Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool

— I waited until this was available on DVD to see it. Thank you Annette Bening, for making the most of any role. As an aging, unravelling actress, she has just the right mix of elegance and fear, and of boldness and uncertainty. Jamie Bell deserves some credit too for his own uncertainties as her somewhat unlikely younger lover, but it is Bening who shines. It’s worth seeing even if the script has less depth than the performance.

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[2017. 105 min. Directed by Paul McGulgan. Starring Annette Bening, Jamie Bell, Kenneth Cranham, and Julie Walters.]
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/film-stars-dont-die-in-liverpool-2017

First Reformed

— A look at the middle-aged pastor at a small, 250-year-old church that sees more people taking tours than attending services, making it more a link to the past than the future, while its nearby parent church, Abundant Life, has all the trappings of prosperity and technology, along with 5,000 or so parishioners. It’s a perfect place to have your faith tested and to experience despair. Although there are a few key events, the film relies mostly on small, daily happenings to tell its well-written story, with much of the narration coming from the journal being kept by the pastor as he undergoes his spiritual crisis in a seemingly hopeless world. The film is perfectly controlled and it’s hard not to hang on the pastor’s every word, marveling at Ethan Hawke’s acting and Paul Schrader's incredible writing and directing skills. It touches on lots of issues in the political and environmental arena, in addition to looking at hope, faith, forgiveness, and redemption. The ending was a little unsatisfactory for me, but I didn’t mind since there were so many ideas for me still to consider and so many images sure to flash through my mind in the future. This was an ambitious effort and a successful one. I’d recommend it.

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[2017. 113 min. Written and directed by Paul Schrader. Starring Ethan Hawke, Amanda Seyfried, and Cedric the Entertainer.]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/goingoutguide/movies/this-new-movie-gets-right-everything-that-mother-got-wrong/2018/05/22/c198ed14-5947-11e8-8836-a4a123c359ab_story.html

Marjorie Prime

— “Marjorie Prime” is another film I missed when it came out and am just now seeing. It’s an interesting story that takes place in the near future. Marjorie, an 86-year-old with a failing memory is given a very realistic hologram of her “in-his-prime” husband, Walter. The hologram, known as Walter “Prime,” becomes more and more like Walter as he converses with Marjorie and Marjorie’s daughter and son-in-law, remembering every story and emotion. It sounds like run-of-the-mill sci-fi but the heart of the story is in its look at history and memory, not at holograms and their usefulness. There’s even mention of William James’ view of memory, not as retrieval of a primary remembrance, but of the most recently altered remembrance so every time you remember something, you probably alter that memory and store it back in your head slightly changed for the next retrieval. Between that phenomenon and the fact that everyone’s memory of an event is somewhat different, it’s hard to know where truth lies, as the family delves deeper into their own sometimes painful past, revealing what we might now call “alternate truths” or, at the very least, “blurred facts.” These soft edges are made real by an outstanding cast and cinematography that revels in fog and rain. It’s well worth seeing, and something a bit more cerebral to watch during the summer season of blockbusters, bro-mances, and chick flicks. [DVD or Amazon Prime streaming.]

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[2017. 99 min. Directed by Michael Almereyda. Starring Lois Smith, Jon Hamm, Geena Davis, and Tim Robbins.]
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/marjorie-prime-2017

Hereditary

— Sometimes it’s hard to know if those Sundance darlings will live up to the hype, particularly when we’re talking about a horror film. “Heredity” really is a great example of a well done creepy, chilling, scary, bloody film that’s well written and orchestrated. Toni Collette deserves much of the credit since she’s the one whose grief, hatred, and shame are so believable. Somehow her reaction to the events is more unsettling to watch than the appalling acts themselves. This isn’t some campy horror film, it’s the real deal!

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[2018. 167 min. Written and directed by Ari Aster. Starring Toni Collette, Gabriel Byrne, Alex Wolff, and Milly Shapiro.]
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/hereditary-2018

RBG

— “RBG” should be required viewing for anyone who isn’t really sure how Ruth Bader Ginsburg changed America! It’s a compelling look at the life of a judicial giant who’s petite, soft-spoken, and brilliant. Now at 85, she's something of a “rock star,” seen as a little bit feisty thanks to her well-written dissenting opinions from a court grown more and more conservative. Of particular interest to me were her arguments before the Supreme Court as an attorney, successfully laying the groundwork for a shift in understanding gender discrimination. This is a woman who slowly and methodically worked, seemingly in the background from a layman’s point of view, toward equality. The film may be a bit of a love poem from a fan, but it’s still well worth seeing and I imagine even more so for a person too young to remember how far we’ve come in the course of Ginsburg's life.

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[2018. 98 min. Directed by Julie Cohen and Betsy West.]
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/03/movies/rbg-review-documentary.html