Apollo 11 is a straight documentary, with no narration, only news clips and photos and film footage. My all-time favorite movie is Apollo 13, and I can see where its producer Ron Howard borrowed some of the original scene setu for spots in his movie.
One detail I did learn in Apollo 11 was about the periodic rolling of the spacecraft to make sure that all sides were equally heated and cooled.
The Public is an indie film starring Emilio Estevez and Alec Baldwin. The title is a pun: it refers both to the downtown public library and to the public in general.
The movie was filmed at the Cincinnati Public Library and is about the homeless people hanging out there during the day. Yes, I know this is true, because I've seen them there myself. The Public was a fictional story about how the homeless decide not to leave one bitterly cold night, and how a librarian sympathizes with them and stays. The police eventually arrive, thinking there is a hostage standoff on the third floor of the building.
There is no violence although there is plenty of discussion by the authorities about storming into the building. The movie has an unlikely ending and everyone gets out unharmed.
My only complaint is that only in two scenes does it look really cold outside--once where you can see the actors's breaths and the other where it is snowing. Other than that it does not look really cold outside--people would be shivering if it had been.
For the movie Late Night, par for the course, I saw only one man and all the women in the theater were over the age of 40. Late Night is a chic flick starring Emma Thompson and Mindy Kaling (I didn't even recognize anyone else in the movie except for the talk show hosts who played themselves). Thompson is a talk show host whose show is losing ratings and the producers and network want to get her replaced. Kaling is a young woman who is hired as a writer.
It's a pleasant little movie with no conflict and was a good choice for a hot afternoon. My friend and I both enjoyed it. My only complaint was the use of the F word, which gave the film its R rating. Late Night could have very easily been rated PG.
Yesterday is a really good but not great fantasy about an alternate universe in which the Beatles never existed. A young musician who wakes up in the hospital after an accident discovers he is the only one who knows who the band was.
He becomes an international sensation singer/songwriter by performing many Beatles tunes. However, he feels more and more guilty about what he is doing, especially when he encounters someone in the music management business who wants to change what he is singing.
The movie is sometimes kind of hard to follow, as there are dream sequences and flashbacks. Yesterday will remind you of other Beatles tribute movies, such as I Wanna Hold Your Hand and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Years ago I read a novel called Liverpool Fantasy, by Larry Narwin, in which the four guys knew each other but never formed their band, and what happened not just to them but to Liverpool and England as well.
Rocketman is a true musical, with people breaking into song and dancing in the streets. I enjoyed the musical sequences very much and the faster songs are great toe-tappers.
This movie is about the life of Elton John, so there are lots of flamboyant costumes. The story skips around quite a bit so as to fit the songs in. If you're looking for a pure biography, Rocketman isn't it.
The story slows at times during the regular scenes, and some of the characters look alike so I wasn't always sure who was who. The actor who played Bernie Taupin most impressed me.
One detail puzzled me. I am not an Elton fan one way or the other, but the song that I always thought was his biggest hit, and the one whose back story I am most familiar with, is "Someone Saved my Life Tonight," and it is never mentioned at all. Even though there are several sequences in which he is contemplating suicide, that song is never performed.
I have not read the book, The Art of Racing in the Rain, so I can't give you a comparison between the book and the movie. This is the tale of a dog and his human, told from the dog's point of view. The human is a race car driver.
The movie is very touching but a little slow in places. There is one segment that is never explained--where Eve and Zoe disappear to when Eve starts to get really sick, and she doesn't go to her parents. Other than that, the movie is very enjoyable for ages 10 and up. It's only PG, but the story might be too sad in places for younger children.
Regarding Where'd You Go, Bernadette: I know it's a cliche, but the book was better.
I'll admit, Maria Semple's novel was a little weird, hard to follow and not chronological. But it was supposed to be a mystery about a girl's search for her missing mother after the woman has a nervous breakdown. The movie changed a lot of plot details, added and subtracted characters and made the story chronological, all of which are normal in a book-to-movie process. The most important detail in the book is that the teen goes on the search by herself and learns her mother is hiding in Antarctica. That's not how it happened in the movie, and it made the film much less tense.
Harriet is about Underground Railroad heroine Harriet Tubman and how she helped slaves escape the American South in the 1850s. The movie is excellent but I am not sure how accurate it is. It is not violent and the only reason it got a PG-13 rating is because one character used the F-word. And I am not sure that word even existed in the 1800s!
I did not know that she had a brain injury, leading her to occasionally hallucinate, which was the probable cause of her "visions." There are many characters in the movie and I got confused at times as to who was related to whom. Her family seemed to get both larger and smaller as the movie went on.
I don't know if 1917 is considered a blockbuster, although it has won awards and is still showing in theaters and has made a profit.
It's the story of two British soldiers in France who trek about 16 miles in German-occupied France from one troop station to another. The telegraph lines are down and there is no other way to get a message from one location to the other.
My sister and I were both very impressed. 1917 is intense and also educational. Some of the movie is physically beautiful. We didn't recognize anyone in the the movie except for Colin Firth at the very beginning. I've seen at least a hundred World War II movies but not very many about World War I, and I recommend it.
On a related note: Ever since I saw Unbreakable, every violent movie I've seen ever since will be compared to it, most likely in the other movie's favor. Unbreakable was the story of an American Olympic runner captured by the Japanese in World War II. Unbreakable was overly long and slow, and the violence and torture were graphic and unending. Yet the movie had a PG-13 rating! Frankly, I think Unbreakable was torture porn, and should have had an R rating, or even NC-17. 1917 was shorter, much better acted and more quick-moving, and the violence and gore were far less. Yet it had an R rating because the F word was used a number of times.
I wish I understood the American movie rating system.
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