A Night at the Movies

Perusing news from the USA I learn that people now go to a library more often than a movie theatre.

A Gallup poll taken just before Christmas found that people visit a library on average 10.5 times a year compared with only 5.3 times a year for movie theatres.

After reading about and watching Sunday’s annual Academy Awards show, I understand why. I’d rather watch raccoons dining at the dump than pay to view some of Hollywood’s recent offerings.

Take for instance the ridiculous Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. How it made it to the Academy Awards defies common sense, as well as common decency. It has to be one of film history’s all-time duds.

It’s packed with star power: Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margo Robbie and Al Pacino. Were they on vacation with nothing to do, so they volunteered to take part in this movie-making catastrophe?

It did work out well, however, for Brad Pitt, who won best supporting actor for his low-key performance as a stunt double to DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton, a washed-up cowboy movie star.

The movie was directed by Quentin Tarantino, and to be totally transparent, I don’t like any of his work. He has a penchant for brutal violence and racial slurs in his films.

He is not a natural storyteller and prefers to create movies that are non-linear, with scattered plots sprinkled with absurdity.

If I want to watch disjointed absurdity, I don’t need to go to a movie theatre. I can watch the evening news, or take a walk through downtown Toronto.

That’s just my opinion. Many people love Tarantino’s work, which has included Kill Bill, Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction.

Although I don’t like Tarantino’s work, it is good that Hollywood has it. The movie industry needs diversity, in its people and in its work.

It got a shot of diversity Sunday when the South Korean thriller Parasite became the first film not in English to win an Oscar for best picture. The film’s director, Bong Joon Ho, won best director and it also picked up the Oscars for original screenplay and best international feature.

I haven’t seen Parasite yet because I dislike having to read sub-titles, but I will get to it.  I’m told it is a cutting social satire about economic inequality.

I’m assuming that the Academy Awards voters did their job thoroughly and that it is a much more interesting flick than the competing 1917, Joker, or The Irishman.

I thought they were okay, but not on the top of my Academy Awards list, although some of the acting in the competing films was terrific.

Joaquin Phoenix was outstanding in Joker, getting a well-deserved Oscar for best actor. Rene Zellweger (best actress) in Judy and Robert De Niro (The Irishman) put in good performances but neither film left me with anything really memorable.

I would have fallen asleep during 1917 but the rifle fire and explosions kept me awake. It did win three Oscars – for sound, cinematography and visual effects.

Last year’s offerings were much better, I thought. Films like A Star Is Born, Green Book, Bohemian Rhapsody and Black Panther were good storytelling while carrying important messages.

Three of the best movies I watched this winter did not figure in this year’s Academy Awards.

The Wife, which won nominations last year, is an intriguing story of a wife (Glenn Close) who writes her husband’s books and he wins the awards. The Good Liar (2019) is about a con man outwitted by a widow (Helen Mirren) he is trying to con and Rocketman, is the biographical musical about Elton John.

I thought each of these was as good or better than some of this year’s Academy Awards offerings. But then again, I’m not a film expert. I’m just a guy who likes to sit down to watch some good storytelling and to leave the theatre having seen something memorable.

Much of the Academy Awards stuff I’ve seen this year is not memorable. Except of course for Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, which was memorable for all the wrong reasons.

However, as my dear old mother used to tell me: “Everybody to their own taste, said the old lady as she kissed the cow.”

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Hooray for Hollywood!

Movies are welcome comfort during a nasty winter like the one we are experiencing. January and February are prime times to catch up on the newest and best movies, which will be celebrated Sunday at the annual Academy Awards.

I’ve got to see many of this year’s nominated movies: The Wife, A Star is Born, Green Book, Vice, Bohemian Rhapsody, Roma.

This year’s film crop has left me with the feeling that movies no longer are simply entertainment. Most of the movies I have seen this winter have had strong messages, or themes, delivered by an impressive line-up of film talent that seems to get stronger every year.

They are movies that don’t leave you just feeling entertained. They are movies that leave you with thoughts and ideas worth thinking about.

For instance, Green Book shows readers how spending time with people unlike ourselves can help us overcome our prejudices. Bohemian Rhapsody delivers the message that we all need to learn who we are, accept it and get on with life. Vice shows how political corruption hurts the world, while Roma displays the hurts of class divisions.

Both A Star Is Born and The Wife are about troubled relationships held together by remarkable feminist strength.

I was thinking about all this when I walked past our television set yesterday and noticed that a rerun of the 1958 musical South Pacific was playing. It has always been a favourite, so I sat down, became engrossed and watched it right through.

Now that’s real cool entertainment without the deep messages or themes, I thought as I listened to some of Rogers and Hammerstein’s greatest songs. Then I reached the part in which the three main characters unexpectedly confront the issue of racism.

Some background for those who don’t know, or remember, the movie: American military forces are gathered on an island in the South Pacific during the Second World War against Japan. Nellie Forbush (Mitzi Gaynor) is a navy nurse who has fallen in love with Emile de Becque (Rossano Brazzi), a French plantation owner. Joe Cable (John Kerr) is a Marine lieutenant who has fallen in love with a young Tonkinese woman.

Cable has decided he can’t marry the girl because she is of a different race. Nellie has decided she can’t marry de Becque because she has learned that he was married to a  Polynesian woman who died and left him with two interacial children.

The three are together in a scene in which Nellie says she can’t marry de Becque because of her feelings about him having married a Polynesian. She can’t help herself because racism born into her, she says.

Cable feels the same but bursts into the song You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught, one stanza of which goes:

“You've got to be taught to be afraid

Of people whose eyes are oddly made, And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade, You've got to be carefully taught.”

People are not born racists, they learn to be, is a strong message delivered through music.

Cable and de Becque, convinced their lives are over because their loves cannot be fulfilled, go off together on a dangerous reconnaissance mission. Cable is killed but de Becque survives.

The movie ends with de Becque walking up the hill to his plantation and sees Nellie serving lunch to his two children. She has overcome her racist feelings and all ends well.

South Pacific was nominated for 10 awards in 1959 but won only one – for best sound.

It was not just an entertaining movie featuring classic musical numbers such as Some Enchanted Evening and Bali Hai, but a movie that delivers an important message without beating viewers over the head.

 

It will be interesting to see what movies walk off with the golden statuettes Sunday evening. It is a safe bet that the winners not  only will have been entertaining but will have delivered messages that are important to receive and ponder during these troubled times.

That’s the wonderful thing about the movies. Not only are they a good place to go when the weather is snowy and cold. They tell us something about who we are and how we should conduct our lives.

Good work Hollywood! Keep them coming.

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