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THE CHOSEN (2019) series review
Category: Comfort Film
SABRINA (1954) movie review
Audrey Hepburn wears the crown as golden age actress of class from her era. In every role, she carries herself with the ethereal grace of a princess. Even in her quintessential black leggings and flats, she remains the icon of fashion, elegance, and simplicity. 
In Sabrina, she plays the innocent chauffeur’s daughter in love with the son of the rich family for whom her father works. What begins as a rags to riches tale becomes more cat and mouse as the older brother seeks to dissuade the girls affections for the younger to maintain a business relationship. 
Playful and fun seeming on the outset, this story bridges more moral conundrums than seem common in a rom com, even one in black and white. You can always trust a Billy Wilder film to tell a simple seeming story with heart and complexity. Genius. Humphrey Bogart, of course, plays the much-too-old-for-her love interest who saves a young Sabrina from attempting to take her own life.
Such tragedies pursue the hopeless romantics cursed with unrequited love. We weep. We waiver. We wander. And she wanders all the way to Paris, to a cooking school, where an odd friendship helps her see her own value before she returns home as an independent woman. Or does she?
Will she allow her heart to swell as it once did for the fabulous playboy brother David, played by William Holden? Or will she fall for the one person in the world who listens as she speaks her mind and is surprisingly teachable, despite his foreboding manner. Bogart proves as lovable in Sabrina as in Casablanca, despite the less believable winter/spring fling potential.
He is charming and she is mature. He is lonely and she is in the way of his big business merger. He has to risk something, even his own heart. It becomes less a question of how than why ever not?
It’s a lovely princess story and a nice follow up to her treasured Roman Holiday performance. 
The 1995 remake with Harrison Ford, Julia Ormond, and Greg Kinnear proves equally as endearing, if justly a bit more aware of the darker tones and painstakingly fearful endeavor that those first steps into love truly are. Harrison and Humphrey, two charming loves who will always have my heart. 
Here is the original trailer: Sabrina (1954)
And Sabrina (1995)
LITTLE WOMEN (2019) movie review
When given the challenge of reviving a generational classic, Greta Gerwig called upon her faithful, dramatic compatriots (Saoirse Ronan and Timothee Chalamet) and broadened her incredible team (Laura Dern, Meryl Streep, Florence Pugh, Emma Watson, Eliza Scanlen, Bob Odenkirk, Chris Cooper, and more) to reinvigorate Little Women as we’ve never seen it before. 
This film is a triumph in artistic vision and storytelling vigor. It’s a walk through the Musee d’Orsay; each scene is reminiscent of a famous painting. Each character is a Pinterest board of fresh takes and favorite moments from classic renditions of these films, all adaptations of the beloved novel by Louisa May Alcott.
But this is Gerwig’s finest chess move. She plants author’s DNA into the main character. Jo March is a strong, verbose, witty, lively heroine confined to the constraints of an era in which women were doomed to demure domesticity. She was a writer and a visionary. Like Alcott. Like Gerwig. So her characters investigate the struggles of home-life in a time of civil war, when money is king yet scarce, and when imagination and family bonding provide rare escape from discouragement. 
Loss determines destiny for most, but strength of spirit and courage of will allow the March women to rise above all.
Don’t miss this newly deemed classic. It’s pretty nearly perfect.
CHRISTOPHER ROBIN (2018) movie review
As it should be, the boy and bear unite to save their friends in this surprisingly sweet film starring Ewan McGregor as a grown up Christopher Robin.
Director Mark Forster and famous voices, including the original voice of 1988 Disney classic Pooh Jim Cummings, bring the original pack of fluffy pals to life in scenes that look pleasantly more muppet than CG.
Hook meets Paddington, as it takes a bear of “very little brain” and deep honey love to show a dad how to play and laugh and be silly once again.
Sometimes we work too much and let the anxious world let us down, so we require a film like this one that reminds us of the sweetness of enjoying another’s company in doing nothing for a while. After all, doing nothing often leads to to best of somethings.
GIFTED (2017) movie review
Chris Evans plays stand-in father to a child genius mathematician in this gift of a film. Strikingly smart banter dots the canvas as the expected plot becomes a landscape of hope full of both sweet and heart-wrenching moments.
The questions within this film seek to drown out fears founded by insecurities. What is family? How do we best care for one another? How do we help foster and nourish peoples’ gifts without exploiting or discouraging them?
It seems the stage-mother phenomenon is not limited to entertainers and little pageant queens as Gifted shows the pitfalls of seeking personal prestige and fame over integrity and selfless love. It challenges families to deal with conflict through lovingly honest communication.
Leaving a legacy looks unique for each person. Some people offer their gifts to the world in such a way as to gain the world’s approval, applause, and praise. The higher road can be lonelier, but leaving a legacy of selfless love is of greater worth than fame. Caring for people may be less glamorous, but it is by far more rewarding.
LA LA LAND (2016) movie review
City of stars, are you shinin’ just for me?
I grew up watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers toe tap and twirl as the band played on. In La La Land, writer /director Damien Chazelle offers the same snap and dramatic vibrato expected after his Whiplash hit in 2014 without falling into the traps of most musical fare. This is whimsy, not kitsch. 
LA is not the city of love or light or laughter. It’s the city of stars, of expectations and broken dreams, of dress up and play act, of trial and error, of big show and grand finale. Who better to cast in this musical whirlwind romance than Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone.
Patched realism supersedes glossy perfectionism as La La offers common characters in challenging jobs and relationships who sing and swing their way through classic Rebel moments and old timey jazz bars. Barista Stone flies from one disappointing audition to the next while Gosling’s sappy Romeo throws himself into his purist jazz music. Balancing hopeful dreams and daunting realities in Broadway rhythm, they dance through every season as La La Land changes them both, for better or worse. 
This necessary film somehow offers dreamers windows of practical insight while in the same beat, providing hope for fatalists. The score, perfectly understated, never preaches or screams. It lilts and never leaves you. It’s somehow about you, so you won’t forget it. And you’ll possibly wonder for much longer than a moment, why you ever stopped taking piano lessons.
THE JUNGLE BOOK (2016) movie review
I’m feel like I’m five years old. I’m scrunching down into the seat like it will swallow me, then I sit up fast so I can see over the heads in front of me. When the screen lights up, I am transported into the jungle full of life, of furry friends and foes, of survival. Everywhere, the joy-filled sounds of jungle conversations mingle with crunching popcorn bags and awestruck children.
Mowgli is just a little boy who must learn, as all others do, how to survive in his world: jumping over giant tree limbs, swinging from vines like an orangutan, singing with bears and monkeys, running from Shere Kahn, howling as the adopted son of the wolf pack.
The screen goes dark after the final, gorgeous, framable shot of this art film closes with the unique credit sequence. The lights come up in the theater and the audience exits reluctantly, as sad to leave the jungle as Mowgli was when he realized he had to rejoin the man village. Director Jon Favreau, who also brought us Elf and Iron Man, made a masterpiece with this live action re-make of the 1967 Disney favorite. It stays true to the characters, the music, the art of the original. 
The classic Jungle Book comes to life in glorious widescreen with the unmistakable voices and cadence of favorite actors like Bill Murray and Christopher Walken. May the wonders of this kind of movie making never cease. It’s amazing to think that it was all made on a sound stage in Hollywood. 
Everyone old enough to appreciate the original MUST watch this film. It’s rare that I say I loved everything about a film, but I wish I had the ability to stop blinking and never miss a single frame of this perfect picture. See it, and live the beauty of the original film. Sit up close. Baloo, Bagheera, Mowgli, and every jungle friend will be your friend for life.
HAIL, CAESAR! (2016) movie review
Hail, Caesar! is a delight. Set in the fifties at the height of musical movie madness, it was a time when Gene Kelly and favorite dance partner Fred Astaire tapped and swooned to golden tunes, when every woman wanted sharp-witted Clark Gable or leather-tanned Cary Grant to sweep them up, when the ladies of the hour were few but interchangeable unless they could stand out as dancers or swimmers. The silver screen was a small world full of dazzling stars with clean slates.
Here in Hail, an ensemble of A+ stars play one-dimensional dolts and hardline honeys clamping Clooney in with communists, sharing Fiennes’s finesse as a classic actor, making Tatum tap on tables, and showing Scarlett Jo flap her fins. It’s elegantly laced with narration following the work day of Josh Brolin, one heartfelt Hollywood Studio manager bent on doing what is right.
Three layers pervade the dialogue throughout the film: the existing value, despite obvious divisions, within religious beliefs, political biases, and movie making.
We follow the film producer who questions the merits of the industry and his work in it. Walking the ridgepole of his decision, he scoops in as handyman at the helm holding all things at the studio in harmony, fending off poparazzi wolves, endearingly all played by Tilda Swinton. 
We attend a premiere with a fresh faced all-western cowhand. He croons sincerely while the audience roars over slapstick sloshings. Division. Value?
Clooney’s character is held hostage by men claiming to be communist writers who feel they must buck the system and capsize the studio called the Capitol.
The film Hail, Caesar! is the film within the film showing a Roman guard gaining perspective for life and truth at the feet of the crucified Christ. An honest dialogue between four faiths ensues, speaking the blatant confusing disparities without preaching tolerance and without honoring one above another. The audience sits in, laughs, enjoys.
So, religion & politics, long-time taboo topics, are fair game for the Coens who even take stabs at their own art: filmmaking. Could it be that the Coen brothers, perhaps better known for writing and directing darker films like Fargo and No Country for Old Men, have made a picture for the picture’s sake? For fun? Poking fun at film has rarely been this delightful. Shakespeare did the same thing, sneering at all people groups, allowing for pure comedy to shine through, for people to laugh at each other, at themselves, at life. 
Hail the conquering Coens as they cart us along by chariot in this perfectly lovely philosophical journey dipped in sweet, aesthetic, syrupy comedy.
Would that it were so simple.
FUNNY FACE (1957) movie review
It opens as the first Devil Wears Prada as scene-stealer Kay Thompson entices the world to “Think Pink.”
These filmmakers were way ahead of their time in creating art films. A visual collage in each scene, and this a backdrop for Givenchy’s designs including the classic “Audrey look” debuting in this film.
From New York’s quaint village bookstores to the picturesque streets and sights of Paris, each scene sets the stage for this film to show off the visual allure of the fashion industry while simultaneously preaching a unique feminism that attempts to promote brains before beauty.
While that non-traditional perspective for that era surfaced, Audrey played the girl with the “funny face” which made her eternally iconic.
Under the flattering pink glow of Parisian city lights, a romance with fashion and more so with the city itself flourishes.
It’s entertaining and lovely, classic and pure. Where the music fails to fit, Audrey’s class fulfills. Don’t miss this dip into Paris in the 50’s and catch all of its sights with the goddess of fashion. Audrey at the Eiffel Tower. Audrey fishing on the Seine. Audrey at the Louvre in that gorgeous red gown.
“I don’t want to stop I like it. Take the picture. Take the picture!”
What Audrey and her famous dancing counterpart lack in romantic chemistry they somehow make up for in breathy swooning endearing moments which turn out rather “swonderful” in the end.
JURASSIC WORLD (2015) movie review
Spielberg gives Tomorrowland a frightening facelift in this latest installment in the Jurassic universe.
John Hammond’s flea circus-turned dino theme park dream becomes a reality. Universal Studios tram ride through King Kong’s city scape, Disneyland’s jungle safari cruise, and Sea World’s main attractions combined cannot compare to a day on the original island now paradise once more.
But hubris married with technology begets genetically amalgamated super saurus. Only the gritty ex-military turned raptor trainer, Chris Pratt, can calm the cage free and the control freaks. 
And, Bryce Dallas Howard proves for womankind that she can run a marathon in heals.
Some blood, but more jump scares. Some great lines, but more memorable characters. Tons of product placement and even more marketable park merchandise. Sure, every character is a caricature, but this film is meant for pure entertainment. It is meant to be a family action film.
Newby director and writers prove once again that Spielberg is not attempting to keep the legacy of big production film in Amblin’s name only. Art is meant for everyone, to be shared. No corner on the market. Just go and make your movie, and maybe someday a nice guy like Spielberg will pay for the promotion and you too will have the biggest box office weekend like Colin Trevorrow did.
Have fun. Don’t get scared now.
Splatter: on FILM 