by Richard Subber | Aug 12, 2023 | Human Nature, Theater and play reviews
rediscover reasons for living…
Scent of a Woman
If you think that all good movies have Super Bowl excitement, don’t bother watching Scent of a Woman (1992, rated R, 157 minutes).
This obviously many-splendored film has grit, gusto, a pretty good tango, a red jaguar with pedal to the metal, a man confronting the downside of his life, a young man struggling with right and wrong, and the mystical mix of truth, justice, and passion.
Army lieutenant colonel Frank Slade (Al Pacino, he won his only Oscar for Best Actor) rides the tiger of his past. He and Baird School student Charlie Simms (Chris O’Donnell) work through the highs and the lows of Slade’s blindness and Charlie’s rush to maturity as they learn about themselves and learn to trust each other.
Pacino won the Oscar for his sensitive portrayal of Slade, who rediscovers reasons for living, his own humanity, his devotion to integrity, and his grandchildren. If you’re a grandparent, you’ll probably agree that the last 90 seconds of the film may not be the best moments, but they are the endearing gift of Scent of a Woman.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Remember the Tallahatchie Bridge?
Molly Johnson sings it right…
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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 | Jul 15, 2023 | Human Nature, Theater and play reviews
joie de vivre, the real McCoy…
Movie review:
The African Queen
The African Queen (1951, rated PG, 105 minutes) was an adventure film when adventure had more to do with intrepid characters and the right thing and joie de vivre than with car chases and bullets flying every which way.
Charlie Allnut (Humphrey Bogart won an Oscar for Best Actor) kindly offers to take Rose Sayer (Katharine Hepburn was nominated for Best Actress) on a boat ride—in his broken down scow (The African Queen) on an unforgiving river in German East Africa in 1914.
Rose, the unworldly widow of a missionary, learns to manhandle the tiller, pours all the gin overboard, and generally civilizes Charlie quite enough. That scrufty bon vivant teaches her about pluck, honor, and kicking the old boiler to keep the boat going.
They risk their lives for the war effort by sinking the German warship, and they decide to get married. Ain’t love grand?
Even if you saw the movie long ago, try it again.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Play review: A Doll’s House
Henrik Ibsen’s classic on abuse…
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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 17, 2023 | History, Human Nature, Reflections, Theater and play reviews
…a perfection of evil…
Movie review:
Conspiracy
The Wannsee Conference in Hitler’s Germany, January 1942
Starring Kenneth Branagh, Stanley Tucci, Colin Firth (2001)
Here’s the short version: watching Conspiracy is like drinking molten lead.
Conspiracy is an almost flawless portrayal of naked evil being done by powerful men, each of whom has lost or abandoned his moral compass.
It is dry, withering, completely transparent, all too believable—not merely because we know it’s all true. We know that there are powerful men and women alive today who are willing to do blasphemously wrong things like killing 6 million Jews.
Conspiracy dramatizes the Wannsee Conference that first officially articulated the Final Solution for the Jews of Europe: the Holocaust.
Stanley Tucci as SS Major Adolph Eichmann, Kenneth Branagh as Hitler’s Chief of Security Reinhard Heydrich, Colin Firth as Dr. Wilhelm Stuckart (a lawyer who wrote the racist Nuremberg Laws), and 12 others show how it was probably done—almost without passion—around a long conference table in a manor house outside Berlin. One of the participants failed to destroy his copy of the minutes. This surviving document was used in the post-WWII Nuremberg Trials.
Conspiracy is frightening, horrifying, and disgusting. It is a perfection of the evil that men can do.
The antidote for watching it is simple: do a good thing every day.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Comanche Empire
the other story of the American West…
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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 | Apr 20, 2023 | Human Nature, Theater and play reviews
feeling truly happy…
Movie review:
Good Will Hunting
1997
Rating R
126 minutes
Starring Robin Williams, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Minnie Driver
There are several plot lines in Good Will Hunting, and of course you know about this one: genius janitor solves math problems on blackboard at night and also has fist fights in bars because his life is out of control.
Good Will Hunting is about a lot more than the action in Boston, and the friendships of Southie boys who support each other in a nether world of poverty.
Good Will Hunting is a revelation of what love is all about. Sean (Robin Williams) steers his therapy sessions with Will (Matt Damon) through ever more confessional truths about his own love for his dead wife, and challenges Will to engage with Skylar (Minnie Driver) because she can be part of his good life.
The gotcha scene is Sean and Will on the park bench: in a longish monologue, Sean says to Will “you can’t tell me what it feels like to wake up next to a woman, and feel truly happy,” and Will admits his longing with silence.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Home Team: Poems About Baseball (book review)
Edwin Romond hits another homer…
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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 | Mar 22, 2023 | Human Nature, Theater and play reviews
that feel-good feeling…
Movie review:
Winter’s Tale
2014
Rated PG-13
118 minutes
Starring Colin Farrell, Jessica Brown Findlay, Russell Crowe
Winter’s Tale offers a gripping combination of magic, miracle, young love, and gritty good vs. evil plot lines. It’s just what you need to guarantee the feel-good feeling as you finish watching the movie some night soon.
Using words to describe it is a challenge. Winter’s Tale (2014, rated PG-13, 118 minutes) creates the characters and then rushes to convergence at the end: Beverly (Jessica Brown Findlay) imparts her miracle to Peter (Colin Farrell), Peter fights evil to create goodness, the girl will live, the magic horse prances into the sky, and love conquers all.
This is a tale about a world as we would like it to be, and the kind of love we all wish everyone could have. It’s proof that the slightest breath of angels can make magic.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Book review: Hag-Seed
by Margaret Atwood…it ain’t Shakespeare
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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 | Aug 31, 2022 | Book reviews, Books, Joys of reading, Theater and play reviews
the movies ignore the real story…
Movie review:
The Scarlet Letter
by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
Published 1850
I watched three films based on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s iconic story, The Scarlet Letter. My small sample (there are at least nine movies based on the story) confirms that Hollywood really can’t stand the story as Hawthorne wrote it.
Read my review of Hawthorne’s book, click here.
In 1934 Colleen Moore played Hester Prynne and Hardie Albright played Rev. Arthur Dimmesdale in the tale about Puritan condemnation of adultery and children born out of wedlock. Hester is sentenced to wear an embroidered scarlet letter “A” on her bosom, and Dimmesdale endlessly rationalizes his decision to conceal his role as the mysterious father of little Pearl. The movie reflects the production limitations and typical dramatic direction in the 1930s—there’s a lot of staring into the camera, and crowded action scenes.
Meg Foster played Hester and John Heard played Dimmesdale in the 1979 TV miniseries about The Scarlet Letter. There are recognizable scenes from the book. The script is nondescript. It’s a ponderous distillation of Hawthorne’s words.
The 1996 version with Demi Moore as Hester and Gary Oldman as Dimmesdale apparently is the latest in the unsatisfying series of film versions of The Scarlet Letter. It is an almost lurid mal-adaptation of the book. The hot scenes featuring Hester and Dimmesdale attracted to each other are a complete invention—Hawthorne eschews any explicit reference or description of physical intimacy between his principal characters. Demi and Gary get it on, but it ain’t Hawthorne.
In all three films, the role of little Pearl is deliberately underplayed. The child is a principal factor in the story—her feelings, her joie de vivre, her contemplations, her maturation are fully explored in the book, and ignored in the movies.
The mental and emotional quagmires that are explored and endured by Hester and Dimmesdale are generally ignored in the movies. None of the movies uses the ending that fulfills the book.
In short, for my taste, if you want to claim that you are familiar with the themes, plot, and denouement of The Scarlet Letter, you have to read the book.
The movies are scandalously thin and false charades of the powerful drama of Hawthorne’s story that was published very successfully in 1850.
If you think you remember reading it a long time ago, try it again.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
Book review: Shantung Compound
They didn’t care much
about each other…
by Langdon Gilkey
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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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