Into the New Year with Looks Back at 2021, Part 2
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) if they agree with me or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) if they choose to disagree.
Opening Chatter (no spoilers): Before we get into the usual cinematic-matters, I’d like to note that last week I had the grand opportunity of reconnecting by e-mail and phone (yes, some people actually use those little devices to talk to each other) with my known-the-longest-good-friend (from Galveston, TX; all the way back to 1950s Sacred Heart Elementary, mid-1960s Ball High), Pat Fant, with whom I co-hosted in 1965-’66 on KILE-AM radio the weekly “Teen Scene A Go Go” show (we still can’t figure out why the station manager let us total novices do that), with him going on to a long, successful career in broadcasting (among other enterprises, including his current Satire for Conservatives skits with Uncle Otis [a commentator I don’t share much with politically but a hell of a lot funnier for me to listen to than FOX News]), with Pat now running RFC Media, a customized streaming radio service in Houston, so if any of you 1,000s (seriously; see the audience info at the very end of this posting, updated each time) of Two Guys readers want to learn more of what that’s about, explore the link to see if there might be a connection there for you (no kickbacks to me if so).
Now, as for filmic-content, last week I offered Short Takes on Spider-Man: No Way Home, Swan Song, Being the Ricardos, The Matrix Resurrections, and Encanto; if I weren’t in COVID-Omicron-avoidance-mode, I would venture out to a theater to see a few remaining 2021 releases like Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson), House of Gucci (Ridley Scott), Nightmare Alley (Guillermo del Toro), Red Rocket (Sean Baker), C’mon C’mon (Mike Mills), and Parallel Mothers (Pedro Almodóvar), but for now I’ll just have to wait for any of them to arrive on streaming, which, fortunately for me, The Tragedy of Macbeth (Joel Coen) will do on Jan. 14, 2022 so when next I post I’ll have commentary on that one, starring Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand. This week’s wrap-up of Short Takes focuses on some other 2021 options (one of them reaching back a few months) Don’t Look Up, The Lost Daughter, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, and The Tender Bar. As you’d expect (you do read this blog every week, don’t you?), I’ll also offer suggestions 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.
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 $ (as well as recognizing those readers like me who aren’t that tech-savvy)—to help any of you who’d like to learn more details yet avoid these all-important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters with colors plus arrows:
⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.
SHORT TAKES (OK, not so short after all)
Don’t Look Up (Adam McKay) rated R 138 min.
In this serious-undercurrent-satire, university astronomers discover a planet-ending-comet is hurtling toward Earth but the President’s too consumed with political affairs (of various kinds) to care much nor do the media take this seriously so even when a decision’s made to crash the comet off-course that strategy’s abandoned in favor of mining the rock for precious metals.
Here’s the trailer:
In this ultimately-very-serious-satire, Michigan State U. Ph.D. candidate Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) and her astronomy professor, Dr. Randall Mindy (Leo DiCaprio), discover a massive comet with a near-100% likelihood of crashing into Earth in just over 6 months, so they’re summoned to D.C. by NASA’s Dr. Teddy Oglethorpe (Rob Morgan) to inform President Janie Orlean (Meryl Streep), but she’s—along with her son/Chief of Staff Jason Orlean (Jonah Hill)—distracted by upcoming Midterm elections and controversy about her Supreme Court nominee, so Kate and Randall instead go on a morning TV talk show where they also get little serious attention from co-hosts Brie Evantee (Cate Blanchett) and Jack Bremmer (Tyler Perry). Finally convinced of the danger to our planet (along with needing to distract from breaking news about a sex scandal with that Court nominee), Pres. Orlean authorizes an orbit-changing-strike on the comet but then recalls the mission in favor of Peter Isherwell’s (Mark Rylance [playing a billionaire CEO of tech company BASH, major donor to the Pres.]) plan to simply break up the comet, allowing its chunks to fall harmlessly to Earth where their precious metals can be recovered (see the second item in Related Links—so very far below—connected to this movie about the viability of all this); in the meantime, Mindy’s begun an affair with Evantee, humiliating his wife, June (Melanie Lynskey). Orlean’s working-class-followers join her in a MAGA-like “Don’t Look Up” campaign to celebrate Isherwell’s plans for new jobs, ignoring/denigrating anyone—like Kate—fearing that comet’s inevitable disaster.
⇒Isherwell’s plan flops, though, so as the comet comes near Mindy goes home to reconcile with his family while Orlean and other government/financial honchos board an escape spaceship (leaving Jason Orlean behind to post a selfie in the aftermath-rubble), going into suspended animation for 22,740 years after Earth’s destruction, finally landing on a distant planet where they can survive but Orlean’s killed by a local animal with the other humans seemingly next.⇐ Other notable cast names in minor roles include Timothée Chalamet, Ron Perlman, Ariana Grande, Live Schreiber, Chris Evans in this package of biting social commentary where characters easily imply Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and a host of media celebrities. The critical establishment’s gone OCCU on this movie, though, with RT reviews only at 54% positive, MC’s average score at 49%, even though it’s clear I was much better impacted by its combination of absurd humor and end-of-days-premonitions that are all too-real about our planetary crisis, through human determination of ignoring climate change.
So, I turned to a critic I admire (even when we're in non-agreement), James Bernardinelli of Reel Views who says: “As a comedy, Don’t Look Up doesn’t work because it’s not funny. As a satire, it flops because the attempts at mockery are broad, puerile, and obvious, unintentionally trivializing the issues it seeks to highlight. As a drama, it collapses because it never makes much of an attempt to be serious.” Well, that’s about as dismissive as you can get, so let’s just say I found it to be much better than that as a fine combination of satire, comedy, and serious-as-all-hell-drama (as did the New York Times’ Manohla Dargis: “[…] a very angry, deeply anguished comedy freak out about how we are blowing it, hurtling toward oblivion […] In the end, McKay isn’t doing much more in this movie than yelling at us, but then, we do deserve it.”) but I was similarly impressed by McKay’s satire of Dick Cheney in Vice (2018; a rare 4½ star-review in our January 10, 2019 posting even as the “official voices” barely made it into CCAL territory while Vice for me was #1 in my 2018 Top 10 so maybe I’m more open to certain McKay approaches than many others are). You might be able to find it in a theater in Portugal, Italy, the Netherlands, or South Korea (in release since Dec. 8, 2021, taking in about $783.1 thousand so far) but the most likely accessor us is through Netflix streaming.
Given that this plot mixes satire and seriousness (in the manner of the 5 stars-masterpiece Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb [Stanley Kubrick, 1964], a far superior work), I’m going with 2 Musical Metaphors, one that talks of leaving the dysfunctional past behind, moving on to a better tomorrow, R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know it (and I Feel Fine)” (on their 1987 Rapture album) found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0GFR cFm-aY (video about a boy accepting the situation of his tornado-smashed-house connected to a song with stream-of-consciousness-lyrics) which follows Don’t …’s rejection of our sociopolitical-absurdities (“Tell me with the Rapture and the reverent in the right, right / You vitriolic, patriotic, slam fight, bight light / Feeling pretty psyched”), or if you’d prefer something darker to match the tragedy of Earth’s inevitable demise here’s The Doors’ “The End” (from their self-titled 1967 album) at https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FMGYycBAMU, a live performance with Jim Morrison channeling implications of hellfire and finality (but if it becomes a bit much to watch—even in context of this current apocalyptic movie [or brings up too many scary memories for you of its connection to the masterfully-brutal-horror of the Vietnam War-themed Apocalypse Now {Francis Ford Coppola, 1979}]—here’s just the audio from the album). After listening, you might want to contact Mr. Musk about relocating to Mars because you never know when a rogue comet or asteroid might decide to scuttle our “best-laid schemes of mice and men” (from the Robert Burns poem To a Mouse [1785]).
A literature professor, Leda, is on vacation in Greece where she becomes obsessed (in a n entirely-different way from the man stalking a boy in the tragic Death in Venice [novel by Thomas Mann, 1912; film by Luchino Visconti, 1971]) by a quarreling young mother and her daughter, bringing back memories of how Leda abandoned her own little girls for 3 years some time ago; she's still mourning.
Here’s the trailer:
Based on a novel by Elena Ferrante (2006),* this film takes us to Greece where Harvard Comparative Literature professor Leda Caruso (Olivia Colman) is on a summer working holiday (where she meets housing manager Lyle [Ed Harris], beach attendant Will [Paul Mescal]) but doesn’t get much work done because she spends her days at the beach observing others, especially a loud extended family where tensions often arise between young mother Nina (Dakota Johnson) and toddler daughter Elena (Athena Martin), reminding Leda of her younger self (Jessie Buckley in the many flashbacks) struggling to further her academic career while being hounded for playtime by young daughters Bianca (Robyn Elwell) and Martha (Ellie Blake), with now-divorced-husband Joe (Jack Farthing) often away on business; Leda later admits she left her family for 3 years to pursue an affair with Professor Hardy (Peter Sarsgaard) whom she met at an academic conference until she missed her kids. In the present, Elena disappears on the beach one day, Leda joins her frantic family in the search, finds the girl, gets appreciation from Nina and family-member-Callie (Dagmara Domińczyk), with relieved-Mom quietly admitting she’s often overwhelmed by the demands of parenthood so she slips away from domineering husband Toni (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) for an affair with Will, all of which brings back painful memories for Leda, oddly leading to her finding, then hiding Elena’s lost doll, a trauma constantly keeping the girl upset. ⇒Nina asks Leda to use her apartment for some private time with Will, but when she comes to get the keys (Leda’s leaving the next day anyway) Leda also gives her the doll, provoking the angry response of Nina stabbing her with a hat pin. Leda drives away that night, then runs her car off the road from the pain of her wound, collapses on the beach (repeating the film’s opening shot). Next morning she calls her now-adult-daughters (ages 25, 23) in Canada (where they moved to be closer to their father), has a good conversation as our story ends in a long shot of her sitting on the sand between rocks and waves.⇐
*This site explores differences between novel and film (Spoilers, of course) while this one gives a detailed summary of the book, with even more specifics chapter-by-chapter if you buy a Study Guide. Make what you will of the film’s Leda being in Greece rather than Italy (as in the book), with whatever connection there might be to the Greek myth of Leda and the Swan where Zeus in the form of a bird rapes a human woman, as noted in the well-respected-poem by William Butler Yeats.
Despite the constant downer content here, it’s a very intriguing film with consistently-excellent-acting throughout (I don’t know if Colman will get a Best Actress Oscar nomination [she’s gotten several from critics’ groups—as has Gyllenhaal in her feature-film-debut as director* and screenwriter {won the Golden Osella for Best Screenplay at the Venice International Film Festival} along with praise for the work as a whole], but I’d consider her for such prizes in this role more so than the Oscar and others she won for The Favourite [Yorgos Lanthimos, 2018] where I much preferred Glenn Close in The Wife [Björn L. Runge, 2018; reviews of both in our postings; see the Summary of Two Guys Reviews farther below with the former in our 3½ stars group, the latter in the 4 stars listings]) supporting this haunting story about the difficulties of motherhood’s obligations. The CCAL’s wild about it, as RT has 96% positive reviews, MC a substantial 86% positive score, so I encourage you to see it for free if you’re a Netflix streaming subscriber. For a Musical Metaphor I’ll use “Mother” (from the 1970 John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band album) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPY
sMM1FvXs (photos illustrate the recording, although you might also like this live performance; both have lyrics below the YouTube screen) as it could be felt by Leda, along with Nina, as a plea from their daughters to not abandon them in their young lives, just like Lennon’s parents did to him.
*Gyllenhaal and Johnson do a detailed Notes on a Scene (12:59; ad interrupts at 9:00) about the disappearances of Elena and Bianca (also briefly lost, when Leda was a young, distracted mother).
A docudrama about Evangelist Tammy Faye Bakker and her husband Jim, how they turned their early traveling salvation show into a worldwide (also lucrative) TV phenomenon, The PTL Club, but then how they were brought low by Jim’s scandals regarding fraud and sex while Tammy continued to believe God loves everyone, even gays. Spoiler warnings below even though it’s all based in fact.
Here’s the trailer:
As a teenage student at North Central Bible College (Minneapolis, MN) in 1960, Tamara Faye LaValley (Jessica Chastain)—daughter of an Evangelical preacher/pianist mother, Rachel (Cherry Jones), who divorced the girl's preacher father, then remarried but had to keep Tammy away from the church because of the “stain” of divorce until the child pushed her way into the congregation by speaking in tongues—became infatuated with fellow-student Jim Bakker (Andrew Garfield), they married the next year (Rachel not happy about that), were barred from returning to the college so they went on the road with their combo of him preaching, her playing the accordion and doing puppet shows, then moved to TV with The 700 Club, soon joining Pat Robertson’s (Gabriel Olds) Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), then launched their own The PTL (Praise The Lord) Club in 1974, evolving into a worldwide network when they added satellite transmission, becoming a huge success with viewers sending in millions from small donations which they used to build various centers to help those in need but also allowed them a lavish lifestyle in Virginia, leading to the building of a Christian theme park, Heritage USA. Along the way, though, Tammy began to face criticism from other leading preachers, especially Southern Baptist Jerry Falwell (Vincent D’Onofrio), presented here as jealous of their success, eager to find a way to absorb their empire, disgusted with Tammy’s on-air embrace of homosexuals. ⇒He got his chance in 1987 when various scandals broke about Jim fraudulently using ministry funds for his own purposes including hushing up a rape of employee Jessica Hahn (as well as implications of gay encounters with PTL honcho Richard Fletcher [Louis Cancelmi],) resulting in 24 guilty counts in 1989, a 45-year sentence with Falwell taking over the PTL operations (Jim served 5 years, returned to ministry divorced from Tammy, continuing to offer herself in the media as a honest presentation of a woman [plastered with self-chosen-makeup]) who simply believed in “gifts from God” so that material benefits were an expression of His love and support.⇐
You could easily question why we needed this film, given that it’s based on a documentary of the same name (Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, 2000; haven’t seen it, available here) with Tammy Faye dead since 2007, numerous options of seeing YouTube clips of her such as this one (11:04 [ad interrupts at about 4:50]) where she and Jim discuss the scandals/aftermath, but you do get the pleasure of seeing marvelous embodiments of the Bakkers by Chastain and Garfield as well as giving some insights to a religious-cynic like me (raised Catholic, have good reason to reject most of that) as to how at least some of these Evangelicals can sincerely want to do good for millions even while shamelessly bleeding their “parishioners” for every dime they can get. The CCAL’s mildly supportive (RT 66% positive reviews, MC 55% average score), audiences about the same (opened on Sept. 17, 2021; total gross $2.4 million), now available on HBO Max or, if you like, here’s a short anatomy of a scene (2:41) from Showalter. The obvious Musical Metaphor here is The Guess Who’s "These Eyes" (1969 album Wheatfield Soul)—“These eyes / Watched you bring my world / To an end / This heart / Could not accept / And pretend”—but rather than transpose something about an ended-love-affair, as this song's directly about, I’m going more subtly with Kris Kristofferson’s “Sunday Morning Comin’ Down” (with the biggest hit version on the 1970 album The Johnny Cash Show) at https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=r0ARfcJvJ68, a live duet of Kristofferson and Cash (backed by Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings), not because I think Tammy Faye “smoked [her] brain / On cigarettes [… or was ever] Wishing, Lord, that I was stoned” (although she did have her own problems with addiction to pills) but because with all the struggles, failures, hypocrisies, and—occasionally—emptiness behind the glamorous surface images I think she probably did feel at times “there’s something in a Sunday / Makes a body feel alone” as she and Jim had to face “There’s nothin’ short of dyin’ / Half as lonesome as the sound / Of the sleepin’ city sidewalks / Sunday mornin’ comin’ down.” This film doesn’t change my dismissive attitude toward the essence of Evangelical attitudes and lifestyles but does help me see the attempted sincerity in at least some of these self-declared-prophets even as they’re overwhelmed by their chase of all other kinds of profits.
This is based on the memoir of journalist J.R. Moehringer about his younger life in Manhasset (Long Island) NY, then college years at Yale in a family situation where he rarely saw his well-traveled DJ/divorced father, lived as a kid with Mom at his grandparents home where his father figure became bartender Uncle Charlie (Ben Affleck), helping him in overcoming the boy's accumulated self-doubts.
Here’s the trailer:
Here’s another docudrama, this one based on the 2005 memoir of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist J.R. Moehringer (2000, Feature Writing, Los Angeles Times; later in 2022 will come his co-authoring of Prince Harry’s autobiography) who was born in NYC, moved in 1973 with mother Dorothy (Lily Rabe) when he was a young boy (Daniel Ranieri) just over the Queens-borough-border out of the City to the Long Island town of Manhasset to live with Grandpa (Christopher Lloyd) and Grandma (Sondra James) Maguire—surnames have been changed for this movie, although we hear narration at times from someone seeming to be the adult J.R. (voiced by Ron Livingston)—as Mom split from Dad, known here only as The Voice (Max Martini) because he was a DJ on several NYC-area radio stations so son J.R. (he claimed the initials stood for Junior, but the author’s full name is John Joseph so I’m not sure where the “R” ever comes from) mostly knew his father as a broadcast entity, not from much interaction (which was also unpredictable as we see the sad kid waiting to be picked up to go to a baseball game after a phone call from Dad who then showed up but days later).
Life with Grandpa often wasn’t much fun because he was a caustic man, arguing a lot with Dorothy, so J.R. turned to her brother, Uncle Charlie Maguire (Ben Affleck), who ran the bar—The Dickens, with loanable books nestled amongst the booze on the shelves—on the ground floor of the family dwelling, as an alternative father-figure, handing around the bar a lot, making friends with the many regular patrons. Charlie encouraged J.R. to read a lot in preparation for his hopes of someday being a writer (Mom, however, was determined he’d become a lawyer, educated at either Harvard or Yale). Roughly the first half of this story takes place during J.R.’s young years but with flashforwards to him (played by Tye Sheridan) riding on a train to interview at Yale, talking with a priest (Billy Meleady) he keeps running into. During these scenes we see Charlie sticking up for his nephew with the school psychiatrist, Grandpa finally treating him nicely by filling in at a father-son breakfast at the school, but the big news comes a few years later when he’s accepted at Yale. Once in college he meets roommates Jimmy (Ivan Leung) and Wesley (Rhenzy Feliz), but his attention’s on classmate Sidney (Briana Middleton), clearly upper class with a boyfriend already, yet as time passes she comes on to J.R., invites him to her family's place for Christmas where they immediately have sex (her parents [Quincy Tyler Bernstine, Mark Boyett] hear them from another floor), but conflicts occur, the lovers break up, then reconcile followed by more breakups, although J.R. never stops active longing for her.
⇒After graduation J.R. gets a temporary reporting job at The New York Times, impresses some of the editors, but isn’t voted in to stay on the staff so he decides to write a memoir about his family which leads him to North Carolina to confront Dad who’s now with Kathy (Kate Avallone) but abusive to her, leading to J.R. calling the police to have The Voice arrested. As this phase of Moehringer/ Maguire’s life concludes he’s off to Manhattan to find work, now the proud owner of a gift from Uncle Charlie, his prized Cadillac convertible.⇐ While press reports show actual Moehringer happy with these depictions, the critics have descended into OCCU mode (RT, 52% positive reviews; MC, a surprisingly-even 53% average score); supposedly this opened on Dec. 17, 2021, but I've found no theatrical evidence of it (although I know it’s playing in at least 1 theater in the San Francisco area), just streaming on Amazon Prime Video for free (as long as you’re a subscriber). I found it to be quite endearing, agree with those who praise Affleck’s subdued-but-determined-acting (where he’s gotten a Best Supporting Actor nomination from the Golden Globes but lost) yet am a bit mystified by the accents which sound more like Boston than NYC to me (I’ve spent time in both, lived in Queens for a couple of years in the early 1970s) but maybe that’s because they shot it all in MA and got confused.
As for those critics who’ve panned it, such as my own local guru Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle (“[… This] is a lovely movie – so long as it stays within a half-mile radius of the bar. When it drifts from the bar, it collapses. […] Just stop watching the minute J.R.’s voice changes, and the won’t miss the best parts of ‘The Tender Bar.’ “), so maybe The Eagles are correct from a personal perspective of “And I know my life would look alright / If I could see it on the silver screen,” yet for someone else watching such a movie it might just not be that engaging. Still, I liked it, as did Stephanie Zacharek of TIME (“The Tender Bar is generally a sweet, affectionate film […] The story doesn’t give Charlie a hidden dark side or a tragic arc. It simply allows him to saunter through the film, doling out advice, tooling around in his groovy teal Cadillac convertible, reassuring his somewhat insecure nephew that the kid has ‘it.’ “), so I’m happy to join in with her. As for a Musical Metaphor, I’m drawn to the first song on the Top 40-heavy-soundtrack, Golden Earring’s “Radar Love” (1973 Moontan album) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRlSHG5hRY4 because I get that same sense of Charlie’s connection to his family (“When I get lonely and I’m sure I’ve had enough / [They send] comfort coming in from above / We’ve got a line in the sky / Radar love”) as the song’s truck driver singer has with his lover, an unbreakable bond (except for best-forgotten "Voice").
So, as I bring these New Year’s opening postings from last week and this one to a close (not tired of reading, are you?), heading back to normal configuration next time (Jan. 20, 2022) with a long review of The Tragedy of Macbeth, I’ll leave you now with a little tribute to the first full moon of this year, coming up on Jan. 17, after being inspired by the second song in the group just below, part of the soundtrack to The Tender Bar, to celebrate any night when you feel all right under the spell of moonlight (the last song of the set—a personal favorite of mine and my marvelous wife, Nina [she likes these other tunes too]), to whom I can always say “Because I’m still in love with you”—can always be found in a live version at the very end of every Two Guys posting so scroll on down there to see what other tunes await you. For now, though, here’s my “moon trilogy,” all 3 from albums named for their songs: "Moondance," Van Morrison (1970) here in a live performance with George Benson, Carlos Santana, Dr. John, Tom Scott, and Etta James; "Dancing in the Moonlight," King Harvest (1972); "Harvest Moon," Neil Young (1992). Happy listening and dancing, as you may have fond memories of so-recently-departed cinema icons Sidney Poitier and Peter Bogdanovich.
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.
(Yes, I know, I get more carried away with some of these descriptions than I do with others but, trust me, they’re all well worth your consideration, for those various reasons that I’ve noted or elaborated.)
(By chance, all the titles just below 👇 except the 1st one have a sort-of-geographical-connotation.)
Saturday January 15, 2022
10:30 AM Dial M for Murder (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954) A perennial favorite on stage brought to screen; famed tennis player Ray Milland sets up an accomplice to terminate wife Grace Kelly yet she kills the assailant instead in self-defense, then is set up by her husband to be convicted of murder, but … .
2:30 PM Being There (Hal Ashby, 1979) Marvelous satirical exploration of the concept of cognitive dissonance as various self-absorbed characters encounter a man with mental limitations, a gardener (Peter Sellers) whose vague statements lead them to interpret him as a newly-emerged genius with political agendas sought to be implemented by high government officials, even putting him in line for the Presidency. Shirley MacLaine, Melvyn Douglas, Jack Warden, Richard Dysart, Richard Basehart (Oscar for Best Supporting Actor [Douglas], Sellers nominated for Best Actor). Ends on a great shot.
Sunday January 16. 2022
2:45 PM East of Eden (Elia Kazan, 1955) James Dean’s screen debut as Cal Trask, a WW I-era young man living near Monterey, CA trying to win the love of his stern father, Adam (Raymond Massey), who gives more support to other son Aron (Richard Davalos), adapted from the stunning John Steinbeck novel (with its intended Biblical overtones). Even when Cal makes a fortune for Dad he’s rejected so he shames Aron by revealing Mom (Jo Van Fleet) isn’t dead after all but lives nearby, running a brothel. Won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress (Van Fleet); Dean (already dead by the time of the awards) was nominated for Best Actor (as he was for his last, Giant [1956]).
Tuesday January 18, 2022
2:30 PM North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959) One of Hitch’s top successes (that’s saying a lot) about a case of mistaken-identity gone terribly wrong as smug ad executive Roger Thornhill (Gary Grant) is thought to be a U.S. spy, hunted by thugs working for an evil foreign agent (James Mason). Marvelous collage of great scenes including crop-duster-in-the-cornfield attack; also stars Eve Marie Saint, Leo G. Carroll, Martin Landau. Great overall combination of tension and laughs.
5:00 PM Places in the Heart (Robert Benton, 1984) I have a sentimental attachment for this one because it was shot in Waxahachie, TX (close to Dallas where I lived then) so through a friend I was able to visit the set, meet cinematographer Néstor Almedros (Oscar for Days of Heaven [1978]), editor Carol Littleton (Oscar-nominated for E.T. [1982]). Grim, touching Depression-era story of a widow (Sally Field) helped through troubled times in racist Texas by a Black man (Danny Glover) and a blind man (John Malkovich) as she tries to recoup her losses; also stars Ed Harris, Amy Madigan, Lindsay Crouse. Oscars for Best Actress (Field) and Adapted Screenplay (Benton), nominated for Best Picture, Director, Supporting Actor (Malkovich), Supporting Actress (Crouse), Costume Design.
11:15 PM Badlands (Terrence Malick, 1973) Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek as young killers-on-the-run in a compelling, marvelously photographed story that’s part Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967) and part John Mellencamp’s song, "Jack and Diane," a marvelous, truly significant—distinctly disturbing—debut film from an eccentric, extremely talented director-screenwriter, somewhat based on actual events from likewise killers-on-the-run Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate in 1958.
Wednesday January 19, 2022
5:00 PM Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Frank Capra, 1939) Likely seems hopelessly optimistic now yet still inspirational about lost causes being the only ones worth fighting for in a government rife with corruption; James Stewart’s an idealistic but naïve Senator, faces defeat from a political machine, gets inspiration from Jean Arthur, Thomas Mitchell. Won the Oscar for Best Writing, Original Story (Lewis R. Foster); Stewart deserved to win for Best Actor, got it for The Philadelphia Story (1940).
If you’d like your own PDF of ratings/summaries of this week's reviews, 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: Extra items for you: (1) Spider-Man: No Way Home now #6 on the Domestic All-Time list, #8 on the Global All-Time list; (2) National Society of Film Critics awards list, Drive My Car as Best Picture; (3) Golden Globes awards list; (4) Golden Globes: no need for an actual ceremony; (5) Why does Disney keep sending Pixar features straight to streaming? As usual for now 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!
*Please ignore previous warnings about a “dead link” to our Summary page because the problems’ been manually fixed so that all postings since July 11, 2013 now have the proper functioning link.
AND … at least until the Oscars for 2020’s releases have been awarded on Sunday, March 27, 2022 we’re also going to include reminders in each posting of very informative links where you can get updated tallies of which films have been nominated for and/or received various awards and which ones made various individual critic’s Top 10 lists. You may find the diversity among the various awards competitions and the various critics hard to reconcile at times—not to mention the often-significant-gap between critics’ choices and competitive-award-winners (which pales when they’re compared to the even-more-noticeable-gap between specific award winners and big box-office-grosses you might want to monitor here)—but as that less-than-enthusiastic-patron-of-the-arts, Plato, noted in The Symposium (385-380 BC)—roughly translated, depending on how accurate you wish the actual quote to be—“Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder,” so your choices for success are as valid as any of these others, especially if you offer some rationale for your decisions (unlike any awards voters who blindly fill out ballots, sometimes—damn it!—for films they’ve never seen).
Here’s more information about Don’t Look Up:
https://www.netflix.com/title/81252357
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntaidEKs_Ks (14:22 physicist Professor Brian Cox discusses the valid science behind this movie but does contain Spoilers; also see the right column for other relevant videos [among others completely unrelated] about this movie including cast statements)
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/dont_look_up_2021
https://www.metacritic.com/movie/dont-look-up
Here’s more information about The Lost Daughter:
https://www.netflix.com/title/81478910
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7DRXRdSVoo (24:15 interview with screenwriter-director Maggie Gyllenhaal and actors Olivia Colman, Dakota Johnson, Jessie Buckley, Ed Harris, Paul Mescal, Peter Sarsgaard, Dagmara Domińczyk [audio level begins quite low so I suggest you use the Closed Caption button in the YouTube screen's lower right; then the audio kicks in better at 4:40])
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_lost_daughter
https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-lost-daughter
Here’s more information about The Eyes of Tammy Faye:
https://www.searchlightpictures.com/theeyesoftammyfaye/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYUEVjZNeYU (8:12 interview with actors Jessica Chastain and Andrew Garfield)
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_eyes_of_tammy_faye_2021
https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-eyes-of-tammy-faye-2021
Here’s more information about The Tender Bar:
https://www.thetenderbarmovie.net/ (click on the 3 little lines in the upper right of the screen for more info)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViLwBoUg_1E (4:10 interview with director George Clooney and actors Ben Affleck, Daniel Ranieri, Tye Sheridan, Lily Rabe)
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_tender_bar
https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-tender-bar?ref=hp
Please note that to Post a Comment below about our reviews you need to have either a Google account (which you can easily get at https://accounts.google.com/NewAccount if you need to sign up) or other sign-in identification from the pull-down menu below before you preview or post. You can also leave comments at our Facebook page, although you may have to somehow connect
with us at that site in order to do it (most FB procedures are still a bit of a mystery to us old farts).
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, but maybe while you're there you'll get a chance to meet Eagles co-founder Glenn Frey, RIP). 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).
But, while I’m at it, I should also include another of my top favorites, from the night before
at Desert Trip, the Rolling Stones’ "Gimme Shelter" (Wow!), a song always “just a shot
away” in my memory (along with my memory of the great drummer, Charlie Watts; RIP).
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