Tina's October 2017 Movies

I barely made it into double figures this month, but a few of the movies I saw were memorable.  Start with "The Florida Project."  Films are rated on a scale of 1-5 cans of tuna, 5 being the highest rating.  Movies I had not seen previously are marked with an asterisk.  Numbering picks up from the previous month.

109.  Spielberg* (2017) – This HBO documentary chronicles the extraordinary career of film maker Steven Spielberg, but it is far from a mere listing of his movies.  Smitten with movies from an early age, Spielberg has used film as a writer uses prose, to express his innocence, his character, his fears and his virtues.  From a young TV director and his landmark TV film “Duel,” Spielberg has delivered some of the most popular, important and revered movies of all time.  You can admire the blockbusters like “ET,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and his first big hit, “Jaws,” or you can partake in more intellectual fare with his epics “Schindler’s List” and “Saving Private Ryan.”  The list is endless and rich in visual creativity, storytelling and innovation (see “Jurassic Park” for one of the first forays into live action blended with animation). Steven Spielberg lives to make movies, and the rest of us are better for it.  4 cans.
110.  Beaches (1988) -- I’m not sure I have any friends who have not seen this movie, designed to celebrate the emotional, warm, feisty friendship between singer CC Bloom (Better Midler) and rich girl Hillary Whitney (Barbara Hershey).  They meet on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City as kids and sustain a friendship for decades that endures strains and misunderstandings, bouts of selfishness and jealousy, but in the end, love wins.  Hershey has it tough here, standing in the shadow of larger-than-life Midler, but she handles herself with a kind of patrician pride.  We all know what’s coming, but we cry anyway.  This is a chick flick that I just need to see every few years (the TV version broadcast last year was forgettable) as a reminder of the power of movies and of friendship.  4 cans.
110.  The Art of the Steal (2009) – This documentary is one I like to view every few years.  It is about what happened to one of the best art collections in the world, mostly post-Impressionist art, accumulated by the late Dr. Albert Barnes, who built his own museum to display his collection outside of Philadelphia.  Scoffed at initially by the art establishment, Barnes vowed never to allow his vast collection to move, travel or become part of the Philadelphia Art Museum.  His death, with no direct heirs, greatly compromised his desires, and the film focuses on the fight over Barnes’ wishes and the greed of the art community who wished to annex his works.  I’m sorry that I never made it to his original museum, but I have seen his collection on display – in the very place he abhorred.  Let’s not forget for a minute that art is commerce, and that those who can profit from it will always try to find a way to do just that.  This is a fascinating movie that I have recommended to many people, all of whom loved it.  I caught it on STARZ this time around.  4½ cans.
111. Crazy, stupid, love (2011) – Ryan Gosling has never looked better than in this part as a cool player who schools separated Dad Cal (Steve Carell) about women in this clever comedy brought to you by the guys responsible for TV’s “This is Us.”  There are plenty of plot twists I cannot reveal, as Cal tries to recover from his wife’s (Julianne Moore) sudden decision to dump him for her co-worker David Lindenhof (Kevin Bacon).  There are precocious kids and Emma Stone.  If you have NEVER seen this movie, stop reading right NOW and go watch it.  It is one of my faves.  4½ cans.
112.  Battle of the Sexes* (2017) – It was Mother’s Day, 1973, and regal Margaret Court, the number one women’s tennis player in the world, took on aging tennis hustler Bobby Riggs, who was out to prove that women could never compete with men.  They called it “The Mother’s Day Massacre,” as Court dropped the match, in essence forcing Billie Jean King, women’s tennis pioneer and champion, to agree to play Riggs herself and defend all women athletes.  King never contended that women were better athletes or tennis players than men.  She just wanted equal pay and treatment from the tennis establishment, and she, with the help of other top players, set up their own tour.  Riggs was in this mix as a publicity stunt and for the money, and he and Billie Jean King squared off at the Houston Astrodome on September 20 of that year to great fanfare and big ratings.  But this movie, with Emma Stone admirably playing King and Steve Carell looking startlingly like Bobby Riggs, takes on more than just the match and the nascent women’s movement.  It is also the story of King’s first romance with another woman, her first realization that, while she loved her husband, she was actually gay.  A hairdresser who came into her life, Marilyn Barnett (Andrea Riseborough), helped her understand her true self.  As for the tennis, I won’t reveal who won the match for anyone who wasn’t alive at that time, but the movie gives a very real portrayal of this huge sporting event that helped women’s tennis grow and thrive.  BJK has always been one of my heroes, and this movie makes her heroic and human.  3½ cans.
113.  The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) – The coolest actors around in 1968 were Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway, and here they team in a white collar crime drama perpetrated by McQueen’s title character.  A wealthy banking executive, he pulls off a multimillion dollar heist – not that he needs the money – seemingly just for the sport of it.  Dunaway is the insurance investigator out to get him – in more ways than one.  If you thought the famous pottery scene in “Ghost” was sexy, check out the chess game as foreplay here.  McQueen was the chillest of actors, one who could dominate a scene with a mere glance or raised eyebrow.  Dunaway matches him nicely in this movie, which is much more about style than substance.  3½ cans.
114.  Jaws (1975) – Having watched the “Spielberg” documentary (see #109) this month, I thought it was a good time to revisit the first Spielberg blockbuster, “Jaws.”  This time around I felt a little less terrified, but every time the John Williams score amps up, I wanted to scream at the screen, “Get out of the water.”  Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw go shark hunting to capture the huge animal snacking on swimmers in Amityville, much to the dismay of the Mayor (Murray Hamilton), who wants to promote tourism, not terrorism, on the beach.  The trio goes after the great white like Hemingway’s hero in “The Old Man and the Sea,” testing their guile and will against a powerful creature.  I have to admit that this time around – after seeing the “Sharknado” series – I saw more campiness and humor than in my initial viewing, many years ago.  Still, with “Bruce,” the mechanical shark stalking the swimmers, and the taut direction of a very young Spielberg, this movie has to be considered a classic in its genre and the appropriate launch of a director’s long and storied career.  3½ cans.
115.  Victoria and Abdul* (2017) – Queen Victoria ruled the United Kingdom for more than 6 decades around the turn of the last century, and in this movie, she’s really had enough.  Her many servants get her up in the morning, get her dressed, drag her off to royal galas and dinners (where she occasionally falls asleep) and generally bore her to pieces.  Judi Dench plays the Queen (of course) as a woman who is physically frail and in a chronically bad mood.  Then along comes Abdul (Ali Fazal), an emissary sent from his native India, a British Colony, who is called upon to present a gift to the Queen.  He is to have no eye contact, and, together with another man drafted for this momentary mission, is to be in and out in no time.  But Abdul shows kindness and understanding to the Queen, who is almost instantly smitten.  She finds ways to keep him around, but her people think she has gone off the deep end when she proposes to grant him a knighthood.  Though from distinctly different backgrounds, the elderly royal and the lower class man from India develop a special rapport and friendship.  Based on a true story, this movie has plenty of charm and humor, but at its core are the antiquated ways of the royals and how tough it is to be a mere mortal among them.  You basically just have to tell me Judi Dench is in a movie and I’ll be heading right to the theater.  She rules!  3½ cans.
116.  Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House* (2017) – If you are old enough to remember the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s, the name “Deep Throat” is one you will easily recall.  But Mark Felt’s name is not one many people know, because it took until 2005 for the 30-year FBI veteran to admit that he was the man who furtively met with reporter Bob Woodward in parking garages throughout the scandal, providing key bits of information and directing the Washington Post reporter along the path of discovery to the role played by the highest level of government in the scandal.  Here Felt, played by Liam Neeson (who is made up with slathers of too-white make-up), is portrayed as the government guy who believed so strongly in the independence of the FBI that he decided to betray it when he saw Richard Nixon’s White House chipping away at it.  Felt was the number 2 guy under FBI czar J. Edgar Hoover, a man with so much power that both Presidents Kennedy and Johnson were afraid to fire him.  Luckily for Nixon, he died, and Felt and company burned his personal papers before the White House could uncover them.  As the 1972 election neared and the Watergate break-in of Democratic headquarters took place (two weeks after Hoover’s death), the White House was all over the FBI, demanding a quick resolution of the case.  Felt understood the importance of having an independent “police” of the nation, and bristled at being passed over for the top job, which likely led to his feeding information to both the Post and Time Magazine.  This story is an intriguing one, as people speculated for decades about the identity of Deep Throat.  It is just when the movie strays into Felt’s personal life that it goes off course.  It also takes much of the suspense out of the story with its very slow pacing and the taciturn performance of Neeson.  3 cans.
117.  Julie & Julia (2009) – The incomparable Meryl Streep – looking incredibly tall – plays beloved chef Julia Child, and Amy Adams plays Child’s superfan Julie Powell – a young woman living in Queens with her husband – in this combination of their respective stories.  Julia Child’s story is of her years in France with her beloved husband Paul (Stanley Tucci) as she decides to attend the Cordon Bleu culinary institute and become a chef and, ultimately, a cookbook author.  When she begins to write the definitive book on French cooking for an American audience, she faces plenty of challenges.  Julie, on the other hand, challenges herself by vowing to go through Child’s entire book, making 571 recipes in 365 days, a daunting cooking task.  The stories are told in parallel fashion.  Child is completely charming, adoring her husband, enthusiastically adapting to life in Paris and transforming herself into a master chef.  How they ever got her to look that tall is an amazing movie feat.  Julie tackles her challenge with relish and feels a growing kinship with the woman she grows to love.  This movie made me hungry!  3½ cans and a hearty serving of beef bourguignon.  
118. The Florida Project* (2017) – If you live a stone’s throw from The Magic Kingdom in a run-down welfare motel called The Magic Castle, you cannot be farther away from the happiest place on earth.  Young Moonee (an incredibly gifted 6-year old actress named Brooklynn Prince) never goes to the Disney Park.  Instead she runs around with her ragtag friends, finding places to explore at other nearby strip motels, begging for enough money to share an ice cream cone, playing largely unsupervised and wreaking havoc with the other residents and the motel’s manager, Bobby (Willem Dafoe).  The kids get into all kinds of mischief, and while we might feel badly for them, they experience the joy of innocence.  Moonee has learned to be pretty self-sufficient since her mother Halley (Bria Vinaite) is busy trying to scrounge up money to pay her rent through shady deals and whatever schemes she can work.  Halley loves her daughter but is completely lacking parenting skills (and she’s fairly shaky on survival skills, for that matter, though she is superb at denying any responsibility for anything and arguing with the confidence that she is never wrong).  The depiction of poverty here, of desperation, reminded me somewhat of “Midnight Cowboy,” with its poignant look at what people have to do to survive when there is no hope, no future and no chance to get ahead.   Prince and Vinaite dominate the screen.  How the director and co-writer, Sean Baker, managed to get this performance out of a six-year old and a novice actress in Vinaite is truly remarkable.  It is hard to LIKE this movie, but easy to admire it for its honesty, its irony, and its acting.  4 cans.