Date: 07/12 >>
(The Weinstein Company)
Reviewed for Arizona Reporter by Harvey Karten
Grade: A-
Directed by: Rob Marshall
Written By: Michael Tolkin, Anthony Minghella
Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Marion Cotillard, Penelope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, Judi Dench, Kate Hudson, Stacy Ferguson, Sophia Loren
Screened at: Lighthouse International, NYC, 12/4/09
Opens: December 18, 2009
Calderon de la barca, the 17th Century Spanish playwright wrote “La Vida es Sueno” (“Life is a Dream”), describing a man, Segismundo, the putative heir to the king of Poland, who commits two violent acts. When he is drugged and returned to prison, he is told that the vicious events are nothing but his dream. The key person in, Federico Fellini’s classic film “8-1/2,” made in 1982 into the Broadway musical “Nine” and now adapted by Rob Marshall for the big screen, evokes an alternate vision. Dreams, at nighttime but especially during the day (like when you sit through a two-hour lecture on medieval Slobotka), are a more colorful and significant part of your life than objective reality. A major segment of Marshall’s movie takes place inside the head of Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis), the preeminent Italian film director of his time (fashioned on Federico Fellini’s own life). When director Marshall trains his cameras on some of Guido’s hallucinations, the movie is on fire.
(The Weinstein Company)
Reviewed for Arizona Reporter by Harvey Karten
Grade: A-
Directed by: Rob Marshall
Written By: Michael Tolkin, Anthony Minghella
Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Marion Cotillard, Penelope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, Judi Dench, Kate Hudson, Stacy Ferguson, Sophia Loren
Screened at: Lighthouse International, NYC, 12/4/09
Opens: December 18, 2009
Calderon de la barca, the 17th Century Spanish playwright wrote “La Vida es Sueno” (“Life is a Dream”), describing a man, Segismundo, the putative heir to the king of Poland, who commits two violent acts. When he is drugged and returned to prison, he is told that the vicious events are nothing but his dream. The key person in, Federico Fellini’s classic film “8-1/2,” made in 1982 into the Broadway musical “Nine” and now adapted by Rob Marshall for the big screen, evokes an alternate vision. Dreams, at nighttime but especially during the day (like when you sit through a two-hour lecture on medieval Slobotka), are a more colorful and significant part of your life than objective reality. A major segment of Marshall’s movie takes place inside the head of Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis), the preeminent Italian film director of his time (fashioned on Federico Fellini’s own life). When director Marshall trains his cameras on some of Guido’s hallucinations, the movie is on fire.
Date: 03/12 >>
By Susan Granger - Robert De Niro plays a retired, recent widower, Frank Goode, trying to reconnect with his grown children in Kirk Jones’ remake of Giuseppe Tornatore’s "Stanno Tutti Bene."
Frank senses something’s amiss when he plans a summer barbeque and his children cancel, one after another, giving a variety of flimsy excuses. So despite dire warnings from his doctor, Frank decides to make a cross-country road trip, paying a surprise visit to each one of them. His first stop is in New York City, where he waits at his artist son David’s apartment, but David never shows up. He then goes to Chicago, where his advertising executive daughter Amy (Kate Beckinsale) seems tense and uncomfortable in his presence. After that, his classical musician son Robert (Sam Rockwell) is just leaving Denver as Frank is arriving. And his dancer daughter Rosie (Drew Barrymore) is saddled with a baby-sitting chore when he lands in Las Vegas. Though they all try to put up a good front, Frank knows that everything is not perfect in their lives – far from it.
By Susan Granger - Robert De Niro plays a retired, recent widower, Frank Goode, trying to reconnect with his grown children in Kirk Jones’ remake of Giuseppe Tornatore’s "Stanno Tutti Bene."
Frank senses something’s amiss when he plans a summer barbeque and his children cancel, one after another, giving a variety of flimsy excuses. So despite dire warnings from his doctor, Frank decides to make a cross-country road trip, paying a surprise visit to each one of them. His first stop is in New York City, where he waits at his artist son David’s apartment, but David never shows up. He then goes to Chicago, where his advertising executive daughter Amy (Kate Beckinsale) seems tense and uncomfortable in his presence. After that, his classical musician son Robert (Sam Rockwell) is just leaving Denver as Frank is arriving. And his dancer daughter Rosie (Drew Barrymore) is saddled with a baby-sitting chore when he lands in Las Vegas. Though they all try to put up a good front, Frank knows that everything is not perfect in their lives – far from it.
Date: 02/12 >>
Sony Pictures Classics
Reviewed for Arizona Reporter by Harvey Karten
Grade: B+
Directed by: Michael Hoffman
Written By: Michael Hoffman, from Jay Parini’s novel
Cast: Helen Mirren, Christopher Plummer, Paul Giamatti, James McAvoy
Screened at: Sony, NYC, 12/1/09
Opens: December 4, 2009
Bear with me because this is not a digression…Liberals want money to be distributed more equitably and will often support tax increases on the rich, with revenue diverted to programs that will help the poor or the community as a whole. Socialists are liberals with a vengeance: the most radical want more than simply government takeover of the means of production, but rather a redistribution of income to all according to need. There are different kinds of socialists. One group, the well-to-do, like to talk a good game because socialism is fashionable, but they would be horrified to lose more than a pittance. Another are the poor, those who have nothing to fear from a redistribution since they do not have money or land in the first place. The third group, the true believers, do indeed possess wealth but have demonstrated with action their willingness to give it up to “the community,” if not while they’re alive, at least when they are dead and have willed their estate to all. Lev Tolstoy was in the third group, the ones with the integrity, but wait: there are others who are true believers but will use force of will if not of guns to get that money into mass circulation. Those are the ones who became the dreaded communist leaders like Stalin, Lenin, and Mao. “The Last Station” may not be primarily a political movie, but politics is the thrust that motivates all the players, even while the Michael Hoffman’s film can be sold to the public better as a love story—which it is as well.
Sony Pictures Classics
Reviewed for Arizona Reporter by Harvey Karten
Grade: B+
Directed by: Michael Hoffman
Written By: Michael Hoffman, from Jay Parini’s novel
Cast: Helen Mirren, Christopher Plummer, Paul Giamatti, James McAvoy
Screened at: Sony, NYC, 12/1/09
Opens: December 4, 2009
Bear with me because this is not a digression…Liberals want money to be distributed more equitably and will often support tax increases on the rich, with revenue diverted to programs that will help the poor or the community as a whole. Socialists are liberals with a vengeance: the most radical want more than simply government takeover of the means of production, but rather a redistribution of income to all according to need. There are different kinds of socialists. One group, the well-to-do, like to talk a good game because socialism is fashionable, but they would be horrified to lose more than a pittance. Another are the poor, those who have nothing to fear from a redistribution since they do not have money or land in the first place. The third group, the true believers, do indeed possess wealth but have demonstrated with action their willingness to give it up to “the community,” if not while they’re alive, at least when they are dead and have willed their estate to all. Lev Tolstoy was in the third group, the ones with the integrity, but wait: there are others who are true believers but will use force of will if not of guns to get that money into mass circulation. Those are the ones who became the dreaded communist leaders like Stalin, Lenin, and Mao. “The Last Station” may not be primarily a political movie, but politics is the thrust that motivates all the players, even while the Michael Hoffman’s film can be sold to the public better as a love story—which it is as well.
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