Complications in European Relationships
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’re in a positive mood or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) if they go negative.
But first, please indulge me in a couple of necessary (as far as I’m concerned) editorial diversions:
Last week, Rick Ansell, whom I’ve known since Ball High School in 1963 Galveston, TX is no longer with us even after a successful heart transplant some years ago (he’s on the left next to his wife, Linda, surrounded by their children). His daughter, Elizabeth, sent out an eloquent statement for us:
“Our dad instilled in us a deep love of books, mostly fiction, an intense appreciation for respect and politeness, and an understanding that slight embellishment on a story for the sake of entertainment was perfectly acceptable as long as you don’t take it too far, so I don’t think he would mind my giving us all a nice polite fiction of our own.
On a cool February evening, James Richard Ansell - Rick to most, Little Ricky to some, dad to a fortunate few, and occasionally asshole when he was not quite in earshot - after a nice dinner of ribs and grilled onions with those he liked best, closed his eyes and breathed his last in his burnt orange armchair as the credits rolled at the end of the umpteenth viewing of ‘Captain Blood.’ Or was it ‘Robin Hood’? ‘Dr. No’? Maybe ‘Young Frankenstein.’ (Any of these works well in this scenario.) The ice had barely melted in his empty scotch glass before he was welcomed into the arms of his beloved mother Winnie, father Lee, brother Terry, a motley pack of Labradors, one mutt, and rabbit in full military garb. The good Lord generously waited his turn.
Being so much full of life and love, it is no surprise it took two hearts to carry it all and he more than filled them both. He is survived by his wife and ally of 47 years Linda, their utterly absurd amount of children, Sid, Kate, Elizabeth, Charles, and Sarah, their partners Carl, Robert, Coleton, and Christina, his grandchildren, Ada, James, Nora, and John, his brothers Van and Bill, and his sisters in-law, Julie, Libbie, and Denise. And never to be forgotten, a phone book of friends.
In lieu of flowers, friends are requested to have a beverage of their choice, go fishing, and take in any Mel Brooks movie that isn’t ‘High Anxiety.’ Rick also requests that you don’t feel bad for him at this time. He’s doing fine seated at the banquet table of the place we all go to when we arrive at our final destination, pouring a drink, telling a story while tuning his guitar and keeping a place set to welcome any guest that comes along. No rush, take care, and he’ll see you when you get there.
Peace, love, and hang ten.
My father died of COVID. The reality is harder than what I wrote. What is posted is what I wished for him. What I wish for all of you is to protect yourself, protect others, get vaccinated if you are able, and please take this seriously. His heart was strong. He was fully vaccinated and boostered but due to his anti-rejection drugs he was supremely immunocompromised. He was exactly the type of person healthcode mandates were made to protect. There is no telling how long he could have had if he had not caught this insidious virus. It did not have to be this bad. I will miss him forever.”
I’ll add this song for Rick, although I don’t usually use church music for my Musical Metaphors, but when he joined me and others in the Liturgy Singers at the Univ. of Texas Catholic Student Center (Rick was a proud “Whiskey-pail-ian” as he often said, although Episcopalians aren’t all that different from Catholics—except for that silly business about the Pope—so he fit in well with the rest of us) this was his favorite song we sang at Sunday masses; this particular rendition sort of reminds me of how our group might have looked today with a few more years of experience under our belts (Rick up front with guitar, me in the back with the colorful shirt [although, I’ve actually got a lot more hair]).
While Rick Ansell was my second-known-the-longest-close friend, Pat Fant—now running RFC Media LLC – SUITERADIO LLC—in Houston gets the honor as the longest because we met in Galveston’s Sacred Heart Elementary School sometime in the 1950s, then connected again in high school where, in our crazy senior year, we (amazingly!) had a weekly show on the local Top 40 radio station before he went on to a successful career in radio and other forms of public media. We’ve recently re-discovered each other after about a 50-year-gap (I noted this in our January 13, 2022 posting), with me learning his wife, Lydia, is of Ukrainian descent so we’ve recently shared mutual concerns about the damnable invasion of her heritage-country by the military might of egomaniac tyrant Vladimir Putin. The shot above is of Pat and Lydia at a recent pro-Ukraine rally, where they—and everyone else of like-mind—have my full support. This kind of nonsensical, belligerent warfare has no place in our world, but all I can do is hope global resistance to this sort of naked aggression will put it to an end, even as countless people have now died in this brutal process (donations to help those in the resistance are useful, however, so I encourage you to seek out helpful charities of your choice). Lydia and Pat get music too, in her honor and for all the brave people now fighting for the integrity of their country—as well as the vast number of Russians protesting this unlawful intrusion into another nation, even as they’re being arrested for speaking out against their own totalitarian government—here’s the Ukraine national anthem in its original version (with lyrics relevant as can be, still today) along with English subtitles for those of us who need translation. Long live Ukraine!
OK, enough grandstanding by me; on to the stated purpose of this blog which usually is film reviews:
Opening Chatter (no spoilers): During the previous week I bravely ventured out into a theatrical screening for one film, stayed home to stream the other one because the former’s playing only in theaters at this point while the latter costs about the same to rent as to buy a pair of senior citizen-late afternoon-matinee tickets (with added convenience watching at home of easily pausing whenever necessary for various bodily functions or responding to the yapping-cat) so what I have for you are 2 films that each have 2 Oscar nominations, although predictions at this point don’t favor either of them for anything (except audience pleasure in seeing these films, as both are effective explorations of the human condition yet with the possibly-needed-warning both will likely require subtitles [unless you’re more bilingual than I am], but, please, don’t let that put you off from seeing either—hopefully both—of them). The streamer ($19.99 rental on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, other platforms) I saw (still playing in a very limited number of theaters) is Parallel Mothers from Spain’s great contemporary master, Almodóvar, in which Penélope Cruz requests for an archeologist to excavate a mass grave in her hometown to retrieve the bones of her great-grandfather (killed by Franco’s forces in the late-1930s Spanish Civil War), but also gets into an occasional relationship with him (he has a wife in chemotherapy), resulting in her pregnancy; while in the hospital awaiting delivery she meets a teenager pregnant from rape, but when the 2 women draw closer after their birthings strong, extensive emotional situations emerge (Cruz's nominated for a Best Actress Oscar).
The one I saw in public is The Worst Person in the World from Norway where a 30-year-old woman keeps changing intended careers, primary men, and direction on how she’d like for her life to be (this one’s up for Best International Feature and Best Original Screenplay), but despite the parallel ratings I’m giving more attention to Parallel Mothers, with The Worst Person … covered in my Short Takes area. Also in that section I’ll offer suggestions for some 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, such tedious software!), along with my standard dose of industry-related-trivia.
Here’s the trailer for Parallel Mothers:
(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 $ (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.
What Happens: In 2016, successful Madrid photographer Janis Martínez Moreno (Penélope Cruz) shoots some portraits of Arturo (Israel Elejalde), a noted forensic archeologist, whom she has an after-the-session-discussion with, asking his help in locating/unearthing a mass grave in her home village to find the remains of her great-grandfather and other leftist-loyalists who were killed by the fascist Nationalist insurrectionists forces of Gen. Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-’39, just prior to the start of WW II. He agrees to have his foundation look into the matter, then soon Janis and Arturo are also looking into each other in close-bedroom-contact. What he doesn’t know because his work takes him away from her for several months is that she’s become pregnant. As she approaches the birth-date we see her in a hospital with her teenage roommate, Ana Manso Ferreras (Milena Smit), pregnant by rape, attended by her stage-actress-mother, Teresa Ferreras (Aitana Sánchez-Gujón)—Ana has no connection with her father who told her to keep the rape quiet so as to not bring shame upon the family. Post-birth, Janis and Ana go their separate ways where each confronts her own burdens: Janis finally gets a visit from Arturo, but he’s both not interested in sharing this child with her (he’s married, his wife’s in chemotherapy; nevertheless, he’s attracted to Janis) and, based on appearance, doesn’t think the baby is his (Janis then conducts DNA tests on herself and little Cecilia, learning she's not the mother, yet she reveals this to no one).
Meanwhile, Ana faces her own problems trying to continue working while needing childcare for baby Anita, but Mom’s useless because she’s gotten a role in a play set to tour various cities for some months so she won’t be able to help with Anita (it’s clear if she turns down this role her career is likely over). Then it all gets worse for Ana when Anita dies from a sudden crib death with no clear medical explanation how it happened. After not being in touch for months, one day Janis happens upon a café where Ana’s working, leading to an au pare offer from Janis as she’s not happy with her current girl, plus she wants to confirm her darkest suspicions. Sure enough, after Ana’s been employed for a bit, Janis conducts another DNA test, confirms Ana is the mother of this baby—the infants were mistakenly switched at the hospital—so Cecilia actually belongs to Ana while Janis is, sadly, the mother of the dead child; however, she doesn’t tell Ana just yet, somehow waiting for an appropriate time to do so (as if devastating news of this sort ever has a “right” time for its revelation).
Ana and Janis continue to have an ever-closer-relationship which evolves into casual sex initiated by Ana, but it’s more of a one-way-interest than Ana realizes. Further complications arise when Arturo returns with news that his foundation has approved the excavation in Janis’ hometown after years in consideration; moreover, his wife’s recovered from her cancer, but he intends to leave her to be with Janis so they head out for a night on the town, making Ana jealous. Later, when Ana’s not home, her mother comes looking for her, hoping to apologize for not being available when her daughter needed her yet confessing to Janis how Teresa had her own professional needs which she couldn’t reject when the lucrative offer arrived. ⇒Janis finally tells Ana the truth about the babies, leading to an angry response, with Ana storming out taking Cecilia with her. Janis calls Arturo in distress, so he comes over to comfort her. The next day Ana calls to apologize, tells Janis that Cecilia can continue being part of her life also. A few months pass until Janis and Arturo travel to the village where he gets information from locals that lead him to the gravesite as the careful excavation does reveal several skeletons, surely one of them being Janis’ ancestor, Antonio. Ana arrives with Cecilia to find Janis is 3 months pregnant (seemingly with Arturo, now willing to share a child with Janis, confident this time it’s his progeny), planning to name a baby girl Ana or Antonio if it's a boy.⇐
So What? In my recommendations for TCM cablecasts farther down in this posting I note that Ingmar Bergman’s magnificent Cries and Whispers (1972, although it became eligible for Oscar considerations with 1973 releases as I never fully understand how the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences adjudicates release-windows, as with Casablanca [Michael Curtiz], which was made and saw a U.S.A. screening in 1942, yet competed with 1943 releases to win the Best Picture Oscar in March of 1944) wasn’t nominated for Best Foreign Language Film as it competed with 1973 releases (even though it did have the rare distinction of being in the running for Best Picture, which hardly ever happens with films produced by non-U.S.-countries [didn't win, though]), which is somewhat the case again with Parallel Mothers, not even submitted by Spain to the Academy as their contender for Best International Feature (The Good Boss [Fernando León de Aranoa, 2021] got that honor [I haven’t seen it, know nothing about it] but it didn’t make the 5 finalists; Norway’s The Worst Person in the World did, though, so you can read more about it in the review just below). All is not lost at the Oscars for Parallel Mothers, however, as Cruz secured a nomination for Best Actress (an honor she won at the 2021 Venice International Film Festival), along with the film getting a nod for Best Original Score (Alberto Iglesias)—plus there have been quite a plethora of other wins/ nominations (scroll down to the Accolades chart within this link) for the film and its various aspects, as well as for Almodóvar and Cruz. So, this famed director won’t be adding to his Oscar résumé this year to go with his trophy for Best Original Screenplay for Talk to Her (2002), but he’s had plenty to celebrate over the many years of his career, with hopefully more of his magnificence to come as he’s only 72 (he's 2 years younger than me, so I hope we’ll both be around for quite awhile to come).
Parallel Mothers is a great exercise in delving into the complexities of human self-understanding, showing all the various desires, challenges, rejections, and acceptances of the main characters with the willingness of Janis to take on the challenge of motherhood despite wanting to maintain some form of her career (even willing to do product photography as it’s not as demanding as other forms of that art), the temptations Arturo finds with Janis despite his unwillingness to leave a sick wife, the burden Teresa feels in somewhat abandoning her daughter to pursue her own last-chance-dreams, the anger Ana carries with her at various times through this story as she has good reason to think she’s not important enough for her parents or her close friend to provide the honesty and support she needs. These people all lead complicated lives—as do we all—explored in his usual embracing manner by director-screenwriter Almodóvar, a great champion of the acceptance of the fragility we humans naturally embody/confront. I haven’t quite finished my 2021 Top 10 list yet (still a couple more possibilities I’d like to see first), but I’m confident Parallel Mothers will surely make my final cut.
Bottom Line Final Comments: Parallel Mothers has been in release for 10 weeks but hasn’t made much of an impact in domestic (U.S.-Canada) theaters, having only gotten at best to 684 of them (83 now) so its domestic take is small, $1.9 million, compared to the worldwide total of $16.7 million so it must be playing in several countries; if you’d like to watch it, though, your easiest-option is likely to be streaming for a $19.99 rental price at Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, other platforms (see JustWatch for options). But, unless you speak Spanish, you know you’ll have to use subtitles; yet, hopefully, the well-crafted-human-dramas occurring here will keep your attention while you’re reading the dialogue (certainly worked that way for me). It’s been nominated for a good number of awards, won a few of them, but it’s not likely to take home any Oscar gold (unless the Original Score nom has a chance) as the Screen Actors Guild didn’t even nominate Cruz (more details about their choices farther down in the Other Cinema-Related Stuff section), so their winner, Jessica Chastain (The Eyes of Tammy Faye [Michael Showalter, 2021; review in our January 13, 2022 posting]) has the edge, given actors are the largest voting bloc in the Academy even though the SAG winner’s not always a lock for the same Oscar category. (For what it’s worth, Variety [scroll down from the Best Picture chatter to the long list of other categories] predicts Chastain for Best Actress & Dune [Denis Villenueve, 2021; review in our October 28, 2021 posting] for Original Score.)
Awards-chatter shouldn’t prevent you from seeing something, however, especially one with this kind of solid CCAL support (verifying the 4 stars rating it easily got from me): Rotten Tomatoes with a hefty 97% positive reviews, Metacritic very favorable (for them) with an 88% average score (more details on these critics-accumulation-sites in the Related Links section far below, as with anything I review for this blog). I highly recommend Parallel Mothers, what more can I say? Nothing really, so I’ll turn to my usual review-conclusion-device of a Musical Metaphor to give you one last avenue of commentary (sometimes directly connected, sometimes—as here—requiring some acceptance on your part as I go a bit afield) but from an aural rather than a written perspective. By chance, my local PBS TV station last weekend was running (during a pledge drive, naturally) the Bee Gee’s 1997 Las Vegas concert called One Night Only (also the title of an album recording of that event) from which I’ve chosen to use “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart” (originally found on the Gibb brothers' 1971 Trafalgar album) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PciJq0qYJj8, used because the central questions being asked in the song (admittedly, by a man as its sung) can also refer to the pain suffered by both Janis and Ana about their babies as well as deceit from the older woman to the younger one (there’s broken-hearted-aspects of Ana’s relationships with both of her parents as well): “And, how can you mend a broken heart/ / How can you stop the rain from falling down? / How can stop the sun from shining? […] How can a loser ever win? / Please help me mend my broken heart and let me live again.” There’s a lot of sorrow—along with eventual joy—flowing throughout this film as 2 of the greatest tragedies associated with motherhood take their cruel toll on these protagonists.
SHORT TAKES (spoilers also appear here)
A Norwegian film about a woman approaching 30 who keeps making unresolved choices for new directions in her life, including professions and male partners; her relationship with a notably older man hits the rocks when he’s ready for children but she’s not so she breaks up to be with a married guy who leaves his wife to be with her, but this story’s far from over when further complications arise.
Here’s the trailer:
Before reading any further, I’ll ask you to refer to the plot spoilers warning far above.
This Norwegian film—yes, you’ll probably have to read subtitles for this one too, but your larger challenge will be finding it to begin with because it’s only now expanded to 554 upper-North American-theaters (Latin America gets other tabulations) despite being out for a month (so its grosses aren’t great, so far taking in $1.8 million domestically, $7.2 million worldwide)—might well be on your “should-see-list” prior to Oscar awards on March 27, 2022 because it’s been nominated for Best International Feature and Best Original Screenplay (Trier, Eskil Vogt) plus it’s either won or been nominated for a lot more (Reinsve won Best Actress at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival), as you’d see from scanning through the Metacritic lists of awards/noms and critics’ Top 10 lists found farther below in Related Links where it comes out at #8 for the year from the critics, although it hasn’t risen to the level of the top 10 (or 5) in any awards category except International Feature (you could scroll through that long list to see where it has been recognized; however, it would be faster to go here [again, scroll down to Accolades] to find a useful chart, tallying all those results for you).
Collectively, the CCAL raves about The Worst Person … with another magnificent 97% positive RT reviews, an almost-unheard-of-90% MC average score (except the same MC result for Licorice Pizza [Paul Thomas Anderson, 2021; review in our February 24, 2022 posting]), so why did I hesitate on 4 stars for my rating, especially as I kept comparing it to … Pizza in that both present main characters with less-desirable-qualities than leads are likely to have, in episodic-structures that could almost (or actually) work as a cluster of short films, only giving a sense of overall connection when we reach the needed point of narrative closure (yet, Licorice more hints at its individual episodes regarding acting, waterbeds, a mayoral campaign, and pinball machines with the attraction/ rejection between a 15-year-old-boy and a 25-year-old-woman as the ongoing narrative glue within all that, whereas The Worst Person … is literally presented in novelistic-form as superimposed graphics tell us we’re watching a Prologue, 12 Chapters, an Epilogue). At first, I considered Licorice … as more intriguing with its charming novice leads, its allusions to real people and situations from L.A.’s San Fernando Valley enhanced a bit for semi-fictional situations; I was even ready to add it to my close-to-finalized-Top 10-of-2021 (until Parallel Mothers changed that tabulation), but in thinking about it all a bit more, I’m now seeing how … in the World shares many of those same qualities (except the L.A. reality-background, with apparently no parallels to offer here from Oslo), adds a few of its own, comes out in a near-heat with me (both it and … Pizza now not quite in my annual Top 10 but likely in a Top 15), and, honestly I’ve just now realized, it reminds me of how my first wife (short marriage) long ago left me to be with a married man (who left his wife to be with her [see below for parallel-plot-notes]) so I probably subconsciously had qualms about The Worst … (a good title for scathing documentaries about Vladimir Putin or Donald Trump as far as I’m concerned) I hadn’t immediately realized (but, my second marriage—approaching 32 happy years—is a triumph, so no lasting trauma on my part). I encourage your consideration for this Norwegian option, although likely difficult to locate outside of larger urban areas no matter what country you’re in (except for Norway?).
What you’ll find—if you can find The Worst …—is a young woman, Julie (Renate Reinsve), approaching 30, dropping out of medical school, considering other options, but gravitating toward photography when she hooks up with Aksel Willman (Anders Danielsen Lie), a well-known-comic book-artist which then moves us from the Prologue into the somewhat-separate-but-ultimately-related-Chapters. A key problem in the relationship is he, notably older, is ready for marriage and children while she isn’t especially when she witnesses negative behaviors from his young niece and, later, his sister-in-law. One night as his work’s the subject of a public event she heads home alone, decides to crash a wedding reception (gives uncomfortable advice to a pregnant woman, claiming to be a doctor), gets attracted to married Eivind (Herbert Nordrum) whose wife isn’t there so they play around until dawn with behaviors they determine aren’t over the edge into cheating. Julie then writes a short story about her interest in oral sex relative to attitudes of feminism, posts it, gets some attention. Later, Eivind and wife, Sunniva (Maria Grazia Di Meo)—a fanatical-environmentalist—enter the bookstore where Julie works, their attraction sparks again, Julie has a fantasy where time stands still for a whole day so only she and Eivind are in motion, exploring what would become love (see this anatomy of a scene [2:17] by the director) as she decides to break up with Aksel; Eivind divorces to be with Julie but still follows Sunniva’s sexy yoga poses on Instagram. Julie sees Aksel in a TV interview defending his comics against feminists, then his brother tells Julie Aksel has inoperable pancreatic cancer; she visits him in the hospital, tells him she’s pregnant (Eivind doesn’t know yet), but when she’s honest with Eivind he doesn’t want a child with her so they also separate.
⇒Aksel dies before Julie visits him, then miscarries while showering. At an unspecified later time Julie’s a stills-photographer on a movie set; after taking shots of the lead female she looks through a window to see the woman's with Eivind and their child.⇐ As you’d find from watching the interview in Related Links connected to this film, there’s a lot of connective-narrative intentionally omitted forcing the audience into further participation by deciding for ourselves what we haven’t been shown, but I’ll use a direct connection in my Musical Metaphor with yet another Bee Gees song from their 1997 Las Vegas concert, this time “To Love Somebody” (originally on their Bee Gees’ 1st 1967 international-debut-album) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBvUrchek1I, which I feel could easily be sung to Julie by either of the men she shared her time with here, although she could have also addressed it to herself, with lyrics such as “There’s a light / A certain kind of light / That never shown on me / I want my life to be lived with you […] But what does it bring / If I ain’t got you, ain’t got you? […] You don’t know what it’s like / To love somebody / To love somebody / The way I love you,” yet by the end the remaining characters now seem more content with their lives. Would you be content after watching this film? I can almost assume so, but I wouldn’t want to make a serious bet.
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.)
Thursday March 3, 2022
7:15 PM The Graduate (Mike Nichols, 1967) Life-defining film for me as I as an undergrad wanted to emulate the lead actor’s life (except for the affair) where a recent college graduate (Dustin Hoffman) begins a loveless affair with the wife (Anne Bancroft) of his father’s business partner while actually wanting to connect with the woman’s daughter (Katharine Ross); fabulous acting, script, Simon & Garfunkel soundtrack. Won the Oscar for Best Director, also nominated for Best Picture, Actor (Hoffman), Actress (Bancroft), Supporting Actress (Ross), Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography.
11:15 PM 8½ (Federico Fellini, 1963) This one’s not quite on my all-time Top 10 list but certainly would be within the Top 20 (did make #10 on the 2012 Sight & Sound once-a-decade poll of all-time greats by critics, #4 by directors), usually regarded as Fellini’s ultimate masterpiece (but that’s up for debate). A meta-situation about a director (Marcello Mastroianni) struggling to find the proper content for his next film as events and people from his past life begin to intrude on him, resulting in an odd, ambiguous ending (title refers to this being Fellini’s eight and a half-th film after previous features, inclusions in anthologies). Won the Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film, Costume Design (B&W).
Friday March 4, 2022
2:30 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]). One of the best musicals 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.
5:00 Network (Sidney Lumet, 1976) Brilliant satire from Paddy Chayefsky (Oscar for Original Screenplay) about TV news, ratings, soulless corporations, and “mad prophet” Howard Beale, a harbinger of Reality TV and Social Media. Ned Beatty’s CEO rant is priceless. Excellent cast: Peter Finch as Beale (posthumous Oscar, Best Actor), William Holden, Faye Dunaway (Oscar, Best Actress), Robert Duval, Beatrice Straight (Oscar, Best Supporting Actress); Oscar nominations for Picture, Director, Actor (Holden), Supporting Actor (Beatty), Cinematography, and Film Editing.
Saturday March 5, 2022 (check the TCM schedule for even more winners today)
1:30 AM Cries and Whispers (Ingmar Bergman, 1972) Subtitles! A masterpiece from the Monarch of Melancholy (I just made that up, but it fits) as a woman (Harriet Anderson) is dying of cancer, taken care of by her maid (Kari Sylwan), visited by her sisters (Liv Ullman, Ingrid Thulin) with all sorts of crises, past and present, emerging among them including emotional frigidity, infidelity, mutilation, death, and an unsettling dream sequence; made extremely well in all areas, although difficult to watch as failed lives are laid bare. Nominated for 5 Oscars (Best Picture, Director, Original Screenplay [Bergman for all 3, rare for a Foreign Language Film, possibly knocking it out of contention for that award, but it would have to have beat Truffaut’s Day for Night, a hard choice], Costume Design—all of which went to The Sting), won for its Cinematography (Sven Nykvist).
5:00 PM Tootsie (Sydney Pollack, 1982) Difficult, desperate actor Michael Dorsey (Dustin Hoffman) gets a job on a daytime soap opera by secretly impersonating a woman, Dorothy Michaels, becomes a cultural smash, tries to balance a semi-romance with a friend (Terri Garr) with his attraction to a co-star (Jessica Lange) who assumes “Dorothy” is a lesbian as complications continue to pile up in hilarious fashion as Dorsey desperately wants out of his fame; Dabney Coleman, Charles Durning, Bill Murray, Pollack also have notable roles. A huge presence at the Oscars, nominated for 10 (Best Picture, Director, Actor [Hoffman], Supporting Actress [Garr, Lange], Original Screenplay, along with Cinematography, Film Editing, Sound, Original Song), Lange won for Supporting Actress; Hoffman is magnificent, stood no chance against Ben Kingsley for Gandhi (which took most of these awards).
7:15 PM Rain Man (Barry Levinson, 1988) Hustler car-dealer Charlie Babbitt (Tom Cruise), inherits a Buick from his Dad in Ohio, learns he has an older brother, Raymond (Dustin Hoffman), an autistic savant; they drive to L.A. due to Raymond’s fear of flying, stopping in Las Vegas to make a fortune with Ray’s ability to count cards, as a bond grows between the brothers. Oscars for Best Picture, Director, Actor (Hoffman), Original Screenplay (Barry Morrow, Ronald Bass), nominated for 4 others.
9:45 PM Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese, 1980) Biopic of middleweight sometimes-champ Jake LaMotta (Robert De Niro), his brother Joey (Joe Pesci), Jake’s wife Vickie (Cathy Moriatry), with a focus on Jake’s brutal ability in the ring tempered by self-destructive jealousies in his private life; final scene’s a great example of a brilliant actor portraying a poor actor character, the rest is fabulous but hard to watch at times. Won Oscars for Best Actor (De Niro), Film Editing (Thelma Schoonmaker), nominated for 6 more: Best Picture (a crime it didn’t win this one), Director, Supporting Actor (Pesci), Supporting Actress (Moriarty), Cinematography, Sound (could easily have taken these others also).
Sunday March 6, 2022
9:00 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.
Wednesday March 9, 2022
7:00 AM Black Orpheus (Marcel Camus, 1959) Brazilian film (subtitles!) made by a French director as a realistic-yet-lyrical retelling of the Greek myth of Orpheus going into the underworld, attempting to bring his lover, Eurydice, back to life, using a good bit of music and a Carnaval setting. Orfeu’s a trolley driver who meets newcomer Eurydice when she first arrives in Rio de Janeiro; from there it references the myth without directly transcribing it at all times. Oscar for Bes Foreign Language Film.
1:00 PM Ben-Hur (William Wyler, 1959) A Jewish prince (Charlton Heston!) runs afoul of his childhood friend Messala (Steven Boyd), now a Roman tribune, who wrongly condemns noble Judah to slavery; from here it’s all about the long road back for Judah, culminating in a magnificent chariot race, all during the time of Christ. Won 11 Oscars from 12 nominations (only Titanic [1998], The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King [2004] have also won that many): Best Picture, Director, Actor (Heston), Supporting Actor (Hugh Griffith), Film Editing, Music Scoring, Sound Recording, Special Effects, Art Direction-Set Decoration, Cinematography, Costume Design (the last 3 for color films).
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: (1) Screen Actors Guild awards; (2) Details on the 2022 "streamlined" Oscar broadcast on March 27; (3) Global entertainment industry is now sanctioning Russia over invasion of Ukraine. I’ll close out this section with Joni Mitchell’s "Big Yellow Taxi" (her 1970 Ladies of the Canyon album)—because “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone”—and a reminder you can search streaming/rental/purchase movie options at Just Watch.
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).
To save you a little time scrolling through the “various awards” list above, here are the
Oscar nominees for 2021 films.
Here’s more information about Parallel Mothers:
https://www.sonyclassics.com/film/parallelmothers/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVJm81bKfkA (26:28 interview with director
Pedro Almodóvar and actors Penélope Cruz, Milena Smit)
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/parallel_mothers
https://www.metacritic.com/movie/parallel-mothers
Here’s more information about The Worst Person in the World:
https://neonrated.com/films/the-worst-person-in-the-world
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfFFpYqz5k4 (42:08 interview with director as well as
co-screenwriter [with Eskil Vogt] Joachim Trier and actors Renate Reinsve, Anders Danielsen Lie)
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_worst_person_in_the_world
https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-worst-person-in-the-world
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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, but maybe while 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 (although, as you know, with bar songs there are plenty about people broken down by various tragic circumstances, with maybe the best of the bunch—calls itself “perfect”—being "You Never Even Called Me by My Name" written by Steve Goodman, sung by David Allen Coe). But wherever the rest of my body may be my heart’s always with my longtime-companion/lover/
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/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 well). But, while I’m at it, I’ll also include another of my top favorites, from the night before at Desert Trip, the Rolling Stones’ "Gimme Shelter" (Wow!), a song “just a shot away” in my memory (along with my memory of their great drummer, Charlie Watts, RIP). To finish this cluster of all-time-great-songs I’d like to have played at my wake (as far away from now as possible) here’s one Dylan didn’t play at Desert Trip but it’s great, much beloved by me and Nina: "Visions of Johanna."
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