Movies 2023

01/07/2023 (Kanopy): Persuasion directed by Carrie Cracknell (2022). A decidedly different treatment of the Jane Austen novel about a woman who lets herself be persuaded to break up with her true love only to regret her decision later when he reappears in her life much more eligible than he used to be. Uses the technique of “breaking the fourth wall” (having the actor comment verbally or non-verbally directly to the audience), and modernizes the language. I enjoyed it.

01/10/2023 (Kanopy): Slay the Dragon directed by Barak Goodman and Chris Durrance (2019). Tells the story of the people’s fight against partisan gerrymandering, focusing in particular on Michigan, Wisconsin, and North Carolina. Scary and inspiring.

01/28/2021 (Kanopy): My Old Lady directed by Israel Horovitz (2014). Kevin Kline plays Mathias, an American man in his late fifties who has inherited a beautiful Paris apartment from his father. He sells everything he owns (which is not much) and travels to Paris to sell the apartment, but when he arrives, he discovers that an elderly woman (Mathilde Girard, played by Maggie Smith) lives there with her daughter Chloe (played by Kristin Scott Thomas). The apartment is a viager, meaning not only can he not evict these surprise tenants; he must pay them to live in their (former) apartment until Mathilde dies. Mathias goes off the rails a bit, but it all ends well.

02/04/2023 The Best of Me

02/11/2023 The Choice

02/18/2023 The Last Song

03/04/2023 The Lucky One

03/11/2023 Downton Abbey: A New Era

03/18/2023 My Cousin Rachel

03/25/2023 Stepmom

04/01/2023 Jane Eyre (1996)

04/15/2023 Portrait of Jennie (1948)

04/22/2023 Where the Crawdads Sing (Netflix)

04/28/2023 (Kanopy): Wendy and Lucy directed by Kelly Reichardt (2008). Wendy Carroll is headed to Alaska with her dog Lucy, but everything falls apart as she traverses Oregon. Her car breaks down; she is arrested for shoplifting and spends time in jail; while she is in jail, Lucy, whom she left tied to a bike rack outside of the store, disappears. Wendy devotes herself to finding Lucy, but when she does, she realizes that she can’t take proper care of her and must decide what to do.

04/29/2023 (Kanopy): Séraphine directed by Martin Provost (2009). Based on the life of Séraphine Louis, aka Séraphine de Senlis, a poor French house cleaner whose paintings are in the “Naif” style. She painted as an expression of religious ecstasy, commanded to create her art by her guardian angel. She was discovered in the years before the First World War by a German art collector and critic, Wilhelm Uhde, but he had to return to Germany when the war began. He returned to France in the 1930s and eventually realized that Séraphine was not only still living in Senlis, but several of her paintings were actually being exhibited in a local exposition in Senlis. He re-establishes a relationship with her, but this time the Great Depression makes it impossible for him to sell her work and arrange for it to be shown in Paris as he has promised her. Séraphine goes madder than she already was, is institutionalized, and dies in the institution.

July 31 and Sept 7, 2023 (seen on the plane to and from Greece)

In the Heights – After I figured out how to turn on the captions, I went back and watched 1/2 of it again. Liked it a lot. The rap style is just like Hamilton. Enjoyed seeing Lin-Manuel Miranda in a cameo part.

Summer of Soul (1/2)

Everything Everywhere All at Once (1/2; didn’t like it much despite all its Oscars)

CODA (Children of Deaf Adults) – disappointing. interesting. I wasn’t expected it to be a documentary.

Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret – very good. I had never read the book, but it’s very well-known for tweens and young teens.

Inside Our Autistic Minds – excellent documentary