Tina's February 2018 Movies

I caught up on the last of the Oscar-nominated movies this month and watched a few others that had been recognized in years past.  Movies are rated on a scale of 1-5 cans of tuna fish, with 5 being the top score.  Movies marked with an asterisk* are ones I had not seen previously, and numbering picks up from the previous month.

13.  The Shape of Water* (2018) – This movie is “Beauty and the Beast” in an aquarium.  You know, the usual girl meets monster and falls in love fare.  It is part sci-fi, part fantasy, part love story and, to me, all strange.  Sally Hawkins plays a mute woman who falls in love with a sea creature captured for study by the government.  There are bad guys (Michael Shannon) and helpful foreign agents and best friends (Richard Jenkins and Octavia Spencer, playing the prototypical Octavia Spencer role).  I jumped more than a few times, laughed while wondering if parts were intended to evoke humor, and felt some real empathy for an impossible and implausible situation.  I don’t do well suspending my sense of reality, and I still don’t know the shape of water.  This film received 13 Oscar nominations, but it is just not my cup of tea.  3½ cans.
14.  Mother’s Day* (2016) – Jennifer Anniston is sure that her ex-husband (Timothy Oliphant) wants to rekindle their relationship – that is, until he tells her that he has married a much younger woman.  Julia Roberts plays a successful businesswoman always selling her wares on HSN, and Kristin (Britt Robertson) is looking for her real mother.  Go ahead, draw your own conclusion.  Jason Sudekis plays a man whose wife died a year ago and he is trying to raise their daughters and get over his loss.  Kate Hudson, Margo Martindale and others fill out the cast..  This movie is one of those productions that sets up separate but overlapping stories filled with stars and tries to make a plot work.  This one more or less succeeds, but certainly not on the order of the best of the bunch, “Love, Actually.”  Nicely done but hardly memorable.  3 cans.
15.  Cinema Paradiso (1990) – Nothing like a good movie – about movies – on a nasty, rainy day.  Young Toto lives in a sleepy Sicilian village during WWII, where the biggest (and apparently only) activity is going to the movies.  Toto becomes the protégé of grumpy Alfredo (Phillippe Noiret), the aging projectionist at the Cinema Paradiso.  Over the years, the boy grows into a young man and takes over the projectionist job and becomes even more enamored of movies.  The beautiful relationship between the lonely boy and the fatherly, gruff man is the core of this film, with both sharing their love of cinema and of the Cinema Paradiso.  I cannot get through this movie without having a big lump in my throat and a few tears running down my cheeks.  It is in Italian with subtitles, but well worth reading.  See it.  You’ll thank me.  4½ cans.
16.  Summer of ’42 – 15-year old buddies Hermie, Oscky and Benji are spending the summer on an island, hanging out and trying to understand the mysteries of sex when Hermie (Gary Grimes) falls hard for a stunning young woman (Jennifer O’Neill) whose husband has shipped off to war.  This poignant coming-of-age movie builds to a climax that Hermie will never forget.  A beautiful, sad movie with a haunting score and a realistic view of teenaged boys in all of their goofy, hormone-fueled ways.  4 cans.
17.   Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) – Here’s the thing about Breakfast at Tiffany’s: You can throw out the plot and just listen to the engaging score by Henry Mancini (“Moon River” won the Oscar for Best Song) or you can simply feast your eyes on the stunning Audrey Hepburn, the icon of style in her Givenchy clothes.  Who cares that her Holly Golightly supports herself thanks to the kindness of men who are not exactly strangers?  Or that, like her nameless cat, the woman herself has no real identity beyond being an attractive New Yorker with a penchant for rich men and the baubles of her favorite store, Tiffany’s?  Or that she refuses to admit she cares for her attractive neighbor, Paul (George Peppard) because she cannot commit to anything?  She insists on calling Paul, a minor author with major aspirations, by the name of her beloved brother, Fred.  She gallivants around swanky parties, befriending those who can help her sustain her lifestyle, which, just based on the gorgeous clothing, requires substantial investment.  This movie is a comedy/drama, with Hepburn as the bon vivant Holly, and yet there is an overarching sadness to this woman who has moved beyond her past and won’t invest in her own future.  This is Hepburn’s shining moment, and she dominates every second she is on the screen.  It is worth watching the movie just to see her sport a pair of sunglasses and an oversized hat.  So don’t look for plotlines here.  I’m just dazzled by the stylishness of the character and the actress who plays her.  4 cans.
18.  A Family Man* (2016) – I have seen too many movies that depict the office environment as a cutthroat workplace populated by immoral and unfeeling people who compete with each other to assure their respective futures.  Think “The Wolf of Wall Street,” “Up in the Air,” “Miss Sloan” and “Wall Street.”  This one falls right into that genre.  Dane Jensen (Gerard Butler) is a headhunter who commandeers a bunch of guys (the only woman in sight is his rival for the next promotion) looking for companies to help fill positions.  They don’t care about ruining careers or helping people.  They care about scoring, even ringing a bell when they make a fat-fee placement.  Dane’s kids know he is always on the phone and working, so they are used to his missing bedtime, storytime and Halloween.  His absence angers his wife (Gretchen Moll), but he defends himself with the argument that he is doing it all for his family.  So when his son gets seriously ill and he finds himself suddenly having to rearrange his priorities, it isn’t easy for anyone.  It takes his son – who describes his father’s job as “he helps other fathers get jobs so they can help their families” – and one older engineer who he just can’t seem to place to give him much needed respective.  3½ cans.
19.  Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) – The year 1939 was a great one for movies.  “Gone With the Wind,” “Goodbye Mr. Chips,” “Dark Victory,” “Of Mice and Men” and “Love Affair” were all released that year.  Although this one is now approaching 80 years old, it seemed the perfect movie to watch with our current political climate.  Jefferson Smith (James Stewart) is an honest and naïve guy who ends up appointed to a vacant Senate seat because the political machine in his home state assumes they can push him around and continue the graft and corruption that has made them rich at taxpayers’ expense.  When he proposes a bill to use land for a National Boys camp, they frame him for fraud, and the wet-behind-the ears senator (who they keep referring to as a boy despite the requirement that a senator must be at least 35!) gets a tough lesson in government and politics.  To me, the flaw in the film is that he doesn’t speak up fast enough or fervently enough to prevent expulsion until it is very late in the game, when only a filibuster on the floor of the Senate will help him win support.  This being a Frank Capra film, it has a happy ending, and I guess if it weren’t constructed that way it might have been much shorter and less celebratory.  Nonetheless, a classic for Stewart and for American moviemaking.  4 cans.
20.  Icarus* (2017) – I admire documentary makers.  They have an idea, often have to do dogged research to get the footage they need and sometimes their efforts are in vain because the story doesn’t always end the way they planned. In this case, that’s not such a bad thing.  Bryan Fogel, a very serious amateur cyclist, inspired by the Lance Armstrong doping denials that he eventually admitted were true, set out to start his own doping program to demonstrate how the use of performance enhancing drugs could improve his own performance in a demanding bike race.  Somewhere along the way he encountered Russian doping expert Grigory Rodchenkov and enlisted his aid.  And that’s when the movie became a mystery/thriller.  Grigory is a shadowy Russian figure who is an expert not only on setting up a program of drug use to improve performance, but also an expert on how to avoid getting caught on tests to determine whether athletes are “clean.”  Armstrong was right when he insisted he never failed a drug test, because there are ways – such as swapping test samples with clean urine – to get rid of the evidence.  Grigory reveals a massive Russian conspiracy to have every athlete use drugs, and despite close supervision by world doping officials, to avoid detection.  Many Russian officials were involved, including the KGB.  Although we never learn how Fogel fared in his big race, we sure know much more about the science of doping.  3½ cans.
21.  The DUFF* (2015) – One thing is certain in high schools of every generation:  There will always be a hierarchy.  There are the popular kids, the jocks, the brainy kids and the kids who are overlooked.  If your best girlfriends are the pretty, popular ones and the boys come and talk to YOU because they want information on THEM, you might just be the DUFF – Designated Ugly Fat Friend.  Bianca (Mae Whitman) finds she is in the DUFF role from her next door neighbor, high school heartthrob Wes (Robbie Amell), the class jock who dates Queen Madison (Bella Throne in the bitch role).  Wes promises to help Bianca step up her game if she’ll help him in chemistry, and he is a man of his word.  So she drops the mean girls and flannel shirts.  This is a standard issue teen comedy with a heart (and with requisite teenaged angst and a heavy dose of modern technology) and well played by the actors cast in the stereotyped roles (although Amell looks at least 25).  The always wonderful Allison Janney has a small part as Bianca’s self-help author Mom.  3 cans.  
22.  The Radicalization of Patty Hearst* (2017) – This multi-part CNN documentary explores the enthralling case of publishing heiress Patricia Hearst, kidnapped in San Francisco in1974 by the SLA, a radical group of protestors.  During the course of her captivity, she began identifying with her “comrades” and when she was finally spotted after police were unsuccessful in finding her, she was brandishing a rifle and robbing a bank.  Calling herself “Tanya,” Hearst participated in more bank robberies, attempted bombings and other crimes until the authorities finally located the remainder of the SLA members and arrested all of them.  Was she a captive who was brainwashed or a willing participant in a crime spree and murder?  This is a story you can’t make up, and I recall following the events closely as they unfolded.  My friends and I even discussed who would play Patty Hearst in the inevitable movie (turns out, it was Natasha Richardson; I don’t recall our choice).  This is a story of civil unrest, of privilege, of the criminal justice system, and especially of a tough but impressionable young woman who eagerly rejected her parents’ lifestyle only to embrace it later.  4 cans.
23.  Klute (1971) – I saw this movie so long ago that the main thing I remembered was Jane Fonda’s “shag” haircut, the biggest hair style news until Jennifer Anniston’s “Rachel” from “Friends.”  But this suspenseful drama is much more than superficial.  Fonda is Bree Daniels, a New York call girl who is being investigated by John Klute (Donald Sutherland) in the disappearance of his businessman friend who seems tied to Daniels as a client.  Klute shows up on her doorstep to hunt down his friend’s last activity and discovers the not-so-secret world of sex workers – high class and otherwise.  When Klute offers Bree $50 for some information, she scoff, saying she can make that much on a lunch break.  She is cool outwardly, but when someone else seems to be on her trail, she is justifiably anxious.  Klute becomes her protector even as he is wary of her.  This is a dark story (and could have used more light on the screen to be more visible). They should have called it “Bree” rather than “Klute,” because she is the dominant character by far. 4 cans.