by Richard Subber | Jan 30, 2024 | Human Nature, Reflections, Theater and play reviews
getting there…
Movie review:
To Serve Them All My Days
There is an utterly familiar plot line in To Serve Them All My Days (TV mini series, 1980-1981, 11 hours, 13 minutes): a Welsh coal miner’s son survives World War I, and becomes a teacher at a boys’ school in England south of Wales, and grows in his role to become the beloved avuncular headmaster.
John Duttine energetically plays the protagonist, David Powlett-Jones. Everyone calls him “P. J.” or “Pow-Wow,” with love and respect.
P. J. quite remarkably discovers that his calling, his life’s work, is with the faculty and boys at Bamfylde School. He judges everything from this perspective.
Much of the tale is an unfamiliarly rich creation of manifestly human characters who deal with the slings and arrows of life, and make the best of their worlds to give willing, deserving boys a good education and a glimpse of how to live a decent life.
The dialogue is above average in many scenes, and you will get inside the minds of the key players. There is enough reflection and imagination and longing and joy/despair for any discerning viewer.
No spoiler alert is needed here. You can’t possibly be in doubt about how the story ends.
In this story, getting there is the point of the journey.
Based on the 1973 novel (same title) by R. F. Delderfield.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Snow Goose
…it’s sensual drama, eminently poetic…
by Paul Gallico
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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 | Jan 4, 2024 | Human Nature, Theater and play reviews
you have to sweat this one…
Movie review:
Norma Rae
1979
Rated PG
114 minutes
Not too many movies make you really feel like you’re sweating. Or really crying.
Norma Rae is one of the good ones. It’s hot and dirty work putting a union into a textile mill in North Carolina in the 1970s.
Sally Field was 33 years old when she played the “Go union!” gal in Norma Rae, and she puts all her photogenic energy into the role. She won the Oscar for Best Actress.
Ron Leibman is Reuben Warshowsky, the New York union guy who leads the way to sweating out the vote right down to the inevitable victory, and falls for Norma in a completely gentlemanly way.
Sad to say, Norma and Reuben lose the big prize: in their last minutes together, in a remarkably well-scripted exchange of halting words and gushing emotion, neither of these big talkers has the courage to say what is so obviously in their hearts.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Remember the Tallahatchie Bridge?
Molly Johnson sings it right…
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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 | Dec 5, 2023 | Human Nature, Language, Reflections, Theater and play reviews
losing sight of right and wrong…
Movie review:
Dangerous Liaisons
Dangerous Liaisons (1988, rated R, 119 minutes) is not a garden of delight.
If you aspire to a working understanding of good and evil, you could do worse than listen to the riveting chatter of the leading personae: the Marquise de Merteuil (Glenn Close) and the Vicomte de Valmont (John Malkovich). They choose each word with careful, deliciously ribald, austerely cruel, and domineering intent.
This is a boundless exposé of the worst elements—of human intrigue, self indulgence, hubris, vaunting egos, and careless poaching of souls—that masquerade as amour.
Dangerous Liaisons is an ultimately degraded experience for both the characters and viewers, who must condemn the marquise and the vicomte for so many lives destroyed…death is an anticlimax in Dangerous Liaisons.
The marquise and the vicomte are burdened with a moral framework that shuns the absolute—they have unimaginably unsatisfied desires, and no intellectual imperative of right and wrong.
They swirl through their lives, casually jousting with each other as they amuse themselves in controlling the fates of other men and women, without realizing that they are not in control of their own fates.
The movie is based on a 1782 French epistolary novel titled Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos de Laclos, available in English translation.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Dirty Dancing (1987) (movie review)
Oh baby, baby, baby…
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Above all: Poems of dawn and more with 73 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 | Nov 4, 2023 | Theater and play reviews
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 2023 All rights reserved.
The Witches: Salem, 1692 (book review)
…a community gone crazy…
by Stacy Schiff
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My first name was rain: A dreamery of poems with 53 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 | Oct 7, 2023 | Theater and play reviews
ya gotta have heart!
Emperor of the North
(1973, rated PG, 118 minutes)
Emperor of the North is a heroic film.
They don’t make too many like this one.
If you plan to watch it, do yourself a favor: plan to watch it twice.
Watch it once so you get the picture: a tramp named A No. 1 (Lee Marvin) is a devil-may-care legendary figure in the hobo camps. He teaches a thing or three to the inexperienced Cigaret (Keith Carradine). He challenges the thuggish railroad policeman, Shack (Ernest Borgnine), there’s a supremely brutal fight on a rolling flatcar, the best ‘bo wins, he finally rides Shack’s “No. 19” to Portland, and, you guessed it, A No. 1 is the king of the road.
Sounds like a few of the “B” movies you’ve seen over the years?
All routinely imaginable stuff, but Marvin’s imperial performance stirs the imagination.
Watch it again. Watch Mr. Marvin show you everything you ever wanted to know about classic heroism of the spirit. See him surpassing his impoverished circumstances to enjoy a rich life, embracing independence, rugged optimism, casually competent leadership, generous mentoring, and the dauntless strength of a Viking in mortal combat.
Finally, A No. 1 abandons the feckless Cigaret. “You had the juice, kid, but you didn’t have the heart!”
A No. 1 rides off, northward, soaring, in high majesty, singing his victory.
American hobo.
American hero.
Emperor of the North.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Financier
Theodore Dreiser’s villain…
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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 | Sep 9, 2023 | Theater and play reviews
slum kids can dance, too…
Movie review:
Billy Elliot
2000, rated R, 111 minutes
Starring Jamie Bell as Billy Elliot
Billy Elliot (2000, rated R, 111 minutes) is about aspirations, with clap-your-hands dancing and a helping of human kindness.
Jamie Bell pretty much flawlessly plays 11-year-old Billy, the son of a widowed struggling coal miner in County Durham in northern England. Billy suddenly realizes that dancing is more interesting than boxing.
You won’t be surprised by the obstacles that Billy overcomes to get accepted at the Royal Ballet School in London.
You will be delighted to watch Billy dancing when he’s happy and when he’s mad as heck. You will want to hug Billy’s dad when he finally realizes that dancing isn’t shameful, and that his son has a talent that just won’t quit.
Not least important, you’ll be reminded that a kid who can be a great dancer is born every day in a slum, somewhere.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Book review: Lord of the Flies
Never more relevant…
by William Golding
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Seeing far: Selected poems with 47 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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