Category: Film

Movies: Oscar Nominees

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We have made a concerted effort to see as many of the Oscar nominees as possible and continued this week with three more films.  All were noteworthy in some way, although I can see why Nomadland is favored by a number of critics for best picture.  I agree with them.

Time (Amazon Prime $)

Ms. Fox Rich on the phone to the prison (decider.com)

Time is nominated for best documentary feature and was made in conjunction with the New York Times.  It is an especially relevant film as this country re-examines our prison system and inequities in the sentencing and treatment of Blacks and other minorities.  Combining home movies going back twenty years with contemporary film footage, Time documents one mother’s challenge to raise six kids alone.  

Sibil Fox Rich’s husband Rob was sentenced to 60 years in jail for robbing a bank.  As the driver of the getaway car, she herself served three years.  Over the years, she visits him in prison and works tirelessly to try to gain him a reduction in his sentence and early release.  Sibil is an amazing study in fortitude, determination, and love as she works hard at her jobs and instills in her boys good values and the importance of education.  

Shot in black and white, the opening scenes are almost dizzyingly jerky given that they are home movies.  I hesitated initially and then got caught up in this family’s story. 

Promising Young Woman (Amazon Prime $)

Carey Mulligan as Cassandra (variety.com)

I had put off viewing this film since I wasn’t sure I liked the overall revenge premise. But I kept reading about Carey Mulligan’s great performance and felt I needed to give it a try.  I found it painful, even shocking, but watched to the end.  

Cassandra, a medical school dropout working in a coffee shop, plots ways to get revenge on the individuals who played a role in the tragedy of her friend Nina.  Cassandra’s schemes are clever, but then verge on outrageous, and you realize she is somewhat unhinged.  Even her boyfriend Ryan does not emerge untarnished.  The film is billed as a comedy thriller and is one answer to the #MeToo movement. Despite its black humor, I didn’t find it funny, especially given the ending.  

The opening scenes made me think of the vulgarity of Carnal Knowledge which appalled me (I was young when I saw it).  Later scenes in Promising Young Woman echo testimony given at Brett Kavanaugh’s Senate hearing.  My advice:  approach with caution, as I don’t think it adds up to a cohesive whole.

Nomadland (Amazon Prime $, free after 4/27)

Fern and her van (harpersbazaar.com)

This is a quiet film with some gorgeous scenery.  No violence, no sex, no great events, just the wide outdoors and folks living rustic lives on the road.  When her husband dies and the plant where she also worked closes, Fern leaves Nevada in a van and wanders the country. She tells people she is houseless, not homeless. Picking up temporary jobs here and there: at an Amazon warehouse, as a host at a van park, and as kitchen help, Fern occasionally joins up with other van nomads.  The life is hard and often not a choice, but folks are genuinely kind to one another and amazingly resilient.  

Frances McDormand is superb as Fern.  She is joined by actor David Straithaim as well as by real-life nomads playing versions of themselves.  Nomadland is definitely deserving of the Best Picture award and director Chloe Zhao of the Oscar for Best Director.

CULINARY CORNER

Bridge Street Bistro

(opentable.com)

After the long year of Covid, we returned to Bridge Street Bistro for dinner with friends.  This upstairs restaurant in Bradenton Beach is both popular and very good.  In fact, the food was even better than my recollection.   Grilled salmon over herb risotto with spinach and shrimp alongside was wonderful!  Although a bit overdressed, the tasty Caesar salads easily served two.  Others in our party ordered crab cakes, lobster mac and cheese, and the stuffed chicken.  Service was good despite it being mostly full.  We were happy diners!   

Tidy Tidbits: Recent Films & Food

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Happy Egg Day! Happy Easter! Couldn’t resist including this basket of dyed eggs as the header photo, courtesy of pennlive.com

OSCAR NOMINEES, A WANNABE, AND A CLASSIC

LOVE UNDER STRESS

Supernova (Amazon Prime $)

Tucci & Firth (reddit.com)

I feel like I’ve been living with Stanley Tucci the past two weeks, what with watching his entire Searching for Italy series and now experiencing him and Colin Firth in Supernova.  It’s an intensely moving and sensitively drawn story of a gay couple dealing with dementia.  Sam is an English pianist and Tusker is an American novelist. Tusker is in the later stages of Alzheimer’s, and they have embarked on a road trip through the English Lake District.  Tusker is losing his ability to recall words and to perform certain tasks and has become more dependent on Sam.  

They are a very loving couple who also tease and bicker with each other.   Neither really wants to let go or to be alone.  But Tusker feels he’s losing control of his life and that brings him and them to a punctuation point.  The dialogue between them rings true to life, and the interactions with Sam’s sister Lily, her family, and friends are believable and not over played.  

Tucci and Firth, longtime friends in real life, are both superb.  Together, they render an emotionally powerful experience.  The soundtrack, ranging from popular songs from the 70’s to a range of classical music, adds additional depth.  The film begins with a slow arc, setting the scene with stunning landscape and showing Sam and Tusker’s daily life.  Simply excellent and should have been nominated for an Oscar!

WHEN CHILD BECOMES THE PARENT

The Father (Amazon Prime $)

Colman & Hopkins (flickeringmyth.com)

This is one of the Oscar nominees for Best Picture and deservedly so.  Based on a play, it focuses mainly on Anthony Hopkins, the father, and Olivia Colman as his daughter Anne.  The character, also Anthony, is 80 and suffering from Alzheimer’s.  He’s canny and sometimes funny, but also defiantly definite about wanting to live on his own.  Simultaneously, he sometimes acknowledges that he’s confused, and he begins not to recognize Anne.  She tries to offer assistance but realizes she can’t give him all that he needs. Time shifts in the film, and you feel you are seeing the same scene played several ways depending on whose reality it is—yours or Anthony’s.  A touching film that has painful moments.  Hopkins and Colman are excellent, and Rufus Sewell plays Anne’s mostly patient spouse Paul.  

MEDICAL CORRUPTION

Collective (Amazon Prime $)

Female reporter with Tolontan (rogersmovienation.com)

This documentary, which grew out of a disastrous 2015 fire at a club in Bucharest called Collectiv, is a heavy-hitting study of malfeasance and corruption.  When experts and others began to wonder why so many young burn survivors died in the hospital, a sports tabloid set out to investigate.  Reporter and editor Catalin Tolontan delved deeply into the tragedy and uncovered tainted disinfectants.  They were just the first evidence of systemic problems in hospitals across Romania.  

Tolontan and his team are heroes and so became Vlad Voiculescu, the newly appointed minister of health.  It’s a devasting story and a compelling one which ends with hints of hope for the future.  It’s a nominee for Best Documentary feature film.    Highly recommended!

A HEPBURN CLASSIC

Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Amazon Prime)

(bookriot.com)

Somehow over the years I missed seeing this classic 1961 film starring Audrey Hepburn.  I’ve watched part of a recent documentary about Hepburn entitled Audrey, and this prompted me to see Breakfast at Tiffany’s.  Hepburn is elegant and beautiful in timeless dresses and gowns by Givenchy.  As high-class call girl Holly Golighty, she alternates sophistication with the innocence of an ingenue.  

The movie is dated, and the casting of Mickey Rooney as a bumbling Japanese man is particularly offensive.  Allowing for that, it’s still an award-winning movie with performances by George Peppard as writer Paul Varjak (who resembles Holly’s brother Fred), Paul’s patron Patricia Neal, and a handsome young Buddy Ebsen.  

CULINARY CORNER

Chateau 13 in downtown Bradenton offers some of the most sophisticated and creative food in the region.  We had dined here once before the pandemic and were delighted that it survived.  As is our wont these days, we had a table with friends outside on the sidewalk.  The street was mostly quiet, so we weren’t bothered by traffic.

The menu consists of cheese and charcuterie sharing plates, small appetizer bites, fries with a range of toppings, several salads, and entrees.  We sampled several cheeses and also frites with black truffles and Parmesan.  For the main event, we ordered the bechamel filled croquettes, shrimp Pernod, braised octopus, coq au vin, and the robust Catalan seafood stew.  Other entrees include mussels several ways, duck breast, salmon, and a chef’s prix fixe menu.  My only quibble was with the crushed croutons on the French Caesar salad. I would have them preferred them whole, but that’s minor for a delicious and different meal!

Happy Spring: Diversions & Dining

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HAPPY SPRING!

(freeimages.com)

For me, the appearance of daffodils, even in the supermarket, heralds the arrival of spring. Today, March 20, is the first day of spring, the spring equinox.  This equinox can occur on March 19, 20, or 21.  Interestingly, according to the Farmer’s Almanac, the next time spring arrives on March 21 in the United States isn’t until 2101, the next century! 

TOUCHING FILM

Minari  (Amazon Prime $)

Minari is one of the Academy nominees for Best Picture.  It’s a mostly quiet film, but powerful and very moving.  This Korean American family of Jacob and Monica and their two children, Anne and David, moves from California to a large tract of land in Arkansas.  

Jacob has dreams of becoming a successful vegetable farmer despite Monica’s doubts.  Their young son has a heart condition, and they live isolated in a rundown trailer.  The parents work at the local hatchery sexing baby chicks while the kids are alone much of the time.  

David and his grandma (latimes.com)

Monica arranges for her mother to come live with them, and she is not at all what David expects.  This Grandma is tough and foul-mouthed and doesn’t bake cookies.   You wonder along the way if this foursome will survive economically, if they will fit in culturally, and finally, if Jacob and Monica will go their separate ways.  

The performances are wonderful, especially that of the boy playing David.  I also found the soundtrack memorable.  Highly recommended!

THRILLING ESCAPISM

The Diplomat’s Wife by Pam Jenoff

First published in 2008, this historical novel was re-released in paperback in 2020.  At the end of the Second World War, Marta Nederman is rescued from a Nazi prison by an American soldier named Paul.  While recovering in an Allied hospital, Marta makes friends with Rose, another patient, and with her nurse Dava.  She has one evening with Paul before he ships out to the Pacific.  

Through a series of happenings, Marta does not return to her native Poland, but ends up in London. She is offered a secretarial job at the Foreign Office and then marries a British diplomat.  How she becomes involved in a secret mission to Prague makes for a suspenseful story with lots of hair-raising twists and turns.  Overall, some of the incidents seem improbable and there are numerous coincidences, but it’s a fast-paced read!

This is one of Jenoff’s earlier works. She has written a number of other novels and often draws on her own experiences working in the Foreign Office.

CULINARY CORNER

Several days ago, we ventured to downtown Sarasota for our first meal at a restaurant since Labor Day weekend last year.  We were celebrating having had both Covid vaccine shots and the conclusion of my term on our condo board. 

Patio (heraldtribune.com)

Rosemary and Thyme has a very large patio.  Tables are nicely spaced, and all servers were masked.  Our table even had several partial walls further dividing it from anyone or anything else!  We dined early, but by the time we finished, this outdoor space was full and service a bit slower.

The menu offers a variety of fish, seafood, and meat entrees along with salads and starters such as fried calamari and fish chowder.  The Chief Penguin and I liked the just-right size and freshness of our Caesar salads.  He then tucked into the hearty meatloaf plate, a signature dish.  I opted for the catch of the day which was a lovely piece of Branzino accompanied by risotto, green beans, and carrots.  Entrée prices range from the low 20’s into the 40’s, the latter perhaps a reflection of staying viable during the pandemic.  The food was tasty and the ambience very nice— we will return.

Note: Header illustration of daffodils courtesy of dreamstime.com.

A POTPOURRI OF VIEWING CHOICES

JWF Leave a comment

Today, March 14, is the International Day of Mathematics.  This date was chosen and proclaimed by UNESCO in November 2019.  Previously, 3/14 had already been known around the world as Pi Day.  In celebration of Pi (3.14159), some people bake round pies, both sweet and savory. Perhaps you are having pie today too!

(delish.com)

FREUD’S FEMALE CASE

Hysterical Girl

Filmmaker Kate Novack is the daughter of good friends of ours.  Her earlier film, The Gospel according to Andre, profiled Andre Talley, an illustrious Black member of staff at Vogue.  

This short film (just 13 minutes) takes Sigmund Freud’s account of his lone female patient, Dora, and re-envisions it in Dora’s own words.  It’s fast moving and filled with graphic clips from contemporary history.  Everything from Anita Hill and Christine Blasey Ford at the Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court hearings to images of women being bullied, mistreated, or sexually abused.  Women as objects through the decades.  

It’s powerful and thought-provoking!  For more background, see the following article.  Hysterical Girl is in contention for an Oscar nomination.  

SLAVERY ENDS IN JAMAICA

The Long Song  (PBS Masterpiece)

Mistress Caroline & July (pbs.org)

This series is sent in Jamaica beginning before the Christmas Rebellion of 1831 and continuing through the abolition of slavery in 1833.  It’s a different piece of the slavery story based on a novel by Andrea Levy.  

July is a young slave woman who captures the attention of the plantation’s white overseer.  Enamored with each other, July and Robert Goodwin have what resembles a common law marriage when he takes Caroline, the plantation owner, as his wife.  

This is an engrossing story with painful images, but an almost too pat ending.  Levy, a British author with Jamaican roots, also wrote the novel, Small Island.

INDIA IN THE 19TH CENTURY

Beecham House  (PBS Masterpiece)

John Beecham flanked by his mother & his brother Daniel (britishperioddramas.com)

The first episode of this 6-part series is a bit slow and when we set out to watch it a year ago, we gave up.  This time around, we were more patient and got caught up in the intrigue.  Set in Delhi in 1800, it focuses on the enigmatic, handsome John Beecham who arrives at the palatial Beecham House with an entourage including his baby son, but no mother.  The British are there through the East India Company, an emperor reigns, and the French vie to keep the British at bay.  There are secrets, treachery, and class and caste differences.  

The production is lavish while the complexities of the interrelationships draw in the viewer.  The series ends with a cliffhanger, a mystery that awaits no planned second season.  And fans of Downton Abbey will recognize Beecham’s mother as Mrs. Patmore, the cook. Worth watching.

WHICH GRANDPARENT IS THE CHOSEN PARENT?

Black or White  (Netflix)

(nydailynews.com)

Kevin Costner is a lawyer and a grandfather raising Eloise, his biracial granddaughter.  When his wife dies in a car accident, the other grandmother, Rowena, and her n’er-do-well son (the girl’s father) sue to gain custody of Eloise.  Octavia Spencer plays Rowena, an enterprising businesswoman, who feels strongly that the girl will benefit from being a part of an extended Black family.  

The film focuses on the legal battle with a wise Black judge presiding in the courtroom.  It’s a good film, not a great one, but the little girl who plays Eloise is delightful!

Note: Header photo of a decorated pie courtesy of newschannel10.com