally Blonde (2001) – Reese Witherspoon bursts onto the screen in this movie about a sorority girl who decides to follow her ex-boyfriend to Harvard Law School and enroll to win him back.  Blessed with a 4.0 average and a way to win over recruiters, her Elle Woods has no problem gaining admission.  Getting adjusted is a bit more of a challenge, but Elle is more than just adorable.  She is plenty resourceful and smarter than even she knows.  Will she win the boyfriend back, and does she really want to settle for someone who dumped her because she is “too blonde?”  There is nothing profound here, but it is great fun to watch Elle Woods in action.  3½ cans.
49.  Harry Benson: Shoot First* – Imagine being on the scene, armed with a camera, at some of the most memorable moments in history.  Harry Benson was a photojournalist who became a celebrity photographer – not one of the unpopular paparazzi, but an invited guest brought in to record history in the making.  From his pictures of the Beatles landing in the US to his photos of President Nixon waving from the helicopter as he departs the White House to his shot of Senator Bobby Kennedy on lying shot on the floor of a hotel in California, where he was assassinated, Benson was there, adding his skill to capture the moment memorably and build our collective retrospective of iconic moments.  He took pictures of every famous person you can name, from chess master Bobby Fischer to the King of Pop, Michael Jackson with the great Muhammad Ali, all four of the Beatles fooling around together.  These are legendary photos of legendary people taken by one of the most legendary photographers of his time.  4 cans of film.
50.  Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer* (2017)  – Richard Gere is the title character, Norman, a “fixer” – more like a fixer-upper, really – whose work is to forge connections between people of influence.  In this case, Norman somehow aligns himself with the man who a few years later becomes the Prime Minister of Israel, closing the deal on their friendship by buying him a very expensive shoes.  Norman is not above stalking his prey on the street where they live or where they run, all trying to broker relationships and deals between them.  He overplays and overstates his own importance, so when his synagogue needs $14 million to save its building from destruction, he “seems” to have an anonymous donor for half the needed funds.  It’s hard to pin Norman down, to have him explain exactly what he does as a businessman/consultant.  I found him brash and desperate, not quite on the “Glengarry Glen Ross” scale, but clearly losing his influence or unable to reach the people he needs to keep playing the game.  At least here, Gere is no longer the sexy young man or the handsome, silver fox.  He appears smaller and with much less charm and power than ever before.  Maybe it is my distaste for power brokers and people who seem to generate nothing of real value, but I found the movie unduly complex and somewhat annoying.  Bring back that gorgeous Gere I used to love.  2½ cans.
51.  The Great Gilly Hopkins* (2015) – Sometimes she is a sullen teenager, and other times she is a feisty but caring young woman truly lost in life.  Gilly (Sophie Nelisse) never knew her mother and has bounced around foster homes, so she is naturally suspicious and withdrawn when she arrives on the doorstep of the relentlessly cheerful and devout Mrs. Trotter (Kathy Bates), a veteran foster mother who already has a young boy living in her house.  Gilly can be nasty and she certainly doesn’t take any guff.  Her goal is to find her birth mother, and she sends a note disparaging her current living situation as she runs away to reunite with her long-missing mom.  When her grandmother (Glen Close) arrives to reclaim her, she realizes that the Trotter house is her home and these people (including the blind next door neighbor who comes for dinner every night) are the family she craves.  Gilly is a tough kid to love, and she has faced so much adversity in her short life.  Will she be able to stay with the people who love her?  I liked this movie despite its sometimes overwrought moments.  3 cans.
52.  The Bridges of Madison County (1995) – Every now and then, I just HAVE to see this perfect little movie.  The plot is simple:  A photographer (Clint Eastwood) passing through Iowa to take pictures of bridges meets housewife and mother Francesca (the glorious Meryl Streep) and over a four-day period, they fall deeply in love.  But she can’t abandon her family (which is conveniently out of town when they meet) any more than she will ever forget that brief interlude when she stopped being a mother/wife and reclaimed her status as a woman.  Beautifully shot, this movie is all about subtlety – a small hand gesture here, a bowed head there.  As her grown children go through Francesca’s belongings after her death, they learn about this unknown chapter in their mother’s life and it forces them to not only reconsider her but to reexamine their own lives and relationships.  Meryl can do no wrong. 5 cans.
53.  The Color of Money (1986) – Fast Eddie Felson (Paul Newman) isn’t quite so fast anymore.  The former pool shark now shills for other players, and Vincent (Tom Cruise) is his prodigy.  But Vincent has an ego as big as his towering head of hair, and he doesn’t want to lose, despite Eddie’s advice that you have to lose sometimes in order to set up the next score and win big.  In pool, it is all about the con, the hustle and the dump to raise the stakes for a better payoff.  Eddie’s wisdom faces off against Vincent’s braggadocio, and who will really be the hustler here?  The coolest thing about this movie is the range of pool shots these guys make.  How’d they do that?  3½ cans.   
54.  Passengers* (2016) – I’ll admit right up front that I have trouble suspending my sense of reality (I could barely tolerate watching “Gilligan’s Island”), so watching this science fiction film seems like an unlikely choice for me.  However, Chris Pratt is one of the Chris stars I like, and Jennifer Lawrence is everywhere these days, so I decided to give it a try.  The premise is that a contingent of passengers have left earth to travel on a spaceship bound for a new home.  They are in suspended animation during the trip, which is scheduled to take decades.  But the sleep pod containing Pratt’s Jim malfunctions, and he wakes up 90 years early (I feel ya, man).  Alone on the ship, surrounded by other humans in their sleep pods, he makes friends with the automaton bartender (Michael Sheen) and tries to keep himself busy.  But the sleeping beauty Aurora (Lawrence) is too tempting, so he finds a way to interrupt her beauty sleep and, as you can guess, they bond.  The spaceship is pretty cool, and somehow is stocked with all of the clothes (and, in Aurora’s case, make-up and jewelry) that one would need during interstellar travel.  I won’t give anything away, except to say that despite my inability to suspend my sense of reality, I found this view of life in space a blast.  3½ cans.
55.  A Walk on the Moon (1999) – Start with Diane Lane, an actress that I love.  She plays Pearl Kantrowitz, and she, her mother-in-law (Tovah Feldshah) and her kids are spending the summer of 1969 at a very modest camp/resort in the Catskills while hubby Marty (Liev Schreiber) schelps back and forth to the city to his job repairing TV sets.  Pregnant at a very early age, Pearl now feels bored and trapped in her role as wife and mother, so when the Blouse Man (Viggo Mortensen) shows up in his magic bus, she’s receptive to flirting.  She is living at a time when feminism is making women rethink their roles, a time when Neil Armstrong lands on the moon, and when the Woodstock music festival is taking place nearby.  Both Pearl and her teenage daughter are curious about what else there is for them as women and eager to stretch their wings.  I love this movie, with its authenticity about the era, the sexual awakening of the two women, the fear of growth and of loss.  I love the announcements about the arrival of the knish man (voiced by Julie Kavner, of Marge Simpson and “Rhoda” fame), I love the acting and seeing the characters watch in awe as Armstrong takes that giant step for mankind (and Pearl takes a pretty major step of her own).   What a time in history, and what a way to combine that era and these characters!  4 cans.
56.  The Wizard of Lies* (2017) – This HBO dramatization of the real story of disgraced investment mogul Bernie Madoff doesn’t break new ground, but it provides a deservedly harsh look at a man whose Ponzi scheme cost his investors millions of dollars.  For years, Madoff (Robert DeNiro) persuaded people to give him their money so he could invest it for them.  His firm employed his own sons, who were unaware of the fact that the trades, the statements -- everything -- were lies.  His elaborate fraud went undetected for years, as investors enjoyed better than average returns, never realizing that he was using the new money to pay off the earlier investors.  Madoff was a genius when it came to making people beg him to take their money.  The many victims here lost their life savings thanks to his greed and hubris – he did not want to lose – ever.  In the end, he lost it all.  And even as he pleaded guilty, he maintained that the investor themselves were responsible at least in part because of their own greed.  He destroyed lives, including that of his family, and ended up in jail, where he will finish his days alone.  Well done, Bernie.  4 cans. 
57.  About Alex* (2015) – A cast of 20-somethings attempts to recreate the angst and vibe of the classic “The Big Chill” here but comes up short.  A group of college friends with varying relationships gathers after the suicide attempt of one of their own.  Alex (Jason Ritter)
– the same name as the successful suicide friend in TBC – is lonely and needs his friends, all of whom show up when his attempt to kill himself doesn’t work.  There are couples and would-be couples and plenty of history between and among the group here, none of whom are as established as the crew in “The Big Chill.”  They aren’t as interesting, either.  And the soundtrack from “The Big Chill” stands alone.  Sorry, but I found it impossible to watch this movie without referring back to a much better and previous telling of a very similar story.  That one gets 4 cans.  This one?  2 cans.
58.  Princess Diana – Her Life, Her Death and the Truth* (2017) – It is hard to believe that nearly 20 years have passed since the shocking death of Princess Diana of Great Britain.  This CBS program examines her less-than-charmed life, marrying England’s most eligible bachelor, Prince Charles, having two sons, and enduring the humiliation of his affair with Camilla Parker Bowles.  But the heart of this program is the examination of Diana’s death, along with the man she was dating at the time, Dodi El-Fayed, in a suspicious crash in a tunnel in Paris.  Fleeing paparazzi and traveling far above the speed limit, their car sideswiped a vehicle as it entered the tunnel and crashed into a barrier, killing Diana and Dodi along with their driver Henri Paul.  Tests later proved that Paul was drinking drunk, and that the accident was not a conspiracy by the Royals who forsook Diana after her divorce from Charles.  The show looks at her life, her relationships, how she became a Princess, her ancestral home, and her kindness and generosity to the afflicted and underprivileged, traits that are continued by her sons.  I forgot how simply beautiful she was, and how unhappy.  3½ cans.
59.  Dirty Dancing* (2017) – The big question here is why, ABC?  Why remake a classic?  Why make us endure it for three hours?  And why cast someone (Abigail Breslin) so completely unsuited for this role?  Breslin plays the Jennifer Grey part of “Baby” Houseman, a bright but unworldly girl who falls in love with Johnny Castle (Cole Prattes), the dance instructor at Kellerman’s Catskills resort.  The appalling casting casts a pall over the entire movie because there is no chemistry between the leads, because she looks much younger than 18 (and is dressed in such dowdy clothes that her wardrobe looks 45) and because his falling for her is about as likely as Ryan Gosling actually being my next husband.  There are a few differences in the plot here, which we all know so well.  Baby’s parents (Bruce Greenwood and Debra Messing) have meatier roles than the parents in the original and they are going through marital troubles.  And Johnny himself turns out to have gotten into enough trouble as a youth that he ended up doing jail time.  The characters also get to sing some of the songs.  The dancing overall is OK, but Prattes is no Patrick Swayze and Breslin?  Decorum prevents me from truthfully commenting on her lack of dance prowess.  And I cannot neglect to mention the most egregious faux pas of all, when the waiter in the dining room of Kellermans’s offers Baby’s father a pastrami sandwich, which he says they serve with cole slaw and mayo.  Mayo?  On a pastrami sandwich?  No respectable Jewish joint would EVER serve pastrami with mayo.  Sacrilegious!  The only saving grace here was that I watched it with a friend, and together we had the time of our lives.  We just didn’t do the lift.  And when Baby and Johnny do it, she looked like she was about to bowl him over and flatten him.  This movie wasn’t as good as “Sharknado,” no less the original Dirty Dancing.  1 can.
60.  The Keepers* (2017) – This engrossing series comes from Netflix, the folks who offered up an equally compelling documentary last year, “The Making of a Murder.”  Like the earlier series, this 7-part program tackles a murder.  In 1969, a young nun teaching at Archbishop Keogh High School near Baltimore goes missing and two months later her murdered body is found.  The case remains unsolved, but two of the now-grown women who were students at the school, Abbie Schaub and Gemma Hoskins, join forces to examine the case.  They sort through newspaper articles and TV clips, determined to unearth the truth.  They interview anyone involved with the victim and the school.  It turns out that the attractive young woman, Sister Cathy Cesnick, might have been about to blow the whistle on the school counselor, a priest named Father Maskell, who was abusing a number of the girls in the school.  For years, the murder went unsolved, and Maskell continued his horrifying acts with young Catholic girls who were too afraid and too ashamed to come forward.  This documentary covers the case and their stories in great detail – almost too much detail.  It wasn’t until years later, in the 1990, that one of the young victims of the abuse starts to recall the memories of the trauma she suffered and, along with another victim, turns to the courts.  Old crimes are hard enough to prove, but given the power of the Catholic Church in Baltimore, this case was almost impossible.  The amateur investigators start a Facebook page that ultimately opens the door to many other former students who suffered at the hands of the abusive priest.  As in the Oscar-winning movie ”Spotlight,” the list grows, and so does the cover-up by the Archdiocese.  Meanwhile, the crime, and any justice for Sister Cathy, begins to fade.  This is a fascinating and disturbing tale of morally reprehensible people who are allowed to continue to have access to children and who get away with their abuse by terrorizing them into silence.  I thought this program would move along better if there had been a voiceover narrator rather than using so many long set-up shots, but the number and depth of the interviews with the principals in the story carries the narrative well.  Not for the faint of heart.  4 cans.
61.  Broken Flowers* (2005) – I always thought that no one can do nothing better than me, but Bill Murray comes in a close second.  Here he is Don Johnston, a computer mogul who doesn’t own a computer and who is content to sit on his couch listening to music and doing, well, nothing.  One day he receives an unsigned letter from a former girlfriend – of whom there are many – letting him know that after they broke up, she discovered she was pregnant.  She never told him, and she raised the son on her own.  Now, she says, she thinks her son might be looking for his father.  Don is hardly flummoxed by this news.  He is so unmoved that you’d think the letter said there was a Macy’s One Day Sale.  But his neighbor Winston (Jeffrey Wright) is captivated by the news and plots out an itinerary for Don to visit each of his former girlfriends who might be the author of the mysterious letter.  Don visits each one, crossing all but one off the list of potential mothers.  In small parts, they are Sharon Stone, Julie Delphy, Jessica Lange and Tilda Swinton, each with her own life, some of which are modestly amusing (Lange is an “animal communicator”).  With his deadpan expression and less dialog than Tom Hanks while stranded on that deserted island in “Cast Away,” Murray is the perfect actor for this understated role.  Which doesn’t mean I liked or recommend the movie – unless you are a huge Bill Murray fan.  I liked him better in “St. Vincent,” where he was equally unmoved, a bit of a reprobate, but ultimately a good guy.  3 cans.  Barely.
62.  The Lovers* (2017) – Michael (Tracey Letts) is a philandering husband, constantly contacting his aggrieved wife Mary (a hardly-recognizable Debra Winger) with excuses so he can spend time with his paramour Lucy (Melora Walters).  But Mary seems relieved, because she is involved in an extramarital affair of her own, with younger and hunkier Robert (Aidan Gillen).  Although Michael and Mary reside in the same house, their paths barely cross, and both of them know this sham of a marriage is nearing an end.  They – and their partners – are just waiting for their son Joel (Tyler Ross) to come home for a visit so they can tell him in person.  But somewhere along the way to resolution, Michael and Mary find each other again and start a fervent romance, with each lying to their other lover to spend time together.  What exactly IS fidelity anyway, you might ask.  Is it cheating if you are secretly having an “affair” with your own spouse?  There were people chuckling in the theater, but the movie never elicited that response from me.  It was a story I had never seen or considered before, and I felt real sadness for the characters (particularly Winger as Mary, with lines of anguish etched into her face).  Different isn’t necessarily bad, but it isn’t necessarily good, either.  3 cans.
63.  The Great Escape (1963) – No, this is NOT a vacation flick.  It is about a group of military prisoners of war at a German prison camp in WWII who bond together and dig their way out.  Back in the day, films used to be made that included large casts of notable names.  Here we have James Garner (his war movie “36 Hours” is even better than this one), Steve McQueen, Richard Attenborough, Charles Bronson, James Coburn and many more as the imprisoned men who cleverly manage to dig their way out of the camp and back into society.  But will their escape stand?  Or will their new identities hold up?  This movie is based on a true story and brings humor and humanity to an otherwise life-threatening and dismal situation.  Great performance all around.  3½ cans.