by Richard Subber | Sep 20, 2026 | History, Theater and play reviews, World history
from the heart, a patriot
Movie review:
Darkest Hour
Gary Oldman was 59 years old when he won an Oscar (Best Actor) for giving us a completely believable Winston Churchill who decided in June 1940 to fight Hitler instead of settling for a completely risky peace agreement.
Darkest Hour (2019, rated PG-13, 125 minutes) is a gem. Oldman is Churchill: overweight, jowly, devotee of long cigars and whiskey, imperious, meekly in love with Clementine (he called her “Clemmie,” she called him “Pig”), a flamboyant patriot, and wartime leader.
Churchill was a career politician, of course, and Oldman deftly portrays his Machiavellian strengths and weaknesses.
Churchill was an aristocratic patriot in the core of his being.
Less than a month after he became prime minister, Churchill energized Parliament:
“We shall defend our island…we shall fight on the beaches…on the landing grounds…in the fields…in the streets…in the hills…we shall never surrender.”
Darkest Hour is Churchill’s (Oldman’s) bright triumph.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Sea Runners
…it informs, it does not soar…
by Ivan Doig
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In high meadows: poems abide with 60 free verse poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Aug 23, 2026 | Theater and play reviews
sure, but…
Movie review:
Doubt
If certainty is your thing, this just isn’t the movie for you.
If you’re willing to share the numbing bleakness of a wish for certainty that gets chased by doubts, the little ones and the big ones, then Doubt is the ticket.
Meryl Streep is the hard-charging Sister Aloysius who’s all too ready to nail the apparent child-abusing priest in her school. Philip Seymour Hoffman is Father Flynn, who acts and talks guilty and innocent in scene after scene. Amy Adams is Sister James, who wants to believe him even though she personally experiences some of the putative evidence against him.
Doubt (2008, rated PG-13, 104 minutes) offers dramatic potency, high-class personality clashes, and deep, deep ambiguity in the final scenes that will not satisfy you, but will tie your emotions in a knot.
There’s no doubt about that.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Scarlet Letter
the beating hearts…by Nathaniel Hawthorne
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In other words: Poems for your eyes and ears with 64 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Jul 26, 2026 | Theater and play reviews
running in the sea breeze…
Movie review:
Albert Nobbs
It’s an obvious story line, and you can sorta guess how Albert Nobbs (2011, rated R, 113 minutes) will end.
Glenn Close rather convincingly plays a woman who passes for a man (“Albert Nobbs”) in a posh hotel in late 19th century Ireland where appearances matter. She makes a life.
She meets Janet McTeer who, as “Hubert Page,” treads a similar path and who, like “Albert,” tries to fool herself about her prospects for happiness.
There are caricature secondary characters, an exaggerated unlikable hotel owner, and an ill-fated two-dimensional love affair.
There is a brief rapturous scene at the seashore where “Albert” and “Hubert” let their woman selves run in the breezes.
The best moments make Albert Nobbs watchable.
Disconnect (I’m avoiding a spoiler alert): the ending is not about “Albert Nobbs.” It’s sweet. It’s Nobbsian. It’s other.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
The “dime novels” in the Civil War
Think “blood-and-thunder”…
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As with another eye: Poems of exactitude with 55 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Jun 28, 2026 | Theater and play reviews
weeping in silence…
Movie review:
Chinatown
Chinatown is a see-it-again confirmation of the finality of sadness that can’t be undone.
Jack Nicholson is the in-your-face private detective, Jake Gittes, and Faye Dunaway is Evelyn Mulwray, the desperately unhappy wife-mother who seems to be everybody’s victim—both of them in Oscar-nominee performances.
Chinatown (1974, rated R, 130 minutes) mostly doesn’t take place in Chinatown—the story could happen anywhere. There is enough of intrigue, and enough of human failing, and enough of human courage. There is ambition, and yearning, and avarice, and benevolence, and hints of love.
It is a tantalizing story about people you don’t want to be, and people you hope may achieve better lives, and people who must finally face the reality of life on the wrong track.
At the end you will be weeping in silence.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
Book review: “The Gentle Boy”
The Puritans had a dark side…
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Above all: Poems of dawn and more with 74 free verse poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | May 31, 2026 | Human Nature, Theater and play reviews
many splendored smiles…
Movie review:
Carol
starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara
Cate Blanchett has a many-splendored smile. You see several of them in Carol (2015, rated R, 118 minutes).
Blanchett’s smile is deep, almost inexplicably alluring, enduring, and profoundly feminine. Sexy? You decide.
Rooney Mara is an almost new pair of eyes for me (think The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). She uses her face like Blanchett does: her face exalts her feelings, you wouldn’t mind seeing it on a stadium-size screen.
Carol is a 1950s-era exploration of how two ladies can fall in love and then wander in their lives until they figure out what love means. Carol (Blanchett) discovers Therese (Mara)—or is it the other way?—and they can’t escape living their previous lives while they mature into their new life together.
The movie is based on the novel The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
The “dime novels” in the Civil War
Think “blood-and-thunder”…
–
Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups with 59 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | May 5, 2026 | Human Nature, Theater and play reviews
they figured it out…
Movie review:
An Officer and a Gentleman
This is a girl-gets-boy, boy-gets-girl kind of movie, with bells on.
Don’t waste a lot of time being thrilled and appalled by the harsh antics of basic military training—Louis Gossett Jr. won an Oscar for being the tough guy Sgt. Foley, but he is really background for Richard Gere slowly becoming an adult as the wannabe Navy pilot, Zack.
Zack almost without knowing it falls in love with Paula (Debra Winger), a townie who comes to need Zack in her life.
An Officer and a Gentleman (1982, rated R, 124 minutes) is a love story hiding in a coming-of-age movie about a boy and girl who finally figure out how to walk off together.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
Book review: “The Gentle Boy”
The Puritans had a dark side…
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
–
As with another eye: Poems of exactitude with 55 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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