Hello, My Name is Doris is a dramedy about a sixty-something named Doris who gets a crush on her co-worker who is at least 20 years younger. She also has just experienced the death of her mother wh she has taken care of for years. This leaves her with time to fantasize and re-examine her hoarding issues she developed while being a caretaker.For the most part, this is a lighthearded film but there are times when the subject matter grows dark. It sets out to be
“sing-song” so I can’t fault it for being that way most the way through. It does tackle some serious issues and I respect the wrters for that.
Tyne Daly plays Doris’ friend which adds a lot to the film. We should all be so lucky to have such a friend at that time in our lives when the sun is starting to set. If you do see this film, and I do recommend it, I hope you enjoy the ending scene as much as I did. It is truly a creative approach to an ending and it’s done in the space of just a minute or so.
Directed byMichael Showalter
Produced by
Daniel Crown
Kevin Mann
Riva Marker
Jordana Mollick
Daniela Taplin Lundberg
Written by
Michael Showalter
Laura Terruso
Starring
Sally Field
Max Greenfield
Beth Behrs
Wendi McLendon-Covey
Stephen Root
Elizabeth Reaser
Natasha Lyonne
Tyne Daly
This film was written and directed by Andrew Renzi who is a relative newcomer. Unfortunately we see the same sort of “bare all” ugly reality side Richard Gere gave us in Time out of Mind, and it doesn’t work as well.
The Benefactor (2015)
Cast
Dakota Fanning, Theo James, Richard Gere
Directed by
Andrew Renzi
Written by
Andrew Renzi
Other Info
Drama
Rated R
1hr 33min
Riley’s Rating:
The more you know about addiction the more you know the difference between a schedule I drug and a schedule V. No addict is groping for a fix of a schedule V drug, although some kids these days are mixing them to get high. Richard Gere is showing us addiction in a very in-your-face way. He seems to be creating these roles for himself at his current age which I believe is around 60. Time Out of Mind is where I saw it recently. He is bare-boned and raw in that one suffering the effects of homelessness and early-onset Alzheimers. You can see his pain in that film, in fact, you fan smell it, even feel it as your own. It’s uncomfortable in that film as it is in The Benefactor. I’m fairly certain Mr. Gere is trying to show he’s a great actor by baring his yellow teeth, so to speak. In other words, he’s not holding back in his portrayal of character these days and he wants you to come along on the journey with him.
The Benefactor isn’t just about addiction but rather the personality flaws and types that make people become addicted. We can say to ourselves, “He’s an addict by choice, that would never happen to me.” We say it every day about the disheveled brutish person begging for a dollar in front of Starbucks. We say it about our friend’s teen who just entered rehab. We judge and prejudge and post-judge and become disgusted when we hear about the lengths addicts go to in order to obtain a fix. This film looks at one man and who he is in a singular way. In the beginning you could argue we are meant to hate him. Middle and end, one could argue the same.
He’s the head of a hospital, a pushy benefactor to an unwitting twenty something Olivia, played by Dakota Fanning of many movies you can look up if you don’t already know her. He is also a general piece of shit to her fiancee, Luke, played by Theo James known for the Divergence series. Let’s visit a tiny bit of plot to see why he acts this way: Franny (Gere) was in a terrible car accident with Mia (Cheryl Hines) and Bobby (Dylan Baker) and Mia and Bobby were killed. Franny was like an uncle to Olivia and after recovering from the accident and becoming addicted to pain pills, he extends financial help and a space in his mansion-like home for Olivia and Luke to live. The trouble is, his money has strings attached and he needs a lot of attention.
We see Franny go through withdrawals from Morphine and through many embarrassing situations where he begs for drugs from many people in the movie, including Olivia and Luke, who by the way is an oncologist doctor. Watching the film is uncomfortable to say the least. As I noted earlier in my review, Gere seems bent on showing every ugly (real?) side to the audience these days. It may be there is no better side. Whatever the reason, this film is the second in a series of films where he chooses to be ugly and in-your-face. It’s telling in fact after the final generic title flash which indicates the end that we see flashes of Gere shaving his scraggly, overgrown white beard with a razor. I actually stopped watching there because I was so on edge with what he would do to himself throughout the movie, I thought he might cut himself on purpose just to show us his true blood.
This is an ok story but a strange convoluted script. Gere is meant to be hated and he is. I had no compassion for him in the little pharmacy desperate to get a refill. He screams, he cuts himself, he says mean hurtful things to olivia and her fiancee, it’s not a happy go lucky movie like Pretty Woman that’s for darned sure. He’s moved way beyond that as an artist and I think he wants you to know it. If he could have developed the other characters a bit more it might have been better. We never get the backstory on what Olivia has been doing as he was healing. Well, she’s pregnant so we know one thing she was doing. Movies with a hate-able protagonist work better when you get other perspectives. As it is, the whole movie is a camera right up Gere’s nose. That detracts from the story.
Another problem is the script given to Gere. I don’t “buy it” when he’s trying to be tender with a kid in the cancer wing, hiding under the blanket and playing good doctor. I don’t buy it when he’s trying to be sweet with Olivia. He doesn’t strike me as an uncle or even a friend. For her to move in with him, risking her marriage and her pregnancy, it would need to be a safer place. It feels tense from the beginning. Another odd non-sequitur is the fact that Luke just up and moves in with Franny because Olivia wants to. If Luke is a doctor, couldn’t they afford their own place? Finally, by the end of the film, we hate Franny almost to the point where we want him to disappear. Yes, he’s that annoying. Still, when he wakes up, the orderly nurse escorts him to the maternity ward to see Luke and Olivia’s child? What? Based on the story I sat through for 1hr 30mins, that would not be appropriate at all. I kept expecting it to all be a dream and he’d wake up in rehab. Unfortunately, you’ll find an alternate to my expectation. There isn’t anything smart here. I think if you really love Richard Gere in movies, you may have a reason to go. You’re gonna see everything about him at 60, well, not everything. Hopefully that won’t get back to him and give him any ideas.
Emma Watson ladles through this historical drama, “inspired by true events.” There are elements of cults and what they do to their members in this but it’s really about one in particular that had a truly evil leader and was eventually tried and convicted as such.
Colonia
Cast
Emma Watson, Daniel Brühl, Michael Nyqvist
Directed by
Florian Gallenberger
Written by
Torsten Wenzel, Florian Gallenberger
Other Info
Drama, History, Romance
Rated R
1h 50min
I often wonder in my life’s travels how many people know what a cult is? I do. I had experience with one in college that I’ll never forget. It started with me attending their little “bible talk” and before too long they were pressuring me to move into a “shepherd” brothers house and pay part of the rent. For God, nonetheless. Before I got too involved, my Dad got wise to what I told him and explained they were a cult on campus for years. That’s when I quit going to meetings. Colonia is a true story about a cult in Chile. I think it has existed up until the early 2000’s. In the film, once you enter you can never leave. In fact, up to the time the story takes place, no one had ever escaped the cult. That’s what makes this story interesting.
Emma Waston and Daniel Bruhl play Lena and Daniel, a Chilean Professor/activist and his English stewardess girlfriend. When a coup erupts in Chile, Daniel is captured. The activists tell her he has been exiled to the Colonia Dignidad, a world-famous frightening place where the members stay for life in a brutally neo Christian environment. Sins are punished by group slapping, to name one torture. When Lena hears her love has been taken there, she realizes her only chance to save him is to enter the cult voluntarily. She does, and a large segment of the film shows the torture she endures at the hands of this sick cult. Michael Nyqvist plays Paul Schäfer, the charismatic and frightening leader of the cult. We learn later he has impregnated, raped, and tortured thousands of members in the cult. He does a great job playing the part. I always wonder what the actor’s motivation could be for playing the part of a cult rapist. No matter, he finds it and he ends up playing this role quite well.
It’s interesting watching Watson adopt the tenets of the cult. Several times, he tests her. It takes many days before she sees Daniel alive there. She has to go on faith that he is there and that she has done the right thing coming to the site. Daniel has to pretend he’s retarded as a result of a terrible beating he receives. It’s smart because they send him to the commune since they feel every person has a purpose. There are some terrible scenes of abuse. When Lena is working in the fields the first day she says she is thirsty. One of the leaders, an especially evil one, brings her a bucket of water telling her to not drink it but rather carry it with her all day. In another case, a woman shares she is to be married. This is forbidden in the commune so the leaders subject her to a public “slapping” or beating session to the point to where she must be hospitalized. Even the man who she was supposed to be married to must deal blows on her face. It is a barbaric scene and apparently the kid of thing that went on in Colonia.
Emma Watson plays the role barely well. I find her a little too unaffected by everything. I think she plays sheltered roles well but when it all comes down to her and her agony, she falls short. In this role, she is a bit weak that way. In a similar fashion, Daniel Bruhl is hard to relate with. I found both of their faces and delivery of dialog vanilla. These roles call for a dynamic set of emotions and neither seems to exude that. But, at the end of the day, the story itself is not all that engaging either. It was not promoted well and there is a bit of false advertising in it. You can watch the trailer or read the ads and then later in the film think to yourself, “I’ve been duped, this is not what I thought.” I like historical films and this is based on a story but it didn’t play out like a movie about cults. Instead, it was about torture and evil people. It would have been nice to see a little more on the psychology of cults and communes and a lot less of the coup material.
Years ago I had a college writing teacher who would tell the class “Focus on one thing.” I think Colonia focuses on too many things. Occasionally a film can get away with multiple items to focus on but usually, the good ones I remember have that overall focus. The one in this film should have been the Colony because that was the title. It should have started at the gate going in. The coup in Chile really has little to do with the cult stuff. It could have been portrayed quickly in the introduction. As it is you have to wait almost 1/3 of the film to get into the commune and even then, they are still building up to what’s really going on in there. The final scenes are great. You feel elated as they escape to the airport and somehow convince the pilot to fly them away, even with Chileans with assault rifle banging on the door. It’s a great ending to a so/so movie. It lost points with me in its story because it wasn’t focused enough. Furthermore, I thought Emma Watson was miscast. This role needs someone who wears their emotion on her face, blood sweat, and tears. Maybe in 20 years we’ll see that from Emma but she’s not showing it enough in this film.
Watching a horror film in black and white can hypnotize your brain to believe the creature is real and the production is modern. It’s an odd thing. What’s more, if you make the tiniest effort to examine the sets, the wardrobe, and the creatures in the feature, you just might find that the movie makers of that time (ie; 1954) put more effort into their craft than many horror movies in modern times.
Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)
G | 1h 19min | Horror | 5 March 1954 (USA)
A strange prehistoric beast lurks in the depths of the Amazonian jungle. A group of scientists try to capture the animal and bring it back to civilization for study.
Director: Jack Arnold
Writers: Harry Essex (screenplay), Arthur A. Ross (screenplay) (as Arthur Ross) | 1 more credit »
Stars: Richard Carlson, Julie Adams, Richard Denning
One powerful aspect of the films in this series is the music. It needed to be, to create suspense. By today’s standards, it is nothing subtle but again, after you suspend your sense of disbelief a little, and let the film hypnotize you, you don’t pay attention to what the music is doing. I love the sets in this film because they are mostly on the water and boat. Like the music, they bring the film alive.
I have to comment on the creature suit. When he/she/it is out of water, he opens and closes his mouth like a fish. It’s effective. There were times I forgot there was an actor inside. The creature was a CREATURE and that is quite a feat for an old B&W film. Make no mistake, there are some cheesy parts that could have been made better but who’s counting?
Like King Kong, the creature will not hurt the woman. That adds a nice element of empathy for him. Nonetheless, he is a killer and must be dealt with as such. This is a barrel of monkeys, I recommend it to all horror fans (and other genres that circle those wagons).
The 1960’s were a mixed bag for women. On one hand, they were getting more rights and respect by the year and on the other hand, the age old discrimination and confines were not budging for any woman, even the first lady. This film shows how Jackie Kennedy ran the White House and dealt with the assassination of her husband.
Jackie (2016)
R | 1h 40min | Biography, Drama, History | 2 December 2016 (USA)
Following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy fights through grief and trauma to regain her faith, console her children, and define her husband’s historic legacy.
Director: Pablo Larraín
Writer: Noah Oppenheim
Stars: Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard, Greta Gerwig
Natalie Portman does a great job here. Clearly she studied the mannerisms and accent of the first lady while working on the movie. Most the time it seemed as if she was Jackie Kennedy. There is a scene with an interviewer where he asks her questions that seem confining to her role as a woman. You see her inner strength come out and it is very telling of what women were putting up with from men in that decade. The scene from the assassination is played out graphically. She had to sit there and take what was happening with no one to comfort her. I had never thought of that until I saw this film.
The final scene of the movie is very well made. As she exits the White House you get to see and maybe feel if you’re open enough, the barren emotions she had likely been feeling. We know her husband had affairs, now he was gone and she had to leave her home, the White House. There were several parts I thought were a bit dull but I chalked that up to being a historical film. It did lose some points for that though. It was a vey well made “case study” of a slice in time. I do recommend it, especially for women to see the types of treatment women once endured.
This film shows Martin Scorsese and Harvey Keitel in their infancy as filmmakers. Scorsese is using his usual conventions to illustrate Italian traditons and youth in America. It’s funny to see how he made movies decades before films like “Taxi Driver” and “Goodfellas.”
Who’s That Knocking at My Door (1967)
I Call First (original title)
R | 1h 30min | Drama, Romance | 20 January 1978 (Finland)
A young man struggles with the fact that his girlfriend was once raped.
Director: Martin Scorsese
Writers: Betzi Manoogian (additional dialogue), Martin Scorsese
Stars: Harvey Keitel, Zina Bethune, Anne Collette
Martin Scorsese directed films I love like “Taxi Driver,” “Mean Streets,” “After Hours,” “Raging Bull,” and many more. He’s like a machine that can only put out hits. This film starts out in a familiar way. You see a group of Italian young men, most notable the protagonist played by Harvey Keitel, a frequent actor in Scorsese’s films.
The conflict comes when Keitel’s character finds out his fiancee had been rapes in the past. He jst can’t calm down about it. I think this behavior could be acceptable in 1967 when this film was made but it looks ugly through modern glasses. Apart from the authentic banter between the Italian men, this film fell flat with me. He starts calling his girlfriend a whore for no other reason than for the rape that happened to her. I found his character disgusting for that. Hasn’t the woman had enough to work through without getting this from him? Because his character made me very uncomfortable with his unbridled acts of jealousy, it lost points.
It’s interesting watching Watson adopt the tenets of the cult. Several times, he tests her. It takes many days before she sees Daniel alive there. She has to go on faith that he is there and that she has done the right thing coming to the site. Daniel has to pretend he’s retarded as a result of a terrible beating he receives. It’s smart because they send him to the commune since they feel every person has a purpose. There are some terrible scenes of abuse. When Lena is working in the fields the first day she says she is thirsty. One of the leaders, an especially evil one, brings her a bucket of water telling her to not drink it but rather carry it with her all day. In another case, a woman shares she is to be married. This is forbidden in the commune so the leaders subject her to a public “slapping” or beating session to the point to where she must be hospitalized. Even the man who she was supposed to be married to must deal blows on her face. It is a barbaric scene and apparently the kid of thing that went on in Colonia.
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