Walk the Line

Walk the Line (2005) starring Joaquin Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon, Ginnifer Goodwin, Robert Patrick. Phoenix plays country star Johnny Cash in this biopic, and does a pretty good job of singing Cash's hit songs. Witherspoon won an Oscar for her sparkling portrayal of June Carter, Cash's eventual true love and wife. A movie like this is a tough sell, because Cash is so recognizable and it's just about impossible for an actor to look like the person he's portraying. Phoenix gives it his best shot, but he falls short. Also, the film puts a little too much emphasis on the soapy aspects of the story, namely Cash's long and arduous effort to get Carter to agree to marry him (it wasn't that hard in real life, according to a recent biography of Cash written by Robert Hilburn). Ultimately, for me, the question is, did the film draw you in and make you forget that you were watching an actor portray an icon? The answer, for me, was no. (The film has English subtitles for the hard of hearing, as well as closed captions.) Grade: B- 

Nebraska

Nebraska (2013) starring Bruce Dern, Will Forte, June Squibb, Bob Odenkirk, Stacy Keach. A delightful mix of drama and comedy in which the elderly Woody Grant (Dern) starts walking to Lincoln, Nebraska after he receives a letter telling him he has won a million dollars. The letter is a scam, of course, but Woody is convinced that he has won. Eventually, his son David (Forte) agrees to drive him to Nebraska, and they set off on a road trip together. They stop off in the town of Hawthorne, Nebraska, where Woody grew up, and word gets around that Woody has won a million dollars. Old friends and relatives come out of the woodwork wanting their "share" of Woody's winnings. The film has many amusing and engaging details, and scarcely takes a wrong step. It was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Dern. I enjoyed it immensely. (Subtitles in English are available for the hearing-impaired.) Grade: A     

The Angel Levine

The Angel Levine (1970) starring Zero Mostel, Harry Belafonte. Morris Mishkin's (Mostel) wife is on her deathbed, and God sends a probationary angel (Belafonte) to help him. The angel has some unresolved issues that he has to work on, too. This movie has not aged well, and I didn't care for it too much. Belafonte's not much of an actor, and I found the soundtrack irritating. (English subtitles are available for the hearing-impaired.) Grade: C 

Frozen

Frozen (2013) Animated. Voices of Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel, Jonathan Groff, Josh Gad, Santino Fontana. Two orphaned princesses live in the kingdom of Arendelle, but one, Elsa, is a "Snow Queen." She has the power to create winter, and she accidentally sinks the whole kingdom into winter with an angry wave of her hands. Her little sister, Anna, must do what she can to break the spell and restore summer to the kingdom. This movie was shown in 3D in theaters, so it surely loses something on the TV screen, but it is still quite entertaining, and a funny snowman character named Olaf provides plenty of comic relief. I'm not usually a fan of animated movies, but this is a good one. Grade: B 

Dallas Buyers Club

Dallas Buyers Club (2013) starring Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner, Jared Leto. McConaughey won an Oscar for his portrayal of Ron Woodroof, a real-life AIDS patient who in the '80s formed a "club" of people who found their own experimental treatments for the disease, which was then new and not well understood. Leto won an Oscar for his portrayal of Rayon, a transsexual who also had AIDS and who went into business with Woodroof supplying non-FDA approved drugs to AIDS patients. Garner is also good as a compassionate doctor who sees that AZT is not working on her patients and befriends Woodroof. This movie was nominated for Best Picture, but of course didn't win, losing to "Twelve Years a Slave." This film was a little too gritty for me to say that I enjoyed it, but after watching it I can say that it is a good movie, and worth seeing. (English subtitles for the hearing-impaired are available on the disc.) Grade: B+   

Philomena

Philomena (2013) starring Judi Dench, Steve Coogan. An unemployed journalist named Martin Sixsmith (Coogan) helps a retired nurse named Philomena Lee (Dench) search for the son she was forced to give up for adoption 50 years before, when she was a teenager. The search takes them to an abbey in Ireland, then on to America. The movie is a delightful examination of the contrast between their two personalities and world views, and it's all squeezed into an economical hour and a half. It was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actress for Dench. The film was based on a true story, and is an exemplar of how the evil nuns in Ireland took pregnant teens and virtually imprisoned them and then sold their babies (in this case, for a thousand pounds). It's a very clean movie, with scarcely a wasted word or a wasted motion. (English subtitles for the hearing-impaired are available on the disc. Closed captions are not.) Grade: A-    

Saving Mr. Banks

Saving Mr. Banks (2013) starring Emma Thompson, Tom Hanks. Walt Disney (Hanks) attempts to convince P.L. Travers (Thompson) to sell him the rights to her book "Mary Poppins" so he can make it into a movie. She resists fiercely, because she is afraid he'll try to make it into a cartoon, which she detests. Travers, however, needs the money and her resistance slowly crumbles. This is a fun movie which suffers slightly from the continuous flipping back and forth between flashbacks to Travers' childhood in 1901 Australia and the time of the negotiations, 1961. Hanks makes a pretty good Walt Disney, but you never forget that he is Tom Hanks, not Walt Disney. Thompson steals the show as Travers -- she is very convincing in the role, and expresses a wide range of emotions very well. (The disc provides English subtitles for the hearing-impaired.) Grade: B+ 

Little House on the Prairie - Season 3, Disc 1

Little House on the Prairie - Season 3, Disc 1 (1976) starring Michael Landon, Karen Grassle, Melissa Gilbert, Melissa Sue Anderson, Alison Arngrim. Little House on the Prairie is comfort food for the mind and heart, and this disc from Season 3 doesn't fail. There are four episodes on the disc, a total of about 176 minutes, or nearly three hours of schmaltz. Two of the episodes involve Laura Ingalls' (Gilbert) sister Mary (Anderson), and two involve a feud between Laura and Nellie Oleson (Arngrim) over a horse. If you've ever seen an episode of Little House, you pretty much know what to expect. Good and right win in the end, and all is right with the world. (English subtitles are not supplied, but closed captions save the day.) Grade: A  

The Accused

The Accused (1988) starring Jodie Foster, Kelly McGillis. Foster won an Oscar for her performance as Sarah Tobias, a young woman who is gang-raped in a bar, only to see her rapists plead to a lesser charge. McGillis plays the prosecutor who decides to try and get justice by bringing to trial the men who cheered the rapists on. (The English subtitles are very good -- very clear and legible.) Grade: B+

Another Year

Another Year (2010) starring Jim Broadbent, Lesley Manville, Ruth Sheen, Peter Wight. Directed by Mike Leigh. Happily married, mature couple Tom and Gerri (Broadbent and Sheen) play host to a group of neurotic friends and relatives. Chief among the neurotic friends is Mary (Manville), who is  in her 40s and fading fast. Mary is sort of the core of the movie, as everything revolves around her. She is deeply troubled, and she relies too much on Tom and Gerri for emotional support. She also drinks too much. Mary has an inappropriate crush on Tom and Gerri's son Joe, and she cracks when Joe finally brings a girlfriend home. Manville won several awards for her acting in this movie, and she is very good. The film, at first amusing, gradually becomes tragic. (The English subtitles for the hearing-impaired are very good -- large yellow letters against a black background.) Grade: A   

Angel on My Shoulder

Angel on My Shoulder (1946) starring Paul Muni, Anne Baxter, Claude Rains. Gangster Eddie Kagle (Muni) is killed by one of his henchmen, goes straight to Hell. But Mephistopheles (Rains) has a use for him, and Kagle gets to return to Earth and take on the identity of an honest judge. The judge is loved by a good woman (Baxter) and she turns Kagle from evil to good. The problem with this disc is that it has no subtitles for the hearing-impaired, and also lacks closed captions. As a result, many passages of dialogue were unintelligible to me, and this disc earns a Grade: F   

August: Osage County

August: Osage County (2013) starring Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Ewan McGregor, Chris Cooper, Abigail Breslin, Benedict Cumberbatch, Juliette Lewis, Margo Martindale, Dermot Mulroney, Julianne Nicholson, Sam Shepard. The all-star cast is almost reason enough to see this movie about a dysfunctional family in Oklahoma. When the patriarch of the family (Shepard) kills himself, all the daughters (Roberts, Lewis and Nicholson) return home to be with their mother (Streep). The mother, who has mouth cancer, proceeds to rip everyone in the extended family with vicious criticisms under the guise of "telling the truth." Streep and Roberts are excellent as the mother and daughter who practically can't stand the sight of each other. The rest of the cast is close behind, with every performance clearly delineating one of the characters in the extended family. This film is well written, with dialogue that regularly cuts to the quick. Sometimes it's not pleasant to watch, but it ultimately rewards the viewer with deep insights into what makes a family so dysfunctional. I liked it. (English subtitles for the hearing-impaired are available on the disc.) Grade: A-  

The King and I

The King and I (1956) starring Deborah Kerr, Yul Brynner, Rita Moreno, Martin Benson. Musical in which Kerr plays Anna Leonowens, a woman who in 1862 journeys from England to Siam (now Thailand) to be the schoolmistress to the king's (Brynner) hundred or so children. The conflict in the movie arises out of the fact that Anna and the king are both strong-willed individuals, and they clash from the start. The beauty of the film derives from the music and words by the talented duo of Rodgers and Hammerstein. Songs include "Hello Young Lovers," "Getting to Know You" and "Something Wonderful." Brynner won a well-deserved Oscar for his portrayal of the king of Siam. Kerr's singing was dubbed by Marni Nixon. I found this to be an entertaining movie, although the subplot about the love of Tuptim and Lun Tha could have been trimmed considerably. Also, some of the songs were quite lame. (Subtitles in English are available for the hearing-impaired.) Grade: B+

Another Woman

Another Woman (1988) starring Gena Rowlands, Ian Holm, Mia Farrow, Blythe Danner, John Houseman, Sandy Dennis, Philip Bosco, Martha Plimpton, Gene Hackman. Written and directed by Woody Allen. It's one of Allen's "serious" films, in which a fifty-something philosophy professor (Rowlands) rents a small apartment in which to write a book, and finds that she can hear, through the heating vents, the conversation in a psychologist's office next door. She overhears a woman (Farrow) talking about the meaninglessness of life, and it starts her (Rowlands) thinking about her own life. Much of the structure of the movie seems derived from films by Ingmar Bergman, although of course Allen adds his own signature touches. I found the film a bit too introspective, and I'm not particularly enamored of Rowlands, who is in almost every scene. This is a quality film which has had much thought put into it, but I just didn't like it very much. (Subtitles in English are not provided, but closed captions are available.) Grade: B  

The Sound of Music

The Sound of Music (1965) starring Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer, Eleanor Parker, Richard Haydn. Directed by Robert Wise. Andrews stars as Maria, an aspiring nun who is assigned to be governess to the seven Von Trapp children, and who falls in love with Captain Von Trapp, the children's widowed father. Set in the late 1930s, the film shows the Von Trapp family fleeing from Austria to Switzerland to escape the Nazis. This is a musical, and the songs pretty much make the movie. Andrews practically glows as she befriends the children and teaches them how to sing. The film won five Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director. Songs include "Do Re Mi," "Climb Every Mountain" and the title tune. (English subtitles for the hearing impaired are available on the disc.) Grade: A

12 Years a Slave

12 Years a Slave (2013) starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Lupita Nyong'o, Sarah Paulson, Benedict Cumberbatch,  Brad Pitt. Directed by Steve McQueen. In 1841, a free black man named Solomon Northrup (Ejiofor) is tricked,  drugged and shanghaied into a life of slavery. The evils of slavery are shown in all their vileness. The movie is a powerful denunciation of slavery, especially as practiced in 1800s America, but one has to wonder whether it is really necessary to go to these lengths to denounce an institution which has been dead for 150 years. The movie won the Oscar for Best Picture, and also for Best Supporting Actress (Nyong'o). Bad as Solomon Northrup's experience was, the ending of this film seems anticlimactic. (English subtitles for the hearing-impaired are available, as well as closed captions.) Grade: B 

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1960) starring Tony Randall, Eddie Hodges, Archie Moore. This disc is a complete disaster. Not only is it lacking in English subtitles for the hearing-impaired, but the disc is not indexed -- so you can't stop the movie and take a break, because when you return it will start over again from the beginning. As I said, a complete disaster. Grade: F