Movie: Belle

Belle: a British drama based upon the life of Dido Elizabeth Belle.  We first meet Dido in 1769 when she is approximately 8 years old.  In the opening scene, her father, Sir John Lindsay (Matthew Goode), a Navy captain, has come to retrieve her.  He, in turn, leaves Dido with his uncle and aunt, Lord Mansfield (Tom Wilkinson) and Lady Mansfield (Emily Watson).  Sir John is never seen again on screen.  Also, we never see Dido’s mother, Maria Bell, an African woman.  After introducing us to Dido and her new family, the movie jumps ahead ten years where we meet Dido, played superbly by Gugu Mbatha-Raw, as a young woman.  The movie was inspired by a portrait of Dido and her cousin, Elizabeth Murray (Sarah Gadon), and shows the girls living at Kenwood House as aristocrats in 18^th century England before slavery was outlawed.  The painting still exists.  It hangs at Scone Palace in Scotland.  Lord and Lady Mansfield do not have any children and raise the two cousins, who are about the same age, as their own.  Critical to the film is the fact that Lord Mansfield is not just an ordinary lord; he is the Chief Justice of England.  Further, he has pending before him the Zong case, whose primary issue is whether an insurance company must pay a ship owner/slaver for the death of slaves who drowned allegedly saving the ship.  While the legal story is a vital part of the movie, it is not the film’s central focus.  Rather, the film is a Jane Austen telling of aristocratic courtship rituals in 18^th century England.  The film plays on the fact that Elizabeth Murray has no inheritance but her cousin, Dido, does.  The acting is excellent and the script by Misan Sagay and Amma Asante holds your attention.  Asante is also the director.  Very little is actually known about life in the Mansfield home.  The historical record validates the fact that although non-whites were permitted to interact with guests after the meal, the dinner itself was segregated.  However, there is no “Butler tells all biography” regarding the cousins, their interactions with the granduncle and his wife, and their interactions with each other.  Historical dates are treated loosely in the film.  For example, the film presents the portrait painting of the cousins and the Zong case in the same time frame.  However, the Zong ruling, which was an important link to the eventual outlawing of slavery in England, was decided four years after the cousins’ portrait was completed.  When Lord Mansfield renders his decision in Zong, it has him commenting on slavery.  The quote used in the film, however, is from the Somersett case in which Lord Mansfield made clear his anti-slavery views.  If you research Belle, you will find a variety of factual inaccuracies, none of which interfered with my enjoyment of this excellent 105 minute movie.  I highly recommend it.    

 

Movie: Neighbors

Neighbors: a comedy.  The opening scenes introduce us to a  young couple, Mac and Kelly (Seth Rogan and Rose Byrne), who have just bought a house, and their baby daughter.  Shortly after they move into their new home, the house next door is sold to a college fraternity.  The setup is obvious and at times the script delivers.  The question is whether the film will work for you over its 96 minute duration.  If your type of comedy is visual slapstick, you’ll be okay with this film.  As for me, I found the characters one dimensional and the married couple’s behavior unrealistic.  Neighbors is a Netflixer and not worth the cost of a movie ticket.  I might have enjoyed the film more sans baby; you just don’t leave a baby home alone, and a lot occurs at the frat house while the baby is home alone.  This was a distraction as were the scenes of Mac at work.  They were merely fillers, which illustrates the thinness of the primary storyline.  I also found the chemistry among the fraternity brothers odd.  Zac Efron gives a good performance as Teddy, the president of the fraternity.  Dave Franco plays the second in command, Pete, and this character had potential.  Unfortunately, the film offers only hints of what could have been an interesting story about two seniors, one of whom matures through his college tenure.  A possible nominee for Worse Supporting Actress in a Comedy is Lisa Kudrow as a college dean.  The only other female with any substantive lines is Carla Gallo as Kelly’s divorced friend.  The scenes with Gallo are funny.  Hannibal Buress, who plays a police officer, also offers some humorous moments.  Otherwise, the movie, directed by Nicholas Stoller, is mostly male humor with drugs.

Movie: Particle Fever

.       Particle Fever:  a brilliant science documentary.  This is the story of the development in Switzerland of the Large Hadron Collider and the task of proving the existence of the Higgs particle.  The Higgs particle has been referred to as “the God particle” because it may be the initial building block for the universe.  In 1964, Peter Higgs postulated the existence of a boson, which is a type of subatomic particle.  It cost the European Organization for Nuclear Research billions to prove its existence.  The movie presents the cooperative partnership that developed between theoretical and experimental physicists in order to learn whether the Higgs particle existed.  While the story’s premise may sound less than exciting, the whole process is explained within a structure that allows a non-scientist to understand and appreciate the tale.  For the film to succeed, it had to offer an entertaining verbal and visual presentation of mathematical theories.  The director, Mark Levinson, a physicist by training, successfully manages to keep the audience involved while remaining honest to the science.  There is no dull moment in this 99 minute film.  Part of the film’s success lies in allowing the individual physicists to tell the story with appropriate background scenes.  By focusing on a select few physicists, you learn what is at stake while also learning various backstories.  Levinson co-produced the film with David Kaplan, another physicist, who appears on screen.  Presumably, the fact that both Kaplan and Levinson are themselves physicists helped to relax the various physicists, which allowed for a discussion of theories, such as how matter was created, without the usual insider jargon.  Special acknowledgment also needs to go to the photographer director Claudia Raschke-Robinson, the editor Walter Murch, and whoever did the animation.  The film covers a number of years including the House Republicans killing U.S. funding of the project.  As you may recall, the Collider was initially intended to be built in Texas.  As explained by American physicist, Monica Dunford, the five story structure was built to house two things, smash them together and see what happens.  The resulting collision at astonishing speeds would either validate or repudiate the theory postulated by Peter Higgs.  While sharing the joys of success, the film does not hide the failures that were encountered.  If you have any interest in science, this film is a must see. 

Movie: The Railway Man

The Railway Man: a British drama based upon a true story.  The movie, after an opening sequence that is partly repeated later, begins in 1980.  You are introduced to Eric Lomax, played excellently by Colin Firth.  Lomax enters a train compartment and meets a nurse name Patti, played by Nicole Kidman.  Patti brings Lomax out of the shell of a life he had been living.  They marry.  The movie then gets quite interesting.  First we see Lomax’s violent nightmares.  Because he won’t share the reason for his moodiness and nightmares, Patti seeks out one of Lomax’s former army buddies, played by Stellan Skarsgard.  We learn that Lomax’s WW II experience included being a member of the British troops who surrendered to the Japanese army in Singapore.  At this point, the story becomes fascinating.  The cause for Lomax’s post-traumatic symptoms becomes clear as we watch graphic scenes of the Japanese Army’s treatment of its prisoners, which includes water boarding.  We are then returned to 1982.  Lomax learns that the Japanese translator who was present when he was tortured is still alive and appears to be financially exploiting  what occurred during the building of a railroad alongside the River Kwai (the same forced labor tale told in The Bridge on the River Kwai).  Lomax travels to Thailand and confronts the translator.  Jeremy Irving plays the young Lomax, Tanroh Ishida plays the young translator, and Hiroyuki Sanada plays the translator in 1982.  Jonathan Teplitzky directed this 108 minute film based on the book written by Eric Lomax in 1995.  This is an excellent film about events too few people know about.

Movie: Transcendence

Transcendence: a slow moving science fiction film.  I believe this is the first time I’ve ever combined the words “slow moving” and “science fiction” in the same sentence.  While there are positive aspects to this  119 minute movie, it is long 119 minutes.  The film has an excellent cast, including Johnny Depp as the lead character, Will Caster.  However, for the first time ever, Depp’s performance bored me.   While his Tonto can be criticized on many counts, boredom is not among them.  At its foundation, Transcendence has an intriguing premise: artificial intelligence using the brain of a single individual.  The opening sequence, which held my interest, shows Caster giving a Steve Job type presentation about where his research is heading.   As he is leaving the auditorium, he is shot but not killed.  For storyline convenience, the bullet, which is laced with radiation, guarantees Caster’s death over time.  The assassination is part of an organized eradication of people involved with artificial intelligence.  From this initial premise, which makes scientists the bad guys, the story winds through a series of implausible events that are told with too much verbiage and too little action.  Intertwined with the sci-fi/ thriller threads, the movie also tells a love story between Caster and his scientist wife, Evelyn, played by Rebecca Hall.  While Caster and Evelyn’s love for each other is eternal, there is no comparable chemistry between Depp and Hall and the connection falls flat.  Morgan Freeman appears briefly as a colleague of Caster but his role is very limited.  Also underused is Paul Bettany who plays Caster’s neurobiologist partner.  Roger Ebert often talked about the need for a film to be believable within its defined framework.  Transcendence falls far short of Ebert’s test.  This failure combined with the film’s painfully slow pace leads me to say for the first time ever about a Johnny Depp movie: it is not worth seeing.  The script, written by Jack Paglen, raises some fundamental issues about the potential power of machines and it is easy to understand what attracted Depp to the movie.  Unfortunately, the director, Wally Pfister, fails to overcome the script’s defects.  I hope Paglen and Pfister do not work together again.  

Movie: Bethehem

Bethlehem: a contemporary Israeli movie.  The primary characters are an Israeli secret service officer and a Palestinian teenage informant.  In 2013, the movie was given an Ophir for Best Film.  The Ophir is the Israeli Academy of Film and Television’s equivalent of an Oscar.  In its 99 minutes, this movie offers a case study as to why there has been no peace in the West Bank.  In this Cain and Abel tale, the political and social difficulties existing in the West Bank are starkly presented.  Sanfur (Shadi Mar’i) is a 17 year old living with his parents in Bethlehem.  His brother, Ibrahim, is a Palestinian militant responsible for the death of Israelis.  Razi (Tsahi Halevy) is a married Israeli secret service officer working for an antiterrorism unit and who has gotten Sanfur to assist him in tracking terrorists.  The film gives different reasons as to why Sanfur chose to cooperate with Razi.  You may view the Sanfur character as complex or as just a confused teenager living in a violent society.  Ibrahim’s mission is simple - to kill Israelis - and while Ibrahim’s story is essential to the movie, the focus is on Sanfur and Razi.  Bethlehem is written by Ali Waked, an Israeli Arab, and Yuval Adler, who also directed this excellent film.  The violence of the place and times are shown primarily through Sanfur’s interactions with his family, friends and society.  The film shows the mistrust many Israelis have for Palestinians as well as the mistrust that lies within the Palestinian community itself.  Through the presence of the individual in Ibrahim’s Cell No. 2, the movie also makes the point that Bedouins are viewed as second class citizens within the Palestinian community.  Hiham Omari, as the Bedouin Badawi, gives a powerful performance.  This film appears to be an honest presentation of what is currently happening in the West Bank.  Subtitled. 

Movie: The Great Budapest Hotel

The Grand Budapest Hotel: a Wes Anderson film.  I usually don’t lead with the name of the director but Anderson has become the leading off-beat comedy film director and, with The Grand Budapest Hotel, he hits a home run.  The script, which Anderson co-authored, was inspired by the writings of Stefan Zweig, an Austrian Jew from the 1930’s who may have been the most widely read German author of his time.  This zany tale takes place at the dawn of WW II in a fictitious Eastern European country located somewhere between Germany and Russia.  The movie was actually filmed in Gorlitz, Germany.  The lead character, M. Gustave, played marvelously by Ralph Fiennes, is the concierge and ruler of the Hotel.  The movie opens in 1985 and the  country is under communist rule.  An elderly writer, played by Tom Wilkinson,  is recalling his visit to the Hotel in 1968 and his introduction to the Hotel’s owner, a Mr. Moustafa, played by F. Murray Abraham.   Moustafa then proceeds to tell the then young writer, played by Jude Law, how he came to own the Hotel.  The Hotel is the centerpiece of the story and the timeline morphs to the 1930’s where we meet Gustave and a newly hired lobby boy called Zero (Tony Revolori), who is the young Moustafa.  Then the fun begins in earnest.  The Gustave character reminded me of Max Bialystock of The Producers - both romance older women and are financially rewarded.  Tilda Swinton plays Madame D, who is 84.  Madame D does not want to leave the Hotel because she has a premonition she will die.  And, off screen, she does die; Zero shows Gustave the newspaper article about her death.  Gustave and Zero head off to Madame D’s home where they meet her family, who are reminiscent of Marx Brothers characters with Adrien Brody playing Madame D’s son and Willem Dafoe playing the family hit man.  There are also three bizarre sisters.  As the inheritance story unfolds, the totalitarianism of the era presents itself with Harvey Keitel appearing as Ludwig and various prisoners and other characters played by Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Owen Wilson and Jeff Goldblum.  Unlike many movies with star ridden casts, everyone stays in character.  The 100 minute film moves at a brisk pace and you never know what oddity will happen next.  There is an undercurrent in the film as to the reality that will befall the region where the Hotel is located, however, it is presented with irony and charm and plain old fun.