Eva's 2007 Book List (gleaned from a universe of 50)\

Eva's 2019 Movies Most Worthy of Mention. Order not significant Compiled Dec. 9, 2019

1. On the Basis of Sex ©2018. Docudrama. Dir. Mimi Leder. Screenplay by Daniel Stiepleman, RBG’s nephew. On seeing the movie, RBG told Daniel, “I just love that it’s joyous.” During production she advised, “I did not wear heels at Harvard Law. I walked everywhere.” Felicity Jones plays Ruth Bader Ginsberg as a young adult, Armie Hammer plays her husband Marty. Kathy Bates plays Dorothy Kenyon, pioneering lawyer for women’s rights. RBG graduated from Columbia because Harvard would not allow her to do her final Law School year at Columbia. Marty was in NYC. He had cancer and they had a toddler. Later in her career the movie has her Harvard Law Dean (Sam Waterston) congratulating her on a brilliant approach to a case, and Ruth replying “Actually, I learned that at Columbia.”

2. Green Book ©2018. Dir. Peter Farrelly. 130 min. Based on a true story. Viggo Mortenson plays Tony “The Lip” Vallelonza, a bouncer hired between jobs to drive Ron Shirley (Mahershali Ali), a black pianist, on a tour of the American South in 1962. Lots of piano playing. Won the Oscars for best picture and best original screenplay.

3. Truth ©2015. Dir. James Vanderbilt. 121 min. Docudrama. With Cate Blanchett as Mary Mapes and Robert Redford as Dan Rather. I’m caught up now with the 2006 scandal that knocked D.R. out of his anchor’s chair. Based on Truth and Duty: The Press, the President, and The Privilege of Power by Mary Mapes. It’s about a 60 Minutes report on W’s service in the Texas National Guard. The reporters failed to re-confirm their sources at the last minute and the sources reneged.

4. Knock Down the House ©2019. Director Rachel Lears. 86 min. Netflix. documentary about the primary campaigns of four women including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The other three lost their primaries. AOC, of course, is in Congress now.

5. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind ©2019. Dir. Chiwetel Ejiofer. Docudrama based on the book by Wm. Kamkwambe and Bryan Mealer. 113 min. With Maxwell Simba as William and Chiwetel Ejiofor as his father, Trywell Kamkwamba. I learned in the epilogue that William eventually studied at Dartmouth. Ground-level view of a family, a school, and a village in Malawi, and what a famine looks like to the victims. I liked the work-with-the-materials-at-hand engineering creativity.

6. The Conductor ©2018. Dir. Maria Peters. With Christanne de Bruijn as Antonia Brico. In the late 1920s she was the world’s first woman to successfully conduct a large symphony orchestra. Her immigrant family lives in a tenement in NYC. When she’s speaking with her parents remember to turn on the subtitles. She works as an usher at the Met in NYC. She meets Robin, the only person who will give her a job in music—pianist at a Revue! Through persistence Antonia gets training, eventually, in Europe. There’s a romance but she turns it down to pursue her dream. There’s an all-woman orchestra.

7. When They See Us ©2019. Dir. Ava DuVernay. A four-part miniseries about the Central Park Five—that 1989 crime where four teenagers, some of whom did not know one another, were convicted solely on the basis of coerced “confessions.” The boys placed each other at the scene without a parent or a lawyer present. Donald Trump’s infamous full page ad calling for their executions is mentioned. Powerful, esp. after just having read Doing Justice.

8. When They See Us Now ©2019. Dir. Mark Ritchie. 61 min. Netflix documentary. Oprah Winfrey and Ava DuVernay sit down with the real Central Park Five and the actors who played them in the miniseries.

9. This is my Father ©1998. Dir. Paul Quinn. 120 min. With Aidan Quinn as Kieren O’Day in 1939, and James Caan as Kieren Johnson in 1998, O’Day’s illegitimate son. Fiona, Kieren’s mother, who had emigrated to America and married Johnson, is alive but unable to talk due to a stroke. Kieren and his nephew Jack take a trip to Ireland to try to find out what happened to his DNA father. Irish attitudes towards sex, and intransigence about suicides being buried in consecrated ground, are dramatized.

10. Queen of the Desert Dir. Werner Herzog ©2015. 128 min. With Nicole Kidman as Gertrude Bell (1868-1926), whose lovers were played by James Franco and Damian Lewis. My impression of Gertrude from the biography by Georgina Howell I read a few years ago was not as svelte and glamorous as she was portrayed here. Photos in Wikipedia do show Gertrude as slim and attractive, though. The movie is filled with stunning desert scenery.

11. Maiden ©2019. Dir. Alex Holmes. 93 min. Documentary with a lot of original footage of the all-women crew that completed the 1989 Whitbread Round the World Race. Tracy Edwards was the skipper. I’m not into sailing but I loved every frame. The crews got their boat shipshape so they knew the craft intimately when they had to make repairs on the fly during storms. There are interviews with Tracy and her mother.

12. I’ve Loved You So Long. ©2008. Dir. Philippe Claudel. 117 min. In French with subtitles. Starring Kristin Scott Thomas, one of my favorite actresses, as Juliette, & Elsa Zylberstein as her sister. Juliette has just been released from prison after 15 yrs. We gradually learn it was for murder of her 6-yr.-old son and that she was a physician. Juliette gets a job in Medical Records. At a dinner party an obnoxious guest insists on knowing where the mysterious Juliette has been all this time. “I’ve been in prison for murder.” Everyone laughs at the perfect squelch.

13. The Good Wife, Season one. ©2009. Created by Robert & Michelle King. With Julianna Margulies, Chris North, Christine Baranski, & Alan Cumming, A legal drama, including the lawyer’s home life. She has two teenagers. Her politician husband is in jail. I look forward to more (there are 7 seasons).

14. My Life So Far ©1999. Dir. Hugh Hudson. With Colin Firth, Rosemary Harris, Irene Jacob, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and Malcolm McDowell. Based on a true story. The Fraser Pettigrew character, we are told in the epilogue, grew up to be a force in the Royal Opera management. Filmed in Argyll Scotland, on an idyllic estate. Set in the 1920s. This is an utterly delightful movie about a happy family with a few dark streaks.

15. The Public ©2018. Dir. Emilio Estevez. 120 min. Alec Baldwin plays a police negotiator whose son is an addict. During an extreme cold snap in Cincinnati the main public library becomes the site of an “occupy” event by the homeless. Christian Slater plays a political candidate. The library director (played by Estevez) used to be on the street himself. He orders pizza on his own nickel for the occupiers. Gabrielle Union plays the local TV reporter.

16. Downton Abbey ©2019. Dir. Michael Engler. 122 min. Like a double-length episode of the beloved 53-episode series, except a little more sensational than the series: The foiled assassination! The purloined paper knife! The broken boiler! The Gay Club! It was great seeing the cast again: Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery), Lady Edith (Laura Carmichael), Anna (Joanne Froggatt), Mrs. Hughes (Phyllis Logan), and Mrs. Patmore (Leslie Nicol).

17. The Killing of Sister George ©1968. Dir. Robert Aldrich. 138 min. Three memorable actresses: Beryl Reid as June Buckridge aka Sister George aka George, who plays an actress in her fifties in a long-running soap opera which is going to “kill her off” by writing her out of the script; Susannah York as Alice “Childie” McNaught, 34, George’s longtime companion; and Coral Browne as Mercy Croft, an initially straight widow who is in management at the TV station where George works. George has a pleasant appearance, but she’s a mean drunk, and she’s often drunk.

18. The Fourth Estate ©2018. Dir. Liz Garbus. 4-part documentary miniseries on two library DVDs. How the NY Times covered the Trump Administration, and, to a lesser extent, the Me Too movement in 2017-2018. Reporter Glenn Thrush was suspended for two months and taken off the White House beat (which he loved) for damaging the NY Times brand with his own Me Too violations. Executive Editor Dean Baquet and Washington Bureau Chief Elisabeth Bumiller are in it a lot, as are reporters Peter Baker and Michael Schmidt.

19. The Big Lebowski ©1998. Dir. Ethan and Joel Coen. 118 min. What a cast! Jeff Bridges as the Dude, John Goodman as Walter (who honors the Sabbath and little else), Julianne Moore, John Turturro, Steve Buscemi, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Sam Elliott. Soundtrack: everything from Tumbling Tumbleweed to Mozart. The story is stupid, contrived to work in all the amusing lines, E.g.: As a guy with a take-out coffee is being roughed up he says, “Careful, I have a beverage.”

20. Testament of Youth ©2015. Dir. James Kent. 130 min. With Alicia Vikander as Vera Brittain (1893-1970), Emily Watson as her mother, Kit Harrington as Roland Leighton, Joanna Scanlon as Aunt Belle, and Miranda Richardson as Miss Lockner. I’ve read Vera Brittain’s book of the same title, so I knew her fiancé Roland, brother Edward, and two more of their close friends would die in WW I. The summer of 1914, and Vera’s Oxford dream, were portrayed idyllically, war, unsentimentally. Winifred Holtby befriends Vera when they both return to Oxford after the war.

21. JoJo Rabbit ©2019. Dir. Taika Waititi. 108 min. I recognize the sensibility of the director of Hunt for the Wilderpeople (See my 2016 list). With Roman Griffin Davis as JoJo; Scarlett Johansson as his mother; Waititi as JoJo’s imaginary friend, a loopy Adolf Hitler; Sam Rockwell as flakey Captain Klenzendorf, commandant of the Hitler Youth camp; Rebel Wilson as the brutish Fraulein Rahm; Thomasin McKenzie as Elsa, the Jewish girl hidden in the attic; and Archie Yates as JoJo’s friend Yorki.

22. Harriet ©2019. Dir. Kasi Lemmons. 125 min. The story of Harriet Tubman. Previously I had only known that H.T. was an escaped slave who was legendary for returning repeatedly to the South to conduct others on the underground railroad. Now I know more. Cynthia Ervio as Araminta “Minty” Ross, aka Harriet Tubman; Leslie Odom Jr. as William. Still, her fiancé; Joe Alwyn as Gideon Brodess; and Janelle Monae as Marie, boarding house proprietor.

23. The Report ©2019. Dir. Scott Z. Burns. 118 min. With Annette Bening as Diane Feinstein, Adam Driver as her Senate staffer Dan Jones who worked for five years investigating the CIA torture program, and Jon Hamm as Denis McDonough, Obama’s chief of staff. Matthew Rhys plays a reporter. Pun Bandhu plays John Woo. There are two rogue psychiatrists. John Brennan still claims we got info from torture. The torture report concludes otherwise.

24. The Only Way ©1970. Dir. Bent Christenson. 87 min. Danish film, but in English. With Jane Seymour as the teenaged ballerina daughter of the Jewish couple. Most of the 8000 Jews in Denmark (Population 4 million) were saved. This dramatizes the escape of one family during a big roundup in 1943. Mixed reviews, but I liked it.

25. Hacksaw Ridge ©2016. Dir. Mel Gibson. 139 min. With Andrew Garfield, Rachel Griffiths, Vince Vaughn and Sam Worthington. Dramatization of the life of Desmond Doss, who was the first conscientious objector to get the Congressional Medal of Honor. He enlisted as a medic. He would not work on the Sabbath or even train with a rifle. He evacuated 75 wounded men on Okinawa. We see the real Desmond Doss interviewed in 2003. His wife of 55 years had died in 2001. We had seen their courtship in the movie.

I also saw three plays in 2019. Yerma by Frederico Garcia Lorca which deals with a woman who has an unrequited desire for a baby; Fun Home based on the graphic novel by Alison Bechdel; and, in NYC on a theater weekend organized by Buffy, To Kill a Mockingbird with Jeff Daniels, based on Harper Lee’s 1960 novel, adapted for the stage by Aaron Sorkin.; My favorite TV show in 2019 was Madame Secretary.