Select a page
Type too small?

SENIORS IN THE MOVIES – June 2018

SENIORS IN THE MOVIES

Written by Dolores Luber

MARK FELT: THE MAN WHO BROUGHT DOWN THE WHITE HOUSE
2017

We all can remember the Richard Nixon era and the corruption in the White House. Mark Felt is the anonymous insider who gave critical details to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, journalists at the Washington Post. Liam Neeson (age 66) plays Mark Felt, FBI agent, known only as “Deep Throat.” Woodward and Bernstein receive his guidance, following a trail that led them from a burglary at the Watergate office of the Democratic National Committee to the corruption that forced the first-ever resignation of a US president. This is a true story, a procedural thriller, timely and relevant. Watch it!

    

   

THE POST
2017

The movie The Post is about events that preceded the 1972 break-in and how, by defying the Nixon administration in publishing excerpts from The Pentagon Papers, the Washington Post became a major player. Although this story transpired 46 years ago, Steven Spielberg, the director, finds surprising relevance in today’s political climate. With Tom Hanks (age 62) and Meryl Streep (age 69) at the top of the bill, the acting is top-notch. The Post’s historical accuracy is as strong as its attention to detail. The 1970’s is in full display. The publisher and the editor of the Washington Post are unsung heroes who protected the American way of life.

ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD
2017

This is a story of towering greed, the absence of mercy, and an ideal 21st century morality tale. In July 1973, John Paul Getty III (known as Paul), the elder Getty’s 16-year-old grandson, was snatched off a street in Rome. His kidnappers demanded $17 million in ransom. Getty Sr. responded, “If I pay one penny now, I’ll have 14 kidnapped grandchildren,” a kiss-off heard around the world. Christopher Plummer (age 89) dominates in the role of billionaire J. Paul Getty, a hoarder of women, art, antiquities, and most of all, money. Ridley Scott, the director, remains unsentimental, conjuring up entire worlds and sensibilities with visual precision, thickening the slow-building sense of dread. A true story, much like an ancient Greek tragedy.

   

FOREIGN FILMS

   

MRS. BROWN
1997

I was so enamoured with the movie Victoria & Abdul that I bought the previous film with Judi Dench about Queen Victoria, Mrs. Brown. The Queen is grieving the death of her beloved consort, Prince Albert. A manly commoner, a Scotsman (played by Billy Connolly) who oversees Queen Victoria’s palace at Balmoral, is called in as a desperate measure to try and cut through the miasma of two years’ mourning. They are marvellous! The atmosphere in court is tense and chilling, yet before long she is taking Brown’s advice that she must ride out daily, for the exercise and the fresh air. Both movies are available at the Isaac Waldman Jewish Public Library at JCC.

DARKEST HOUR
2017

Gary Wright, the director of Darkest Hour, with Gary Oldman (age 60 in elaborate make-up) playing Winston Churchill, explores both Churchill’s bullish public image and his angst-stricken private life. He’s reminding viewers of the undeniable power of Churchill the politician at a pivotal time in his life, when his oratory helped bolster Britain’s resolve to stay in the war after the fall of France and before the entry of the United States. Churchill was not entirely sure he was doing the right thing when he demanded “victory at all costs” from his country. Wright’s approach works because of the narrow focus of his story, centered on the five weeks between Churchill taking office as prime minister in May 1940 and the evacuation of Dunkirk in June. Superb drama, great acting, all worth watching.

   

   

PHANTOM THREAD
2017

Daniel Day-Lewis (age 61) sews up another great performance in Phantom Thread. The movie is stunningly beautiful and a pleasure to behold. Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) is a couturier plying his trade in London in the 1950s. He creates exquisite drawings of garments which materialize, assisted by a crew of disciplined artisans, cutting and stitching his ideas into usable form. Alma (Vicky Krieps) becomes Reynolds’s model, mistress and muse. The battle of wills that ensues is the film’s dramatic furnace and its comic engine. It is hard to tell if the film is a comedy or a melodrama, it is thrilling to watch, full of large and small surprises.

DOCUMENTARY

KOSHER LOVE
2017

Kosher Love examines the search for true love and bible-instructed marriage in the orthodox/ Hasidic world as it pushes back against the wired, secular world and its idea of momentary, selfish love. Rabbi Yisroel Bernath, of Montreal, known by some as “the Love Rabbi” believes that love develops over time, but that in today’s fast-paced world, few have the patience to wait. When and how love develops, and how it can be nurtured are subjects considered by Rabbi Bernath who is open to hearing, different points of view. He is a rabbinical matchmaker who sets up Jewish singes, as he brokers new unions—marriage now, love later. Aired on the CBC network http://www.cbc.ca/ .

  

ISRAELI FILM

  

IN BETWEEN (BAR BAHAR)
2016

Arab-Israeli filmmaker Maysaloun Hamoud presents a trio of young Palestinian women in Tel Aviv trying to shape their own destinies despite being part of a conservative society entrenched in patriarchy. Three single women with distinctive personalities share an apartment and their intertwined lives. The result of their rebellion against cultural norms is bringing shame to loved ones and being ostracized by their community. Most of the film is in Arabic with a little Hebrew. The theme of sisterhood is international and performed impeccably by the actors.

SPECIAL MENTION

THE SHAPE OF WATER
2017

I will quote A.O. Scott, “The Shape of Water is partly a code-scrambled fairy tale, partly a genetically codified monster movie, and altogether wonderful.” The director Guillermo Del Toro brings the creature to Baltimore in the early 1960s, the strange beast, quasi-fish and sort-of human is kept in a tank at a government research lab, where he is subjected to brutal torture in the name of science and national security. Enter Elsa (Sally Hawkins), mute and lonely, the night cleaner at a hidden, high-security government laboratory in 1962 Baltimore. Her life changes forever when she discovers the lab’s classified secret – a mysterious, scaled creature from South America that lives in a water tank. As Elisa develops a unique bond with her new friend, she soon learns that its fate and very survival lies in the hands of a hostile government agent and a marine biologist. Get ready for an interspecies romance.

  

  

BABY DRIVER
2017

This is a caper/chase/comedy/thriller. It is fast, sweet, and executed with perfection. In Baby Driver, the youth Ansel Elgort plays the title character Baby, the driver for any icy Atlanta crime boss, Doc (Kevin Spacey). Baby, a music-loving orphan also happens to be the prodigiously talented go-to getaway driver for heist mastermind Doc. Baby never talks, is he a mute, is he slow? No, but he has a hell of a backstory involving a car crash and a rash juvenile robbery spree that put him in Doc’s debt. He’s not in it for the long haul though, hoping to nail one last job before riding off into the sunset with beautiful diner waitress Debora. Easier said than done. Technically brilliant, it is a cinematic joyride.