Reviews

Director Donnersmarck's screenplay, loosely based on the life of German Painter Gerhard Richter, kept my interest throughout its three-plus hour runtime. Although it is not well advertised, the story presents one of the most affecting love stories I have seen. The relationship between Kurt Barnert (the fictionalized Richter) and Ellie Seeband (his love interest and eventual wife) is delicately set forth, particularly in the early blossoming of their romance. As their love matures we are given some tastefully presented, fairly explicit, sex scenes. Donnersmarck and his actors are not shy about nudity on the screen.

The opening scene takes place at the Degenerate Art Exhibition in Dresden in 1937 where Barnert/Richter (age five) and his aunt are in attendance. This exhibit was assembled by the Nazis to showcase what they considered immoral art that did not "elevate the soul." It's laughable to think about the Nazis pontificating on morality. This theme of the interaction between art, morality, and politics is carried throughout the forty year time span of the movie. During the time that Barnert was living in the GDR he was expected to depict scenes about hardworking citizens. In one art class the students were to draw from models with the male shouldering a sledge hammer and the female holding up a sheaf of wheat. Interesting that art, morality, and politics are still debated. For example, I am thinking of Serrano's "Piss Christ" and Mapplethorpe's "The Perfect Moment" exhibit.

Fortunately Kurt and Ellie ultimately escape to the West. I knew that the Berlin Wall went up to keep the East Germans from fleeing to the West, but, as shown here, it was fairly easy to escape to the West before the Wall went up.

The story strays from the facts of Richter's life for dramatic effect on occasion. In an intriguing plot twist Ellie's father is shown, in his capacity as a Nazi medical doctor, to be responsible for the ultimate extermination of Kurt's aunt. Also, Kurt winds up at the Dusseldorf Academy of Art while the Academy was under the direction of Professor Antonius van Verten--a fictional stand-in for real life Joseph Beuys. The movie promotes the myth concerning Verten/Beuys of his having been shot down in Crimea during WWII and saved by Tartars.

Donnersmark has assembled an able cast. Cai Cohrs, playing Barnert at age 7, had the ability to portray intense absorption in his surroundings, giving a hint as to his ultimate development as an artist. Sebastian Koch is perfect in his portrayal of Professor Seaband, a stiff, aloof Nazi. After the war you see that Seeband had not adapted his personality just to being a good Nazi, rather he was ideally suited to being a Nazi; this worked well for him in the GDR as well. Seeband was capable of evil deeds even after the War. I had never seen Oliver Masucci, who played van Verten, and I was impressed with his ability to capture my attention just in his speaking parts. The women, Saskia Rosendahl as Kurt's aunt, and Paula Beer, as Kurt's love interest, were up to their parts. I would like to have seen Tom Schilling, as Kurt, show a little more intensity, following up on Cohrs' lead.

Much time is devoted to showing Kurt's struggle to find his métier. His initial breakthrough was to start with photo realism and overpaint with some simple full brush strokes. Of course this movie has you asking, "What is Art." As an example, the simple overpainting of a photo image adds an indefinable mystery to the original. Is the original photo not art, but the overpainted one is?

The sound is closely miked. You don't miss door closing, the wind in trees, car motors, sheets rustling, and so forth. The score borders on being intrusive at times, but I really liked the low bass notes that accompanied the love scenes.

This was nominated for an Oscar for best cinematography. The camera work is not flashy but effective. After finding out about the Oscar nomination and watching the movie a second time with an eye toward the color palette, composition, and lighting it is easy to see the justification for the Oscar nomination. Between the sound and lighting the style reminded me a bit of Terrence Malick.

When the final product is of such high quality credit has to be given to the director.

Some time ago I had read that the American Psychiatric Association had declared its opposition to any practice that attempts to change sexual orientation. Their opinion was based on lack of evidence that it can work. In fact there is evidence that such therapy can cause harm and this movie gives an account of that downside. Somehow I had the idea that this practice had been banned, at least as applied to minors. So, I was surprised that the end comments in the movie stated that reparative therapy was still legal in 36 states (as of 2018).

The movie starts out following Jared (Lucas Hedges) and his mother Nancy (Nicole Kidman) on a long drive from Arkansas to a therapy center called Love in Action. Checking in had all the feeling of checking in to a prison. The daily schedule was regimented under the command of one Victor Sykes who had all of the attributes of a drill sergeant. In his first lecture he attempts to comfort his group by propounding the lie that sexual orientation is a choice. He supports this thesis by asking one of attendees if he had chosen to be a football player and when he got a "yes" for an answer he notes that it is just so that one chooses their sexual orientation. Since this story is based on real life experiences I guess such absurd reasoning is offered up in such places.

I felt that the film editing could have been better. When we first meet Jared's father Marshall (Russell Crowe) he is delivering a sermon at a church and it's quite a bit later that we are shown that he is the owner of a car dealership. The movie hops back and forth in a manner that confused me. The first scene has Jared already at the therapy center, then there are some scenes of Jared as a college student living in a dorm, then Jared is back living at home. And there was a scene from Jared's being on his high school basketball team mixed in there as well. I did not see any particular value in the out-of-sequence filming.

The way that Jared's sexuality was outed to his parents did not make sense to me. Jared was raped in his dorm room by his running buddy Michael in a chilling scene that is difficult to watch. After that event Michael calls Jared's home one night and, pretending to be a counselor at the school, reports on Jared's sexual activity and this precipitates his parent's sending him to Love in Action. I don't understand Michael's motivation here in one of the pivotal events of the movie.

The acting is uniformly good. Russell Crowe is surprisingly effective as Jared's rather portly father. This role has Crowe a long way from "Gladiator." Hedges turns in another fine performance, but I felt he was weakest in the highly charged final scene with his father. There are some good lines in that scene like Jared's, "I'm gay and I'm your son, and neither of those things is going to change." OK, so he had tearful eyes, but he was lacking a convincing passion. Flea, as Sykes's toady, Brandon, is truly creepy. I know nothing about Flea, but if his Brandon is a creation of acting, my hat is off to him.

I think Jared may have gotten off easy, since his commitment was for only two weeks, during which time he was able to conclude that the treatment he was being subjected to was hogwash. And he was able to leave every night to be with his mother. But it was noted that Sykes would have the power to recommend a one year follow-up treatment that, if effected, looked to have the flavor of being inducted into a cult. In a punch to the gut in the commentaries at the end it was stated that the real life person that Sykes played in the movie had left Love in Action as was married to a man. One can only guess at the complex psychology of such a man--denial on steroids?

Any person, parent or child, who is thinking of having anything to do with conversion therapy could benefit from seeing this movie.

This is based on a memoir by Jeannette Walls and, given that, I would expect most scenes to be believable. However, I found it hard to believe that things happened as presented in so many scenes.

For examle, early on Jeanette's family (father Rex, mother Rose, and their four young daughters) is travelling in an old beat-up 1955 Ford when Rex decides give vent to some sense of defiant freedom by veering off the road, crashing through a fence and hooting and hollering as he drives hundreds of yards into a dessicated southwestern landscape. Having gotten his family stuck in the middle of nowhere Rex says how great it is--they can camp out there and have a great view of the stars when the sun goes down. In the meantime Rose has found a fascinating Joshua tree that, being an artist, she must paint immediately. How would such a scene ultimately end? Somehow they would have to get the car out of there and have it repaired--at what price freedom, huh? And, in their apparent destitution, where will they get the money to get the car back on the highway? This scene set the mood for the whole movie for me, showing Rex to be an irresponsible ass with some idealistic sense of freedom that allows him to put himself above less liberated souls. And this is Rex at his best, he only gets worse as the movie goes along and we become familiar with the depths of his alcoholism.

I give the movie credit in its convincing presentation of Rex as being a troubled drunk with little redeeming value. What I could not understand was how any of his family could tolerate him for a second. However he apparently had some quality that the family on occassion would find appealing, a quality that was totally lost on me. Unfortunately for my being able to appreciate this movie, Rex's appeal was at the heart of the family dynamic.

Most all scenes are amped up for maximum emotional response and the music cues us as to how we should respond. In one scene Rex returns home from a drunk with a six inch gash in his arm and he coaches his daughter to put in stitches while he braves the pain with no anesthetic. Really? No antiseptic even? What does Rex do when he turns up with a major infection? He could not possibly lower himself to go to an emergency room in a hospital that is there primarily to put money into the pockets of rich doctors.

In an emotional final scene Rex presents Jeanette with a scrap book where he has saved every piece of her writing. Given the total chaos of the family's vagabond lifestyle and Rex's inability to focus on anything long enough to push it through, introducing this unbelievable scrap book antic for a purely emotional punch at the end of Rex's life was insulting to me.

For a movie that is supposed to be somewhat autobiographical this had more the feeling of fiction than of truth.

This story of a young Korean woman, Young-hee, trying to come to terms with breaking up with her lover never rose above the pedestrian for me. There is essentially no action beyond conversation. After her breakup Young-hee goes to Germany to visit her friend Jee-young. A good part of the time spent with these two friends is concerned with wondering if Young-hee's lover will show up and with Young-hee's struggle of being torn between thoughts of her lover and her desire for independence.

Young-hee returns to Korea where she takes up with some old acquaintances and carries on conversations with them that struck me as conversations typical of interactions among any middle class people. The climactic scene at the dinner table closes with a reading from a Chekhov story. The story was appropriate in context, but that's taking an easy way out isn't it? When you cannot come up with your own writing, fall back on that of a famous writer?

Young-hee is far from likable--on more than one occasion she lashes out bitterly at her companions. Most of the men are pretty much cyphers; it was hard for me to get involved with any of them.

There are some interesting filming techniques. I liked the use of the large camera pans and the shifts in focus. There is a scene that had one of Young-hee's friends picking rocks out of some pounds of dried beans. Maybe this was to show that the guy was subservient to the cafe manager, but it puzzled me as to why so much time would be spent on such a mundane task. Then there are scenes that are just plain odd--like the acrobatic window cleaner who dominated one scene and was there for a purpose that escaped me. And there is the man in a black overcoat whose main scene has him asking for the time of day. What was that all about?

The adagio from Schubert's C-major string quintet accompanies several scenes and did not particularly enhance the emotion of those scenes, beyond being a most beautiful work.

This is my first exposure to director Hong. I have the feeling that he may be an acquired taste--a taste that I have yet to acquire.

Reuben (Ben Stiller) is a straitlaced risk manager who tries to calculate risk in most everything he does. We witness his marriage to Lisa (Debra Messing), but on their honeymoon things go terribly wrong and they separate. Then along comes Polly (Jennifer Aniston) who is played as a disorganized free spirit who can never make decisions. So, the setup is the clichéd one of rigid person being drawn out of his shell by carefree companion.

Philip Seymour Hoffman provides a couple of laughs as Reuben's wacky friend, particularly the scene with him on the basketball court. Hoffman does seem to at least be trying rather than phoning it in, but Ben Stiller plays Reuben as Ben Stiller--he doesn't have much of a range does he? Stiller did have one good scene doing a frenetic salsa dance. Alec Baldwin seems to be there simply as a draw at the box office, since any one of a hundred actors could have played his part as Reuben's boss.

There are several running gags that got old real fast, like Polly's blind pet ferret running into things, Reuben's suffering from irritable bowl syndrome, and Hoffman's falling down on hard floors. The thing that most irritated me was playing Reuben's IBS for laughs--I always have a hard time with physical or mental disabilities being played for laughs. Reuben's bowel problem was cause for a lot of unfunny bathroom humor.

There was hardly a single sharp line of dialog. Seeing this movie and thinking back to the old Cary Grant/Kathryn Hepburn comedies (think "Bringing up Baby") makes me realize just how coarsened and dumbed down our culture has become.

I had better stop here, further consideration my cause me to move my two star rating to one star.

There is much commonality in most love stories on film, with interest coming mainly from how they are told. I found the telling of this tale of two young women who fall in love to be engaging from several perspectives. First of all I was taken with Adèle Exarchopoulos, the actress who plays Adèle, the protagonist. If you do not respond to her physically or emotionally, then your experience of this movie is likely to be quite different from mine. Léa Seydoux, who plays Emma, Adèle's love interest, was less appealing to me, but was well cast nonetheless.

Adèle's first encounter with Emma was an exchange of casual glances as they walked past each other. I liked that scene, since it was subtly done yet you knew from that first eye contact that these two were destined to be involved in some way. It may not have been love at first sight, but that usually just means sexual attraction at first sight and Adèle and Emma had that.

Director Kechiche had to have been fascinated with Exarchopoulos, given the many ways he filmed her to accentuate her appeal, it's like he couldn't get enough of her. He used her infectious smile to great advantage. A good part of the movie is taken up with closeups of Exarchopoulos and Seydoux.

I liked the way that Adèle did not anguish too much over her sexual identity, a theme that is prominent in a lot of gay themed movies. After some initial experimentation involving men and an attempted contact with a woman, once Emma was on board Adèle knew that she wanted Emma and she never seemed to doubt herself in spite of getting flack from her mates.

Early in their relationship Adèle and Emma are seen engaging in explicitly sexual acts. These scenes have created a lot of buzz, but I think they are essential to the movie, since sexual attraction is what has brought these two women together and, as we get to know them, it is seen that the sexual attraction is going to have to be strong enough to bridge some cultural gaps. Emma comes from a family with liberal parents, a family that delights in eating oysters and drinking fine wine, while Adèle's family is more into table wine and spaghetti with Bolognese sauce. Emma associates with artists, philosophers, actors, and other elites. Emma is so much more experienced and sophisticated than Adèle that I did wonder how this relationship was going to work out, absent the sex. But it was Emma who broke it off, or was she just looking for an excuse to do so? To Adèle's credit she recognized the cultural differences but, in spite of some small intimidation, she felt no need to pretend artistic inclinations. She likes children and, as the movie develops, we see that Adèle does have a natural talent in the classroom in front of small children. There is a scene where Adèle is involved in a group interaction with her class that has the kids so rapt that it reminded me of that fantastic scene in "The 400 Blows" that has the kids attending a Paris puppet show.

The sex scenes are filmed with an appreciation of sculpture. In some scenes I could not quite figure how the women got themselves into the positions they were in. I had the feeling that maybe it was good that these women were lesbian, since finding a man who could satisfy them would be a challenge. It is not a stretch to see how this movie could be played as a love story between heterosexuals, but trying to see how it would work with gay men is more difficult to imagine. At the least male sex scenes would probably not make it past the censors. Apparently neither Exarchopoulos nor Seydoux is a lesbian, so the fact they could get themselves to do the sex scenes amazes me.

This kept my attention for the full three hours.

This movie tries for too much. The idea of trying to analyze where high-tech may be taking us is a worthy subject, but the speculations provided did not engage me on a personal level, not did they provide any new insights

Apple, Google, and Facebook are folded into one entity here: The Circle. The building that houses The Circle is a takeoff on Apple's home base and the campus life there is an amalgam of stereotypical scenes from a Google-like campus. Tom Hanks plays the president of The Circle as a conflation of Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos.

The revolutionary product being developed by the The Circle is called SeeChange; it is a wide screen camera the size of an eyeball that can be trivially mounted anywhere and can broadcast its images to the web. The cultural effect of this product is to have tentacles reaching into all aspects of everyone's life.

The pros and cons of a device such as SeeChange are discussed. The power this device vests in The Circle is frightening: it gives it the power to manipulate opinion by having voluminous data on any one person and then being able to aggregate those data. This would effectively give The Circle the results of instant polling with the ability to push out information to support or confront current trends. Maybe just an exaggeration of what already exists, yes?.

Rather than speculation about an Orwellian future, I think it would have been more engaging to comment on where we are, even though where we are today may look simple minded in a year's time. Where I think the movie is on track is in trying to address the conflict between the power that corporations have and the erosion of privacy, but that's really not a novel idea at this time is it?

A death by harassment is offered as a tragic result of The Circle's new product, so the moral seems to be that the dangers of where we are headed outweigh the benefits. I personally became aware of an unintended invasion of my privacy some years ago when I was having what I thought was a private conversation with a relative who in short order posted a summary of our conversation to his Facebook friends. I am not even on Facebook and I started getting e-mails about how people were offended by things I had said. This illustrated to me the power of social media to cause me to censor my speech even in a private conversation. No matter how you try to protect your privacy, technology reaches deeply into almost every aspect of your life. Think what would happen if the Internet were permanently disabled.

Emma Watson plays Mae, an ordinary woman who gets sucked into the vortex of The Circle's power structure. I did not find Mae to be an interesting or engaging person. Her boyfriend Mercer had some appeal, but Emma dumped him early on. For this story to work we need to identify with Mae and her life. The reason "1984" was effective was because the two main characters are presented in a way to make you identify with their struggle at a gut level. In this movie I was not made to care much about Mae--her struggle was an abstraction.

I give this movie marks for taking on an important subject but have to rate it poorly on providing much depth.

This is the story of Phiona Mutesi, an accomplished young Ugandan chess player. The story follows the standard script of inspiring sports story where the underdog meets competition and succeeds, but not without overcoming many obstacles. One of the biggest obstacles Phiona had to overcome, and what makes this a remarkable story, is her having been born and raised in Katwe, a slum in the City of Kampala.

The dialog offers little by way of surprise. After Phiona loses a crucial match she expresses self-doubt and questions whether she should go on. Interacting with her coach after the loss, in a scene with a strong emotional buildup, her coach delivers the tired line, "You must never surrender."

I appreciated this having been filmed on location in Uganda. The bright colors are a delight to the eye. The costumes make a vivid impression, from the women's dresses to the more subtle intricate designs and colors of the men's shirts. The little insight into what life looks like in a Kampala slum is something I would never otherwise have gotten. I would like to have seen more of the daily life in Katwe.

Using non-professional actors for many of the roles worked two ways for me, it added authenticity at the expense of stilted acting.

In all movies "based on a true story" I always have a question as to just how many liberties were taken for audience appeal. This movie may have pushed the envelop--it tries to extract every last drop of emotion. The overt attempt to manipulate drains the true emotional content. A little research reveals that Mutesi's chess playing is not of the prodigy caliber as portrayed; her ranking by the World Chess Federation among active players is around 90,000. Her apparent financial success, as represented by her buying a nice house for her mother, could not have come from her chess wins, since any major money from tournament wins is awarded only to the very top players. The celebration of her last win make it look like it was for a national holiday. Is chess really that popular in Uganda? All of the exaggeration is not to take away from Mutesi's achievements that are extraordinary given her background and living conditions.

There are lots of chess-related movies out there (Google "chess movies") and, of the half dozen or so I have seen, my favorite is "Searching for Bobby Fischer."

(Spoilers) After a couple of brief flashbacks, the story begins in Hungary in August, 1944. To wait out the war in a safer environment, twelve-year-old twin brothers have been sent from a comfortable urban apartment to their grandmother's farm on the Austrian border. Harsh would be a kind description of granny--on their first night the boys are left outside in the cold until they work around the farm to earn any privileges, like being inside.

This is not a war movie as such, but rather about the effects war has on people and the parlous moral climate that prevails. While there are some brief war-related scenes, like Jews being marched out of town and there being a nearby concentration camp, the emphasis is on what the boys are experiencing and how they react. During the course of the film, seeing what is going on around them, the boys implement a survivalist strategy by trying to toughen themselves physically, psychologically, and emotionally. Blackmail, theft, lying, and violent revenge are in their repertoire. War has turned decent, happy boys into amoral survivalists--their gradual transformation is skillfully presented.

One cavil: the boys' physical appearance does not deteriorate as much as it would have in the time frame before they meet the priest's helper who helps care for them--they are never what one would call scruffy. If the movie could have provided smells it would have been distinctly more unpleasant than it is.

Attention is paid to the complexity of human behavior. Stereotypes are avoided. The story goes in unexpected directions. Not all affirmative feeling is drained from the boys, they respond warmly to a Jewish cobbler who gives them a pair of shoes, and they befriend a neighbor girl, whom they call Harelip, who teaches them about theft. The boys participate in one instance of assisted suicide, out of compassion, and another that is problematic. By the end we see that the boys are capable of pretty much anything. The betrayal of the father in the final act is shocking. Or, given the rotten emotional and physical shape the father is in, as well as his status as an ex-soldier, was their act one of mercy?

One of the most sympathetic characters is a German SS officer who takes to the boys, there being more than a hint of a sexual undercurrent in his liking of them. This officer runs counter to any preconceived image. He wears a neck brace that prevents him from turning his head. The officer's relationship with the boys is presented in a positive light--in fact he saves the boys from being beaten in an attack that could have resulted in their death. Is pedophilia always bad? Is what the officer did to stop the attack condemnable? An example of how the movie poses moral dilemmas.

I confess that my knowledge of Hungarian history during the was is a little weak. I understood that Hungary fought on the side of the axis powers, so I was confused by how the Nazis were clearly an occupying force. A brief reading of Wikipedia on the matter is clarifying. One of the most poignant scenes has Harelip waving to the Russian "liberators" as they approach the village; they pick her up on their tank. This scene is brilliantly filmed as the tanks are initially seen in the distance and gradually approach the happy girl in real time. Later we see what the Russians did to Harelip.

Independent of its absorbing story I was struck by what an accomplished piece of film making this is. I found the two boys (twins in real life) to be believable. Piroska Molnár as the grandmother, is perfectly cast. High production values prevail. I found the spare, edgy score to be highly effective.

This movie had me questioning the morality of almost all actions. Viewed from one angle I could understand the motivations and even sympathize with what transpired. On the other hand, in a non-war setting the behaviors would be considered reprehensible. War complicates moral judgments. The use of atomic weapons at the end of WWII is still being debated over seventy years later.

The twins are presented as being inseparable from birth, so I was puzzled by their decision to part ways at the end of the movie. They could see what was happening around them, for example having suffered a physical beating that no amount of their training could have prepared them for. Their father wanted out, so why didn't both boys decide to leave the country? I would like to see two sequels to this movie, movies that follow each of the two boys in the years after the war.

Given the premise of this story I think most people could come up with a script to equal or surpass the one in this movie. The premise has a boss of seventeen blue-collar employees present them with the decision to forgo their bonuses in favor of not laying off a particular woman. That woman is Sandra (Marion Cotillard) whom we get to know throughout the movie. Sandra is recovering from an episode of depression and is just coming back to work, only to find out about the vote where the majority of employees voted to keep their bonuses. That would send most any person into a depression, so Sandra is indeed in a tough situation, given her already delicate emotional state. Also, she has a husband and two young children and losing her job would have a devastating effect on the family.

Feeling that her foreman had biased the vote by telling people that even if Sandra were saved, someone else would be fired, Sandra appeals to the big boss for a re-vote, and that is granted. From there the movie slips into low gear as Sandra tracks down her fellow employees and tries to convince them to vote in her favor. One after another we see her finding out where her colleagues live and going to their homes. She is seen, in *long* takes, walking, riding the bus, and being driven by her husband to the homes. What develops is pretty predictable. Some workers are swayed and some just feel that, given their situation, they cannot give up the bonuses they had worked for. We see how lower middle class people have a hard time of it and how varied their situations are.

I guess that there are some bosses dumb enough to set up a situation like the one portrayed here. The way these decisions are usually handled is to make the proposition of forfeiting bonuses, or raises, in favor of keeping all the staff on board, rather than signaling out a specific employee. Some things did point to why Sandra might have been singled out though. She had been on sick leave for depression with her ability to function in question, and the remaining employees could take up the slack in her absence. I got the feeling that Sandra was not particularly well liked and was surprised by how little she knew about her fellow employees, particularly given there were only sixteen others for her to know. It's not surprising that this situation produced a lot of strong emotional reactions--jobs and money strike at the heart of people's lives.

I like Marion Cotillard and feel she was good in this difficult role. Given that she is portraying a woman recovering from depression she has few highly dramatic scenes, so to appreciate her performance you have to key on her subtle reactions. The movie illustrates the difficulty in dealing with a depressed person and I vacillated between being irritated with Sandra's husband and his apparent insensitivity by goading his wife into painful situations that could easily send her back into full-scale depression. But then I had to realize what a delicate situation he was dealing with and moderated my opinion.

Getting through this was a bit of a slog. I found my attention had to be restrained from wandering.

This follows a week in the life of a Paterson, New Jersey, bus driver, coincidentally named Paterson. One criterion that separates the best movies from the rest for me is whether I lose track of time while watching. That did not happen for me with this movie. One theme, a theme that is true for much of the time for a lot of our lives, is that every day is the same but every day is different. There was too much weight given to "everyday is the same" in this movie.

Paterson writes poems and records his poems in a notebook. Given that poetry plays a central role in Patterson's life, it plays a central role in the movie. Unfortunately it did not capture my imagination, since Paterson's poetry was as pedestrian as his life. The poetry for the movie was written by New York poet Ron Padgett. The problem I have had with Padgett's poetry is that he takes a common everyday experience, writes a brief prose summary of the event, and calls it poetry. For example, consider the poem that begins:

We have plenty of matches in our house.

We keep them on hand always.

Currently our favorite brand is Ohio Blue Tip,

though we used to prefer Diamond brand.

That was before we discovered Ohio Blue Tip matches.

They are excellently packaged, sturdy

little boxes with dark and light blue and white labels

with words lettered in the shape of a megaphone,

...

If that stirs your soul, then you will be much more engaged with this movie than I was. I suppose that Padgett was a good choice for the role of putting the words on the screen, since they make it believable that Paterson, an ordinary person, could have written them.

I appreciate the risk that Jarmusch is taking in making a movie like this. I just wish it had been more engaging. I did like the later scene that recounted a random meeting between Paterson and a Japanese poet whom he encounters on a public park bench. But the Japanese man intuits that Paterson is a poet? Really? Introducing the Japanese poet was only an artifice to help bring the story to a conclusion with the gift of the blank notebook.

Given that a "dog ate my homework" scene is the emotional peak, be prepared for somewhat of a slog to get through this. It seems that an attempt was made to drain this of anything that might move it beyond the pedestrian: the camera work, the music, the acting, the color palette, the story--all pedestrian.

This reaches a level of realism rarely seen. The story revolves around Jo, a lower class young girl in Manchester, England in the early 1960s. In the beginning Jo lives with her alcoholic mother Helen in a run-down flat and, when her mother takes up with a loser, Jo gets a gut load and moves out on her own and finds a job in a shoe store. She becomes romantically involved with Jimmy, a black ship's cook. She gets pregnant, only to have Jimmy ship out and leave her to deal with the situation alone. Along the way Jo meets Geoffrey, a young man who moves in with her. If this all sounds a bit too downbeat for you, be aware that this film has a lot of qualities that make it worth seeing.

Both Rita Tushingham, as Jo, and Murray Melvin, as Geoffrey, won best actor awards at Cannes in 1962. These were well deserved in my opinion. I was taken with Tushingham. She has an interesting face and, in her first film roll here, she is able to express a lot with facial expressions. Frequently filming her in close up is effective. The relationship between Jo and Geoffrey is played with some tenderness. I found Geoffrey's sexuality to be ambiguous. In one scene he tries to kiss Jo and offers to marry her. This she rejects. While Geoffrey does have some stereotypical behavior patterns associated with gays, I found that there was only one scene that more than hints at Geoffrey's homosexuality, and that is when Jo's mother's mate comes into Jo's flat, sees that Jo is pregnant, looks at Geoffrey and says, "Whose this, the father?" and, after looking at Geoffrey says, "Oh, dear, no." Since homosexual acts were illegal in England until 1967, portraying overt homosexuality on screen in this movie would have been controversial.

There is some sharp dialog, especially between Jo and her mother. When Helen announces the she is going to get married, Jo asks, "You're not getting married in a church are you?" to which Helen answers, "Why? You coming to throw bricks at us?" When Helen puts on a fur and asks, "Jo, how do you like this?" Jo responds, "Bet somebody's missing their cat."

Walter Lassally's black-and-white cinematography is to be savored-- he understands that art form. There are some scenes that are powerful in black and white that would be unremarkable in color. I am thinking in particular of one scene that has Jimmy walking across a bridge that has him in black against a bright background. This scene emphasizes the sadness of his leaving. Many scenes, like the last scene with the sparklers, are so well lighted that they last in memory. Lassally also knows how to get the most out of Tushingham's close ups.

Director Richardson, who was nominated for best director at Cannes for this movie, was on a real roll at this time in his career. Consider: Tom Jones (1962), The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962), A Taste of Honey (1961), Sanctuary (1961), The Entertainer (1960), Look Back in Anger (1959). He also worked with some of the best actors of his generation, like Lawrence Olivier, Richard Burton, and Albert Finney.

Some of the themes treated, like interracial relationships and hints at homosexuality were daring at the time. You would think that this would make the movie dated, but it is not like those issues have been totally resolved some sixty years later.

The one negative for me was the score--it would be more appropriate for a lighthearted Cary Grant, Kathryn Hepburn comedy. "A Taste of Honey" is a serious look at a time and place. It does have some humor, but much of that comes from sarcastic dialog. There are vestiges of this having been a stage play, particularly in the final scenes, but the filming makes this a work of cinema, especially by filming using outdoor locations.

The Criterion Collection DVD contains interviews with Tushingham and Melvin (filmed in 2016), and Lassally (filmed in 1998). I usually find such interviews a bit of a bore where the actors praise everyone, but these interviews I thought were interesting. Tushingham had things to say about working with Richardson. The interview with Melvin is fantastic--he in one interesting dude. I liked his comments, "I was the start of gay pride of 1958. It's all down to me, honey. It's on my shoulders, and I'm very proud of it." The interview with Lassally shows that he was very concerned with film quality and how much he thought about the filming. Some of his work here was pioneering in the use of low light photography, hand held cameras, and different film stocks. He was so interested in getting contrasts right that in the scene with Jo and Geoffrey under the arch he actually put some sand in a field in the background so that he could get Jo in well-defined silhouette.

In the first scene 13-year-old Jake learns that his grandfather Sal has died. Jake and his parents, Brian and Kathy, subsequently move into Sal's 2nd story Brooklyn apartment. Below the apartment is a dress shop that is a one-person show run by seamstress Leonor Calvelli.

A close friendship develops between Leonor's son Tony and Jake. Michael Barbieri's performance as Tony is captivating-- who wouldn't like this boisterous and guileless youth? Jake is more reserved and quiet. Bonding between complimentary personality types can be intense, particularly between young teens like Tony and Jake. There are some wonderful scenes that show how Jake and Tony delight in just being together, like a scene that follows them along a sidewalk with Jake on skates and Tony on a bicycle. That scene is augmented by a score that perfectly captures the carefree emotion.

Relationships like Jake and Tony's are more common than are treated in film and literature I think, particularly between boys. Two examples that come to mind are the relationship between Jean and Julien in the movie "Au Revoir Les Enfants" and between Gene and Phineas in the novel "A Separate Peace."

Just following the interactions of these young boys would probably not provide enough drama to sustain a full length movie, but I do wish that there had been more time devoted to their endearing relationship before the drama came from the interactions between the adults. Brian's sister Audrey was set on getting more rent money from Leonor and Audrey and Kathy put the heat on Brian to deal with Leonor on the matter. Leonor is just barely making it and would be forced out of her shop, and likely winding up in a sweatshop, if having to fork over more rent. When Jake and Tony understand what is going on they see that their friendship is threatened. Brian is squeezed from four directions--his wife, his sister, his renter, and his son. This is one of those situations that make you ask what you would have done in his situation. I came to view Brian as a wimp, since I think there were options where all the emotional damage could have been avoided. Instead of being dismissed out of hand, Jake made a suggestion that I thought should have been seriously considered. As is, there will be a permanent rift between Brian, his sister, his wife, and his son.

I am not sure whether there was any intended implication that Jake may be gay, but the scene at the dance where Tony pursued a girl while Jake withdrew to himself would hint at that. Also when some of Tony's friends taunted him about his relationship with Jake not being strictly platonic, Tony went on the attack.

There are lots of themes that bubble up in this seemingly simple movie-- class, race, family dynamics, the downside of capitalism, and not taking the thoughts and emotions of young adults as seriously as deserved. A final scene that has Jake looking across an atrium to see Tony, without any attempt to connect, is symbolic of the divide that separated them. But I was disappointed that Jake did not have the courage to take an opportunity to reconnect with Tony. I could see no reason why the two boys could not renew their friendship after the storm had blown over.

In watching this it occurred to me how undeliberative I have become in accepting quality movie workmanship. This small movie illustrates the point--it is so well done that I came to appreciate its technical qualities

only when I tried to come up with any negative comments.

The movie details an event in the life of a Keld, a Danish plumber. That event is set in motion when Keld's wife leaves him. Keld is more of a reactive person than an active one and that is probably a reason his wife left him, although we don't get too many details on that.

Bjarne Henriksen plays Keld with grace and gentleness in a captivating and nuanced performance--he can say a lot with facial expressions. I imagine that it is harder to play everyday people like Keld than bigger-than-life characters having big, dramatic scenes.

Keld reacts to his new bachelorhood by frequenting a Chinese restaurant on a daily basis where he gets to know Feng, the owner (Lin Kun Wu). There is subtle humor--after running through all of the 21 selections on the menu in numeric order, Feng asks Keld what should be done next and, after some hesitation, Keld decides to start over. Feng, sensing that Keld is a kindly soul, asks him for a big favor--to marry is younger sister Ling (Vivian Wu) so that she can get Danish citizenship. The marriage is to be "pro forma," but in a sequence of beautifully filmed scenes, what does start out as "pro forma" turns into a delicate love. Maybe this story line is a bit predictable, but the relationship between Ling and Keld is developed so believably that it's hard not to be taken up with it. However, the ending is not predictable.

When Keld's wife wants to come back, she is led to understand the meaning of the idiom, "Be careful what you wish for, lest it come true." She got her wished-for divorce, but that led to her being cut off from Keld later when she wanted him.

The relationships between Feng and his son, and Keld and his son, offer commentary on the changing cultural dynamics of such relationships as experienced in a Chinese family contrasted with a Danish family. It is interesting to see the difference between Feng's extended family and Keld's rather lonely life.

The score, while engaging, often seemed more lighthearted than what the story-line would call for.

There are no villains in this vary human tale.

There is not much original in this story of a Parisian extramarital affair. Pierre (Jean Desailly) and Franca (Nelly Benedetti) are the married couple and Nicole (Françoise Dorléac) is Pierre's love interest. Pierre is a well known editor, author, and critic. Pierre is quite famous to the extent that his appearance to give an introduction to the movie "With André Gide" draws a sellout crowd. As part of this event Pierre is expected to entertain a group of local intelligentsia at a dinner. That scene had the ring of truth and Truffaut must have written it based on the many times he had been in similar situations. I wish there had been more supporting evidence for Pierre's fame, since I was being asked to buy into it; believing it was essential, since that is the main thing that I could see that Pierre had that could attract such a woman as Nicole. Pierre comes off as a mild family man, devoted to his daily habitual pleasures. Outside of one or two scenes there was no on-screen chemistry between Desailly and Dorléac. I also found the discord between Pierre and his wife more scripted than believable. The final scene was poorly motivated.

On the positive side the Criterion Collection print is high quality, showing off the skilled use of camera angles and film contrast. Those who appreciate black and white photography should enjoy this example. There is use of quick cuts in an attempt to add some excitement to the affair, but not enough to keep this from being but a minor variation on a time-worn theme.

Coming after "The 400 Blows," "Shoot the Piano Player," and "Jules and Jim," I was hoping for more from this.

This is the story of the experiences of two brothers who join the same college fraternity, one year apart. I think that it did not take much talent to come up with the story. Start off with a violent beating of the younger brother to get the audience's attention, emphasize the hazing events during hell week, toss in some sibling interactions, and end with the fallout from a tragic consequence of the hazing. The acting is pedestrian and there is such a lack of depth to the characters that it is difficult to care about them. The deepest conversation goes along the lines of, "Hey man, how's it going?" followed by "Fine."

The "based on true events" comment at the beginning does not add much value, since what is presented does not go beyond stereotypical material.

Several years ago I read the book "Goat Brothers" by Larry Colton. I thought this movie might be based on that book, but, aside from the one small part of the book dealing with hell week, they are miles apart. The book traces the lives of five fraternity brothers over a period of twenty-five years and, opposed to "Goat," you wind up really knowing them.