Mary Poppins Returns [2018]

MPAA (PG)  CNS/USCCB (A-I)  RogerEbert.com (1 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (C+)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
Los Angeles Times (J. Chang) review
RogerEbert.com (M. Castillo) review
AVClub (C. Bramesco) review


Mary Poppins Returns [2018] (directed by Rob Marshall, screenplay by David Magee, screen story by Rob Marshall, David Magee and John DeLuca, based on the childrens' stories [wikip] [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] by P.L. Travers [wikip] [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] [IMDb]) proved MUCH BETTER than I feared and my hat off to Emily Blunt for the courage to play the lead, Mary Poppins, a role that's truly indelibly SEARED into the heads of generations of us as having been played by the great Julie Andrews [wikip] [IMDb]. 

As with last summer's update of another children's classic (in that case of Christopher Robin / Winnie the Poo), the story here takes place after, the children of the original story Michael (played here by Ben Whishaw) and Jane (played here by Emily Mortimer) have all grown-up and Michael, a widower (hence among other things in need of a nanny...) has children of his own: Anabel, John and Georgie (played by Pixie Davies, Nathanael Saleh and Joel Dawson). 

Set during the Great Depression, when money was tight, the family's house is threatened with foreclosure, and as the good souls but not particularly practical Michael and Jane struggle to keep the house, the uber-sensible (but also fun) Mary, not aged ONE BIT since she last flew out of the lives of the Banks family with her umbrella, "pops in" to ... well ... ;-)

Much ensues ...

I had heard from parishioners who saw the movie that I did that the current movie is "simply too much" (that it's just too fast paced).  Given that this has been the legitimate criticism of the Sherlock Holmes [2009] [2011] as well as Star Trek [2009] [2013] [2016] reboots, perhaps even of the most recent The Three Musketeers [2011] adaptation (the last of which, TTM, I LIKED), I went to the current film with some, perhaps even _a lot_ of  "concern."  BUT all things concerned, I thought that the adaptation / updating was quite marvelous -- there's an entire sequence that plays out on the surface of a "chipped bowl" that, except for a little bit of unfortunate old-style English racism (the carriage rider, portrayed AS A DOG was voiced by someone who identified himself as "Irish" ... sigh), was remarkable!

As such, I'd compare the adaptation to The Three Musketeers [2011], The Alice in Wonderland [2010] [2016] and Winnie the Pooh / Christopher Robin [2018] updates, all of which I liked as opposed to the Sherlock Holmes / Star Trek updates that IMHO "haven't worked so well."

I didn't particularly like the unnecessary "anti-Irish" flourish mentioned above, nor the spectacularly _undeveloped_ "bad guy" banker Wilkins / Wolf (played by Colin Firth) who plays the villain in the story.  Aside from being "of course" a banker, there doesn't seem to be a reason why he'd be so evil, or so spectacularly focused on destroying the peace and tranquility of Banks family.

As such, while not perfect, the effects in the film are often truly magical and EMILY BLUNT simply nails it, playing the simultaneously no-nonsense but FUN "Mary Poppins."

Sooo ... generally a pretty good and at times truly excellent job!

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Mary Queen of Scots [2018]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB ()  RogerEbert.com (2 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (C+)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB () review
Los Angeles Times (K. Turan) review
RogerEbert.com (M. Castillo) review
AVClub (J. Hassenger) review


Mary Queen of Scots [2018] (directed by Josie Rourke, screenplay by Beau Willimon based on the book Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] by John Guy [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] [IMDb]) is a reminder to us why monarchy even for the monarchs themselves is really an awful form of government.

Both Mary, Queen of the Scots (played by Saoirse Ronan) and Elizabeth, Queen of England (played by Margot Robbie), cousins, found themselves Queens of their respective Kingdoms by the then roulette of history.  Both had plenty of enemies first because of their religion, Mary was nominally (but proudly) Catholic (by birth), Elizabeth was Protestant (not entirely by choice: by the politics of the time, she was much more likely to survive to live to a ripe old age in the England of the time as a Protestant than as a Catholic...), and then because they were women at a time when a Queen would be the Monarch only because ... there were no legitimate (or simply no clear) male heir to the throne.   YET, as women, they were BOTH expected to fulfill their fundamental role of providing their Kingdoms with heir.  YET to fulfill that fundamental they needed HUSBANDS and (ONE MORE) YET that husband would inevitably start to think (or have people pushing him to think) that HE was supposed to be the MONARCH not the Queen.  Elizabeth famously NEVER GOT MARRIED (she found it impossible to really trust ANYONE).  Mary, did and a good part of the story here is about the intrigues that followed.

The result is a story that would arguably make the characters of Game of Thrones blush.

Well acted, based largely on actual events (as well as some intriguing / fun "reading between the lines...") I honestly don't have much negative to say about the film except that I'M REALLY REALLY HAPPY (1) to be of NOT of "much consequence," and (2) did not live back then.  Good / great job all around!


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Creed 2 [2018]

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB (A-III)  RogerEbert.com (3 Stars)  AVClub (B)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
Los Angeles Times (K. Turan) review
RogerEbert.com (O. Henderson) review
AVClub (J. Hassenger) review


Creed 2 [2018] (directed by Steven Caple Jr., story by Cheo Hodari Coker and Sascha Penn, screenplay by Sylvester Stallone and Juel Taylor, characters by Ryan Coogler) continues the generally satisfying Rocky franchise:

Adonis Johnson (played by Michael B. Jordon) son of Rocky Balboa's once great rival later fallen friend Apollo Creed first introduced to us in Creed [2015], is challenged by Viktor Drago (played by Florian Munteanu) son of Ivan Drago (played by Dolph Lundgren) the (Russian) fighter who had killed Apollo Creed in a boxing match and was finally bested by Rocky Balboa in Rocky 4 [1985]. 

It's a match made in fictionalized boxing (and actual Hollywood) heaven.  However, as is ever the case in the Rocky franchise (and certainly the franchise's greatest and most redeeming charm) the actual match becomes almost beside the point, as both Adonis and Viktor were fighting other demons far closer to home. 

Adonis, who was after all an illegitimate son of Apollo Creed and who had been portrayed in the previous film as having grown-up in various foster homes / institutions continues a still unfinished struggle, still largely unguided (though an aging Rocky, played still by Silvester Stallone, there in as much as he can to lend a helping hand) to achieve a more "normal," yes respectable life.  He has a girlfriend, a singer named Bianca (played by Tessa Thompson), who's also struggling, among other things with hearing impairment.  He feels he wants to marry her.  She honestly asks the question, why?  Soon a pregnancy, which becomes more complicated than perhaps initially expected, takes things to a new and quite poignant level.

Viktor, for his part, has been dealing with the effects of his father's "loss" to Rocky.  After Ivan lost that fight, Ivan's wife, Viktor's mother (played in the film by Bridgette Nielson), left him (and Victor) as a loser.  So Viktor has spent his entire life trying to redeem his father's (or at least his own) honor. 

Some years ago, I've come to see these "boxing" / "fighting" stories as fundamentally tragic.  So often BOTH of the "fighters" have compelling stories and honestly deserve "to win" and yet ... only one can.

So then this film to, while a fundamentally one (even as it is about a boxing match, it is also a sad one. 

I do wish that both could win.


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Green Book [2018]

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB (A-III)  RogerEbert.com (3 Stars)  AVClub (C+)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (K. Jensen) review
Los Angeles Times (K. Turan) review
RogerEbert.com (C. Lemire) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review


Green Book [2018] (directed and cowritten by Peter Farrelly, along with Nick Vellelonga and Brian Hayes Currie) tells the sad story of what it was like "back in the day" for African American people in the Jim Crow South -- as special "Green Book" was put out by Exxon to help African Americans who were traveling to know which gas stations, hotels and restaurants would serve them (many indeed _most_ commercial establishments would not, and were legal protected by the Jim Crow (Segregationist) laws of the time from being required to do so.

As we discussed this movie over dinner in my Servite community recently, I confessed that I had a real difficulty watching the film -- it remains simply stunning to me that ANYONE much less someone claiming to be a Christian [Mt 25:40] or for that matter an American -- the "We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" and all from our Declaration of Independence" -- could so blatantly even _gleefully_ mistreat an entire group (in this case, race) of human beings like this "You know, that's 'just' the way we do things here..." WHY???  I'd be either in jail, or would have set myself on fire or hung myself in despair (or so I'd hope...).

So then ... to the movie ...

Dr. Don Shirley [wikip] (played in the movie by Mahershala Ali), Florida born in 1927, Jamaican-American in ancestry, at age 9 he was invited to study music in the Soviet Union at the Leningrad Conservatory, and later having studied at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., he became virtuoso in CLASSICAL PIANO, something that African Americans at the time were not necessarily known for.  SO ... he decided, as part of his personal contribution to the African American Civil Rights struggle of the 1950s-60s, to embark on a tour of various cities in the Deep South to ... give concerts in classical music.  Since traveling in the Deep South as an African American was not necessarily safe at the time, he hired as a driver / bodyguard Tony "Lip" Vallelonga, a bouncer of Italian American ancestry at New York's Copacabana nightclub.   Tony was temporarily out of work because of "remodelling" being done at the club.

To the film's credit, Tony is not portrayed as some sort of a Civil Rights crusader.  He was doing this simply because he needed the work.  Tellingly, in an early scene, when Tony's wife Dolores (played by Linda Cardelini) had given two African American workmen who had come to their apartment for a plumbing job glasses of water, Tony discreetly took their glasses after they had finished AND THREW THEM AWAY (Dolores, seeing what her husband had done, later with similar discretion pulled them out of the trash and washed them).  The scene AS QUIETLY UGLY AS IT IS is in my mind COMPLETELY REALISTIC.  Yes, THAT was the time, my own family would have almost certainly done _no better_.

So ... as the story progressed, Tony learned what it was like to be ... black.  And Don Shirley learned ... IMHO that he had made the right decision to embark on his tour.  How many white Southerners he "converted" to accepting black Civil Rights, one can only guess, but he DID convert Tony.

Great story.



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A Private War [2018]

MPAA (R)  RogerEbert.com (3 1/2 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
Los Angeles Times (K. Turan) review
RogerEbert.com (N. Minow) review


A Private War [2018] (directed by Matthew Heineman, screenplay Arash Amel by based on the Vanity Fair article by Marie Brenner [VF] [IMDb]) tells the story of Marie Colvin [wikip] (played by Rosamund Pike) an (American) journalist who covered some of the most brutal dangerous conflicts / civil wars of our time from the Civil War in Tamil Tiger Civil War in Lanka (where she lost one of her eyes) to the Arab Spring inspired Revolution in Libya that deposed Gaddafi to the subsequent Syrian Civil War where she (not really a spoiler alert) she died during Seige of Homs.

This is a harrowing tale of a driven journalist who repeatedly risked her life to tell the stories of innocent people in war zones who otherwise we'd never know about.  Why did she do it?  That's one of the questions that the movie asks viewers to consider.  Yet, whatever her motive, and it was almost certainly mostly pure, we owe her and other journalists like her an enormous debt.  Justice depends on being able to understand what's going on.  She and other journalists like her help us to understand precisely that -- what's going on.   A deep deep thank you for journalists like her.


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At Eternity's Gate [2018]

MPAA (PG-13)  RogerEbert.com (3 Stars)  AVClub (C+)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
Los Angeles Times (K. Turan) review
RogerEbert.com (B. Tallerico) review
AVClub (M. D'Angelo) review


At Eternity's Gate [2018] (directed and cowritten by Julian Schnabel along with Jean-Claude Carrière and Louise Kugelberg) tells the story, again, of tormented impressionist artist Vincent Van Gogh [wikip] [IMDb] (played in the current film quite admirably by Willem Dafoe).

Why would an artist who _never_ sold even one of his paintings during his life time, who clearly was tormented (he _cut off his ear_ for God's sake in apparently a terribly misguided expression of ... unrequited love) and who arguably committed suicide (though he could have even flubbed that up ... being killed instead by simply random petty thieves) BE SO FASCINATING TO SO MANY PEOPLE (US) TODAY?  Exactly ;-)

It would seem that Vincent Van Gogh was an archeotypical supremely talented but tormented, misunderstood ... LOSER ;-). 

It would seem that his legacy embodies fundamental fears that many of us have of "never being able to make our mark" (though somehow we'd feel entitled to make said mark ;-).  And yes, like Franz Kafka (another tormented soul, never really appreciated in his lifetime) he's been vindicated -- IN SPADES (!) -- since his death, more than a century ago (!).  TODAY we look at his pictures, so many of them SO FAMOUS _now_ and wonder "how it it possible that people didn't see his genius while he was alive?"

SO ... quiet loser in his life time (and again Willem Dafoe plays him really, really well) ... he embodies a hope that "one day" those who don't understand us ... will.

Honestly, GREAT introspective / tormented, and dare one say _impressionistic_ film ;-).


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2.0 [2018]

MPAA (UR would be PG-13)  RogerEbert.com (3 1/2 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
FiBt listing
RogerEbert.com (S. Abrams) review


2.0 [2018] [IMDb] [FiBt] (directed and tamil dialogue cowritten by S. Shankar [IMDb] [FiBt], along with Jayamohan [IMDb] and Lakshmi Saravanakumar [IMDb], hindi dialogue written by Abbas Tyrewala [IMDb]) is a fun if apparently wildly expensive Indian (Tamil) Sci-Fi film about "The Day the Cell Phones Disappeared."

What happened?  They just all "flew away," right out of people's hands all over the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, one day.  Why?

Well, they seem to have been "called together" by the soul of a tormented environmental activist named Pakshi Rajan (played by Akshay Kumar [IMDb] [FiBt]) who had been convinced that microwaves from cell phones were killing birds (by frying their brains).  So in despair, he had hung himself from a cell-tower in protest and ... his soul apparently got sucked into the microwave ether where ... he became able to call all the cell phones from all over the state to form a shape changing "flock" of cell phones that sometimes even took the form of a GIGANTIC bird of prey that would attack random "people of interest" (usually promoters of cell phone and other "anti-bird" technology) throughout Tamil Nadu.

Enter a geeky scientist named Dr. Vaseegaran (played by Rajinikanth [IMDb] [FiBt]),  He too was (mildly) bitter.  He had previously created a marvelous all-purpose (but particularly adept at law-enforcement) robot named ... Chitti (also played by Rajinikanth [IMDb] [FiBt]).  But the good doctor had been forced previously (at the end of a previous film... Endhiran [2010] [IMDb] [FiBt]) to terminate his research by a government not particularly interested in robotic technology (in a country with so many PEOPLE desperate for work / livelihoods).  Sooo ... pouting a bit ... he contented himself with creating a simultaneously hot yet sensible looking / super intelligent robotic personal assistant named Nila (played by Amy Jackson [IMDb] [FiBt]) to "accompany him" in his "waning years."  Honestly Asimov would have been awe-struck by (and perhaps tormented over) Nila.  She was truly EVERYTHING but ... free (but, of course, programmed not to mind...).

But now the country was in peril.  So the Government FINALLY gives him the permission to "unleash" his original creation, Chitti, into the fray to battle this otherworldly cellphone dominating Monster.  Much often very, very funny ensues... in good part because "Chitti" is not exactly "robocop" but rather a rather chatty, again, truly all-purpose robot ;-).  Anyway, much ensues ...

A fair question could be asked:  Does the plot make sense?  BUT does it have to?  Did ANY of the plots of Sharknado movies ever make sense?  What about the Spielberg, Belushi, Aykroyd "flop" 1941?  There are SO MANY sight gags, one liners, two liners in this film that to complain about "plot integrity" would be to WILDLY MISS THE POINT ;-).  A truly fun / great job ;-)


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