Eva's 2017 Movie List

Eva's 2017 Movies Most Worthy of Mention, order not significant, but documentaries and movies based on a true story are 1st

Compiled Dec. 3, 2017

1. Alive! ©1993 Dir. Frank Marshall. 126 min. A plane carrying a Uruguayan rugby team crashed in the Andes at 11000 feet in 1973. 16 people survived there for 72 days. The library DVD contained a bonus documentary of the 16 in 1993, still all friends in Montevideo. Another bonus documentary shows one of them making a camping trek in 2003 by horseback to the crash site memorial.

2. Marshall ©2017 Dir. Reginald Hudlin. Dramatizes a case from the early career of Thurgood Marshall (Chadwick Boseman), in 1940 the only lawyer for the NAACP. Josh Gad plays Marshall’s co-counsel, Sterling K. Brown, the defendant, James Cromwell, the Judge, and Dan Stevens (Matthew Crawley in Downton Abbey), the prosecutor. Also w/ Kate Hudson and Keesha Sharp. 118 min.

3. The Battle of the Sexes ©2017. Dirs. Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, w/ Emma Stone as Billie Jean King and Steve Carell as Bobby Riggs. Also w/ Sarah Silverman, Andrea Riseborough and Austin Stowell. The story of the 1973 tennis match and a lot more.

4. Hidden Figures ©2016 Dir. Theodore Melfi, based on the book by Margot Shetterly. Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer & Janelle Monae play Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, who did math and programming at NASA in the ‘50’s and ‘60’s. Kevin Costner and Jim Parsons (Sheldon in the Big Bang Theory) play their boss and a colleague. Clips from this film were discussed in a forum I attended at Sundance on how women are portrayed in the STEM fields in film, w/ a panel of women scientists.

5. Maudie ©2016. Dir Aisling Walsh, produced by Bob Cooper (no relation); A biopic about Maud Lewis (1903-1970) played by Sally Hawkins, a severely arthritic folk artist who lived in a very small house near Digby, Nova Scotia with her uncommunicative, curmudgeonly husband Everett (Ethan Hawke), a fishmonger. It’s a portrait of an artist and a marriage, on a refreshingly basic level.

6. Jane ©2017 Dir. Brett Morgen. Documentary about Jane Goodall (1934- ). 90 min. The 83-year-old Goodall comments. We see footage of her when she first arrived at Gombe to observe chimpanzees. Her mother was supportive. In the 1960’s she married a National Geographic photographer. We see their son as a baby in Africa. Later we see him grown up. The well-told story of Jane’s career and research together with extraordinary footage of birds and insects and mammals fascinates. The music is by Philip Glass.

7. Lion ©2016 Dir. Garth Davis. 129 min. with Dev Patel, Nicole Kidman, Rooney Mara, David Wenham and Priyanka Bose. Based on the true story of a 5-year-old who got lost in India around 1990. He was adopted by a loving couple in Australia. 25 years later, with the help of Google Earth, he returned to his village and found his birth mother. Seeing the twenty-minute documentary version on 60 Minutes beforehand in no way spoiled this narrative feature for me. The script, by Luke Davies, is derived from the 2012 memoir A Long Way Home by Saroo Brierly. His name got a bit mangled over the years, but it originally meant “lion.”

8. Loving ©2016 Dir Jeff Nichols, w/ Ruth Negga as Mildred Loving, Joel Edgerton as her husband Richard. This movie dramatizes the story behind the 1967 Supreme Court Decision that made interracial marriage legal throughout the U.S, Loving v. Virginia.

9. The Loving Story ©2011, documentary by Nancy Buirski. The 2016 docudrama was well cast! We see archival footage. We see the 3 Loving children. The daughter was interviewed as an adult. There’s video of the young lawyers Bernie Cohen and Phil Hirschkopf.

10. The People vs. O.J. Simpson ©2016, 4 DVDs. Based on the book The Run of His Life by Jeffrey Toobin. w/ Cuba Gooding Jr. (O.J.), John Tavolta (Bob Shapiro, initially lead defense lawyer), Nathan Lane (F. Lee Bailey), David Schwimmer (Robert Kardashian), Courtney B. Vance (Johnnie Cochran), Evan Handler (Alan Dershowitz), & Kenneth Choi (Judge Lance Ito). The prosecutor, Marcia Clark, is played by Sarah Paulson (who won the Golden Globe for best actress). She had a slam dunk case but lost. Reminds me of what happened to Hillary in the 2016 election. In focus groups Marcia was described as a bitch. She got criticized for her hair. Chris Darden (Sterling K. Brown), second chair after Marcia, begged her not to call Mark Fuhrman (Steven Pasquale) to the witness stand, so that was one big mistake she made. It won 9 Emmys and the Golden Globe award for best miniseries. Four of the ten episodes were directed by Ryan Murphy, five were directed by Anthony Hemingway, and one, “The Race Card,” by John Singleton.

11. OJ Made in America ©2016, the documentary. Dir. Ezra Edelman. Makeup and casting really did a good job with Marcia Clark and Robert Kardashian in the aforementioned docudrama! After the trial 77% of white America believed OJ had gotten away with murder, 72% of blacks felt it was a just verdict. This documentary shows footage of OJ’s football glory days, and his 2006 armed robbery conviction (he was trying to steal back OJ memorabilia from a collector) where they threw the book at him. It happens he got out on parole the week I watched this. It also covers the trial, which I paid little attention to back in 1994, but now I’m all caught up! 3 DVDs

12. It’s Not Yet Dark ©2016 (Ireland) Dir. Frankie Fenton, based on the book of the same title by Simon Fitzmaurice (1974-October 26, 2017). Documentary about Irish filmmaker Simon Fitzmaurice who was diagnosed with Motor Neuron Disease at age 34. My friend Elizabeth got called on at the Q and A at Sundance, and we spoke briefly with the filmmakers in the lobby afterwards. E. had just written a Master’s thesis on how disability is treated in books and film. She expressed appreciation to the filmmakers for handling this material well. Before getting ALS Simon had led an exceptionally blessed life—it was a pleasure to watch the happiness. We see him finding his great love and marrying, enjoying fatherhood, premiering a film at Sundance. We see Simon dancing at his sister’s wedding, the last time he was able to dance. Budding filmmaker Simon took a lot of home movies, thus there was this footage.

13. Menashe ©2017 Dir. Joshua Z. Weinstein. I saw this documentary at Sundance with Menashe Lustig and the filmmakers present at the Q & A. The evening before at the premiere had been the first time Menashe had ever been in a cinema with an audience. The docudrama tells the story of Menashe, a widower whose 10-year-old son is living with his brother-in-law’s family because the Hasidic community to which he belongs insists children be raised in a traditional home, not a single-parent home. We see him on matchmaker dates. We see Menashe at his work. We see him visiting with his son. We see him putting his case to the Reb. It does not help that Menashe’s brother-in-law has a more successful career, or that Menashe’s own arranged early marriage was never a happy one.

14. Stronger ©2017 Dir. David Gordon Green. Jake Gyllenhaal plays Jeff Bauman, a 28-year-old who lost both legs in the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013. I wonder how Jeff’s mother feels about the film. She was portrayed realistically, not flatteringly. Jeff, too is portrayed with his flaws. Rehab is no picnic. Jeff’s girlfriend had given up on him more than once, both before and after his injury.

15. The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman’s Portrait Photography ©2016 Documentary by Errol Morris. The eponymous Cambridge MA artist worked in large format Polaroids. The film for that medium is no longer made. The Somerville Journal’s review of this movie was titled “To Be Discontinued.” During the film I realized that Elsa’s husband, Harvey, is Harvey Silvergate of the Boston Phoenix and ACLU fame. Dorfman (1937- ) was a friend of Allen Ginsberg. Dorfman would let her clients choose a photo from the several she took. The remainders, the “B-side,” constitute her collection. We learn about her son and parents and her artistic development.

16. Obit ©2017 Dir. Vanessa Gould. Documentary interviewing obituary writers at The NY Times. Timely view of professional journalists checking facts. I liked this better than the fictional Shirley MacLaine feature film about an obit writer, The Last Word, which I saw at the Sundance film festival. But the venue where I saw the Shirley MacLaine vehicle, Robert Redford’s Sundance Resort, an hour from Park City, was fantastic. As was the brunch Elizabeth and I had there. It was a winter wonderland with rustic buildings and skiers.

17. The Eagle Huntress ©2016. Dir. Otto Bell. (US, UK, Mongolia). In Kazakh, with subtitles. Documentary-ish. A true story with the real people, but surely some parts were re-enacted. Aisholpan Nurgaiv, 14 or so, plays herself. Just seeing the family in their winter and summer homes, the town (Ugli) that was a day’s horseback ride away, the landscape, and the boarding school would have been a fine way to spend 87 minutes. But there’s also an absorbing story line. The heroine is personable, with a loving family and friends. She had the courage to break into a previously all-male sport, with the support of her father. Predictably, the old guys who had disapproved of letting her enter the Eagle Festival Contest grumbled that she had been advantaged by being a girl when she won.

18. Racing the Rez ©2012 Documentary about two Navajo high school cross country teams. One of the two always wins the Arizona State championship, but which one? We get to see the coaches and the kids, we meet their parents. This was screened in East Somerville outdoors, a free event, with local restaurants selling food. Thanks to Polly for suggesting we go! Local dir. Brian Truglio told us what became of some of the kids after high school. There was an uplifting short before the feature about diversity in East Somerville. There was a local band before that. Best summer experience viewing a movie in a park since 1950’s Cambridge WI.

19. Queen of Katwe ©2016 Dir Mira Nair, based on the non-fiction article of the same title by Tim Crothers. w/ Madina Nalwanga, David Oyelowo, Luipita Nyong’o. 124 min. The story of an internationally competitive chess team from the slums of Katwe, Uganda, and in particular it depicts the life of a real girl, Phiona Mutesi, who becomes a Woman Candidate Master. Very colorful, with DVD extras.

20. Bending the Arc ©2017 Dirs. Keith Davidson and Pedro Kos. Documentary about Partners in Health. Old footage and stills showing Paul Farmer and Ophelia Dahl, 23 & 18 resp., as rural volunteers in Haiti in 1983, and then later Paul becoming friends with Jim Kim at Harvard Medical School. It follows the trio as they grew purposefully. I liked Dr. Agnes Binagwaho, Health Minister of Rwanda. Pedestrian production values but inspirational content. It concludes showing the little kids of Jim and Paul, friends like their fathers.

22. Keep Quiet ©2015 Dir. Sam Blair. Documentary about Csanad Szegedi, vice-president of Hungary’s far right Jobbik party, who at age 30 discovers that he is Jewish, and is kicked out of the party. He does a 180, embracing his new identity. But is he sincere, or does he have nowhere else to go? He interviews his grandmother. “If you are Jewish, how come you escaped?” “I didn’t.” She rolls up her sleeve to show him her Auschwitz #. His grandmother said she learned to “keep quiet” about it in anti-semitic Hungary. In retrospect Csanad remembers his mother looking sad when as a child he told a joke about the Holocaust. This film reveals the thinking and motives of some neo-Nazis. One guy says the military aspects of the movement drew him. Another liked being part of a group.

23. Dunkirk ©2017 Dir. Christopher Nolan. I like escape stories. In May 1940, 400,000 British troops were sitting ducks on the beach in Dunkirk. 700+ little boats and a few naval vessels rescued 338,226 of them, though to see the movie you’d think most of them died. No character development. I saw it in iMAX & perceived no added value because of that. Still I enjoyed this great moment in retreats.

24. Their Finest ©2017 based on Their Finest Hour and a Half by Lissa Evans. This is my list’s transition movie from docudrama’s and documentaries to fictional stories. This movie is set in 1940 in the London Blitz. It’s in color but has the look of 1940’s movie color technology. It’s about making a propaganda feature about the evacuation of Dunkirk that will rally the British people and maybe move Americans. There’s a strong feminist thread. There’s character development and character actors (Bill Nighy), and the growing attraction stage of a romance (Gemma Atherton and Sam Claflin). Danish director Lone Scherflig talks about it all in the DVD extras.

25. A Brilliant Young Mind ©2014 Dir. Morgan Matthews’ previous movies were documentaries, and this has a realistic feel. Nathan (Asa Butterfield), who is autistic, at age 16 qualifies as one of Britain’s five entrants to the Mathematical Olympiad. Nathan’s widowed mother Julie (Sally Hawkins) endures the loneliness of young widowhood & of loving a son who doesn’t respond. A teacher, Mr. Humphries, himself a former Mathematical Olympian, tutors Nathan from ages 9 to 16. Mr. H. has MS. He and Julie start a relationship. Two fellow contestants, one a Taiwanese girl (girls are rare in Olympiads!) befriend Nathan. He starts to open up a bit.

26. The Effects of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds ©1972. Dir Paul Newman. Starring Joanne Woodward as Beatrice Hunsdorfer, a hard-boiled widow with two daughters who are, I’d say, a freshman and sophomore in high school. Newman and Woodward’s real-life daughter plays Matilda, Beatrice’s younger daughter, who’s into her high school science project. The older daughter, Ruth, is compelling too. Sample line: Beatrice is picking up her daughters at school. Ruth is talking to some boys. Beatrice tells Tillie, “Go get your sister before she gets pregnant.” Based on the Pulitzer-Prize-winning play by Paul Zindel.

27. Homeland, ©2011-15. Seasons 1-5, all library DVD sets. I got hooked on this, even though there’s violence and mental illness in it which usually turns me off. With Claire Danes (Carrie Mathison), Mandy Patinkin (Saul Berenson), Damian Lewis (Nicholas Brody), F. Murray Abraham (Dar Adal), Laila Robins (US Ambassador to Pakistan), Sarita Choudhury (Mira Berenson), Nina Hoss (Astrid), and Rupert Friend (Peter Quinn). It did not shake my liberal tilt but there’s controversy about whether it encourages right-wingers.

28. Better Call Saul ©2015-17 Seasons 1-3. Created by Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould. Spinoff prequel to Breaking Bad, with Bob Odenkirk as Jimmy McGill (later—way later—Saul Goodman: “S’ all good, man”), Rhea Seehorn as Kim Wexler (a breath of fresh air), Michael McKean as Chuck McGill, Jonathan Banks as Mike Ehrmantraut, and Patrick Fabian as Howard Hamlin, law partner.