Tina's November 2018 Movies

I came up slightly short of a dozen movies in November, but I am almost certain to hit my goal of 150 for the year with one month and just 11 movies left to see.  I saw lots of new ones in November and especially liked "Green Book." Movies are rated on a scale of 0-5 cans of tuna fish (I had to change the scale since for the first time one movie received 0 cans).  Movies marked with an asterisk are ones I had not seen previously and numbering picks up from prior months.

129.  Can You Ever Forgive Me?* (2018) – Real-life author Lee Israel (Melissa McCarthy) was once on the best-seller list, but the hard-drinking woman has fallen on hard times in the early 1990s.  She can’t pay her rent or the bill from the vet, her apartment is a dump and her agent won’t take her phone calls because she claims she can’t sell anything Lee plans to write.  Desperate, she begins to forge letters from such literary luminaries as of Dorothy Parker, Noel Coward and others, and she adapts to their witty, acerbic styles so well that the letters seem authentic.  She teams up with her equally irresponsible friend Jack (Richard Grant) sell the forged letters to book shops for resale.  The phony correspondence is coveted by dealers for clients, and Lee begins to emerge from her lonely existence and earn enough money to sustain herself and her drinking habits.  But can the deception last?  This movie is billed as a “comedy-thriller,” but there were only smatterings of clever comedy and it wasn’t all that thrilling, either.  Based on a true story – Israel wrote a book about her experience – and viewers can tell how it turns out, and I suspect that Lee knows, too.  3½ cans.
130.  Switched for Christmas* (2017) – There was a time when “The Hallmark Hall of Fame” broadcast superb stories, memorable movies that I enjoyed and looked forward to seeing.  Now, Hallmark preempts its daily Hallmark Channel programs (I miss Lucy and “The Golden Girls” to telecast these treacly Christmas-themed movies for more than two months each year.  Since many of my friends freely admit enjoying them – often, they claim, just to cleanse the brain with mindless “entertainment” – I thought it would only be right to see what they find so addictive.  Wrong!  My first foray was this story of twin sisters who switch places, with the career woman taking over for the art-teacher mom, both played by Hallmark heroine Candace Cameron Bure.  I’d tell you the rest of the plot if it mattered in the least, which is not the case here.  It is mindless entertainment; I was asleep in the first 20 minutes, went to bed, and used my extra hour of sleep to finish it on the morning of the first day of Eastern Standard Time.  There’s an hour of my life I’m not getting back.  But I am not giving up. I will do an unscientific study to see if any of these movies can even get on the tuna fish scale, so to speak. 0 cans.
131.  Beautiful Boy* (2018) – This intense true story stars Timothee Chalamet as Nic, a sweet, meth-addicted teenager who needs his father’s help but resents him when he tries to come to his rescue.  Steve Carell is David, a writer who does everything he can to save the boy he loves so much.  The frustrated father, divorced from Nic’s mother and raising two young children with second wife Karen (Maura Tierney), makes his son feel he has disappointed his father with each attempt to give him the help and support he needs.  But nothing can fill the void in the young man’s life, and the drugs are just too enticing.  This is a story filled with love, failure, sadness and hope.  Chalamet’s performance breaks your heart.  4 cans.
132.  The Road to Christmas* (2018) – I’m trying to understand why many of my friends adore these corny, predictable Hallmark Christmas movies, which invade the airways for two full months before Christmas.   In this one, the star is a TV producer, working with a Martha Stewart (but less bossy) type of TV star on her annual Christmas special.  And this year, it is going live.  So the boss lady brings in her son (Chad Michael Murray, the main reason I watched this in the first place), who has produced previous TV specials, to help out on this one.  He is experienced but a little smug.  Everyone wants this show to succeed, there are technical issues, weather challenges, family issues, and do you think that they just might fall in love?  Oh, the suspense is killing me.  Another innocuous cinematic trifle, hardly worth the time and effort.  1 can.
133.  Tootsie (1982) – I find this Dustin Hoffman comedy irresistible, especially Hoffman’s performance as an obnoxious actor who achieves success when he masquerades as an actress to snag a part in a long-running TV soap opera.  His Michael Dorsey is a much better person as Dorothy, a rather frumpy woman who falls in love with the star of the soap, played by Jessica Lange.  In today’s Me, Too, environment, I could look at the plot and the characters in a new light and note how we use stereotypes to pass judgment on people without knowing them.  As Michael says to Lange late in the movie, “I was a better man with you, as a woman... than I ever was with a woman, as a man.”  Watch the movie and it all makes perfect sense.  4 cans.
134.  Green Book* (2018) – If you were Black in the 1960s and wanted to travel in the south, you had better have a copy of the “Green Book,” the directory that listed which hotels would accept people of color.  Even Dr. Don Shirley, an African-American who was a noted concert pianist booked to entertain the local gentry in their stately southern country clubs, could not eat in the clubs’ dining rooms or stay in the finer hotels.  When Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali) embarks on his southern performance tour, he hires a rough and tumble New Yorker with mob connections, Tony “Lip” (Viggo Mortenson, perfectly cast), to be his driver.  Tony eats greasy food, can’t compose a decent letter to the wife he left behind – but he knows how to get out of and avoid trouble.  Shirley, on the other hand, is as prim and proper, talented and poised, well-dressed and well-mannered, who needs a little dose of reality from the Lip.  The movie reminded me of “Driving Miss Daisy,” where two people who come from different worlds overcome their differences and become great friends and companions.  Without question, one of the best movies of the year.  4½ cans.
135.  Bohemian Rhapsody* (2018) – Let’s start with the fact that I know very little about the rock band Queen other than their iconic anthems like “We Are The Champions” and “We Will Rock You,” – and, of course, the title tune, a lengthy and unlikely hit that was strictly the brainchild of dynamic lead singer Freddy Mercury (Rami Malek).  The biopic traces the history of a band going nowhere until Mercury joins.  Malek gives a sensational performance as a man who struggles with his own sexuality, the trappings of fame and the excesses made possible by becoming a major rock star.  How can you tell whether the people in your corner are friends or sycophants?  The crescendo of the movie is when Queen is asked to perform at the legendary 1985 “Live Aid” concert that was held simultaneously in London and Philadelphia and which became the Woodstock of its generation in terms of talent on the stage.  How they recreated or used footage of those concerts in the movie is remarkable.  Amazing and entertaining.  4 cans and a probable Oscar nomination for Malek.
136.  The Death of Stalin* (2017) – And now for something completely different.   Imagine “Monty Python” executing (pun intended) the succession plan when Soviet leader Joseph Stalin dies in 1953.  With nods to the Marx Brothers and shades of “The In-Laws,” a whacky bunch of inept Russians fight over everything from Stalin’s successor to whether he is really dead (at least they confirm that before they grab a saw and start slicing into his skull).  This movie is a satire, though you can see overtones of today’s political climate in each of the characters.  The standouts for me were the always excellent Steve Buscemi as Nikita Khrushchev and Jeffrey Tambour as the wry and wily minister of whatever (it really doesn’t matter).  This is “All the Dictator’s Men” and it is a farcical delight.  3½ cans.
137.  Chappaquiddick* (2017) – In the annals of politics, there has never been a family quite like the Kennedys.  The story here is familiar – Senator Ted Kennedy, partying with a bunch of attractive young Bobby Kennedy staffers, goes off in a car with Mary Jo Kopechne and accidentally drives the car off a bridge in Chappaquiddick in July 1969, just when Apollo 11 is making its way to the moon.  Somehow, he manages to escape as the car, with Mary Jo drowning in it, sinks – along with his hopes for the presidency.  Teddy has to be persuaded to report the incident to the local authorities, but he holds off until the next day, not knowing how to best concoct a story that will save his political career and keep him out of jail.  The Kennedys and their staffers are portrayed as unfeeling despots whose main objective is to contain and control the news with minimal damage to Teddy.  His lack of action is inexcusable in every way, but the local authorities as well as Kennedy staffers cut him every conceivable break.  What a totally reprehensible lot they all were.  Well played by Jason Clarke as Kennedy, a man alternating between ambition and remorse.  3 cans.
138.  The Last Days of Knight* (2018) – This documentary about legendary basketball coach Bobby Knight of Indiana is part of the ESPN series “30 for 30.”  If you are familiar with Knight, you probably know about his success as a coach and his well-known temper.  He was an equal opportunity bully, hounding his players, nasty to the media that followed his program, and disrespectful to university officials and faculty.  But did he go too far?  The documentary spends an inordinate amount of time focusing on one player, Pat Reid, who transferred out of Indiana and ultimately revealed that he had been choked by Knight in a fit of rage at a team practice.  Former players and officials either condemned or denied the action until, mysteriously, a videotape was mailed to Robert Abbott, the CNN writer/producer working on the Knight story, verifying that the incident took place.  Winning coaches are revered and afforded great latitude with enormous power and prestige.  Ultimately, Knight lost his job when he couldn’t follow the ultimatum handed down to him by the university president and he attacked a student on campus.  Success in athletics shouldn’t be realized out of fear and dread.  I thought this documentary, while thorough, placed too much emphasis on the writer/producer and his attempts to uncover the story over time.  3 cans.
139.  Widows* (2018) – Veronica (Viola Davis) clearly loves her husband, but Harry Rawlins (Liam Neeson) is a gangster who pulls off big jobs with his crew.  Until they get blown up during a heist.  Veronica and the other women in the lives of this gang find out they have been ripped off, too, left with their husbands’ debts to powerful men in Chicago.  They team up to pull off Harry’s next job, even though they have no experience buying or shooting guns and generally no knowledge of how to be criminals.  Veronica is the ringleader, following the meticulously outlined plans she finds in Harry’s the notebook.  There is plenty of shooting, double-crossing, plotting and planning in this female empowerment caper.  Desperate times call for desperate measures, and the women are mad as hell and they are not going to take it anymore.  Also starring Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki and Cynthia Eviro as the vengeful women and Colin Farrell, Daniel Kaluuya and Robert Duvall.  Sisters are doing it for themselves.  3½ cans.