Pink Floyd - The Wall (1982)

Rock Opera based on the titular album by the titular group. Pink Floyd - The Wall is a slightly abstract, metaphorical film, which is best remembered, as is the album, for the song Another Brick in the Wall and its imagery of a stiflingly conforming English boys school come meat processing plant. There is a lot going on in The Wall but what I want to focus on is what I take to be its primary through line and theme, which I will call 'rage at the loss of the father'. Early in the film we see the father of the character "Pink" (played as grown man by Bob Geldorf) in a surprisingly well budgeted sequence fighting in the Battle of Anzio in Italy in 1944. Pink's father would die there and his resulting absence would be a continuing source of pain for Pink, a loss he would feel deeply, occurring as it did when he just a little past being a toddler.

There is a post war scene, in England, where a young Pink is in a park watching children play, he spies one young child playing with his fathers and watches, follows them. In a moment when the father is distracted Pink grabs hold of the mans hand, in desperate child logic trying to lay claim to 'a father'. The man is confused and shoes him away, going back to concentrating on his own son. Latter in life Pink spends a lot of time brooding and watching old World War II films on TV, later his musical persona embraces a fascist esthetic (ironic given that fascists killed his father), as he increasingly rages and melts down. It was a very moving, very powerful motif that I was not expecting to find in this film. The rest of the movie did not work as well for me, its not really my thing, but it was usually interesting. No real stars to speak of in this, but a youngish Bob Hoskins plays Pink's sleazy manager. ***

Svengali (1931)

Not as weird as I'd hoped it would be. Svengali is a pre-code Hollywood motion picture based on the 1894 gothic horror novel Trilby by the Frenchmen George du Maurier. A wonderfully made up John Barrymore stars as Svengali, a (Polish?) composer, con man, and expert hypnotist. Svengali gets besotted of one Trilby O'Farrell (Marian Marsh), a beautiful, young, professional artist model. He steals her away from her intended (Bramwell Fletcher) and through his hypnotic powers turns her into a leading musical deva. Svengali is a more interesting character then just a stock villain in that now that he has his prize, he can't seemingly bring himself to enjoy her cranially. He has a sense of guilt, though it is strongly implied for a movie of the time that Trilby had been a lose woman before. There is some oddly fascinating chemistry going on between Barrymore and Marsh, so effective was it that Warner Brother rushed another, similar Barrymore/Marsh pictures The Mad Genius into theaters before the end of the year. An odd piece, makes me a little curious about the novel. ***

Ant-Man and The Wasp (2018)

Ant-Man and The Wasp is fine. That's the word I keep coming back to with this film, its just fine. Nothing particularly special about it, it's not as funny as it could have been, the action sequences (with maybe one exception) are not that memorable, and while I'm sure its setting up plot points that will be returned to later on in the MCU, this is still one of Marvels lesser offerings. I enjoyed the movie all right, I don't want to come off as being too critical,  there were some fun moments here, but maybe this should have been released before Infinity War, especially as it takes place before it in the increasingly fractured cinematic chronology. Oh and this movie features a giant ant playing a drum set, so let's hope they didn't just jump the shark. **1/2

The Howling (1981)

I didn't enjoy The Howling quite as much as The Fog, the movie which shares a DVD with this film. While the latter movie is more structurally perfect, The Howling is more innovative and takes more risks.  As I am most familiar with director Joe Dante's more family oriented, if still horror tinged fair, like Gremlins and Matinee, I did enjoy seeing him doing something more purely in the genera he so often evokes. His love of nostalgia is still very evident here, what with the cartoon clips, the horror movie clips, the Dick Miller cameo. This film also has some of the rubber, hydraulic type effects memorable form Explorers and his segment in Twilight Zone: The Movie. The Werewolves, when you finally see them in their full glory, still work and are impressive special effects. The organization of the Werewolves community is interesting, and the film makes good use of Patrick Macnee, and uses Robert Picardo rather interestingly. Dee Wallace is the lead, she did so many horror movies, particularly in this period of her career, that her casting in E.T. must surely constitute some kind of in-joke. This is a pretty sexual movie, so beware of that. ***

Paul VI: The Pope in the Tempest (2008)

After productions about Pope John Paul II and John XXIII, Paul VI: The Pope in the Tempest is the third of these pontifical mini-series I've watched. While the first two were international co-productions Paul VI appears to be just an Italian mini-series, no big stars and not even dubbed into English. A reason the very long named Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini didn't get the more lavish treatment of his associates soon became clear, and was really hit home in one of the DVD's special features. A discussion on the life and career of the late pontiff between an EWTN host and a Catholic scholar showed the latter (at lest) not very impressed with his subject. Said scholar makes a comment that Paul may not have been the best suited vicar of Christ on Earth for his period, when the host asks if he's saying that the Holy Spirit didn't work in his election, the scholar says that maybe Paul was meant to serve as a negative example. Whoa, harsh. In the LDS tradition I come from that kind of quasi official denigration of the Lords Anointed wouldn't pass muster, so I was a little shocked by it.

The acting thesis of the film seemed to be that Paul really tried, unfortunately he was not that successful. The period of his pontificate from 1963 to 1978 was not seen as a very positive time for the Catholic Church. Vatican II was not an easy going process and its ultimate reception mixed among the faithful. Church attendance was down, there were fewer priests, and some of the remaining priests were getting more politically radical, typically in a leftist sense. While Montini had a strong background in teaching, the Vatican diplomatic corps, and diocese work, Paul could not translate those success into larger vitality for the Church as a whole, though he did try. This film, like the other mini-series, are interesting primers on their pontificates, basically collections of 'greatest hits'. A guilty pleasure of these films is the sometimes simplistic writing (less hagiographic in this case then the others), containing many scenes of characters reacting to important historical events and 'cameo' appearances by notable Catholics, including Mother Teresa and the future John Paul II. An odd, but mildly intriguing production. **1/2

Gray Lady Down (1978)

Gray Lady Down is a pretty conventional, pretty boring movie about efforts to rescue the crew of a Navy submarine that sank after running into a Norwegian freighter off the eastern seaboard. Charlton Heston is the sub's Captain, Stacy Keach his boss, while David Carradine and Ned Beatty are the Navy misfits who just might pull the darn thing off. The movie is competently put together, and had I not felt as though I'd seen this kind of thing so many times before, or if it had some unique hook or conceit or something I might have liked it. Mostly this is only mildly interesting video wallpaper, perfect for multi tasking. **

Mission: Impossible - Rouge Nation (2015)

This 5th Mission: Impossible movie continues the trajectory of the previous two films, building on the fall out of previous events and expanding on them. The 'team' is well put together, and the set pieces continue to be first rate, I am thinking particularly of the under water data storage unit heist, as well as the opera house sequence. Speaking of the opera house sequence that is one of a surprising number of homages to the Hitchcock classic The Man Who Knew Too Much to appear in this film, which include the assassination plot and the Morocco sequences. There is also some of Tinker, Taylor, Solder, Spy here to with the goings on inside British intelligence. Alec Baldwin shows up as the newest bureaucratic foil for Ethan Hunt, while Rebecca Ferguson is the, I guess you'd call it love interest, while Ving Rhames, Jeremy Renner and Simon Pegg all return. As much as I liked Ghost Protocol, I think Rouge Nation is probably a little bit smarter. ***1/2

The Fog (1980)

All aboard the clipper ship Elizabeth Dane perished when that vessel crashed upon the rocky cost of Antonio Bay, California one foggy night in the year 1880. A century later those lost souls return to wreak their vengeance, because the crash you see was not an accident. This early John Carpenter horror film does such a fantastic job of building a mounting sense of dread, and is just different enough in the particulars of its story elements that it proved irresistible to me. From the old man telling ghost stores to children on the beach at night, to the towns preparations for their evening centennial celebrations, sure to be ill-fated, to the casting of two generations of scream queens, Janet Leigh and her daughter Jamie Lee Curtis, the construction of this film as arch classic horror is fantastic. Good supporting parts as well for Hal Holbrook, and director Carpenters wife at the time Adrienne Barbeau. ***1/2

Won't You Be My Neighbor (2018)

When the Youtube personality Adam the Woo visited a museum in Pittsburg to view props from the celebrated children's series Mr. Roger Neighborhood he confessed to getting kind of emotional, I suspect I would have cried. Fred Rogers and his television program meant a lot to multiple generations of kids for whom it was a preschool fixture. Mr. Rogers was uniquely suited to do what he did a the time he did it, with a background in ministry, early television, and child development. Coming in at the birth of public broadcasting Fred spent more then 30 years helping young children navigate their emotional development and deal with issues from anger and loneliness to divorce and death.

The new documentary Won't You Be My Neighbor follows Rogers long career in television from producing early morning children's fair in the early 1950's to living legend status in the early years of the 21st century. You find out a lot of interesting little things in the course of the film, like where Mr. Rogers sweaters came from, the origins for the names of many of the characters on the show, as well as why Daniel Stripped Tiger lived in a clock. Watching as the program tries to help children make sense of tragic events such as the Robert Kennedy assassination and the Challenger explosion can be emotionally devastating viewing. Nine months after his retirement Rogers even came back to the studio to record public service spots to aid children in processing the events of 9/11.

Even in the racially fraught times of the shows early years Rogers had a black policeman character name Officer Clemmons as a regular, they would soak their feet in a kiddie pool together even as segregated swimming facilities were not uncommon in large swaths of the country. The quadriplegic boy Jeffrey Erlanger was brought on the show in his wheelchair to teach children not be afraid of people with disabilities. Yo-yo Ma and Izack Perlman were on the show brining classical music to little kids long before Baby Einstein's. The recently departed Coco the Gorilla was on the show as well, encouraging empathy for animals. What Fred Rogers did, was truly impressive.

There of course have been criticisms, Rogers emphasis on how everyone is special has lead to charges that he promoted narcissism, and reward and recognition without hard work. To approach Mr.Rogers as a liberal stooge would be a mistake, the life long Republican was attempting to communicate the very Christian compatible concept of each persons individual worth in a way that preschool children could understands. The man was an ordained minister and the concept he principally preached was that of empathy, almost a Christ in a cardigan. In all times, but especially in times of great political divisions Mr. Rogers message is an important one, and its hard to think of a film that could be of more value today then Won't You Be My Neighbor? ****