Dear Jodie - Woman in Gold

Dear Jodie,

Woman in Gold is, on the surface, a story about an elderly Jewish woman's attempt to get back some valued paintings (heirlooms) stolen from her family by the Nazi's, sometime after the Anschluss.

Her name is Maria Altmann.

But it's about so much more than that, isn't it?

I don't even know where to start really.  My emotions are still running wild having just seen it.  And maybe that's the brilliance of this movie; its emotional impact.

I ran the gamut, as I watched this elderly woman fight so hard to come to terms with her horrific past despite her fear, and this young man risk so much to come to terms with his future.

I loved the flashback integrations and thought that Tatiana Maslany was every bit as wonderful as the ever-brilliant Helen Mirren. Unfortunately, I think Woman in Gold was released too early in the year to get serious Oscar notice, otherwise I think this might be the third time in which two women were nominated for Oscars playing the same role in the same movie.

I can't say I hated the Austrian government in the movie. I just thought that this is what governments do, unfair though it may be, and it was damned unfair.

I completely agree with you that the most gut-wrenching scene in the movie was Maria's farewell to her parents!  I could not help but cry, especially when her father smiled and spoke English, "the language of your future home."

The biggest surprise for me in the movie was the performance given by Ryan Reynolds. I was so afraid of getting the Green Lantern, but he was quite good.

I completely agree with you that this movie was about relationships, the most compelling being the one between the older woman so grievously damaged in her youth, and a young man living in the shadow of his grandfather who changed Western music forever with the "twelve-tone technique."

That, then, makes the Klimt paintings the Macguffin.

One lovely moment I would like to mention is the place where the Austrian journalist Hubertus Czernin admits to the Jewish Maria Altmann that his father was a Nazi. Her reaction was perfect, patting him on the hand and telling him that he is a good man. The real Maria said of him, "Without Hubertus, there would have been nothing." The real Hubertus died in 2006 at the age of 50 of mastocytosis, his obituary saying, "Believing in justice for Maria Altmann kept Czernin alive."

I lost myself in this movie. I completely lived the depiction of the Anschluss, and the coldness of the modern day Austrians (loved those kangaroos, huh?). I travelled back in time with Maria and loved how modern day Maria finally joined them in the ending scene letting us know how much she was able to let go.

Simon Curtis's direction was amazing!

Most of all, though, Jodie, I lived in the emotion of the film.  This is one of those rare ones for me. When it comes out on DVD, I'm buying it!

10 out of 10

Read Jodie's review here.

I'm sure the brownies were amazing!

Dear Jodie - Still Alice

 Read Jodie's wonderful review first ... here.

Dear Jodie,

I read the novel Still Alice by Lisa Genova in one day, mostly with my mouth agape.

I'd heard of early onset Alzheimer's disease just like I'd heard of a unicorn. A phenomenon (creature) far out there in the distance unlikely to enter my mind except as a rare fleeting thought.

Harry Potter brought back the unicorn for me.

Still Alice brought home early-onset Alzheimer's disease

Still Alice made me laugh and cry. It thrilled me in the sense that I could not put the book down.  And oh how it made me think.

I'm still thinking.

I'm thinking about a painful interview I saw with Burgess Meredith (Mickey in the "Rocky" movies) when he mentioned no less than three times that his first movie was "Winterset," and a couple of times looked like he didn't know where he was.

He was 88.

I'm thinking about the moving announcement Charlton Heston made regarding his Alzheimer's diagnosis …

"If you see a little less spring in my step, if your name fails to leap to my lips, you'll know why.  And if I tell you a funny story for the second time, please laugh anyway." 

A plea from Moses.  A plea from Ben-Hur.  A plea from Charlton Heston.

He was 79

"

I am already seven years older than Alice Howland was when she received her diagnosis. Fifty years old, Jodie!  So young! The morning after finishing the novel, I couldn't find where I had put my empty wine glass from the previous evening (I'd put it on the fireplace mantel rather than the sink). I couldn't find a particular shirt I wanted to wear that day (it was in my laundry basket to be washed). I had to force myself to recall that no member of my known family has ever been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. My uncle is 87.  My aunt is 94. Both still hale, hearty, and in possession of their minds.

But my father died at 48.  My sister died at 45.  My mother died at 65.

Might they have been …?

I thought about it too, Jodie.

The book brilliantly shows us a family dealing with the effects of a disease we just don't hear much about. We hear about Alzheimer's, yes.  Not early-onset.

Powerful moments strike everywhere in the novel like when Alice tells Anna and Tom of her condition. Later Tom says, "I don't have the mutation."  Then Anna says, "But I do."

I cried as Alice replied, "I'm sorry."

Wow!

The book went well into the genetic testing so that Anna can have children without the mutation.

The movie did not, but should have.

The novel rocked, Jodie.  I'm right there with you on that one.  So much so that while I am referencing passages for this review, I am resisting reading the novel again.

The novel is full of small moments that resonate, too.  Here's one. When Alice is checking out the Alzheimer's facility, she remarks that there are only three male residents.

"Actually, only two out of the thirty-two residents are men. Harold comes every day to eat meals with his wife."

I like Harold.

Unfortunately, Alice saw no other loved ones, and the two male residents sat together away from the others.

Let me get to the movie. I did think more of it than you did, but not by that much. Julianne Moore's performance alongside that of Kristen Stewart (yes, there is life beyond "Twilight") was the movie for me, and I thought both were wonderful. Moore's preparing for her talk with the written copy of her speech that she highlighted as she read, moved me as well.  And her last shot with Kristen Stewart brought me to tears.

I did not like Alec Baldwin (I haven't liked him in much since "The Hunt For Red October"), and Kate Bosworth came off as a bit too … painted for my taste. Certainly nothing like an attorney.

In responding to your questions on the changes made, the producers probably shot at Columbia in New York because Harvard wasn't available or too expensive (or not).  As for the Yogiberry?  Product placement dollars (or sheer petulance)?

Yes, they bothered me, too.  Harvard was perfect, a world-renowned university. How many people even in the U. S. know about Columbia University in New York?

I once heard a screenwriter remark on why he made certain changes from the novel. "It's my story, now."

One that also bothered me was that they changed her from a Psychology Professor who specialized in psycholinguistics to a Linguistics Professor. What was the point? And why did the movie have her removed as a Professor, instead of her understanding her own condition after awhile and resigning as she did in the novel?

Ah, Jodie!  Julianne Moore is usually hit or miss for me, but in this one I think she shined, far more so than Meryl Streep did in Iron Lady for which she won the Oscar. This is a very different and more powerful Julianne Moore than the one in Mockingjay Part 1. Or as Clarice Starling in the wretched Hannibal.

I just thought it was her time and her role.

As is usual for me, the novel far exceeded the movie, but I cannot say the movie disappointed me.

Book 9 out of 10.  Movie 5 out of 10.

Read Jodie's wonderful review here.

Dear Jodie - The 2015 Oscars

Dear Jodie,

The 2015 Oscars have come and gone and have left me with a number of impressions.  First, Lady Gaga can sing! Truly sing! She even impressed the great Julie Andrews.

And what about Julie Andrews?  She still looks wonderful, and always full of class and grace.

On the other hand, John Travolta seems to be returning to his John Revolta phase of decades past. Has he stopped touching Idina Menzel's (aka Adele Dazeem's) face yet?  What about blind-side smooching Scarlett Johansson? I'd be saying yuck, yuck, double yuck.

Hell, I am saying it.

A great line from Neil Patrick Harris: "Benedict Cumberbatch is what you get when you ask John Travolta to pronounce Ben Affleck."

The winners won. The losers didn't.  My predictions weren't even in the ballpark.  But a couple of acceptance speeches stood out.

I liked J. K. Simmons thanking his wife and kids and encouraging folks to call their mom and dad.

I loved Common's and John Legend's acceptance speech for the Best Song Oscar.  Really moving!

I wasn't so thrilled with Patricia Arquette's acceptance speech. I happen to agree with her, women still aren't compensated as well as men, but feel that the Oscars … an award/entertainment show…isn't the right place to make that point, or any other point not directly related to the movie she won for. "Boyhood" was not about the inequality of the pay scale between men and women.

There's an old saying that you catch flies with sugar, not vinegar. I felt her rant sprayed too much vinegar over an unsuspecting audience.

"Still Alice" on the other hand was about dealing with Alzheimer's disease (please, my fellow Texans, can we not call it "Oldtimer's disease" anymore), and I loved Julianne Moore's acceptance speech.

http://oscar.go.com/video/2015-awards-ceremony-highlights/_m_VDKA0_jcuivrt3

She, very deftly and kindly, mentioned shining the light on Alzheimer's disease. Completely appropriate.  She brilliantly laced her observation with sugar and a touch of cinnamon.

I'm also glad that she won. Julianne Moore is hit or miss with me, but she hit big in "Still Alice."

Oh, and Eddie Redmayne. I rooted for him, not because any of the other nominees sucked, they didn't, but his, I felt, was the more difficult role to play. Physically demanding, and limited in the scope of his expression, Mr. Redmayne truly brought Stephen Hawking onto the screen.

This is just me, Jodie, but I only felt like three of the performances were worthy of the Oscar.  Eddie Redmayne, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Bradley Cooper.  The other two were good performances, but not particularly memorable to my mind.

Am I the only one who noticed that Joan Rivers was not in the "In Memorium" presentation? Was this an oversight? Or was Hollywood really sick of her acerbic jokes at their expense?  Either way, the Academy should address the omission, I think.

And then Sean Penn strikes again.  While presenting the Academy Award for Best Picture ("Birdman") to the Mexican-born Alejandro González Iñárritu, Penn said, “Who gave this son of a bitch his green card?”

Iñárritu later graciously said, "I thought it was hilarious," but … it sure didn't have the ring of hilarity.  Between really good friends in private, fine. But not in public. Not at the Oscars.  Not good, Sean!

Overall, I thought Neil Patrick Harris did an excellent job of hosting the Oscars. Ah, but Jodie, I have nothing to say about his appearing in his briefs onstage a la "Birdman." It reminded me of an old Eddie Murphy routine, "If I ain't got no bulge, I ain't modeling no underwear."

I rooted for people to win who didn't, like Kiera Knightley for Best Female Actress in a Supporting Role. Others I rooted for won, like Eddie Redmayne and Julianne Moore. I didn't particularly like Birdman winning. The movie, it seemed, was more about the camera technique than a story.

Oh, well.

Overall, I loved the 2015 Oscars, even with all of the hiccoughs.  It is my Super Bowl every year. It is an event.

I'm already looking forward to next year.

I can't wait to find out what you thought, Jodie!

Read Jodie's review here.

Dear Jodie - The Imitation Game

Dear Jodie,

I LOVE Sherlock Holmes, but not the series with Benedict Cumberbatch.  Basil Rathbone will always be Holmes for me.

That being said, I thought Cumberbatch was marvelous in "The Imitation Game."  Wow! What a performance!

Alan Turing didn't have a chance, really. My father once told me, "Son, it's hard as hell to like what you can't understand." People of Turing's day couldn't understand his genius or his sexuality so they took from him what they could and made him an outcast.  What a damn shame!

Mr. Cumberbatch brought this onto the screen beautifully, I think. The best part for me was bringing his youthful love to life again in the computer that essentially wins the war for the allies. In the end, he could love only Christopher of the past and present … the boy and the machine.

And, of course, I loved his confused tears when Joan Clarke explains the enormity of his contribution.

Keira Knightly as Joan Clarke shined as I have yet to see her. Just marvelous! I loved watching her, especially toward the end when she returns the words that Turing had once said to her.

"Sometimes it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine."

Many in my father's generation complained about "changing history" or "revising history."

When I studied World War II in history class up until I minored in history in college, I never heard of the Enigma code or Alan Turing.  Even then, it barely drew mention. It has only been in my lifetime that Turing's contribution to the war effort has become publicaly known, and then well known.

Not only were his accomplishments wartime secrets, but issues of homosexuality and chemical castration would have grown like weeds in the yard of a vacant house.

No, not changing history, or revising history, but shining lights onto the past to see those facts and events long lurking in the shadows and adding them into the canon or replacing inaccuracies.

Though I have never believed in watching movies to gain a history lesson, I think this one shined brightly and vividly.

8 out of 10

I'm curious to know what you think!

Read Jodie's review here.

Dear Jodie - To Kill a Mockingbird

Dear Jodie,

Gregory Peck won the Oscar playing Atticus Finch for his address to the jury in "To Kill a Mockingbird," and rightly so.  He was marvelous.

But those who come to this wonderful movie seeking a courtroom drama will find the movie out of balance.

Certainly the trial of Tom Robinson for a crime he didn't commit was a major part of the plot, but this is a coming of age story.

Scout, Jem, and Dill's story, of how they learn the ways of the world in which they lived.

I loved it.  Still do. I found much recognition in it.

Growing up, I, too, had a "haunted" house with a boogieman inside six or seven houses away that we sneaked up on from time to time.

I, too, had to stay in the house a few hours while the authorities took care of a rabid dog.

I, too, had to run like hell to get away, leaving behind articles of clothing (shoes in my case ... britches in Jem's).

The essence of this story, to me, lies in Atticus's comment to Jem.  "There are a lot of ugly things in this world, son."

Then there is the Mockingbird ... Boo Radley, wonderfully portrayed by Robert Duval in his first screen role, and all of other human beings in the movie shunned by their fellow humans.

Ah, but I'm supposed to be commenting on the acting, not my own feelings on the movie, so I will.  Mary Badham was amazing as Scout and justly nominated for Best Supporting Actress.  Brock Peters was just brilliant as Tom Robinson.

 

That Gregory Peck, Mary Badham, and Brock Peters remained friends until Peck's and Peter's respective deaths is telling.  Badham always called Peck "Atticus."

Harper Lee (author of the Pulitzer Prize winning novel) remarked of Gregory Peck's performance, "The years told me his secret. When he played Atticus Finch, he had played himself, and time has told all of us something more: when he played himself, he touched the world."

10 out of 10

What did you think, Jodie?

Read Jodie's review here.

Dear Jodie - Calvary

Dear Jodie,

I'm so glad to be back in the saddle as we say in Texas, and what a saddle!

It would be so easy to make a movie about a pedophile priest. Wouldn't take anything at all. As an old Catholic myself a priest once told me in confession that I was going to hell for masturbating while he, it was later discovered, provided private lessons to the alter boys on the ways of the sexual world. I had trouble reconciling that.

Still do.

Then again, a friend of mine told me of her very first confession, oh-so-worried how she was going to confess her biggest, most baddest, most horribleist transgression. She decided to go for it.

"Bless me father for I have sinned, I hit Sister Gabriel in the butt with spitwad."

She smiled telling me of the near uncontrollable laughter behind the screen, letting her know for good and all that priests were human beings too.

She still attends mass with her family with a healthy attitude toward priests and nuns.

Ah, all of this as preface to my impressions of "Calvary," a movie, not about a sexual predator, but a good, decent priest who endures the confession of a man threatening to kill him because he is good, and because the priests who abused him in his youth are either dead already or long gone. Vengance on the innocent. What a splash that would make with the Church! We walk the road of Calvary with Father James through his daily, mostly unsuccessful, rounds with this threat hovering over him like storm clouds.

Writer and director John Michael McDonagh put the movie in the hands of the actors, and they came through brilliantly. Brendon Gleeson shined bright as Father James with Chris O'Dowd as the perfect foil. I also enjoyed Kelly Reilly's performance as Father James's adult daughter, a living symbol of the good Father's troubled past.

Their conversation on forgiveness stays with me even as I drink my morning tea.

That the end is determined because Father James is honest regarding his personal feeling for a personal tragedy versus his detachment regarding the huge wrongs of the Church just tears at me ... and makes me think.

The final scene is perfect. Can we can tell a little about ourselves by what we think is said behind the silence?

Maybe.

Hard to watch, but a haunting, amazing movie nevertheless.

10 out of 10

I can't wait to read your view, Jodie!  Read Jodie's review HERE.

Dear Jodie - The Lion King

Dear Jodie,

I wanted to LOVE The Lion King, both when I saw it in 1994 and again just a few days ago.  I wanted to LOVE it, but only REALLY LIKED IT.

There was nothing wrong with The Lion King.  The animation was amazing, the story was classic (Hamlet-esque), the actors were . . .

Ah, therein lies the rub.  You said it wonderfully in your review, Jodie.  James Earl . . . Mufasa.  I'll extend that to Jeremy (Klaus Van Bulow) . . . Scar.  I had real trouble getting past that beautiful bass voice of James Earl Jones being that of James Earl Jones, and the reprise of Jeremy Irons' most famous line of his Oscar winning performance in Reversal of Fortune "You have no idea."  Add Ferris Bueller --- Simba -- and it pulled me completely out of the movie (both in 1994 and 2004), except for those amazing scenes you mentioned.

Back in the Golden Age of Disney, the producers rarely used name actors in the roles, much less stars.  They used solid actors whose names wouldn't take away from the characters.  A more modern example is Frozen.  The only actor who I was familiar with was Kristen Bell, and her only vaguely.

As a result, I stayed with the story.

But that's by the way.

I know that I'm being unfair here, but a movie about the circle of life invites comparison with other movies with the same theme.  The movie I'm thinking of (also Disney) is Bambi, a movie I grew up with, a movie that saved the life of a couple of deer the times my father took me deer hunting, a movie that would be on my top 10 movies of all time.

I will say that the opening was brilliant, far and away the best musical number in the movie.

All of this aside, it is not fair that I do not have the same emotional history with The Lion King that I do with Bambi, but that's the way it is.

I have no doubt that I will watch The Lion King again, Jodie.  I have friends with kids who LOVE it.  Hell, I have friends who LOVE it.  I have no doubt I will really like it.

Since my view of the movie has less to do with the movie itself than my own whims and caprices, I'm giving it a solid 8 out of 10.

It really is an excellent movie!  Wonderful opening!  I really liked it!

What did you give it, Jodie?

Read Jodie's review here.