Month: February 2022

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The Affair of the Necklace (2001)

After watching Marie Antoinette, I was more familiar with the Affair of the Diamond Necklace. This is another retelling of that story, but from the perspective of Hilary Swank’s Jeanne of Valois-Saint-Rémy, a prominent participant in the scandal. For such a tale of intrigue, this film is quite dull. Joely Richardson makes a decent Marie Antoinette and Christopher Walken is amusingly campy as the occultist Count Cagliostro, but Swank is poorly cast in her role. I don’t know if it’s because it’s a period piece or just an inability to encompass the various qualities necessary of the character, but she doesn’t bring an ounce of believability to the role.

Oscar Nomination: Best Costume Design

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The Thing (1982)

The tranquility of an Antarctica outpost is interrupted by a Norwegian helicopter hunting down a sled dog. The Norwegians are killed in the confusion, but the dog survives and has brought with him a creature of questionable origin. Between this, They Live, and The Fog, I’m really digging John Carpenters 1980s SciFi Horror. This has the incredible added atmosphere of the remote location and extra tension as paranoia sets in amongst the denizens, no one knowing who has been infected until it’s too late. It also has a pretty great cast that works well together, including Kurt Russell, Keith David, and surprisingly Wilford Brimley.   SciFi  Horror

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Twice in a Lifetime (1985)

On the night of his 50th birthday, Gene Hackman goes to a bar without his homebody wife Ellen Burstyn and flirts with the younger, new barmaid Ann-Margret. Despite, or maybe because of, thirty years of marriage with his wife and having three now adult children together, he finds himself falling for Ann-Margret and beginning an affair. It’s a bit exasperating to watch Hackman disintegrate his long-time family unit without much thought, but in parallel, it also shows how people get stuck in patterns without much thought to their happiness or the direction their life is going. I enjoy watching films set locally so I can try to guess the neighborhoods they were filmed in, that is as long as it’s not really Vancouver or some other city pretending.

Oscar Nomination: Best Actress in a Supporting Role

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In Our Water (1982)

At this point I’ve seen a number of narrative films based on corporations contaminating water supplies that the details from this film are not all that surprising. A family in South Brunswick, New Jersey discovers that the water coming from their well, and that of their neighbors, has been contaminated by a local landfill. This documents the father becomes an activist and fights to get local, state, and federal governments to acknowledge the problem. It’s all very depressing as it’s a real life story that occurred before those other films and just establishes that these problems keep happening and environmental protections are so easy to reverse or ignore.

Oscar Nomination: Best Documentary, Features

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One Summer Love (1976)

Beau Bridges has recently been released from a mental hospital. He meets Susan Sarandon working at a movie theater and with her help, tracks down his family and some answers to his mental issues. Bridges does a fairly good job portraying someone whose development has been stilted from years living in an institution but the rest of the film is somewhat of a mess. He spends most of his time bouncing off the actions of those around him who honestly aren’t any more mentally with it than he is. I prefer the original title of Dragonfly as it actually relates to Bridges’s experiences instead of trying to make it some grand love story.

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Freedom Song (2000)

During the Civil Rights movement in a small town in Mississippi, young people join with other activists to register people to vote and protest other inequalities. Similarly to Deacons for Defense , parents of these students aren afraid to shake things up, being well aware of the retributions that have happened in the past. Unlike that other movie, the adults don’t step in to protect the teens. It’s a perfectly serviceable made for television version of the events of the time period. It’s possible I’ve just watched a few too many on the theme recently to appreciate it more.

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One Potato, Two Potato (1964)

Abandoned by her adventure-seeking, ex-husband Richard Mulligan, the mother of a young child, Barbara Barrie, meets single man Bernie Hamilton at her new job. They begin a relationship and soon marry despite the obstacles presented to an interracial couple. At some point, her ex-husband hunts her down and sues for custody of their daughter because of his disapproval of their relationship. Reminiscent of Two Mothers for Zachary , it’s another story of a parent at risk of losing their child because someone else simply has objections to the couple being together. Like that other film, this one is based on actual court cases that happened. This film is more infuriating as the home Barrie and Hamilton have established with Hamilton’s parents is obviously loving and wholesome and even Mulligan admits his feelings could be wrong, but he can’t stop himself from objecting regardless.

Oscar Nomination: Best Writing, Story and Screenplay – Written Directly for the Screen

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Small Wonders (1995)

Based on the same story as Music of the Heart, this film follows the work of Roberta Guaspari, a music teacher who teaches violin to elementary school students in Harlem. As a documentary, it doesn’t really work for me. It has the aesthetic of a personal interest story from the evening news and has only about as much story to share as one of those pieces. There’s not much flow to the narrative nor even a clear sense of the timeline it encompasses. It is cool to the kids hard at work and for some of them, the culmination of that work giving them the chance to play with world-class violinists.  Music

Oscar Nomination: Best Documentary, Features

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The Gates (2007)

Though I was not in a position to at the time, I had really wanted to see The Gates when it was exhibited. Watching this is the closest I can come to that. Unlike The Floating Piers, the work was constructed while Jeanne-Claude was still alive and she seems to be somewhat of a calming influence on him. Like that other work, this required the couple to work through many decades of government bureaucracy before finally having the chance to pull it off. The interviewers somehow found the grumpiest New Yorkers to express all forms of disgust at the two week, in the middle of winter installation. It makes for a great contrast to the delight the artists themselves show at seeing their work finally realized.

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The One and Only Dick Gregory (2021)

Before this film, I only knew of Dick Gregory by name. This documentary offers a fairly comprehensive view of his life from his early days as a comedian to his activism to his later promotion of health and weight loss products and then returning to being a speaker and comedian. While fairly standard as a biopic, the subject is definitely intriguing and there is plenty of footage of Dick himself along with interviews from family members and those he influenced.

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