Kwickie Kritical Kommentaries

Cleaning out the Mental In-Box.....

I have yet to read a book by Erik Larson that, if it wasn't GREAT, it was at least VERY, VERY GOOD.  His newest one, "The Demon of Unrest" is proving to be in that same category.  It covers events leading up to the attack of Fort Sumpter in Charleston Harbor that was the beginning of the American Civil War.   In his introduction to the book, Larson tells us that he was well into the research of this book when the events of January 6, 2021 unfolded, and that he couldn't help but see the parallels  to what took place in 1860.   I am only 100 pages into the book, and I can say that he is exactly correct.  The unrest stirred up in the American South prior to the Civil War is exactly what we are seeing being fomented in America today by the Convicted Felon-in-Chief and his minions, and it scares the shit out of me.

I always wait until I finish a book or movie before giving it a rating, but this one is well on it's way to Four Grandstander Stars.

This movie was released in mid-May and within two weeks was available on streaming, so it seems to have bombed at the box office.  It was still playing in our local multiplex, so we took it on last weekend, and enjoyed it a lot.

Ryan Gosling plays a professional movie stuntman, and Emily Blunt plays his ex-lover who is an aspiring movie director,  there is a plot to this one that I won't go into, since these are all "Kwickie Kommentaries" today, but it's a fun movie to see.  Gosling is charming as the put upon lead, and has Blunt ever been bad in anything?

Three Stars from The Grandstander, and be sure and stay for all of the closing credits.

I sought out this 1946 British mystery movie based upon a write-up on a classic movie Facebook Group to which I belong called My Reel Life.  It was said to be the type of movie that Hitchcock would have made back in Britain at the time.  It takes place in a London hospital that was set up to care for those injured and wounded during the Blitz of Great Britain by German V-1 rockets (called "doodlebugs" by the Brits; I had to google it when I heard it in the film) during WW II.  A death takes place.  Was it a murder?  Then another death takes place that most certainly was a murder.  There are five possible suspects, and a Scotland Yard detective played by Alistair Sim has to  unravel the whole bloody mess.  Sim, who is best known as being the best ever film version of Ebenezer Scrooge, can be classified as a distant antecedent to America's Lt. Columbo, in his portrayal of the detective in this one.

I found this one on Amazon Prime, and give it Two Grandstander Stars.

Now let's talk about Uniforms, and I'll be brief.

MLB's City Connect Uniforms are an abomination.  I have yet to see one that I like.   At PNC Park on Wednesday night, I saw a guy coming out of the Pirates Clubhouse Store putting on his newly purchased Pirates City Connect uni with the Number 21 and the name CLEMENTE on it. It made me want to gag.

YUCK!!!!

"First Man"

When the Oscar nominations are announced and when the awards themselves are passed out, you are going to hear the movie "First Man" mentioned a lot, and rightfully so.  Saw this one this afternoon, and it is a terrific movie.

It is the story of Neil Armstrong and the journey to his being the first man to set foot on the moon.  It begins with a scene of test pilot Armstrong flying an X-15 over the Mojave desert in 1961, and the story then follows the Armstrongs losing a child (something that I never knew about), his selection as a Gemini astronaut (the sequence of Armstrong's and David Scott's Gemini 8 mission is thrilling and harrowing), the tragic deaths of the Apollo 1 astronauts in a training exercise, and, of course, the historic mission of Apollo 11 in July, 1969.

This is not only a terrific story, but it is great movie making.  The scene of the lunar landscape after the LEM lands and the musical score that accompanies it is breathtaking.  And director Damien Chazelle puts you inside a cramped spacecraft and lets you know how really, really hard it is to be an astronaut even better than such terrific past movies as "The Right Stuff" and "Apollo 13" did.

The movies stars Ryan Gosling as Armstrong and Claire Foy as his wife, Janet.

Both are terrific. Gosling plays Armstrong as the reserved egghead (as described by a fellow astronaut) engineer that he was, not as a rowdy space cowboy, but as a guy whose reserved nature can be traced back to the personal tragedy of the death of a child.  Foy, best known as the young Queen Elizabeth in "The Crown" is fabulous as Janet, who has to deal not only with the loss of her daughter, but with raising two rowdy sons, dealing with NASA bureaucrats, and being married to man who every day runs the risk of not surviving his job.  The scene where she forces Neil to talk to the kids before he leaves for Cape Kennedy and the Apollo 11 mission is the clip that you will be seeing when they  show why she received her Best Actress nomination.

The movie is directed by Damien Chazelle, an Oscar winner for "La La Land" and has a screenplay by Josh Scott, an Oscar winner for "Spotlight".   Add that pedigree to great acting performances, an exciting and true story (yeah, it's edge-of-the-seat stuff even though you know how it ends), and you have what just might be the best movie of the year.

Four stars from The Grandstander, plus a tip of the space helmet to the man who inspired the whole story.

Neil Armstrong

The First Man

Movie Review - "La La Land"

There sure is a lot to like about the movie "La La Land", which we saw this afternoon.  Among them...

• Great performances and chemistry between stars Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone (who just may be the cutest woman in the movies today)
• Terrifically staged song and dance numbers, including one on a Los Angeles freeway and another at the Griffith Observatory
• A great girl-meets-boy motif
• Some really good music
• A story about living and fulfilling your dreams
• Did I mention just how gosh darn cute Emma Stone is?

This movie is making everybody's Ten Best list and many are calling it the best movie of the year.  We went prepared to absolutely love it, and we were loving it....until the end.

Oh, it was yet another terrifically staged number to end the movie, but the actual ending of the story itself left both of us disappointed.  I won't spell it out and spoil it for  those who haven't seen it, and I do recommend that you do see it, but if anyone wants to explain their thoughts on the ending, I am more than happy to listen.

Two and one-half stars from The Grandstander.  (A different ending might have gotten this one three and one-half or even four stars.)