What Are We Watching in July????

Don't even try to change the channel...just tell us what you've been watching

Movie
The Deep End - (2001)

When a woman's eldest son's lover washes up on the beachfront in front of their house, she does the only thing an unflinchingly devoted mother could: she hides the body to protect her son. Now unexpectedly, in the aftermath of this desperate act, emerges Alek Spera, who knows about the death and the secret life of her son. But what begins as a riveting cat-and-mouse game soon turns into a haunting love story with self-sacrifice at its center.

The description doesn't exactly tell the plot right. I loved the character played by Alek Spera. It was almost agonizing seeing the mother digging herself deeper and deeper. Never the less it was a story that kept you watching. The "strong sex scene" it warns about is extremely short and can be easily skipped.

Taking a look at the list of films leaving Netflix this month. I didn't see Mary and the Witch's Flower, but I believe there was a note on its opening page that it was going July 17. Catch it if you can; sort of a variation of Spirited Away, but without the overflow of images in the Miyazaki pic; also some relation to The Island of Dr. Moreau in its many versions. Has the Studio Ghibli "look" but I believe a different studio. I watched the dubbed English language version, with Ruby Barnhill as Mary, Kate Winslet as Madame Mumblechook, Jim Broadbent as (the mad) Doctor Dee. The magic flower leads Mary to a witch's broomstick that takes her to an alternate world run by witches, and the finishing academy of Madame Mumblechook. Excellent anime style animation.

Movie & Book


5/5
Elizabeth Is Missing (2020)

A woman suffering from dementia tries to convince some one that her friend Elizabeth is missing. No one believes her and she begins to doubt herself but knows that she is right.

I read the book by the same title by Elizabeth Healy when it first came out in 2014. The movie was almost as heartbreaking as the book. Well done...both the book and the movie.

>4 Carol420: I enjoyed that film!

>5 JulieLill: I loved the book also.

Hollywood entertainments!

Via HBO: The Little Things (2021). Director/Screenplay: John Lee Hancock. By chance a deputy sheriff for a county outside LA, Joe “Deak” Deacon (Denzel Washington) is delivering some evidence for an LA crime to his former station in LA where he was a detective sergeant. He tags along with his replacement, Jim Baxter (Rami Malek) to a murder scene. Deak believes the MO resembles one of a series of serial murders he worked on when he was a detective where the culprit was never determined. Together Baxter & Deak focus on a suspect, Sparma (Jared Leto). The script was written some time ago, and the old school police procedures with the suspect would, hopefully, be considered pretty outrageous today – the setting, perhaps intentionally, takes place in the past, as if the story does not reflect on modern police work. The film really goes off the rails when Baxter lets Sparma persuade him to accompany the chief suspect (i.e. Sparma) to the burial site of his earlier victims … alone! The script intends to bring out the ambiguity of police handling of suspects, but it requires a ridiculous turn to make its point.

Via Epix. Love and Monsters (2020). Director, Michael Matthews. Screenplay, Brian Duffield & Mathew Robinson. Civilization collapses when a meteor transforms the earth’s critters into monsters. A young man, Joel (Dylan O’Brien) is separated from his girlfriend Aimee (Jessica Henwick), and he ends up in an underground bunker with a handful of survivors. He manages to contact his girlfriend through shortwave communication. Aimee is living in another survivor community on the California coast, about a 100 miles away from his bunker. He decides to leave the bunker & search for Aimee. Joel is well-liked by the other survivors, but he’s considered to be colossally inept & probably a danger to the group, so they don’t try to dissuade him. Most of the movie is about his journey, where he encounters various types of critter-monsters; he’s helped by a survivalist (Michael Rooker) & a little girl, Minnow (Ariana Greenblatt). Something of a science fiction version of stories like Hans Christian Andersen’s “Clever Hans,” the simple-minded youngest son who goes journeying and outsmarts various evil entities. Lots of fun, & neat monsters who look like illustrations from children’s books.

HBO again. Wonder Woman 1984 aka WW84 (2020). Director & story, Patty Jenkins. Jenkins helmed the successful initial WW. Nice, largely dialog free opening with WW as a child on the island of Amazons, in a version of their Olympics. Then we’re in 1984, where WW’s alter ego, Diana Prince (Gal Gadot), is a scholar at the Smithsonian (in the original movie she was a French scholar; she’s good at languages) & looking not a day older. How this works isn’t explained. She welcomes a new scholar, Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig); rather frumpy w/glasses natch (female version of Clever Hans, where she seems to be ignored; unlike Hans, she has low self-esteem). The MacGuffin is a magic artefact, part of a hoard of illegal antiquities stolen from a shop at a mall which WW breaks up. The FBI asks Minerva to assess monetary value to the stolen objects. It turns out the artefact grants wishes, but the grantee is expected to give something of value in exchange. Diana makes a silent wish, which results in the sort of resurrection of Steve Trevor (killed in the earlier movie). Barbara’s wish is to be strong & glamorous like her idol Diana Prince. But the master mind behind the robbery is a Ponzi-scheme con-man, Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal), whose wish is to become the wish-granting artefact, part of his larger aim to rule the world. This film borrows a bit from the W.W. Jacobs horror tale “The Monkey’s Paw.” “WW” for Jacobs & Diana Prince? Coincidence? I don’t think so! Jenkins makes the story something of a comedy, as everyone’s wishes go awry and chaos ensues. On the plus side, Wonder Woman learns how to fly.

Movie:

Let Him Go (2020
A retired sheriff, (Kevin Costner), and his wife, grieving over the death of their son, set out to find their only grandson.
5/5

It was based on the book by the same title by Larry Watson published in 2003. Set in Montana and North Dakota there is some of the most beautiful scenery you could ever ask for. I liked the idea and the plot of the story and hoped that this wonderful couple were going to get their grandson out of the awful family that their daughter-in-law married into and became stuck. It didn't have a very good ending but it was certainly worth of the hour and 50 minutes to watch it.

Movie:
Fear of Rain (2021)
3/5

A girl living with schizophrenia struggles with terrifying hallucinations as she begins to suspect her neighbor has kidnapped a child. The only person who believes her is Caleb -a boy she isn't even sure exists.

Not only wasn't Rain sure of what was real and what wasn't...neither was the viewer. I really liked the character of Caleb more than anyone else in the film. There was times that it was just too confusing and tended to lose any ground of reality that it had gained. I usually absolutely love psychological thrillers, but this one just fell a little short for me. I'm glad the DVD belonged to the library and not bought by yours truly.

Freaky
A young girl somehow swaps bodies with a serial killer. I don't usually like this genre but I thought they pulled it off and I enjoyed it.

Nobody
"A bystander who intervenes to help a woman being harassed by a group of men becomes the target of a vengeful drug lord". From IMDB This was another odd film but I enjoyed it and my husband didn't even fall asleep through it!

Movie"



High Crimes (2002)
5/5

A happily married, successful lawyer (Ashley Judd) is shocked to learn that her husband (Jim Caviezel) has a hidden past as a classified military operative, and is accused of committing a heinous war crime. As she prepares to defend her husband in a top-secret military court, where none of the rules she knows so well apply, she gets help from a wild card (Morgan Freeman) -- a former military attorney who doesn't play by anyone's rules. Based on Joseph Finder's book by the same name.

This is the third or fourth time I've watched this one. It has an unexpected ending but not one that I particularly wanted.

Disturbia (2007)
4/5

A teen living under house arrest becomes convinced his neighbor is a serial killer.

This particular version was very well done. Seems it was fashioned after Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window. The acting was fairly good and the characters were just okay...but you have to remember that it IS a teen thriller... but a good choice if you're looking for something to kill an afternoon or evening.

Defending Jacob (2020)
5/5

Andy Barber has been an assistant district attorney in his suburban Massachusetts county for more than twenty years. He is respected in his community, tenacious in the courtroom, and happy at home with his wife, Laurie, and son, Jacob. But when a shocking crime shatters their New England town, Andy is blindsided by what happens next: His fourteen-year-old son is charged with the murder of a fellow student. Every parental instinct Andy has rallies to protect his boy. Jacob insists that he is innocent, and Andy believes him. Andy must. He's his father. But as damning facts and shocking revelations surface, as a marriage threatens to crumble and the trial intensifies, as the crisis reveals how little a father knows about his son, Andy will face a trial of his own - between loyalty and justice, between truth and allegation, between a past he's tried to bury and a future he cannot conceive.

A television miniseries based on the 2012 novel of the same name by William Landay. I loved the book even though it was one of the disturbing things I have ever read...especially the ending. The book as a TV series is a bit of a stretch since the first season...which I watched...leaves a lot of the middle and the ending of the book out to set the scene for a 2nd season which I understands has very little to do with the book. The first season is pretty good if you haven't yet read the book or if you can try and ignore what isn't shown but you know is eventually coming. It's a mixture of courtroom drama, murder mystery, and psychological thriller.

Tokyo Olympiad (1964). 2 hr. 50 min. Color, sound, aspect ratio 2:39:1. Director & Japanese commentary by Kon Ichikawa. Film editing: Tatsui Nakashizu. Cinematography: Kazuo Miyagawa et al. Music: Toshiro Mayazumi. Sound: Ishiro Hoshi.

I saw this with my mother the year it came out, or the year after. Haven’t seen it again until TCM screened it because of the upcoming Olympics. Probably the best sports documentary I’ve ever seen, beautifully photographed, noteworthy sound close-ups (e.g. the flags of participating countries flapping in the wind; the sound of racing bicycles), & the music wasn’t overdone. Aspect ratio well suited for modern flat screens, unlike other Olympic docs. Some of the IMDB info might be suspect, since it refers to the English dubbed version. Although Ichikawa wrote the Japanese commentary, TCM did not indicate who was actually reading the Japanese original through the film. TCM showed a restored 35 mm print in Japanese with English subtitles.

The first half seems to focus more on competitions, including two terrific contributions by Bob Hayes in 100 meters & in the last relay. Second half – got the impression that the director had too much footage to present as narrative (commentary throughout was not overdone), saving one story line for the concluding marathon, with the astonishing win by the Ethiopian runner Abebe Bekilla, who seemed to have arrived at the finish line 10 minutes or so before the second and third place runners (he broke the world & Olympic records for the 20 kilometer run). The weather was Japan at its most humid, & throughout the race runners were collapsing and being carried off by ambulances, with the last runner doggedly running to the end after the sun was setting, but cheered on by the crowd. The highlight of the first half might have been the pole vault duel between the 2 exhausted finalists, American & Russian that lasted until 10 PM – they tried again and again to get over without knocking over the crossbar, with the American finally winning.

But in the second half, we are only shown black and white stills & brief clips of the pentathlon & fencing, maybe the one because it involves so many different skills, while the latter is difficult to show scoring. Another sport difficult to score was parallel bars & artistic gymnastic dancing – just showed the best of it with beautiful photography, and close-up sound to give some idea of the effort involved. Throughout, unsurprisingly, a bit more focus on Japanese contestants, e.g. the last set of Russia-Japan women’s volleyball final. Women’s competition got significant time, both in track and swimming, pretty good for 1964. As I watched the African-American participants, it was jarring to remember that this was during the height of segregation in the U.S.

This was the 18th Olympic games, the first in Asia. Peace & fraternity boilerplate at beginning & end (with nice fireworks, & parades of participants from different countries before a packed stadium). In the first Olympics after WWII in London Japan was not allowed to participate, & it was still a little weird seeing the representatives of countries that were at war with each other & Japan not that long ago parading & competing in Tokyo. I figure many of the young participants were born during or shortly after WWII. I didn’t see a China delegation in the parades, so there was doubtless still some animus, though Taiwan participated. Russian-U.S. Cold War was going on too.

Ichikawa was one of the great Japanese directors, best known for Fires on the Plain, Burmese Harp (the one from ’55, which was pretty shattering when I saw it; Ichikawa re-made it in the 80’s apparently), and The Makioka Sisters.

I also DVR’d 2 Eric Rohmer films, but I’m not sure I’ll write about them, both because I’m busy & because my Samsung TV is starting to die.

The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse (1938)
Edgar G. Robinson plays the title character who infiltrates and takes over a group of thieves (which includes Humphrey Bogart) to do research on criminals. Unfortunately, things don't turn out well for him. I enjoyed this film.

Watched on TV a fascinating two hour documentary about Ernest Hemingway so looking forward to part two.

>16 aussieh: Is that the PBS show one on him- been trying to get a copy of that one!

The Wolf of Snow Hollow (2020)
Comedy, Horror, Thriller

"Terror grips a small mountain town as bodies are discovered after each full moon. Losing sleep, raising a teenage daughter, and caring for his ailing father, officer Marshall struggles to remind himself there's no such thing as werewolves." From IMDB

I am not a big horror fan but I enjoyed this film!

>18 JulieLill: I do like horror so I moved it up to the top of my Netflix movies.

.17 Julie Hill

Yes PBS the main narrator is Peter Coyote