Netflix new release roundup for February ‘21

I’ll have a major announcement on March 9 that you’re gonna want to be here for. I probably should spill the beans now, but I’ll wait. In the meantime, not a lot of new stuff on Netflix that I watched...

—Malcolm & Marie. Up-and-coming filmmaker and his girlfriend come home from the premiere of his film only to hash out lingering issues pertaining to his worth as a director and her value to him as a muse. You probably know by now that writer-director Sam Levinson made this during the quarantine period last year, which is a story unto itself, and lately it became a lightning rod for other issues of the moment, but honestly, I didn’t think of or care about any of that when I saw it. It’s been called a Millennial Virginia Woolf: bickering couple, one long night, black and white. Some of it was excruciating to sit through, I admit: the language, the wandering narrative, but the acting from John David Washington and Zendaya was fine, especially given the difficult circumstances they must have gone through to make this film. Good not great.

BONUS! I had the opportunity to watch One Night in Miami on Amazon Prime last month. The feature film directing debut of Oscar-winning actress Regina King, it’s a fictionalized account of the night in 1964 when four legendary black men—Cassius Clay (before he became Muhammad Ali), Malcolm X, Sam Cooke and Jim Brown—hung out together, after Clay defeated Sonny Liston to become the heavyweight boxing champion. It’s based on a play. 

I remember King from her days as a child actress on television and it’s wonderful to see how much she’s progressed as a filmmaker. This film is basically just four guys in a room but, as you can imagine, they have some important things to say to each other, things that speak as loudly to us today as they did then. The only name among the stars I’m familiar with is Leslie Odom Jr. (the guy from Hamilton) as Cooke, but all the stars—Eli Goree (Clay), Kingsley Ben-Adir (Malcolm) and Aldis Hodge (Brown) are exquisite. A solid film debut from director King.

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The reopening here in NYC: on the local level, Cinemart in Forest Hills posted on their Facebook page that they thought they wouldn’t be ready to go until April 1. The Kew Gardens Cinema also said they’d need a little time to get ready.

Also, Jersey City mayor Stephen Fulop announced last month that more money is going into the Loews Jersey theater’s upgrade and a commercial operator for the redevelopment plan was conditionally named. They’ll have to close for eighteen months beginning next year, but when they reopen, look out. Booking national acts to play there is on the long-term agenda, but Friends of the Loews will still be the non-profit partner and movies will still have a place there.

Unrelated but worth checking out: the 50 most beautiful cinemas in the world.

More on the other side.

The Two Popes

A Luso World Cinema Blogathon é um evento dedicado a filmes e cineastas em língua portuguesa de todo o mundo, organizado por Critica Retro e Spellbound by Movies. Para uma lista completa dos blogueiros participantes, visite os links nos sites de hospedagem.

The Two Popes

Netflix viewing 

One of the brightest lights in recent Brazilian cinema has been director Fernando Meirelles. The São Paulo native discovered film through his father, who made 8mm parodies with his family and friends. In college he studied architecture, but also sustained his interest in filmmaking. He entered indie TV and experimental film after graduation, which led to advertising. He co-founded the ad firm O2 Films.

In 2002, he co-directed, with Katia Lund, the movie City of God, a crime picture based in a suburb of Rio de Janeiro, based on a novel inspired by actual events. O2 Films was one of the production companies. The film was an international sensation, and was nominated for four Oscars, including Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay.

In subsequent years, Meirelles made the Oscar-winner The Constant Gardener, as well as the films Blindness and 360 and the HBO series Joint Venture. When the Summer Olympics came to Rio in 2016, he directed the opening ceremonies. In 2019, Meirelles adapted the play The Two Popes for Netflix.

Popes loosely tells the story of the relationship between Pope Benedict XVI and the future Pope Francis, back when he was still Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, in the wake of the 2012 scandal over corruption within the Vatican. Anthony Hopkins plays the former and Jonathan Pryce plays the latter.

Meirelles recreated the Sistine Chapel in the famous Cinecitta studio in Rome. This podcast explains how he did it. St. Peter’s Square was computer-generated. Additional filming was shot in and around Rome as well as Argentina.

Pryce and Hopkins were both Oscar-nominated, for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor, respectively. Pryce spoke some Spanish and Hopkins spoke some Italian and a little Latin. They both came across very convincingly.

I can’t say the story moved me that much, not being Catholic, but the contrast between the two holy men and their differing visions for the future of the faith was presented well. The reality behind the popes and their connection to each other is different, but this is, after all, a dramatization. The adapted screenplay by Anthony McCarten was also Oscar-nominated.

Popes is an ambitious production depicting a crucial turning point in religious history, told on a small, almost intimate scale.

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Previously:

Manoel de Oliveira 

Netflix new release roundup for December ‘20

The Vaccine is out in the world now, and it’ll take some time before its impact on the future of the film industry can be measured. One likes to believe 2021 couldn’t possibly be any worse than 2020, but getting past that nightmare of a year with not only a new president on deck but a legitimate defense against the Virus does give one reason to be hopeful. Zod knows we could all use that.

—Mank. The making of Citizen Kane through the eyes of co-writer Herman Mankiewicz. I was kinda drowsy when I watched this, plus it was really talky (what a surprise, a movie about a writer was packed with dialogue). It was cool to see historical figures like Orson Welles, Louis B. Mayer, Irving Thalberg and William Randolph Hearst depicted, but ultimately this didn’t thrill me as much as I had hoped it would. David Fincher directs from a screenplay by his late father Jack. Gary Oldman acts drunk most of the time as Mankiewicz and Amanda Seyfried as Marion Davies was good, but overall I thought it was kinda meh.

—Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Early 20th-century blues pioneer Ma Rainey comes to Chicago with her band to record her songs, but her ambitious trumpet player has ideas of his own about how her music should be played. Co-produced by Denzel Washington, based on the play by August Wilson, Viola Davis is damn near unrecognizable in the title role but is also a force of nature, taking the contempt she holds for the white men controlling her career, the suspicion she has over Chadwick Boseman (in his final role) subverting her position as bandleader, and her general world-weariness and putting it into the blues. Boseman stands a strong chance at winning a posthumous Oscar with his performance; how very sad it is that he’s no longer with us.

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By now you’ve heard about Warner Brothers’ deal to release all its 2021 films on HBO Max at the same time as they’re released theatrically. It’s a plan that has rubbed some people the wrong way, among them Christopher Nolan. 

It’s awful hard to look at this and not think the genie is out of the bottle. It’s not likely to return, either. The theatrical distribution model was struggling before the Virus and if it’s a matter of financial survival on the studios’ part, even with a Vaccine now available, I’m unconvinced they’ll go to bat for the theaters without a strong motivation. Maybe one will come. 

That said, the recent stimulus deal signed last month offers some hope, and this piece offers more reasons to be cheerful for the long-term future of theaters (though watching movies at home has its merits too).

More on the other side.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

The Celluloid Road Trip Blogathon is an event focusing on cities and towns in movies, presented by Hometowns to Hollywood. For a complete list of participating bloggers, visit the link at the host site.

Who’s Aftaid of Virginia Woolf?

In the summer of 1995, I worked as a counselor at a sleepaway camp in Massachusetts. To someone whose childhood summers were spent at day camps, this was a new experience. 

While I relished the opportunity, I probably would’ve suffered cabin fever without the occasional break from hikes in the forest, swimming and canoeing in the river, and daily recreation on the camp grounds. This was for the kids more than the adults, after all. 

Fortunately, there was a town to which I could retreat on my days off: a tiny college community called Northampton.

Fourteen Hours

Crystal from In the Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood is seriously ill, according to her brother Jarrahn, and while a blogathon may seem unimportant in the face of that, Gill from RealWeegieMidget Reviews has agreed to take over in her absence. I don’t know Crystal well, but I know she’s a dedicated classic film fan whose blog has a strong following. Here’s hoping she recovers as soon as possible. Best wishes to her family.

Fourteen Hours

YouTube viewing 

Henry Hathaway tends to be associated with westerns, and indeed, some of his biggest hits as a director were in that vein: How the West Was Won, The Sons of Katie Elder, and of course, the original True Grit. A perusal of his IMDB page reveals a variety of movies, including war, film noir and drama. While he may not have had a clear signature style as a director, he was one of a number of Hollywood filmmakers from the Golden Age who turned out reliable product again and again; a go-to man.

A former assistant director during the silent era, he got his break in the early 30s making adaptations of Zane Grey westerns with Randolph Scott. In 1935, Lives of a Bengal Lancer with Gary Cooper got a Best Picture nomination and Hathaway was on the radar.

Netflix new release roundup for November ‘20

I’m watching much more Netflix now than before, and not just for the new releases. I think I’ve come to depend on it a bit, as a way of coping. A movie a day, plus two or three TV episodes, isn’t too much, is it? At least I’m not bingeing.

—The Trial of the Chicago Seven. The anti-Vietnam protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, and the violence that resulted as a result of the confrontation with the Chicago police, gets revisited in this film from writer-director Aaron Sorkin. Specifically, it’s about the trial of an unconnected group of individuals at the heart of the protests, including irreverent activist Abbie Hoffman, memorably played by Sacha Baron Cohen. He’ll get Oscar nominated for certain. Sorkin uses cross-cutting between places and times to bring life to a very talky but riveting screenplay, in addition to actual television footage from the late 60s. In a time when Americans have been agitating for more drastic change in society than ever before, this movie leaves a deep impression.

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So Death on the Nile and Free Guy moved to next year and Wonder Woman 1984 will debut in theaters and on HBO Max simultaneously. The Tom Hanks western News of the World and the video game adaptation Monster Hunter are still expected to play theatrically in 2020... for the moment. This Slate article goes into streaming amidst the current status quo and how unsatisfying it can ultimately feel in a world with diminished theatrical distribution.

More on the other side.

Netflix new release roundup for October ‘20

Good movies can still be found this year through streaming sites, and my site of choice remains Netflix. I suspect the overwhelming majority of this year’s Oscar candidates will come via the streamers, so here’s what I’ve been watching over the past weeks. 

—Da 5 Bloods. The surviving members of a Vietnam platoon return to Vietnam forty years later to find the remains of their commanding officer, as well as to reclaim a cache of gold they appropriated during the war. Spike Lee captures the beauty of modern Vietnam well, its cities as well as its jungles, and the story is relevant, as you would imagine one of his joints to be. Delroy Lindo’s finest work has always been with Spike, and this may be his best performance ever, MAGA cap and all. A Best Actor nomination is all but assured. Also, how wonderful it was to see the late Chadwick Bozeman one more time, in a key supporting role, to remind us what a treasure we lost in him. Even in a normal year, this would be one of the year’s best.

—The Old Guard. Highlander meets Unbreakable: a race of immortal beings live in secret, righting wrongs around the world. They encounter a new one of their kind at the same time a pharmaceutical company wants to discover what makes them tick. Gina Prince-Bythewood was known for romantic dramas like Love and Basketball and Beyond the Lights. Who knew she had an action movie in her? And this one hits on all cylinders: Charlize Theron, who has been making a pretty good post-Oscar career as an action girl, rocks it in this one: kicking ass left and right, but with a vulnerable and human side to her as well. A multi-culti cast that goes all over the world, in a movie that could be the start of a new franchise—once The Virus is under control, of course.

—I’m Thinking of Ending Things. I feel about Charlie Kaufman’s new film the way I did when I saw Darren Aronofsky’s Mother!: there was definitely a singular artistic vision here, at work in a story that starts out relatively mundane and ends surrealistic and utterly bizarre, but I’ll be damned if I can interpret any of it. My guess is it’s a meditation on aging and the deterioration and fragmentation of memory, though it seems to start as the woman’s story and ends as the man’s, which didn’t make sense. Like Mother!, I went into Thinking blind, assuming all I needed to know was the writer-director and his rep (I have got to stop doing that). Ludicrously talky, it bored me silly in places but I kept thinking well, sooner or later there’ll be an explanation for all this. There wasn’t, not that I could tell.

—Rebecca (2020). The critics were less than charitable to this latest version of the world-famous Daphne DuMaurier novel memorably adapted by Alfred Hitchcock in 1940, but I didn’t think it was as mediocre as they said it was. The set design of Manderley was thrilling, as were the location shots, and weird dream sequences aside, I found it watchable. Lily James is less mousy as the nameless protagonist than Joan Fontaine, and Armie Hammer felt a bit less cold and uptight than Laurence Olivier, but Kristin Scott Thomas as Danvers was the best part for me. It won’t make me abandon my Criterion DVD of Hitch’s version, but for what it is, it’s alright.

More on the other side.

Black Narcissus

The Rule Britannia Blogathon is an event celebrating British cinema, hosted by A Shroud of Thoughts. For a complete list of participating bloggers, visit the link at the host site.

Black Narcissus
YouTube viewing

Back in May we talked about the writer-director team of Powell and Pressburger, and I’m glad for the opportunity to discuss their movies again. They were beautifully made, with stunning cinematography and lush, vivid color.

If I ever saw Black Narcissus before, I don’t recall. All I knew about it was it had creepy-looking nuns doing nun stuff, but to be more specific: Deborah Kerr establishes a hospital and school with a group of her fellow nuns in the Himalayan mountains of India, but the atmosphere drives them all a little cuckoo. It’s based on a book.

Okay, first of all, I thought for sure that they shot this film on location somewhere in the Himalayas, but it was (mostly) done indoors! Specifically, it was shot in a studio with matte painting backgrounds, so perhaps we should talk about that.

Europa ‘51

The 2020 Wonderful Ingrid Bergman Blogathon is an event in tribute to the classic Hollywood actress, hosted by The Wonderful World of Cinema. For a complete list of participating bloggers, visit the link at the host site.

Europa ‘51 (AKA The Greatest Love)
YouTube viewing

Ingrid Bergman first met Roberto Rossellini in 1949. The Hollywood actress from Sweden was so impressed with the Italian director’s work she wrote to him, wanting to collaborate with him.

At this stage of her career, Bergman was a superstar, known for such films as Casablanca and Gaslight, plus her projects with Alfred Hitchcock, Notorious, Spellbound and Under Capricorn. Making a movie outside of the Hollywood bubble, with an unfamiliar foreign filmmaker, was a risk, but one she thought worth taking.

The result was the movie Stromboli, released a year later. In the process, the married Bergman had an affair with Rossellini, who was separated from his wife at the time. The actress and director had a son, who was born two weeks before the American release of the film... and that was around the time Bergman’s troubles really began.

The UFO Incident

The UFO Incident

YouTube viewing

I first became aware of UFO sightings sometime in the mid-80s, and like many people, I dreamed of it happening to me one day. I still believe life of some form other than humanity is out there somewhere, but I suspect the odds of us finding it in our lifetimes is slim at best.

That doesn’t stop people from trying, of course. This 2018 New York article goes deep in re-examining UFO mythology in the age of DT and his proposed “space force.” 

If aliens exist, though, why would they abduct and experiment on humans? Do they see us as an inferior form of life? Possible—but I have a hard time imagining the popular image of little, skinny grey men with large, almond-shaped eyes and big heads (and no clothes) as genetically superior.

And at what point did this become the default image for “extraterrestrial,” anyway? (The emoji for “alien” on my iPhone is a simplified version of this.) It’s as if the same species were observing us for over half a century, and if that were so, at what point would they decide we actually are intelligent and talk to us? Or are they not as advanced as we thought? Could anal probes be their species’ equivalent of cow tipping? 

Regardless, the notion that aliens have nothing better to do than pick apart our insides persists—and one of the first widely-reported abduction stories was turned into an unusual and unsettling TV movie.

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
YouTube viewing

In 1977, Roots held American television audiences in thrall like nothing had before by telling the truth about slavery. It was a true television event that opened up new levels of discussion about race relations and acknowledged how far black people have come and how far we still have to go.

Three years before that landmark, however, another television movie told a story about slavery that was not too different; in fact you could say it helped pave the way for Roots.

A novel was published in 1971 called The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines, and I feel the need to emphasize it was a novel, a work of fiction. It references numerous real people, places and events throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, but it is fiction. CBS adapted it into a TV movie that aired in January 1974, with the teleplay by Tracy Keenan Wynn and directed by John Korty.

The star was Cicely Tyson.

Titanic (1953)

Blogathon. Stany. Pale Writer.

Titanic (1953)
YouTube viewing

Nine decks. 882 feet, nine inches long, 175 feet tall. Maximum speed, 23 knots—equal to 44 kilometers on land. Total passenger capacity, 2453, with luxuries including a seven-foot deep swimming pool, a gym, a library, a squash court, a Turkish bath and an a la carte restaurant.

They didn’t call that ship Titanic for nothing.

Even today, over a century later, the sinking of the massive British passenger liner still makes news. Back in January, an international agreement declared the wreckage would be left undisturbed, but in May, a federal judge gave the okay for a salvage mission to retrieve the ship’s Marconi wireless telegraph. The US is challenging this decision.

There are at least eighteen films about the Titanic in one form or another. You know about James Cameron’s version. You might know about the 1958 British film A Night to Remember. Do you know about Saved From the Titanic, the silent short film made a mere 29 days after the sinking in 1912, starring one of the actual survivors? Or, for that matter, the 1929 silent feature Atlantic, starring a young Madeleine Carroll?

Titanic movies have been around almost as long as the movies themselves.

Shadows

Shadows
YouTube viewing

“Independent film” has become a loaded phrase these days, and it  may mean one thing to you but something else to me. Is it simply a matter of working outside the Hollywood studio system? Maybe, but then why are so many smaller boutique studios owned by the majors still considered indies? Is it measured in budgets? If so, what’s the upper limit for a budget before a film no longer becomes “independent”? Is it an aesthetic, an attitude, a frame of mind? If so, who determines it? Is it a matter of distribution? Maybe, but these days it’s possible to see an indie at the local multiplex, at least in big cities.

I remember wrestling with similar issues during my years in the comics industry and I never found the answers there. With the movies, it’s probably even more knotty and tangled.

Ultimately, I can’t say I care one way or another beyond a certain point, but I think some filmmakers and some films are and will forever be associated with alternative cinema in America because of either their approach to filmmaking or their themes or their budget or any combination of the three—and it’s these films I’m gonna look at this month and possibly next month too.

For the sake of simplicity, I’m gonna focus on the 50s to the 70s; maybe the 80s if I feel like it. We have to begin somewhere, and for me, if we’re talking independent film, we have to begin with John Cassavetes.

La Strada

La Strada
YouTube viewing

Okay, I know La Strada is a Fellini movie, but can we talk about Giulietta Masina for a minute? The first time I saw her was in Nights of Cabiria and I thought she was terrific in that, but omigod, I think I’ve fallen in love with her after watching her in this one. She is adorable! She has eyes like Joan Blondell, a sweet and endearing smile, and I love that pixie haircut of hers.

And she was an excellent actress. She may not have been a sex goddess like her fellow Italians Sophia Loren or Gina Lollobrigida, but after seeing her as a spunky, worldly streetwalker in Cabiria, she went in the other direction and played an innocent waif of a girl who you just wanted to hug and take as far, far away from Anthony Quinn as possible. Madonna and whore: not exactly an original combination, but what can I say? That’s how I discovered her.

The Pearl (1947)

The Pearl (1947)
YouTube viewing

Movie fans who think of Mexican cinema these days think of the “three amigos:” Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuaron and Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu. Between these three guys, they’ve won ten Oscars, made millions and thrilled audiences worldwide with their singular, unique visions.

Mexico has a strong tradition in film that goes back at least as far as the dawn of the sound era in Hollywood. People speak of a Golden Age which produced a wide variety of stars and filmmakers, some of whom crossed over into American cinema. Aurora has blogged at length about some of these stars; here’s a wider study on the era from last year.

Mexico underwent a wave of urbanization in the 1940s, and the film industry benefited. Studios developed in Mexico City, and while the US and Europe were making war movies, Mexican cinema was able to be more diverse in its subject matter, and prominent filmmakers emerged. One example from this era is a fella named Emilio Fernandez.

Persona

Persona
YouTube viewing

I think for a long time, the phrase “art cinema” was synonymous with Ingmar Bergman: black and white; really deep thoughts about Life, The Universe and Everything; playing chess with Death and other abstract visuals, etc. And to Bergman’s credit, he became popular enough that such imagery became so cliche. But does that mean people love his films the way they love those of Kubrick or Scorsese?

There are a bunch of YouTube videos in which critics and filmmakers and scholars talk at length about why Bergman is so great and what his films are “really” all about, but if I’m coming at him from the perspective of just another film fan, albeit one with a little more knowledge of film history than some, I shouldn’t need any of that for me to appreciate his work; indeed, I’m trying hard to avoid those videos while writing this post about Persona because I want to be as unbiased in my opinions as possible.

Some might say knowing Bergman and his worldview is necessary to grok his films—but did the average moviegoer have that information when he made his movies during the sixties, pre-Internet? If Bergman was the capital-A Ar-TEEst he was proclaimed to be, I imagine he’d have wanted his work to speak for itself. So let’s give it a shot.

Tokyo Story

Tokyo Story
YouTube viewing

It’s time once again for us to eat our cinematic vegetables! I’ve gotten kinda flabby around the middle gorging on Hollywood films, so I’m gonna change my diet for awhile and indulge in a few foreign movies, the kind that are supposed to be “good for you.”

Don’t get me wrong; I’m only being slightly serious about this. It’s one of the oldest debates on this blog: just because some big-shot critic says a certain movie is great, does that mean you have to like it too? Especially if it comes across as “boring”? (Please note the quotation marks around that word.) I still haven’t found the answer to that question; I doubt I ever will—but I do want to mix things up around here and look at some foreign films.

Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu is one whom I’ve heard a lot about but whose work I had never seen before. Omigod, do the critics fall all over themselves praising this guy: his films often make the “all-time best of” lists, Criterion has his films in its collection, they discuss him in film school, the works—so he must be worth watching, right? Well, I was very lucky to have found one of his biggest hits online to watch: the film Tokyo Story. I’m pleased to say I thought it was good, though it took quite awhile for me to appreciate.

The Emperor Jones

The Emperor Jones
YouTube viewing

How awesome was Paul Robeson? The son of a former slave, he graduated high school and college as class valedictorian. He played in the NFL while studying law. He was successful on the foreign and domestic stage. He was one of the top recording artists of the 20th century. He was a civil rights activist and supported progressive political causes in other countries. He wasn’t a saint—he cheated on his wife multiple times, for instance—but he was a proud black man who saw and did it all during a time when institutional racism held back many black people in America. Oh, and he made movies too.

Among the many, many awards and tributes he received, both in life and death, include the naming of a Manhattan apartment building after him. Robeson lived in what is now The Paul Robeson Residence in uptown Washington Heights from 1939-41, and was one of the first black tenants. Count Basie and Joe Louis also lived there. It’s both a civic and national landmark—and the street on which it resides, Edgecombe Avenue, is co-named “Paul Robeson Boulevard.”

Of course he has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. A Criterion box set of his films is available. James Earl Jones starred as Robeson in a one-man Broadway play which was turned into a TV movie.  12 Years a Slave director Steve McQueen had plans for a biopic, though that was over five years ago.

Rain

Rain
YouTube viewing

W. Somerset Maugham was a doctor when his first novel, Liza of Lambeth, was published in 1897. It sold so well that he was able to pursue writing full-time. During World War One, he was one of a number of writers who doubled as ambulance drivers for the Allies, including Hemingway, EE Cummings, John Dos Passos, Robert Service and Gertrude Stein.

WSM would become one of the twentieth century’s most popular authors, with hits including Of Human Bondage and The Razor’s Edge. In addition, he was a secret agent during WW1 for a time; his later novel, Ashenden, is said to have been an influence on Ian Fleming when he created James Bond.

In 1921, The Smart Set, an American lit mag, published a short story by WSM called “Miss Thompson,” later known as “Rain.” It was inspired by a trip WSM took by steamer to Pago Pago, in American Samoa, a locale notorious as one of the wettest places on Earth. According to Wikipedia, it gets 119 inches of rain per year, with a rainy season lasting from November to April. During his trip, WSM encountered a Miss Thompson on the boat as well as a missionary man, both of whom were models for the story’s main characters. The guest house where WSM stayed is now a notable landmark.

Pain and Glory

Pain and Glory
seen @ Kew Gardens Cinemas, Kew Gardens, Queens, NY

So. Pedro Almodovar. Can’t say I’ve ever been a huge fan. I don’t hate his movies, but I’ve never been particularly moved to rush right out to the local art house theater every time one of them comes out, either. During my video store days I watched Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and Tie Me Up Tie Me Down and was entertained by them. Maybe he was too European for me to grok—or maybe I needed more life experience. I dunno. I’d rather stick with Woody Allen.

As I recall, Vija and Andrea saw Pain and Glory when it first came out last fall. I had passed without even learning what the new film was about. I think they liked it. Then it got Oscar nominated twice, including Antonio Banderas for Best Actor, and it was re-released—and Virginia and Ann wanted to see it. Well, at least this time I had a little more incentive.

Banderas is a hypochondriac filmmaker in the late stages of his life. Unexpected reunions with people from his past alternate with memories of his childhood, involving his mother and other individuals. Less a plot than a loose connection of character vignettes, it works mostly because of Banderas. I’ll come back to him in a minute.

I can’t say for certain what distinguishes Almodovar as a filmmaker, but as I watched Glory I wondered how much of this story is autobiographical: Banderas’ character is internationally known, has never been to Hollywood, and has similar hair to Almodovar. The director says there’s only a passing resemblance, and I have no reason to doubt him; still, I was drawn to Salvador’s story as much as the way it was told: gently, compassionately, unhurriedly.

The layers of his life—his childhood; his relationship with his mother; his career and his estrangement from his star; his business partner; his former lover—are peeled back a little at a time and presented, warts and all. Aside from one early CGI-animated sequence describing Salvador’s numerous ailments, there’s nothing flashy here...

...just Banderas embodying a complicated person with vulnerability, dignity and pain. When he crossed over into Hollywood, they tried making him an action hero, and I dug him in movies like Desperado and The Mask of Zorro, but Glory reminded me of his more dramatic turns in films like Philadelphia and Evita. I think drama is a better fit for him. Glory is his seventh film with Almodovar, and after all these years, it would seem he handles Banderas better than anyone else.

A few words about Penelope Cruz, who plays Banderas’ mom in flashbacks: like Banderas, Cruz also broke through in Hollywood. You may have seen her in Vanilla Sky, the American version of the Spanish film Open Your Eyes, in which she also starred. Recently she was in Kenneth Branagh’s version of Murder on the Orient Express.

I liked her in Glory; she had a Sophia Loren kind of vibe as a woman of the country, raising young Salvador in a domicile fashioned out of a cave—yes, a cave; that’s how she refers to it. In the opening scene, we see her washing clothes with other women by a river, singing songs. Her character is an important part of the story; later on, we see her, still in flashbacks, as an old woman (played by Julieta Serrano) and Banderas gets to interact with her in some very fine scenes.

The acting all around is quite good. In judging acting ability with foreign language actors, I find I respond more to things like physical presence and being in the moment than I normally might with English-language actors. Since I constantly have to have one eye on the subtitles, it helps to be able to read body language and tone of voice, something I suspect we take for granted when we can automatically understand the language being spoken. Anyway, good movie.