B Indicates Bob Saw It, Too Comments in Brackets Are Bob S

Mary Dan’s 2016 Movie List

B indicates Bob saw it, too { Comments in brackets are Bob’s }

Documentaries

Highly Recommended

Dryden Theatre, part of their 26th Annual Labor Film Series (2015). I can hardly believe I forgot to list this last year, as it was my favorite documentary of 2015. We are introduced to three master tailors. Their love for their craft was palpable. The director was in attendance for a Q&A after the film. See Movie Miscellany.

The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst B

This 6-part series aired in March of 2015 on HBO (but, not having HBO, we caught up with it on library DVD). Andrew Jarecki had previously (2010) made a fictionalized account of Robert Durst’s life (All Good Things). After Durst saw it, he contacted Andrew Jarecki and said he was moved by it. He wanted to be interviewed, tell his story (though strongly advised against this by his lawyers). I am glad I also saw Andrew Jarecki’s 2003 documentary Capturing the Friedmans. He seems to have something of a specialty in dysfunctional families.

Where to Invade Next, written and dir by Michael Moore © 2015 B I got turned off by some Michael Moore film years ago (pushing his way past security guards comes to mind), so haven’t seen any for years. But he redeemed himself here, I think. {Loved this.}

Theater of War, directed and edited by John Walter © 2008 B We were very impressed with this film. Adriane Giebel was a producer on both this film and at least two of Michael Moore’s (Where to Invade Nextand Capitalism: A Love Story). Adriane grew up in the 19th Ward, went to Wilson a few classes ahead of Ezra, and is the daughter of our friends Doug and Charlotte Giebel. Besides wanting to see her work, we had a more immediate motivation to see this: It is about Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children, and we wanted all the background we could get before seeing a production of that play (University of Rochester, April, 2016. Another neighbor, 81-yr-old Tom Bohrer, had a part in that stunning production.) We watched Theater of Warstraight through, and then watched it again with the commentary, which was a conversation between director John Walter and Michael Moore.

Weiner, dir by Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg © 2016 B Josh Kriegman is a former staffer to Anthony Weiner. Why did Anthony Weiner and his wife Huma Abedin even think that running for mayor of NYC less than two years after his sexting scandal was a good idea? “She was very eager to get her life back that I had taken from her, to clean up the mess I had made, and running for mayor was the straightest line to do it,” Weiner says in the film. Or, as the Washington Post put it, “The first step toward political redemption was remaking their image, from that of a late-night punch line to a loving couple in recovery.” But, not such a good idea if you have skeletons in the closet that you were hoping would never be made public.

The Dryden. “Films about painters have the double benefit of having a fascinating person at the centre and strong visuals.” - Randall Wright. Highly recommended as an introduction to David Hockney, born 1937.

Based in part on Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s 2005 book, Crimes Against Nature. Explores a proposal to build a wind farm on Coal River Mountain in West Virginia rather than deforesting and demolishing the mountain for the coal seams within. According to a study on Coal River Mountain’s wind potential (albeit commissioned by the activists), it has potential to produce 328 megawatts of electricity, which can power 70,000 homes. The coal industry’s perspective is explained by Don Blankenship, the ex-CEO of Massey Energy. See Movie Miscellany section for more on the infamous Don Blankenship.

Also Worth Seeing

Not being someone who ever watched Star Trek, I didn’t know that George Takei (pronounced Ta-KAY) was famous for being Lt. Sulu. After watching this documentary,I now know a whole lot more than that about him. I loved seeing his relationship with his longtime partner and manager, Brad Altman.

The Beatles: Eight Days a Week—the Touring Years, B

Gleason, dir by Clay Tweel © 2016 B Steve Gleason (best known as the undersized-NFL-safety-who-could) played football for the Saints for seven years, retiring in 2008. He married Michel Varisco, and she was pregnant with their son when, at the age of 34, Steve was diagnosed with ALS. After the disease had progressed significantly, he chose to have a tracheostomy and feeding tube, and is thus still alive. (A 2012 article in the journal Neurology reported that professional football players are four times more likely to die of ALS than the general population.) Good companion piece with Concussion.

The Act of Killing, dir by Joshua Oppenheimer © 2012 B Library DVD. A summary: “Explores the experience of tragedy and horror of genocide in Indonesia through imaginative recreations made with the killers themselves.” The director, in an interview: “These men were killers and boasting about what they did, but somewhat haunted by what they did. … I wanted to know how my characters, as human beings, imagined themselves.” Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. The director was one of 21 recipients of MacArthur “genius” grants in 2014, which is also the year that a companion film to this one, The Look of Silence, came out (still on my long “hope to see” list).

Triage: Dr. James Orbinski’s Humanitarian Dilemma, dir by

Produced for the National Film Board of Canada. Very worthwhile. The only reason I didn’t rank this Highly Recommended is that it is a message film more than a gripping film. In this documentary, Dr. James Orbinski returns to Somalia and Rwanda, where he had served during the genocides, to ponder the meaning of his life's work. Incidentally, he was president of Doctors Without Borders in 1999 when that organization received the Nobel Peace Prize. See Quotes.

Francesca (b. 1958) and Charlie Woodman are the children; Betty (b. 1930) and George Woodman are the parents. The children grew up amidst their parents’ art, and became artists themselves. Francesca went to RISD and had definite ideas about her photography (more so than her fellow students, according to one interviewee). Francesca’s work became famous after (but not immediately after) her suicide in 1981. Well done portrait of a family, about whom I knew nothing before this documentary.

Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel, dir by Lisa Immordino Vreeland, Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt, and Frédéric Tcheng © 2011 It sounds like Diana Vreeland (1903 - 1989) was a really confident, interesting woman. She loved working at Harpers Bazaar and Vogue, which was her career from 1936 to 1971. "What these magazines gave was a point of view. Most people haven't got a point of view; they need to have it given to them—and what's more, they expect it from you.” At age 68, she became consultant to the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where she organized twelve exhibitions before dying of a heart attack at age 86. Director Vreeland is the granddaughter-in-law of Diana Vreeland.

In both this film and the one above by the same director, “Vreeland showed how personal style can wend its way into every corner of creativity, making personality a key element of inspiration.”

My Love Affair With the Brain: The Life and Science of Dr Marian

Diamond, dir by Catherine Ryan and Gary Weimberg © 2016 This was a PBS documentary (and is probably available on YouTube, but I saw it as part of Rochester’s High Falls Film Festival, which honors women in filmmaking). Dr. Diamond taught at Berkeley from 1954 to 2014 (stepping down at age 87), and was the first person to demonstrate the plasticity of the brain (it had previously been thought that DNA defined its size and ability, and that it was limited by its pre-defined characteristics). Now we know we must “use it or lose it.”

Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, dir by Alex

I thought it would be interesting to see this documentary, having seen Spotlight in 2015, and having read History of Loneliness. It’s about the case of Fr. Lawrence Murphy who taught at the residential St. John School for the Deaf in a Milwaukee suburb from 1950 to 1974. Fr. Murphy molested probably 200 boys during that time. At least one boy brought the case to the justice system at the time, but the case ended in acquittal. Other parents also filed, but their complaints were dismissed. So, the movie points the finger of blame not just at the Catholic Church.

** I Might Have Skipped These **

Hitchcock/Truffaut, dir by Kent Jones © 2015 B The Dryden. Based on the original recordings from a two-week period in 1962 when the young Truffaut interviewed the older Hitchcock. Many famous film directors weigh in to round out this talking-heads film (Peter Bogdanovich, Martin Scorcese, Wes Anderson, Richard Linklater, and so on). I am not deep into films enough to absorb all they had to say.

In addition to Snowden, the viewer gets some familiarity with Glenn

Greenwald and William Binney (an earlier NSA whistleblower). Julian

Assange appears briefly. This was good for me to see (especially since I had never seen photos of Edward Snowden before, and didn’t realize how young he was!) but it was far from riveting, and I’m surprised it won Best Documentary.

In addition to directing, Herzog wrote and narrated. The film was intended to be viewed in 3D (to better convey how the paintings follow and exploit the natural contours of the ancient walls). It was slow paced as a film, but it did give views not otherwise available of France's Chauvet Cave, with the world's oldest surviving paintings (30,000 years old). The cave was discovered in 1994, and the UN’s cultural agency UNESCO granted it World Heritage status in 2014. {Getting a little tired of Herzog.}

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Narrative Films

** Some of this actually happened **

This is a wonderful HBO movie, written by Robert Shenkkan (“The

Kentucky Cycle”) and starring Bryan Cranston. Loved seeing Bryan Cranston do LBJ! As Doris Kearns Goodwin says in the Special Features, “At a time now when racial relationships seem fraught again, to remember a time like this where a black leader could work with a white

Southern leader and produce this extraordinary act [The Civil Rights Act of 1964]—It’s a positive moment.”

Bridge of Spies, dir by Steven Spielberg © 2015 B We actually saw this near the end of 2015, but I forgot to list it. The action begins in 1957, in Brooklyn. Soviet spy Rudolf Abel is played wonderfully by Mark Rylance, and the lawyer Donovan by Tom Hanks. Well worth seeing!

A cautionary tale of how the degenerative brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) was first discovered in deceased NFL players by Dr. Bennet Omalu, while performing an autopsy on Steelers’ Hall-of-Famer Mike Webster in 2002. Does a good job of getting one interested in this important topic.

Depicts the events of Jan 2009 when a plane carrying 159 people made an emergency landing in the Hudson River, and everyone survived. Of course the Nat’l Transportation Safety Board had to investigate: Could Captain “Sully” Sullenberger have made it back to LaGuardia, or to Teterboro Airport in New Jersey? This was played up/exaggerated, providing the necessary story arc and dramatic conflict. A feel-good flick, much enjoyed.

Now I may have to watch Into the Deep: American, Whaling and the World(PBS, American Experience, 2010). This was fascinating, as well as entertaining.

I finally got around to watching this movie, made 30 years ago. Screenplay by Nora Ephron, based on her book. She tells the (fictionalized) story of her marriage to Carl Bernstein, played here as the couple Rachel (Meryl Streep) and Mark (Jack Nicholson). And their darling daughter was played by Meryl Streep’s own daughter Mamie Gummer, a toddler at the time. Features a song “Coming Around Again,” sung by Carly Simon. The success of the song began a career resurgence for Simon (according to Wikipedia).

Brings you back to Nov 22, 1963. Based on the book Four Days in

Novemberby Vincent Bugliosi. Paul Giamatti plays Abraham Zapruder. I asked Hemant Sharma one day if he had seen Batman vs. Superman, knowing his penchant for Batman movies.“No! You’ve completely changed my taste in movies!” This is the latest one I have recommended to him. Before this, it was Trumbo, which he hadn’t heard of until I told him about it. He and Priya loved it.

Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, told Stephen Colbert that Steve Jobs, was ”someone that you wanted to do your best work for.” No one would want to do their best work for the man portrayed in this film. But, the film doesn’t try to be balanced, and I accepted that. I liked this biopic mostly for what it led to: it spurred me on to learn more about Steve himself, his “work wife” Joanna Hoffman (played by Kate Winslet), and his daughter Lisa.

This was certainly an unsanitized view of the camps, showing for instance the process of bodies (“pieces”) being dragged out after the gassing, and it did this without being overly graphic, because it was at the periphery of the screen, while the focus was on Saul scrubbing the floor. To be admired, but I thought it was grim, chaotic, confusing, and had no character development and not much of a story. However, Bob really loved it (as did the critics). Winner of Academy Award for Best Foreign Language film.

The story—of a 1970s rocker who hadn’t written anything new in years —didn’t grab me. Watch it if you are simply in the mood to see the performances of A. Pacino, A. Bening, J. Garner, B. Cannavale, and C. Plummer, all of which were quite good. Oh, and the darling little girl, Hope (Giselle Eisenberg). Steve Tilson is the British folk singer on whose story this is based. He had gotten an encouraging letter from John Lennon. But the letter had been sent in care of a magazine which had printed an interview with Tilson, and someone at the magazine kept it as a souvenir. Steve finally saw the letter 40 years after it was sent. The film imagines how Danny Collins/Steve Tilson’s life might have played out differently.

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** Original Screenplays and screenplays based on books ** (not, as far as I know, based on actual events)

** Highly Recommended **

Room, dir by Lenny Abrahamson © 2015 B Brie Larson wonBest Actress. I seem to have seen a lot of “taken captive” movies. These are the ones I can think of: Silence of the Lambs, Captain Phillips, Misery, Fargo, Cape Fear. All those were good, and Room is a worthy addition to that list.

The Lincoln Lawyer, dir by Brad Forman © 2011 B Author Michael Connelly was interviewed in the Bonus Features. He says he heard a lawyer say, “There is no client as scary as an innocent man," and that inspired the Mick Haller character. Mick is a Los Angeles criminal defense attorney who operates out of the back of his Lincoln Town Car. Matthew McConaughey is supported by Ryan Phillippe, Marisa Tomei, Bryan Cranston.

Smoke, co-directed by Wayne Wang and Paul Auster © 1995 B We had seen this 20 years ago, when it came out. Thoroughly enjoyed seeing it again. Screenplay is by Paul Auster. Harvey Keitel and William Hurt are very much fun to watch, and the story was good. Set in and around a Brooklyn tobacco shop.

Based on the book by Susan Minot, screenplay by the author and

Michael Cunningham. Two sisters (Natasha Richardson and Toni

Collette) come home to be with their dying mother, Ann (Vanessa Redgrave). Their mother talks disconnectedly about “mistakes” and someone named Harris. The daughters wonder if she is hallucinating. The flashbacks give us an opportunity to watch another talented mother-daughter pair: Mamie Gunner and Meryl Streep (young/old Lila). The young Ann is played luminously by Claire Danes. I really enjoyed this movie.