ArmenPandolaITSJUSTAMOVIECOM Reviews

Greyzone (2018)

Not your usual cop show

[9/10 · 16 March 2024]

In Greyzone, police must make difficult decisions and sometimes they get it wrong. One of the themes is how they use people, many of them victims, to get the results the police want.

The scripts are well written. The acting is excellent. The directing is a little off. Too many scenes go on and on in an attempt to rachet up the suspense 🤐 But often it is just annoying.

There are villains you come to understand if not admire and heroes you come to reassess.

Overall, it does an excellent job.

And why is it that all these Danes and Swedes speak excellent English? Why can't America start teaching foreign languages in preschool?

Maestro (2023)

Or How to Conduct a One Note Movie

[5/10 · 23 December 2023]

MAESTRO Or How to Conduct a One Note Movie

Leonard Bernstein was one of the great musical talents of the 20th century. Like many people of a certain age, I first learned his name and heard his music when I saw the film, "West Side Story." Then, I began watching the 'Young People Concerts' and discovered classical music. Bernstein never talked down to us, his audience. He made classical music approachable and, most importantly, exciting. Whenever I could, I listened to or watched his concerts and bought his records.

So, I looked forward to a film biography of him. How did this son of a toupee maker become one of the most admired conductors, composers, teachers and performers of our time? What qualities did he have that made his music so exciting, so life-enhancing. He seemed to conquer every medium he touched. The amazing film score for "On the Waterfront", the hit musical theater shows, TV shows, albums, classical compositions - it was all too much for one person.

Bradley Cooper's "Maestro" is not interested in any of these questions. Instead, it is devoted, entirely, to his personal life with a few mentions of his professional successes and one gaudy, Oscar-hopeful scene when Lenny (the movie character) conducts Mahler.

If a person knew nothing of Bernstein's life and saw this movie, he would wonder what all the hoopla is about.

The movie has no context - none. It begins with an aged Bernstein playing the piano before a film crew and then suddenly jumps back in time (and into black and white - a real cliché). The b/w is supposed to tell you the time period - long ago. Lenny gets a phone call and goes berserk with joy while his male bed companion goes on sleeping. Soon, we are sleeping too.

I knew that Bernstein was married and that he was bi-sexual, but I never read gossip and so had no idea and no interest in his private life. "Maestro" is about that private life and his relationship with his wife, Felicia Montealegro (Carry Mulligan). While a couple of other characters have a few moments of screen time, none are 'characters,' but merely background. "Maestro" is a pas de deux.

The movie jumps around without any identifiable purpose. Nothing about his music is explored or his beliefs. His early commitment to the state of Israel, his controversial political beliefs, his legacy of creating institutions for musical study - not even his incredible concert at the site of the then- recently fallen Berlin Wall - nothing is explored in this movie but Lenny and his penchant for young men and the effect that has on his marriage.

For the first half of the movie, there is no drama, no comedy - nothing. It's as if Andy Wharhol filmed his life in jump cuts. Then the first conflict in the movie is his wife telling Lenny that he is becoming careless and his bi-sexuality is becoming too public. This is strange since early on, presumably in the late 1940s, we see Lenny on a busy New York street embracing and kissing on the lips a male lover. Lenny is never inhibited about his desires. So why the sudden concern?

Again, no context. Bernstein avoided all the terrible prejudices against homosexuals during his time by marrying and having children. Yes, he loved Felicia and his children, but it was convenient that he did marry since he probably would never have headed a major orchestra if he had not. No mention of any of this.

So the movie jumps along. It ends with his marriage falling apart because of his lack of discretion (but he never had discretion so why it suddenly matters is unexplored), then coming back together when Felicia is diagnosed with breast cancer that has spread to her lungs. Lenny returns to be with her during her final months. After her death, he announces that he must have total freedom if he is to fulfill his artistic goals and the next scenes show his attachment to a young male student, snorting cocaine and dancing wildly in a disco - as if that is what freedom is.

I am sorry for Bernstein's legacy. We are the stories we tell about ourselves. Future generations will watch this movie and may think that this was his life. But what we do in bed does not define us. Not even our marriages define us. We define ourselves by all that we do and Leonard Bernstein did more for music in the 20th century than any other American - and telling that story would have been a great movie.

The Flight of the Phoenix (1965)

The best survival movie ever made

[9/10 · 21 August 2023]

Great story, great cast, great director, great movie. One of Jimmy Stewart's best performances and the best by most actors in the cast which is excellent. Peter Finch, Ernest Borgnine, Richard Attenborough, Dan Duryea, Ian Bannen...Ignored by most critics, this is one of the best adventure movies ever made. An international cast makes their characters more than stereotypes. Aldridge is right at home with this story and cast. He knows how to create comraderie and how men like this react to disaster.

And as an added bonus is an incredible cameo performance by Barrie Chase that I guarantee you will not forget.

Fatale (II) (2020)

A real fatal attraction

[7/10 · 6 August 2023]

In Fatale, Hillary Swank plays a real woman on a mission. Excellent characters and real twists and turns - the movie could have been a lot better with just a few revisions and better direction. For a realistic thriller, the violence was much too Jason Bourneish - not really viable. Like when an intruder gets hit in the head twice with a heavy golf club and continues to run away.

The acting is uniformly excellent.

The end was a problem - and the constant background noise of trying to implant a 'meaning' in all this by references to Black men getting arrested for crimes they didn't commit.

This movie came very close to being a lot better - it's worth watching.

The Diplomat (II) (2023– )

THE DIPLOMAT IS ANYTHING BUT

[7/10 · 29 April 2023]

THE DIPLOMAT

by armen pandora

The title of Netflix's new series is ironic, The Diplomat. Starring the incredible Kerri Russell as the title character who is anything but 'diplomatic' in the usual sense of the word, The Diplomat tries to be that unusual blend of thriller, comedy and witty drama - you know, the kind of thing that Alfred Hitchcock did twice a year.

Co-starring the equally incredible Rufus Sewell as her fellow diplomat/ husband, and including a cast of A-list British TV vets, The Diplomat strives to make you think as you watch - how smart these people are!

And just to show you that they aren't too smart, too high-brow, its creator, Debora Cahn ( a West Wing alumnae who imitates the Sorkinesque banter style) and her fellow writers throw in references to blow jobs for a husband's good deeds and every five minutes references to peeing.

The plot has a vague similarity to today's headlines: an aging president played by Better Call Saul's kookaboo brother, Michael McKean (it's becoming his specialty) has a female VP he is soon going to dump because of some vague scandal and is looking for a replacement, who is not a politician and won't be looking to run after her job is done. Yeah, right. Like a President doesn't want to hand-pick a successor.

The plot involves lots of twists and turns about who bombed a British aircraft carrier and what should be done about it. To test if Russell can possibly handle the VP job, she is named Ambassador to the Court of St. James - one of the highest-profile diplomatic postings in the world. Reluctantly, she goes there - with her husband.

The series tries to make the politicians all so 'human' (like we need convincing) while the civil servants - the diplomats and their ilk, CIA station heads, chiefs of staff, etc, are all striving hard to save the world from the crazy politicians.

The joker in the pack is that Russell wants to divorce Sewell, but she can't be VP if she does. They have a 'she loves to hate him' relationship that is as stable as an NBA lead with five minutes left in the game.

Russell and Sewell make a great match and are like a modern Tracy and Hepburn, but there's no Garson Kanin/ Ruth Gordon writing team to make the center-court match as good as it should be. The music is the giveaway - a kind of slow beat that provides constant auditory winks at all the shenanigans - and that's what the plot consists of mostly, shenanigans which is, as Webster defines the word, 'secret or dishonest activity or maneuvering.' It's fun to watch at times, but could be so much more.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994)

A race to the bottom

[2/10 · 29 November 2022]

It is difficult to say which is the worse part of this movie; The script is pure junk. Overwritten and lacking the sense God gave a poodle.

The acting is so horrible that Tom Hulce actually shines out as the best one in this cask of syrupy overindulgence.

The directing is worse than the acting.

The music is so over the top and intrusive that it is almost an opera, one with a lousy score.

The sets are funny, no other word fits so well.

And it is also long.

One word to describe this mess is not enough.

Silly, ridiculous, dumb, loud, boring, crazy, foolish, lavish, numbing, stupid, tedious, outlandish...

The Guilty (2021)

Maybe The Most Annoying Movie I Have Ever Seen

[1/10 · 12 September 2022]

Can you overact and never be seen? Yes. This is a movie that happens almost exclusively in audio - 1 9-1-1 operator who is losing his mind takes a call from a distraught woman who is losing her mind and says she has been abducted. It is impossible to watch and listen to this 2 hour scream without begging to be put out of your misery by ending it.

And the big reveal is telegraphed from minute one - you have to be losing your own mind not to see it coming. Have Xanax available. And take deep breathes. And don't feel compelled to watch until the bitter end. You know the end.

And it's not good. The original must have been better since why would they import it to make it this bad? Yes, made during the lockdown - wear a mask while you watch! This movie is unhealthy.

Elvis (2022)

Elvis - The Same Ole Song and Dance.

[5/10 · 4 September 2022]

Somehow Baz Luhrmann thinks that Elvis was a civil rights icon because he was influenced by the music created by African-Americans. Baz, every major popular musician was influenced by that music. Hanks is Hanks, playing the scummy Col. Parker. We meet him fully formed as a con artist - he has no back story. Other than Butler and Hanks, every other actor is totally wasted since their characters are nothing more than vehicles to drive the story to where Baz wants it to go - and that is, the same ole song and dance. Elvis is ruined but drugs and fame. In this version, it's because Parker refuses to let him be more than a money machine. Why Elvis allows this to happen and to continue to happen is never dealt with. Yes, Butler is a great Elvis - but it's not like we can't see the original whenever we want to. Just go to youtube. Why did they make this movie? It might have been a great non-musical if it were just about Parker.

Elsa & Fred (2014)

It coulda been a contender

[4/10 · 4 September 2022]

How can you waste fine performances by two of the best actors of our time? Put them in a choppy movie that makes little sense and even less fun. You can guess everything that happens within 5 minutes.

Shirley MacLaine is the kook. You know this - it's why she was cast. Chistopher Plummer is in a shell and she has to penetrate it to get him to return to life after the death of his wife. But he hated his wife. Doesn't matter - he has to be in a shell so she can crack it open with her kookiness.

All of the other actors are totally wasted in roles that have no depth and no chance of being anything more than vehicles to get the plot to the point where what the writers want to happen, happens. This screenplay has 'written by committee' all over it. And it makes no sense. It is poorly edited. The end is exactly how you imagined it will be and is not very imaginative. A total waste of time. Sad because both leads are so great.

Destination Wedding (2018)

Better than you think -

[8/10 · 4 September 2022]

Ryder and Reeves finally make a movie together that is worth watching. And they are excellent in it. This is the Odd Couple meets the Odd Movie - two people come together in a movie in which they and they alone have speaking parts. Well written and directed, the movie is as quirky as the characters. Watch it - it deserves a lot better than its avg 6 - I gave it a 8 and actually among RomComs it is a 9. My only complaint is that the end is a little too pat - but that's small potatoes. If you like witty dialogue, very good acting, simple but effective direction and lovely scenery, this is your cup of tea.

The Undeclared War (2022)

10 reasons to watch this British drama about Cyberwar

[9/10 · 22 August 2022]

THE UNDECLARED WAR 10 reasons to watch this bingeable series by armen pandola

The title of this British TV 6-episode series, streaming on Peacock, refers to the cyberwar being waged by Russia against the West, and, in particular, Great Britain. But this is no polemic drama in which the good guys are always Americans or their nearest relatives, the Brits, and the bad guys are always Putin or, at least, Russian.

The Undeclared War follows a team of top analysts with GCHQ (the United Kingdom's version of the USA's National Security Agency) who are trying to prevent Russian social media tweets and news stories from destabilizing the country just before the 2024 elections.

Here are ten reasons to give it a watch:

10. Seamlessly woven into the drama is the method used by Russia to create fake social media accounts and use them to create chaos in Great Britain. It's really not that hard to do. If you know what you are doing and what you want to accomplish.

9. While the framework of the drama is this BIG story, the stories of the people who are the footsoldiers and generals of this war provide the emotional base upon which all good dramas - and comedies for that matter - are based.

8. Simon Peeg. Peeg is at the center of two of the biggest modern movie franchises - Star Trek and Mission Impossible. Amidst all those warp speed treks and almost impossible to accomplish feats of fantastic actions, you may have missed what a fine actor Peeg is. Here, he plays the lead analyst who is under pressure to stop the attacks and, also, retaliate.

7. It's British. I don't know how or why but the Brits just know how to do shows like this - political but not polemical, dramatic but not morose, topical but not typical. From Yes, Minister to A House of Cards (remember this is the British original, 1000x better than the American show of the same name) to A Very British Coup, the Brits know how to do contemporary political drama.

6. Hannah Khalique-Brown. Yes, you never heard of her, but you will. She plays Saara Parvin who wins an internship at GCHQ, but is conflicted on taking this job with the UK's prime spy agency since they do a lot of spying on Saara and her fellow Muslims. Her personal life ends up being almost as complicated as her professional one.

5. Maisie Richardson-Sellers. She plays an American analyst with NSA temporarily on loan to the GCHQ. Of course, she's British - yes, if I hadn't read that, I wouldn't have known. Her accent is perfect. More importantly, she acts and speaks with the authority that a NSA spy would have in dealing with the very much less formidable British equivalent. If you have never seen her before in her short career - look out!

4. The writing. Declan Lawn, Adam Patterson and Amelia Spencer have very few writing credits, but this series is going to change that. In one scene, Marina Yeselova (Tinatin Dalakishvili) has been sent to London as a TV journalist for the Russian TV News channel. She is sent to cover a demonstration where a riot breaks out and she suspects that the Russians had planned the riot. She confronts her editor who readily admits that they did. Look, her editor says, we are here to make people doubt the truth of what the other news shows are saying and what the politicians are saying. What good will that do? She asks. Make people think everything they are told is a lie and then - the biggest liar wins.

3. The director. Peter Kosminsky directed White Oleander 30 years ago. Since then, he hasn't worked much - a few TV movies and then there was the Wolf Hall series in 2015 and The State series in 2017 and that's it. He deserves to work more. He is credited with co-writing the first episode, also. One of the most imaginative things that he and the other writers have done is to make the search for the implanted malware a real experience - so we see Saara searching through an eerie landscape for something like a bomb as the visual equivalent of searching through code for the malware that is ready to explode and cause panic.

2. The ensemble. Again, with the Brits, it's all about having fine acting from the leads right down to the 'chorus' - the actors who play the many roles required in a sprawling drama of this kind. Mark Rylance shows up and for once has the perfect part for him - a low-key, long-time employee of GCHQ who doesn't like too many people and the feeling is mutual. Every actor and actress is pitch-perfect in portraying a world where anxiety is the sixth sense.

1. Trump is never mentioned.

Nope (2022)

Why do critics love this dud?

[1/10 · 25 July 2022]

A dumb story, a couple of interesting characters and no fun. There is so much wrong with this movie, you wonder how it got made. The writing would not get one star on any of the screenwriting sites. So why do critics love it? You tell me.

Black Sunday (1977)

One of the best thrillers

[9/10 · 10 February 2022]

First, you have an excellent book by a young Thomas Harris before he invented that great gourmand, Hannibal Letter. Add a great director, John Frankenheimer at the top of his game. Music? How about John Williams. Then the cast, Bruce Dern, Martha Keller, Robert Shaw, Fritz Weaver. This is one of the fastest 2 hours you will ever spend watching a movie.

The Real Charlie Chaplin (2021)

Chaplin, Very funny, very sad

[9/10 · 17 November 2021]

Charles Chaplin was the greatest comic actor, writer, producer and director of his time - from the infancy of film to the collapse of the studio system in the 1950s. For a long period, he was the most famous person on earth. His creation, The Tramp, was so flexible that he could find himself in a factory, a circus, a boxing ring, a gold rush - the list is endless. And it never didn't work. Wherever the Tramp went, he found himself immersed in the business of being human. This documentary wants us to know the man behind the Tramp facade. In many ways, they were very similar. Chaplin came from dire poverty in the hovels of late Victorian London. In many respects, he never left there. His politics were never very precise except that he was always for the underdog, for the Tramp. During the shameful period of American history when the FBI spied on every prominent person (probably still do) and tried to ruin the careers of all those who were sympathetic to working people (again, they probably still do) Chaplin was forced to leave the US and prevented from returning. He never fully recovered from the shock.

The Rossellinis (2020)

A Typical Family of Beautiful, Troubled, Intro, extroverts.

[8/10 · 17 November 2021]

THE ROSSELLINIS

In 1945, Roberto Rossellini directed Open City, a movie about the Nazi occupation of Rome during World War II. No one had ever seen a movie like it - many thought it was a documentary. It started the neo-realism movement in film and influenced almost all of the new breed of filmmakers who came to prominence in the 60s and 70s. This film examines not the movies, but the man and his family. Married with children, Roberto's meeting with famous Hollywood actress, Ingrid Bergman, changed both of their lives irretrievably. They both left spouses to live with each other, causing a worldwide scandal. The family that emerged was truly international. This film is made by Alessandro Rossellini, son of the famous director's son, Renzo, and an African-American dancer, Katherine. Alessandro made the film as a kind of family therapy, all suffering from what he calls 'Rossellini-itis,' a disease causing various ailments such as high expectations and constant media scrutiny. Emerging as the modern matriarch is Isabella Rossellini, the famous actress/model. While it is not clear what Alessandro hopes to accomplish in this film, he does show us a modern, international family that has dealt with many of the problems most modern families have to deal with, for example, addiction and wildly different economic fortunes.

Falling (I) (2020)

Officially the worse movie I have ever seen.

[1/10 · 12 August 2021]

Too sad to go through all the idiotic plot maneuvers and terribly written characters. The only thing worse than the writing is the directing.

Soapdish (1991)

Unappreciated gem

[9/10 · 13 May 2021]

There is so much that is great in this movie... Kevin Kline doing The Death of a Salesman in a Florida dinner theater for the elderly. Daytime TV star Sally Fields visiting a mall when she is feeling down so people will recognize her. Producer Garry Marshall telling the production team that he knows Sally Fields is crazy but that's why people want to watch her. Me, he says I'm normal. Nobody wants to watch me.

Borgen (2010–2022)

BORGEN - SOMETHING WONDERFUL IN THE STATE OF DENMARK

[9/10 · 15 September 2020]

BORGEN - SOMETHING WONDERFUL IN THE STATE OF DENMARK by armen pandola

The most thrilling aspect of the new streaming TV capability is the incredible foreign TV series that are now available on US television. Just as American TV in the 60s and 70s was shown worldwide, spreading the message about how wonderful life is in the USA, so these new TV series from abroad are showing Americans what life is like 'overseas.'

Borgen is a political TV series about Denmark - and I bet you don't know a lot about Hamlet's birthplace, so let's start there. Denmark is that piece of Europe that juts out above Germany- on the Jutland peninsula (Greenland is part of Denmark but has Home Rule, i.e., they govern themselves for the most part). Along with Norway and Sweden, it is a part of the Nordic welfare states. About 5.8 million people live in this constitutional monarchy (just like England, it has a in-name-only monarch, a Prime Minister and a Parliament). It is one of the wealthiest countries in the world with the average person making more money than the average American. It has some of the highest tax rates in the world, but the Danes live in a country with free healthcare, free tuition for all schools, including college and post-graduate, a social welfare system that works and one of the happiest places in the world to live - when asked on a scale of 1 to 10 how happy they are, most Danes respond 11.

Borgen literally means 'castle' but in Denmark it is the stand-in name for the government, like White House is for the US Executive branch. Birgitte Nyborg (Sidse Babett Knudsen), leader of the Moderate Party, is a politician on the way up. It is no spoiler alert to tell you that she becomes the PM and the series follows both her public and personal lives. Her husband, Phillip Christensen (Mikael Birkkjær), and two children, Laura (Freja Riemann) and Magnus (Emil Poulsen) pay a price for their wife/mother's political career - and the price isn't just being in the limelight. This is a real drama about how a political career can destroy a family, especially if the politician is a woman.

The other lead characters are Kasper Jull (Pilou Asbæk) and Katrine Fønsmark (Birgitte Hjort Sørensen) journalists and sometime media consultants for the politicians in the series. Then, there is a world of characters who make up the political, media and societal leaders of Denmark. It is a fascinating tapestry of double-crosses, power grabs, idealistic hopes and realistic decisions.

The ensemble acting is something that you expect to see only in a BBC production - incredible. There are moments so gripping that they are difficult to watch - like a scene in season 2 when Brigitte is forced to come to grips with the fact that her teenage daughter is having serious mental problems, likely caused by Brigitte's absences due to her political career. Many times in this series characters have to make a choice between personal happiness and ambition. In a country where happiness is the norm, it is a real dilemma.

It is a joy to watch a series about the leader of a major democracy who is not enthroned in office, with special salutations (Mr. President) and a mansion in which to live and work. The PM is just Brigitte to all and she goes home every night to a normal looking house. But, her job is slowly corroding her personal life and while she is becoming a better PM, she is becoming less and less the optimistic, loving woman who dreamed of changing Denmark for the better.

There are 3 seasons of 10 episodes each to watch on Netflix - and more to come:

"Ten years ago, Borgen helped redefine the global television landscape, showing that great stories can come from anywhere and be loved everywhere," said Lina Brouneus, director co-production and acquisition at Netflix. "We are immensely proud to partner with DR and the whole creative team to bring this worldwide phenomenon back and to give Borgen's legion of fans the chance to be gripped once again."

The target date for the release of season 4 is 2022 - which gives you more than enough time to get hooked.

Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

I am a trial attorney

[10/10 · 15 February 2020]

I have tried more cases than I can remember - hundreds. This movie, more than any other, comes closet to real life. In criminal cases., the first and most important thing is - the phone call. That's right, getting the case. Next comes the 'talk.' An attorney has to inform the client of the possible outcomes given the facts. In Anatomy of a Murder, the main facts are 'undisputed', that is, there is no doubt that the defendant killed the victim. Given that fact, there are only so many possible defenses - and so Jimmy Stewart, in one of the best performances of his career, relates those defenses to Ben Gazzara, in one of his best performances. Along the way, we are treated to George C. Scott's premiere performance on screen - and it is is magnificent. Did I mention how incredible and sexy and vulnerable Lee Remick is? And the rest of the cast is also as good as it gets. And then there's the Duke Ellington score (he won a Grammy) and the Wendell Mayes screenplay and the B/W cinematography by Sam Leavitt (The Defiant Ones (Oscar-winner), A Star is Born (1954)). Watch this movie to see how to make a crime drama. There is nothing as good as it is - nothing.

1917 (2019)

1917 - A Best Picture?

[6/10 · 22 January 2020]

1917 - A BEST PICTURE?

by armen pandola

Do you like war movies? What are your favorites?

If you like war movies and Saving Private Ryan or The Paths of Glory or even The Longest Day are among your favorites, then you will like !917, directed and co-written by Sam Mendes. If you don't, chances are, 1917 will not make a believer of you in spite of the fact that it is an odds-on favorite to win the Oscar for Best Picture.

Mendes won an Oscar for his first feature film, American Beauty, which no one watches any longer because it starred Kevin Spacey and because his character, a middle-aged man on the brink of a breakdown, has sexual fantasies about his teenage daughter's friend.

Since then, Mendes has directed a couple of good movies (Road to Perdition and Revolutionary Road), a couple of so-so movies (Jarhead and Away We Go) and a couple of Bond movies (Spectre and Skyfall). He comes from the theatre and continues to direct for the stage. 1917 is his first co-writing credit.

So, what does 1917 bring to the 'war movie' table that wasn't there already?

Peter Jackson's They Shall Not Grow Old has all of the horror of World War I, Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory has all of its despicable commanders, All Quiet on the Western Front (1931) has the folly of its 'patriots' and Gallipoli (1981) has the tragedy of senseless slaughter. What else is there to say or show?

Mendes brings us a war movie that follows two soldiers for one day, keeping his camera on only these two and what they see and experience. Shot in segments several minutes long, the movie is stitched together seamlessly - or seemingly so. From its opening to its closing, the camera stays focused on the two protagonists. What does this add to the movie?

'Tracking shots' are shots that go on for a minute or more without the action stopping in order to set-up a new shot. Alfred Hitchcock shot one of his least successful movies, Rope, the story of two rich kids who kill someone for the fun of it, in a few very long takes. Orson Welles starts off Touch of Evil with a three and a half minute tracking shot that ends in an explosion. Paths of Glory has a shorter (91 seconds) tracking shot of a general walking through the trenches. Scorsese's Goodfellas has a three minute tracking shot of Henry Hill and Karen walking through the kitchen of the Copacabana to front row seats. If you have noticed such scenes, then you are probably a film buff.

What do tracking shots add to a movie? In the movies I have mentioned, long tracking shots have furthered the story. For example, in Goodfellas, the long tracking shot shows us how Henry, a small-time mobster, has special privileges because of his insider status, privileges that impress his date, Karen.

What has filming 1917 like one long sequence added to its message? It has focused our attention on two soldiers and two soldiers alone. This is a view of war from the bottom up. The stench and mud and rats are brought to the fore as two young corporals, Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) and Schofield (George MacKay), undertake a mission to save sixteen hundred fellow soldiers from a senseless slaughter. Sadly, Mendes decides to add to the mix a few 'special appearances' from famous actors a la The Longest Day (1962). The movie stops dead for brief appearances by Colin Firth, Benedict Cumberbatch and Mark Strong, taking us out of the gory frontlines and into the world of make-believe.

There is not much depth in 1917. Two soldiers are given what seems to be a suicide mission which one of them is eager to undertake because he has a personal motive - his brother is one of the soldiers who may be saved. Along the way, we are told small bits and pieces of their lives. They are not especially memorable, and the self-imposed technical limitations make it impossible for us to have a fully rounded portrait of them. In the end, they are just two soldiers, much like millions of others who were fighting on both sides - and dying. And that is 1917's virtue and its limitation. Given its narrow scope, 1917 can only appeal to our most sentimental feelings.

The best war movie that I have ever seen has not been in circulation in years - there are some pirated versions available on Amazon. The Victors is a 1963 British-American WWII movie written, produced and directed by Carl Foreman, starring George Peppard, George Hamilton, Melina Mercouri, Jeanne Moreau, Elke Sommer and Eli Wallach - yes, an odd cast, but an excellent one. The movie dares to be an anti-war movie in an era when such feelings were suppressed. WWII was the 'good war,' yet there was no sentimentality in The Victors - in fact, it showed the execution by firing squad of a GI deserter (a scene inspired by the real-life 1945 execution of Pvt. Eddie Slovik).

In The Victors, war didn't make the men 'better' or more 'giving' or 'caring.' War did to the young men it trapped exactly what violence does to young men - it makes them worse, not better. There is a scene in which a new member of the squad finds a dog and starts to take care of it. When the squad pulls out of its camp, the sergeant tells the young soldier that no dogs are allowed on the trucks. As the young recruit sadly sits in the truck with his fellow soldiers, one hardened veteran tells the recruit to call the dog, so the recruit whistles to the dog, thinking they will hide it on the truck. Instead, the veteran shots it. That's what war does to young men, at least those who survive. The Victors won no awards for presenting war as it is - and The Victors has been forgotten. A great loss.

The Two Popes (2019)

THE FOUR POPES

[4/10 · 3 January 2020]

THE FOUR POPES

By Armen Pandola

Movies can re-make reality. Who can separate the real Winston Churchill, an arch-conservative who hated even the idea of freedom for India or Ireland from the many fictional film Churchills who fought for freedom against its greatest foe in modern times? In America, we have the real President Kennedy whose first term as President was a disaster contrasted with the golden boy/man of film and fiction.

Today, every famous character has a dual personality - one that exists in the real world and one that exists in the ether, that place where all is born of the human imagination.

And so with Netflix's The Two Popes, directed by Fernando Meirelles and written by Anthony McCarten from his own play. The story pits conservative former Pope Benedict XVI against progressive current Pope Francis I, formerly Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio (like Super Bowls, Popes are enumerated by the eternal roman numerals of a bygone empire - for those who did not have to endure Latin classes, it's Benedict the 16th and Francis the 1st). There is a real and imagined Pope Benedict and Pope Francis - so we have four popes.

The dramatic force of this movie is Cardinal Bergoglio's desire to retire during the papacy of Benedict. This is ironic since, eventually, Benedict 'retires' from the papacy, something that no pope has done in over seven hundred years. And while Benedict had nothing to do with the election of Francis as his successor, it is implied that he resigned so that Francis could become pope.

Francis travels from his home in Bueno Aires, Argentina to Rome to get permission from the Pope to retire. From the beginning, McCarten ignores facts to make dramatic points - Bergoglio did not need the Pope's permission to retire. There has been much criticism of this movie based on its ignoring of many facts to heighten the drama, but, in the end, the movie works as a drama or it is nothing so it is hard to blame McCarten for taking liberties.

At its heart, this is a buddy movie, pairing two very dissimilar people together to make dramatic hay from the combination. The original popular buddy story is The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas père. Buddy movies have been around since Chaplin's The Kid and many have been super hits like Casablanca, Butch Cassidy, Midnight Run, 48 Hours, Lethal Weapon, The Sting, The Shawshank Redemption, etc.

Simply put, Pope Benedict thinks the Catholic Church's problems have been caused by too much compromise with the modern world and Francis believes the problems are caused by the Church's refusal to enter the 20th let alone the 21st century. Whatever the cause, the Church has been in decline for decades and the reasons are many. This movie reflects the debate about the causes: some, for example, believe it is caused by too much liberalism and others by too little.

So how does The Two Popes keep from becoming a kind of long, boring Firing Line? Two reasons, Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce. They play Benedict and Francis and bring whatever life there is to the story. While Benedict's past as a member of the Nazi Youth in his native Germany (he was forced to do this) is not given much play, Francis' story is told in flashback, showing him about to be engaged to marry, then deciding against it when he 'receives a message from god.' Francis is the first Jesuit priest to become pope - Jesuits are specially trained and it takes many more years of education than a regular priest. He becomes head of the Jesuit order in Argentina and gets cozy with the military junta that overthrew the democratically elected government and killed or tortured tens of thousands who opposed its reign. Of course, his past is whitewashed in the movie - he tells Benedict that he could never become pope because he could never forgive himself. Benedict tells him that only God is perfect, and that seems to change his mind - so much for his eternal regret at what he did.

Benedict tells Francis about his own sins - he knew that certain priests were abusing boys and did nothing about it. While the actual reason for Benedict retiring as pope is not stated in this movie, it is suggested that it as atonement for his sin in allowing this to continue.

Is this movie worth watching? Lots of critics think so based on the performances of the two leads. In the end, it is a disappointment. It doesn't take itself seriously enough to be honest about its two main characters who have gotten to be popes, in part, because of their past concessions to the powerful who rule the Church and the world in which the church must exist. Every day, the Church becomes less and less relevant to our world and no amount of pious speeches by popes is going to change that. Even a fictional character like Pope Francis in this movie is not enough of a follower of Christ to do his work:

And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money changers, and the seats of them that sold doves, And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves. Matthew 21:12-13

Reprisal (2019)

WHAT IS THE FAIL-SAFE POINT IN BINGE WATCHING

[7/10 · 25 December 2019]

REPRISAL by Armen Pandola

Binging TV series has introduced us to a new phenomenon - the moving on decision. Say a series is ten episodes long. You have watched the first episode and it seems like the kind of TV series you like. So, on to episode number two. You like two, but not as much as you thought you would. Maybe it gets better. Episode three is good, better than two but not as good as one. So, you try one more - episode four. That is the key episode. If you go on to episode five, you have gone past the point of no return. Five episodes and you are stuck - you have to go on.

Reprisal got me to episode five and I was stuck. I went with it to the end, but every episode was a decision - to go or stay. There was just enough glitz and shine to keep me from turning it off before the next episode flashed on, automatically - it was a decision made for me rather than an affirmative action on my part. And Hulu knew enough to start the next episode off in mid-action rather than with credits - I may have turned it off if the credits came first.

Hulu's Reprisal has an excellent cast. Abigail Spencer is Katherine Harlow / Doris Quinn, a woman who is part of a criminal gang, but has been tortured and thought killed by her brother, Burt played by Rory Cochrane. As they say when Hamlet thinks of killing his usurper/step-father near the beginning of the play - if he does, there is no play, And so Katherine is not dead but returns as Doris to get revenge.

She picks up a pair of uber-thieves, Earl and Cordell and concocts a scheme to rob the gang's front, a strip club called Bang-a-rang, owned by Burt. She cons a young man, Ethan Hart played by Mena Massoud into infiltrating the gang. Queenie played by Lea DeLaria . runs the place and is a kind of den mother to the strippers who work there, one of whom is Burt's daughter, Meredith Harlow played by Madison Davenport. Ron Perlman shows up at the beginning and end of the series as a mob boss and does his usual excellent job of looking bad, yet sounding reasonable.

There's a lot of blood and beatings that would put The Rock in traction for a month, but, in Reprisal, turn out to be scratches that barely make a mark on the victims. I don't know about you, but these phony violent scenes are getting old. Hollywood has come 360 degrees - at the birth of talkies in the early 1930s, Hollywood set up a 'code' that didn't allow for the victims of violence to bleed. For the next 40 years or so, characters died from gunshot wounds and beatings that left no wounds, no blood. Then, Sam Peckinpah and others brought blood back to the screen. Now, we have gallons of blood and dozens of wounds, but no real injury. Somebody gets pummeled in the face with too many punches to count and the next minute is fine.

After watching this series, I read what its makers said it was about since I couldn't make out any theme:

"At its core Reprisal is about family. A family that seeks to destroy each other," executive producer Warren Littlefield claims. "And the family that you build in order to survive and thrive. There will be themes that will be recognizable. It's quite universal, actually."

And the NY Times offers this: "If you like the combination of violent action, sentimental fantasy, literary pretension and periodic slapstick humor that Reprisal offers, you may enjoy it well enough."

In the end, Reprisal is a mish-mash with cell phones and pay phones and 1950s cars, 1980s hot pants and contemporary music. There is something for everyone and enough to keep you clicking to the end, but that's about it. Like Rocky, Reprisal goes the distance, but barely.

The Irishman (2019)

The Long and Winding Road to Nowhere

[5/10 · 25 December 2019]

THE IRISHMAN

The Irishman is about the relationship among three main characters: Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino), Frank Sheeran (Robert DeNiro) and Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci). Hoffa was head of the Teamsters Union in the 1950s and early 60s, but it's his connection to the Kennedys that is at the core of this movie.

In 1961, with the help of his father's mob connections, John Kennedy was elected President. He appointed his brother, Robert, as Attorney General. Robert Kennedy made the arrest and conviction of Hoffa a top priority. Hoffa was jailed for trying to bribe a juror and fraud, then pardoned by Richard Nixon in 1971 (he gave Nixon a large contribution). By that time, he had lost control of the Teamsters and was banned from holding office in a union, but he refused to retire and was fighting to get back 'his union' when he disappeared on July 30, 1975, never to be heard from again.

The Irishman is Martin Scorsese's fourth movie about the mob or gangsters (I don't count The Gangs of New York as a mob movie) among over fifty non-gangster movies, but this is what he is known for. It runs for three and a half hours - or I should say, strolls, leisurely cutting back and forth in time from the early 1950s to the turn of the century. Veteren screenwriter Steven Zaillian wrote the script from Charles Brandt's book, "I Heard You Paint Houses, " the title of the book being mob-talk for a hit man.

Martin Scorsese loves voice over narration and most of his mob movies have voice-over narration as does this one by Sheeran. He starts out as a truck driver who helps things fall off the back of the truck - in his case, sides of beef - and ends up a mob hitman. Along the way, he marries, divorces and has four daughters, one of whom refuses to have anything to do with him when she gets old enough to understand what he was - a murderer.

The Irishman is not primarily the story of Jimmy Hoffa which has been told in a major film before, Danny DeVito's Hoffa (1992) from a script by David Mamet and starring Jack Nicholson in the title role. Hoffa was neither a critical nor commercial success.

In The Irishman, Scorsese has bigger fish to fry than the story of Hoffa - he wants to connect the election of John F. Kennedy, the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the CIA's undercover operations to kill Castro, the assassination of Kennedy and the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa.

He doesn't quite make it, but that doesn't stop him from trying very hard - like the fact that Sheeran in 1961 is ordered by Bufalino to take a truck to Miami that is loaded with military weapons and deliver it to 'a guy with big ears.' When Sheeran gets there and talks to the 'guy with big ears' we see that the guy doesn't have big ears because, as the big-eared guy explains, he had an operation to fix them. The weapons are loaded into a van with Spanish writing on its side - apparently these are weapons that were used in the Bay of Pigs fiasco. All of this is done so that thirteen years later, when Sheeran is watching the Watergate hearings on TV and sees 'big ears' testifying, it can be revealed that he is Howard Hunt, a Watergate conspirator. So instead of just telling Sheeran to deliver the weapons to Howard Hunt we have a lot of time wasted on hiding who that person is just so we can be 'surprised' that it is Howard Hunt of Watergate fame.

There are very long scenes about ...nothing much. For example, the core of the movie is a long car trip that Sheeran takes with Bufalino and their wives. There is a lot of talk about taking 'cigarette breaks' and the fact that Bufalino makes many stops along the way to collect money from various people. All of this has nothing to do with anything.

Scorsese's use of the same actors playing their characters' decades-long relationships is made possible by using CGI to change the actors aging face. I don't know if it was a conscious decision, but all the actors look like they are wearing masks. And the fact that peoples' faces change, not just wrinkles, over time is a real hindrance to this technique. I was never distracted by it but I did wonder, at times, where we were in the story - is this older Sheeran or younger?

DeNiro and Pesci have the same great chemistry that has made them a delight to watch since Raging Bull. Pacino enters the movie about a third of the way through and gives it a boost. Ray Romano gives a solid performance as Bufalino's lawyer brother and Bobby Cannavale does his crazy mobster bit as Skinny Razor. But the best performance in the movie belongs to Stephen Graham (Capone in Boardwalk Empire) as Anthony 'Tony Pro' Provenzano, a rival of Hoffa's.

Is it worth watching? Of course - but don't get your hopes up. This isn't the crowning gem of anybody's career. It a long, too long, poorly told story of some very bad people who did some very bad things - things that Scorsese seems reluctant to touch. For example, Hoffa helped destroy not only the reputation of the Teamsters Union, but unions in general. Movies about union bosses rarely show them for what the vast majority were and are - leaders working to make life better for the working people of America. Instead, Scorsese's union bosses are all corrupt - or fools.

A final note - a lot of the action takes place in South Philadelphia where I grew up. There is not even a slight attempt to make it realistic and there are no South Philly accents in the movie. But there is Angelo Bruno (Harvey Keitel). I never figured out why he was in the movie. Local color I guess.

A final final note - a lot of the mobsters on display are introduced by a blurb on screen telling us what happened to the mobster e.g. for Bruno: shot in the head sitting in a car outside his home. I am not sure why this was done. Crime doesn't pay? Not quite Michael Corleone sitting and staring out into space, wondering when and where and how it all went to hell.

Marriage Story (2019)

It's the little things

[8/10 · 25 December 2019]

Netflix's Marriage Story, written and directed by Noah Baumback (The Meyerowitz Stories) and starring Scarlett Johansson as Nicole and Adam Driver as Charlie, tells the story of the divorce of two young artists at the beginning of their careers. She is a young actress known for a topless scene in her last movie (this is according to the people in this movie) and he is an avant garde theater director and head of his own company in New York City. When they meet by chance, they fall in love and she moves to NYC where she becomes the 'draw' for his theater company. Eventually, they have a son. At the beginning of the movie, they are getting a divorce after 10 years and are seeing a mediator in the hope of having a friendly divorce.

Is it a spoiler to tell you that a friendly divorce is rarer than a vegetarian meal at Mar-a-Lago? I knew a couple who mediated their divorce and everything was going well until they got to the jazz album collection (this was back in the day) which they were to split evenly. He objected - she didn't know Dizzy Gillespie from Dizzy Dean when I met her. She countered - yes, he introduced me to jazz but I was the one who actually bought and cared for our collection of over a 1000 albums - if it were up to him, he'd still be using his albums as coasters at the drunken parties he and his friends threw every week. And so much for mediation.

The upshot of Marriage Story is that good people get divorced and often do terrible things, things they'd never dream of doing except for the divorce. And that's what happens to Nicole and Charlie. The contested divorce legal process is unfair and incredibly expensive. Laura Dern is Nicole's lawyer and she explains to Nicole that she cannot admit to any wrong-doing or even any flaws since our world treats women/wives/mothers so differently than men/husbands/fathers. Women/wives/mothers must be like Mary, mother of Christ and a virgin to boot. Men are like Joseph - who is absent when the going gets tough and isn't even the actual father who is away somewhere doing whatever it is that gods do.

The other side is represented by Ray Liotta who tells Charlie that he had better get ready to be demonized and pay legal bills and costs that would make a lottery winner cringe. At first, Charlie is represented by a nice lawyer played by Alan Alda who tells him, "We have to prepare to go to court hoping we don't go to court." When Charlie sees that Dern is crushing Alda at a meeting, he switches to Liotta who can talk faster and be meaner than anybody else.

Along the way, there's a custody dispute. At the very beginning of the divorce, Nicole goes to LA to do a TV pilot (her first acting job outside her husband's company in a decade) and takes their son with her. The expectation is that she will return to NYC when the pilot is completed but then - she doesn't. Her family is in LA where she grew up and made a career as an actress. The money is exponentially better than doing theatre work. So, Charlie can only see his son by traveling cross country on weekends. As is usual in divorces where there are children, the child becomes the center of the divorce with each side claiming that it knows best for the child. Of course, the divorce is devastating to children, but that is a different movie and Baumbach concentrates on the adults.

It gets complicated quickly. The heart of the story is told in long takes where both Johansson and Driver communicate their rage at what is happening to them and the man/woman they loved. These longs takes show both Johansson and Driver's acting chops - each of them is able to build a scene to the point where real emotions are on display. The hateful argument they have at the end of the divorce process is contrasted with the tender affection for both their partner's qualities and deficiencies that they talk about at the beginning of the process. In fact, it is probably true to say that if you can find a person who loves not only your wit and charm, but your surliness and bad habits, then you should chase him/her until you catch him/her because that is the person who loves you.

Two songs from Sondheim's Company are sung - "You Could Drive a Person Crazy" by Nicole and her actress mother and actress sister, played beautifully by the under-appreciated Julie Haggerty and Merritt Wever, and "Being Alive" from the same musical sung by Driver. Each song speaks to what their characters are feeling about each other. Strangely, in Company, there is even a more appropriate song they could have sung - The Little Things You Do Together:

It's the little things you share together, Swear together, Wear together, That make perfect relationships. The concerts you enjoy together, Neighbors you annoy together, Children you destroy together, That keep marriage intact.

It's not talk of God and the decade ahead that Allows you to get through the worst. It's "I do" and "you don't" and "nobody said that" And "who brought the subject up first?" It's the little things, The little things, the little things, the little things.

There is so much to recommend this movie that I hesitate to mention a few missteps. While money is mentioned, often, it isn't really talked about in substance. The fact is that many people never recover, financially, from a divorce. This is partially solved in the movie by a gift from the gods that drops in their lap during the divorce. A bigger problem is that Baumbach wants it both ways - the great angry scenes where people say things to each other that they don't mean, but once said can never be unsaid, and the happy ending. One of the best angry arguments that Nicole and Charlie have is negated by their embrace at its end. The fact is that arguments drive people further apart and don't end in an embrace but, usually, a slammed door. There are some maudlin scenes whose purpose is to show that they have moved on with their lives and are doing fine, and still think of each other with love and affection. And a divorce that ends that way is rarer than a 2-for-1 meal at Mar-a-Lago.

Bombshell (I) (2019)

IT TAKES A COMPANY LIKE FOX TO MAKE A SERIEL ABUSER

[7/10 · 25 December 2019]

BOMBSHELL

By Armen Pandola

In Graham Greene's The Third Man, directed by Carol Reed, an American writer of westerns with the improbable name Holly Martins (Joseph Cotton) travels to post-WWII Vienna to work with his childhood friend, Harry Lime (Orson Welles). When he arrives, he discovers that Lime is dead and the police think Lime committed heinous crimes. Martins tells a book club audience that he is writing a new book based on his late friend's adventures. A shadowy business associate of the late Lime tells him that he is doing something very dangerous - mixing fact with fiction. He threatens Martins by advising him to stick to fiction, pure fiction.

In Bombshell, screenwriter Charles Randolph (The Big Short) dangeruously combines the story of two actual victims of sexual harassment by Fox News creator and CEO Roger Ailes (John Lithgow) with fictional characters who are victims of Ailes' scabrous sexual appetite. Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman) is a star at Fox but her unwillingness to continue to succumb to Ailes' advances leaves her without a friend at Fox and she is demoted to an afternoon show and then to the door. Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron) is the rising star at Fox who has been similarly 'Ailesed' and makes the mistake of asking Ailes' other creation, Donald Trump, some embarrassing questions about his demeaning of women. The third member of this trio of graces is Kayla Popisil (Margot Robbie), a fictional character who, the author claims, is a composite of many women at Fox who were forced to kneel at the altar of Ailes.

For those who have not drunk the Kool Aid, sympathizing with Carlson and Kelly is a tough sell. Sure, no matter what your politics, you have a right to be free of licentious bosses, but - and this is a big BUT - It is difficult to work up a lot of indignation for women who made their careers spouting right-wing/religious prattle while kow-towing to the sexual fantasies of men who ran Fox.

Bombshell director Jay Roach (Meet the Fockers, Austin Powers) tries to keep things light and fast. The only scene of actual sexual harassment that is shown is Ailes forcing Popisil to lift her already short skirt up to reveal her panty. But this scene occurs only after Popisil has followed Ailes' pimp/secretary into the elevator with the intention of getting noticed and sent into the liars' den, Ailes' office. Of course, she didn't know what was going to be expected of her, but she was already in an organization that exploited its women and made no secret of the fact that it wished the feminist movement ill. So, in a movie about work-place sexual harassment, the most powerful scene in the movie is a phone call that Popisil has with her cubicle partner, Jess Carr (Kate Mckinnon) in which she reveals that she has succumbed to Ailes' advances and had sex with him. I cannot imagine that this would have been the case if a woman was hired to direct or write the script. Why are we still allowing Hollywood men to tell these stories?

Bombshell wants to tell this powerful story of sex and TV, but without too much politics. It follows on the heels of Showtimes' The Loudest Voice with a bravura performance by Russell Crowe as Ailes. While TLV concentrated on Carlson (Naomi Watts), Bombshell focuses on Kelly and fictional Popisil. Kelly's husband (Mark Duplass) is in a few scenes in which he tries to protect his wife from right-wing bullies, but, ultimately, he is disappointed in how his wife deals with the blowback from her confrontation with Trump - but that is the point! Kelly got where she was at Fox because she knew how to play that game.

Carlson is fired at the beginning of the movie and her quest to get other harassed Fox female employees to come forward is the driving force of the movie. The performances are pitch-perfect and, as opposed to The Irishman, the accents and make-up match the acting. As they use to say in movie publicity ads, Charlize Theron IS Megyn Kelly!

Bombshell ends with Ailes getting the boot from the boss, Rupert Murdoch (Malcolm Mcdowell), Carlson gets her humongous settlement, Kelly does the right thing and the fictional Popisil rides off into the fictional horizon. A blurb tells us that Fox paid $50 million to various women to settle harassment claims, but $65 to Ailes as a parting kiss.

I liked Bombshell, but it could have been better. Ailes did not exist in a vacuum - it takes an entire company to make a serial sexual predator. The entire Fox phenomenon and culture was to blame. There was and is nothing that Fox will not do to feed and grow its audience of right-wing, conspiracy-loving, women-hating, war-mongering red-state viewers. Sure, a lot of very good people watch Fox, but these very good people have to ignore a whole lot of nasty behavior by Fox men, just as the female Trumpsters have to ignore almost every tweet, speech and diatribe by the Predator-in-Chief. That is the real story - not what happened, but how and why it happened. We're still waiting for that movie.