Downtone Abbey (2019)

I had been interested in watching the Downton Abbey TV show for some time and the coming of the Downton Abbey movie gave me an excuse to finally see it. I watched the series over the summer and really enjoyed it, it's got a neat setting, some great characters you come to really care for and is generally well written. My two big complaints about the series is a writerly over reliance on convenient inheritances, and the Crawley's seem unrealistically tolerant people for early 20th Century British aristocracy, However those are minor quibbles, I get why people love this show because I loved it to. Despite being globally popular the series pulled its own plug with season 6 and gave it's self a really nice send off. The ending was so good in fact that there didn't really seem to be a point to a movie, however much as Toy Story 4 is to Toy Story 3, here we've already got our ending and this is just the epilogue, and turns out that is nice to have as well with extra little flourishes put on some long standing plots and character arcs.

I read one review say that nothing happens in the Downton Abbey movie and that's why it's great, which I think for the most part is true, the stakes are limited and its just fun to see these characters again. However to walk around a major spoiler here there is something that happens in the Downton Abbey movie which if this had happened in any other movie it's what the whole film would have been about, while here its a third string plot, you'll know it when you see it. I can't help but wonder what seeing this movie would be like if you'd never seen the series, it would probably seem even less consequential then it already does. However if you're a fan of the series you'll probably get a lot out of the Downton Abbey movie, it's a manifestation of nostalgia for a recent series about nostalgia. One the surface this is just a *** but adjusted for emotional inflation it gets ***1/2.

The Thomas Crown Affair (1968O

The Thomas Crown Affair is arguably the most boring thriller I've ever seen. Kind of a caper movie, rich guy bank robber Thomas Crown (Steve McQueen) romances insurance investigator Vicki Anderson (Fay Dunaway) sent to get him, testing both of their loyalties. A very stylish film featuring the Oscar winning song "The Windmills of Your Mind" and directed by the very capable Norman Jewison. However I found it very boring, it could not keep my full attention which is honestly kind of rare. Later remade in the late 90's staring Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo. Well made but I could hardly sit through it so I can't recommend it. *1/2

Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins (2019)

I'd heard of Molly Ivins before but it wasn't until earlier this year that I read a book of her old newspaper columns from the early 1990's. I liked her pretty instantly, she had great literary voice, very droll, she was liberal who was also thoroughly Texan, once not unheard of (think Lyndon Johnson) but a couple of decades after LBJ's passing increasingly rare, though it seems that type may be on the upswing again. The oldest daughter of a conservative oil executive "Molly" had at an early age rechristened herself from Mary and went on to became the dreaded liberal journalist. Yet she was still very Texan, something that set her apart form the liberal media establishment of the North East, The New York Times hired her for her distinct voice and then proceeded to iron some of her more memorable phrasing from her articles, for example "like a two dollar fiddle" was re-rendered in one piece as "like an inexpensive musical instrument". So she went back to Texas and became the chief chronicler of its legislator and early liberal eye on the rising of George W. Bush, who she said she liked personally, but felt was bad for the country. The kind of person I would have liked to have known personally, and a category screwing presence we could use more of today. Ivins succumbed to cancer in 2007 at the age of 62. ***

Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice (2019)

Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice documents the decades long and remarkably varied musical career of Linda Ronstadt from the 1960's into the 21st Century. What a career she had, one remarkable for its eclecticism, from folk rock in the sixties, to straddling the rock/ country divide in the 70's, to doing Gilbert and Sullivan on Broadway, recording 'the standards', a mega selling Spanish language album, performing in concert with Emmylou Harris, Bonnie Raitt, Dolly Parton, Jackson Browne, Aaron Neville and others. Heck even The Eagles grow out of her backup band. Fairly standard form for a documentary but she's just great and this movie made me so happy so it gets an extra half star.***1/2

Hallelujah (1929)

King Vidor was a pretty powerful director in his day, even in the silent era he'd already made the The Big Parade and a number of other successful film and he had enough pull to get MGM to agree to make a musical staring an entirely black cast, in 1929! Hallelujah was really more of a drama with musical interludes, not really a musical as we think of them today, all the singing is within the logic of the story, hymns, popular deities, things the characters are really suppose to be singing, not simply a means of conveying inner dialogue. Of course the musical form as it relates to cinema was still being shaped, and while this movie bears some historical note as part of that process where it really stands out is that it was a major studio film about black people, again in 1929!

Of course the film hasn't aged particularly well, in a very early scene we are introduced to three black brother named Sears, Roebuck, and Coe, it makes you whence a little. The film has an entirely black cast, a first for an A production by a major studio, and much of the cast were not professional actors. Daniel L. Haynes plays Zeke, a good looking but simple farmer who is taken advantage of by a world wise chick named Chick (Nina Mae McKinney, really sexy, in a different world she would have been a big star). Zeke loses the proceeds from the family cotton harvest in a con for which Chick served as bait, in trying to get it back his younger brother is killed and Zeke's long, dark night of the soul results in his rebirth as an evangelist called Zekeial.

Zekeial amasses a great following, Chick shows back up, repentant but weak, the two get married and Zeke takes a job at a mill, only Chick cheats on him with her old lover and former con partner Hot Shot (William Fountaine ). The adulterers try to run off together, Zeke's pursues, a carriage accident causing Chick to die but not before she apologizes to Zeke for not staying true. Zeke then kills Hot Shot in revenge, he goes to prison but is eventually let out and returns to his extended family, forgiven once more.

An odd story, with a more morally ambiguous plot then one might expect. Much of the film plays as raciest caricature, though simultaneously this was then an at lest some what progressive picture and a millstone for black film in America. Film critic Daniel Eagen has said that its a film whose "reputation is based largely on the fact that it was made at all" and that seems a real good summation of the thing to me. I don't know how to rate this, not a good movie, but one of historical significance. I'll go with **

March of the Penguins (2005)

Iconicly narrated by Morgan Freeman this documentary on the life cycle of Emperor Penguins made boo koo bucks, $127.4 million on an $8 million budget and won a best documentary Oscar. The film fills in the gaps on the natural details from the rough outline I got from Happy Feet and Scamper the Penguin. I always thought the worse thing about being a penguin would be having to dress formally all the time, but really their lives kind of suck I don't envy them, sure they have a fun 4 or so years hunting in the sea, assuming they don't get eaten, before the matting drive takes over, but penguin lives for the most part are hard, hungry and cold. They are beautiful though, and so is this very sold documentary.

Woyzeck (1979)

For financing reasons director Werner Herzog had to start production on this film only days after wrapping on his remake of Nosferatu the Vampire. Shot in just 18 days using the same crew and star as Nosferatu actor Klaus Kinski, Woyzeck is adapted from an unfinished play by the early 19th century German dramatist Georg Buchner. Woyzeck is the story of a German solder who goes mad and starts to have apocalyptic visions after working himself sick doing odd jobs, including being the subject of an eccentric professors experiments, all in an effort to support the child he had out of wedlock and the mother. Woyzeck finally breaks when he learns that the mother of his child is cheating on him with a handsome drum major, things don't end well. Odd and eccentric as any good Herzog film should be, Woyzeck is only 82 minutes in length, which is about perfect you wouldn't want this to be much longer. It's quite good, but also slow and strange, meant for something of a limited audience. ***

Twins of Evil (1971)

Hammer horror films had a very distinct look to their color palate, it was practically a trademark and very consistent from the late 50's into the early70's, so much so that it's kind of hard to tell when an individual film was made as they all look like they could be from the late 50's. This is why there is such an out place quality and odd juxtaposition to the presence of nudity, though not much of it and chiefly breasts, in the 1971 release Twins of Evil. This film was built around 'The Collinson Twins', Maltase born beauties in their 19th year who had just been Playboys first set of identical twins to serve as playmate of the month. Their cute but they can't act great so Peter Cushing is tasked with most of the heavy lifting as the pairs uncle and new guardian after the deaths of their parents. The film is set in what appears to be late 17th or early 18th century Austria and Cushing plays a puritanical sort who is all too willing to burn young women at the stake, and it takes a long time to convince him that the local menace he's dealing with are vampires, not witches.

The films title is a little misleading as well, both twins are not evil just Frieda (Madeleine Collinson) who falls under the spell of a local vampire count, Maria (Mary Collinson) is a good girl, but dress her up in her sisters clothing while she's asleep and Cushing might just try to have her burned at the stake. A workable film and at a nice standard Hammer running time of 87 minutes it doesn't overstay its welcome and is just different enough to be consistently engaging, at least for a single viewing. David Warbeck and Damien Thomas are the twins non-vampire and vampire love interest respectively, and Kathleen Byron, who I quite like is also in this though she has very little to do. **1/2

Tarzan (1999)

One of my film watching goals for this year has been to a see a dozen movies I haven't seen before featuring Oscar winning songs. Disney's 1999 animated film Tarzan won an Academy Award for "You'll Be in My Heart", which is a nice, hooky but kind moving ditty. I must say I did not expect much from this film, late 90's Disney animated fair has a reputation as being a significant quality fall off vis-a-vie their early 90's brethren. You have Phil Collins doing the soundtrack, who I like but acknowledge isn't for everybody, Rosie O'Donnell doing the voice of a somewhat sexually ambiguous gorilla, and the whole idea of doing Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan of the Apes as a Disney cartoon didn't seem like a natural fit. This film started somewhat in the red for me, so I was surprised how much I liked it and that it completely won me over. This is tight little film, no fat, and everything here works, a finally balanced film of near clock work precision in its structure, not too self serious, but not too heavy on the comedy. Roger Ebert gave the film four stars. To me the movie doesn't have the level of gravities I normally associate with a four star film but its so perfectly satisfying as what it is, that it's part of an odd sub rating I call 4 star 3 star films, perfect as a satisfying self contained film experience, but not ' a great movie', beatified not sainted. This is the rare kids movie that I genuinely want to see again. ***

It Chapter 2 (2019)

When 'It' came out two years ago it was really greeted as something kind of special. First off the timing was great, 80's nostalgia was starting to pick up do in part to the success of Stranger Things, with which this movie shared a cast member (Finn Wolfhard), and also there was that thing with the creepy clowns showing up on the sides of roads at night, remember that? It was an adaptation of a significant horror novel, which already had a lot cultural cache thanks in part to Tim Curry's portal of the titular clown in a 1990 mini series. This 'It' was approaching the material in a different way by presenting events chronologically rather then the flash back heavy structure of the original novel and the TV version. 'It' was a big summer movie release starting a cast of largely unknown kids and with the relatively modest budget of $35 million dollars. It made over $700 million at the box office, it was a huge hit both finically and critically, it's sequel however is considerably more average in every way. Well every way other then making money, its already made $220 million and it came out last week.

'It Chapter 2' starts out promising enough, I especially liked how they showed many of the characters repeating the same life patterns they had started as children into adult hood, with Eddie marrying a domineering woman much like his mother, and Beverly in a manipulative relationship like the one she had with her father, and so on. The gang reunites 27 years after the events in the first film to fulfill the pledge they made to fight It should it return, the movie lost a good deal of its intensity for me shortly after the dinner sequence. The characters have to divide up to find 'talismans' from their childhoods which mostly serve as an excuse to bring the kids back again for flash back sequences, people really liked those kids they were great, so now we have a collection of 'forgotten memories' that play like deleted scenes from the previous movie. There are more jump scares and effect shots in this movie, the monsters look like CGI rendering of illustrations from those 'Scary Story' books of  my childhood, which we don't need because those just got their own movie and here they are more vaguely unsettling in an 'uncanny valley' sort of way then really scary.

I will readily compliment the film on its casting, all the adults, but especially some of the lesser known actors, really look believable as adult versions of the characters from the first movie. The performances here are good, but the whole films lacks the tension and unifying sense of unease that marked the first film. Some things in this movie just seem kind of off, especially the town of Derry, which had such as strong sense of character in the first movie, here it's seems kind of empty, both in emotional context and in the sense of where are all the people? Their doesn't seem to be any staff in that hotel, which I thought was going to be because of some 'It' mind trick, but no the empty hotel doesn't tie into anything.

As you've gathered I was disappointed in 'It Chapter 2', though not a horrible movie it felt depressingly average. It also hurts some when a major recurring gag is that Bill, who grew up to be writer, doesn't do endings well. Foreshadowing indeed. **1/2

The Hoard (2012)

This movie came form one of those mystery DVD packs I mentioned earlier. The cover art shows images of a Mongol hoard, so imagine my surprise when this turned out to be a Christian movie, kind of, a Christian move with some side boob. The story of the Orthodox Saint Alexius, a 14th Century Metropolitan (Bishop) of Moscow. Alexius restored the sight of the mother of the then reigning Kahn, or at least tradition says he did, this movie doesn't seem overly concerned with facts. Still its a story I did not know, and the film is decently enough acted and certainly well budgeted. Life under Mongol dominance is something I don't think I've ever seen depicted in film before, I haven't seen The Conqueror though I suppose that would have be on my B-movie bucket list. This was really an interesting movie, very different, not that straight forward, the eventual "miracle" is handled in a extremely subtitle manner, off screen even, and it took me a bit to figure out what had happened, at first this annoyed me, but in retrospect there is something to be said for a vaguer, round about presentation. A good amount of time is spent with the Kahn and his inner circle, I don't think you even get to Alexius until at least 20 minutes in. This Russian film was refreshingly different. ***

Sorcerer (1977)

For its first 20 to 30 minutes you wouldn't know that 1977's Sorcerer is in fact a remake of the French produced 1953 masterpiece The Wages of Fear.  Both films are about a group of desperate expatriates who take on the dangerous job of transporting volatile nitroglycerin over hundreds of kilometers of rough roads in a never named Latin American country. However the beginnings of Sorcerer wants to give you detailed backstories for our leads, something Wages of Fear doesn't bother with. So you have assassinations, terrorists attacks, bank fraud and armed robbery before our four principal characters start to interact with each other in a sweltering banana republic. Interestingly while I know much more about the characters in Sorcerer, I actually cared about the characters in Wages of Fear far more.

While this latter films does a few things arguably better then its predecessor, such as explain how the nitroglycerin is insulated against road turbulence, and the way one particular road obstacle is blown up, on the whole it is a far less interesting film, because it is a far less tense one. Now part of this is because I've seen this story before, and while its not a strict beat per beat remake even in the trucking scenes, it sticks mostly close to the original. But part of this also has to do with the way the thing was mounted. There is a sequence where they take the trucks over a bridge that is so ridiculously rickety you would never dare try to drive a truck over it because you would surely die. I mean it just looked ridicules and took me right out of the movie. On paper remaking Wages of Fear sounds like a great idea, but in practice, even with a serviceable cast (highlighted by Roy Scheider, 2 years off Jaws) and an expert like William Friedkin (The French Connection, The Exorcist) helming the thing it was still just a pale imitation. Oh and 'Sorcerer' is the name of one of the trucks, so that's where the stupid title comes from. **

Heaven & Earth (1993)

Oliver Stone directed this adaption of the true life story of Vietnam native Le Ly Hayslip. Hayslip's story is an incredible one, what this woman went through is amazing, so I'm not going to go into any real specifics because it might be best to see this movie in relative ignorance of its story. Hiep Thi Le who plays Hayslip is excellent by the way, and the supporting cast is strong including Joan Chen, and Oscar winners Tommy Lee Jones and Haing S. Ngor. Bear in mind the film is not strictly historical, one major character is a composite and a number of things are simplified, but the core is true. While the film got bad to mixed reviews upon its release, and was a major box office failure for the then hot Stone making only $5.9 million off a $33 million budget, it's really something of a lost classic, at times hard to sit through but really an accomplishment and quite a moving story. ****

Men in Black: International (2019)

This soft reboot / tangential sequel is an attempt to bring new life, but which I mean profits, out of an old franchise. Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson have a passable platonic chemistry as they do in Thor and Avengers movies. While the audience I saw this with seemed to really like Kumail Nanjiani's "Pawney". However this movie is just of kind of there, while competently done it is unwanted, unnecessary, uninspired. But I still paid $2 to see it. *1/2

Natural Born Killers (1994)

Oliver Stone's film about celebrity, violence, and the celebration of violence. Natural Born Killers is highly stylized, highly violent, and highly unpleasant. Maybe it would have been different seeing this in 1994 when stories and films of this sort weren't so commonly done, but seeing it now I found that the movie did not enrich as entertainment, nor did it creatively convey to me anything new, or repackage anything in a way that felt worth while. I'm not saying that Stone is wrong in a lot of what he has to say in this film, in some ways it feels precinct, but I didn't enjoy watching it, I didn't get anything from it, and I didn't like any of the characters in it with possible exception of the Indians. *

Alexander: The Directors Cut (2004)

It's kind of funny that while 9/11 and its aftermath were happening, and in the early days of the Iraq war, events that would call out as being veritable trigger words for Oliver Stone, this most political of directors was tied up, his energies focused on an unwildley bio-pic of Alexander the Great. There are four different cuts of this movie, it's as though the director thinks if he just keeps re arranging things eventually the picture will work, this does not appear to be the case. Alexander is a mess, it's all over the place, it's over long, and it just doesn't engage, I just couldn't get myself to care. Colin Ferrell is miscast as the ancient Greek leader, and the films handling of his reported bisexuality has been widely regarded as Luke warm and non-committal. Oh were that you could care for any character in this movie, but you really can't. A disaster.  *

Flashdance (1983)

Succinctly the plot:

Just a steel town girl on a Saturday night
Lookin' for the fight of her life
In the real time world no one sees her at all
They all say she's crazy

Locking rhythms to the beat of her heart
Changing movement into light
She has danced into the danger zone
When the dancer becomes the dance

Flashdance stars a doe-eyed and highly charismatic Jennifer Beals as Alexandra "Alex" Owens a recent transplant from Altoona to Pittsburg, Pennsylvania who works as a welder in a steel mill while perusing her dream of professional dancing. A sort of female Saturday Night Fever there is not a lot of plot per say, though there is a slightly creepy romance between Alex and her boss at the mill (Michael Nouri) who is twice her age, as well as a nice assortment of colorful supporting characters. While certain plot elements are trite or ridicules it's got a nice spirit to it and a catchy soundtrack. Not well received by critics when it came out, it still only has a 35% Rotten Tomato's Score, it produced multiple hit songs including the Oscar winning "What a Feeling", and made $201.5 million at the box office off of a $7 million budget. I did not expect to like this but it won me over. ***

Any Given Sunday (1999)

Director Oliver Stone's movie about professional football. Stone fancies himself the cinematic chronicler of the foibles of post World War II America, and there are few things as American as professional football. However there are also few things of which I am less interested then professional football so this movie didn't really work for me. There is some good stuff in it, some good performances, some interesting scenes, it has things to say about its subject matter though nothing really that earth shaking. Mostly I found the film kind of boring and unpleasant, as much of it is about the egos of those in the world of professional football, the players, the coaches, the owners, the journalist, not really the fans thought, not in this movie. 2 hours and 42 minutes in length  so a little shorter then an NFL game, though both things are too long for my taste. **