Classic Movie Review: Sophie’s Choice (1982)

Title: Sophie’s Choice
Release Date: December 10, 1982
Director: Alan J. Pakula
Production Company: ITC Entertainment | Keith Barish Productions
Summary/Review:

I watched Sophie’s Choice many years ago and then read William Styron’s novel and loved them both. So I was happy to revisit this movie. It’s the story of a young aspiring writer, nicknamed Stingo (Peter MacNicol playing a character much like Styron), who moves from the South to Brooklyn. At his rooming house he meets and befriends the tempestuous couple upstairs of Sophie (Meryl Streep) and Nathan (Kevin Kline).

While Stingo sees Sophie and Nathan as glamorous, they each have dark secrets. Sophie survived the Holocaust in Poland and over the course of the film reveals her shame over her actions there in long flashbacks. Nathan is a paranoid schizophrenic which manifests in extreme jealousy and abuse of Sophie. Most heartbreaking is that Sophie, because of her guilt over the past, seems to believe she deserves the abuse. The story ultimately leads to tragedy.

I remember watching this movie the first time and being utterly charmed by Nathan in his early scenes. This time I was more weary because I knew he was an abuser and it the patterns of abuse were more clear to see. Oddly enough, Kline’s portrayal of Nathan is very similar to his portrayal of Otto in the later film A Fish Called Wanda. We can laugh at Otto because he’s in a comedy, but since Nathan is in a drama, he is terrifying.

Meryl Streep’s performance is excellent, of course. She does a great job of portraying a person inexperienced with speaking English as well as the nuances of someone dealing with trauma. I was surprised that MacNicol portrays Stingo since it is very different from his later roles in things like Ghostbusters II and Ally McBeal. The one thing that bugs me about this movie is that when Stingo and Sophie have sex, Stingo narrates it like he’s in a frat boy comedy and he just made a great conquest. It really jars against the tone of the film and makes me wonder if Stingo learned anything from his experience.

Rating: ****

Podcasts of the Week Ending November 28

AirSpace :: Station to Station

Everyday life for astronauts on the International Space Station.

Decoder Ring :: The Cabbage Patch Kid Riots

The weird phenomenon of the early 80s when ugly dolls became all the rage, explained.

Hub History :: Lost Wonderland

The Wonderland amusement park in Revere, MA had a short history but a long legacy.

The Story Collider  :: Adaptation, Part 1

The story of how a person living with OCD faced the challenges of the COVID world.

This Day in Esoteric Public History :: Franksgiving!

The political history of Thanksgiving, focusing on Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s controversial declaration of the date of celebration, and reasons why we need to divorce the holiday from the myth of Pilgrims and Indians.

 

RUNNING TALLY OF PODCAST OF THE WEEK APPEARANCES

• AirSpace – 2
• Afropop Worldwide – 3
• All Songs Considered – 3
• And Nothing Less – Entire series
• The Anthropocene Reviewed – 1
• BackStory – 4
• Brattle Film Podcast – 2
• Best of the Left – 3
• Coronavirus Daily/Consider This – 5
• Code Switch – 5
• Decoder Ring – 6
• Fresh Air – 9
• Futility Closet – 5
• Have You Heard – 3
• Here & Now – 1
• Hidden Brain – 3
• Hit Parade – 4
• Hub History – 2
• The Last Archive – 4
• LeVar Burton Reads – 1
• Memory Palace – 4
• More Than Enough – 4
• Mortified – 1
• The Moth – 1
• Nice White Parents – entire series
• 99% Invisible – 12
• 60-Second Science – 7
• Planet Money – 7
• The Politics of Everything – 2
• Radio Boston – 3
• Radiolab – 8
• Retro Disney World – 1
• The Rewatchables – 1
• Risk! – 1
• Science Talk – 2
• Smithsonian Sidedoor – 4
• Snap Judgment – 1
• Sound Opinions – 1
• The Story Collider – 2
• The Thirty20Eight – 2
• This American Life – 2
• This Day in Esoteric Public History – 1
• Throughline – 12
• The Tomorrow Society – 2
• The Truth – 1
• Twenty Thousand Hertz – 8
• The War on Cars – 1
• Wedway Radio – 1
• What Next – 13

Album Review: American Head by Flaming Lips

Album: American Head
Artist: Flaming Lips
Release Date: September 11, 2020
Label: Warner
Favorite Tracks:

• Dinosaurs on the Mountain
• Mother Please Don’t Be Sad
• Assasins of Youth

Thoughts:

The Flaming Lips enter their fifth decade as recording artists with this trippy new album. This seems weird to me even though I first heard the band in the 1990s, and began listening to them avidly with their legendary releases of the 2000s. The album is a loose concept album drawn from band leader Wayne Coyne’s childhood in Oklahoma City. Musically, the Flaming Lips aren’t breaking new ground and the lyrics are full of gratuitous drug references. But the melodies are gorgeous in this collection of mostly ballads awash in rich instrumentation. Kacey Musgraves provides counterpoint vocals on a few tracks.

Rating: ***1/2

Classic Movie Review: Unforgiven (1992)

Title: Unforgiven
Release Date: August 7, 1992
Director: Clint Eastwood
Production Company: Malpaso Productions
Summary/Review:

This is a grim movie. I remember when it came out in the early 90s, it was hailed as the return of the Western. But thematically, Unforgiven is out to undercut every trope of the Western, especially ideas of heroism and honor among gunslingers or small-town sheriffs.

Clint Eastwood stars as Will Munny, a notorious gunslinger who settled down after marrying. When we meet him at the beginning of the movie he is widower with two young children on a pig farm, 11 years removed from his days of drunkeness and violence. The naïve (and nearsighted) Schofield Kid (Jaimz Woolvett) tracks down Will to recruit him to collect a bounty from prostitutes in a brothel against two cowboys who cut up the face of one of the women. Initially reluctant to return to the sinful life, Will changes his mind because he realizes his farm is failing and he needs the money for his children. He recruits his old partner Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman) to join in as well.

Meanwhile, the sadistic sheriff of Big Whisky, Wyoming, “Little” Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman), the man who let the two cowboys go without punishment, is determined to prevent gunslingers from disturbing the peace in his town. This is displayed most viscerally in an extended sequence when Little Bill captures and then brutally beats the hired gun English Bob (played brilliantly by Richard Harris). Things are set up for severe bloodshed and tragedy.

This movie has a big problem with its depiction of women. Will’s wife is repeatedly discussed as an angel with magical powers of repentance but as she’s dead she never speaks for herself. Ned’s Native American wife is seen, staring scornfully at Will, but she never speaks either. Delilah (Anna Thomson), the prostitute who is the victim of the face-cutting that initiates all the other violence, seems to not want the other woman to raise a bounty on her behalf and willing to accept a horse as an apology from the cowboys, but she isn’t able to speak for herself in these situations.

Another theme of this movie is aging and the weight of the past. I find it interesting that Eastwood, Hackman, and Harris were all around 60 years old when the movie was made and all got their start in ultraviolent New Hollywood movies of the 60s & 70s. Freeman is a bit younger and didn’t gain widespread fame until the 80s. Ned seems more instantly likeable (because he’s Morgan Freeman) but also the one who doesn’t seem weighed down by his past.

This is well-made, beautifully-filmed movie with an excellent script as well. The acting is top notch, especially Hackman and Harris as well as Saul Rubinek as W. W. Beauchamp, a toady-esque writer who attaches himself first to English Bob and then to Little Bill as he fabricates heroic tales of the Old West. The movie naturally spirals into a whirlpool of violence and vengeance, but that doesn’t make it any easier to watch.

Rating: ***1/2

Classic Movie Review: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)

Title: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Release Date: October 17, 1939
Director: Frank Capra
Production Company: Columbia Pictures
Summary/Review:

When I watched this movie as a child, I was gobsmacked by the depiction of rank corruption in the government. It wasn’t that I didn’t know about political corruption throughout US history, I just didn’t expect it in an old Hollywood film. For all the criticism of Frank Capra of making sentimental “Capra-corn,” this movie is cynical and dark. I mean they show flunkies of a political machine attacking children and driving them off a road, fer chrissakes!

The story begins with the death of a senator from a unnamed party in an unnamed state (Capra is very careful never to mention either of these things, ignoring the specific people and places where corruption thrived giving this movie an unfortunate “bothsiderism” undertone). The governor (Guy Kibbee) is torn between selecting a replacement suggested by his party’s political boss Jim Taylor (Edward Arnold) or a reform candidate suggested by citizens’ committees. His sons convince him to instead nominate a popular scouting leader Jefferson Smith (James Stewart). Since the appointment is only for a few months, everyone believes that the noble but naïve Smith will keep his mouth shut and just occupy the seat for a short time.

Stewart does a great job of portraying Smith, at first awed by the symbolism of Washington DC and the majesty of the Senate. Smith’s mentor and the senior senator from his state, Joseph Paine (Claude Rains) advises Smith to work on some small legislation to keep him busy. Despite Paine’s public persona as honest man, he’s working for Taylor’s machine, and wants to keep Smith from learning about a bill which contains a dam-building graft scheme.

Smith works with his world-weary and cynical assistant Clarissa Saunders (Jean Arthur) who teaches him how the sausage is made in the Senate while at the same time his optimism begins to rub off on her. Unfortunately, Smith’s bill for a national boys’ camp uses the same land as dam project. To cover their tracks, Paine and the Taylor machine frame Smith for corruption. Which leads to the final act, the famous and dramatic filibuster in the Senate.

This movie is considered inspirational, although I find it uninspiring that Smith only succeeds because he is able to make Paine feel shame, and then Paine makes a full confession. After all, Senators today won’t even apologize for mistakes they’ve made in the past, much less admit to corruption. In the past four years we’ve seen members of the Senate choosing to look the other way in full knowledge of corruption and crimes that affect the very heart of our democracy and the lives of millions of people. So I don’t believe that standing against corruption like Smith will change the hearts of the wicked, but I do believe it is correct to stand for America’s best ideals and what is best for the country, nonetheless.

This movie features some terrific acting, especially from Stewart, Raines, and Arthur. I particularly like the depiction of Saunders as an intelligent and independent woman within the government, something else you don’t expect to see in a movie from the 1930s. I also like Capra’s direction and some of the subtle choices he made to undergird his theme. For example, when Smith is reading the Gettysburg Address at the Lincoln Memorial, an elderly Black man (possibly born in slavery) is seen in the background.

This is definitely one of the great films of all-time and one that remains relevant to our times.

Rating: ****1/2

Classic Movie Review: An Affair to Remember (1957)

Title: An Affair to Remember
Release Date: July 19, 1957
Director: Leo McCarey
Production Company: Jerry Wald Productions, Inc.
Summary/Review:

Celebrity playboy Nickie Ferrante (Cary Grant) is finally going to settle down and get married. Terry McKay (Deborah Kerr) is also in a long-term relationship but traveling in Europe on her own. They meet aboard a transatlantic ocean liner to New York City, and initially the movie plays like a romantic comedy with a series of meet cutes and shipboard antics.

It makes a big shift when the ship docks at a hill-town in the French Riviera and Nickie invites Terry to visit his grandmother Janou (Cathleen Nesbitt). This extended sequence is the best part of the movie as the trio spend a lovely afternoon together and Nickie and Terry form a stronger bond. Upon arriving in New York, the pair make a pact that if they still feel the way they do about one another in 6 months, they will break off their prior relationships and meet at the top of the Empire State Building.

On that day, Terry is hit by a car and severely injured, and Nickie assumes that she stood him up. This is where the movie goes downhill, because Terry assumes that she’s undesirable since she can no longer walk. The movie is steeped in every worst stereotype of people with disabilities, and it’s just awful to watch. Also, the movie gets very corny with Terry directing a chorus of precocious children (which rather progressively for the era includes Black children) while Nickie takes up painting. The sentimentality and mawkishness just get to be too much and I don’t find the conclusion all that believable.

Still, if you can find a way to just watch the Janou scene, it’s a great depiction of human warmth and joy, and an example of Leo McCarey at his best.

Rating: **

Classic Movie Review: Forrest Gump (1994)

Title: Forrest Gump
Release Date: July 6, 1994
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Production Company: The Tisch Company
Summary/Review:

When I see Forrest Gump on the AFI 100 list, I know it doesn’t belong there. On the other hand, there’s a cottage industry that’s arisen over the past 26 years that insists that Forrest Gump is on of the worst movies of all time, and I don’t think that’s right either. I remember watching and enjoying Forrest Gump in the movie theaters all those years and liking and enjoying it. Revisiting it now, I still like and enjoy it. And that’s fine.

I think Forrest Gump gets its reputation for good or for bad because it is a movie that is hard to get a handle on. It’s not really a comedy and it’s not really a drama. It’s famous for digitally editing Tom Hanks into moments from history, but that’s more of a running gag than the point of the movie. It’s considered inspirational, but a lot of what happens in the movie is very dark and the protagonist is just completely unware of that. The movie is slammed for being a nostalgia trough for Baby Boomers, but it is also a caustic satire of that same generation. Gump is claimed by conservatives as a beacon of traditional American values, but he’s often quite progressive for his place and time. Gump talks an awful lot, but does he ever say anything meaningful?

If there’s one thing that bugs me about this movie, it is the problem of Jenny. Not Robin Wright’s performance, which is as good as could be, but the fact that her character seems to exist to suffer. It’s like a type of cruel pornography.

That aside, it’s a clever and entertaining movie with some good acting by Hanks, Wright, Gary Sinise (as Lieutenant Dan) and others. If you can see it as something other than one of the best movies or worst movies of all time, it may just be an enjoyable couple of hours of your time.

Rating: ***1/2

Podcasts of (Two) Weeks Ending November 21

I’ve had bloggers block lately and I’m not keeping up with my posts.  So, many apologies for having two weeks of podcasts for today.

What Next :: How Democrats Took Latino Voters for Granted

An autopsy on one of the main reasons why Democrats failed to gain seats in Congress.

99% Invisible :: You’ve Got Enron Mail!

How an archive of emails released to the public during the Enron scandal have become a resource for researchers and developers.

The Rewatchables :: Toy Story

The groundbreaking computer-animated film classic was released 25 years ago today!

The Story Collider ::  Stories of COVID-19 

A series of personal stories of the most significant scientific event in recent history

Futility Closet :: Friedrich Kellner’s Opposition

A German opponent to the Nazi regime performed resistance through documentation.

The Tomorrow Society :: Seth Porges, Writer and Co-Director of Class Action Park

The story of the most dangerous amusement park, that thrived in New Jersey in the 1980s, get the film treatment.

Best of the Left :: The Conservative Fever Swamp is Reaching Critical Mass

Trump is leaving office but the Republican party is permanently the party of racisms and conspiracy theories.

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RUNNING TALLY OF PODCAST OF THE WEEK APPEARANCES

• AirSpace – 1
• Afropop Worldwide – 3
• All Songs Considered – 3
• And Nothing Less – Entire series
• The Anthropocene Reviewed – 1
• BackStory – 4
• Brattle Film Podcast – 2
• Best of the Left – 3
• Coronavirus Daily/Consider This – 5
• Code Switch – 5
• Decoder Ring – 5
• Fresh Air – 9
• Futility Closet – 5
• Have You Heard – 3
• Here & Now – 1
• Hidden Brain – 3
• Hit Parade – 4
• Hub History – 1
• The Last Archive – 4
• LeVar Burton Reads – 1
• Memory Palace – 4
• More Than Enough – 4
• Mortified – 1
• The Moth – 1
• Nice White Parents – entire series
• 99% Invisible – 12
• 60-Second Science – 7
• Planet Money – 7
• The Politics of Everything – 2
• Radio Boston – 3
• Radiolab – 8
• Retro Disney World – 1
• The Rewatchables – 1
• Risk! – 1
• Science Talk – 2
• Smithsonian Sidedoor – 4
• Snap Judgment – 1
• Sound Opinions – 1
• The Story Collider – 1
• The Thirty20Eight – 2
• This American Life – 2
• This Day in Esoteric Public History – 1
• Throughline – 12
• The Tomorrow Society – 2
• The Truth – 1
• Twenty Thousand Hertz – 8
• The War on Cars – 1
• Wedway Radio – 1
• What Next – 13

Classic Movie Review: Titanic (1997)

Title: Titanic
Release Date: December 19, 1997
Director: James Cameron
Production Company: Paramount Pictures | 20th Century Fox | Lightstorm Entertainment
Summary/Review:

I remember seeing this movie on a date shortly after it was released. I had no expectations of the movie going in, but the date was pleasant, the movie was entertaining, and the special effects really brought the ship and its tragedy to life. Also Kate Winslet was hot. I liked it. In the ensuing weeks the hype machine went out of control and suddenly Titanic was being discussed as the GREATEST. THING. EVER!!! This followed quickly by the reactionary view, picking Titanic apart, declaring it the WORST. THING. EVER!!!

Rewatching the movie many, many years later, and I’m going to have to say my initial impression was on the mark. This is a well-made and entertaining film that gets to the heart of a great tragedy. Sure, the fictional romance of the first-class Rose (Winslet) and the steerage passenger Jack (Leonard DiCaprio) is incredibly corny. But it works in terms of the film because they are renegades and thus have an excuse to be on various parts of the ship encountering different people at key times.

It is perhaps disappointing that the groundbreaking special effects are used these days more in superhero movies than in historical dramas. I am happy that DiCaprio got his due, as I recognized his acting skill here even as he was generally getting slagged. He’s proved he’s a talented actor just not so suit for leading man roles like this.

Rating: ***1/2

TV Review: Phineas and Ferb (2007-2020)

Title: Phineas and Ferb
Release Date: August 17, 2007 – June 12, 2015
Created By: Dan Povenmire and Jeff “Swampy” Marsh
Production Company: Disney Television Animation
Summary/Review:

You may wonder why I watched all four seasons of a children’s tv show. I will counter that it may be one of the best tv shows ever made. Clever humor, breaking the fourth wall, and catchy songs are just some of the features that appeal to both children and adults.

“Formulaic” is a word often used derisively when describing tv shows. Yet, Phineas and Ferb sticks to a formula for each episode and finds brilliance in subverting that formula. In every episode, the titular stepbrothers Phineas and Ferb make the most of their summer vacation by creating something outlandish and fantastic ranging from a city-wide roller coaster to a transporter to the moon. They are helped by their friends, the highly-capable scout Isabella, the nerdy Baljeet, and the bully Buford. Phineas and Ferb’s teenage sister is obsessed with busting the boys for their dangerous activities, doing everything she can to get the attention of their clueless mother.

Meanwhile, Phineas and Ferb’s pet platypus, Perry, is actually a secret agent for an organization called O.W.C.A (Organization Without a Cool Acronym). Each day he disappears to go fight the evil scientist Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz, who builds elaborate machines called “Inators” in his attempt to become ruler of the Tri-State Area. Perry thwarts Doofenshmirtz’s plan in a way that inadvertently makes whatever the boys built that day disappear before Candace can get their mother to see it.

It may not seem like much when you read it, but somehow it remains hilarious over 222 episodes of the show. One thing I came to realize is that Candace, and to a lesser extent, Doofenshmirtz, are the protagonists of this show. They may be the “villains” but they are also very relatable.

Rating: *****

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Title: Phineas and Ferb the Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension
Release Date: August 5, 2011
Director: Dan Povenmire and Robert F. Hughes
Production Company: Walt Disney Television Animation
Summary/Review:

This movie sees the cast travel to an alternate dimension where Doofenshmirtz has achieved his goal of ruling the Tri-State Area and thus creating a dystopian society. The movie is surprisingly dark as the usually affable Doofenshmirtz is seen as a cruel authoritarian with all that entails.

Rating: ***

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Title: Phineas and Ferb the Movie: Candace Against the Universe
Release Date: August 28, 2020
Director: Bob Bowen
Production Company: Disney Television Animation
Summary/Review:

Released this summer, this movie kickstarted my family’s Phineas and Ferb binge-watch. It’s a clever sci-fi pastiche where Candace is abducted by aliens and her brothers, their friends and Doofenshmirtz must rescue her. It has some clever gags and great sing-a-long tunes.
Rating: ***1/2