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Sydney Penny plays Eliza a young widow who must work to save the family orchard. "Hidden Places" is based on the novel by Lynn Austin. One of the great character actors working today, Barry Corbin does a magnificent job as the local sheriff. If the name isn't familiar, the face and voice are sure to be. Corbin may be best known as the former astronaut Maurice from the quirky television show "Northern Exposure." |
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My personal experiences with horses have been unfortunate so I avoided watching the movie “The Horse Whisperer” until recently. My first unfortunate experience with horses was at the Grays Harbor county fair the year I turned fifteen. I was trying to impress my first real girlfriend. As we toured the fair we went to the horse barn where we met a friend who want to show us her horse. The instant I approached the horse it decided to blow snot all over my clean, white shirt. I spent the rest of the day wearing horse snot. My second horse experience was years later. I was an adult with one marriage behind me. A woman friend with a horse, you’d have lot I would have learned, asked me to come out a ride around her pasture so I could learn to ride. After several circuits of the field the horse I rode stumbled and threw me off. I suffered a bad sprain. Several weeks later my “friend” told me that she had figured out why that horse had kept tripping and had changed the horseshoes. Before I rode the horse it was a gentle, easy-to-ride horse. After I fell the horse was characterized as a chronic tripper.
Anyway I had avoided “The Horse Whisperer” and I’m sorry I did. Now that I’ve watched the 170-minute movie I would not call it a horse movie. Sure there are horses in the movie. The horses are important to the movie. However, “The Horse Whisperer” is not about horses. The movie is the story of Tom Booker played by Robert Redford. Booker is a rancher and horse whisperer, who tries to help a severely traumatized horse. A horse whisperer is a person who is supposed to be able to establish a special rapport with horses because he understands them and somehow senses what is causing the horse to misbehave. Read the the rest of my Review Stream
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I think it's important for Americans to realize they are not the center of the universe, nor is Christianity the only religion in the world. We should learn about Islam and all beliefs of people throughout the world. This documentary is a good film to help people learn about Islam. |
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Almost seventy years ago the great movie director William Wyler brought a young Bette Davis and Henry Fonda together in the movie "Jezebel." The combination was electric. Bette Davis was one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood when she was a young star. When she had aged she became one of the scariest in "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane" with Joan Crawford and "Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte" with Olivia de Haviland, Joseph Cotten, and Agnes Moorhead, and of course, one of my favorite scary move "The Nanny." Henry Fonday is a great favorite. These two actors in one movie is a great treat. |
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The extremely beautiful Kristin Scott Thomas plays the vicar's wife, played by the extremely strange Rowan Atkinson. Maggie Smith, the consummate British matron plays the nanny who came to dinner. For my generation Maggie Smith is the epitomic English matron, but she wasn't always so. She played Desdemona, the font of jealousy in the 1965 version of Othello opposite Lawrence Olivier. |
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I watched the movie “Kippur” as part of my “trying to understand the Middle East” efforts. I’m not sure what affects watching the movie had on that, but it
reinforced my belief that governments are inefficient and self-serving and that war is the supreme human lunacy.Israeli Director Amos Gitai made “Kippur” because of his having
served in the Israeli army in the 1973 Yom Kippur war where he served as a reservist as part of a helicopter rescue team. His story serves as the springboard for “Kippur.”
Read the the rest of my Review Stream Review |
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In “Ladies in Lavender” (2004) the UK Film Council brought together two of the great woman actresses of England: Maggie Smith and Judi Dench. The color, mostly in English, 103-minute movie was filmed on location throughout Cornwall. The tagline describes the movie as “The story of two sisters who saved a stranger, and the stranger who stole their hearts.”
World War II is approaching. In Cornwall two English sisters, Ursula (Judi Dench) and Janet (Maggie Smith) live near the sea. When they discover a young man washed up on the beach, they rescue him and he changes their lives. Andrea (Daniel Bruhl) is Polish and a gifted violinist. While they are nursing him back to health both Ursula and Janet come to love him. Ursula becomes infatuated with him. When he is well enough to move on they have difficulty letting go of him. One almost expects to hear Ursula ask her more responsible sister if she can keep Daniel. When the lovely and much younger Olga Daniloff (Natascha McElhone) not only speaks to him in Polish, but also arranges so his musical career can develop both Ursula and Janet become jealous. Read the rest of my Review Stream Review |
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Sometimes it feels like there is a role that is created for a particular actor. Forest Whitaker is the ultimate Idi Amin portrayer. |
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I was less enamored with "Little Miss Sunshine" than many people. It was an okay movie, but seemed to try to hard. |
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Maggie Smith again. It's hard not to think of her as the English matron. She's an amazing actress and probably deserves more credit than she gets. |
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I really wanted to like this movie. I love William H. Macy and think Julianne Moore is a talented, beautiful, and sexy actress, but I couldn't get through the movie. I quickly tire of tom Cruise's one role that he plays in every movie. Is he every going to learn how to act? |
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The 1962 movie the “The Manchurian Candidate” is an excellent movie. Filmed in black and whiter, a favorite of mine, the movie lasts for 126 minutes and tells the story of Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) and Major Bennett Marco (Frank Sinatra). The two men were the sergeant and the Captain of a patrol in Korea that became lost behind enemy lines. Shaw won a Congressional Medal of Honor for his heroics. When the men return to the United States Marco suffers from recurring nightmares where it appears that things aren’t quite right. The resulting movie is one of political intrigue, especially poignant when one remembers that it came out in 1962 when the Cold War was at its peak and people worried about what impact China and the Soviet Union might have on the United States. I don’t want to reveal too much of the plot. Just watch the movie it’s excellent. The garden club/brainwashing scene is excellent. Since I watched the movie on DVD I replayed the scene again and then made my wife come in and watch it with me. |
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“The Mother” will be a shock to people under the age of thirty who can’t imagine their parents having sex at all much less have casual sex and enjoying it. The 112-minute UK film tells about May, a woman in her late fifties or sixties, and Toots, her husband who arrives at her son Harry’s house. Clearly no one is happy to see them. Their son is too busy with his career. Their daughter-in-law is too busy with her shop that features “anything cashmere” and losing money. The grandchildren, who do not recognize their grandparents and only interrupt their lives for a brief, “did you bring us a present?” Nearby lives Paula, daughter to Toots and May. She openly dislikes them and blames all of her failures on them. When Toots dies during the visit May feels reluctant to return to the house they had shared. Instead she elects to stay with her children. During her visit May meets Darren, a handyman who is doing remodeling for both Harry and Paula. They soon begin an affair. This complicates matters because Paula is already having an affair with Darren and has convinced herself, if not him, that they are going to married. Read the the rest of my Review Stream Review |
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"Mrs. Brown"
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“Mrs. Henderson Presents” was another one of those movies that disappeared from the large screen before I had a chance to see it. I suspect this is true for many people. That’s a pity because “Mrs. Henderson Presents” is a charming, feel-good movie that will leave you feeling both wistful, and happy. Based on the true story of the Windmill Theatre in London, “Mrs. Henderson Presents” tells the story of Laura Henderson (Judi Dench) and Vivian Van Damm (played by Bob Hoskins). Together they run the Windmill Theatre and start a “Revudeville.” A 24-hour a day review with women and beautiful women. Naturally the show is a great success. However other theatres soon follow suit and business suffers. In response Mrs. Henderson suggests they offer nudity onstage but they must get approval from the Lord Chamberlaind, Lord Cromer. Known to Mrs. Henderson as Tommy." Read the the rest of my Review Stream Review |
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From the beginning scene of the aftermath of a violent drug scene gone bad through the end this movie features a series of violent scenes. All the men seem bent on men trying to cowboy up and deal with the problem in true Texas fashion: with more violence. Don’t expect any resolution with just desserts from this movie. Instead the title tells all, there is “No Country for Old Men.” The old man in this movie is Sheriff Ed Tom Bell played by Tommy Lee Jones. He opens the movie with a voice-over talking about in the old days some sheriffs never even wore guns. He tells of sending a boy to the electric chair because the boy had killed a young woman because he wanted to and would do it again if he got the chance. From there the audience soon realizes things have gone downhill. By the movie’s end Bell has realized that he is too old for an amoral country that engages in violence as the first response.
A deputy sheriff has arrested Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) and believes he has him safely in custody. Chigurh strangles the deputy and makes his escape. This begins a long series of on-screen killings by the amoral Chigurh as he searches for Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) who stole the drug money after he stumbled on the site of the drug buy gone bad. Chigurh kills just about everyone he wants throughout the movie. Read the the rest of my Review Stream Review |
DVD is pending release |
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After spending his life as a shipbuilder, Frank Redmond finds himself suddenly unemployed and discontented with his life. His relationship with his son Rob is distant at best, and though
they both make halfhearted attempts to fix the relationship they are both haunted by the childhood drowning of Frank’s other son, and Rob’s brother. At ends with the time on
himself, Frank decides to swim the English Channel within six months. He enlists his friends to help him train. His efforts encourage them who have also been made redundant and their
friendship helps each of them grow. Read the the rest of my Review Stream Review |
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If you didn't grow up in the 1950s and 1960s you won't understand the threat that of nuclear war that was felt throughout the world. I remember nuclear defense shelters in the basement of many publis buildings and stores. I remember a large stack of pamphlets at the local libary, among which were bookcovers that I used to cover my books for the first five years of elementary school. "On the Beach" is the product of an era that is, thankfully, gone. But it's still a good movie and the threat of nuclear war is still there although more remote than it was in the 1960s. |
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Copyright tfedge, 2006-2007