Two Days, One Night 2014

     Manu and Sandra Bya are married and they have two children.  Manu has a job in a restaurant kitchen.  Sandra works at a solar panel factory but she has been hospitalized and on medical leave from her job for depression.  Her supervisor, M. Dumont decides that her section can get along without her.  The work can support sixteen people with a little overtime instead of seventeen people and no overtime.  The company can also save money by paying annual bonuses of 1000 Euros to sixteen people and not seventeen.  Sandra finds out the news from Juliette, her friend and also her co-worker.  There was a show of hands vote on Friday with the result 13-3 for the bonus option and elimination of Sandra’s job.  Juliette knows the section supervisor Jean-Marc is in favor of letting Sandra go and he put pressure on the employees to choose the bonus plan.

     The news about her job problems does not help Sandra with her depression and she starts back on her medication.  She can’t stop crying all the time and this was her original problem.  He husband encourages her to personally visit all the workers and ask them to forgo the bonus so she can keep her job.  It seems like this would be boring with Sandra asking all the workers the same question but she gets different attitudes and responses from each one.  3 ½* (I liked this movie)

95 min, Drama directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne with Marion Cotillard, Fabrizio Rongione, Catherine Salee, Batiste Sornin, Pili Groyne, Simon Caudry, Lara Persain, Alain Eloy, Myriem Akeddiou.

Note:  Imdb 7.4 out of 10, 97% critic 77% audience on Rotten Tomatoes, Roger Ebert 2 ½*.

Special Note:  This movie was filmed in Seraing and Liege, Wallonia, Belgium.  Marion Cotillard was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress and she received a 15-minute standing ovation at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival.  Marion has little or no makeup, she wears her hair in a ponytail and has only casual clothing.

My Neighbors the Yamadas 1999

     The Yamadas are a middle class Japanese family living in urban Tokyo.  There are nine animated episodes about their lives.  This film is based on a popular comic strip in Japan.  The stories are about their daily lives including Takashi and Matsuko, the parents.  Shige, Matsuko’s mother and grandmother to Noboru, a son aged 13 and Nonoko, a daughter aged 5.  They also have the family dog, Pochi and he has his own doghouse in the yard.  Nonoko is accidently left behind at the mall and the family races back to get her.  There are stories about the relationships between the parents, the children and the addition of a grandmother.  There are arguments over control of the television and the remote. 

     This family is relatable because they seem like any family with the same joy, problems, misunderstandings and circumstances.  They love each other and care about each other too.  The parents want to do the best they can for the children.  The parents and grandmother worry about aging also.  3 ½* (I liked this movie)

104 min, Animation directed by Isao Takahata with the voices of James Belushi, Molly Shannon, Daryl Sabara, Liliana Mumy, Tress MacNeille, David Ogden Stiers.

Note:  Imdb 7.3 out of 10, 75% critic 76% audience on Rotten Tomatoes, Amazon 4.3* out of 5* with 76 reviews.

Special Note:  This is the first film from Studio Ghibli to be 100% digital.  It is also different because there is not a continuing storyline but short vignettes.  The comic strips are by written Hisaichi Ishii and are published with four panels. 

Love Field 1992

     Lurene Hallett is a housewife living in Dallas.  She goes to Love Field on November 22, 1963 and this is the airport where President and Mrs. Kennedy arrive to drive through Dallas in an open convertible.  Lurene has been living vicariously through Mrs. Kennedy and this has helped her to recover from the loss of her daughter.  Ray is her husband and he doesn’t understand any of this and he’s not going to the airport.  After the death of President Kennedy, Lurene leaves a note for Ray and she takes a Greyhound bus to go to the funeral in Washington DC.  She meets Paul Cater and his five-year-old daughter Jonell.  In the beginning, she is friendly to Paul and Jonell.  She finds out later that Paul has taken his daughter from an orphanage because she was not being treated well and he wants to have custody of her.  Jonell's mother has passed away and that is why Jonell was in the orphanage.  The dull housewife days of Lurene are left behind on this bus trip.  

     Lurene deals with her own reality by changing her viewpoint to that of John and Jackie Kennedy.  She doesn’t realize how much this bus trip is going to change her life.  She just wants to be there for this historic event and emotionally support Jackie, even if it is from a distance.  3 ½* (I liked this movie)

102 min, Drama directed by Jonathan Kaplan with Michelle Pfeiffer, Dennis Haysbert, Stehpanie McFadden, Brian Kerwin, Lousie Latham, Peggy Rea, Beth Grant, Johnny Ray McGhee, Cooper Huckabee, Troy Evans.

Note:  Imdb 6.7 out of 10, 36% critic 57% audience on Rotten Tomatoes, Amazon 4.5* out of 5* with 22 reviews.

Special Note:  This movie was filmed in Wilson and Rocky Mount, North Carolina, Richmond, Virginia and California.

Life as a House 2001

     George Monroe has lived alone for ten years in a run down shack on the Southern California coast.  All the other homes in this area could be called estates but not the one George and his dog live in.  His dog has a ‘bad’ habit of peeing on the car, newspaper and yard of one of the neighbors.  The plumbing is out and George uses the ocean.  George has worked building scale models of architectural projects for the same firm for twenty-five years.  Everything is moving to computers and George is let go.  He learns he has advanced cancer and he decides he will finally build the house he has always wanted to live in.  He wants his rebellious sixteen-year-old son Sam to help him and he wants to try to change Sam’s life.

     Building the house changes more than Sam’s life, it changes George, Sam’s mother, her husband, her younger children, the neighbors and other people in Sam’s life.  I thought it was interesting and good how the project expands and it rises into a new house from a shack.  3 ½* (I liked this movie) 

125 min, Drama directed by Irwin Winkler with Kevin Kline, Kristin Scott Thomas, Hayden Christensen, Jena Malone, Mary Steenburgen, Ian Somerhalder, Jamey Sheridan, Scott Bakula.

Note:  Imdb 7.5 out of 10, 47% critic 88% audience on Rotten Tomatoes, Roger Ebert 2 ½*, Amazon 4.6* out of 5* with 484 reviews.

Special Note:  Filmed in Long Beach, Los Angeles, Malibu, Palos Verdes, Santa Catalina Island, California and Bermuda.

Man Hunt 1941

     Captain Alan Thorndike is a big game hunter vacationing in Bavaria.  He goes out into the woods and he has Adolf Hitler in his gun sight.  He plans to see if it would be possible to shoot him but he intends not to pull the trigger.  He is captured by Nazi troops, beaten and left for dead in the woods.  He escapes and goes back to London as a stowaway on a Danish steamer.  In London, German agents hound him but a woman,  Jerry Stokes tries to help him.  Alan wants his attorney to arrange for Jerry to receive money after he leaves London but she refuses.

     I wondered how Thorndike could think he could get this close to Hitler without being discovered and captured?  He endangers himself and also those he meets after he escapes.  I wonder if the outcome was worth this adventure?  3* (This movie is OK)

105 min, Drama directed by Fritz Lang with Walter Pidgeon, Joan Bennett, George Sanders, John Carradine, Roddy McDowall, Ludwig Stossel, Heather Thatcher.

Note:  Imdb 7.4 out of 10, 90% critic 75% audience on Rotten Tomatoes, Amazon 3.9* out of 5* with 77 reviews.

Special Note:  The director, Fritz Lang fled Germany to Paris in 1933 rather than accept an offer from Joseph Goebbels to make Nazi propaganda films.  The next year he came to America.  This is the first film out of four that Joan Bennett made with Lang.  She also made The Woman in the Window and Scarlet Street.  She partnered with Lang in company Diana Productions for those films.

A Brilliant Young Mind 2014

     Nathan Ellis has difficulty connecting with other people and any changes in his life.  His father was killed in a car accident when he was nine years old and this has left a large gap in his life.  His mother, Julie Ellis tries very hard but she doesn’t understand the math that comes easy to him.  He is more comfortable with numbers and a teacher Mr. Humphreys agrees to take Nathan on as a math pupil.  Nathan wins a place on the UK team to attend the International Mathematics Olympiad.  He goes with a group of sixteen other math whizzes from England to Taipei for a summer camp.  In Taipei, he will work with Chinese math students so both groups can hone their skills.  Only six students will be selected from each country to attend the Olympiad so the stakes are high.  Nathan has trouble interacting with the other students and Taipei is sensory overload for his system.

     When Nathan goes to the summer camp, you really wonder how he is going to set aside his food needing to be prime numbers and at certain meal times.  He starts studying the language on the plane and he’s as good at this as he is at math.  Nathan finds it hard to believe that other students do not bully the math teens in Taipei because they are ‘different?’  This film is an interesting study in material that has been covered in other films about excelling in one field but dealing with problematic social maturity issues.  3 ½* (I liked this movie)

111 min, Drama directed by Morgan Matthews with Asa Butterfield, Rafe Spall, Sally Hawkins, Eddie Marsan, Jo Yang, Martin McCann, Jake Davies, Alex Lawther, Alexa Davies, Orion Lee.

Note:  Imdb 7.2 out of 10, 86% critic 80% audience on Rotten Tomatoes, Roger Ebert 1 ½*, Amazon 4.0* out of 5* with 39 reviews.

Special Note:  Filmed in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England; Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England and Taiwan.  This film is based on Daniel Lightwing and his story as a mathematician.

The 39 Steps 2008

     The setting of this film is 1914 just prior to World War I and it is based on a 1915 novel by John Buchan.  Richard Hannay is a mining engineer on a holiday from his work in the African colonies.  Richard finds London to be terribly dull and he spends a lot of evenings out all night.  After one of his nights out, he returns home to his flat and immediately there is a knock on the door from his upstairs neighbor Scudder.  Richard complains that he is tired but Scudder tells him he is a British spy and there are three German spies in the building who want to kill him.  Scudder entrusts Richard with his notebook written in a Roman numeral code.  The Germans thrust themselves into the flat and Scudder is immediately shot to death.  Richard is believed to be the murder and he leaves London right away by train.  Richard starts trying to solve the complicated code in the notebook.

     The scenery in Scotland is very beautiful.  I liked the clothing, hairstyles, cars and manners of this period.  There is a biplane and a submarine included in the action.  It’s difficult to tell with the plot 

twists and turns who are the British spies and who are the German spies. 3 1/2* (I liked this movie)

90 min, Crime directed by James Hawes with Rupert Penry-Jones, Lydia Leonard, David Haig, Patrick Malahide, Patrick Kennedy, Eddie Marsan, Alex Jennings, Steven Elder, Werner Daehn, Peter Stark, Del Synnott, Roger De Courcey, David Gallacher.

Note:  Imdb 6.4 out of 10, Rotten Tomatoes 42% audience, Amazon 4.1* out of 5* with 565 reviews.

Special Note:  Filmed in various locations in Scotland.  There are six other versions of this film released in 1935, 1959, 1978, 2003, 2010 and one in development.  Some story elements were added not included in the original novel.