(Borrowed from Fred Rogers with the best of intentions; send the copyright bill to my agent.)
Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke
I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) when they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative.
Opening Chatter (no spoilers): Well, this marks a week where I’m not as sorry as I often am I’m not yet frequenting actual movie theaters because there’s really not that much playing I’m truly interested in (I'm not alone in that attitude either because Box Office Mojo tallies show that of the top 47 current domestic [U.S.-Canada] releases only 8 took in anywhere over $1 million last weekend so I fear a good number of big-screen-venues may be teetering on the edge of closure; maybe the big-name-options still to come as summer fades into autumn will bring long-hoped-for-relief). What I found, almost by accident, in streaming, though, provided a marvelous uplift during 9/11 (or Patriots Day) weekend (where the only news/doc remembrance of that awful event I chose to watch was the 60 Minutes feature on the heroic work [and tragic loss of life] of the NYC Fire Department), a musical, of all things, Come from Away (“based on actual events and real people” as the opening graphic verifies), more tangentially than directly about that horrid disaster as it focuses on 5 days in a long-ago-mid-September when dozens of airliners were forced to land at a large-yet-obscure-airport at the small town of Gander, Newfoundland, Canada, almost doubling the local population as the residents made every effort to house, feed, care for about 7,000 unexpected visitors. While I hadn’t previously been aware of this story as a quite successful Broadway play (a link where you can find full production/plot details if you like), I became fascinated to see how this filmed version of a recent performance on the Great White Way so effectively merged the intimacy of seeing the story unfold in real time in a limited space before a live audience and the cinematic-energy of cutting among various shot distances to bring in the full 12-person-cast (each one playing multiple roles)—plus a few musicians—as they shift through various ensembles or come in closer (as you could never do in an actual theatre) for specific interactions as it all moves rapidly along. This one’s free for Apple TV+ subscribers (or to those who want to watch for free during a 1-month-intro) or just $4.99 for a month’s fee (cheap compared to movie tickets), so whatever your feelings about musicals—or 9/11—I highly recommend serious consideration of watching Come from Away.
In the Short Takes section I have nothing else to review but I’ll offer suggestions for choices on the Turner Classic Movies channel (but too much extra text for line-justified-layout like you see here [Related Links stuff at each posting’s end is similarly-ragged], at least to be done by this burned-out-BlogSpot-drone—oh, ye tedious software!) along with my standard dose of industry-related-trivia.
Here’s the trailer for Come from Away:
(Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge it; activate
that same button or use the “esc” keyboard key to return to normal size.)
If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film or want to save some $. To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid those important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters like this:
⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.
What Happens: This is a non-traditional-film as it’s the recording of a live stage production of a musical (written/composed in 2017 by Irene Sankoff, David Hein; during the initial Broadway run it won the Tony award for Best Direction of a Musical [Ashley at the helm then also]) shot at NYC’s Gerald Schoenfeld Theater (location of that original run) in May 2021 (set to return to Broadway on Sept. 21, 2021, as well as many other locations) so while it unfolds seamlessly for 1 hr. 46 min. (no intermission) it’s mostly visualized as wide or medium shots of the action as it transpires actively on stage with a group of 12 actors performing various roles, taking us through a dramatization of actual events from Sept. 11-15, 2001 as 38 airliners (with people from 98 countries) were denied access to continue in American skies following the World Trade Center/Pentagon attacks, this group diverted instead to a huge airport near the small town of Gander (about 9,000) in Newfoundland, Canada. (The large island in the north Atlantic that with its coastside neighbor forms the province of Newfoundland and Labrador; the International Airport [north of Newfoundland’s main city, St. John’s, which I visited a few years ago on a trip to the Canadian Maritimes and went through Gander briefly while cruising around the province but don’t remember anything about the smaller town] was built years ago as a refueling stop for planes coming from Europe to North America before more contemporary technology allowed longer flights, with little need to touch down in this rural outpost.)
So, there’s no adaptation to a more-standard-cinematic revision of this story; it all takes place in real time in a confined space with an audience watching, the only concession to normal filmmaking being the cutting between camera views of differing widths to periodically get us closer to the action (rather than always being in maybe the first row of the first balcony) to more clearly see the faces of a few individuals interacting rather than the entire company in unison as if in a town meeting debating how to handle all these roughly 7,000 unanticipated-arriving-passengers-and-airline-crews or portraying a representative group of these passengers stuck inside their plane for hours (watching movies, including Titanic [James Cameron, 1997]!) until the aviation authorities finally grant permission to open the cabin doors or enjoying a group celebration uniting townspeople with these sudden guests.
Given this is structured as a musical with a lot of full-cast-numbers, any plot-transcription I can give you won’t convey much of what it’s like to watch the actual event so if what you read here is interesting in its content you can stream it on Apple TV+. As far as that content goes, it’s a direct narrative where Gander locals (especially Mayor Claude Elliott [Joel Hatch], policeman Oz Fudge [Paul Whitty], reporter Janice Mosher [Emily Walton], SPCA worker Bonnie Harris [Petrina Bromley], the latter concerned about the 19 animals stuck in cargo bins) learn on the morning of the NYC attacks that many airliners will be diverted to their locale so plans are quickly put in motion to attend to this overwhelming number of arrivals. As events move swiftly along we join some of those passengers trapped in their planes, not knowing why. When they’re finally allowed out, they frantically try to phone their loved ones with a specific focus on Hannah O’Rourke (Q. Smith)—helped by Gander teacher Beulah Davis (Astrid Van Wieren)—concerned about her firefighter son. ⇒Soon the Gander locals provide an initiation ceremony for the newcomers at a local bar as pilot Beverly Bass (Jenn Colella) now sees the world through a negative lens while a Dallas woman, Diane Gray (Sharon Wheatley), and a London man, Nick Marson (Jim Walton)—the 2 seated in the middle in the photo just above—start becoming fond of each other even as a gay couple—in plaid shirts in the forefront of the photo just below—Kevin Tuerff (Tony LePage) and Kevin Jung (Caesar Samayoa) begin to drift apart and an Egyptian Muslim traveler, Ali (also Samayoa), finally wins over the trust of everyone before he’s humiliated by a strip-search as he reboards his plane when the skies are opened up again (delayed a bit more by huge Hurricane Erin roaring through the area), with equal horror coming to Hannah when she finds out her son died in the World Trade Center catastrophe. 10 years later the crews and passengers return to Gander for a reunion with the townsfolk to celebrate the connections made as well as to honor those lost in the terrorist attacks.⇐
So What? Turns out that Come from Away is Gander-slang for all of those non-Canadian-passengers displaced from their intended destinations by the tragic events of 9/11/01, which took me until near the end of the film to comprehend (although it’s briefly clarified in the opening number, but I didn’t catch it then while taking notes, a frequent problem with my intended-attention toward what I'm watching but I need the detailed-prompts after the fact for these reviews as my memory along would never suffice), nor did I have any prior sense of this story on stage—despite its nomination for 7 Tony Awards, winning the one I noted above—in that I don’t go to Manhattan to see plays nor (due to the huge ticket prices) do I see hardy any of the Broadway successes that come via road-show-performances to San Francisco, so I pay only passing notice to the Tony results each year with … Away completely passing me by, but now I have a full sense of why it was so lauded when it debuted on stage in 2017, even with a bit of a time-travel back to that run as Hatch, Bromley, Smith, Van Wieren, Colella, Wheatley, and Samayoa return in their original (multiple) roles (all except Bromley had been in the cast from the beginnings in La Jolla, CA and Seattle [2015], Washington D.C. and Toronto [2016], but she missed only the D.C. stop before returning to join in the initial Broadway run).
As I’ve noted in various past reviews I’m not generally a great fan of traditional musicals (the “love conquers all [unnecessary complications]”-variety), preferring ones with more substance, from West Side Story (Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, 1961) to Cabaret (Bob Fosse, 1972 [running next week on TCM; see the listings farther below]) to Chicago (Rob Marshall, 2002)—all substantial Oscar winners (certainly powerful as plays too, whether done in neighborhood theatres, by touring companies, or revived on Broadway, as with Chicago which I saw the last time I was in NYC [this version opened in 1996, is now the longest-running musical and also musical revival in Broadway history]), so I’ll admit it was with some trepidation I chose Come from Away as the only film to review this week (as my other streaming options just didn’t seem too compelling), in fear that taking any aspect of the 9/11 situation (especially given I was watching this film on the specific night of the 20th anniversary of that horror, purposely steering away from the many documentaries about the event on several TV networks last weekend, not needing to be reminded of those horrible events any more than my still-vivid-memories can easily conjure up), then structuring it as a musical (might become like a Saturday Night Live parody skit, maybe resembling the one they did years ago seemingly singing the praises of American military victories in Afghanistan), could be a horror-show in its own right, despite the high praise this film has with the CCAL (more on that in this review’s next section).
Needless to say (from my 4 stars-rating), I was pleasantly surprised by how this relatively-simple-concept of small-town-Canadians opening their doors, their supply closets, and (mostly) their hearts to thousands of suddenly-arriving-strangers (a little humor thrown in to slightly-lighten the overall-somber-mood of the horrifying situation when no one knew if the 4 crashed airliners were what could be some larger strike force or if more disaster was imminent, as with the anthrax packages that showed up in some mail deliveries not long after those attacks). Maybe this film (and the play it captures for us) works so well simply because (1) the content is so divergent from the vicious/at times violent “my way or the highway” mentality that’s gripped American politics and culture (not to mention the same sort of populace-divide now easily found all around the globe) in the 20 years since the terrorist attacks; (2) the Gander citizens’ initial concerns of “How do we handle this huge influx?” quickly transformed into “What else can we do to help, how quickly can we do it?”; (3) the willingness of (most of) the passengers to take a deep breath in the midst of this crisis to more rationally respond rather than becoming a mob: panic-stricken-chaos-creators refusing to cooperate with the Gander locals out of fear, ignorance, or asserted-privilege. I doubt anyone a couple of decades from now will be able to write such a humanity-embracing-story when dealing with the U.S. 2020 elections, the anti-vaxxers’ contributions to the spread of COVID-mutations, the unwillingness of our national Congresspeople to find ways to work together during these crises instead of just spewing out blame however they can manufacture it. In the light of the rancor we now struggle through as a society the events of Come from Away may seem unbelievably naïve (just as the willing coming together of U.S. factions in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 may seem hard to comprehend today), but such open-embracing did happen up there in that lonely stretch of Canada, producing an affirmation of the decency of the human spirit whenever we allow it to rise above imposed barriers, to allow ourselves to find dignity in people, customs, ideas different from our own or ourselves (even if we have to kiss a fish in the process, as a few of these newly-minted-Ganderites were willing to do).
Bottom Line Final Comments: While the message of this film (and, of course, the play) is inspiring and much-needed today, along with a long list of songs for those who reasonably expect a lot of music in their musicals (toward the middle of the flow dialogue for its own sake begins to predominate for a bit, but then the more-active-flow of tunes kicks in again), I can’t say the songs themselves are all that fabulous, certainly not of the consistently-memorable-character of the ones in significant film musicals I noted above, but they do come across as energetic, clearly convey what’s intended about the narrative elements needed to keep this plot in focus as it shifts from townspeople to passengers to a merging of these 2 groups (all done effectively by just those same 12 actors), with enough focus on a few individuals within the several thousand locals and visitors implied by the events of those fateful days so that we have a few specific cases to invest our interests in, seeing how some will benefit from these unexpected days even as others will be more negatively-impacted. As I noted before, the CCAL’s all aboard with Come from Away as the critics surveyed by Rotten Tomatoes offer up the highly-supportive-result of 96% positive reviews even as the usually-more-hesitant-scribes at Metacritic yield an 83% average score, one of their very best for 2021 films they’re reviewed that I’m aware of; however, you should take note you can find links for their results farther below in this posting in my Related Links section (as with anything I review) because those numbers could change notably as time goes on with the RT 96% based on only 24 reviews, the MC number the result of a mere 9 responses. Also as noted above, you’ll have to stream Come from Away on Apple TV+, although their monthly fee to do so is quite cheap at $4.99 (with a 1-month-free-option so you could see this uplifting film for no cost, along with access to some great series such as “Ted Lasso” starring Jason Sudeikis [currently vying for 20 Primetime Emmy Awards] and “Mr. Corman” starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt [you’ll also find Juno Temple playing different characters in both shows], 2 examples of some of what I spend my time on when I'm not watching/reviewing films).
OK, enough blather from me in this posting (except for those recommendations noted below—and no questions about what else I do when not watching films or TV, if you don't mind) so let’s wrap this up with my usual device of a Musical Metaphor for a final line of commentary on the chosen review subject, this time being the opening number from the play/film, “Welcome to the Rock,” as performed by the original Broadway cast at the 2017 Tony Awards ceremony (also available, obviously, on the Original Broadway Cast Recording) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UH-ozsBI570 because it establishes the locale of the story, allows us to meet some of the Gander characters who cheerfully tell us “[…] the world has come ashore If you’re hoping for a harbour Then you’ll find an open door In the winter, from the water Through whatever’s in the way To the ones who have come from away Welcome to the Rock!” (that is, the somewhat-isolated, lonely-island of Newfoundland). This place might not be your anticipated destination, although it turns out to be not just any old port in a storm.
SHORT TAKES
Suggestions for TCM cablecasts
At least until the pandemic subsides Two Guys also want to encourage you to consider movies you might be interested in that don’t require subscriptions to Netflix, Amazon Prime, similar Internet platforms (we may well be stuck inside for longer than those 30-day-free-initial-offers), or premium-tier-cable-TV-fees. While there are a good number of video networks offering movies of various sorts (mostly broken up by commercials), one dependable source of fine cinematic programming is Turner Classic Movies (available in lots of basic-cable-packages) so I’ll be offering suggestions of possible choices for you running from Thursday afternoon of the current week (I usually get this blog posted by early Thursday mornings) on through Thursday morning of the following week. All times are for U.S. Pacific zone so if you see something of interest please verify actual show time in your area for the day listed. These recommendations are my particular favorites (no matter when they’re on, although some of those early-day-ones might need to be recorded, watched later), but there’s considerably more to pick from you might like even better; feel free to explore their entire schedule here. You can also click the down arrow at the right of each listing for additional, useful info.
I’ll bet if you checked that entire schedule link just above you’d find other options of interest, but these are the only ones grabbing my attention at present. Please dig in further for other possibilities.
Friday September 17, 2021
9:15 PM The Misfits (John Huston, 1961) In its own way a bit of a swan song for Old Hollywood,
with script by Arthur Miller, direction by Huston, the final screen appearances of Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable, one of the last by Montgomery Clift (Thelma Ritter and Eli Wallach are in there too), sort of a western but set in contemporary Nevada with interpersonal angst, drunkenness, desperation among the starring characters. A flop in its time, much more highly regarded today by the critics.
Saturday September 18, 2021
11:00 PM Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976) Career-defining accomplishment for Scorsese, screenwriter Paul Schrader, star Robert De Niro plus terrific acting by Cybill Shepherd, Harvey Keitel, Peter Boyle, Albert Brooks, and young Jodie Foster detailing a psychotic man attempting to kill both a Presidential candidate and a pimp. Paraphrasing Travis Bickle, “If you ain’t ‘looking at me’ (this film), you’re missin’ a lot.” A grim masterpiece with continuing social reverberations.
Sunday September 19, 2021
11:15 AM Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941) Still my All-Time #1 (even though Sight and Sound’s poll dethroned it in 2012 in favor of Hitchcock’s Vertigo [1958] after 50 years on top); a triumph of script, acting, cinematography, editing, sound design, art direction, special effects, score, with Welles as director, star actor portraying Charles Foster Kane, an enormously wealthy (by chance as a kid) newspaperman (patterned on William Randolph Hearst) whose early progressive ideals succumb to pragmatics destroying marriages to 2 wives (Ruth Warrick, Dorothy Comingore) and a long-time-friend (Joseph Cotton), retaining loyalty only from his business manager (Everett Sloane). Except for the eye-of-God beginning & end told in flashbacks, 5 narrators imparting subjective accounts (hard for us to know what’s true). Won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay (Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz [granddad of noted TCM host Ben Mankiewicz]); scripting process the subject of Mank.
Monday September 20, 2021
3:00 AM An American in Paris (Vincente Minnelli, 1951) All-time great musical about a painter in Paris (Gene Kelley), his neighbor (Oscar Levant), and the woman he loves (Leslie Caron), ends with a spectacular ballet set to Gershwin’s An American in Paris. Nominated for 8 Oscars, won for Best Picture, Story and Screenplay, Art Direction-Color, Cinematography-Color, Costume Design-Color, Scoring of a Musical Picture, plus an Honorary Oscar to Kelly for cinematic versatility, multi-talents.
2:45 PM Cabaret (Bob Fosse, 1972) An 8-Oscar winner: Best Director, Actress (Liza Minnelli), Supporting Actor (Joel Grey), Art Direction, Sound, Score Adaptation and Original Song Score, Cinematography, Film Editing (close for me on these last 2 with The Godfather which won Best Picture [I agree]). A great film, best musical of all-time for me, set in 1931 Berlin as an American performer & an English academic get involved, Nazis on the rise, notable differences from the play.
Wednesday September 22, 2021
9:45 PM Autumn Sonata (Ingmar Bergman, 1978) Powerfully intimate, a successful collaboration between 1 of cinema’s greatest directors and 2 of its finest actors as the wife (Liv Ullmann) of a village pastor invites her mother (Ingrid Bergman) to visit after 7 years apart; Mom’s a famous pianist with a grand view of herself daughter’s not so talented but accepts her domestic role, even caring for her severely-disabled sister, as long-simmering tensions emerge among all these women. 2 Oscar noms: Best Actress (Bergman, female), Best Original Screenplay (Bergman, male), won none.
If you’d like your own PDF of the rating/summary of this week's review, suggestions for TCM cablecasts, links to Two Guys info click this link to access then save, print, or whatever you need.
Other Cinema-Related Stuff: (1) A very early round of Oscar predictions for 2022; (2) Critics say the new version of Dune belongs on the big screen but WB still plans to simultaneously release it on HBO Max. I’ll close out this section with Joni Mitchell’s "Big Yellow Taxi" (from her 1970 Ladies of the Canyon album)—because “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone”—and a reminder that you can search streaming/rental/purchase movie options at JustWatch.
Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:
We encourage you to visit the Summary of Two Guys reviews for our past posts.* Overall notations for this blog—including Internet formatting craziness beyond our control—may be found at our Two Guys in the Dark homepage. If you’d like to Like us on Facebook please visit our Facebook page. We appreciate your support whenever and however you can offer it!
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Here’s more information about Come From Away:
https://www.apple.com/tv-pr/originals/come-from-away/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZdj1LxqGrs (3:31 statements from actual Gander residents and 9/11 airline passengers)
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/come_from_away
https://www.metacritic.com/movie/come-from-away
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If you’d rather contact Ken directly rather than leaving a comment here please use my email address of kenburke409@gmail.com—type it directly if the link doesn’t work. (But if you truly have too much time on your hands you might want to explore some even-longer-and-more-obtuse-than-my-film-reviews-academic-articles about various cinematic topics at my website, https://kenburke.academia.edu, which could really give you something to talk to me about.)
If we did talk, though, you’d easily see how my early-70s-age informs my references, Musical Metaphors, etc. in these reviews because I’m clearly a guy of the later 20th century, not so much the contemporary world. I’ve come to accept my ongoing situation, though, realizing we all (if fate allows) keep getting older, we just have to embrace it, as Joni Mitchell did so well in
"The Circle Game," offering sage advice even when she was quite young herself.
By the way, if you’re ever at The Hotel California knock on my door—but you know what the check-out policy is so be prepared to stay for awhile (quite an eternal while, in fact). Ken
P.S. Just to show that I haven’t fully flushed Texas out of my system here’s an alternative destination for you, Home in a Texas Bar, with Gary P. Nunn and Jerry Jeff Walker. But wherever the rest of my body may be my heart’s always with my longtime-companion, lover, and wife, Nina Kindblad, so here’s our favorite shared song—Neil Young’s "Harvest Moon"
—from the performance we saw at the Desert Trip concerts in Indio, CA on October 15, 2016 (as a full moon was rising over the stadium) because “I’m still in love with you,” my dearest,
a never-changing-reality even as the moon waxes and wanes over the months/years to come. But, just as we can raunchy at times (in private of course) Neil and his backing band, Promise of the Real, on that same night also did a lengthy, fantastic version of "Cowgirl in the Sand"
(19:06) which I’d also like to commit to this blog’s always-ending-tunes; I never get tired of listening to it, then and now (one of my idle dreams is to play guitar even half this good).
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