Dolphin Reef (2018) and Diving with Dolphins (2020)

Breathtakingly gorgeous! Dolphin Reef is the official Disneynature documentary and Diving with Dolphins is a documentary about making Dolphin Reef. Both were released in time for Earth Day in April 2020. They would make an excellent double feature with the first running only one hour 18 minutes and the second 1:19.

Natalie Portman narrates Dolphin Reef, which focuses on, among others, a bottlenose dolphin calf named Echo and his mother, but there are other creatures, including humpback whales and a brilliantly colorful mantis shrimp in the brilliantly colorful coral reefs, which, as we all know, are endangered by climate change. The locations are worldwide.

Keith Scholey is credited as director and story writer, Alastair Fothergill as co-director, and David Fowler wrote Portman's narration.

Steven Price's soundtrack can be streamed on Apple Music and probably elsewhere.

Three cinematographers are listed for Dolphin Reef–Paul Atkins, Mark Gerasimenko, and Roger Horrocks–although many other photographers are shown in Diving with Dolphins. Martin Elsbury does the editing.

Diving with Dolphins is narrated by Céline Cousteau, granddaughter of Jacques Cousteau–one of the world's underwater diving pioneers–and herself an environmentalist and filmmaker.

As above, Scholey directs and wrote the story with Fowler providing the rest of the script.

The music by Barnaby Taylor does not seem to be available online, but as I write I'm listening to Price's delightful soundtrack to Dolphin Reef.

The cinematographers listed for the second movie are Atkins, Horrocks, Doug Anderson, Jamie McPherson, Didier Noirot, and Helen Sampson. It was edited by Elsbury and Sampson.

Portman was last blogged for Annihilation, Scholey for African Cats (though I neglected to cite him as director of Bears), Fothergill and Fowler for Polar Bear (below), Price for Baby Driver, Horrocks for My Octopus Teacher, and Taylor for Born in China. Atkins has dozens of credits, many but not all of which are nature docs. Gerasimenko has been aerial director of photography on over 100 titles and most likely did those honors here. Elsbury's long resume, dating back to 1981, includes Earth and African Cats but I left him out of those posts. Anderson and Noirot worked on Earth and many others, McPherson on lots of nature docs, including many TV series, and Sampson graduated from field assistant on Bears to assistant producer on Dolphin Reef to one of eight producers on Diving with Dolphins.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics have floated Dolphin Reef up to 100% with its audiences' average just below the surface at 89. Diving with Dolphins isn't on that site but is definitely worth watching. Jack and I think you should see it second.

We saw them both this week, streaming on Disney+. You can also rent them on iTunes/Apple TV or Amazon Prime Video.

Now this is going on my Disneynature documentary list, updated right this minute. Note to my email subscribers: the Disneynature documentary list you get in your inbox will not have live links to today's posts but the list will be updated on the web version.

And milestone alert: I've just passed the 1400 mark–number of movies about which I have written on the blog since September 3, 2008, listed in my alphabetized index.

Troop Zero (2019)

Jack and I enjoyed this story of outcast kids banding together to form a scouting troop in 1970s Georgia. The young cast is headed up by McKenna Grace and Charlie Shotwell, with elders Viola Davis, Alison Janney, and Jim Gaffigan, among others.

Directors Bert & Bertie, two women, work from a tight script by Lucy Alibar.

The country-tinged music by Rob Lord is behind the Apple Music paywall but it's on spotify for free (with ads) and I'm grooving to it right now. One song title reminded me they often say "funna" instead of "fixing to," which I especially noticed since I always watch with closed captions." There are plenty of songs, too, listed here.

Grace was last blogged for I, Tonya, Shotwell for The Glass Castle, Davis for Widows, Janney for Bombshell, Gaffigan for It's Kind of a Funny Story (though his comedy stylings can be enjoyed in many stand-up specials and 23 episodes of The Jim Gaffigan Show), and Alibar for Beasts of the Southern Wild.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics average is a cool 66% and its audiences' slighter warmer at 78. We liked it more than that.

You can stream this Amazon original, included with Prime, as we did on Valentine's Day, February 14, 2020.

Milestone alert! I have seen and written about 1200 movies since beginning the blog on September 3, 2008. I've written about 19 that I saw before that date, and have seen others that are still in draft form. Catching up in the quarantine!

First Man (2018)

Jack and I enjoyed this story of Neil Armstrong before and during his historic 1969 moonwalk, but it's too long at 2:21. The actors are compelling, especially Ryan Gosling and Claire Foy as Neil and Janet Armstrong (Gosling was last blogged for Blade Runner 2049 and Foy won awards for playing young Queen Elizabeth in twenty episodes of The Crown). Also featured in the enormous cast are Jason Clarke (most recently in these pages for Mudbound) as Ed White, Kyle Chandler (last blogged for Game Night) as Deke Slayton, Corey Stoll (most recently in The Seagull) as Buzz Aldrin, Shea Whigham (first time in the blog in Take Shelter) as Gus Grissom, and a grown-up Patrick Fugit (We Bought a Zoo) as Elliott See.

Oscar-winning director Damien Chazelle (for La La Land) makes his first movie that's not about music and without writing the script himself, working instead from a screenplay by Josh Singer (co-writer of The Post), based on the Armstrong biography by Pulitzer Prize winning author James R. Hanson.

Here's my other problem with this movie. I sometimes wrote about Motion Picture Motion Sickness/MPMS, and I have a running list of movies that make some of us sensitive souls nauseated by the unchecked swinging of a camera. Every one of Chazelle's four features is on that list (70 before adding this one). This one is bad! Right off the bat we have Armstrong testing an aircraft and the camera is shaking intensely. Every time any of them takes off it had me looking away from the screen and waiting for the camera to return to the tripod. Usually I mention the MPMS towards the end of the post but this is egregious. For what it's worth, Jack does not share this sensitivity.

Justin Hurwitz (won two Oscars for La La Land) is Chazelle's only composer and you can stream his whole hour and five minute soundtrack on youtube. I haven't gotten all the way through it so I don't know how many songs, listed here, are on that video, but, at about a half hour in, you will hear musician Leon Bridges reciting the protest poem, Whitey on the Moon. This article about the poem and a video of its composer Gil-Scott Heron reciting it are interesting.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics are much more enthusiastic, averaging 88%, than its audiences at 63. Some say Chazelle will get another Oscar nomination. I can't bet on it.

Milestone alert! I have now published posts about 1100 different movies on this blog since September 3, 2008. My alphabetical list includes the count.

Downsizing (2017)

I was eager to see this story of humans who shrink themselves to live in a community more sustainable than our current society but its mad mood swings from comedy to drama are a bit hard to take. Matt Damon (last blogged for Suburbicon) does his darndest as our hero Paul and Christoph Waltz (most recently in The Legend of Tarzan) is pretty funny as the hedonistic Dusan (DUE-shan). The first trailer we saw for this featured Kristen Wiig (last in Ghostbusters) as Paul's wife Audrey but we guessed, even before the second trailer confirmed it, that she wouldn't "downsize" with Paul. Hong Chau (no newcomer, she's been in several projects, including Inherent Vice and all but one episode of Big Little Lies season 1) has been nominated for three Best Supporting Actress awards already (here's the running list), but, frankly, her character of Ngoc Lan bugged me--shrill, bossy, and no fun. Fun fact, the voice on the phone who says "Do you think moss is pretty?" is Mary Kay Place (blogged for I'll See You in My Dreams).

Director/co-writer Alexander Payne was Oscar-nominated for directing his last movie Nebraska, very clearly a dramedy (he's had three other Oscar nominations and two wins), so we expected more. There's a lot there but it lacks cohesion. Nor can we solely blame co-writer Jim Taylor, who shared one win (for Sideways (2004) and two of the nominations (for co-writing Election (1999) and producing The Descendants), and also co-wrote Citizen Ruth (1996), About Schmidt (2002), and I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry (2007), all with Payne, among Taylor's credits.

The original music by Rolfe Kent (scored Labor Day) can be streamed on spotify. That link doesn't include the 40 some songs played throughout the movie. One song egregiously missing from the final cut is Talking Heads' Once in a Lifetime, so humorously placed in all trailers.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics are lukewarm at best, averaging 51%, while its audiences, averaging 25%, were represented by the folks at our screening last week, who were antsy and talkative every time the laughs died down.

Another milestone! In early November I celebrated the 1000th movie posted on the blog. That number included posts summarizing nineteen movies that I saw before I began writing on September 3, 2008. This movie, which we saw on December 23, 2017, marks 1000 movies actually seen in about 485 weeks (3393 days, but who's counting?). I keep track of the numbers on my alphabetical index. Thanks for reading!

American Made (2017)

Jack and I really liked this story of Barry Seal, a real pilot who worked for the CIA, the Contras, and others in the late 70s and early 80s. Tom Cruise is perfectly cast as the impulsive, audacious Seal, in an entertaining performance.

Cruise (last blogged for Edge of Tomorrow) makes us think of Top Gun and even Risky Business as his Seal has talent, charisma, and guts to get ahead. Domhnall Gleeson (rhymes with PHONE-ull, most recently in Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens) has bravado of his own as "Schafer," Seal's CIA recruiter, and Sarah Wright (I can't be sure why she looks familiar, maybe her series arc on Parks & Recreation?) is great as Barry's devoted wife Lucy.

There are occasional historical film and still clips from the real events, including the disclosure that director Doug Liman's (helmed Edge of Tomorrow) father Arthur L. Liman was Chief Counsel to the Senate committee investigating the Reagan Administration's arms-for-hostages scheme known as the Iran-contra affair, which definitely involved our pilot, Barry Seal. The script by Gary Spinelli (his second) was on the 2014 Black List of most liked unproduced screenplays. We also appreciated the technical explanations of some of the aeronautics feats.

The cinematography by César Charlone (last blogged for Blindness) is terrific, and I must mention the magnificent aerial photography by Dylan Goss (here are the movies in this blog for which he's done that job: Up in the Air, Valentine's Day, Samsara, Rock of Ages, Now You See Me, Elysium, Million Dollar Arm, Annie, Sicario, Straight Outta Compton, Concussion, The Boss, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and Blade Runner 2049. And that's not close to all of his aerial photography credits).

A warning to my fellow sufferers of MPMS, also known as Motion-Picture-Motion-Sickness: you will not do well watching this on the big screen without medication, so be prepared or wait for video. Here's my full list.

We boomers loved the period music from one of the periods we lived. Here's a playlist that includes pop tunes as well as some original music by Christophe Beck (last scored Sisters, another one full of recent period music). Imdb has a pretty complete list of the songs.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics at 87 and its audiences at 80 are flying high with this one and we agree.

There's a little bonus written at the end of the credits--geography buffs will enjoy it. And with 32 producers, this movie goes on my list for the producers plethora prize, though it's going to be hard to beat the current leader with 41. Here's my list of those.

This movie is a big milestone for babetteflix. It is number 1000--I have now written about one thousand movies on this blog since September 3, 2008 (a few weeks after my only child left for college). Inspired by Julie & Julia, wherein Julie Powell kept count in her blog of how many recipes she cooked, I began counting movies on my blog. Sometimes I forget to write about one and add a short summary later in honor of my obsessive-compulsive personality (not a disorder in my case, I guess). Another milestone will be coming up because the blog contains summaries of nineteen movies that I saw before the start date and OCP makes me want to know exactly how many distinct movies I have seen in that time period. Three drafts to write (as of today) and still counting! I have an alphabetical list where I update the numbers each time.

Allied (2016)

We quite liked this glossy story of a couple of World War II spies who meet on a mission and stay together. Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard make a handsome couple and the production values are high. They were last blogged in 12 Years a Slave and Two Days, One Night, respectively. There's a big cast but I'll just cite appearances by Jared Harris (after I mentioned him in Certain Women he had a major part in the first season of The Crown) and Lizzy Caplan (profiled in Now You See Me 2).

Robert Zemeckis (last directed The Walk) is very good at big Hollywood pictures and does not disappoint, working from a script by Steven Knight (most recently in these pages for writing Burnt).

We saw it 2½ weeks ago but my notes remind me that Jack said he could have done with fewer mirror shots, while the former film student in me rather liked them. Blame or credit go to Zemeckis and cinematographer Don Burgess (last shot 42). I'll be interested to see if the American Society of Cinematographers nominates Burgess when the announcement comes out Tuesday. Here's another plug for my running list of this year's nominees and winners.

Before we saw it I noted that it had been nominated for a Critics Choice Costume Design award (didn't win), so I watched for the wardrobe and Cotillard's outfits are, indeed, spectacular, thanks to Joanna Johnston (Oscar-nominated for Lincoln, also designed Forrest Gump (1994), About a Boy (2002), Valkyrie, Pirate Radio, The BFG, and many more).

Alan Silvestri, who scored The Walk for Zemeckis, composes good mood music which can be streamed in its entirety here (or at least until it's taken down for copyright infringement).

The movie has left all big screens in these parts, but the DVD release is estimated for next month. Rotten Tomatoes' averages of 61% from critics and 68% audiences are pretty tepid but we liked it.

Blog housekeeping notes: I found drafts of two old compilations of Oscar-nominated shorts that I didn't write about and have no notes. I'm adding them to the count of movies seen since I began the blog but can't tell you anything about them. I know, nobody else cares. But I strive for accuracy in numbers. That also means I've blown by my milestone of 900 movies seen (the count is now 904) and 923 summarized in these many, many pages since September 3, 2008. It certainly is late. You be the judge of whether it's better than never.

Hidden Figures (2016)

As expected, Jack and I loved this true story of three brilliant African-American female mathematicians breaking race and gender barriers to work in NASA's space program in the early 1960s. When we know there's a happy ending--including a successful launch and the abolition of that organization's "colored" rest rooms--it's even more satisfying.

The stars have the power to portray the brave women. Oscar nominee (for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) Taraji P. Henson (after I wrote about her in Larry Crowne she's been in, among others, 40 episodes of Empire) is top billed as Katherine Goble Johnson, who was in the room when her calculations helped John Glenn become the first human to orbit the earth in 1962. Oscar winner (for The Help) Octavia Spencer (last in these pages for Black or White) brings her reliable strength to the part of Dorothy Vaughan, whose talents extended from math to management. Janelle Monáe (just seen in Moonlight) is Mary Jackson, the brashest one of the group, with delightful form-fitting wardrobe (her figure isn't hidden), designed by Renee Ehrlich Kalfus (some of my faves of her work are What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993), The Cider House Rules (1999), Chocolat (2000), Baby Mama (2008), and The Joneses).

Supporting strength comes from Kevin Costner (co-starred with Spencer in Black or White), Jim Parsons (last blogged for The Big Year but is, of course, best known for 221 episodes of The Big Bang Theory), Kirsten Dunst (after On the Road she starred in all ten episodes of Fargo's first season), and Mahershala Ali (also just seen in Moonlight), whose wardrobe is also nicely form-fitting. To quote Mary Jackson in the movie,"It's equal rights. I have the right to see fine in every color."

Margot Lee Shetterly's book proposal for a Katherine G. Johnson's story was optioned and the movie was made concurrently with her writing the book (the latter, Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race, was released in September 2016 and the movie came out on the coasts on December 25).

Theodore Melfi (directed the wonderful St. Vincent) immersed himself in the world of NASA along with his co-writer Allison Schroeder, who didn't need to, since her parents and grandparents actually worked for NASA. They both interviewed Johnson, now 97, and are nominated for the prestigious adapted screenplay award from the Writers Guild of America. Here are my running tallies of awards and nominations sorted by movie.

My regular readers know that Jack and I love to see old cars in movies from previous eras and this is no exception. In fact, the Art Directors Guild just nominated Production Designer Wynn Thomas (I loved his work in, among others, She's Gotta Have It (1986--his feature debut), Mo' Better Blues (1990), Malcolm X (1992), To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar (1995), Analyze This (1999), A Beautiful Mind (2001), Inside Man (2006), and All Good Things) for this movie in the Best Period Film category.

Benjamin Wallfisch (not a novice but new to me) is top billed of three for the music. Pharrell Williams (his song Happy was Oscar nominated for the movie Despicable Me 2 (2013)) is one of the producers and provides several songs (here is the album for your streaming pleasure). His tune Running from this movie is nominated for a Golden Globe so far. We boomers enjoyed the pop and jazz tunes of the era as well as a little music by esteemed composer Hans Zimmer (last blogged for Freeheld). Here's the only Zimmer track I could find online.

With its SAG Best Ensemble nomination, this movie is likely to get a Best Picture Oscar nomination at the very least. Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences are aligned with us on this one, averaging 93 and 94%, respectively. You're going to want to see this before the Oscars and you can bring the kids--it's PG.

My Sister's Keeper (2009)

I saw this when it was new and I know I liked it. It's about a girl conceived in order to save her dying sibling. Starring Abigail Breslin as the younger sister, Cameron Diaz and Jason Patric as the parents, and Sofia Vassilieva as the sick one. Breslin was last blogged for Zombieland, Diaz for Annie, and Vassilieva was new to me then and I haven't seen any of her work since. I remember liking Patric in Rush (1991), Sleepers (1996), Your Friends & neighbors (1998), and Narc (2002).

I read the Jodi Picoult book on which this is based and I remember liking that, too. Director Nick Cassavetes (I didn't see The Notebook but really liked Alpha Dog (2006), his fifth feature--this was his sixth, he directed two more and is planning two upcoming ones) adapted the book with Jeremy Leven (co-wrote seven before this and three after).

I just had to put this on the list to satisfy my obsessive-compulsive personality (not disorder) and make a milestone announcement: I thought this made 900 movies summarized (I don't like to say reviewed because I'm usually quite generous) on the blog since I began writing on September 3, 2008. However, I just double-checked the count and apparently I passed 900 five movies ago, so I'm up to 905. Certain Women was #900, but I was in such a bad mood I forgot to add it and others to the count!

When I began writing, I thought I'd go back and write about every movie I had ever seen. That didn't and won't happen. But I got 21 in there that I had seen before that date, so I keep two counts on my index. Another milestone will be coming in a bit.

One more comment. Google/blogger says that in the past month I've had 661 page views here in the USA and over five times that many in France. Bonjour à mes nombreaux amis francais! Apparently I also have readers in Poland, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Netherlands, India and Portugal?! I'm honored. Je suis honorée. Jestem zaszczycony. Ik ben vereerd. Ich bin geehrt. मैं सम्मानित किया।. Estou honrado. And thanks to https://www.freetranslation.com!

Happy 8th anniversary to me

I began writing this blog eight years ago today. In that time I've seen 864 movies (and written about 884). 864 includes Equity, which we saw yesterday, about which I will write shortly that we both loved it. If you see us at the movies, we'll be in our seats until after the credits are finished!

Dough (2015)

Another packed room roared with laughter at this story of an elderly Jewish baker in London who takes on a young Muslim apprentice whose help, both intentional and not, causes the struggling business to boom. The closing feature at our local Jewish Film Festival, it has a twist that surprised me, even though it's on the poster and every synopsis I've read of the movie. I'll leave it out, because that's how I roll.

It stars Jonathan Pryce (profiled in Hysteria) as the baker, Jerome Holder (new to me) as the apprentice, and Ian Hart (some of the movies he's been in that I loved were Backbeat (1994) in which he played John Lennon, The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain (1995), Michael Collins (1996), The Butcher Boy (1997), Monument Ave. (1998), Enemy of the State (1998), The End of the Affair (1999), Liam (2000), Finding Neverland (2004), twenty episodes of Dirt, and four of Boardwalk Empire--he was also in one Harry Potter movie as Quirinus Quirrel) as a bad guy), and Pauline Collins (last blogged in Quartet) as a saucy widow.

Directed by John Goldschmidt (new to me but no novice) from a script by Jonathan Benson (yes, a novice--it's his first) and Jez Freedman (his first feature after one short), the movie has music that I liked but cannot find online, composed by Lorne Balfe. On his website, however, you can find many other tracks he has written,

We had such a good time that I wrote to distributor Menemsha Films to ask how my friends and readers could see it. I was told "the film will begin its theatrical release this spring, starting in Florida and then going wide in April!" So, I hope, there is a DVD in its future.

I hit a milestone on Sunday, having seen 800 movies since the first one in the blog on September 3, 2008 (Brideshead Revisited). And now that I'm all caught up on the writing, I can put that number on the index, with the other number, 821, of movies summarized in these pages.

UPDATE: Yes, it's true. Dough's release date is April 29, 2016 probably on the coasts, and will reach the rest of the country soon.

Grandma (2015)

Jack and I really liked this story of a prickly woman and her granddaughter searching for cash to fund an abortion in Los Angeles. Lily Tomlin (covered in Admission) is brilliant as Elle, a published poet still reeling from the not-recent death of her long-time partner Violet, and Julia Garner (I didn't recognize her, though we've seen two of her pictures) is good as the pregnant teen. Marcia Gay Harden (last blogged in Whip It) is terrific, as always, as the daughter of one and mother of the other, feared by both.

Nat Wolff (most recently in Palo Alto and was in Admission as well), Sam Elliott (I'll See You in My Dreams), Judy Greer (Men, Women & Children), Laverne Cox (trans woman Sophia on Orange Is the New Black), and Elizabeth Peña (sadly, she died a year ago. Some of my favorites were Lone Star (1996), Tortilla Soup (2001), Transamerica (2005), and Mother and Child) all turn in good cameos. Read this glowing review from Variety after you've seen the movie.

Director/writer Paul Weitz says he had had the idea for the script before working the same duties on Admission with Tomlin but she helped him flesh it out.

The magnificent 1955 Dodge Royal driven by Elle in the movie actually belongs to Tomlin.

Joel P. West composed the dreamy music, which can be streamed on Spotify or purchased on amazon and iTunes.

Jodi, of the Tuesday night movie club, saw it before we did--moving and travel have kept us away from the big screens far too long--and dismissed it as "typical film fest fare not living up to its potential." We and Rotten Tomatoes' critics at 93% heartily disagree (RT audiences average 70%). In fact, we think film festivals tend to provide the best entertainment. Check this out at your neighborhood art house and listen for my new favorite movie line: "I don't have an anger problem, I have an a**hole problem."

Milestone: this is the 800th movie summarized on the blog since September 3, 2008. Sorry I've been too busy to write for a while. Working now to catch up!

My Old Lady (2014)

Jack and I enjoyed this tale of a prickly American loser who finds that the Paris apartment he just inherited comes with a nonagenarian and her daughter. Kevin Kline, Maggie Smith, and Kristin Scott Thomas are in top form and the establishing shots are beautiful, breaking my rule #2 about the Eiffel Tower. Kline (last blogged in Joe Papp in Five Acts and Darling Companion) pronounces every word with such care it's always a pleasure to listen to him. I did find it hard to swallow that his character is supposed to be 57 (Kline's birthdate is 10/24/47) but it was worth it to enjoy his darkly comic moodiness. Thomas (most recently in Nowhere Boy) is a more believable 57 (5/24/60) and brings in her reliable skills and flawless French (she's been living in France since her late teens). Dame Smith (last in Quartet) simply employs body language and subtracts makeup to add a few years (12/28/34) and can do no wrong.

When I lived in Boston in the late 70s-early 80s, playwright Israel Horovitz, a Massachusetts native, was much revered. He wrote the adaptation of his play and here makes his fiction directorial debut, following a documentary. Trivia: he is the father of Beastie Boy Adam. Jack did comment that the movie seemed awfully play-like, i.e. static, but I didn't feel that way. The lovely cinematography is credited to Michel Amathieu and the production design to Pierre-François Limbosch.

The French viager tradition, a sort of reverse mortgage explained here, is cause for much of the humor. The movie could benefit from subtitles; I was glad I understood a bit of French here and there.

As I write this I'm listening to clips from Mark Orton's (most recently scored Nebraska) sprightly soundtrack on amazon. Stay in the room to hear the end of the music over the credits. You'll be rewarded by important bonuses, one tying up a loose end in the plot.

Rotten Tomatoes' averages are too low, at 56% critics and 61% audiences. We liked and recommend it.

Milestone alert! This marks the 700th movie I have watched for the first time since beginning the blog September 3, 2008, or six years and one month ago. Who's counting? I am.

They Came Together (2014)

Silly slapstick, in the style of Airplane (1980), this is a spoof of romantic comedies, chock full of clichés. Jack liked it a lot. Amy and I, not so much, even though we love stars Amy Poehler and Paul Rudd.

Poehler (best known for Saturday Night Live and Parks and Recreation, she's done a fair number of movies, including Blades of Glory (2007), Baby Mama (2008), and a voice in the US version of The Secret World of Arietty) and Rudd (last blogged in Anchorman 2) are game for this genre and they work hard. In my post about Prince Avalanche I wrote, "Jack and I would watch Paul Rudd in almost anything." This and Anchorman 2 seem to fall into the category of "almost."

Director/co-writer David Wain (profiled in Wanderlust) also gives his all but it left me pretty cold when we saw it five weeks ago. DVD release is set for September 2. Rotten Tomatoes critics are now at 68% and audiences at 50%.  Poehler and Rudd fans can get it on netflix and fast forward, especially that scene in the bar.

Despite my negative views on this one, here's a milestone: this is the 700th movie presented on this blog (despite the long summer break, five more in draft form, and many on my must see list)!

The Great Gatsby (2013)

A magnificent spectacle, this zooms and leaps in its depiction of 1920s wretched excess set to 21st century rap music and jazz covers. If you don't know the story, read the F. Scott Fitzgerald book which Jack, a former English teacher, calls (I may be paraphrasing) one of the best crafted works in the English language. Suffice it to say that some fabulously wealthy folks party on Long Island and we learn that money can't buy happiness. But we enjoy watching "the privileged class enjoying its privileges" (quoted from The Philadelphia Story (1940)). Leonardo DiCaprio (last in Django Unchained) plays our enigmatic title character to a T. Tobey Maguire (Brothers) is the aw-shucks narrator Nick Carraway, Carey Mulligan (Shame) the blandly calculating Daisy, Isla Fisher (Confessions of a Shopaholic) the brassy floozy, Elizabeth Debicki (new to me, she's been in only one other picture) as nice girl Jordan, and Joel Edgerton (Zero Dark Thirty) is getting the most props as the explosive Tom.

Director/co-writer Baz Luhrmann (Australia was probably his least popular movie, Moulin Rouge! (2001) his most and it was Oscar-nominated for Best Picture; I didn't see Strictly Ballroom (1992) nor Romeo + Juliet (1996)) is known for his zooming and leaping camera, even though he hasn't used cinematographer Simon Duggan before. Gatsby co-writer Craig Pearce collaborated with Luhrmann on the earlier three screenplays.

But the real stars here are the sets and costumes. Wow. Architectural Digest covered them in an article with some pictures on an attached link. You can also see some photos of the costumes on the movie's website (left column, five rows down). I predict nominations for Catherine Martin who headed both the Production Design AND Costume Design teams (she won Oscars for both for Moulin Rouge! as well as the Art Directors Guild Award that year, was nominated for art director for Romeo + Juliet and for costume design for Australia, and has had a producing credit on Luhrmann's movies starting with Romeo + Juliet). Oh, and Mulligan's and Debicki's haircuts or wigs or whatever are terrific as well.

With Jay-Z as another of the producers it's no surprise that there is contemporary music mixed in with the oldies. Here's a pretty good list as far as I can tell. You can hear clips on the movie's website in the video section, soundtrack sampler, right column, second row.

The critics are still complaining (51% average on rottentomatoes, though audiences are up to 72). I guess they were expecting Shakespeare. We liked it. And it finished its fourth weekend at #8 at the box office, #7 in total gross of movies playing now. You probably don't need to spring for 3D but you should see it on a big screen.

Hit & Run (2012)

We liked this one a lot. It's a car chase movie combined with a romantic comedy between modern, evolved adults. I'm a big fan of Dax Shepard (Crosby on Parenthood, was in Baby Mama (2008) and more) and he wrote the script and co-directs with David Palmer, as they did on another project. Kristen Bell, Shepard's real-life fiancée, plays his girlfriend here. They talked about the movie on Jimmy Kimmel in this video. It's an independent movie made with a $2 million budget (that's low, believe it or not), half of which went to music rights (clips here). Shepard, a car buff, provides the awesome onscreen muscle cars from his own collection AND does his own driving. Don't try those fishtails yourself, kids!

Also in the cast are Joy Bryant, who plays Crosby's girlfriend on Parenthood, Tom Arnold as a dumb cop, and Bradley Cooper in unfortunate dreadlocks. This has gotten bad reviews (45% critics, 58% audiences on rottentomatoes). We still enjoyed it two weeks ago and you can now on the big screen or later at home.

It's just a few minutes before midnight, and I'm celebrating an anniversary. Four years ago today, 9/3/08, I saw Brideshead Revisited and wrote the first entry in this blog. As of today I have seen 502 distinct feature films in those four years. This is number 500 (still catching up, as usual). Including the 21 I saw before that date and wrote up after, 521 are summarized as of right now. See my index for the running total.

A Dangerous Method (2011)

Beautiful and fascinating, this story of Carl Jung, Jung's first patient, and Sigmund Freud is surprisingly not Oscar-nominated, despite a steady hand from director David Cronenberg, amazing production design, luscious cinematography, and good performances from Michael Fassbender, Keira Knightley, and Viggo Mortensen. The "method" is the "talking cure," introduced by Freud and employed by Jung in treating Sabina Spielrein, a Russian (the characters are supposed to be speaking German, and Spielrein German with a Russian accent; all speak English, and kudos to Knightley for her Russian-accented English). Frequently young and/or attractive actresses are deemed "brave" for appearing unpretty in movies, so Knightly (her last appearance in these pages was Never Let Me Go) could have earned that with her grimaces and extra jutting of her already prodigious jaw as the literally hysterical Spielrein, but her top billing is erroneous, as it is clearly Jung's story. Fassbender (last in X-Men: First Class, next in Shame, which we saw a few days ago, and I completely forgot to mention him in Inglourious Basterds) lends Jung the requisite intelligence, passion, and inquiring mind. Mortensen (to me he'll always be the sexy Blouse Man in A Walk on the Moon (1999), but here he is, third from the right, in his first role in Witness (1985), and I liked him in 28 Days (2000), A History of Violence (2005), and Eastern Promises (2007) which did earn him an Oscar nod), aged to perfection with a balding wig and facial hair, gives us a wonderful, controlling Freud, stuck in his oral phase, as he is never without a cigar in his mouth.

I've long been a big Cronenberg fan, beginning with The Dead Zone (1983) which was in my 1980s top five list, moving on to The Fly (1986), Dead Ringers (1988), Crash (the 1996 one with James Spader and Holly Hunter, not the 2004 ensemble movie of the same name), A History of Violence, and Eastern Promises. This one has plenty of perversion, as do the others, but much less blood. Cinematographer Peter Suschitzky (shot the latter four Cronenberg pictures and many others) provides the glorious images. Christopher Hampton (I covered him in Chéri) adapted his play The Talking Cure, which was in turn adapted from John Kerr's book A Most Dangerous Method.

Jack and I admired the magnificent sailboat, the pens, gadgets, and all sorts of doo-hickeys appropriate for the first two decades of the twentieth century setting. Spielrein's and Mrs. Jung's wardrobes are also spectacular. I covered composer Howard Shore in Hugo and here is the first track of the lovely score, but I have a new anecdote. I got to speak with author Alan Zweibel, one of the original Saturday Night Live writers, recently. I mentioned his "Spud beer" spot (sorry, video isn't readily available), from that 1975 season, Howard Shore and his All-Nurse Band (they were all men, wearing nurse dresses and caps for the bit) performed the song St. James Infirmary and Zweibel played a patient in a hospital gown. Zweibel told us was his very first appearance on TV, and he was impressed that I remembered. Jack said, "That's just what she does."

Anyway, this is definitely worth seeing, so trundle on down to your local art house and give it a look, but leave the children at home.

Milestone! This is movie number 450 summarized on the blog. And, since September 3, 2008, I have seen and written up 431 distinct pictures, an average of 10.5 per month. But who's counting?