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Review: THE SCARLET LETTER (1934) (Blu-ray)

December 2, 2023

James Plath, Family Home Theater Drama, PG rated Leave a comment

Grade:  C+

Drama

Not rated (would be PG)

First, schools across America absolutely ruinedNathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter for readers by force-feeding it to them when they were disinterested children. Then Roland Joffé spoiled it for film buffs by giving them a weird and distorted 1995 version starring Demi Moore—a film so bad that the essence of its badness stays with you years after you’ve forgotten what made it a stinker.

But there is some redemption for the American classic in this newly restored and released talking 1934 adaptation starring Colleen Moore, one of the biggest stars of the silent era. While the film didn’t do well because sound was still in motion picture infancy, it might look and sound better now than it did when it was first released, thanks to Film Masters’ meticulous restoration and digital advancements. The black-and-white film looks visually stunning for a film that old, and the sound is distortion-free, with respectable clarity.

For fans of classic films like The Adventures of Robin Hood starring Errol Flynn, what jumps out instantly is the familiar face and onscreen persona of character actor Alan Hale, who played Friar Tuck in that swashbuckler and offers the same type of performance and comic relief  . . . in The Scarlet Letter! Hawthorne would be horrified, of course, but Hale’s recognizable presence and that unmistakable period touch adds an element of interest to this early sound offering. It was one of 14 films (you heard right) that Hale made in 1934, and what that suggests, of course, is low budget and quick turnaround time. This one was shot in a month.

I’m not sure how accurate the depiction of Puritan life is in the film, but Puritans were big on public humiliation for any infraction, and in opening scenes we get examples of someone in stocks and another with wooden splints clamped to her tongue with a sign that reads “Ye olde gossip.” Again, there’s that blend of interpreted history and the preferred light touch of Hollywood films from the thirties. We also see an engaged couple using an “engagement horn” that was essentially an eight-foot long device that they had to use to talk to each other at a respectable distance. I could picture this film being used by teachers in addition to Hawthorne’s novel. It would make for a nice comparison discussion. Is the punishment for “malicious gossip” too strict? Is Hester’s punishment sexist?

The makers of this 1934 film chose to depict the Puritan culture within the broader context of early settlers and pioneers. And after all, Puritans were extremists who tried to impose their rules on entire communities. Too often in film and discussions of the text we tend to get Puritans in self-contained homogenous communities (I’m thinking The Crucible). But in this version, Chillingworth (Henry B. Walthall), who studied medicines with the American Indians, actually comes to town dressed like someone who lived with the Indians. He’s a bearded frontiersman wearing buckskins and a coonskin cap. Other traders and trappers walk past the camera with a dead deer on a pole, and when the Puritan city fathers hold an event in the town square there are non-Puritans dotting the audience landscape as well as the bunch in austere black-and-white and their armor-plated enforcers.

As Hester is publicly shamed for bearing a child out of wedlock and must begin wearing an “A” on her chest, Dimmesdale (Hardie Albright) is appropriately duplicitous.  He also  acts a bit like Ralphie when the boy’s teacher asks what happened to Flick, the friend that the Christmas Story main character abandoned when his tongue got stuck to a metal pole. Hester? Who’s she?

Hawthorne’s novel was a psychological drama of the heart and concerned the tormenting power of guilt, not unlike Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart. And Dimmesdale’s hypocrisy would have resonated even more with audiences in 1850 because the Puritan way of life—husbands as spiritual heads of the household—would not have been as far removed from them. There is less implication that Dimmesdale’s torment comes at the hands of Chillingworth than in the book, but the basic principles remain the same.

Although director Robert G. Vignola gave viewers a very watchable version of The Scarlet Letter that showcases the severity of Puritan extremists in a Hollywood backlot environment of drama and spot humor, I have to admit that the Film Masters’ bonus features are almost if not more riveting. Teachers might like to augment their reading assignments with the 17-minute “Hawthorne on Film” bonus feature. Another extra, the 13-minute “Salem and The Scarlet Letter,” is a nice contextual history made during the sixties and narrated by John Carradine.  

I’m usually not into commentary tracks, but when you have a film this old that features contributions from Cora Sue Collins, the young actress who played Hester’s daughter, Pearl, it’s worth watching the film all over again to listen to her and Colorado Christian University professor Jason A. Ney, who also contributed liner notes.

But the bonus feature that I thought was as entertaining as the movie was the 19-minute Revealing the Scarlet Letter, in which producer Sam Sherman shares the story of how he came to dedicate himself to this project. It’s actually quite engrossing.

Entire family:  Yes (but what small children would want to watch?)

Studio/Distributor:  Film Masters

Aspect ratio:  1.33:1

Featured audio:  Dolby Digital Mono

Bonus features:  B-

Trailer

Best Buy link

Not rated (would be PG for implied adult themes)

Language:  0/10—Uh, Puritans

Sex:  0/10—Uh, Puritans

Violence:  1/10—Things are thrown at Hester and Pearl

Adult situations:  1/10—Kids would have to know where babies come from to even grasp that there was anything adult in this, and there is one death near the end

Takeaway:  Hawthorne lives! Ironically, in retrospect. I’m not sure that a faithful adaptation could be made these days, given the audience expectations for skin, language, and violence, all gratuitously inserted because they were lacking in the book; this version remains the best choice for classrooms

Review: Oppenheimer (2023) (Blu-ray)

December 2, 2023

James Plath, Family Home Theater Biopic, Drama, R rated Leave a comment

Grade:  B+/A-

Drama

Rated R

On the heels of Barbie comes this review of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer—the other half of the Barbenheimer cultural phenomenon, where moviegoers took to seeing both films in tandem this past summer.

Nolan’s sweeping saga, a blend of color and black-and-white sequences, stars Cillian Murphy as theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who directed work at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and successfully tested the first atomic bomb. After President Truman made the decision to drop A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Oppenheimer became a victim of his own conscience and Republican-led McCarthyism—the latter resulting in him being kicked to the curb for “red” associations, even as (or partly because?) he saw the horror of the bomb they created and pushed for international control of nuclear weapons.

Oppenheimer isn’t a lock to win the Oscar for Best Picture, but I’d be very surprised if it didn’t, because it’s the kind of film that voters have gone for in previous years:

—It’s a biopic, and from the earliest BP Oscar-winning The Great Ziegfeld through films like Patton and Gandhi to more recent entries like The King’s Speech, Hollywood has often had a soft spot for films based on real people and true stories—even ones like Oppenheimer, which focus on a very specific time in a historical figure’s life. In this case, from 1922-63, with the bulk taking place between 1938, when Oppenheimer realizes that nuclear fission could be weaponized, and 1954, when his career is threatened by a hearing to determine if he is a threat to national security.

—It’s a social commentary “message” film, like such previous winners as Driving Miss Daisy, 12 Years a Slave, Green Book, Moonlight, Spotlight, Parasite, Nomadland, and CODA. We see scientists question whether they’re doing the right thing by creating a super bomb, and we see a level of caution that all suggests they had no real idea of exactly how great and how destructive the A-bomb would be. For all the intellectual brilliance assembled at Los Alamos, there was also a startling level of naiveté, and we  also see Oppenheimer staring at his reflective decisions in the rear view mirror. Oppenheimer was billed as a thriller, but with a security clearance hearing that functions as a trial providing the narrative structure, it feels more like a tense courtroom drama.

—It’s also a historical epic, and Hollywood has always been a sucker for epics when it comes to Best Picture voting. The very first BP winner (Wings) was a historical epic. Such films offer an in-depth but also broad sweeping treatment of material suggesting consequences that reach far beyond the characters’ lives, whether it’s the settlement of the West (Cimarron), the fall of the Old South (Gone with the Wind), or an ill-fated voyage (Titanic) that still has a ripple effect. Epic stories often have epic lengths, like Ben-Hur, Lawrence of Arabia, The Bridge on the River Kwai, or Chariots of Fire. And Oppenheimer, which runs 3 hours—another reason I preferred Blu-ray to movie theaters.

Most importantly, Oppenheimer has gravitas—a weightiness and solemn seriousness that testifies this is a HUGE topic in the annals of history and the evolution of humankind. The film is about a serious topic and brainy people, produced now when anti-intellectuals are as vocal and politically active as they were during the time of Oppenheimer’s hearing. That makes Oppenheimer even more relevant, and the factor most likely to earn the film a Best Picture statue.

Murphy said he starved and practically tortured his body to become as gaunt as Oppenheimer—something he vowed never to do again. I hope he’s pleased with the results, because the only way Oppenheimer would be more convincing is to have Oppenheimer play himself. Even then, I’m not so sure that he could express wordlessly what Murphy is able to do in order to suggest what’s going on inside that brilliant mind. In this, Nolan uses visual techniques reminiscent of what Ron Howard in A Beautiful Mind (another BP winner) did to suggest the complicated visionary mind of mathematician John Nash, who became involved in his own secret work that turned nightmarish.

The cast is epic, but make no mistake—this is Murphy’s film, with stolen moments by Emily Blunt (as Kitty Oppenheimer), Robert Downey Jr. (convincingly aged and periodized to look like a ‘40s and ‘50s politician), and Matt Damon (who plays the military head of the Manhattan Project and Oppenheimer’s immediate superior).

The only head-scratcher is Nolan’s somewhat gratuitous insertion of two sex scenes that really showed more skin than anything of Oppenheimer’s character or plot points. There were other ways to suggest womanizing, other ways to suggest the appeal he had for women (not unlike the appeal that Henry Kissinger famously had—intellectuals are sexy to some women!), and certainly other ways to suggest the woman was a member of the Communist party.

Inception and Dunkirk both received Best Picture nominations but did not win. Oppenheimer ought to be the one to give Nolan the big prize.

Entire family:  No (older teens only)

Run time:  180 min., Color/Black & White

Studio/Distributor:  Universal

Aspect ratio:  Mixed 2.20:1 and 1.78:1

Featured audio:  DTS HDMA 5.1

Bonus features:  B+

Trailer

Amazon link

Rated R for some sexuality, nudity, and language

Language:  7/10—More f-bombs than you can count on one hand, and various other curse words

Sex:  6/10—Just those two gratuitous lovemaking scenes showing full-body (no genitalia) nudity in muted light in the process of having sex; did Nolan opt for them to get an R rating thinking it would add to the gravitas?

Violence:  3/10—The film is about mass killing, but it’s all conceptual or reported after-the-fact, off-camera; one disturbing scene, shot kaleidoscopically, shows a woman committing suicide.

Adult situations:  5410—It was the era a smoking and social drinking, and the film reflects that

Takeaway:  Nolan has only been making films for some 15 years, but his body of work is already impressive, with brainteasers like Memento and The Prestige, his Batman trilogy and Man of Steel, and thought-provoking thrillers like Inception, Interstellar, and Tenet, and historical blockbusters like Dunkirk and Oppenheimer; it’s anyone’s guess what he does next, but you can bet stars will be nudging each other out of the way to get onboard

Review: SCRAPPER (Blu-ray)

November 26, 2023

James Plath, Family Home Theater Drama, PG rated Leave a comment

Grade: B

Drama

Not rated (would be PG)

After watching Scrapper a second time, I found myself scratching my head that British director Charlotte Regan was able to craft such a likable feature film her first time doing something more than music videos and short films. It confirmed for me that the “flaws” I perceived initially were really just stepping stones for this director’s different sort of journey. I liked it despite:

—a gentle tone that comes dangerously close to meh territory,

—a quirkiness that’s understated even by indie standards,

—a narrative that has conflicts you’d also have to call gentle or understated,

—a crisis point that’s relatively calm in a story with no real antagonist, and

—emotional content that’s so understated (there’s that word again) it borders on matter-of-factness or apathy.

Altogether, it adds up to a different kind of daddy-daughter story—one that’s endearing in a non-cloying way and that tells a story of human interaction without relying on standard tropes and audience manipulations.

Amazon link

Scrapper might work just as well as a play, because it revolves around two flawed characters who learn to put up with each other and peacefully coexist. They’re their own antagonists, as we watch them take baby steps toward an understanding that both of them seem to want, deep inside. Except their outsides don’t know it yet, and so they resist or fall short of full commitment.

Here’s how simple the plot is:  Georgie’s mum died, and while aren’t supposed to question the logistics of why she wasn’t taken away when the body was, we see her fending for herself in the flat. She pays the rent by stealing bicycles with her best (and only) friend Ali (Alin Uzun) and selling them to a fence. One day she looks out the window and a strange man is hopping her fence. It turns out that he’s her dad, returned from a carefree life in Ibiza. He heard her mum passed away and decided to see how she was doing. Though Georgie isn’t about to let any stranger who calls himself “dad” in her house, he blackmails her by telling her he’ll phone social services.

Once he’s in, she sends him on an errand and then changes the lock. Again, pretty swift work, unless a locksmith owes her a favor or she just happens to have a new lock ready to install right there at the apartment. But he doesn’t get angry—no one, really, expresses feelings that run high on the Emotion Meter—and they continue to tolerate each other. Small things happen in small ways to help them get to a point where they’re ready to accept each other. That’s the film in a nutshell:  subtle, and far from the kind of heartstring tugging that a director could have opted for with a daddy-daughter-reunion-‘cause-mommy’s-dead story. Except that they’re really more like older brother and younger sister as they try to negotiate a relationship from scratch.

In retrospect, that’s kind of refreshing. The wildest or most expressive elements in the film seem to be leftover ideas from Regan’s music video days—a few visual tricks and modern sitcom-style “interviews” to impart quirkiness in a different kind of way. To me, though, they didn’t add to the film, and, overdone, detracted from it.

But the tentative relationship between Georgie (Lola Campbell) and her dad, Jason (Harris Dickinson) is strong enough to weather the stylistic storm. Overall, this film really has a gentle vibe—no tantrums, no shouting, no swearing, and no “go to your room”s. But it was strong enough to win the Grand Jury Prize in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at Sundance.

Entire family:  No (Age 10 and older?)

Run time:  84 min., Color

Studio/Distributor: BBC Film / Kino Lorber

Aspect ratio:  2.39:1

Featured audio:  DTS 5.1 Surround

Bonus features:  C

Trailer

Amazon link

Not rated (would be PG for petty theft and adult situations)

Language:  1/10—Nothing verbalized that I caught, but there was one prominent middle finger

Sex:  0/10—Nothing, other than Ali’s concern for his friend sleeping in the house with a strange man roaming about

Violence: 2/10—One incident involving one child giving another a black eye

Adult situations:  2/10—A child steals bicycles and “dad” advises her to file off the serial numbers before painting it—there are no role models here, only characters trying to figure things out

Takeaway:  Scrapper sticks with you because of the casting of the two main characters, the understated direction, and the way those two make you believe you’re watching life as it’s really lived

Review of BEAST FROM HAUNTED CAVE Special Edition (Blu-ray)

October 17, 2023

James Plath, Family Home Theater Drama, Horror-thriller, War Leave a comment

Grade:  C-

Horror/Drama

Not rated (would be PG)

Just in time for Halloween, Film Masters has released a B-movie trick or treat (you decide):  a newly restored 4K scan from 35mm archival materials of the Gene and Roger Corman-produced Beast from Haunted Cave Special Edition. What makes it a special edition is bonus B movie from the King of B Movies, director Roger Corman: his WWII drama Ski Troop Attack, with both films released in 1959.

The Corman brothers were ahead of his time, because their films are perfect for today’s young adult film-watching parties, where the goal is to offer snarky running commentaries. It will be a “treat” for this crowd to savor and skewer—especially the “beast,” who has to be a contender for worst looking bargain-basement movie monster ever. You’ve got to see this. Really.

The “trick,” of course, is that the film got a 4.3 rating out of 10 at IMDB.com, and that’s not inaccurate. But a little context:

As someone who grew up in the late fifties and early sixties, I’ve sat through my share of B movies when going to the theater meant a double feature: the heavily advertised A movie that you went there to see, and a B movie that was shot on the cheap and thrown in as a bonus. Most of them were genre films and some of them were just bad. Sad bad—the kind that made you squirm in your seat or think to go to the restroom yet again, because you had a limited amount of money for movie snacks and could only make so many trips to the lobby counter. Then there were Hammer films and Roger Corman films, who embraced the fact that they were making movies, not films, on the cheap, so why not do it tongue in cheek? These were the campy films, the so-bad-they’re-good ones that left you wondering whether they were intentionally or unintentionally goofy. Somehow, despite being bad and having abrupt endings that made you wonder if they stopped filming when the money ran out, they were still fun to watch.

That’s what we’re dealing with here. Beast from Haunted Cave combines two genres—the heist film and the horror film—and it ends so suddenly that—wait, what?—you’ll probably want to rewind a bit. The plot is straightforward, as B movies typically are, but with better-than-B-average dialogue. A group of men and one woman plan on robbing a ski lodge, and decide to blow up an old mine/cave for a distraction. There’s more talk than action, but there are some interesting moments, many of them provided when Sheila Carol is on camera. Trivia fans might also look for Frank Sinatra’s nephew, who does a decent job with his role.

The heist team in this film is probably the most generic and benign cast of characters ever assembled, though the writing and their acting is just good enough to hold your attention until the next sighting of a creature that sometimes looks like a hairy tentacle operated by a Muppetteer and sometimes looks like a thinner, gauzy, spidery rendition of Pizza the Hutt. Like I said, you’ve got to see this movie monster to believe it. Beast from Haunted Cave is one of those B movies that’s fun make fun of.

Ski Troop Attackis surprisingly okay for a B movie, which is to say it’s almost good. Like Beast, it holds your attention while you wait for something to happen, but instead of hokey laughable moments there are just logical lapses that make you think, really? Like, why is it that it takes five ski troopers behind enemy lines to take out a bridge that we’re told can’t be attacked by the air, when A movies like 633 Squadron and The Bridges at Toko-Ri established that pretty much any target can be hit through the air?

Both films are halfway decent for B movies, and the transfers look great. Of the two, Beast remains the most fun to watch because of that campy monster. Ski Troop Attack, also filmed in Deadwood and the Black Hills of South Dakota, doesn’t lend itself as much to wisecracks—maybe because a historical war is the central subject. As I said, it’s surprisingly okay, but logically uneven. One final note:  like Alfred Hitchcock, Roger Corman liked to insert himself into his films. Look for “German Soldier Entering Cabin” in this one. The films and bonus features are on two separate discs in this release.

Entire family:  No (Age 10 and older)

Run times:  65 and 72 min., Black & White

Studio/Distributor:  Film Masters

Aspect ratios: 1.85:1 and 1.33:1

Featured audios:  Dolby Digital and DTS 2.0 Mono

Bonus features:  B-/C+

Trailer

Amazon link

Not rated (would be PG for adult subjects and frightening images)

Language:  2/10—Beast is squeaky clean, and Ski Troop isn’t much worse

Sex:  1/10—Other than a single bathtub scene where nothing can be seen, there isn’t anything here

Violence:  3/10—Neither film is particularly violent, either

Adult situations: 4/10—Some smoking and drinking and wartime action

Takeaway:  This is an interesting pairing of a Corman brothers’ produced B movie and a Roger Corman directed movie

Review: LITTLE MISS MARKER (1934) (Blu-ray)

April 10, 2023

James Plath, Family Home Theater Comedy, Drama, Entire Family, G rated Leave a comment

Grade: B-/C+

Comedy-Drama

Not rated (would be PG)

Child actor Shirley Temple became a household name in the 1930s and was considered to be 20th Century-Fox’s greatest asset. When she was only seven years old, the studio assigned a team of 19 writers to develop original stories for her. Discovered at age three, she became the inspiration for stage mothers all across America who pushed their own small children to become singers and dancers. Her signature song (“On the Good Ship Lollipop”) sold 500,000 copies on sheet music—presumably to those same stage mothers—while her likeness was used to sell such merchandise as dolls, clothing, plates, and glassware. She even had a drink named for her, and was the first performer to receive a special Juvenile Oscar.

By the time a six-year-old (but looking younger) Temple appeared in Little Miss Marker (1934)—the film that established her as a star—she had already acted in 13 film shorts and nine feature films. By contrast, Dorothy Bell, the female lead who plays a nightclub singer in this Damon Runyon adaptation, had only one film short and a single feature to her credit.

Runyon was a journalist whose published short stories celebrated the denizens of Prohibition-era Broadway: hard-boiled newsmen, gamblers, bookies, singers, racketeers, reformers, and other colorful characters that inhabited his little corner of Brooklyn. They were people who frequented racetracks and clubs, had colorful nicknames, yet had a soft spot. If you’ve seen Guys and Dolls, you’ve seen the most famous adaptation of two of his short stories. But “Little Miss Marker” comes in second, having spawned this film and three remakes.

In Little Miss Marker, bookie Sorrowful Jones (Adolphe Menjou) accepts an unusual I.O.U. “marker”: the daughter of a desperate man looking to get back on track with a racing win. When the man never returns to get her and pay his debt, the bookie is forced to take the child home. Soon he, his associates, and everyone under the thumb of racketeer Big Steve (Charles Bickford) find themselves being charmed by her. That includes the racketeer’s girlfriend, club singer Bangles (Dell), who envisions a more respectable life when she looks at the orphan.

Of Temple films, then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “It is a splendid thing that for just 15 cents, an American can go to a movie and look at the smiling face of a baby and forget his troubles.” But not everyone could forget their troubles. America wasn’t exactly equal, and films from this era, with their unfortunate racial stereotypes, are a reminder of that. Willie Best, like Stepin Fetchit, played a lazy, simpleminded, easily spooked character whose eyes bug out and words meander in a slow exaggerated drawl. But at least he received credit for his work, as did Wong Chung for a single walk-on line spoken again as an stereotypical caricature of what white America thought Asians sounded like when they spoke English. Mildred Gover, who plays the club singer’s maid, isn’t even credited . . . though at least her delivery seems less caricatured as the film progresses. At one point we even catch her having a drink and putting her feet up on the furniture when the missus isn’t home.

So yeah, a few unfortunate cultural stereotypes mar a film that otherwise is entertaining in a hokey sort of way. Hardened men and women become like putty in the hands of “Marky.” When they realize they’re having as much of a negative effect on her as the positive effect she’s having on them, they resolve to do something about it—even if it involves sabotaging Big Steve’s plan to use the girl as “owner” of a racehorse that they plan to use to fix a race, or holding an elaborate dress-up party to refuel the child’s belief in fairy tales. And even if it means kidnapping a doctor when, like Pollyanna, Marky needs emergency care.

Shirley Temple was America’s screen orphan and her movies were a mainstay on family-oriented TV movie series of the ‘50s and ‘60s. But these days the safest ones to watch with your small children remain those that are the least outdated and have the fewest unsavory characters in need of transformation.

Those would be Heidi (1937), The Little Princess (1939), Bright Eyes (1934, “The Good Ship Lollipop” film), and Captain January (1936), in that order. But Wee Willie Winkie (1937, Temple’s favorite) and Little Miss Marker aren’t far behind. While this Little Miss Marker might lose by a nose to Bob Hope’s Sorrowful Jones (1949), it remains far superior to the 1980 adaptation or looser remakes like Little Big Shot (1935) or Forty Pounds of Trouble (1962).

Entire family:  Yes

Run time:  80 min. Black & White

Studio/Distributor:  Universal/Kino Lorber

Aspect ratio:  1.37:1

Featured audio:  DTS 2.0 Mono

Bonus features:  C+

Amazon link

Clip (spoiler)

Rated “Passed” (would be G today)

Review: THE FABELMANS (Blu-ray combo)

April 7, 2023

James Plath, Family Home Theater Biopic, Drama, PG-13 rated Leave a comment

Grade:  A-

Drama

Rated PG-13

The Fabelmans was promoted as a “semi-autobiographical story loosely based on Spielberg’s adolescence,” but after Steven Spielberg’s November 2022 New York Times interview, the term “biopic” seems more appropriate. As it turns out, all of the major and memorable events happened pretty much as they were depicted in this 2022 film, which earned seven Oscar nominations. That includes a memorable scene where a timed young aspiring filmmaker meets the great, gruff John Ford in his office.

Even without labeling, audiences would have picked up on at least one similarity between the boy in the film and the famous director’s work:  a scene with boy scouts reminiscent of a sequence from the third Indiana Jones film. In fact, Spielberg recreated exactly the first short films that he made, including one he made with his boy scout troop to earn his photography merit badge.

The Fabelmans (fable-man’s) are an eccentric Jewish family that’s split down the middle of their collective brain. The mother, Mitzi (Best Actress nominee Michelle Williams), is a creative right-brained talent ruled by passion and imagination. A concert pianist, she’s also a free spirit who loves life, loves to laugh, and loves to play-act. The father, Burt (Paul Dano), is a left-brained tech genius who does his best to go with the flow, despite wanting his son to make useful things, as he does does. In their own way, both parents are  creative, so it’s no wonder that Spielberg turned out to be a creative genius. The fun of this film comes from seeing how that genius was nurtured in his adolescent and teen years.

As one of Sammy Fabelman’s three younger sisters (Keeley Karsten, Julia Butters, Sophia Kopera) observes, the youth is most like his mother.

Sammy (Gabriel LaBelle) is immediately drawn to filmmaking after his parents take him to see Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth—alternately mesmerized and traumatized by the film’s storytelling and realistic depiction of a train crash.

Mitzi is drawn to her husband’s partner and best friend, Bennie (Seth Rogen), who does everything with the family except spend the night in the same house. Bennie is silly and a bit of a free spirit himself. Early on the audience can detect that their mutual attraction is a train wreck in the making.

What results is a fascinating coming-of-age film with a twist:  as Sammy teaches himself how to make movies, the audience learns all the ingenious things that young Spielberg did with a little budget and big ambitions. His special effects and utilization were a marvel, and he learns early that the power that a film can have—especially when it captures people in a way that can be missed or overlooked in daily life. Film can be a means of expression, it can evoke emotions in the audience, and it can reveal truths—some of them painful.

Michelle Yeoh deserved to win the Best Actress Oscar, but so, frankly, did Michelle Williams, who captivates the audience as much as she does her family . . . and Bennie. She brings life to the film in every frame she’s in. Gabriel LaBelle is also convincing as the young hero who copes with anti-Semitic taunts, bullying, parents who are drifting apart, an uncle (Judd Hirsch) who tells him he was meant to pursue his art at the expense of his family, and a first crush that ends up being a Pray-the-Jew-Away comedy in two acts.

Hirsch leans a little too close to familiar stereotypes in his performance as Uncle Boris, a former actor and circus performer, but the rest of the cast blends seamlessly into the landscapes of ‘50s and ‘60s Arizona and California. They were no doubt helped considerably by watching the home movies that Spielberg showed them and the recollections he shared so they could get a handle on how to play them. As Paul Dano said, “For somebody like Steven to share that much of himself with us—with the audience too—it was really a profound experience.

Knowing that this is the life story of one of the great directors of all time—the man who gave us Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, The Color Purple, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, War Horse, Lincoln, The Post, and West Side Story—makes an already compelling film even more so. The average viewers will make connections to many of their favorite Spielberg films, and appreciate them (and this biopic—there, I said it) all the more.

The late Roger Ebert once said, “No good film is too long,” and that almost applies to The Fabelmans, a 2.5 hour film that might prompt many people to head for the snack counter or restrooms or just stretch their legs. Some of the scenes might go on a bit long, but it’s an interesting, episodic story that covers a lot of ground: the breakup of a marriage, prejudice, a painful relocation, a first love, and, most of all, the development of a filmmaker. In the end, you’re apt to forgive Spielberg his one excess:  trying to make a biopic that does justice to his own interesting life and amazing career.

Entire family:  No (junior high age and older)

Run time:  251 min. Color

Aspect ratio:  1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen

Featured audio:  Dolby TrueHD 7.1

Bonus features:  B

Includes:  Blu-ray, DVD, Digital Code

Amazon link

Trailer

Rated PG-13 for some strong language, thematic elements, brief violence and drug use

Language: 5/10—1 f-bomb plus a peck of lesser swearwords

Sex:  3/10—Just the start of a teen make-out session, an embrace and hand-holding as signs of an affair, plus Sammy’s mom dances nude in a see-through dress (though all the audience sees is the outline of her shape)

Violence: 3/10—A character is pushed and punched in the face (nose bloodied), and an adult slaps a teen across the face; it hardly counts, but the young director films a war movie with realistic blood and gore from his high school “actors” not that severe because we see the secret behind the screen magician’s tricks

Adult situations:  3/10—Social drinking and smoking, plus the sadness of anti-Semitic bullying and a marriage on the rocks

Takeaway:  Spielberg said he almost abandoned his dream of being a filmmaker after seeing Lawrence of Arabia, thinking he could never reach the heights that David Lean did in that film. But he has done so a number of times, even if he fell just shy of perfection with this one

Review of A MAN CALLED OTTO (Blu-ray)

April 3, 2023

James Plath, Family Home Theater Comedy, Drama, PG-13 rated Leave a comment

Grade:  B-

Drama-Comedy

Rated PG-13

A Man Called Otto (2022) offers another serving of a Hollywood trope we’ve seen many times over: the grumpy widower whose life is brightened somehow by a younger person.

In Finding Forrester the old man was a Salinger-like recluse dogged by a young wannabe writer. In Gran Torino it was a crusty racist war veteran softened by a teenage Lao Hmong refugee. In About Schmidt it was a still-numb and rudderless old coot that found some sense of purpose by corresponding with a Tanzanian boy through a Plan USA program. In Murphy’s Romance it was a widowed druggist who found an unlikely romance with a young single mom. And in Disney’s animated Up it was a gruff old codger with a cane who became stuck with an overly talkative boy scout insisting he help the elderly man in order to earn a merit badge.

There are many more examples to cite, but this Tom Hanks film tweaks the trope to make it both schmaltzier and darker. Otto (“O-T-T-O”) is so lost and depressed after losing his beloved wife to cancer that he tries to take his life onscreen—multiple times, and by multiple means. If this were a Taika Waititi film, those attempts would have been rendered more comically. But director Marc Forster (Finding Neverland, The Kite Runner) goes for a deadpan blend of dark humor and pathos that doesn’t quite scream “Don’t try this at home,” the way broader humor might have done.

A Man Called Otto is a bit of a Hanks family affair, with Hanks’ wife, Rita Wilson, sharing a producing credit and son Truman playing a younger Otto in flashbacks. In the early going those flashbacks with Sonya (Rachel Keller) keep the film from being a total downer, like a film version of “Bolero” that plays over and over again because Forster tends to overstate Otto’s grumpiness, anger, and unexplained Barney Fife-like mission of guarding a gated cul-de-sac block of row houses in the Pittsburgh, Pa. area. The average viewer will, at some point, think, Okay, I get it. He’s an angry old bird. Move on. The film runs six minutes past two hours, so it could certainly have used a heavier hand in the editing room.

Though Hanks—like Sean Connery, Clint Eastwood, Jack Nicholson, James Garner, and Ed Asner before him—is the focal character and the one who grows and changes, the heart of the film belongs to a pregnant Mexican woman named Marisol (Mariana Treviño), her two young daughters, and her bumbling husband (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo). Without this family, Otto is a dead man, and without Treviño the film is a train wreck. Treviño has been acting for 10 years, but A Man Called Otto has to be considered her breakout role for U.S. audiences. She received no nominations for her performance, but Marisol’s exhuberance, honesty, and literal foot-in-the-door no-nonsense approach to life and relationships model the kind of virtues and values that parents might hope their children could attain. And her onscreen daughters Abbie (Alessandra Perez) and Luna (Christiana Montoya) get the assist. Scenes with them and Otto can seem cloying at times because they’re so purposefully intended to show Otto beginning to soften, but the young actresses channel their screen mother’s knowing enthusiasm along with their own characters’ innocence and naiveté to make those scenes funny.

Is it manipulative? Heck yeah. You’ll find yourself near tears one minute and laughing the next, and you know it’s because most of the scenes seem shot with the sole purpose of moving the audience. Some viewers will resent that, while others will appreciate a roller coaster ride that dips down for much of the first half and climbs throughout most of the second.

But if you give it any thought, Otto’s depression and anger would have been plenty to pull at audience’s heartstrings without the filmmakers adding a seemingly tacked-on side plot about a friendship that dissolved over automobile makes and a parallel sad medical situation. All of that feels like unnecessary piling on. The film would have been helped by fewer downer subplots, fewer trips to the cemetery, and more diverse characters like Malcolm (a transgender kid who had Otto’s wife for a teacher) and Jimmy (a neighbor whose fitness walking style will crack you up). There’s no happy ending here, only a happy transformation.

Is it family fare?  Perhaps, for families with tweens and older children. I’m a film critic, not a mental health professional, but a UCLA study reported that suicide is the second-leading cause of death among people age 15-24, with nearly 20 percent of high school students admitting that they’ve had serious thoughts of suicide. That’s a crazy statistic. Would it help them to watch a depressed and angry man who thinks he has nothing to live for find his way? Parents who know their children might have the answer. I don’t. I do know this: a film isn’t a substitute for professional evaluation and treatment, but it could very well be a starting point for a discussion that could lead to seeking outside help.

Entire family:  No

Run time:  126 min. Color

Studio/Distributor:  Columbia/Sony

Aspect ratio:  1.85:1

Featured audio:  DTS-HDMA 5.1

Bonus features:  C

Includes:  Blu-ray, Digital Copy

Amazon link

Trailer

Rated PG-13 for mature thematic material involving suicide and language

Language:  7/10—Some audience members seem to bristle at the mere mention of “transgender,” and that word is spoken, along with an f-bomb, a few profane God damns, shits, hell, SOB, etc.; turns out that angry old men have a potty mouth

Sex:  1/10—Nothing here, even in flashbacks, which are intended to be tender; just a few kisses

Violence:  3/10— Otto loses it with a honking driver, physically manhandling the guy and threatening him, and there are lesser examples of physicality

Adult situations:  7/10—Aside from the multiple suicide attempts, two of which have him experiencing a near-death vision of his wife, there’s some alcohol and smoking, and one death

Takeaway:  A Man Called Otto is based on a best-selling novel by German writer Fredrik Backman, so given the number of aging male actors in Hollywood I would say there’s a pretty big incentive for future novelists to keep feeding this trope

Review of TOP GUN: MAVERICK (Blu-ray)

November 2, 2022

James Plath, Family Home Theater Action-Adventure, Drama, PG-13 rated Leave a comment

Grade:  B+/A-
Action-Adventure Drama Romance
Rated PG-13

Top Gun: Maverick outgunned all other films at the box office so far in 2022, besting #2 Jurassic World: Dominion by nearly half-a-million dollars. It’s slick Hollywood action blockbuster filmmaking at its finest. 

Critics thought it better than the first Top Gun because of the increased number and authenticity of the aircraft action sequences. With the cooperation of the U.S. Navy, a film crew spent over a year working with six cameras placed inside the cockpits and additional cameras mounted at various spots on the planes’ exteriors. Reportedly more than 800 hours of aerial footage was shot, so the sequences that made it into the film were really something special.

And the planes? The production crew used 20 functioning aircraft and modified them to have the look that they wanted, including the fictional “Darkstar” that was designed with the help of actual engineers from legendary aircraft manufacturer Lockheed Martin.

The 1986 Top Gun was so popular that composer Giorgio Moroder and performer Kenny Loggins probably expected to see a hastily produced sequel and earn residuals for their “Danger Zone” theme. But it took almost 25 years before Paramount announced a sequel with Cruise signed, Jerry Bruckheimer onboard to produce, and Top Gun director Tony Scott expected to work behind the cameras again. Then, later in 2012, Scott died and production didn’t begin until 2017, with Joseph Kosinski directing. Then came delays related to COVID-19 and the prolonged filming of those complicated action sequences. But the results speak for themselves. If you don’t already have a big TV, this might be a reason to splurge. Top Gun: Maverick was made for the big screen.

Cruise at 60 looks boyish as ever and because of his action roles has maintained his muscle tone and slender frame. In Top Gun he was paired romantically with Kelly McGillis, five years his senior, but McGillis said she wasn’t asked to be in the sequel. Instead, writers gave Cruise another love interest to take his breath away:  Navy hangout bar owner Penny (Jennifer Connelly, age 48), with whom it’s implied he had a previous relationship—the old heartbreaker.

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Review of ISLAND OF THE BLUE DOLPHINS (1964) (Blu-ray)

October 2, 2022

James Plath, Family Home Theater Drama, PG rated Leave a comment

Grade:  B-
Drama
Not Rated (would be PG)

Island of the Blue Dolphins was released just four years after the 1960 Newbery Award-winning book on which it was based. If you’re a fan and haven’t seen this film by James B. Clark (A Dog of Flanders, Misty), you’ll be glad to know that the writers and director steered as close to Scott O’Dell’s book as anyone could. And both the book and the film have been used in classrooms to broach discussions of feminism and the mistreatment and resilience of indigenous people.

Parents should be cautioned that this children’s book was written originally for adults, which means that there are some adult things here. Island of the Blue Dolphins has more in common with a novella like John Steinbeck’s The Pearl than it does your typical Newbery Medal recipient. Though there isn’t much blood, many people die in a brief battle, a main character is killed off-screen, and a beloved animal dies onscreen. Through it all, what’s emphasized is the strength and fortitude of a female character that is 12 years old when the story begins.

Black-and-white promo (film is in color)

Celia Kaye, part Cherokee, won a Golden Globe for Best Newcomer as Karana, who must learn how to fend for herself in Robinson Crusoe fashion after her people decide to leave their Channel Island off the coast of southern California following a battle with Russian fur traders and their Aleut trapper allies. Karana is in the evacuation boat when she realizes that her six-year-old brother (Larry Domasin) is still on the island. Rather than leave him, she dives into the water, which is indeed populated by dolphins. That split-second decision will lead to many years of relative solitude and self-sufficiency.

The book and film are set in 1835, and Karana must learn how to do things that were forbidden for her to learn because she was not male—things like how to string a bow and shoot arrows to protect herself from the feral dogs on the island, and how to feather arrows and make nets. When the film was first released, a New York Times reviewer pronounced it a film for children. Maybe that’s because the script calls for the characters to speak in simple language with no contractions to suggest an earlier time period; maybe it’s because the plot itself is as simple as a fable, but with a less obvious lesson; or maybe it’s because the reviewer was conditioned to think of it as a children’s story since it had been published as a children’s book. But for a 1964 production, Island of the Blue Dolphins doesn’t seem all that dated because of these things. And it’s not nearly as slow as the film version of Robinson Crusoe due to the constant presence of a threat on the island.

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Review of WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING (Blu-ray combo)

September 15, 2022

James Plath, Family Home Theater Drama, PG-13 rated Leave a comment

Grade:  B+
Drama
Rated PG-13

Unlike many reviewers of Where the Crawdads Sing (2022), I don’t have an axe to grind or a subject to bludgeon. I never read the first novel by 70-year-old Delia Owens that this Olivia Newman film is based on, and only heard about the hype—a Reese Witherspoon book club selection that sold 12 million copies in four years—and the controversy after watching the film. For some people, Owens’ background makes a difference, so I’ll address it briefly, though even without the backstory there’s plenty enough to get riled up about.

The film, like the novel, tells the story of a girl who is forced to fend for herself in the marshes of North Carolina after her abusive father drives off her mother and older siblings, and later bows out of the picture as well. Shamefully, it doesn’t occur to any of her family to take her with them. They just take off, leaving her alone with him.

The townspeople aren’t much better. They dub her “the marsh girl” and obviously recognize her situation, but only one couple shows her any kindness. And they certainly could have done more for her. Kya attends school barefoot, but is treated so shabbily that she never returns. Later, as a teenager after living in the marsh for years, she draws the attention of two young men: one a rich boy with a penchant for partying and taking what he wants, and the other a college-bound youth who at one point decides to teach Kya how to read. Some think that sweet; others call it condescending and controlling or a perverse sort of  relationship imbalance fetish.

Maybe the razors were sharpened after it was brought to everyone’s attention that Owens, like Kya, was (and is still) a suspect in an unsolved murder. In the film, one of Kya’s suitors ends up dead and she stands trial, with David Straithairn playing the kind of down-home country lawyer with uncommon wisdom and empathy that we saw in Harper Lee’s attorney, Atticus Finch. In real life, Owens and husband Mark were working as biologists and environmentalists in Zambia and were being filmed when a poacher was shot and killed . . . on camera. The couple left the country and was advised not to return because they remain persons of interest, as shown on ABC’s 1996 special Deadly Game: The Mark and Delia Owens Story.

But back to the film. Lucy Alibar (Beasts of the Southern Wild) wrote the screenplay, Witherspoon co-produced, Polly Morgan (The Woman King) was responsible for the gorgeous location cinematography, Taylor Swift co-wrote and sang the theme song (“Carolina”), and Daisy Edgar-Jones (Normal People, Under the Banner of Heaven) headed a talented cast as Kya. Though men also are involved in the project, Where the Crawdads Sing feels very much like a female empowerment story and holds considerable appeal because of that.

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