Wicked 2024 Movie Review: Overrated Didn't like Wicked

 

Wicked 2024
Wicked is very popular but it hasn't enchanted everyone

 

She's twenty-four years old and she weighs a hundred pounds. She's pretty but conventionally so. Plainly human, like the rest of us, she will eventually wither and die. But right now she's twenty-four and a bare-backed gown of hip-hugging satin and ostrich feathers billows about her.

 

She resists his seduction. He sings to her – "Cheek to Cheek." They dance beside a pool of water. He is charming and she is charmed. The music, and the scene, begin as conventional patter and rise to passionate intensity. Her dance expresses that which elevates the human above the animal; her movements defy that which reduces mortals to dirt. She, freed of human limitation, wafts like the wind; she flows like water. She has joined the eternal elements; she is black and white, the elemental colors of clouds and constellations.

 

Near the conclusion, though, three times, he lifts her, spins her, and she spreads her legs. He then dips her almost to a full recline, almost to the ground, and her body goes limp. The feathers cover her face modestly like a fan – her hidden expression no doubt communicates feelings too intimate to share. The music quiets. He, a satisfied smile on his face, tenderly guides her to a stone wall, where she leans back, open-mouthed. We recognize that this old movie is telling us, in old movie language, that she has just had that precious human experience that one can have only in a human body, a climax.

 

Audiences who went to see the 1935 Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers film Top Hat might have, earlier that same day, been on a bread line. That year my parents were foraging for food in the forest. That feather dress transported audiences away from the Great Depression and into pure beauty.

 

Ninety years later, when I am crushed by the burdens of this world, I sometimes rewatch that dance. Its escape from, return to, and celebration of the human condition gives me what I need to go on.

 

Music analyst Robert Kapilow salutes the scene's "meticulous craft." "Cheek to Cheek" sounds familiar, simple, even corny. But it demonstrates the talent that Irving Berlin exercised in writing 1,500 songs in a sixty-year career. Berlin also wrote "God Bless America;" his "White Christmas" is said to be the best-selling single of all time. One-hundred-thirty-six years after Berlin's birth, during the month of December, one can hear "White Christmas" on any radio station or in any shopping mall.

 

"Cheek to Cheek" is "mock-mundane." Any amateur might hear the song and think, "Hey, I could have written that." Berlin's sophistication is disguised. "Every note in the vocal line" Kapilow points out, is on the beat, but with the lyrics, "When we're out together dancing cheek to cheek," "Every single note is off the beat … it's so subtle, you almost don't even notice it." Kapilow says that Berlin "brilliantly elides the" song's sudden, intense passion "in a minor key" and resolves that operatic intensity by concluding with a return to the casual flirtatiousness of the song's opening. "These are not just tunes … These songs are three-act dramas in two minutes."

A Real Pain 2024 Movie Review

 

A Real Pain
Jesse Eisenberg explores American Jewish identity eighty years after the Holocaust

A Real Pain is a comedy-drama Holocaust-themed film. A Real Pain was written, directed, and co-produced by Jesse Eisenberg. The film depicts the journey of two cousins, David and Benji Kaplan, who travel with a tour group to Poland. The cousins' late grandmother, Dory, was a survivor. The cousins' journey is an effort to honor her and better understand their heritage.

Eisenberg, 41, plays David; Kieran Culkin, 42, plays Benji. A Real Pain also features Will Sharpe as James, the tour guide, and other tour members Jennifer Grey as Marcia; Kurt Egyiawan as Eloge; and Liza Sadovy and Daniel Oreskes as Diane and Mark.

David is a happily married husband and father. He lives in an attractive brownstone and makes a good living selling ads. He suffers from anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder, as does Eisenberg himself. David takes prescription medication to suppress his symptoms.

Benji is a "real pain" – as in, "a pain in the ass." He is disruptive and socially inappropriate. Benji lives in his mother's house and smokes a lot of marijuana. He has no committed relationships or steady work. He uses the F-word in every sentence.

David's pain and Benji's pain are set against the overwhelming pain of the Holocaust. The tour group members are flummoxed in their attempts to assimilate historical reality. They juxtapose their comfortable American lives with what Holocaust victims endured. They cannot craft a coherent narrative about the world or their own lives that encompasses that dichotomy.

Conclave 2024 Movie Review

 

Conclave 2024 Starring Ralph Fiennes

A New Movie on Papal Selection Stirs Controversy

Conclave is a 2024 film depicting, in almost docudrama fashion, the fictional death of a beloved pope followed by a conclave conducted by the College of Cardinals. The film concludes with the conclave's election of a new pope, selected from among several intriguing but of course imperfect candidates. Conclave was released on October 25, 2024. It is two hours long. Conclave has an all-star, international cast. Conclave is based on the 2016 novel by the British writer Robert Harris. Harris is the prodigiously talented, multiple-award-winning author of fifteen bestsellers. He often writes historical fiction, including novels set during World War II and the Roman Empire.

Scary Movies Haunt Me: I Take Them On!

 

Standing Up to Scary Movies

I Say "Boo!" to Impotence in the Face of Evil

I'm so small my big brother can toss me over his shoulders without missing a step. He has to carry me sometimes because I'm always barefoot and broken glass lines the path to the factory where Mommy works. There are eight of us in this tiny house, plus dogs and cats, but one bathroom. I'm the youngest so I don't get my own bed yet. I sleep under a green quilt tossed over the couch.

I am so scared I can't move. I barely breathe. My big brothers like scary movies and the only TV in the house is just a few feet away. I'm trying to sleep, but they're watching an old 1950s sci-fi flick. Martians vaporize Earthlings. A cop sights a UFO in our town. It made the national news. The anchor mispronounced our town's name, a Lenni Lenape Indian word meaning "sassafras." I quietly wait to be vaporized, and am surprised when I am not.

Lee 2023. New Kate Winslet Movie Dramatizes Lee Miller's World War II Photographic Career

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Lee 2023
A Fine Film Exposes As Much As It Hides

Lee is a new biopic about Lee Miller (1907 - 1977), an American-born fashion model turned photographer. Miller's most famous photo was snapped by LIFE photographer Dave Scherman. Miller is naked in a bathtub. As the viewer examines the photo, he comes to realize that there is a portrait of Hitler on the bathtub's edge, and filthy combat boots and an army jacket over a chair. Along with LIFE magazine's Margaret Bourke-White, Miller was one of only two credentialed women combat photographers during World War II. The photograph was taken on April 30, 1945, in Hitler's Munich apartment. Miller had begun the day photographing horrors at the newly liberated Dachau. Also earlier that same day, Hitler had committed suicide.

Multiple-award-winning actress Kate Winslet produced and stars. Winslet had been trying to get the film made for nine years. "It's hard to get a film made about a woman, and it's hard to get a film made as a woman," Winslet says. Alexander Skarsgard plays Roland Penrose, Miller's lover. Andy Samberg stars as Dave Scherman, Miller's colleague. Andrea Riseborough is Audrey Withers, Miller's editor at British Vogue. Josh O'Connor is Antony Penrose, son of Roland Penrose and Lee Miller.

Ellen Kuras, a cinematographer, directs only her second feature film with Lee. Veteran film composer Alexandre Desplat, winner of two Academy Awards, two Golden Globes, and two Grammys, composed the score. Lee's runtime is 116 minutes. It was released in the US on September 27, 2024.

Rottentomatoes gives Lee a 64% professional reviewer score and a 94% amateur reviewer score. Some reviewers dismiss Lee as a "paint-by-numbers biopic." Rex Reed is more enthusiastic. "Enough cannot be said about the film or Kate Winslet – irritating, admirable, challenging, sometimes unlikeable, always heroic – as she elevates the complex personality conflicts of Lee Miller into a cohesive, resplendent, three-dimensional whole."

I loved Lee. I was so intrigued that after the film I read about Lee Miller. What I discovered shocked and disturbed me. Now I want another movie. One that explores the richer, harsher, and ultimately more inspirational story that Lee is too afraid to address. The review, below, will provide a summary of the film. I'll close with an addendum that clues you in to the more difficult narrative I discovered that the movie refuses to touch.

Between the Temples 2024 with Jason Schwartzman Movie Review

 

Between the Temples 2024

A New Film Comments on Jewish Identity

Between the Temples is a 2024 traumedy feature film. "Traumedy" is a genre term for a film that mixes trauma and comedy. Between the Temples stars Jason Schwartzman as Ben Gottlieb, a depressed, middle-aged cantor living in upstate New York. He has retreated to the basement of a home belonging to his mother Meira and his mother's wife Judith (Caroline Aaron and Dolly de Leon). Ben's wife died over a year before the film begins. Rabbi Bruce (Robert Smigel) allows Ben to assume his cantor's chair in front of the congregation during synagogue services, even though Ben has lost his ability to sing. Carla O'Connor (Carol Kane) was, decades earlier, Ben's grade school music teacher. She is now his septuagenarian bat mitzvah student.

Between the Temples was directed and co-written by Nathan Silver. Silver has made low-budget independent films that play at film festivals rather than obtaining wide release. He has often featured friends and relatives in his casts. Between the Temples is an hour and fifty-one minutes long. It was released in the US on August 22, 2024.

Temples has a distinctive look. The film stock is color and it is grainy. Silver shot on 16 mm of "rare Kodak film stock … we pushed at two stops" to make the film "less contrasty and it kind of gave it this look of these Soviet films that we used as our our guide." Silver says he wanted the film to have an "analog" look, to mirror Carla, an older character who was in her prime back in the 1970s. The movie poster's New Spirit Condensed font is also a throwback to the 1970s, and the soundtrack includes Hebrew language songs by Boaz Sharabi, who was popular in Israel in the 1970s.

The camera is handheld and shots are often jerky. Shots focus tightly on human faces. In one scene all the viewer sees is a person's nostrils, lips, and teeth, as the character eats. In a low-budget film, such tight close-ups eliminate the need for set design.

Professional critics lavish the film with praise. Audiences not so much. Rottentomatoes awards Between the Temples a proud 86% score from professional reviewers. Amateur reviews at the site, though, average out to a failing 40% score.

Hitler's People: The Faces of the Third Reich by Richard J. Evans. Review.

 

Hitler's People: The Faces of the Third Reich by Richard J. Evans
Even if you've read many books on the topic, you'll want to read this one

I'm sitting on the couch, next to my brother Greg. I'm about five years old. The TV is our magical portal to old movies. The elegant dancing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. The wit and romance of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. John Wayne's righteous action hero. But not today. I am witnessing horrors that will haunt me for the rest of my life.

Naked, skeletal bodies stacked like firewood. Even worse, some still live, in a nether world that strips them of any concept of human dignity. They stare at the camera and at me and Greg sitting there on the couch in suburban New Jersey.

My mother is furious. "This is what they did to us!"