Here we go with my reviews of movies and more for February, 2021. Numbering picks up from the previous month and asterisks indicate things I had not seen previously. Everything is rated on a scale of 1-5 cans of tuna fish, with 5 being the best of the bunch.
19. Broadcast News (1987) – This gem from director James L. Brooks is filled with crackling dialog (mostly between stars Holly Hunter and Albert Brooks) and plenty of humor (when Brooks’ character anchors the news and has an epic episode of flop sweat), even as it excoriates network news for promoting looks over competence. William Hurt plays a newsman clearly in over his head, and he knows it. I loved this movie when I first saw it in the movies and I still enjoy revisiting it now. 4 cans.
20. Palmer* (2021, Apple TV+) – Singer Justin Timberlake can legitimately be referred to as “Actor” with this top-notch performance. He plays Eddie Palmer, fresh out of prison and on parole, determined to get his once promising life back on track. Staying with his grandmother (June Squibb), he meets the folks in the trailer next door to her house, where a feuding young couple pays little attention to the woman’s little boy, Sam. The neighbors are both strung out on drugs and oblivious to Sam. When the mother ups and leaves, Grandma has the elementary school boy come stay with her and Palmer, and soon they bond in unexpected ways. This is a story of redemption, of acceptance, and of learning to do the right thing. 4 cans.
21. Burgers, Fries and Family Ties* (2019, Prime Video) – Sometimes you just need a little comfort, and this family-owned restaurant – Richwine’s Burgerville – provides more than comfort food in this charming documentary. After 58 years of making burgers and shakes, this place remains a destination for the people of Polson, Montana, and its grand opening each spring draws lines of cars. Marcia, daughter of the original owners, knows everything about running the restaurant, and she happily and thoroughly spends weeks before the seasonal opening training her young staff on everything from how to write up a guest check (no computer terminals here!) to how to make a proper shake to making the all-important burger patties. The customers know Marcia and she knows them, from the woman who stops by each morning for a chocolate Coke to how people take their burgers. Running a burger joint requires much more work than you can imagine, and it takes a toll, especially on a demanding but fair Marcia. Her young employees love her for treating them with respect and teaching them how to interview and much more. This woman really needs to do a Ted Talk on how to run a restaurant. Yes, it made me want a burger (just not the 10 patties ordered by one robust young man), but it also warmed my heart and made me respect the work done with the emphasis always on the customer. This is a yummy movie! I wonder if Marcia does mail order. 3½ cans.
22. Uncle Frank* (2020, Prime Video) – Frank (Paul Bethany) is gay, and his family either doesn’t know or doesn’t want to know or is too oblivious to understand. His obstinate and unaccepting father hates him without admitting why. His niece Beth (Sophia Lillis) adores him, and when she leaves their Southern home to attend NYU, where he is a professor, she learns that he has a long-time partner, Walid (Peter Macdissi). All roads collide when Frank’s father dies and he and Beth hit the road to attend the funeral and uninvited Walid tags along. Frank finally comes to terms with his life and his relationship with his family. This movie is plagued by stereotypes of gays and Southerners, but it does illustrate the pressures of living a double life and the repercussions of not fully accepting yourself or being accepted by others. 3 cans.
23. Breakfast at Ina’s* (2018, Prime Video) – Ina Pinkney is an institution in Chicago, where for years she served breakfast and love to her loyal patrons at the renowned Ina’s breakfast and lunch-only restaurant. This documentary covers the last few weeks before she closed her famed restaurant permanently. Ina had polio as a child, and as she aged, the long-term effects of coping with the disease wore her down. She is a strong and determined woman who fully understands that the time has come, but the last few weeks are all about mingling with the customers and giving everyone memories to last a lifetime. Ina now writes about other restaurants for The Chicago Tribune, and I would bet she could offer a few suggestions and a couple of recipes to make them even better – on a par with Ina’s itself. 3½ cans.
24. Starman (1984, EPIX TV) – What can you say about a young widow who falls in love with an alien who morphs himself into an exact replica of her dearly departed late husband? Jeff Bridges shows up in rural Wisconsin, turns into Jenny’s (Karen Allen) late husband Scott, and they set off for Arizona so he can hitch a ride on the mothership and return to a galaxy far, far away, all while dodging the feds and the alien-hunter determined to capture him. I’m not a science fiction aficionado at all, but this sweet movie captured my heart. At first, “Scott” does a lot of observing as Jenny speaks, learning idioms and meanings of words. He speaks haltingly and moves awkwardly as he grows into his new body. Bridges is charming as the alien, and this movie compares – on a much smaller scale – to ET in its appeal to my emotions. This is an oldie but a goodie, and I welcomed our reunion. 3½ cans.
25. Marshall* (2017) – Chadwick Bozeman plays esteemed attorney and former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall is this biopic that focuses on a single case in his storied career. A lawyer with the NAACP, Marshall has a case in Connecticut involving a Black man (Sterling K. Brown) accused of raping a white socialite (Kate Hudson), but he insists he didn’t do it. The case is complicated by the fact that Marshall can’t practice in Connecticut, so the courtroom parts are left to a lawyer who has only civil court experience (Josh Gad). The case has some nifty twists and turns, and Marshall has to ferret out the information to represent the client without speaking in the courtroom. Marshall went on to a distinguished career, arguing many cases before the U.S. Supreme Court before becoming its first Black Justice in 1967. Bozeman brings his usual intensity and elan to the role, reminding us again of his tragic loss. 3½ cans.
26. Shadowlands* (1993, HITZ TV) – Real-life author C. S. Lewis was an avowed bachelor, a bit of a loner who was content living with his brother in a comfy home in Oxford, where he wrote books and held a position as a respected professor. But then along comes a somewhat brash American, Joy Gresham, an aspiring author who is determined to meet him. They strike up a friendship, but will this detached man be able to take on something more? The great Anthony Hopkins stars as “Jack” Lewis, bringing some of the character of Mr. Stevens, his role in “The Remains of the Day,” as a man unaccustomed to human connection who responds awkwardly to interactions beyond his small circle of friends and students. Debra Winger is Joy, echoing at the end some of her scenes from “Terms of Endearment.” I kept thinking of the quote from Alfred Lord Tennyson, “’tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” This is a lovely movie, quietly tugging on your emotions as it introduces the concept of love to a man who finds it brings him Joy. 4 cans.
27. Let Him Go* (2020, Prime Video) – Kevin Costner and Diane Lane are well-matched as the parents of a grown son who lives with them and his young wife and infant child. When the son dies in a tragic accident (not a spoiler; this happens in the first 10 minutes), they stay in close touch with his widow Lorna and their beloved grandson. But when Lorna marries a bad guy who hits her and the child, Mom Margaret is determined to get the boy back. She and her husband, a former sheriff, set out to find him and retrieve him from a family of nasty, dangerous outlaws. I had to rent this one, but it was money well spent. 4 cans.
28. The Next Three Days* (2010, Netflix) – Everyone who has a fight with his/her boss might say they want to kill that person, but generally that is in the figurative sense. But when Lara Brennan (Elizabeth Banks) is convicted of killing her boss, she is locked up in the county jail and loses every appeal. Her husband John (Russell Crowe), raising their young son alone, is determined to help her – or spring her – and takes matters into his own hands in this action thriller. Yes, there were parts that stretched credulity, but this was a fast-paced, intricate story that was captivating (pardon the pun) to watch. 4 cans.
29. Nomadland* (2021, Hulu) – Francis McDormand is the perfect choice to play Fern, a woman who has lost her husband and the factory where she worked has closed down, so she hits to road in her beat-up van. She has customized it – tricked out would be a vast overstatement – making it livable for her nomadic existence. She travels around, getting season work at Amazon, occasionally working at a burger joint or shoveling potatoes at a processing plant, and she meets up with plenty of people living the same kind of life, just a step or a damaged tire away from danger. The nomads she comes to consider friends are played by real nomads, so the story is at least partially true. It is a moving tale, devoid or real action or immediate tragedy, and Fern seems to appreciate the time she spends by herself. She doesn’t need a home or a lot of possessions and prefers to avoid any drama in her life. There’s not a lot of action here, just powerful images of a lonely but somehow fulfilling life. This film is not for everyone, but I enjoyed its portrayal of a segment of society I did not know existed. 4 cans.
30. Spare Parts* (2015, EPIX) – This formulaic film gives us the typical rag-tag group of misfits who band together for the big game – only this time, it isn’t sports, it is robotics. Substitute teacher Dr. Cameron (George Lopez), a former engineer, is persuaded to help a few of the students at a regional high school consisting mostly of undocumented students when one of them wants to form a robotics club and enter a competition that could bring them money and scholarships. But this group doesn’t have the money to buy the supplies they need, so they have to substitute with spare parts and innovation to build an underwater robot and compete with college teams from places like Cornell and MIT. Of course, you root for these resourceful kids, and of course there are setbacks along the way, and of course the end is predictable, but when you get there, you find that it was mostly worth the trip. 3 cans.
31. I Care A Lot* (2021, Netflix) – Rosamund Pike is really good at playing bad people. Her Marla Grayson has a great gambit: She works with a cooperative doctor to identify elderly people who have just enough dementia to be considered incapable of handling their affairs and plenty of money they can bilk from the patient. Marla, her girlfriend/partner Fran and the doctor get a court order from a friendly judge who appoints Marla to be the legal guardian of the patient, which gives her license to drain these people dry, emptying their accounts and selling their homes and possessions before they know what hit them. If they don’t cooperate, Marla gets the head of the nursing home where they have been assigned to medicate them so they really are incompetent. Marla is equal parts cunning and brazen, but when she comes up against Jennifer Peterson (Diane Weist), she has a battle on her hands because this little old lady has some shady connections of her own. Some of this is hard to accept, but Marla has no fear and no boundaries to get what she wants. I’d like to think that if I suddenly disappeared, my aqua aerobics friends would call the police and track me down before I was fleeced, but Jane can’t count on that. There is plenty of suspense and a good deal of “Oh, no, she didn’t” in the script, but this one definitely held my interest. 4 cans.
32. Hitsville: The Making of Motown* (2019, Prime Video) – If you grew up in the 1960s, chances are that Motown is the soundtrack of your life. The songs, the performers, the smooth moves – all were the brainchild of founder Berry Gordy, whose Hitsville house in Detroit was the center of the music universe. This documentary traces Gordy’s magic touch in finding the writers, performers and music that stays with us even today. When you have the right ear and people like Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross and the Supremes, The Temptations, The Four Tops, Michael Jackson and Gordy’s right-hand magician, Smokey Robinson, you change music forever and create legends. 4 cans, because I can’t resist Motown!
33. Belushi* (2020, Showtime) – I remember seeing the very first episode of "Saturday Light Live" with its Not Ready for Prime-Time Players. Some were droll, some were ironic, some were silly, and there was John Belushi, who stood out in the crowd for his bad boy humor and take no prisoners approach to comedy. Whether he was a bee, a Samurai swordsman or Joe Cocker, Belushi commanded attention. You know the tragic ending of his story, when he was found dead in a hotel in California from a drug overdose. This documentary doesn’t spare the sordid details of Belushi’s rise and fall, and though you know his star will flame out, you can’t help but appreciate a guy who brought such big humor to our lives. His role in “Animal House” remains iconic decades later, and that movie is, to me, one of the top five funniest movies of all-time. Belushi did a lot in his too-brief 33 years, and his light will never be diminished. 4 cans.
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