The Wife (2018)

The Wife (2018)
Glenn Close, Jonathan Pryce, Christian Slater. Written by Jane Anderson. Directed by Björn Runge.

At first I didn’t quite see what the critics were reporting, that Glenn Close’s performance in The Wife was sure to earn her a nomination for a Best Actress Oscar. Close is pretty much always very good, and this role of Joan Castleman didn’t seem to stretch her at all. Sure, there are some pretty fiery moments where Joan and her husband Joe Castleman argue almost to the point of throwing blows or objects, but this stuff is a cakewalk to someone of Close’s talent.

Then there’s the last act of the film, where Joan’s barely controlled fury threatens to blow everything in the room to pieces, and it’s an amazing thing to witness. She is certain to be nominated for best actress, and she’s going to be among the favorites to win.

Joe is informed in the first scene that he is this year’s winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. The movie then alternates between its present day and the early days of the Castlemans’ relationship. This is a movie about Joan’s role in Joe’s literary career, which includes the raising of two children—a well-adjusted adult daughter and a troubled adult son, who accompanies his parents to Stockholm for the awards ceremony.

It’s a pretty good story, but the reason to see it is the acting, which is excellent without being especially pyrotechnic. I was really pleased to see Christian Slater as a wanna-be biographer tailing the Castlemans despite their open dislike of him. Slater brings his slimiest best, all the sneaky, sleazy acting that made him a Gen X icon, minus the rebellious self-righteousness. I won’t be surprised if there’s some supporting actor love for him at Oscar time.

Close’s real-life daughter Annie Stark is a nice discovery as young Joan.

I’m giving it a few extra points for being a literary-themed movie, one of my admitted biases. Worth a look even if it’s not one of yours.

8/10 (IMDb rating)
80/100 (Criticker rating)

The Wife (2018)

"Murphy Brown" on CBS

After a 20 year break Murphy Brown returns to the CBS Fall 2018 lineup.

Most of the characters from the old FYI program come back from either retirement or other endeavors to do a morning news program on a cable network and have to contend with things like smartphones and social media. Murphy shows her flip phone to their news programs' young tech guy who have seen pictures of old flip phones but never seen one. He attempts to ask Siri on the flip phone about something but the flip phone doesn't have Siri on it.

"Murphy Brown" on CBS

Juliet, Naked (2018)

Juliet, Naked (2018)
Rose Byrne, Ethan Hawke, Chris O’Dowd, Megan Dodds. Written by Tamara Jenkins, Jim Taylor, Phil Alden Robinson, and Evgenia Peretz (based on the novel by Nick Hornby). Directed by Jesse Peretz.

Tucker Carlson released one moderately successful album called Juliet and then disappeared. Decades later, his fans dedicate their free time to deconstructing the album and speculating on Carlson’s whereabouts in an online forum run by Duncan Thomson, a college lecturer in a small town in England. Duncan’s live-in girlfriend and the central character in Juliet, Naked is Annie Platt, the curator and director of the town’s museum.

Juliet, Naked is the title of a new release of the classic album, but stripped down to its essential vocals and acoustic guitar, perhaps demo recordings of the songs before they were recorded and mixed for the final product. It seems to appear out of nowhere, and of course the rabid fanbase is ecstatic.

Annie is less so, and when she expresses her feelings about the album, she sets into motion a weird sequence of events leading to Annie’s serious questioning about her life choices. She knows exactly how she got to where she is, but is she satisfied? Is it too late for a redo on some of it?

It would be easy to call this film a romance, and there are romantic elements here. Yet Annie’s relationship with Duncan is only part of her reflection, merely representative of many choices she never pursued or opportunities she let go. The possibility of a new relationship simply provides the catalyst for this self-evaluation.

What I love most about Juliet, Naked besides Rose Byrne’s excellent performance is how correspondence by email and in text messages with an unexpected friend forces Annie to articulate the specifics of her life and how she feels about them. Annie deconstructs her relationship, her family, her job, and her small town in what becomes essentially a journal with an audience.

When Annie is finally ready to do or not do something about where she finds herself, it isn’t because some guy walks into her life, or some other guy sees the error of his ways and redeems himself. She makes her choices because self-examination empowers her.

Ethan Hawke can be an annoying actor. I find myself demanding he prove his sincerity with every performance, even in those great sequels to Before Sunrise. Here is a film where he mostly wins me over (despite one suspiciously gratuitous piano performance), one of the best roles I’ve seen him in. Byrne has what I think of as the Emily Blunt role, which used to be the Minnie Driver role, but she does it in the sweetest, most relatable way that makes me wish she had more starring vehicles.

My only real problem with the movie is the Nick Hornby effect. I care about Annie and don’t want her mixed up with any of the men in Nick Hornby stories. Not John Cusack, not Hugh Grant, not Ethan Hawke, and certainly not Nick Hornby. None of these guys can be trusted, and I left the theater confident in Annie’s ability to deal with whatever comes her way, but I don’t want a Nick Hornby to be one of those things.

8/10 (IMDb rating)
83/100 (Criticker rating)

Juliet, Naked (2018)

The Bookshop (2018)

The Bookshop (2018)
Emily Mortimer, Bill Nighy, Patricia Clarkson, Honor Kneafsey, James Lance. Written by Isabel Coixet, based on the novel by Penelope Fitzgerald. Directed by Isabel Coixet.

Florence Green is a middle-aged widow living in a very damp coastal English town. She opens a bookshop, despite reservations by (and condescending advice from) supposedly smarter men like her banker and her solicitor, and despite strong discouragement from Violet Gamart, an elder socialite who envisions a community arts center in the space Florence purchases for her shop.

A smart, young farm girl works for Florence after school, and the two ladies form a nice mentor-apprentice relationship. A wealthy recluse (played by Bill Nighy, one of my favorites) is one of her steadiest clients, and the bookshop seems to take hold in its little corner of this town among other residents as well, but Violet still wants her arts center.

The Bookshop is a wonderfully moody film, colored with the grayish blues and grayish grays a lot of post-WWII films set in England seem to favor. England, like the rest of the world, still feels the effects of the war, and people seem to want connections where connections may be elusive. Florence’s tenuous but intriguing connections, made through the drawing power of her bookshop, seem to bring together people who have difficulty connecting otherwise.

Like her bookshop, Florence may not belong in this place among these people, but like her bookshop, she appeals to the people who need these connections even if maybe they never realized it.

I love this movie. I love Emily Mortimer’s quirky but dignified performance as Florence, and of course I love Bill Nighy whose Edmund Brundish has all kinds of locks begging to be sprung.

I imagine this is the film people are thinking of when they say they dislike British films (it’s Spanish, but whatever). For me, it’s a desperately needed scratch of my long-neglected Merchant-Ivory itch and I can’t wait to see it again.

9/10
91/100

The Bookshop (2018)

Pepperming (2018)

Peppermint (2018)
Jennifer Garner. Written by Chad St. John. Directed by Pierre Morel.

Riley North witnesses the horrible murder of her husband and young daughter. A crooked system lets the perpetrators get off with no punishment, so Riley disappears for a few years, showing up in time to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the murder, but this time with Jason-Bourne-like skills. And she’s not back to offer second chances.

A movie like this is pretty much review-proof. It’s Jennifer Garner in badass mode, as she was in her Alias TV program. I was aware of its terrible reviews before I went in, but whatever. It’s Jennifer Garner.

Even the bad reviews acknowledge that Garner is pretty good in it, and she is. I think only Julia Roberts among current actresses holds a screen better than Garner, and as long as the script keeps finding new ways for her to exact her revenge, I’m unlikely to find any of it boring.

I dislike the concept of a vigilante, but I do enjoy vigilante movies, and how many have female leads? Seriously, you can put Riley right up there with any of them. I like her better than Charles Bronson in Death Wish or Clint Eastwood in those westerns. I don’t care that there is nary an explanation to be found for her quickly attained super-amazing death-machine skills. I just want more Peppermint.

Predictable, formulaic, incredible? Yes, all of those. But fun, too. Sequel, please!

6/10 (IMDb rating)
63/100 (Criticker rating)

Pepperming (2018)

Searching (2018)

Searching (2018)
John Cho, Debra Messing, Michelle La. Written by Aneesh Chaganty and Sev Ohanian. Directed by Aneesh Chaganty.

Searching is the second movie I’ve seen in September 2018 that’s marketed as a thriller but is really a mystery. So if you are not thrilled by thrillers (as I am not), don’t let the trailer keep you away. There are a couple of dark episodes, but the film stays away from edge-of-your-seat suspense or immediate peril for the main character. The main character’s teenaged daughter disappears and may be dead, and very sensitive parents may wish to skip it for this reason, but even with this major plot element, the film is really not at all scary.

Some viewers, however, may find it gimmicky. The entire movie is seen on electronic screens of some sort, usually computer screens and smartphone screens. Even when we’re looking at live news reports, we see them not on television, but via streaming through a web browser. There’s a good reason for the gimmick, and although this device forces the filmmakers to resort to some unrealistic exposition by way of news reporters who say things they would never say (and televise things they would never televise), it’s worth this bit of tradeoff for the social issues they explore. In this way, Searching is not a bad partner for Eighth Grade.

Cho is David Kim, the recently widowed father of Margot, a high-achieving high-school senior. Margot disappears one night when she’s supposed to be at a study group. As police detective Rosemary Vick (Debra Messing) and her team trace the evidence, they ask David to contact all of Margot’s friends to try and figure out where she might have gone. The more David looks, the clearer it is that he really doesn’t know his daughter.

It’s pretty cool to see Cho carry a film pretty much entirely on his own. Messing is a supporting actor at best here, and Cho is more than up to the task. The film has a few flaws best left for the viewer to discover (or not care about). I’m willing to look the other way because the story is engaging and surprisingly not preachy about the things it wishes us to consider. In my own writing, I frequently ask, “How does any of us survive childhood?” Searching proposes another side of the question I’ve honestly never considered: How does any of us survive parenthood?

7/10 (IMDb rating)
73/100 (Criticker rating)

Searching (2018)

A Simple Favor (2018)

A Simple Favor (2018)
Anna Kendrick, Blake Lively, Henry Golding. Written by Jessica Sharzer (based on the novel by Darcey Bell). Directed by Paul Feig.

A Simple Favor is being marketed as a thriller, but it’s really more of a mystery, so if you’re put off by thrillers (as I am), be assured that it’s not very scary and not very violent, and it doesn’t have edge-of-your-seat moments the way thrillers usually do.

Anna Kendrick plays Stephanie, a widowed mother who puts her name next to three jobs for her young son’s class party sign-up sheet while the other parents say mean things about her behind her back. When she’s not volunteering for class mom activities, she produces a vlog for other moms.

She meets Emily, the beautiful mother of her son’s classmate. Stephanie and Emily become friends, but for Stephanie it’s a very uneasy friendship. Emily is wealthier, more successful, and more adventurous than she is, and where Stephanie is eager to please and quick to apologize, Emily seems to disdain any attitude that doesn’t begin with oneself. She admonishes Stephanie for saying “I’m sorry,” and threatens to punch her in the face if Stephanie ever says it again.

Emily disappears a week after she befriends Stephanie, and the rest of the film involves finding out what happened to her.

It’s fun in the way a good puzzle mystery is fun, engaging all the way and difficult to predict. Every character seems at times likeable and despicable, with nice performances by Kendrick, Lively, and Henry Golding as Sean, Stephanie’s husband.

Early promo materials (including trailers) featured only Kendrick and Lively, but the success of Crazy Rich Asians, which stars Golding, had the studio releasing new promos highlighting all three principal actors. This is not meaningless: there’s no way to tell if it’s lasting, but there has already been a Crazy Rich Asians diversity effect even on films already completed before its release.

Anna Kendrick is my second-favorite actress over the past several years, so there’s a huge bias here, but if you also find her charming, you’ll want to see this film. If not, deduct a few points and see it anyway for a good two hours of engaging escapism.

79/100 (Criticker rating)
7/10 (IMDb rating)

A Simple Favor (2018)

"American Horror Story" on FX

I have heard about the series American Horror Story but never watched an episode until a co-worker was telling about an episode that he watched the night before to our group to past the time on a long drive thru Northern Nevada last week (9/13/18 was when the co-worker was relating his experience of the episode).

What he was watching was the 8th season opening of American Horror Story: Apocalypse which is titled The End. The episode is about the end of the civilized world due to a nuclear war. It doesn't say who started it or why but a news cast in the episode states that cities like Hong Kong, Moscow and a few other cities have already been hit with ICBM and Los Angeles (which the beginning of the episode takes place) is next.

The bulk of the episode is about the aftermath of the war and the few survivors who have taken shelter in a place that has prepared for this disaster.

The episode makes reference to the missile alert scare in Hawaii, ancestor websites and only one song that plays on and on in the bunker.

American Horror Story airs on the FX network on Wednesday nights and Spectrum does have it on Demand if you want to watch the first two episodes that have already aired as of 9/22/18.

"American Horror Story" on FX

Hurricane Olivia

The Central Pacific Hurricane Center has issued Tropical Storm Warnings for the counties of Maui and Hawaii and a Tropical Storm Watch for Honolulu County for Hurricane Olivia.

Hurricane Olivia

Slow

This forum is really slow.
Not much discussion at all.
Where has everyone gone????

Slow

Scully

Why weren't there any service animals on the flight? Was it because birds caused the crash?

Scully

Airport Security Trays

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/msn/t...ays/ar-BBMVl7t

I gotta stop licking those airport security trays. They look so tasty.

Airport Security Trays

Stowaway Skunk found at Maui Trucking Company

As Superspy would say, "Skunk soap makes you kusai."

Stowaway Skunk found at Maui Trucking Company

2018 UH Warrior football season

I hadn't paid squat for attention thru the off season without even a clue who might even be our QB. then lo and behold we're into the 2nd game of the season having won the opener on the road at CSU, the first since the '80s, and then tonite while I was away on a dinner date the team takes win #2 at home against NAVY and scoring 59 points with big numbers on the ground and air! in review it looks like Cole McDonald has some goods and plenty of guts to carry most of the team on his back as they struggle on defense and gave up 41 points. next up is Rice which promises win #3 of a schedule that favors a rejuvenated UH squad. good for Rolo, the coaches, and the young men under the helmets, things are looking up!

2018 UH Warrior football season