"Little Women"

I'll cut right to the chase here:

"Little Women" is one of the best movies, maybe even THE best,  that I have seen in 2019.

No, I had never read the Louisa May Alcott classic upon which the movie is based, and I wasn't even at all familiar with the story itself.  This admission comes much to the chagrin of Mrs. Grandstander, who counts "Little Women" as one of her all time favorite books.

Be that as it may, I was looking forward to seeing this movie for several reasons.  Foremost among them was the chance to see Saoirse Ronan on screen once again.  Also, the screenwriter and director of this one is Greta Gerwig, who last year gave us the wonderful "Lady Bird" (which also starred Miss Ronan).  Finally, the reviews for this movie have been universal in their praise.  Sometimes such a build up can lead to a letdown, but not so in the case of "Little Women".  It is a marvelous movie, and great story, gorgeously filmed, and smartly written and wonderfully directed by Gerwig, who at the age of 36 is quickly becoming one of the current days' great filmmakers.  Any movie that she now makes becomes one that I want to see.

Ronan and Gerwig

She makes the interesting choice of telling the story of the March Sisters during two different points in time, set seven years apart in the story.  It seems a bit disorienting at first, but you catch on pretty quickly and it turns out to have been a great way to present the story.

Scanlon, Ronan, Watson, and Pugh

The March Sisters, the "little women" of the title are played by Emma Watson (Meg), Saoirse Ronan (Jo), Florence Pugh (Amy), and Eliza Scanlon (Beth).  All are great, but the first among equals is Ronan.  Ever since seeing her in the great movie "Brooklyn" a few years back, she has become one of my favorite actresses. She alone makes any movie that she is in worth seeing (if they filmed her reading the telephone book, I think that I'd pay to see it), and she is absolutely mesmerizing as Jo March in this one.  You really just can't take your eyes off of her as you watch her perform on screen.  I have said previously on this Blog and will restate it once more, she is becoming the next great actress of her generation, and she will be, I believe, the "next Meryl Streep."

Also appearing in this movie are Timothee Chalamet (another veteran from "Lady Bird"), Laura Dern, Chris Cooper, Bob Odenkirk, and the aforementioned Meryl Streep.  How great to have both Streep and Ronan appear in the same movie, although they have few scenes together.  Most of Streep's interactions in the movie are with Miss Pugh's Amy.  

I simply cannot recommend this movie highly enough.  Some terrifically staged scenes, particularly of sequences where there is dancing involved.  Sounds crazy since this is NOT a musical, but when you see the scenes, you'll know what I mean. Also, terrific dialog, particularly from Streep's character Aunt March when talking about the sisters, the necessity of marriage in the nineteenth century, and her feelings towards Jo, who may be more like her than she realizes or cares to admit. 

Simply put, don't miss "Little Women".  I can't wait to see it again.

Four Stars from The Grandstander.

Oh, and one more thing.  We saw this yesterday in a theater that was close to being filled to capacity, and I was one of three or four men in the audience.  So my message to all you guys out there, don't pass this one up because you think this one is strictly for women, or more specifically, young girls.  To do so will cause you to miss out on a terrific movie.  Trust me on that.

"The Laundromat"

We watched this movie on Netflix on Friday night.  It was, to say the least, and interesting movie, and I am not sure I can even tell you what it was about.  Money laundering? Corruption in the tangled relationships among lawyers, bankers, and insurance and financial services companies?  Corrupt political systems both here and abroad? It was funny in parts, sad in parts, and it made you feel both angry and helpless against "the system."  It stars Academy Award winners Meryl Streep and Gary Oldman, as well as Antonio Banderas, James Cromwell, and an almost unrecognizable Sharon Stone in a minor role.

WARNING:  If you lean to the right, and like wearing a red baseball cap with gold lettering that promotes a certain political agenda, don't bother seeing this one because you will hate it.  You've been warned.

Two and one-half Stars from The Grandstander.

Two Movies and a Blackout

It was an interesting 36 or so hours this past Thursday and Friday that saw us seeing two movies and experiencing one significant inconvenience.

Let's take them in chronological order.

Thursday afternoon we saw the newest from director Steven Spielberg, "The Post".

For those of you too young to remember, or who have just plain forgotten about it, vey simply stated this is the story of the top secret documents back in 1971 that were leaked to the New York Times by Daniel Ellsberg, the documents that came to be known as the Pentagon Papers.  The Papers discussed the mishandling and misleading (a nice word for "lying") by four Presidential administrations about the conduct of the United States in the Viet Nam war, and the conduct of a fifth Administration in subverting the first amendment.

Ellsberg first leaked the papers to the Times, and the Times published them.  The Nixon Administration then enjoined the Times from continuing to publish them.  At the same time the Washington Post came into possession of the Papers, and they had to make a decision as to whether or not to publish them themselves.  This was at a critical time for the Post, which was in the process of going from a privately owned family business to a publicly traded company.  It fell upon publisher Katherine Graham and editor Ben Bradlee

The real Ben Bradlee and Katherine Graham

to make the decision:  Inform the public and defend the first amendment of the Constitution, or knuckle under to a bullying  President and all of his men.  The whole issue went before the Supreme Court, who ruled in favor of the Times and the Post, and, it might be argued, the American people.

The movie is well made and suspenseful, even though you know how it is going to end.  And it gives a great feeling for how it is, or at least how it used to be, to work at a newspaper (the building would literally shake when the presses that produced the newspaper would begin to run).  We attended this movie with friend Barb Vancheri, retired Film Critic for the Post-Gazette, and she said seeing the stories being written, the editorial meetings, and the actual production of the paper made her miss her job!

Attention must be paid to the terrific performances of Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks in the roles of Graham and Bradlee.

Is it a surprise to anyone that they were both terrific in their roles?  A scene where Streep as Graham is talking on the phone and wrestling with the publish-or-not-publish decision is worth the price of the movie and is probably why she will get yet another Oscar nomination.  As for Hanks, he may suffer by comparison to Jason Robards, Jr. who played Bradlee in "All The President's Men", which is certainly understandable, but also unfair to him.  

The issues underlined in "The Post" are, sadly, still all too relevant in 2018, which makes this movie almost mandatory viewing for the civic minded among us, but it is also an exciting and dramatic bit of movie making.  And it also might compel one to rewatch the great "All The President's Men", never a bad thing.

Four Stars from The Grandstander.

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"The Post" was pretty much going to be our movie going activity for the week, but along about midnight, electric power for much of McCandless and Franklin Park, about 2,500 homes, was lost.  Have any idea of just how dark  it gets when all of the various nightlights and luminescent clock dials in you home suddenly go out?  Or how cold it gets inside when it is subfreezing outside?

Well, the public utility that serves us told us that power would be restored by 1:00 PM, then it was 4:30, then it was 6:30, then it ws 8:30.  We were this close to packing up and heading to a local hotel when at 7:17 PM, we heard the fridge click on, and an instant later the lights came on and the furnace began running.  It was an unpleasant experience, but it made us grateful for how we live, and appreciative of what we have and sad knowing that there are folks out there who don't have such everyday conveniences at their disposal.

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So what do you do when it's too cold to stay in your home.  We went out for breakfast.  We had separate lunch dates with friends, Marilyn went to the Mall, and then we decided to go to another movie.  

The choice:

If you were around in 1994, what became known as the "Harding-Kerrigan Affair" is well known to you, but it can be shocking to think that for people under the age of thirty or so, the story told in "I, Tonya" is probably completely unknown to them.

Tonya Harding came up through a hard scrabble upbringing in Oregon to become a world class figure skater.  She competed in the 1992 Olympics, became the first woman to ever perform a triple axle in competition, became the American Champion, and on her way to competing in the 1994 Olympics, her chief competitor, Nancy Kerrigan, was knee-capped at the behest of her husband and some of the gang-that-couldn't-straight entourage that surrounded her.  Was Harding complicit in the attack?  She still says, no, but even after seeing the movie, you still don't know whether to believe her or not.

One thing you know for sure is that she was the victim of an abusive mother.  Played by Allison Janney (a sure fire Oscar nominee), this lady brings new dimensions to the term "evil stage mother" and also to the term "foul-mouthed", for that matter.  She is just an awful person, almost hard to watch, but Janney is brilliant in the role.  Harding was also victimized and abused by her husband Jeff Gillooly, played by Sebastien Stan, whose name became a verb, as in, "to Gillooly someone".  Also terrific in this movie is actor Paul Walter Hauser who plays Shawn Eckert, Gillooly's loser friend who "masterminds" the whole Kerrigan attack.

But the real star of the movie is Margot Robbie who plays Tonya Harding.

Robbie as Harding (L) and 

Harding herself (R) in competition

She plays Harding as both a victim and a victimizer.  She pulls off the skating sequences, which were brilliantly filmed, very well.  She was brilliant in this role.  Watch the changes in her eyes and her face in one scene where she applies her own make-up prior to skating.  A simply marvelous performance.

At times this movie was hard to watch, and as far as language is concerned, it is for sure hard to listen to at times, but great performances by Robbie and Janney, and a terrifically written and filmed story (directed by Craig Gillispie) make this well worth seeing.

Four stars from The Grandstander.

By the way, both Harding and Gillooly were interviewed by screenwriter Steven Rogers in preparation for this movie, so one would think that what we are seeing is authentic.  And we know for sure that Robbie and Harding were in touch with each other, at least at various red carpets in relation to the release of the movie, as evidenced below.

Harding and Robbie on the red carpet

Upcoming Movie - "The Papers"

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette  carried a feature article in is entertainment magazine this morning that previewed the upcoming "Fall Movies" scheduled for release in the months ahead.  Summaries of sixty movies were included, many of which will fall into the "don't wanna see it" category for me.  

However, there was one movie, scheduled to be released around Christmas time, of which I had never heard, and it really grabbed my attention.  It's called "The Papers" and it is about the legal wranglings over the release of The Pentagon Papers back in the early 1970's.  All you youngsters out there can Google that, but here is the synopsis from IMDB: 

"A cover-up that spanned four U.S. Presidents pushed the country's first female newspaper publisher and a hard-driving editor to join an unprecedented battle between journalist and government. Inspired by true events."

IMDB also refers tells you that the name of this movie is "The Post", so apparently the actual title is still up in the air.

It stars Tom Hanks as Ben Bradlee and Meryl Streep as Katherine Graham of the Washington Post, and it is directed by Steven Spielberg.  It also includes such interesting actors as Alison Brie, Carrie Coon, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Matthew Rhys, but is the pedigree of Hanks-Spielberg-Streep that will make this one Must See movie going for The Grandstander.

Mark your movie going calendars for this one, folks.

Old Movie Review: "Postcards From The Edge"

The deaths last week of Carrie Fisher and her mother, Debbie Reynolds (see http://grandstander.blogspot.com/2016/12/two-absent-friends-carrie-fisher-and.html ), prompted us to seek out and watch the 1990 movie, "Postcards From the Edge", screenplay by Carrie Fisher, based on her novel of the same name.

Directed by the great Mike Nichols, the movie stars Meryl Streep as  young actress Suzanne Vale and Shirley MacLaine as her mother, Doris Mann, a one time star of movies and cabarets.  Suzanne has never quite been able to escape the shadow of her famous mother and this has led to a life filled with "mother issues", and, oh, yeah, drug addiction.  The movie opens with Suzanne screwing up on a movie set because of her drug issues and ending up on a rehab center.  In order to get work in a shlocky movie, the producers insist that she live at home with her mother for the duration of the filming.  This opens the entire can of worms that Suzanne has struggled with her entire life.

It was no secret at the time that Fisher's novel was published that this story was autobiographical in nature.  I didn't read the book, but the movie pulls no punches in describing the rocky nature of the Mann-Vale/Reynolds-Fisher relationship.  It is biting and at times quite uncomfortable to watch the two fight and struggle to come to terms with each other, even when the daughter is now a middle-aged adult.  (Funny bit of dialog:  When Streep tells MacLaine that she, Streep, is now middle-aged, Shirley responds by saying that "you are young; I'M middle-aged", to which Streep replies "How many 120 year olds do you know?")  Turns out that Mann/MacLaine, now a past her prime star, has some mother issues of her own, and a fairly serious drinking problem, which, of course, she denies while castigating her daughter for her drug issues.

Smaller parts in the movie are played by Annette Bening, Richard Dreyfuss, and Gene Hackman.  Hackman's part is pretty key, actually.  He plays a movie director who threatens  to see that Suzanne never works again because of her drug issues, but who turns out to play a key role in helping her out, not only in her career, but in her relationship with her mother with this particular exchange of dialog:

Lowell: You know, you're not going to get a lot of sympathy. Do you know how many people would give their right arm to live your life? 

Suzanne: But that's the problem. I can't feel my life. I look around me and I know so much of it is good. But it's like this stuff with my mother. I know that she does these things because she loves me... but I just can't believe it. 

Lowell: Maybe she'll stop mothering you when you stop needing mothering. 

Suzanne: You don't know my mother. 

Lowell: I don't know your mother, but I'll tell you something. She did it to you and her mother did it to her and back and back and back all the way to Eve and at some point you just say, "Fuck it, I start with me." 

Suzanne: Did you just make that up? 

Lowell: Yeah, well, I was working on it when you came in. If you'd shown up a half hour later like you were supposed to, it would have been better. 

Suzanne: It's pretty good as it is. 

Lowell: Yeah, you just like it because it sounds a little like movie dialogue. 

Suzanne: That's right, I don't want life to imitate art, I want life to be art.

The very best scene in the movie may well be the final scene wherein Suzanne, acting an a new movie, sings a slow country ballad called "I'm Checking Out".  The entire movie crew is taken by the performance, including Doris (MacLaine), who is on set watching her daughter during filming. It is a triumphant performance, and it ends the movie "Postcards From The Edge", but without breaking stride, and seemingly in one take, Streep performs the song again, this time in a rocking up-tempo manner as the film's closing credits roll.  It is absolutely terrific!

As one might expect, given the people involved, Fisher's script, and Nichols' direction, the acting is terrific in this one, and, yes, Streep did receive one of her twenty (or is it twenty-one?) Oscar nominations for her performance in this one.  This movie is now twenty-seven years old, long enough ago that Streep was able to play the daughter  in it.  Given the nature of Hollywood, and the attention surrounding both Reynolds and Fisher due to their deaths, I can just picture someone in some studio boardroom pitching this one...."Hey, let's strike while it's hot and do a remake of "Postcards From the Edge", only this time, Streep will play the mother."  Would that surprise anyone?

Three stars on this one from The Grandstander.

Movie Review - "Florence Foster Jenkins"

From the time I saw the first commercial for "Florence Foster Jenkins", and looked at a trailer for it online, I knew that this was going to be a movie I wanted to see.  It looked like it would be funny, and it starred Meryl Streep and Hugh Grant, and it even included Simon Helberg, the guy who plays Howard Walowitz on "The Big Bang Theory".  It was directed by Stephen Frears, the guy who made "The Queen". I mean, how could you go wrong?

Then the reviews came in, and word of month from friends, and it confirmed everything.  Streep was great, everyone said, and will probably earn her twentieth Oscar nomination from this one, but the guy who steals the movie is Helberg, and he, too, will probably score an Oscar nomination as a result of his part in this one.  Like to see Sheldon Cooper top that!

The movie takes place in 1944 in New York City.  Streep plays the title character, a wealthy patron of the arts who loves music and has a desire to sing in public.  In Carnegie Hall, no less.  Grant is her devoted husband, and Helberg plays the pianist that Grant hires to accompany his wife as she takes to the stage.  I will say that the scene when Jenkins/Streep first sings with Helberg accompanying her in a rehearsal in Jenkins' apartment is positively hilarious.  If Helberg does score that Oscar nomination, it will be because of those few minutes of the movie.  

The movie is more than that, though. It's a love story that is incredibly touching, but one with a few complicated twists and turns to it.  The scenes of New York City in 1944 are really beautiful to look at, too.  As for pure film making, there is a scene in the latter part of the movie where Streep reads a newspaper on a New York City street where the camera backs up and away that is just a terrific scene.  And Streep's final line of dialog in the movie is really great.  It hits the perfect note (no pun intended).

This movie is also based on a true story.  There really was a Florence Foster Jenkins, who really did give a performance at Carnegie Hall in 1944.  You can look it up!

As I said, Streep is terrific, but that's no surprise.  Is she ever not great in a movie?  So is Helberg, but not mentioned much in the reviews is the work of Hugh Grant.  Personal prejudice:  I really like Hugh Grant.  He can be serious, he can be funny (he is both in this movie), and he is good looking.  I have always said that there was only one Cary Grant in the movies, and he will never be duplicated, but Hugh Grant comes the closest to it of any contemporary actor.  He gives a wonderful performance in "Florence Foster Jenkins", but it is one that will probably get lost amidst the work of Streep and Helberg.

Three and one-half stars from The Grandstander for "Florence Foster Jenkins".