The Quarterly Movie Run-Down

Before moving on to the catch-up stuff, here is the run down on movies I saw over the last quarter.

1. In the Heat of the Night: This was part of my on-going attempt to see every movie that’s won a Best Picture Oscar. I’m fairly sure I’d actually seen it before, but it doesn’t matter because Sidney Poitier is so good as a Philadelphia detective caught up in a murder in Mississippi. Throw in Rod Steiger as the sheriff who shows himself capable of human transformation and the murder mystery is a side plot. Highly recommended.
   
   
2. The Greatest Show on Earth: Another Oscar winner, this is pretty much a paean to the circus, including narration by John Ringling North himself. There is plenty of spectacle, particularly in the performances of aerialists. But, I thought the movie would have been stronger had it been shorter, with fewer competing subplots.
   
   
3. Easy A: I watched this on a recommendation from the Wall Street Journal. And, wow, am I glad I did. The plot involves Olive, a high school girl who lies about her sexual experience, earning her an undeserved reputation as a slut. They happen to be reading The Scarlet Letter in English class and she plays the role to the hilt, sewing A’s to her clothes. I was not entirely comfortable with her faking relationships with various boys in exchange for gift cards. But, overall, I thought this movie had important things to say about slut shaming and did so in an intelligent and witty manner. I also want to note the performances of Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson as the most amazing parents any teenager ever had. I absolutely loved this movie and cannot recommend it highly enough.
   
   
4. Butter: The competitive world of butter carving gets shaken up by the wife of a retired competitor and an adorable black foster child. This would be the sort of quirky movie I love, but there was an unfortunate subplot involving a prostitute who is involved with the retired competitor. Recommended, with reservations.
   
   
5. Million Dollar Arm: Since I love baseball and find Indian culture interesting, this story (based on a true one) about recruiting the first Indian players to MLB was right up my alley. It’s somewhat predictable, but I thought it was sweet and entertaining. Of the options on DirecTV on a United flight, I’m reasonably sure it was the best choice. Recommended.
   
   
6. Down Argentine Way: I was at a hotel and flipping through channels when TCM was doing a Betty Grable retrospective. The plot is thin and predictable and there are surprisingly few songs for a musical, though the title song is repeated multiple times. More significantly, this was the first U.S. film for Carmen Miranda. This is a fluffy diversion and far from essential, but there are worse ways to kill an hour and a half.
   
   
7. The Wolf of Wall Street: I was somewhat hesitant to watch this movie (on another flight) since I knew my mother had walked out of it, apparently based on excessive cussing. Frankly, the language is a bit much, but it didn’t really bother me and I thought it fit the character well. I grew up on Long Island, so I know the type. At any rate, the movie held my interest and, in some ways, Jordan Belfort’s behavior is so over the top that it didn’t bug me that he was so reptilian. Recommended, if you can handle the lack of any likeable characters.
   
   
8. Let the Right One In: This Swedish vampire movie is truly spooky and disturbing. It’s hard to know what to say about it, because the interplay between Oskar, a bullied boy, and Eli, a vampire, is such an unusual relationship. Apparently the sexual ambiguity about Eli is explained in the book the movie is based on, but there was a certain value in not knowing that back story. This is a brilliantly original film and highly recommended for those who think they know all about vampire movies.
   
   
   
9. Broken: United’s wifi entertainment system has limited availability for movies if you use an Android device. Basically, you can get uninteresting television episodes and foreign films. British apparently qualifies as foreign, so I watched what was described as "the story of a young girl in North London whose life changes after witnessing a violent attack." That’s a horribly inaccurate description of the plot, which has to do with three families of broken people, all of them impacted by the mental illness of one family's son. Overall, I found this movie depressing and overly melodramatic. Bear in mind, however, that I also detest To Kill a Mockingbird and for much the same reasons.
   
   
10. Woman of the Year: There are times when you just need to watch Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. Yes, the concluding scene where Hepburn tries to be domestic to slapstick results is annoying, but this was 1942. There will always be a part of me that always wants to be every Hepburn character, so suave and so elegant and so immensely competent. If you feel the same way, you can watch their films over and over.