by Richard Subber | Oct 18, 2025 | Human Nature, Theater and play reviews
Frankie could marry your sister…
Movie review:
Million Dollar Baby
Clint Eastwood and Hilary Swank
You think Clint Eastwood can’t be a heart-throb sensitive guy, the kind of guy who you wouldn’t mind at all if he married your sister?
Million Dollar Baby (2004, rated PG-13, 134 minutes) is a bona fide tearjerker about a world class, down-on-her-luck lady boxer who ultimately brings out the best in her very reluctant trainer and surprises no one by becoming the love of his life.
Hilary Swank is Maggie, the wannabe boxer who can’t afford her own speed bag but has the spirit and the right moves that make her a world champion.
Eastwood is Frankie, who ekes out a low profile life as the owner of a broken down gym and disdains being a trainer for “a girl.” Maggie finally persuades him, and then love very slowly takes over.
There’s lots of action in the gym and in the boxing ring, but the real action is directed by the fat little cherub with wings and a bow and arrow.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review: Six Plays by Henrik Ibsen
…his bleak insight into human nature
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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 | Sep 20, 2025 | Theater and play reviews
this time it’s different
Movie review:
Last Chance Harvey
Maybe you’ve been wondering how they come up with those almost-too-hard-to-believe love stories that end with the two unlikely lovers walking off together in the tree-shaded lane.
I don’t know how they come up with them, but I discovered Last Chance Harvey (2008, rated PG-13, 93 minutes), so I know they’re out there.
You never heard of it, you say? Well, here’s a hint: there’s no sweaty sex, no car chases, no guns, no bad language…
There’s just a feel-good heart-throb story about Harvey (Dustin Hoffman) and Kate (Emma Thompson) who are having unhappy lives, who meet really momentarily by chance, who meet again with a little more time to think about possibilities, who can’t stop thinking this time it might be different…
This time it is different. Harvey and Kate slow-walk themselves finally onto a dance floor, and then they walk around town and dither about their obvious blooming feelings, and then they walk off together in the tree-shaded lane…
Are you smiling? Watch Last Chance Harvey, and do the wider smile thing.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review: All The President’s Men
The men and women
who crave power…
by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward
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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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by Richard Subber | Aug 23, 2025 | Theater and play reviews
a different kind of Tom Hanks film…
Movie review:
News of the World
2020
PG-13
118 minutes
It’s titled News of the World, but that’s really not what this see-it-again movie is all about.
This out-of-the-ordinary Tom Hanks film is about awakening, and affection cradled in a dirty crystal goblet, and a little girl with a deadpan face and a deadened life who learns to smile.
The story line: a grizzled Civil War veteran, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd (Tom Hanks), takes time out from his traveling newspaper reading gig to escort a hapless 12-year-old German girl, Johanna (Helena Zengel), to her mostly uninterested distant relatives after she escapes from Kiowa captivity.
There’s no love affair, of course, but the old man/young girl affection starts to pile on, and they handle some adversity, and Johanna teaches Kidd some Kiowa words so they can talk, and Texas cowboy culture passes them by as they roll their raggedy wagon into the future.
Johanna learns a beaming smile as she learns to work with Kidd in his reading rambles, and they make a life. It’s a feel good ending.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review: Forced Founders
by Woody Holton
The so-called “Founding Fathers”
weren’t the only ones
who helped to shape our independence…
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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 | Jul 26, 2025 | Human Nature, Theater and play reviews
good guys sort of win…
Movie review:
Dinner Rush
An honest-to-gosh suspense movie doesn’t come along all that often.
It’s a good bet that you’re not going to be able to guess how Dinner Rush (2000, rated R, 99 minutes) ends before you get to the end. It’s worth the wait. The good guys sort of win, kind of. At least you’ll be rooting for the right team.
Danny Aiello as Louis Cropa, a restaurateur-small time bookmaker-small time mob guy, carries the story line in a confined setting: almost the entire movie takes place in Cropa’s restaurant, Gigi’s, a Tribeca eatery with an acclaimed chef that has a long line of waiting patrons.
The nominal themes are good food, gambling, mobster violence, and an extended debate about portrait art.
The real themes are human frailty, family loyalties, and valiant personal character.
A bonus: the supporting cast is really quite entertaining.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review: Tales from Shakespeare
summaries by Charles and Mary Lamb…
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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 | Jun 28, 2025 | American history, History, Human Nature, Politics, Power and inequality, Theater and play reviews
power brokers aren’t good guys…
Movie review:
All the President’s Men
It’s a good guess that you watched All the President’s Men (1976, rated PG, 138 min) a long time ago.
Now’s a good time to watch it again. You get to see Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford at work in their younger years, and you get to see the good guys win.
Bob Woodward (Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Hoffman) give workmanlike performances as they grind through the often mind-numbing work of bringing down a corrupt president and his corrupt henchmen. I don’t think any women were involved in the really bad Watergate business.
The drama is created as the “Woodstein” duo and Deep Throat and dubious/credulous Washington Post editors relentlessly push for the boring investigative legwork that ultimately reveals the frightening cabal of power brokers who will do close to anything to keep Nixon in office.
The good guys win. Mostly they didn’t fear for their own safety. Mostly they didn’t think they were heroic. Mostly they didn’t think the job was hopeless. Mostly they wanted to do the right thing.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Old Friends (book review)
Tracy Kidder tells truth about old age…
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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 | May 29, 2025 | American history, Politics, Power and inequality, Theater and play reviews
the spadework for the 13th Amendment…
Movie review:
Lincoln
2012, PG-13, 150 minutes
The movie Lincoln is about Lincoln, and we don’t need to spell out his name. Daniel Day-Lewis gives a performance as the Great Emancipator that rings true on both the good side and the not so good side. Sally Field rather woodenly plays the role of Mrs. Lincoln, or, as she preferred, “Mrs. President.”
Lincoln was a politician—we tend to forget that. The subplot of the movie is the horse trading and the not-so-savory vote buying that went on in the runup to the successful vote on the 13th Amendment to abolish slavery. Lincoln’s right-hand men did what he asked them to do and what they knew he wanted them to do—and Lincoln finally did a bit of the spadework himself.
Lincoln is not a spectacular movie. It’s dark in many ways. It is profoundly historical, and the drama keeps peeking through the windows.
One bag of potato chips is enough.
By the way, Lincoln was born in 1809, when it wasn’t widely popular to give babies a middle name.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review:
John Eliot: “Apostle to the Indians”
…a righteous man of his times
by Ola Elizabeth Winslow
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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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