A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Last night I had the opportunity to see a Thursday preview of A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood and, as a big fan of Mr. Rogers, I knew I would enjoy it but I absolutely loved it!  Since I basically sobbed through the documentary Won't You Be My Neighbor?, I was prepared with tissues for this movie and I definitely needed them!  Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys) is a journalist for Esquire magazine known for hard-hitting exposés designed to discredit his subjects.  He reluctantly takes an assignment to interview Fred Rogers (Tom Hanks) and his wife Andrea (Susan Kalechi Watson) warns him not to write anything negative about Mr. Rogers because it will ruin her childhood.  Whenever Vogel attempts a question, Rogers turns it back on him and gets him to reveal his concerns about being a new father and his inability to forgive his own father Jerry (Chris Cooper), who has recently made a reappearance in his life, for walking out on him and his dying mother.  Through his friendship, Rogers is able to get Vogel to change his perspective on life and become a more involved parent as well as reconcile with his father.  The story sounds very emotionally manipulative but it doesn't come across that way at all.  What I always loved about Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood is that he could always explain difficult and scary things in a way that a child could understand and he provided a way for children to express and deal with their feelings and that is exactly what he does for Vogel.  In fact, this movie uses the framing device of having Rogers tell Vogel's story as an episode of his show which is absolutely brilliant.  I love that all of the transitions between scenes involved the trolley moving through models of the locations.  Hanks gives an incredibly heartwarming performance as the beloved television star and, after a while, I forgot that I was watching Tom Hanks.  It is not so much an imitation as it is an embodiment of Fred Rogers.  Rhys also gives a powerful performance as a broken man in need of a little kindness.  I had one of the most profound viewing experiences of my life (which required all of my tissues) during an especially poignant scene.  Rogers asks Vogel to take a moment of silence to think about all of the people who loved him into being and you could literally hear a pin drop in my screening as everyone in the audience, including me, did as he asked.  When a tear falls from Vogel's eye I think everyone in the audience was crying, too!  I really loved this wonderful movie and I highly recommend it to everyone, but especially to those who grew up watching Mr. Rogers.

The Good Liar

Despite feeling a bit under the weather, I decided to see the movie The Good Liar last night because I was afraid it would be leaving theaters soon to make room for all of the big Thanksgiving releases and I just couldn't pass up an opportunity to see Helen Mirren and Ian McKellen spar with each other on the big screen.  Roy Courtnay (McKellen) is a career con-artist who sets up elaborate (and fraudulent) investment schemes with his partner Vincent (Jim Carter) to scam people out of their money.  He begins chatting with Betty McLeish (Mirren), a wealthy and recently widowed woman, through an online dating service and the two eventually meet for dinner where they both confess to a few white lies on their dating profiles  They form an instant attachment and soon he introduces her to Vincent, who suggests that she open a joint off-shore investment account with Roy (which Roy will then use to steal all of her money).  Betty naively agrees but her nephew Steven (Russell Tovey) is suspicious and investigates Roy's past.  He discovers that Roy has been lying about much more than his investment scam.  However, Roy soon finds out that Betty has been lying about her past, too.  Who is scamming whom?  This movie is definitely a slow-burn and I predicted the big plot twist well before it happened (although not the details which are, quite frankly, a bit convoluted and seem like they belong in a different movie).  What makes this movie so enjoyable are the performances of Mirren and McKellen.  The two of them are, as you might imagine, absolutely riveting and they have such great chemistry as they match wits against each other.  They are just so much fun to watch and I particularly enjoyed McKellen, who plays Roy with a glint in his eye.  This is a very average movie but it is elevated by its two stars and I recommend it for them.

The Report

I am a huge fan of Adam Driver (I find him to be strangely appealing) so I was very eager to see the political thriller The Report at Sundance this year.  I wasn't able to get a ticket but I knew that it would eventually come to the Broadway.  I saw it yesterday and I found it to be incredibly compelling and disturbing.  Senator Dianne Feinstein (Annette Bening) is the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee and she asks Daniel Jones (Driver), a member of her staff, to investigate reports of the CIA's use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" on detainees after the 9/11 attacks.  He spends the next five years obsessively studying over 6 million pages of documents from the CIA and determines that the torture of terror suspects yielded nothing that the CIA didn't know already.  His 6,700 page report is blocked by CIA director John Brennan (Ted Levine) who vehemently disagrees with his interpretation of events and by White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough (Jon Hamm) who says that Obama wants to be perceived as a non-partisan president and doesn't want to go after Bush and his policies.  What is eventually released is a 525 page executive summary that is heavily redacted and does not result in any disciplinary measures against the CIA.  This movie is sometimes really difficult to watch because it includes many flashbacks of detainees being tortured (the waterboarding sequences are especially brutal) as Jones uncovers information.  This movie reminds me a lot of All the President's Men and Spotlight because, as with both of these movies, I was on the edge of my seat waiting for the next revelation and was horrified when it came. Driver gives a riveting performance as a naive and idealistic staffer (he takes a picture of the Capitol Building on his first day in Washington) who becomes more and more jaded as he becomes emotionally invested in his investigation.  I especially loved the intensity of his scenes with Bening who is pitch-perfect as Feinstein.  I highly recommend this movie because it shines a light on a troubling period in our history that should not be forgotten.

Midway

The second movie in our double feature last night was Midway and both my Dad and I really enjoyed it.  Intelligence officer Edwin Layton (Patrick Wilson) predicts that Japan will eventually attack the U.S. but he is ignored by Washington.  After the devastation of Pearl Harbor, Chester Nimitz (Woody Harrelson) is appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet and he decides to listen when Layton predicts that the next attack will be at Midway even though Washington believes that the location will be the Aleutians.  He orders the USS Enterprise, under the command of Admiral Halsey (Dennis Quaid), to leave the Coral Sea to regroup near Midway.  Layton is correct and the Japanese are caught unaware.  Ultimately, because of the bravery of Squadron Leaders Wade McClusky (Luke Evans) and Dick Best (Ed Skrein) in a series of aerial dogfights, all three Japanese aircraft carriers are damaged and they withdraw from battle which turns the tide of the war in the Pacific.  The script is very rudimentary with lots of cliched dialogue (but that is to be expected with a Roland Emmerich blockbuster).  There is not a lot of characterization beyond that of Best but every character is portrayed as heroic, even the Japanese, and the actors do a good job with the material they are given.  As a devotee of historical novels, especially those having to do with World War II, I enjoyed learning about the events leading up to the battles portrayed in this movie.  However, this movie really delivers with spectacular visual and sound effects which are intense, to say the least.  From the attack on Pearl Harbor, to the Doolittle (Aron Eckhart) raid on Tokyo, to the actual Battle of Midway, the audience feels completely immersed in the action.  There were moments when I felt like I was in the cockpit with the pilots as they are diving from a nearly vertical angle to drop a bomb on the Japanese aircraft carriers.  This movie delivered exactly what I expected and I recommend it to fans of action blockbusters.

Ford v Ferrari

There are so many movies that my Dad and I want to see so we decided on a double feature last night and it was epic!  We began with Ford v Ferrari and we both absolutely loved it!  When Enzo Ferrari (Remo Girone) humiliates Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts) by refusing an offer to purchase his bankrupt company, Ford is determined to build a car that will defeat Ferrari at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.  Lee Iacocca (Jon Bernthal), Vice President of Ford Motor Company, enlists the help of Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon), who won the Le Mans in 1959 but has since retired from racing because of a heart condition and now designs cars.  Shelby asks Ken Miles (Christian Bale), a hot-tempered British race car driver, to help him.  They test the Ford GT40 and Miles suggests many modifications to get it ready for the 1964 Le Mans but Leo Beebe (Josh Lucas), Executive Vice President of Ford Motor Company, doesn't think that Miles represents the ideals of the company and demands that another driver race it.  After they lose Ford promises Shelby total control as they attempt the race again but, once again, Beebe interferes to oust Miles.  Shelby bets his entire company on Miles to win the 24 Hours of Daytona which convinces Ford to let him race at Le Mans.  This leads to a thrilling 1966 Le Mans race in which Miles pushes the car past 7,000 RPMs for a stunning conclusion.  This movie is fantastic!  It has a compelling true story about two outsiders who overcome their own personal demons and corporate interference to do something that had never been done before.  It makes you want to stand up and cheer even if you are not a fan of racing!  Both Damon and Bale give brilliant performances that are generating a lot of Oscar buzz.  The two of them have great chemistry as they play off each other and I especially enjoyed their knock-down brawl!  Bale, especially, is incredible and I loved it when he talked to the car as if it was a woman.  Finally, the racing sequences are an adrenaline-fueled rush with squealing tires, shifting gears, and fiery crashes.  We saw it in IMAX and these sequences were thrilling, to say the least.  I cannot recommend this movie enough (see it in IMAX).

Note:  At one point my dream car was a Dodge Daytona Shelby.  I thought Shelby was just the name of the car until my friend Michael explained to me that Carroll Shelby designed it!