Star Wars, Episode VII: NO SPOILERS. First of all, it is really great. It has a 95% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes and I agree. JJ Abrams, who did such a good job of bringing back Star Trek, has teamed with Lawrence Kasdan, who wrote The Empire Strikes Back and The Return of the Jedi, to make everyone forget the abomination of Episodes 1, 2 and 3, and get back to the Galaxy, Far, Far Away that we know and love. We should all thank Disney for buying the rights to Star Wars from George Lucas. They have done a great job with this movie. The look and feel of Episode VII are just right, and the return of some familiar characters made me smile. Thirty years have passed both here on Earth and on Tatooine when the action begins in Episode VII. There are some nice new characters, and this is yet another movie with a female lead, Daisy Ridley, who plays Rey, a scavenger for junk. She is joined by a sometime stormtrooper (John Boyega), and a fighter pilot (Oscar Isaac). This film stands on its own, but it is also a paean to the original trilogy. Many scenes hearken back to the original films and warm the heart. I won't say anymore except what Han Solo says in the trailer, “It’s true. All of it. The dark side, the Jedi, they’re real.” Everyone should get out and see this movie as soon as possible.
Trumbo: I hate to say it but America needs to see this movie. The Hollywood Blacklist and the House Un-American Activities Committee happened in my lifetime and they could happen again. Unfortunately everyone in the theatre was old enough to remember Joe McCarthy. Ok, it's Star Wars weekend. But Trumbo is also a good movie. It stars Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad) as Dalton Trumbo, a screenwriter, ok not just a screenwriter. After he was blacklisted for being a member of the Communist Party, he won two Oscars while writing under pseudonyms. He wrote Roman Holiday, Spartacus, and Exodus. The supporting cast is also great including Diane Lane as Trumbo's long suffering wife and Elle Fanning as his daughter. John Goodman shines as the producer of B-films who hired Trumbo and various other Oscar winners to write movies such as The Alien and the Farm Girl. Then people like Kirk Douglas and Otto Preminger start showing up at Trumbo's home. This one is worth seeing.
Legend: My first introduction to the Krays was through the Piranha-Brothers sketch on Monty Python. Doug and Dinsdale Piranha led a gang that terrorized East London in the 1960's. The only difference between the Piranha brothers and the real-life Krays is the giant hedgehog named Spiny Norman. Legend tells the story of identical twins Ronnie and Reggie Kray both played by Tom Hardy. This an entertaining movie with a fair amount of blood and gore. The brothers, particularly Ronnie, are sociopaths who,like the Piranha brothers, rose to fame and power by terrorizing East London. The state of CGI today is such that you don't even notice how seamlessly the wonderful Tom Hardy plays the two brothers, who are frequently onscreen together. He does a great job of making Ronnie and Reggie very different characters. Emily Browning plays the young woman who makes the mistake of falling in love with Reggie. Legend is written and directed by Brian Hegeland. He won an Oscar for Best Screenplay for L.A. Confidential, and wrote and directed A Knight's Tale, one of my fav movies. Tom Hardy makes this a fun movie to watch even if you have to close your eyes once in a while.
Youth: The average age of the actors in Youth is pretty high. Youth stars Michael Caine (age 82), Harvey Keitel (age 76), and Jane Fonda (age 78). I wanted to see this movie because of the cast, also including Rachel Weisz and Paul Dano, but I was surprised at how good and, well, interesting this movie is. Youth tells the story of a retired composer and conductor (Caine), and his lifelong best friend, a film director (Keitel) who is working on his latest script. They meet each year for a holiday at a swanky Swiss resort. Caine and Keitel have been friends for 60 years but as they say, they only tell each other the good things. Youth is about working out some of the bad things that have been ignored and repressed. Caine is trying to repair his dysfunctional relationship with his daughter (Weisz), and Keitel is struggling with his latest project and his star (Fonda). Paul Dano plays a well-known actor who is chilling at the resort before his next role as Adolf Hitler. One of the joys of this film is all the other guests at the resort, including a levitating Buddhist monk and Miss Universe, and how they interact with the main characters in unexpected ways. The ending is very unexpected as well. Youth is worth seeing.
Carol: The director of Carol, Todd Haynes, seems to like this kind of story. A few years ago he directed "Far From Heaven," the story of a woman in the 1950's with marital problems. This is also the plot of Carol but with the added frisson that the married woman, here played by Cate Blanchett, is having an affair with another woman played by Rooney Mara. Blanchett's husband played by the reliable Kyle Chandler is not very happy about it. In fact, Mara is Blanchett's second girlfriend. The first played by Sarah Paulson is still around and is tolerated by the husband, but when Mara arrives on the scene it is just one lesbian too much, and the husbands decamps with their young daughter. You can guess the rest. That's the one weakness of this film which has a great cast. The plot is pretty predictable and it isn't breaking any new ground. Carol isn't meant to be a happy film but everyone is pretty dour throughout. And they smoke a lot. The people against smoking in movies must be going crazy this Christmas. In the last four movies I have seen, other than Star Wars, Trumbo, Youth, and Legend, as well as Carol, everyone is smoking all the time. Most of the smoking takes place in the 1950's, and so is realistic, but it makes you realize how much things have changed from then to now. Anyway, Carol is worth seeing but don't see it if you are having a down day.
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