Movie Review: Bombshell (2017). Kanopy.

This is an unusual and revelatory documentary about Hedy LaMarr, the beautiful movie star from Europe who became a Hollywood legend in the 1940s and 1950s.  Her story is remarkable, because she turned out to be so much deeper, smarter and more talented than her two-dimensional image as a female sex symbol and celebrity gossip topic would have suggested. 

As a young immigrant actress from Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II, she was driven to help the American war effort, and did so, by leading war bond drives where she helped raise millions of dollars for the war.  

But her real interest was inventing.  In the early 1940s, working with an inventing partner, she came up with an innovation which was intended to help solve a technical problem relating to torpedo guidance systems, for which she was awarded a U.S. patent, although it was never used during the war. 

Later, though, researchers and engineers came upon her idea of "frequency skipping"-- rapidly changing the frequency of a radio signal to prevent jamming and monitoring -- and applied it to many of the electronic and communications technologies that are now foundational to our modern world.  The profits from her invention are now in the many billions of dollars, although she never saw any of it, because her patent had expired by the time others wanted to use it.  

A surprising and overdue appreciation of a brilliant and complicated woman, who struggled throughout her life to be recognized as something more than just another pretty face.  Highly recommended.   

Movie Review: Finding You (2021). Amazon Prime.

A young woman goes to Ireland for a "study abroad" break before retrying her violin audition for a music conservatory in New York.  While there, despite her resistance and skepticism, she falls for a young action-film movie star trapped in his celebrity bubble. 

 

In the meantime, she is also mentored and taught about life and music by an old drunken Irish fiddle player, and becomes involved in straightening out a family tragedy for an angry elderly woman (Vanessa Redgrave).  

 

It's all fairly contrived, but still sweet and entertaining.  Recommended, if you like rom-coms and coming of age stories.  

Movie Review: Enola Holmes (2020). Netflix.

This lightly amusing historical period piece and mystery stars young Millie Bobby Brown (of Stranger Things fame) in the leading role.  

As Sherlock Holmes' little sister Enola, a feisty and non-compliant teenage girl, she goes into the family business, as a means of escaping the oppressive plans and domesticated female role their older brother (as her guardian) has made for her.  

Nicely outfitted with the latest in Edwardian fashion and surrounded by English period sets and scenery, young Enola helps win the battle for women's suffrage in Britain, while freeing herself from repressive social expectations, and tracking down the beloved but unconventional mother who had abandoned her. 

Of course, there are plenty of other mysteries to solve, plots to uncover and prevent, and brilliant Holmes-ish detective work throughout.  Recommended.

Movie Review: Dune (Part 1) (2021). HBO Max and in theaters.

The SyFy Channel produced two good TV mini-series in the early 2000s, Dune and Children of Dune, which covered the first three books of Frank Herbert’s legendary six-book Dune science fiction series (Dune, Dune Messiah, and Children of Dune). 

Although the special effects were not up to contemporary Hollywood standards, these two mini-series (which are difficult to find now, except as used DVD sets for sale online) were the best attempt until now to bring Frank Herbert’s trailblazing epic book series and universe to the screen.  There was also an unfortunate movie version produced in 1984, but it is barely worth mentioning, and several other proposed versions never made it to completion.

This new large-screen 2+ hour version, released to widespread acclaim late in 2021, covers only 1/12^th of Herbert’s full six-book Dune epic (i.e., only the first half of the first and most famous book, Dune), but it does so with visual beauty, fantastic special effects, a talented and exotic-looking cast, and a faithfulness to the book version that has eluded earlier cinematic treatments. 

The hardest thing about making any film version of Dune has always been the number of technological, social, political and historical facts and settings in the Dune universe that need to be conveyed to viewers, in order to have the plot and action make any sense.  The director handled that very well, through an early narrator’s summary, and by accepting that only a part of even one of these complex and rich books could be done justice in the course of one feature-length movie.  

The producers placed a bet that it would be well enough received to justify spending the money to tell part 2 in a later sequel.  That bet apparently paid off on opening day, with the wide enthusiasm and critical success of this first really excellent film version of the Dune story.  Very highly recommended.

Movie Review: The Snow Walker (2003). Amazon Prime.

Some good friends told us about this 2003 movie, based on a Farley Mowat novel, after we came back from a 2019 trip to Alaska.  We finally got around to seeing it, and it was well worth it.  

The story takes place in 1952, in the Canadian Northwest Territories, where an arrogant white bush pilot and war veteran on a side trip to a tiny remote native village is persuaded to take a very sick young native woman to the nearest city hospital.  

Unfortunately, the engine fails on the way, and the two of them end up crash-landing in a barren wilderness, where the pilot tries to take charge to figure out how to rescue them.  What he doesn't realize (until he does) is that his ailing passenger is far better equipped for survival, with just the few primitive tools she carries in her kit, than he could ever be in that hostile, cold natural environment. 

Watching the process of how she copes in the wild, and they gradually learn to work together, is fascinating, emotionally stirring and wonderfully told.  Highly recommended.

Movie Review: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2018). Movie, Netflix.

This is the lovely and moving story of a young woman in the post-World War II London literary and social world of 1946, based on a 2008 book of the same name. 

The main character Juliet (played beautifully by Lily James) is a successful author of a series of popular children's books, engaged to be married to a wealthy American.  But after reading an intriguing letter she receives from a stranger, she discovers and then falls in love with a small group of eccentric book-loving survivors of the Nazi occupation of Guernsey (in the Channel Islands). 

In the process of going to Guernsey, meeting and getting to know the members, and learning the deeper history of their wartime experiences, with all their difficult compromises, sacrifices and bravery, she comes to know herself and her own true desires as well.  Highly recommended.

Movie Review: Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions (2020). Disney +

This unusual concert video of Taylor Swift caught my attention toward the end of 2020.  I had not been a long-term Taylor Swift fan, but it would be hard to live on this planet and not know by now that she is one of the most iconic and popular songwriters, singers, musicians and performers of our era.  

So I took note when I heard that she had released a new album in July, 2020, a total surprise even to her record company, which she produced entirely under COVID-19 isolation conditions.  The album, Folklore, had very strong reviews, due in part to her departure from previous music styles (teenage country music star, then mid-20s-aged pop diva) toward a more ethereal folk rock sound and style.  I listened to it, and was immediately taken with it – it’s a truly great album, full of ear-pleasing sounds and haunting stories.

That's all backstory to this concert film, which was recorded in a rural home studio by the Hudson river, with just Swift, her small group of musical collaborators, and a large supply of guitars, pianos, mixers and other instruments, performing stripped-down versions of every song on the album.  In between songs, there are clips of them sitting around talking and reminiscing about their process of writing and recording the songs. 

It was fascinating to me, and very impressive, particularly when we find out that Swift (like so many other musicians, from famous to amateur and recreational) had to figure out how to do home recording, and remote recording collaboration (not to mention performing!), while also creating all the beautiful new songs she wrote.  Highly recommended.

Movie Review: Sylvie's Love (2020). Amazon Prime.

This is a touching love story about a young black couple in the 1950s and early 1960s.  The young woman Sylvie (played by Tessa Thompson) manages to get a menial job on a popular TV cooking show, and through her diligence and persistence, and despite constant obstacles of racism and sexism, works her way up to a successful career as a TV producer.  

As she's on the way up, she meets a handsome young jazz saxophone virtuoso (Nnamdi Asomugha), and they fall in love, and start planning a life together.  But things fall apart when his promising music career collapses as a result of the changing times, and the end of the jazz and big band eras in the early 1960s.  

As he loses confidence in himself, he withdraws, stops sharing confidences with her, and eventually settles into a working class job at a car plant far away from her.  But can love still conquer all, despite their different circumstances and positions?  

This is a moving universal kind of young love story, placed in the context of the black experience during the early American civil rights era.  Recommended.

Movie Review: The Dig (2021). Netflix.

With the well-told flavor of a made-for-English TV drama, this interesting story, loosely based on a real set of events, chronicles an ailing older woman in pre-World War II England (played by Carey Mulligan) who hires a local non-academic excavator (Ralph Fiennes) to explore ancient mounds on her property.  

Looking like an aging Indiana Jones, the somewhat curmudgeonly but talented excavator finds a Dark Age ship buried in one of the mounds.  The dig, and the eventual discovery and excavation of the ship and its ancient contents, bring out competing local archeological academics and museum authorities, who fight with each other for control of the dig, the academic narrative and the loot from the burial site. 

A very enjoyable story and evening's entertainment.  Recommended.

Movie Review: News of the World (2020). Xfinity On Demand, others.

Tom Hanks stars as an old Confederate Civil War veteran in Texas, who ekes out a living traveling from small town to town, putting on shows where he reads articles from various distant newspapers, to bring people the "news of the world".  

In one town, the local authorities prevail upon him to take a young white girl who had been captured by Native Americans as a small child back to her family in his horse-drawn wagon. The young girl speaks only the Native American language, and identifies as an Indian, compounding the difficulties of their uneasy relationship and dangerous journey across the hostile, anarchic Texas territories of the post-Civil War era.  

An excellent, compassionate and unusual Western, well executed in movie form, although the book was even more powerful and moving, particularly in portraying the struggles of the young girl to cope with her latest traumas, and the insecurities of separation from the only family and way of life she still remembers.  Recommended.

Movie Review: Under the Tuscan Sun (2003). Amazon Prime.

I decided to take a little break today from the grim news outside, by posting reviews of a couple of movies that are just on my lists as enjoyable entertainment.  One is an oldie, the other a more recent release.

We saw Under the Tuscan Sun, a truly charming and heartwarming film, at a theater when it first came out in 2003.  It's a romantic and lovely film about a divorced American writer, who takes a trip as a tourist to Italy, and then buys a dilapidated Tuscan villa on impulse.  

 

In the course of the movie, she manages to rebuild her shattered life and her crumbling old house with the help of a new community of friends and family, while cooking some great meals, traveling through beautiful scenery, and having a brief love affair with a handsome Italian. 

 

It's based on a true story and book, but it was fictionalized somewhat for the film.  Recommended.

Movie Review: Munich: The Edge of War (2022). Netflix.

This is a taut, well-paced pre-World War II spy thriller movie, based on Robert Harris's novel Munich.  It's about Neville Chamberlain's Munich negotiations with Hitler over the fate of Czechoslovakia, and an attempt by two estranged friends from pre-war Oxford, one British and one German, to get critical information about Hitler's true expansionist intentions to Chamberlain before he signs the "Peace in Our Time" agreement with Hitler.  Jeremy Irons gives an excellent performance as Chamberlain.  Recommended.