There was a bit of movie watching in the last couple of weeks.
In Blue Moon, Lorenz Hart (played by Ethan Hawke) Reminisce about his prior successful career with his former partner, Richard Rogers (played by Andrew Scott). The action takes place on the night that Oklahoma! (written by Rogers and Hammerstein) opens on Broadway. With many of the films in which Ethan Hawke plays, this movie is dialogue driven. Surprisingly, the dialogue, bogs down the action and only a couple of parts. It was good, just not sure if it was Best Picture good…yet.
Playing real life couple Mike and Claire Sardina, Kate Hudson, and Hugh Jackman star in Song Sung Blue. The couple or a Neil Diamond tribute band called Thunder and Lightning, and we’re popular in the Milwaukee area in the late 1990s to early 2000s. Words on the street if that Jesse Buckley will win for her performance in Hamnet, but dayum! Cate was fabulous. This film is warm and fuzzy, but it depicts real humans. There’s a documentary filmed in 2008 about a couple available on YouTube, also called Song Sung Blue. It’s a bit greater and it made my Pollyanna heart a bit sad. Anyway, the motion picture is good and worth a watch.
I wasn’t sure if I was gonna like Frankenstein. There have been so many adaptations of Mary Shelley’s book and I thought it would just be redundant. I was happy to see that Guillermo del Toro’s treatment was quite pleasing. In this version, the creation is a sympathetic character, and Dr. Frankenstein is the real monster. Jacob Elordi Was nominated for Best Supporting Actor as a creature, and he did a great job.
Leonardo DiCaprio may have a messy personal life, but he sure can act. In One Battle After Another, he plays a single father running from a bad guy from his vigilante past. The film is quite entertaining, in a Quentin Tarantino kind of way.
I am not the biggest fan of Yorgos Lanthimos’s work, despite the fact that we have a common national heritage. Most of his films are weird. Bugonia is no exception. Jesse Plemons and Aidan Delbis play cousins who kidnap a pharmaceutical company CEO (played by Emma Stone) because they think she is part of an alien species that is killing off the honey bees. Is it a dark comedy or a horror film? Yes. And a little weird, but in the end, entertaining. Best Picture? Hmmm. Emma Stone as Best Actress? We’ll see.
And that concludes the latest installment.
MK out.
