A man ends up in a mortal hunt, being chased by a madman who leads a game where he hunts humans instead of animals. This tale is pretty common today, but it got its start in The Most Dangerous Game, a short story from 1924, and then the film version of the same name in 1932. Bob is on a luxury yacht when it crashes on a tiny island off the coast of South America. He is the only survivor, but he is taken in by the owner of a mansion on the island, Count Zaroff, and finds survivors of similar wrecks already living in the house. The grisly game unfolds from there, in spectacular fashion. For a 30’s film, the movie has excellent thrills and suspense, and being pre-Hollywood code, it a bit on the gruesome side as well, complete with human heads displayed in Zaroff’s trophy room. A very entertaining, short film (just over an hour in length), it fell into public domain quite awhile ago, but do yourself a favor and make sure to look up a version that was restored properly, and forego one of the ones that has been “colorized.” This film looks best in glorious black and white.

I’m sneaking Lonesome into this set of pictures, even though it came out in 1928. Close enough, and I wanted to see it. Like a lot of movies made in 1928 and ’29, it is mostly a silent film but had a few scenes of dialogue added to take advantage of the talkie craze. Lonesome is a film about two single people living in the hustle and bustle of New York. Jim and Mary are surrounded by a hectic, modern world constantly in a rush, but though they have people all around them, they are each lonely. All of their friends are coupled off, leaving them to be the third wheel if they go out. They each see an advertisement for a carnival day at the beach, and head there for some fun. They run into each other there and hit if off right away. They spend a memorable day together, but are separated near the end, not knowing anything about each other, other than a first name. In classic cinema fashion, they return to their individual homes, only to find their apartments are down the hall from each other. A classic love story, with all of the elements of a film of this era, but with genuinely nice, artful moments too. When they are separated, Jim and Mary are engulfed in a sea of people, all cheering and having fun, throwing streamers, involved the gaiety of the day, but the two of them are each as hopeless as a person can be, striving to find each other. Glenn Tryon as Jim is particularly good, with a more varied, nuanced acting style than what you typically see in silent movies. The film had some nice other aspects too, including some color added in various scenes to emit emotion, such as blue-tinted scenes to show moonlight and love, and in other spots, color added to the film itself to enhance the moment, like the lights and colored balloons of the carnival.

From 1939, Stagecoach is a renowned movie for a lot of reasons. It is the first western director John Ford made in the sound era, the genre in which he would later become synonymous. It is the film that catapulted the western genre from “B” movie status back to mainstream success. And it also launched John Wayne’s career as a leading man. The film focuses on a ragtag group of strangers as they ride a stagecoach from one western town to another, under the constant threat of Apache attack. There’s a disgraced saloon girl, a woman looking for her union soldier husband who is stationed out here, a drunk doctor, a traveling salesman, a corrupt banker, a gambler, and of course, John Wayne as a rancher out for revenge on the men who murdered his father and brother. John Ford had been watching Wayne ever since using him as a prob boy on earlier pictures (under Wayne’s real name Marion Morrison), and knew he had something special. Though he was paid the least of all of the male actors in Stagecoach (which, among others, starred one of my mom’s favorite old actors, Thomas Mitchell), John Wayne steals the show and the camera eats up his charisma. Though not without its stereotypes, this movie is tremendous, and just as exciting as any film made today. The final gunfight between Wayne’s character and his enemies, drawn out in tight suspense, is pure movie magic.

Make Way for Tomorrow is a lovely, funny, but ultimately sad film about aging and the forever-turning wheel of time. Bark and Lucy are an old married couple who have lost their house to the bank. Unfortunately their kids don’t have enough space to take both in together, so Bark goes with one daughter and Lucy goes with their son, 300 miles away. While the film has a lot of humor, good humor too and not the corny, dated kind, it plays out as a tragedy. All of the kids feel put out, and no one wants the burden of taking care of their parents. The youngsters don’t want their daily lives interrupted, and they keep trying to pawn off the old folks on other people, such as their own kids, the remaining sister (who has a big enough house to keep both together, but whose husband has forbidden it), and even strangers. From an outsider’s perspective, they are awful people, but in a terrible way, it is easy to see how it can happen. Everyone is wrapped up in their own lives, same in 1937 as it is today, and no one wants to change those routines, even to help out a parent. When Lucy finds out that her son is considering putting her in a home (something she hates the thought of), she broaches the subject to him as her own idea, so as to spare him the pain of bringing it up to her. Parents will always protect their kids, even if the reverse isn’t always true. When the first daughter decides to send dad off to California, further separating the old married couple, they spend a final day reminiscing about their life together. Thomas Mitchell shows up in this film too as the son, but the leads of Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi (Mrs Bailey in Its a Wonderful Life) are the real showcase. Even now, I think back to the final scene with Bark and Lucy saying their goodbyes at the train station, not knowing if they’ll ever see each other again, it hits me. A wonderful film.

Island of Lost Souls is an old 1932 horror film, based on the HG Wells book The Island of Dr Moreau. In it, Edward Parker finds himself stranded on an island with gruesome looking inhabitants and a scientist named Dr Moreau (played by younger Charles Laughton). Parker finds out that the people aren’t people at all, but animals that Dr Moreau has “treated” with medically advancing evolution techniques, turning them into human-like beings. Dr Moreau introduces Parker into the exotic and beautiful Lota, who it turns out was also once an animal, to see if they will mate and what will come of it. In the meantime, Parker’s girlfriend Ruth finds her way to the island to rescue him, and this leads to the humanesque people rising up against Moreau. The methods pursed on screen by Moreau are very macabre and only made it out because of the pre-code time period. Though Wells himself hated the film, thinking it relied too heavily on the horror aspects rather the philosophical ideas he intended, it is a very good film with more thought-provoking ideas than your average run-of-the-mill horror flick.

As I Lay Dying is the third William Faulkner book I’ve read, and so different from the previous two that you would think it was a different author. This book is tremendous. It gets accolades as one of the best books ever written and it’s hard to argue against that. It even had me liking the somewhat stream-of-conciousness writing that takes place throughout. I never thought I’d see the day!

If a book can be both simple and complex, this is it. The story itself is rather plain and straight forward, but the way Faulkner weaves it, it takes on a life of its own. The novel is told in first person throughout, by over a dozen characters. Each (short) chapter, sometimes just a couple pages, sometimes just a paragraph or two, is narrated by a different person, and told in a way unique to the personality of the person telling it. Oldest son Darl is a bit of a dreamer and tends to more obtuse; carpenter son Cash is more direct and forceful; 8-year-old Vardaman is all play, and his mind wanders; and so forth. Faulkner spins these separate viewpoints into a beautiful, whole tale (spoilers follow).

The book begins with Addie Bundren on her death bed. The matriarch of a poor farm family, she is overseen by her husband Anse and all their kids: Darl, Cash, Jewel, Dewey Dell (the only girl), and Vardaman. Knowing she could go at any time, Cash is outside putting together her coffin, even holding it up so she can see it through the window, and approve of its build quality. From there, this family’s tale is opened slowly, like a flower taking bloom in the morning. Pretty quickly we learn that the father, Anse, is a good-for-nothing waste of space; he tells a story that a doctor once told him that if he ever sweat, he would die, and he has milked that to go through life without doing anything. But he seems hell-bent on granting Addie’s dying wish that she be buried with her people in Jefferson, a good couple days journey away by wagon. Darl and Jewel are away with said wagon when Addie does finally perish, so the family isn’t able to leave on their trek until she’s already been gone 4 days, and is starting to smell in her coffin.

It so happens a storm has washed out both bridges leaving their homestead, and through their travels around their neighbors, we learn more about the family. Anse really is a piece of shit; he feigns Godliness by not accepting hand-outs from others, but really it is just a way for him to not feel indebted to others. His kids seem to know this (especially the oldest three brothers) but no one is willing or able to stand up to him. When they finally attempt to ford a swollen river, Anse walks across the nearly drowned bridge carefully and lets his sons take the dangerous job of moving the wagon and mules across the unused ford. In doing so, Cash’s leg is broken and the mules are drowned. As Darl and Jewel make trip after dangerous trip back into the water to bring up Cash’s carpenter tools, Anse only watches. Even though they could all use a rest, Anse keeps them going, guilting them with Addie’s final wishes.

They reach a neighbor’s house and stay the night in the barn, and the next day, find that Anse has sold Jewel’s horse (a horse Jewel earned himself through hard work over a long period of time) to replace the dead mules. We also learn around this time that Dewey Dell is hiding a secret, that she is pregnant from a local farmhand, and is hoping to find a pharmacist in town to “help her situation,” though she knows nothing about the process. At the next night’s stop, they are staying the night in another barn when it goes up in flame. Jewel rescues the coffin and all of the animals in the barn, getting burned badly in the process.

When they finally get to town, they are shunned by its people, because the smell has gotten so bad from the coffin (now 9 days in), and buzzards are flying overhead. Cash really should see a doctor, but Anse instead makes an impromptu cast out of concrete, against everybody’s advise. The police arrive to take Darl, who it turns out set the fire in the barn to burn up the coffin and end their miserable trip. He loses his hold on his sanity and ends up sent to an asylum. Dewey Dell goes to the doctor, but is assaulted by an impersonator who is working the counter there, who convinces her to have sex with him to “cure” her. The concrete cast is causing Cash’s foot to turn black, so they break the concrete off, only to find it has taken most of his leg’s skin with it.

In the end, we find the true reason Anse kept everyone going to Jefferson to bury Addie, a woman he probably didn’t love and who most certainly didn’t love him in return. He shows up the next morning after the burial with new teeth, and introduces his family to the “new” Mrs Bundren, some floozy he met in town that night.

I was skeptical for the first 100 or so pages of this book (a good portion, because it is only about 250 pages in length), but I see now that Faulkner was just setting up all the of the chess pieces properly. When bombshells are dropped (finding out Jewel is not Anse’s child, but the son of the local priest is one!), they are felt through your core. Also, telling the story through multiple viewpoints is genius. We all see the world in our own way, and in the book, this leads to some facts being stressed by one person and almost completely ignored by another. This may be a top 5 book for me, it is that good. Classic books like this are the reason I wanted to do this whole crazy journey in the first place, I probably would never have experienced it otherwise.

One of the most famous writer and director teams in the history of cinema, or at least, 2 names synonymous with each other, is that of the British duo of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (together known as the Archers). Together, they made 20+ films from 1939 until 1957, and a couple more in the 60’s. Today I’ll look at a few films they did during and just after World War II.

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp may well be one of the best movies I’ve ever seen. It details the long life of Major-General Clive Wynne-Candy (Roger Livesy), but begins near the end. Clive is an old man and is training the Home Guard in London during World War II. He is to run a training exercise the next day, but a brash young lieutenant gets a jump start on him and takes him “capture” the day before “war” is to break out. Clive is incensed, saying kids these days don’t follow rules or respect their elders. We then get the story of what made Clive the man he is, going back to his days as a lieutenant himself in the English Boer War in Africa in 1902. Clive has made a name for himself for heroics in battle, but when he travels to Germany to squash some propaganda, he is challenged to a duel by a young German officer. For his sword fight, he gets a lifelong scar on his lip (covered by a mustache as an old man) and a lifelong friend in the German, whom he calls Theo. (This was a daring film to make in 1942, at the height of war, when the only German who gets a lot of screen time is shown as a good man.) Theo ends up falling in love with and marrying Clive’s friend Edith, and Clive realized only afterwards that he loved Edith too. The movie then jumps ahead to the end of World War I, and Clive (now a brigadier general) is marrying a girl half his age who looks just like a young Edith (in fact played by the same actress, Deborah Kerr). Theo is a prisoner of war with the English army, but Clive looks him up and treats him well, attempting to cheer him up. Theo isn’t having much of it though, worrying about what will happen to his home of Germany now that they’ve lost. The next scene gets us close to the beginning of the movie, in 1939. Theo is trying to immigrate to England but is held up in customs. He admits his sons are in the Nazi party, but that he wanted nothing to do with Hitler and hasn’t been a soldier since 1920. Clive arrives and vouches for him. They catch up, admitting that both wives have died, and Clive fesses up that he once loved Edith himself. Clive is about to give a speech regarding Dunkirk where he is going to argue that English soldiers fight with honor and not resort to tactics that Germany is using. The powers that be will not allow Clive to give that speech, and Theo agrees, saying that having seen what losing a war will do to your country and home, that it is better to win at any cost. Clive finds retirement in training the Home Guard, but sees that he has been passed by. He laments the lifetime of experience he has that no one seems to want, but also sees a parallel in the brash young lieutenant that captured him, and his own rush off to Germany when he himself was a brash young man. A beautiful film, full of love and longing, loss, grief, and, quite literally, a “passing of the guard.” One to watch again and again.

The one word that came to mind upon finishing A Canterbury Tale is lovely. It’s a fairly simple movie, really not much of a plot, but it exudes a feeling of calm and serenity, making it impossible to not become swept up in it. The film follows an unlikely trio who disembark a train in a small village in Kent, on the way to Canterbury, in 1943 (the film was released in 1944). Peter is a British soldier stationed nearby, Bob is an American soldier who mistakenly got off too early, and Alison is a young woman who is to begin working at a farm nearby. On their first night there, Alison is attacked by an unknown assailant, someone locally who has been pouring glue in women’s hairs. The trio set out to solve the mystery of the attacker, but in the meantime, learn about the quiet nearby villages and the history of the Canterbury pilgrimages. Some really picturesque cinematography featured throughout, and the land really becomes as important as the actors. Nice little film.

I Know Where I’m Going! is about a young woman, Joan Webster (Wendy Hiller), who seems to have had her whole life planned from an early age. She knows what she wants, and more often than not, she gets it. From a middle class background, she is on the eve of her marriage to a very wealthy factory owner, Robert Bellinger. He is bringing her out to the northern, Scottish isle of Kiloran, which can only be reached by boat from the nearby isle of Mull. On Mull, she is stranded when storms prevent the final leg of the trip, and she meets Torquil MacNeil (Roger Livesey), a Naval officer and everyman who wants to visit his childhood home on Kiloran. While Joan waits on Mull for the weather to clear, she grows closer to MacNeil and the other middle, working-class inhabitants. She is shaken when she learns MacNeil is also laird (lord) of Kiloran, and it was from him that Bellinger leased the land. Though MacNeil does own the land from inheritance, he isn’t a wealthy man. For Joan, who always thought money was everything that would give her happiness in life, she sees a people who are quite content with what little they have. A fantastic romantic drama with lots of comedy too, a film like this would play just as well today as it did in 1945.

A Matter of Life and Death is just what it sounds like. Peter is an English airman returning home after a bombing mission in Germany, but his plane is crippled, he doesn’t have a parachute, and he knows his end is near. He radios down and gets an American servicewoman named June, he takes down his last words. Remarkably though, Peter awakes on a beach the next day, and realizes quickly he’s in England, not Heaven. He hunts down June immediately and they quickly develop a relationship. However, in Heaven, they realize their mistake and that Peter was to die that night, and send down a man to bring him up. Peter asks for an appeal, on the grounds that his life has changed now that he has a love in his life, and is granted a case by jury in 3 days. Peter selects his counsel, and the case plays out, both about Peter, as well as a referendum on relationships between England and America, which were strained in the aftermath of the world war. A fine film, not as spectacular as the preceding ones, but who can hate a story about love?

For today’s lineup, the Archers end on a high note with Black Narcissus. Incredible drama about a group of nuns sent to a remote complex in the Himalayas to set up a hospital and school for the locals. Leading them is a young but driven Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr). The sisters get a good start there; the school is well attended and they have the support of the local “general,” a young man who inherited the land from his wealthy uncle, now a holy man. The only real point of contention is a strapping Englishman named Mr Dean (David Farrar), who flaunts his robust sexuality to the nuns and drops sexual innuendos to make Sister Clodagh uncomfortable. It isn’t long that other problems begin to creep up. The high altitude and wide open spaces seem to affect each of the nuns differently. Sister Ruth, already a bit unstable but sent up there in hopes to find peace, becomes mentally unhinged and begins to yearn for Mr Dean, but becomes jealous when he talks to Clodagh. Sister Honey is supposed to overlook the gardens for their food, but starts planting flowers instead, remembering happier moments from her youth when she was surrounded by flowers. Even Sister Clodagh herself begins remembering a romance she had as a teenager before taking her vows, memories probably brought on by Mr Dean’s flirtations. Ultimately, the nuns’ safety is put at risk when a baby they are treating in the hospital dies, and the local population begins to think they are trading in black magic. The kids stop coming to the school, and Ruth’s mental acuity unravels, leading to a horrendous moment between her and Clodagh. I’ve only previously seen a few of Powell and Pressburger’s films before this set, and they were good, but this lineup has pushed them to one of my favorites. Time to go hunt down some more!

Holy cow I loved this book. I really like Ernest Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea, but A Farewell to Arms blew me away. It starts quickly in the first few pages and runs a roller coaster of emotions throughout. The book follows Frederic Henry, a paramedic at the Italian front in World War I.

Frederic is an American who had been living in Italy when the war broke out, so he joined up with the Italian army. As a paramedic, Frederic is often near battles, so he tries to keep it loose when he has downtime. He meets a young English nurse at the local hospital named Catherine. He flirts with her but doesn’t see anything serious developing. However, shortly thereafter Frederic is gravely wounded from shrapnel from a mortar, and while recovering in Milan, Catherine finds him there and they begin a serious relationship. After a couple months, Frederic is just about fully healed to head back to the front when Catherine tells him she is pregnant.

Frederic meets back up with his old troop, but is seeing life differently now. When they begin a retreat from advancing Austrian forces, Frederic convinces his fellows that the retreating army is moving too slowly and they can set off on their own to get to their destination faster. Frederic, who’s been living a dream with Catherine for so long, finally sees his luck run out. One friend is killed by friendly fire, and then another abandons them to give up to the nearby German forces. When Frederic does finally get back with the army, he sees that angry Italian soldiers are killing all non-Italians, calling them German spies or charging them with abandoning their posts. To escape his fate, Frederic jumps in the nearby river and rides the current downstream.

Coming out a few miles away, Frederic treks up to the train tracks and jumps a train to Milan, hoping to reunite with Catherine. He has decided to go AWOL and abandon his troop and the war in general. In Milan he finds she has moved on to a new hospital in Stresa. He finds her there, and the two plan an escape to Switzerland. With help from a friend, they cross a border lake and find their way to the Swiss, where they pretend to be husband and wife.

A few months later, Catherine is about to give birth. She and Frederic have been living a comfortable life together, but the peace is about to come to an end. Catherine’s birth ends in tragedy, with the baby being stillborn. Shortly after, the book ends suddenly as Frederic watches Catherine die to internal hemorrhaging.

Obviously for most of the book, I thought the title referred to Frederic giving up his fight in the army and going to live a peaceful life, but I think it takes on more meaning with Frederic losing the love of his life in Catherine. Frederic comes off as a pretty self-absorbed individual; he cares a lot for Catherine but I couldn’t shake the feeling that he only did so for what she provided him. And when his baby was born dead, he shrugged it off and admitted he hated the child for what it did to Catherine. The whole book is written in Hemingway’s short, almost curt style. It lacks the prose of a Faulkner or James novel, but that doesn’t make it any less absorbing. A fantastic read.

Maîtresse, directed by Barbet Schroeder, stars Gérard Depardieu (an early role for him) and Bulle Ogier in a very strange and provocative film. Olivier is a bit of an aimless drifter and petty thief when he runs into Ariane as he is trying to rob her. He is smitten with her at first sight, but is unprepared for her job as a dominatrix. Ariane dresses up in leather and is paid by men to humiliate them. They get sexual pleasure out of it, but she does not, she only does it because she is good at it. Olivier comes into this life with his traditional views of male dominance in relationships, and he isn’t ready for the flip. Ariane herself seems confused at times, sometimes acquiescing to Olivier, and at other times putting him in his place. This film was released in France in 1975 and was hit hard by the UK standards when they tried to release it there in 1976. They cut some of the graphic footage to get all the way to an X rating in 1981. Some of those scenes are hard to watch, definite pain was used and it was not faked during filming. Most certainly left me uncomfortable, both as a man and as a movie watcher. Not sure how I feel about this one, some of the aspects of the story of the relationship were quite good, but when they went for shock factor, I was ready to check out.

After finishing Fantastic Planet, the only thing I could think was, “What the heck did I just watch?” An animated film, it takes place on an alien world where a large, blue people called the Draags keep palm sized humans (which they call Oms) as pets. The Draags live long lives, a week to them is a year to an Om. When a baby Om named Terr is raised by a teenager as her plaything, he gains much of their knowledge, and finally escapes to the “wild oms” to share his new-found insight. When the Draags come around 15 years later for their regular cleansing, to kill a bunch of Oms as population control, Terr and his friends are ready, and escape on rockets to another planet, where a new discovery is awaiting them. It’s a strange film, with unique animation. I’m not sure what to think about it. There are obvious correlations between race relations and power/control/oppression, but with so much going on, including a twist in the end, I think there’s more to ponder for those who wish to delve deeper. Not my cup of tea, but it’s OK.

I cheated on this one. French director Louis Malle made both French and English films, and while this one was filmed in France, it does feature English dialogue. Black Moon is a trippy, Alice in Wonderland sort of tale. A late teen/early 20s woman is driving through the countryside while a very literal war of the sexes is going on, with male troops gunning down woman and female troops beating up men. She falls asleep, and awakes in a bizarre world where she hears the flowers she is laying on screaming, and looks up to see a black unicorn walking away. And it gets only more strange from there. She ends up at a secluded house with an old woman who communicates with her pet rat, naked children herd sheep and pigs on the grounds, and a brother/sister duo who are as peculiar as they come. Filmed by long-time Bergman cinematographer Sven Nyykvist, it plays out like a surrealist dream, with each succeeding scene more out there than the previous. A bizarre but very fun film. I’m not sure it is meant to mean anything, but it is entertaining.

The 1978 film La Cage aux Folles is the first film to come out based on the French play of the same name. It is more popularly known in America as the 90s movie The Birdcage. Laurent (Remi Laurent) is getting married to a girl from an ultra-conservative family, but the couple has to first reign in Laurent’s gay parents, Renato (Ugo Tognazzi in the Robin Williams role) and Albin (Michel Serrault originating Nathan Lane’s part). Renato and Albin run a drag queen bar below their apartment, but agree (begrudgingly for Albin’s part) to go along with the charade to make Laurent happy. Hilarity ensues, and things get worse for our group when Laurent’s estranged birth mother shows up at an inopportune time. A very funny movie, way ahead of its time for 1978 cinema.

In 1973, 60’s sex symbol Brigitte Bardot made here second-to-last film, Don Juan (or if Don Juan Were a Woman), directed by Roger Vadim. She shortly thereafter retired at the age of 39 and stuck to it. I really enjoyed this film, showing Bardot’s character, Jeanne, treating men in an uncaring way that is a total role reversal from what we often see in film. The movie opens with Jeanne visiting her cousin, a priest, and asking him to come to her place that night. He refuses, saying he does not condone her lifestyle, but she pleads, saying she has murdered someone. He goes to her to hear her confession, and she regales him with tales of her exploits. She had a fling with a married man, and when he tried to pull away, she seduced him until he craved her, losing his wife and family in the process. On another man, who treated women as playthings (boasting about the youth of his third wife), Jeanne is able to ridicule him in front of his business partners by going to bed with not him, but his young wife instead. Ultimately, we find out that Jeanne didn’t invite her cousin over for absolution, but instead to corrupt him as well. You have to stay until the very end to find if she gets her comeuppance or not. A bit melodramatic at times, but a very fun film.

The new Lion King film has received middling reviews, but I still wanted to see it, if for nothing else than to relive my childhood. The film is a straight redo of the original cartoon, in fact some scenes seem shot-for-shot the same. I’m sure you’ve all seen it before, so no re-hashing. The computer generated animals are indeed breathtakingly real, and I think that is the only detriment to the film. In this case, very real can be too real. Real lions don’t break out into huge grins or raise eyebrows in skepticism, so they don’t in this movie, and that takes away from some of the wonderment of it all. The songs are all there, the story is there, the humor is just as good (if not better in spots), but it doesn’t have the same kind of magic. Any maybe that’s just because I’m not a kid anymore. Certainly not a bad film, I enjoyed it and will watch it again sometime, but I think for my generation at least, it doesn’t match the original.

I wasn’t going to watch the new Toy Story 4, and only did because it was a double billing with Lion King at the local drive-in. But I’m glad I did. I still think the original trilogy is perfect as it sits, but this is a decent conclusion (assuming they don’t get even greedier and make another). This one picks up with the toys living with Bonnie now, who is going in to kindergarten. Woody is no longer the favorite, as Bonnie usually goes for the female toys like Jessie, but Woody seems fine with his new role. He had a good run with Andy and he is content. Bonnie struggles at school on her first day, but finds joy when she “builds” herself a new toy from a spork and some odds and ends out of the trash can. Forkie becomes her new favorite, but he just wants to return to the trash, which leads to a lot of humor. When Forkie makes a run for it during a family vacation, Woody goes to bring him back, and in doing so, runs in to Bo Peep. Bo was Woody’s love interest in the early Toy Story films, but she was given away years ago and Woody thought her lost. She’s been doing well as a solo toy all these years, without a kid. Woody enlists her help to get Forkie back to Bonnie, and it doing so, has to face a decision on what he wants for his own life. If you cried at the end of Toy Story 3, you probably will again at this one. I still stand by my initial statement, but if the first three films are a perfect story, then the new one is a proper epilogue.

The Upside stars Bryan Cranston and Kevin Hart and is about a rich, older man confined to a wheel chair who hires an ex-con to be his live-in caregiver. Philip was left paralyzed from the neck down after an accident, and has just survived a suicide attempt, saved by his professional assistant despite a DNR order he had in place. She insists on a new caregiver to stay with Philip night and day, and despite her protests, Philip likes Dell. The film follows their unlikely relationship. There is some heart, and a whole lot of humor, but I can’t help but feel the film felt a bit “thin.” Cranston is a phenomenal actor and he is great here again, but it isn’t enough. The movie hits on all the right spots, and some really funny moments were laugh-out-loud good, but it is chuck full of clichés. It also felt too safe, and I feel like they could have taken some risks that would have made for a better picture. A pleasant enough comedy, but only good enough for a single viewing.

I’ve been waiting to see Ramen Shop for quite awhile; it’s been on my list since I first heard about it in 2017. I have to say the wait was worth it. A Japanese film, it is about a young man in Japan who works for his dad in a ramen shop, serving delicious food. His mother, originally from Singapore, is long dead. When his father also dies, Masato sets out to Singapore to find his mother’s estranged family. What follows is a beautiful film about healing past hurts and a family coming together after too long apart. There are still long-felt pains in Singapore from when the country was occupied by Japan, and Masato’s parents’ marriage was not accepted at the time. Masato finds his uncle first, who openly welcomes him in, but his grandmother is not so easy to win over. This is a deliberate film, moving at the pace of a slow preparation of a meal (and many meals are shown in the cooker’s themed movie!), but the end is extremely rewarding, as is the beautiful journey to the denouement.

Captive State has received some rough reviews, but honestly it isn’t all that bad. It starts in present day, showing how an alien race came and quickly overpowered the governments across the globe, until all bowed down and relinquished power. Jumping ahead 9 years, the aliens are called “the legislators” since they make all the rules, and they control the police force as well. Insurgents or dissenters are killed or rounded up and sent off world for labor. Of course like many alien invasion films, they are here for our resources, and have set up walled-off zones in most major cities around the world, and are digging down into the earth. The film follows a resistance movement, and the police force hunting them. The story of the underground insurgents is quite good and very gripping; their unseen ways of communicating with each other paints a stark picture of a people under constant surveillance, but the movie has plenty of shortcomings. The camerawork is really quite bad, there are some gaping plot holes here and there, and the direction seems amateurish too (though director Rupert Wyatt has some good films under his belt like Rise of the Planet of the Apes and The Gambler). Not great, but definitely not as bad as the reviews would have you believe, and a solid diversion for fans of the genre.

How about a series of films by the great Ingmar Bergman, released in the 1950’s? Secrets of Women (sometimes known as Waiting Women) isn’t about a specific person per se, but follows a group of women at a summer cottage as they tell stories to each other, while awaiting the return of their husbands. Rakel tells about her affair one day, and how her husband found out and nearly killed himself over it. Marta tells of her adventures when she was younger and free-spirited, afraid to settle down until she finally ended up pregnant, and finally Karin relates about her and her husband ending up stuck in an elevator over night one evening, and sharing secrets with each other that they never could before in their daily lives. All are fascinating looks at humanity in true Bergman style, though as a total film, I’m not sure it is all that memorable. Still, great acting by several Bergman regulars and certainly not a bad film.

Sawdust and Tinsel is often noted as a film about the battle of the sexes, but I think there’s a lot more going on than just that. It follows a traveling circus and in particular, its leader Albert and his inner circle. The troupe is getting ready to visit a town where Albert’s estranged wife and kids live, whom he hasn’t seen in three years. He is nervous and excited, but his mistress, Anne, the horserider in the circus, is fearful that Albert will leave her to return to his wife. While Albert goes to see his wife, Anne goes to see a local good-looking actor, and both have very different outcomes than what they wanted. Depressed, Albert returns to the circus and confronts Anne, just before their show that night. At the show, Anne’s fling shows up and fights dirty to subdue Albert in front of everyone. The conclusion is gut wrenching, but leaves hope for a future together. This film does have struggle of man vs woman for power, but it also shows people hitting their limits and finding the strength to go on through their friends. The sets and camerawork are amazing (this is Bergman’s first film with renowned cinematographer Sven Nykvist, a relationship that would continue through the next couple decades) and the acting from all, and especially Harriet Andersson as Anne, is the best you’ll find.

Bergman made few comedies in his prolific career, but one is A Lesson in Love, which he probably made in response to the dark Sawdust and Tinsel the previous year. The film is about a man, David (Gunnar Bjornstrand), cheating on his wife with a young woman. But when he finds that his wife is also cheating on him, by visiting a lover in Copenhagen, he boards a train to go there. On the train he shares a car with a man and woman, and bets the man that he can kiss the girl before the train arrives. Of course, the girl ends up being his wife, Marianne (Eva Dahlbeck). It turns out she is having an affair with an old flame name Carl-Adam, the man who she was engaged to before David intervened. The married couple share some memories of their life and kids during the rest of the ride, but the ending is just ambiguous enough to not know who Marianne ends up with at the finale. An average enough film, for my tastes Bergman doesn’t handle comedy as well as he does psychoanalytical dramas, but still, it mostly hits at the right moments.

Dreams is the rare dud from Bergman. Even his films that I don’t think are that good, I can still find moments of enjoyment, but this one is a bore. It is about 2 women, a successful owner of a model agency, and one of her employees. Susanne has power and wealth, but she can’t enjoy her personal success because she is obsessed with an ex boyfriend Henrik, whom she recently dumped when she found out he is married, but whom she still misses. Doris is torn between putting her career as a model or her life with her fiance first. When Susanne takes the crew to Gothenburg, ostensibly for a day shoot but really to beg for Henrik to come back to her, each woman has a day that will set their lives on the right path. Even Bergman regulars Eva Dahlbeck, Harriet Andersson, and Gunnar Bjornstrand can’t help this tedious film. Unfortunately it is just a shallow movie, with none of the deeper elements that Bergman usually gives us.

Brink of Life came in 1958, after Bergman had finally “hit it big” with The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries the previous year. This movie is tremendous. It takes place in a women’s recovery ward in a hospital, and follows three women. Cecilia has just had a miscarriage at the end of her first trimester, Stina is long overdue and waiting for labor to start any day, and the young Hjordis has been admitted for premature bleeding. Cecilia is in physical and mental anguish; she wanted a baby more than anything but is convinced she lost it because her husband did not want it. Stina can’t wait to have her first baby and is on cloud 9. Hjordis, unbeknownst to the nurses, tried to force a miscarriage, but is nearly recovered and about to be discharged. Over the course of 24 hours, we get to know these 3 as they get to know each other. They develop a bond that (hopefully) leads to healing and hope for all three. I loved this movie, and it cemented Bergman in my mind as one of my favorites.

Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is a fascinating short book, or novella, even more so because it is light on plot, and even lighter on substance, but it is inarguably engrossing. Released in 1899 and the loose inspiration for the film Apocalypse Now, it reads as a story told by Conrad’s favorite explorer and adventurer, Marlow. Marlow is telling his listeners about a time he traveled up the Congo River deep into Africa, following a legend of a man named Kurtz.

Marlow begins with how he was sent there in the first place, but the book really gets going when he arrives at the “Outer Station.” He begins hearing rumors of a man who has a voice that can sway all people into doing what he wants, even the local “savages” and cannibals. There are tales that this man is sending in more ivory (the extremely valuable reason the British are in the area at all) than all of the others combined. Marlow is intrigued but doesn’t put much faith into legends. But as his trek carries him to the Central Station, and then finally to the Inner Station, Marlow begins to believe everything he has heard. When Marlow finally meets Kurtz, who is near death from some unknown disease, he finds that the natives not only respect him, but downright revere him. It is only some of the other English that are jealous and despising towards Kurtz, especially the Manager who wants a cut of the money Kurtz has been bringing in, or at least the knowledge of where Kurtz is finding his ivory.

Kurtz dies shortly after being found by Marlow, and his final, anguish-ridden words are simply, “The horror! The horror!” Marlow returns with the news back to England. There, the company also just wants info, hoping that Kurtz passed along something before his death. But Marlow either has no information, or is unwilling to enlighten them. When Marlow visits Kurtz’s fiancee, she asks what his final words were, and Marlow tells her it was her name.

This book lives up to its name. From the opening sentences, and progressively through each page, it gets darker and more foreboding. Conrad does an amazing job of describing the murky fog, the agitated steamboat workers, and the sense of dread as the boat works its way slowly up the river. And it is extremely ambiguous, which in this instance, is not a bad thing. At the conclusion, we don’t know how Kurtz did what he did (other than his power of persuasion). Other evils that are hinted at being attributed to Kurtz, like heads on a stake at the Inner Station, and whispers that Kurtz’s methods are “unsound,” are never explored, but definitely add to the sense of trepidation. Really enjoyed the 2 books of Conrad’s that I’ve read on this trip (the other being Lord Jim).

The Heiresses is just interesting enough to be a step above watching paint dry. To say this one moves slowly is an understatement, but it has elements that the critics eat up, thus its big rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It follows Chela, a just-past-middle-age woman who comes from money, but who is now fallen on hard times. She and her long-time girlfriend, Chiquita, are selling off household furniture and crystal to pay the bills, but Chiquita is arrested for the debts and sent to jail for a couple months. Chela has relied on Chiquita to make all the decisions for years, and now is forced to take care of herself. She starts driving her elderly friends around for cash, and in doing so, meets a young, attractive, carefree woman named Angy. Chela begins truly living her life for the first time in decades. It’s an art film all the way, which is generally my cup of tea, but perhaps I just wasn’t in the mood today.

Fighting With My Family, on the other hand, has less art and more fun. The previews I saw for this film before it came out hyped up the laughs and I thought maybe it was a straight-forward comedy. It is undoubtedly funny, but it is much more than that too. Based on a true story, it follows the Bevis family in Norwich, England, and specifically, youngest daughter Saraya. The Bevis’ are a family of wrestlers, with the mom and dad running a small wrestling club in their hometown. Saraya and her brother Zak have dreams of making it big and becoming WWE stars in the USA, but when they get their chance in an audition, only Saraya is picked to train and move further in the audition process. Depressed, Zak goes back to England, while Saraya continues working in the high-stress world of wrestling hopefuls. The film leans hard towards sentimentality but isn’t entirely heavy handed, and the acting by all involved (including some familiar faces) is top notch. Very entertaining movie.

Shazam! is good, I’d say much better than the average DC film, but it still didn’t blow me away like Marvel is often able to do in their film series. This one takes place in the same universe as DC’s Batman and Superman films, but features a lesser known superhero. Billy is a teenager who has drifted from foster home to foster home, but is always searching for his birth mother. He is given superpowers by a desperate wizard who knows a great evil will be unleashed soon, and all Billy needs to do to access his powers is yell out “Shazam!” In doing so, his body morphs into a big muscular man who has all kinds of powers from super speed, to flight, to the ability to shoot lightning from his fingertips. While Billy is coming to terms with his new powers, he is also facing his personal struggles in his new foster home, bullies at school, and a powerful supervillain who wants to ad Billy’s powers to his own. Lots of funny sequences involving Billy learning his new powers with his one friend in the world, but the ending really started to drag, with the final fight scenes seeming to go on way too long. Still, not a bad superhero flick.

Transit is as much of a gut punch as you’re going to get from a quiet, independent film. It is a German film, based on a book that was written and took place during World War II, but the film has shifted its time frame to today. Instead of an occupying Nazi army, the governments are the increasingly nationalist ones currently spreading throughout the world. Georg is a German citizen living and working in France, but he needs to get out before being rounded up and deported. He has paperwork for a writer named Weidel, who is just famous enough to maybe help him leave France before the government closes all ports. Visas and travel documents are getting hard to come by, and even stop-overs in other countries are hard to get, as those countries don’t want to risk letting foreigners in who may not leave. But when Georg gets to Weidel’s apartment, he finds that he has just committed suicide, and the landowner has used connections to dump the body anonymously so as to avoid the police’s attention. Georg heads for the port city of Marseille, where the occupying police have not yet reached. Attempting to inform the Mexican consulate there that Weidel is dead, they think that Georg IS Weidel. Seeing an opportunity to get himself out of the country, Weidel plays along. A wrench pops up though when he meets a girl he is instantly smitten with, and she refuses to leave France without her estranged husband, who just so happens to be the missing Weidel. A deep and emotional story, directed by one of the best current German directors, Christian Petzold, and starring two great actors, Franz Rogowski and Paula Beer (who has been in several films I’ve seen lately, including Frantz and Never Look Away).

Alita: Battle Angel received more attention for the big eyes of its lead actress (computer enhanced Rosa Salazar) than its plot, which is never a good thing, but we all know my love of future dystopian films. This film takes place in a future where an intergalactic war (referred to as “the Fall”) between Earth and colonies on Mars has left most of our planet as a junkyard. 300 years later, a single floating city called Zalem houses all of the elite, whereas the rest of the population fights over the scraps on the ground. Technology is still advanced, but mostly just from the leftovers of the previous generations, as these days people can only re-use and re-purpose existing tech. In the rough society, most humans have cybernetic arms and/or legs, and Dr Dyson (played by Christoph Waltz) is a man who specializes in attaching these robotic limbs to those who need them. He finds a cast-off cyborg in a pre-war junk heap and is able to resurrect her, naming her Alita. Alita has no memory of her past, but in battle, her instincts as a soldier in the war take over, and she is lethal. She falls for a local human named Hugo, who unbeknownst to her, is attacking people and night and ripping off their cybernetic limbs to sell on the black market, in hopes of raising enough money to bribe his way to Zalem. Though the movie has a little too much of a young adult flare (some cheesy dialogue, a forced romance, etc.), I still really enjoyed it. The visuals are stunning, the battle scenes are frenetic but well made, and the plot, while not all that deep, is engaging. While the film did just OK at the theater (400 million on a 170 million budget), it probably didn’t do well enough to get the sequel, that was so obviously set up, made. But even on its own, a fun film.

A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh is one of the few children’s books to make my list. Pooh Bear is one of the most recognizable and cherished characters in history, and is certainly a favorite of mine. The books and movies are heart-warming, but teach good lessons, and Pooh and his friends always bring a smile to my face.

This is my first time reading the first book, the one that started it all in 1926, since I was a child myself. Most of the stories I still remember from heart, like Pooh riding a balloon up to a bee hive to steal honey, Pooh getting stuck in Rabbit’s hole after eating too much, Eyeore losing his tale, and Pooh and Piglet setting a trap for a Hefalump. The stories have a certain innocence of youth that you don’t find very much anymore, in either books or movies for kids, and make me think of simpler times. I continue to enjoy Pooh movies to this day, like 2017’s Goodbye Christopher Robin and 2018’s Christopher Robin. I encourage everyone to go out and read this book again, it brings back your childhood, and you can’t help but smile at Pooh Bear’s adventures.