Movies and book reviews

I found the ebook The Day is now far spent, by Cardinal Sarah on line (well, parts of it on line) at google books and am slowly working my way through it.

LINK

quite interesting: Reminds one that without prayer and uniting with God in silence, your works could end up as busy work, without fruit.

so I am reading it a little at a time and thinking of it.

Of course, I am also reading other stuff: I'm working my way through Agatha Christie's books. Nothing like a good "cozy murder mystery" book to pass the time.

 and in the evening we have watched a few of the films up for academy awards.

Joker: reminds me of my paranoid schizophrenic patients. These patients are very very scary: hate takes them over, but you can see they are mentally ill, and don't always chose to hate until the illness engulfs them completely.

However, the character of the Joker here is a mentally ill loner, (?incel) reminding one of the hate filled hearts of school shooters. His hatred and murder is directed at enemies, true or false, including those who ridiculed him or tried to help him. 

Phoenix deserves and academy award for his portrayal.

But the character has little or nothing in common with the Joker in the Dark Knight, who is a criminal mastermind working with other criminals for money and revenge (more like the Ringo character in the film Tombstone, who lashed out at people because of a diffuse hatred but usually chose to kill where he could profit from their deaths).

Once upon a Time in Hollywood? Nostalgia for boomers.
Since I was in Medical school I sort of missed the late 1960s, so I didn't find it very compelling. 

Marriage Story? Should have been called "Divorce story". Very human people seeking self fulfilment in today's modernistic "me me me" culture and the intense anger when that dang marriage gets in their way: but seen with sympathetic eyes.
Scarlett Johanson deserves and academy award for her portrayal here.

Ford Vs Farrari? A good movie with a good plot and interesting characters. Sort of like the solid movies they used to make but rarely do nowadays.

1917: starts slow but gets better. A good story of the quiet courage in war: knowing you might be killed but doing your job anyway without a lot of emotional bragging.
This should be seen in tandem with Peter Jackson's documentary: They Shall Not Grow Old, which portrays a similar old fashioned stoicism toward war and death.

Pain and Glory: good film. not much plot, mainly short scenes. The best ones were of his childhood. 

And am I the only one who noticed the hint in one scene that he was molested as a child and traumatised by it? Did this fit into the plot? As a said: Not much of a plot, and hard to follow the subtitles, but I was fascinated by the cinematography and the colourful rooms etc. in the background of the story.

Parasite? Stupid movie supposed to be about class warfare in Korea. But stupid because the characters are two dimensional and not sympathetic and the plot, including the mass murder at the climax, doesn't really make sense.

Why this was up for an award I'll never know: we see a lot of K Dramas here that are a lot better. Heck, even Train to Busan was better than this film.

The Irishman? Didn't see it so can't comment.
Ditto for JoJo Rabbit and Little Women.

But you know, I hated the book Little Women which I had to read as a young girl, and have seen three previous tv or film adaptations and hated them too. Maybe the word hatred is too strong: Not hated: Saw them as fake nicey nicey passive aggressive girls.

Maybe one of these days they'll make a film of Alcott's hospital sketches, when she nursed in the Civil war, and I might like that one better.

Judy was also enjoyable: Zellweger did a good job acting here, and the character was portrayed as flawed but sympathetic. 

And the music saved the story: They integrated the music into the plot and played the entire songs so you could remember her talent and why she was beloved. ( as they did in Bohemian rhapsody, but didn't do in Rocket Man, which is why I liked the former but not the latter film).

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood: Good film, solid story. Another film like they don't make nowadays. But, as I wrote in an earlier review, Tom Hanks over acted the part so I couldn't really enjoy the film.

Kathy Bates in Richard Jewell also deserves an Oscar. That low key film was given bad reviews for being non PC, but again it was the story of ordinary believable characters caught in the whirlwind of a false accusation and stoically surviving the storm.

As I said, I haven't seen a lot of these films (and my not even bother to watch them when they hit HBO), but what amazed me is that most of them that I watched (except for Joker) were old fashioned story telling. 

And also noted: no gratuitous sex scenes in the movies I saw...

 Too often in the last 20 years, Hollywood often just seemed to plop R rated sex scenes into movies (often slowing the actual plot) because it was expected of them.

Hmm... maybe they're over that nonsense and will get back to story telling again.