October 2017

It was a mostly peaceful month. Cindy and I started tutoring again on Halloween. BOOKS: I finished A Stranger in the House by Shari Lapina, the second thriller of hers I’ve read this year (following The Couple Next Door). I was also delighted to discover that a new Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey collection had been published. MUSIC: I have been grading the entire Kinks discography. This was also the month that I discovered the YouNow website, making friends with some of the musicians who perform there. Here are the movies I saw in October:

AMERICAN MADE (2017)—Tom Cruise plays pilot Barry Seal in this biopic about the infamous Nicaraguan Contras drug smuggling cartel in the 1980s. It’s an exciting and informative true-life drama about greed and corruption. Cruise is typically winning and handsome. You’ll learn a lot about the Iran-Contra affair, but it’s always entertaining. (8)

KINGSMAN: THE GOLDEN CIRCLE (2017)—The 2014 action-comedy spy spoof Kingsman: The Secret Service gets a strong sequel. Colin Firth—seemingly killed off in the original—is miraculously resurrected and reunited with co-star Taron Egerton; many cameos (including Elton John), help make this second installment of the franchise great fun. I’m looking forward to the “threequel”! (9)

THE FLORIDA PROJECT (2017)—Director Sean Baker (Tangerine) ups the ante with his follow-up film by working with a somewhat larger budget—but that much larger. Instagram star Bria Vinaite plays a prostitute and mother of a young girl (Brooklynn Prince) who are living in a run-down motel in Orlando; the film follows their day-to-day life in a series of mini vignettes. It doesn’t feature a traditional plot—it’s more of a “slice of life” presentation. The entire cast is first-rate, including Willem Dafoe as the motel manager who has to deal with everything from bedbugs and perverts to late-paying customers and a group of rambunctious kids. (8)

THE MOUNTAIN BETWEEN US (2017)—Charles Martin’s 2011 survival novel has been adapted into an exciting film starring Idris Elba and Kate Winslet as passengers of a small plane that crash-lands into a snowy mountain wilderness and must survive through extremely harsh weather conditions. The movie clicks on virtually every level—at least until the interminable final act. Two points subtracted because of the last 15-20 minutes, which make the film go from great to second rate. (8)

THE MEYEROWITZ STORIES (NEW AND SELECTED) (2017)—A marvelous cast led by Dustin Hoffman, Ben Stiller and Adam Sandler are short-changed in this plodding, overlong family drama that never quite gels. The excellent performances are wasted in director Noah Baumbach’s aimless story of three adult siblings who bicker, and sometimes even come to blows, among themselves while dealing with their aging, eccentric father (Hoffman). There are a few excellent scenes, but the movie just goes nowhere. Piano score by Randy Newman. (5)

MARSHALL (2017)—The early career of civil-rights champion Thurgood Marshall is explored in this courtroom drama that focuses on an early case involving a black man unjustly accused of rape in the 1960s. The movie is above average but rarely exceptional; it’s like a really good TV movie. There are a few amateurish touches, but its heart is in the right place. I’d like to see a movie about how Marshall became the first African-American Supreme Court Justice...or a case where Marshall actually gets to testify (in this particular courtroom case, the racist judge mutes him so he doesn’t really have a lot to do). (8)

SUBURBICON (2017)—Writer-directors Joel and Ethan Coen originally wrote their script for Suburbicon in 1986; George Clooney has championed its production many years later…and has directed a below-average film of it. What a waste of time! The usually reliable Matt Damon stars in this crime drama about murder and the Mafia. About a third of the film involves a barely connected story involving how racism destroys the lives of Damon’s black neighbors. Violent and not very stylish. (5)

WONDERSTRUCK (2017)—Parallel stories track two different deaf children’s cross-country odysseys as they hunt for their respective parents in different timelines. Most of the time, it’s relatively engrossing, but it’s occasionally show, about 20 minutes too long and complicated by lapses of logic. (There was absolutely no reason to make the main kid deaf except to make the movie longer by having too many people write long notes to him.) Curiously, as with Suburbicon, actress Julianne Moore is cast in a dual role. (7)

September 2017

September’s highlights included my trip to San Jose to see the South Bay Musical Theatre production of The Bridges of Madison County; a trip to the doctor to get my hand X-rayed because of some pain in my pinky finger (still no prognosis); and assembling shelves in my bathroom and kitchen. TV: The new season is in full swing; I have cycled Seth MacFarlane’s Star Trek tribute The Orville into my viewing regimen, which already includes Modern Family, The Big Bang Theory, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Good Place, The Mindy Project, South Park, This Is Us, The Simpsons, The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and Great News. (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Stranger Things and Mom premiere over the next couple of months.) BOOKS: I read Gilly McMillan’s What She Knew and Madeleine L'Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. MUSIC: Listened to the cast album recording of The Bridges of Madison County and Shania Twain’s new CD, Now.
Here are the movies I saw in September:

INGRID GOES WEST (2017)—Aubrey Plaza is a troubled soul with an obsessive personality disorder. She has gotten into trouble by stalking a woman in the past, and now she’s desperately trying to befriend an L.A.-based Instagram celebrity. This Single White Female-type saga is alterantely dramatic and hilarious; Plaza is totally believable and often chilling. (9)

IT (2017)—Half of Stephen King’s bloated 1986 horror novel arrives on the big screen after TV’s hit Stranger Things—which strongly recalls the essence of King—has become a major hit on Netflix. (The young actor Finn Wolfhard of Stranger Things is on hand to further underscore the similarity of the two stories.) This trimmed-down version of the King story works reasonably well, but the boys drop so many “f-bombs” that it becomes distracting. Reasonably entertaining, but not King’s best plot. (7)

MOTHER! (2017)—Director Darren Aronofsky scored with two disturbing dramas, Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan, so hopes were high that this Jennifer Lawrence movie would be another classic. Alas, this home invasion-style thriller gets more and preposterous and surreal as it goes on—it’s a Biblical allegory that didn’t really make a great deal of sense. Loud, garish and pointless. (4)

BRAD’S STATUS (2017)—I like Ben Stiller. His old TV sketch-comedy series was pure genius, and I have also enjoy the occasional movie he stars in (Meet the Parents, There’s Something About Mary). So it’s discouraging that the vast majority of his movies are terrible. How wonderful it is, then, that Brad’s Status is the rare Stiller movie that knocks it out of the ballpark. Stiller is Brad, a fortysomething dad who’s preparing to send his son to college. Their journey to check out a variety of campuses is a thought-provoking odyssey that lays out Brad’s various self-esteem and professional jealousy issues—he’s even envious of his own son. This is a comedy/drama that presses all of the right buttons. Co-stars Michael Sheen, Jenna Fischer and Luke Wilson are used minimally, but they’re very well cast. (9)

BATTLE OF THE SEXES (2017)—This biopic tells the story of the 1973 tennis match between arrogant Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell) and Billie Jean King (Emma Stone), and all of the drama leading up to the match. I remember the original saga, but this film does a good job of providing a lot of details I wasn’t familiar with. It’s watchable and reasonably well done, although many of the side characters are one-dimensional—Billie Jean’s manager (Sarah Silverman) is just there to kvetch and smoke cigarettes; Riggs’ crony (Fred Armisen) is just there to feed him pills; and plenty of other characters appear just to do their one single thing. One clip of the real-life Howard Cosell has been electronically manipulated to show him interviewing one of the actors in the film, which was almost worth the price of admission. Lots of TV comedians appear—Silverman, Armisen and Chris Parnell were all former cast members of Saturday Night Live; Wallace Langham was on The Larry Sanders Show; Tom Kenney was on Mr. Show With Bob and David, and so on. Stone, who’s a little too pretty to play Billie Jean, is typically excellent; her lesbian love affair with Marilyn Barnett (Andrea Riseborough) is the heart and soul of the movie. (8)

CASS TIMBERLANE (1947)—This was my one movie from the vaults this month. An adaptation of the Sinclair Lewis novel, Spencer Tracy is the title character, a judge, whose affair with a much younger woman (Lana Turner) sends him on an emotionally charged journey. Excellent comedy-drama. (9)

August 2017

I spent August assembling the September issue of Speedboat. I was pleased by how it came out. Part of the content was based on a trip I took at the beginning of the month to Indiana to report on a boat race. After the race, I visited my friend Merf in Wisconsin. This was the month I started to feel a pain in my left hand, which is still there—I am concerned that it might be arthritis or tendonitis. I also listed a bunch of stuff on eBay and sold some of it. Meanwhile, Cindy and I saw Baby Driver (her first time, my second) at Century City, while Emma and her friend saw Annabelle. BOOKS: I listened to the audio CD of Behind Closed Doors by Kathryn Croft and started the short-story collection Don’t Read Alone by Paul Finch. TV: I have been enjoying reruns of 30 Rock and The Andy Griffith Show during meal times; I also saw a couple of episodes of Room 104.  MUSIC: I drilled several Broadway show-tune albums, including Little Me, Something Rotten and Dear Evan Hansen; the latter score was particularly memorable.

Here are the movies I saw in August:

CIMARRON (1960)—I settled on this Western (it’s one year older than I am) because of Austrian co-star Maria Schell, who was so charming in a great Western I screened last month called The Hanging Tree (from 1959). In this adaptation of Edna Ferber’s 1929 novel, she is paired with Glenn Ford, whom she has recently wed. He plucks her from her well-to-do Kansas City home during the late 1800s to settle in the Oklahoma Territory. It’s a long trip, and once they get there, it’s quite rugged. They make friends, experience various hazards, encounter some truly mean people and are generally challenged by a number of life-altering events. They have a son, Cimarron, who grows up and disappoints his mom by falling in love with a Native American woman. It’s a fun flick, satisfactory soapy and exciting, with some uncanny special effects. Well acted. (9)

THE CAT AND THE CANARY (1939)—Like the previous movie, this is a remake of an earlier screen effort. This one stars Bob Hope in what has become a very cliched story about a group of people who gather in an old house for the reading of a will…and then murder and frightful things start happening. But with Bob Hope in the lead, it’s really more of a comedy than a chiller, although there are tense moments throughout. Paulette Goddard is the love interest. Mildly entertaining; Hope has a fair amount of good one-liners. (7)

TEN LITTLE INDIANS (1965)—Yet another remake, this time of Agatha Christie’s 1939 novel And Then There Were None. Like the previous movie, it’s another story about a group of people who come together in a mysterious house where people start getting murdered. I’d always been curious about it, as it’s been filmed numerous times, and it’s supposed to be one of Christie’s best stories. Well…I can’t say I disliked it, but I doubt I will remember much about it in the foreseeable future. (7)

MY FAVORITE WIFE (1940)—Merf selected this screwball comedy for screening during my visit to Madison, WI. The only problem is that I’m not a fan of screwball comedies. Cary Grant is a guy whose first wife has been declared legally dead, so he marries another woman. Then the first wife reappears on the scene. The movie’s big joke is that Grant is too nervous to tell the news to his new bride, so he makes up 10 million excuses to avoid the subject. Forgettable fluff. (6)

DESK SET (1957)—Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, arguably the most reliable screen couple in all history, are paired up as an efficiency expert and a reference librarian. He’s gathering information that may lead to the replacement of Hepburn’s team by a huge computer. The movie is based on a stage play, and looks every bit of it. The story is merely passable, but Tracy and Hepburn are always fun to watch, no matter what they’re in. (8)

WIND RIVER (2017)—This was the revelation of the month, by a mile. It’s a chilly murder mystery that recalls Fargo, only without the dark humor of that film. Director Taylor Sheridan (writer of last year’s Hell or High Water) pairs wolf tracker Jeremy Renner with FBI operative Elizabeth Olsen, who are trying to solve the murder of a local Wyoming woman. Intense, chilling and quite suspenseful! (10)

LOGAN LUCKY (2017)—Great reviews brought me to this heist caper, which mostly served to remind me that I’m not crazy about heist capers. This one gets by completely on the charm of stars Channing Tatum and (especially) Daniel Craig as hillbillies trying to steal concession money from a race car event. Hilary Swank is outstanding in a small role, but Seth MacFarlane turns in an embarrassing performance as a race car driver with a phony-baloney Cockney accent. The entire heist plot is beyond implausible, and the main story gets bogged down by too many characters and subplots. (7)

SO BIG (1953)—Inspired by Cimarron, another movie based on an Edna Ferber novel, I approached this one hoping to be seduced by a similar story about a strong woman making her way in the late 1800s. (It, too, is a remake of an earlier film.) Jane Wyman is at a boarding school when her father dies, leaving her penniless. She gets a job as a schoolteacher, gets married to a farmer, and they have a son (nicknamed So Big). Then her husband dies, leaving her to bring in the crops by herself. There are some strong thematic similarities to Cimarron—Mom gets let down by her son’s choices—and I enjoyed it almost as much. (8)