Cinema Cat

    Murder on the Orient Express Kenneth Branagh, Director   Overheard during Previews of Coming Attractions:  “Well, I like Liam Neeson , but that looks stupid.” We feel ya, lady seated in the next row back.  We like Kenneth Branagh , and Johnny Depp , and Judi Dench , and Willem Dafoe , and Michelle Pfeiffer , and Penelope Cruz (well, sorta), and Josh Gad and Derek Jacobi …but this movie is stupid. OK.  Maybe we’re out of line to say such a thing about this lush production full of all these beautiful people.  There were at least a couple of noteworthy elements to this 70mm spectacle:  1. Branagh’s mesmerizing mustache and 2. that super cool avalanche. It probably is unjust to impugn a film when you’re not the intended audience.  And there was fair warning.  We knew going in that it was an Agatha Christie murder mystery; that Hercule Poirot would treat us like Perry Mason treated our mothers back in...

Human Flow Ai Weiwei, Director 5 0ut of 6 Ai Weiwei , artist and activist, made the film, Human Flow, to call attention to a humanitarian crisis across the globe – that of refugees.  He traveled to 23 countries documenting the plight of throngs of people – hundreds of thousands; millions – forced to flee their homelands because of the violence of war, religious persecution, drought, plague of disease and every other creator of misery known to man. We get the impression early on that Ai kept a written journal along with his video journal, and somewhere late in the process, maybe in post-production, the pages of the journal were torn from their binding and scattered in the wind.  He collected them all and reassembled them with little concern for chronology, context, or linear thinking.  He’s an artist , after all. His product is beautiful in so many aspects.  Breathtaking images of sunsets, seas, and the mesmerizin...

The Florida Project Willem Dafoe Brooklynn Prince Valeria Cotto Bria Vinaite Sean Baker, Director  Right out of the chute, The Florida Project thrusts us back into the free-wheeling summer vacations and that big-world-no-worries life that children lead.  Remember when school let out, and June, July, and August stretched to the horizon like Route 66 across New Mexico?  So we freely surrender to Sean Baker , the striking cotton candy colors of Florida, and these precocious kids’ point of view.  Moonee (Brooklynn Prince), Jancey (Valeria Cotto), and Scooty (Christopher Rivera) travel at will among the brightly-painted yet seedy residence motels just outside of – and galaxies away from  – Walt Disney World.  The kids’ shenanigans seem mostly child-like and harmless until a seeping realization forms in the periphery:  While this sense of freedom and unlimited time seem familiar, this is not a replay of the innocen...

  Suburbicon Matt Damon Julianne Moore George Clooney, Director  What’s not to like here?  MattDamon ?  Julianne Moore ?!  Cohen Brothers ?!!  George Flippin’ Clooney !!!  Come on!  Who could ask for anything more? Our setting:  Suburbicon , 1950-something, a planned community of cookie-cutter homes and families promoted as ‘diverse’ since each white family of four hails from various locales around the country.  Then, Mailman Henry delivers letters to a new family in the neighborhood, and learns posthaste (sorry) that the Mayers are not white.  Word spreads and the pump is primed for…what? Quirky Cohen Brothers upset and shenanigans? But wait!  Cut to the Lodge home, the next block over, where stuff has gone seriously awry.  Bad men have taken over, men who most certainly do not belong in Suburbicon.  Yet here they are with their unseemly personas, perpetrating something dangerous and...

Marshall (2017) Chadwick Boseman Josh Gad Reginald Hudlin, Director How did Thurgood Marshall get to be Thurgood Marshall ?  The movie which bears his name opens at a point in his life when he’s already successful, having founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ’s Legal Defense and Education Fund – when he was 32!  By this time he had argued and won  cases before the Maryland Supreme Court and the United States Supreme Court. “I’ll take care of the big picture,” Marshall (played by Chadwick Boseman ) tells his confused and struggling conscripted co-counsel Sam Friedman (played by Josh Gad ) who must learn the nitty gritty of defending a black man, Joseph Spell (played by Sterling K.Brown ), accused of raping a white socialite (played by Kate Hudson ), in a racist system that almost certainly guaranteed failure. Marshall knew the importance of this milestone case, but he never lost sight of his bigger, ...

Photo: Little White Lies See this movie. But first:  Did you see the original Blade Runner?  You should see it.  It has  all the elements – an intriguing story, riveting characters, powerful visuals, a haunting soundtrack – that keep a movie  alive for generations. No worries though.  You don’t have to have seen Blade Runner to ‘get’ BR 2049 .  Villenueve gives you a quick bit of context in text at the opening of the movie, kind of like Star Wars’ scrolling narrative, “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…” but a lot gloomier ,and ‘way more ominous. From that moment forward, we are drawn into a time and place not so distant from here and now, and every bit as real and engrossing.  We have a sense of being seated behind the eyes of Agent K ( Ryan Gosling ) and soon we experience his dark world and his darker mission as a Blade Runner:  “Retiring” Replicants, those almost-but-not-quite-human beings that do the bidding of wh...