Eva's 2007 Movies Most Worthy of Mention , in Chronological order * means Herman saw it too.
*My Flesh and Blood seen on DVD. Dir. Jonathon Karsh. Documentary about a woman who adopted a bunch of severely disabled children. Recommended by Herman's niece Nancy. Herman could not understand how MaryDan & I could laugh at the "I have issues" T-shirt worn by the lively 7th grader with no legs. Susan Tom has a permanent parking spot at Children's hospital. She shops in quantity.
Origin Unknown The director Nina Grünfeld and her father Berthold, who was her subject, were present. Berthold came to Norway at age 7 from Bratislava in a kindertransport of Jewish children. He had been a foster child before that, though his birth mother was still alive. Berthold is a very famous psychiatrist and pundit in Norway who lives in the present. But Nina wanted to research his origins. Together they went to Bratislava. During the Q & A we learned that Berthold & Gunhild had gone to Bratislava on their honeymoon in 1962 & had visited his foster family. Gunhild was also at the MFA.
51 Birch Street Documentary by Doug Block (2005, 88 min.). Doug is a filmmaker so home movies of his parents 50th wedding anniversary and other family events existed. When immediately after his mother's sudden death his father married his former secretary, Doug and his siblings jaws dropped. He sought advice from his mother's friend and from a Rabbi about whether he should read his mother's diaries. He interviews his sisters and his father and his stepmother. Doug re-interpreted his family.
*The History Boys (2005. dir. Nicholas Hytner, who had directed a Tony-award winning production of the Alan Bennett play.) is set in the 6th form in a boys' grammar school in Yorkshire in the early 1980's. Richard Griffiths plays Hector, a corpulent charismatic teacher the boys love even as they dodge his gropes. A new teacher arrives to cram the boys for the Oxbridge exam. Styles clash.
Notes on a Scandal. Dir. Richard Eyre, adapted by Patrick Marber from a novel by Zoë Helle. Judy Dench plays Barbara, a history teacher in a dreary N. London comprehensive school. Cate Blanchett plays Sheba, the undreary new art teacher who has an affair with a student. Barbara is undone. We see Sheba and Barbara's domestic lives. I used to teach in a North London Comprehensive School.
Miss Potter Dir. Chris Noonan (Babe) with Renee Zellwenger as Beatrix Potter. I agree w/ the critics who say the occasional animated drawings are a mistake, and who say Emily Watson, who plays Beatrix's friend, would have been a better lead, but I still found this movie very pleasurable.
Wrestling with Angels Documentary by Frieda Lee Mock about Tony Kushner. I enjoyed this it a lot more than *Angels in America, Kushner's masterpiece. (We only saw the TV adaptation).
The Italian. Dir Andrei Kravchuk. A fictional look at a Dickensian contemporary Russian orphanage. The ending was happy yet not sentimental. There was a lot of humanity to balance the depravity.
The Namesake Dir. Mira Nair. A faithful adaptation of the fine novel by Jhumpa Lahire even if the MA setting was changed to NY. Gogol Gangali (Zak Penn) and his parents were well cast, Sonia and Gogol's wife, less so. It's a challenge to show love well in a movie. This one succeeded admirably with parent-child love and in marital love between Ahima (Tabu) and Ashoke (Irfan Khan).
The Flying Scotsman. Dir. Douglas MacKinnon. A dramatization of the true story of 1990's Scottish bicycle mechanic turned bicycling champ Graeme Obree (Jonny Lee Miller). He suffered from depression. Brian Cox plays a clergyman in mufti. Also w/ Laura Fraser (wife) & Billy Boyd (mgr).
Away from Her (Canada) Dir. Sarah Polley (She's under 30!). Julie Christie imparts dignity and grace to her character, Fiona, a professor's wife with Altzheimer's. Fiona has not forgotten her husband's (Gordon Pinsent) past infidelities. Olympia Dukakis plays a tough old broad whose husband has "lost it." He nevertheless forms a close mutual attachment with Fiona in the assisted living facility to which both are consigned. (Would this resonate with Sandra 'Day O'Connor?) I read the Alice Munro story on which this movie is based, "The Bear Came Over the Mountain," on my complete NYer DVDs.
*The West Wing. All 7 season's, on DVD. It took us weeks to get through this. We both loved it. Created by Aaron Sorkin. With Allison Janney, Martin Sheen, Stockard Channing, Jimmy Smits, Richard Schiff, Janel Maloney, Alan Alda, Kristen Chenoweth, Rob Lowe, and Bradley Whitford
La Môme/La Vie en Rose Writer-dir Olivier Dahan, w/ Marion Cotillard as Edith Piaf. "La Vie en Rose" is one of the songs Piaf made famous, many of which are on the soundtrack. The set designers deserve an award. Edith was most fully alive when the curtain went up. She was a wreck by her 40's.
The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen). Germany. Writer/dir. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. Set in East Germany in an Orwellian 1984, with an epilogue in 1993. Best Foreign Film Oscar winner. A Stasi agent (Ulrich Mühe) is assigned to spy on a playwright (Sebastian Koch) whose life is a lot richer in human relationships than his own. Martina Gedeck plays the girlfriend.
*Sicko A feature-length partisan political spot, but I was entertained, and it does re-open the national discussion . It occurs to me that a reason Americans have sub-optimal health is that many of us are shaped like Michael Moore. I read about all the gimmicks beforehand but that didn't spoil it for me.
No Reservations. Scott Hicks remake of Sandra Nettelbeck's 2001 German hit Bella Martha/Mostly Martha. Catherine Zeta-Jones plays the Martina Gedeck role. N.R. has an operatic soundtrack, M.M. a Jazz soundtrack. Patricia Clarkson's role as the restaurant owner was not big enough to carry the movie for me, but the chemistry between Aaron Eckhardt and C. Z-J made up for that. It was amusing, but not worth a second viewing, so, pick one. I liked N.R. better, but then that's the one I saw first.
Alice Neel (1900-1984) 81 min bio-pic directed by the painter's grandson, Andrew Neel. Andrew and his father Hartley were both present for a Q & A. Each Alice Neel portrait projected on the big screen looked terrific. We saw footage of Alice herself, gleened from home movies and from documentary interviews. Alice lived in Greenwich Village, a single parent of 2 sons now a doctor and a lawyer resp.
Vera Drake Dir. Mike Leigh. DVD. A drama set in London in 1950 about a housewife who does abortions on the side, unbeknownst to her family, to help desperate women. Nothing was overdone or underdone. Imelda Staunton won best actress at several film festivals and deserved it. Vera's family was shown at home, at work, in bed, courting, and in crisis. Well cast. Eddie Marsan plays son Sid.
Shadow of the House. A documentary about Boston area photographer Abelardo Morell directed by Allie Humenuk. Both Humeneck and Morrell were present at the MFA screening George Keilbach and I attended. It was a window into one family of Cuban emigrés. Morell does camera obscura images superimposed on objects in a room. Also he photographs books. Two days later G. & I went museum hopping in Western MA. We planned to catch a Morell exhibit in Amherst, but Making it New: The Art and Style of Sarah and Gerald Murphy, a multimedia exhibit at Williams College, took longer than expected. At that exhibit one could rest in several alcoves and see a film of the Murphys daughter Honoria reminiscing, or a slide show of the Murphys circle of ex-pats in the twenties in France, or a film of a short ballet they designed, or hear a recording of Gerald and Sara themselves.
Into the Wild. Dir Sean Penn. A dramatized film version of the non-fiction book by Jon Krakauer about Chris McCandless., a young attractive university graduate who gave away his material possessions in the early 1990's and eventually died alone in Alaska. He took a lot of risks during the two years he lived incognito as Alex Supertramp. His distraught parents are played by Marcia Gay Hayden and John Hurt. I presume the real McCandless parents cooperated with this film. That took courage. Catherine Keener plays a middle-aged hippie who picks up hitchhiking Alex. She eventually tells him of her own heartache over her teenaged son who had taken off two years earlier and had not contacted her since. I have personally known survivors of this behavior. It happens. It's real.
Blame it on Fidel (La Faute à Fidel) Dir. Julie Gavras. Set in the early 1970's in France. By the end of the movie I was so impressed at the way the movie had communicated a rich array of moods, emotions and attitudes! The hands-on love this young affluent French family (actually he was Spanish by birth) gave their children was something to ponder pleasurably afterwards. The way the young couple treated each other, including a fight that wasn't about nothing, and was fairly fought, was sketched nicely. Three generations of family attitudes towards politics, religion, sex , work, and food were masterfully covered. The 9 yr old is played wonderfully by Nina Kervel-Bay, her parents by Stefano Accorsi and Julie Depardieu. We see the child's social life and the parents' political crowd.
Jesus Camp. Documentary by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady. I watched this DVD twice, the second time with the directors' commentary, which was excellent, turned on. I want a "20-up" film on Levi, Tory and Rachel when they are grown up! They are great kids. The children's pastor, Becky Fisher, has found her vocation. This movie was shown to the subjects in it. I bet they approved it (not that documentarians need to get approval from their subjects). Yet at the same time non-Pentecostals ( & non-Evangelical Christians) who see the movie do not see it as propaganda. Not at all. It was filmed between the resignation of Sandra Day O'Connor and the confirmation of Judge Samuel Alito. I also saw the documentary Summercamp! by Brad Breesley & Sarah Price, set at the Swift Nature Camp in Minola Wisconsin. It had no political content. One subject, Cameron, might have reason to regret the existence of this film--who wants his awkward years on public record— but most people in it would probably see it as an accurate depiction of a good experience. Camp has not changed much in 50 yrs!
*Letters from Iwo Jima. Dir Clint Eastwood. Ken Watanabe as General Kuribayashi . In Japanese w/ subtitles. We also saw *Flags of our Fathers which we did not like as well, but it was a good to see the battle from both sides. Herman chose these war movies. In the DVD extras I liked the interview with Iris Yamashita, the screenplay writer (along with Paul Haggis). This was her first big job.
This page has been accessed
times since Dec. 22, 2007
Last revised: December 22, 2007