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A Man Called Otto (2022)
Lovable
"The whole neighborhood is falling apart these days," intones a fed-up Otto (Tom Hanks) to his wife's gravestone. As a matter of fact, he plans to soon join her soon. Suicide is his antidote to his grief. So as soon as he retires from his job and no longer has responsibilities, because he is indeed a compulsively responsible guy, Otto orchestrates his own hanging.
This could be a gruesomely bitter character study, but it is just the opposite. Otto is so compulsively ornery and rude with stunningly clever retorts and perfectly set-up attempts to commit suicide that the entire film becomes comedic.
"A Man Called Otto" is adapted from the 2012 Swedish novel, "A Man Called Ove" by Fredrik Backman. When it was initially sent out to publishers it was rejected because of the subject matter, a curmudgeon widower committed to killing himself after the death of his lovely wife. But when a publishing house finally accepted the book it ended up on the NYT Best Selling list for 42 consecutive weeks. By 2015 a Swedish comedy-drama was based on Backman's book. It was even submitted to the 2016 Academy Awards as Sweden's entry in the Best Foreign Language Film category.
By 2017 the lovable story caught American attention and Tom Hanks was announced as the star and his wife, Rita Wilson, as one of the producers. By early 2022 Marc Forster joined up as the director and David Magee re-wrote the screenplay that closely followed the Swedish rendition.
With little time to spare, Forster needed a young guy to play Otto as a young man. He insisted on meeting Hanks' youngest son despite the Hanks family insisting that Truman was a cinematographer and not interested in acting. Forster met Truman and a deal was made. Filming was completed from February to May and by December "A Man Called Otto" was delivered to audiences.
The featured song, "Til You're Home," was written and sung by Rita Wilson, Hanks' wife, and is in the early Oscar line-up for Best Song. Participating with her, in a gorgeous duet, is Sebastián Yatra. In an interview with People magazine Wilson explains the song: "It's a person choosing life after coming out of a very dark place. We all have dark periods where things aren't going well. When you can be reminded that there's a reason to live and people to live for, it's such a beautiful feeling."
And those words summarize "A Man Called Otto." Not only does Tom Hanks carry this film home with an expected Oscar nomination for best actor, but Mariana Treviño, as his new Hispanic fully pregnant neighbor, is priceless. It's her Latina social charm and cultural expectations that enhance the humor and message of acceptance and civility in this charming family film that take it over the top.
On the Map (2016)
Israel's 1965 basketball team is Israel's diversion in tough times
Review: On The Map — by BEV QUESTAD — When depressed in a dark hole with enemies lurking on all sides, what's the best antidote? Distraction. Though she had been repeatedly attacked and even though her very existence was entangled in the frozen core of the Cold War conflict, Israel's people were still hanging on. But times were grim and their fears for survival pervasive.
So it was when the US National Basketball Team came to Tel Aviv for the 1965 Maccabiah Games, Moshe Dyan, soon-to-be Israel's Minister of Defense, forged ahead with a new hope. With the right players perhaps the Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball team could become competitive. Perhaps it could triumph on the European athletic stage, and in that way gain the dignity and respect of a world force. Perhaps a winning team could also distract a country from the rubble of random attacks.
The player of hope was Tal Brody, an American Jewish basketball star who led his US team to a gold medal victory at the Maccabiah Games. He had become an American All-Star while at the University of Illinois and was drafted 12th in the NBA. But after the game in Tel Aviv the Israeli Maccabi team and Moshe Dyan encouraged him to switch his allegiance. Come to Israel. Join the Maccabi Team.
This fast-paced documentary, with legendary Bill Walton narrating, is about a team that mirrors the persevering Israeli spirit. It is also a film about a man who gives up his country and the fame, glory and riches of an NBA affiliation, for heritage.
Because of Brody other American basketball players like Aulcie Perry, Eric Minkin, Bob Griffin, Lou Silver and Jim Boatwright come to Israel. Their goal is to triumph at the European League Championship and challenge includes a game against the forbidding Red Army Russian team.
The first hurdle is that Russia is boycotting Israel and forbids Israelis on their soil. A compromise is achieved and the David and Goliath confrontation is held in neutral Belgium. The Maccabi Tel
Aviv team became a unifying agent of Israel. Everyone watched all the games and government leaders, including Moshe Dyan, regularly came to the games in person.
The documentary is full of impossible 3-pointers, surprise assists and super-human passing. How the newly American-dominated Israeli team affects the Israeli basketball club and the European League back in the 1970s is the thrill of this excellent, fast-passed documentary.
Parallel to the national story are Brody's tough choices involving his invitation to play for the NBA, his draft into the Vietnam War, marriage to an Israeli, mandatory military service for Israel and a medical crisis for his father back in the US.
Dani Mankin, the filmmaker and a prior two-time Israeli Academy Award winner, has collaborated with an exceptional production team, including Steven Spielberg's sister, Nancy, to show how sports can cross all divides to unite a country in pride and how one man can make a difference. As Tal Brody presciently calls out in 1977, "We are on the map! And we are staying on the map – not only in sports, but in everything."
The Daughter (2015)
This dark Nordic perspective is richly thought-provoking and certainly reflective of our current crazy political world.
Review: The Daughter — by BEV QUESTAD — Edvard Munch did not paint just one version of "The Scream." He painted four. His essential Norwegian character cannot avert his eyes from life's true circumstance and man's grotesque nature within it. He chooses not to fabricate an illusion to help disguise the depths of human failure, but starkly faces it in raw horror.
Ibsen, writing 10 years before Munch paints, sets the truth and the illusion side by side and shows that in telling the truth, in facing what is, the horror is too great for us to handle. But like a determined, honest Norwegian, he still courageously drags us to the well, the dark abyss, and forces our heads to look down and see the truth as it is.
This dark Nordic perspective is richly thought-provoking and certainly reflective of our current crazy political world. But is a film based on painful exposure something we'd like to see?
So no, I didn't like the film at all despite the fact that is excellent. It's not that it isn't perfectly executed with a natural dialogue, explosive emotion and charged casting. It's not that every part of this film doesn't faithfully reflect the original Ibsen work, "The Wild Duck." It's that the truth, without the lies we contrive to make it through another day, can be too painful to bear and hard to watch on the screen.
But why did Simon Stone, a young 32-year-old writer-director, who has already produced a documentary about himself, "The Talented Mr. Stone," get so deeply involved with this particular project? What is his fascination with Ibsen, and why did the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts award him the prize for best adaptation of a screenplay for this tortured production?
At age 12,after an argument with his father, Stone witnessed his father, head of the molecular biology and biochemistry department at Monash University in Australia,die from a heart attack. He has stated that he has "always been attracted to stories that try and explore a family in crisis because that was the defining experience of my life." But since when does a pre-pubescent outburst kill a parent?
Take this confounded confusion, passion, and guilt and you get Ibsen and Munch, the Norwegian specialists in true life horror and torment. Put them on the screen and you get Stone. Stone is obviously brilliant on many levels. "The Daughter" is too. Subtly modernized in a defunct lumbermill town, each character obfuscates a hidden life circumstance with an exterior story of cozy domestic bliss.
Dad is marrying his young housekeeper, his son has flown in from the US waiting for his wife to join him, a boarder on the property is supported to explore his passion for photographic art, the boarder's wife and daughter, the loves of the photographer's life, enjoy the generous property woodlands and a grandfather dotes on his grand-daughter. All of this is set to parallel a contrived little garden where rescued bunnies and a wounded duck seemingly enjoy care and safety.
But the American-ex pat, our Ibsen/Munch, the son who will soon have a much younger beautiful step-mother, becomes suspicious. Why did his mother die? What were her last thoughts? Who was the prior housekeeper? Who belongs here? Who is who? He seeks the truth and when he finds it thinks everyone must know – that it will be liberating. And then he gets a phone call. Why isn't his wife here yet? Is the truth really that great to know?
Kino Lorber presents the US release of "The Daughter," an official selection at the Toronto, Venice, Melbourne and Sydney film festivals. This adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's "The Wild Duck" stars Academy Award winner Geoffrey Rush and opened at the Cinema Village in NYC on Jan. 27, and will open at the Laemmle Royal in Los Angeles on Feb. 3. A national release will follow.
Inuk (2010)
This is an inspiring film about a teenager and an older mentor whose personal challenges are mirrored in the obstacles of the freezing cold of Greenland.
This is a film about loss and the road to recovery in a frozen land where the harsh environment serves as a keen metaphor to life's challenges. It is also about the power of human relationships – and how, like the icy hand of the frozen north, they can be more deadly than the cruelest cold.
Anderson: It also is a universal story of troubled people in dysfunctional broken families. It is a story of deep pain along with a hope for healing.
At the same time "Inuk" also gives us dazzling scenery with beautiful snow landscapes, awesome dog sled scenes and views of the far north cities of Greenland. I loved that.
Questad: The film starts out with sparse, poetic language that makes its story sound like a legend. "Outsiders are always surprised by the number of words we use for ice. But for us Inuit, ice is more than a word, it's our soul!"
We loved this movie.
Out of the Clear Blue Sky (2012)
This review is a debate over the intentions of Cantor Fitzgerald in the aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy.
Is this a sentimental documentary erring on the side of historical rewrite or a healing probe into the aftermath of the World Trade Center tragedy? Bearing in mind its focus is on what happened within one company in the aftermath of the fall of the Twin Towers, we debate over whether this doc gets it right.
The background is that Cantor Fitzgerald, L.P. is a financial services firm founded in 1945. At the time of the attacks, the firm had grown to be one of the largest, if not the largest, bond trading firms in America. It had more than 5,000 institutional clients, being one of only 21 firms that traded US bonds with The Federal Reserve Bank of New York. It was located on the doomed 101-106 floors of the World Trade Center.
Howard Lutnick, the focus of our dissension in this doc review, was named President and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald in 1991 and Chairman in 1996. His reputation for ruthlessness may be as true as it is commonplace in the stratospheric salary circles of investment bankers working in the world's top financial centers. If CF closed shop, Lutnick and his buds would have had a lot to lose.
We agree on the facts. On September 11, 2001, CF lost 658 of its 960 New York employees in the World Trade Center attacks. A few days later, in a miraculous last-ditch effort with a money deal from Morgan Guaranty Trust Company (subsequently JP Morgan), CF re-opened its doors with a skeleton crew. On Sept. 19, the firm pledged to distribute 25 percent of its profits for the next five years, along with ten years of health care, to families of its 658 former employees. These profits would otherwise have gone to the partners of the firm.
Wilkinson: This was a gift from the partners to the families of the deceased employees, and this film makes sure the viewer gets the picture. By 2006, the company had completed its promise, having paid a total of $180 million, with an additional $17 million from a relief fund run by Lutnick's sister, Edie.
Lutnick and the rest of the firm's leadership have milked this gesture of generosity for all it is worth. In the eyes of some, they have milked it for more than it is worth.
The complexity of this situation lies in the uniqueness of the terrible tragedy that caused it. There is simply no comparison to a firm compensating the survivors of employees killed through natural disaster. They had no obligation to do anything. The question is, have the survivors been used as public relations pawns to secure and cement bond sales for Cantor Fitzgerald?
The answer, to paraphrase Mr. Dylan, is blowin' in the wind.
Questad: Who cares if the survivors are being played or not? When the Pentagon was hit on the same day, we didn't hear the government offering special deals beyond policy to the families involved. What about the rest of the Trade Tower companies that were hit – did we hear of generous family packages for their workers? Furthermore, when the Columbine and Sandy Hook student massacres took place and the Oklahoma City bombing rocked our world, did we see the government rush to families with extra compensation?
The point is, the immediate reaction of Lutnick, who also lost his brother that day, was compassion, not avarice or self-protection. There might also be some divine, if not coincidental, providence involved. Lutnick had been prepared. At age 18 he lost his mother and then a year later his father. The middle child of three, he banded with his siblings for support. Though abandoned by family members, Lutnick's college gave him a full scholarship in response to his loss. Through grief, bonding, resiliency and a college that cared, the Lutnicks succeeded.
Lutnick's tears on CNN in the aftermath of the attacks were not fake. His outreach to all the affected families was from a deep empathy that came from personal experience.
Enter your own point of view and read more of the debate at It's Just Movies by entering the film title in right hand search.
http://itsjustmovies.com/review-out-of-the-clear-blue-sky/
Kaméleon (2008)
The story of one of those psychopathic men who give the nice guys a bad name. This time we have some karma. A great educational film for those female victims of Lothario.
Chameleon by Bev Questad, Feb. 25, 2010
"We all had the same dream. Not women. Not Fame. Not a house. But cash
because that meant that you were someone."
This is another Hideous Man Show – but this bad dude meets the seemingly angelic, beautiful, seductive, duplicitous Hideous Woman.
Chameleon, the 2009 film submitted from Hungary for Oscar consideration, is worth seeing. Sure, there are contrivances and quite possibly the psychologist, played by László Áron, is a little too seedy. But this film is loaded with exceptional casting, acting, and psychological illumination.
The Greek term for chameleon means ground lion. A chameleon adapts to its environment to avoid detection by its predators, slinking close to its base, changing colors to falsely blend in.
Enter Gabor Farkas (Ervin Nagy), a seductive liar. Nagy has said about his role that his character didn't say one honest thing in the whole film. In the movie Farkas rationalizes, "Women believe what they want to. I don't trick them."
Adapting, sneaking, creeping around the garbage of people's lives to strike them at their most vulnerable, flicking that hypnotic tongue, luring in the prey, Farkas is the ultimate trickster, the consummate disgusting liar, manipulating the unsuspecting with his charm and wit.
Womanizers like Farkas struggle with low self-esteem and many, like our orphan protagonist, have had unstable or nonexistent relationships with father figures, especially in early childhood. This makes them feel unsure about their own self-worth, their basic identity and their own sense of power.
Abandoned by his parents, Farkas grew up in an orphanage. He plays a version of the powerless male who maneuvers through "pretending" to blend in, in order to be accepted by a society which essentially rejected him in his formative years. With his focus on adaptation rather than introspection, he is lost, without a sense of his own distinct self. When asked, "Who are you?" Farkas side-steps with unintentional honesty, "That's a good question."
Farkas (Nagy) has created so many identities, succeeding so well in so many roles, that he perhaps would think he deserves notice amongst the paintings of great actors at the New York City Players Club. However, unlike the best of actors, his psychopathic nature is incapable of guilt or empathizing. He is incapable of tears and, conversely, of feeling true joy. He is incapable of a true union with a woman or the society he is so busy trying to prove that he is better than.
In an interview Ervin Nagy explains, "I don't think I have ever had a more challenging or complex role before. I was playing a different personality in almost every single moment. The main character is an underprivileged country lad with a hard life behind him who moves up to the capital and the only money-making option that he sees a future in is the scheme of deception. So ultimately, he becomes a con artist. We would like to see a realistic picture of his psyche they said to me" (Hungarian Filmweek.com).
And Nagy does the job. His most brilliant scene is the first time he unwittingly falls prey to his own quarry – his affected seduction by an orthopedist (played with extraordinary depth by the singer/actor, Janos Kulka) results in a calculated closing insult beyond our chameleon's limited expectations. And the karma begins.
The central plot involves Farkas (Nagy) becoming obsessed with seducing one woman, a Madonna-like ballerina named Hanna Hartay, played by the lovely Gabi Hamori. His original intent, like with all his other conquests, was to seduce her in order to tap into her financial assets. As soon as he got a pay-off he'd leave her and prowl for a new victim. However, the tables soon turn and she becomes the one who needs the money from him – as well as the one factor in Farkas' life with the power to transform or destroy him.
The denouement of this film ironically involves a succession of remarkable karmic twists and convolutions. "Chameleon" labels the protagonist as well as a surprising group of others. Entertaining, insightful and surprising.