November 2019

November was a pretty rockin’ month. Although I missed seeing films with my Constant Movie Companion while she was busy house-hunting, I caught a few decent flicks...had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner...and finally got my apartment officially inspected by the city after my kitchen was repainted. All in all, not a bad month. One of the highlights was discovering a video online of a 1972 TV play I’ve been chasing for quite a while: Neil Simon’s The Trouble With People, starring Gene Wilder, James Coco, Jack Weston, Valerie Harper, etc. I’d always hoped this would be a lost classic—it’s so obscure that it isn’t even listed on IMDB.com. Turns out the reason it’s so obscure is that it’s just not very good. What a letdown! Oh, well. TV: I started watching The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which is quite entertaining. I also binged a series called Undone. MUSIC: I listened to the soundtrack of Frozen II (more on that below), the new Jeff Lynne’s ELO album, and a bunch of singles from 2019. BOOKS: I finished listening to the audiobook of The Perfect Wife by JP Delaney and started The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell. I also bought a bunch of gag-cartoon compilation books via Amazon and eBay. Here are the movies I saw in November:

DOCTOR SLEEP (2019)—The sequel to The Shining comes nearly 40 years later. Danny Torrence, now grown up and played by Ewan McGregor, still has his magical gifts…but so do some bloodthirsty new antagonists, as well as one dynamic new child character. For nearly the entirety of the film, it’s riveting, with excellent plotting, characters and suspense. Only during the final showdown do things go somewhat off the rails, but mostly it’s a real gem of a thriller. Lookalikes have been cast in some of the pivotal roles to represent characters we met in the original Shining. The movie does a real service both to King’s sequel novel and to Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 scarefest. Compares very well to Stranger Things, Village of the Damned and numerous Stephen King stories (Firestarter, The Institute) in the canon of Magical Kids movies. (9)

LAST CHRISTMAS (2019)—Emilia Clarke (Me Before You) plays a klutzy, self-centered girl who find romance with a mysterious, handsome young man (Henry Golding), who inspires her to become a better person. Ah, but the young man has a secret, which the audience doesn’t learn until the end of the film. Although the movie has great comedic turns by Michelle Yeoh and co-screenwriter Emma Thompson, Clarke practically carries the whole film on her endless charm. Basically an ultra-formulaic Hallmark TV romance on the big screen, but entertaining enough. (8)

CHARLIE’S ANGELS (2019)—Director-screenwriter-costar Elizabeth Banks has fashioned a fun if extremely formulaic reboot of the TV phenomenon, sort of a distaff version of the big-screen Mission: Impossible series (itself a TV reboot). All the clichés are here, but it’s entertaining enough, with a good cast that includes both Kristen Stewart and Patrick Stewart. The plot is absolutely the least important part of this movie, which keeps the humor flowing at an acceptable pace. (8)

WAVES (2019)—This Is Us star Sterling K. Brown—probably my favorite actor on the series—is the head of an African-American family living in South Florida. My old stomping grounds! His son Tyler (Kelvin Harrison) is a very popular and handsome high-school wrestler who has it all: popular, intelligent, a great piano player, and in love with Alexis, a pretty Latina classmate. The first half of Waves recounts how Tyler’s life spirals out of control stemming from a shoulder injury and problems with his girlfriend. The second half then picks up the story of Tyler’s sister Emily (Taylor Russell), who becomes involved in her own biracial romance. The movie is like one long punch to your gut—it’s a searing and ultra-emotional drama that at one point made a fellow audience member cry out in total shock and surprise. That’s how effective the movie is at getting the viewer involved in the story. All of the acting is outstanding, and the direction is remarkable (although writer-director Trey Edward Shults does lean a bit too heavily on psychotropic special effects and film techniques, and Trent Reznor’s intense musical score is occasionally a little too full of itself). The movie is a little too long—I honestly thought it was over at around what turned out to be the halfway point—but it’s still relentlessly powerful and thought-provoking. (9)

MARRIAGE STORY (2019)—Extremely well acted tale of Adam Driver divorcing from Scarlett Johansson, fighting over their young son. But halfway through, I did feel as if I were watching a remake of Kramer vs. Kramer. Very long, but the acting is worth seeing. Nice musical score by Randy Newman. (8)

FROZEN II (2019)—The original animated feature, starring Idina “Adele Dazeem” Menzel, Kristen Bell and Joshua Gad, was a wonderful adventure with amazing songs and terrific animation. All of it is back for the sequel, but this time the story isn’t as compelling. In fact, I found it all a bit confusing. Elsa hears a mysterious voice calling to her from a forbidden forest and must travel there and uncover the truth about something from the past. There are some rock giants, a ghost horse made of ice (?), some tribes of people trapped in a weird forest, a super-cute fire lizard and not one shred of their story made much sense to me. But the songs are terrific, the special effects are beautiful, and Olaf the Snowman is always good for a dozen laughs or so. (8)

KNIVES OUT (2019)—I saw this hot on the heels of Frozen II, and while the two movies couldn’t be less similar, they are both a little confusing. Knives Out is a traditional whodunit, with a dead body, a house full of people who wanted the person dead, and a colorful detective who’s there to connect the thousands of dots. And there are more dots to connect in this movie than in any other mystery I’ve ever seen…it just goes on and on and on until I was frankly getting a bit impatient with it all. There are so many layers and double-crosses and nuances that it’s impossible to guess what happened. Still, the end is very satisfying. With Chris Evans, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Toni Collette, Don Johnson and Daniel Craig as Detective Benoit Blanc, whose Southern-fried accent here is quite a switch from his James Bond drawl. (8)