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Life at the Movies

There was a story I heard in the course of a conversation that reminded me of the sentimental favorite Beaches (1988, USA), directed by Garry Marshall, sister of Penny (Penny directed the Tom Hanks favorite Big the same year). The person who told me the story had a strong liking to see the movie because…

The Hunger Games was a successful blockbuster franchise about the difference between reality and fiction, yet for a film about fiction or reality, it engrossed the viewer in anticipating the outcome as riveting entertainment. It made a star of Jennifer Lawrence who won an Oscar the year after for her role in Silver Linings Playbook.…

Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia and company, versus villains and corruption. That’s Star Wars. Star Wars: A New Hope (1977), the one that introduced Han Solo, Luke and Leia Episode IV hit a nerve with the movie going public. That is when Star Wars was first unveiled to become pop culture history. The evil…

Movie flashback Action, adventure, and something mysterious—that’s Indiana Jones. There have been four films in the Indiana Jones franchise, all starring Harrison Ford as the swashbuckling archaeologist with a penchant for artifacts, and directed by Steven Spielberg, one of the ‘movers and shakers’ of the blockbuster movie form. By day, Jones is a lecturer at…

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999) not only hinges on trade, but a trade blockade, which brings larger-than-life political connotations to the story. The political talk did it in. Characters talked too much about political intrigue. The original trilogy wasn’t about politics or at least it was mentioned briefly. The original films had interesting, sublime…

DVD movie commentary/review A palatable issue is better on the senses than a heavy handed approach to an issue. Of the recent Ron Howard films I have seen, the issues are presented palatably. Howard’s films such as A Beautiful Mind (2001), The Da Vinci Code (2006), and his latest In the Heart of the Sea…

This year, if you did not know already, there is a fresh take on Batman and Superman at the movies, but the characters have been separate identities at the movies, for a generation. There have been seven Batman feature films. The previous three movies were the more complex and interesting, but a Batman feature film…

DVD movie commentary/review The existential worldview is a certainty in Far From Men (2015, France, and subtitled), but there is more. The film is adapted from the short story The Guest by French existential writer Albert Camus. His short story was published in 1957. The film adaptation, Far From Men, takes its cue from 1954…

Star Wars has moments of pure food joy, perhaps meaning something extra. In The Empire Strikes Back (1980), eating at the swamp planet of Dagobah offers the most obvious food joy because in swamp planets you may find some exotic food pleasure and the food there is a specialty. Swamp planets are bound to come…

The story of Mary Poppins author Pamela Travers, or P.L. Travers, as told in Saving Mr. Banks (2013), is not only about her reluctance to part with her children’s book Mary Poppins, but about why she wrote it in the first place. In that vein, Saving Mr. Banks shares a lesson about experience. For two…
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