Nuremburg (2025)

There are countless variations of the saying “history repeats itself.” Nuremberg is a movie that wants us to remember. The story revisits the final days of World War II and the Nuremberg trials. The movie begins with Göring attempting to flee at the end of the war before being captured by Allied forces. We see him, along with other leading figures from Hitler’s inner circle, taken into custody. Douglas Kelly, played by Rami Malek, is brought in to create psychological profiles of these men. In the background is the effort of Justice Robert Jackson, played by Michael Shannon, who believes these men must stand trial for their crimes. He argues that they should not simply be executed. There must also be a public accounting for the horrors carried out in the name of the Third Reich. It is interesting that they brought a psyc Russell Crowe’s Göring is charming to the point of being almost disarming. We watch the two men talk and probe one another. Kelly is writing a book about what he is learning from Göring and the others. His questions cut to the heart of how such atrocities came to be. When Kelly asks why he followed Hitler, Göring describes a devastated Germany after World War I, a nation humiliated and made to suffer. Hitler told them that foreign powers were feasting on their pain and promised that Germany could reclaim its former glory. He made them feel proud again. Kelly’s obsession with Göring becomes his downfall, costing him his position, but not before Göring is put on trial. We watch Göring skillfully maneuver through Jackson’s questioning. Despite its flaws, there is something worthwhile in Vanderbilt’s attempt. Kelly eventually wrote his book. It revealed that what occurred in Germany could happen anywhere. The perpetrators of Nazi crimes were ordinary people who embraced a message that told them walking over the bodies of others was worth obtaining power. No one wanted to hear thst warning, and here we are, back at the beginning again.

Song Sung Blue (20250

I watched this because Kate Hudson is nominated for Best Actress in this, which is the only nomination the film received. She and Hugh Jackman do all the singing in this, and having grown up with two parents who loved Neil Diamond, I have familiarity with his music and they do a fantastic job of impersonating singers who impersonated him. The story is not entirely a happy one. It starts off well, though. This is based on a documentary of Lightning and Thunder, a couple in Milwaukee who channeled their love of music into a passion project that became a Neil Diamond tribute show. Mike is a recovering alcoholic Vietnam War veteran who’s tired of singing half-hearted Don Ho covers at the Wisconsin State Fair and elsewhere. He wants to do something different and Claire, who does Patsy Cline, is intrigued by his passion. Their chemistry is instant, they become a couple, and have real small time success performing together with some help from their friends. Then a tragedy occurs--really for both of them, and they have to work to come back from that. The music is fun, the script is a good one, and the performers do it justic.

Blue Moon (2025)

This is a sad one. It is nominated in several categories for an Oscar in 2026, which chas been a surprisingly fruitful year for interesting big budget films. This one is intimate and raw. Ethan Hawk does a masterful job of portraying the heart and soul of the writer through one of the last nights in the life of Lorenz Hart, who was once one of the most acclaimed Broadway songwriters on the scene before fame and passion stopped returning his calls. He’s now the drunk at the end of the bar, the guy who gets there first and leaves last, and the one who can barely hide the pain behind his non-stop commentary on film, Broadway, and everything else around him. THe director, Richard Linklater, has crafted one of his finest docudramas, a consistently fascinating exploration of the frailty of the artist, buoyed by one of Ethan Hawke’s most remarkable performances.

The Smashing Machine (2025)

The true story of mixed martial arts and UFC fighter Mark Kerr, whose obsession with greatness drove him to be a legend, and he ehlped create what the sport became. He is also largely unknown, and this is an attempt to rectify that. Let me start off by saying two things--I am not a fan of MMA and I did not like this movie. The two might be related, so I am putting that on the table up front. That said, this is kind of the antithesis of a sports legend movie. It is gritty and it doesn't step away from the hard stuff. A couple of reviews that I read pointed out things that make it different. Whereas most films about sports icons reach for immersion, this film takes an observational approach. Notice that almost every fight scene in this film is shot from outside the ring, the ropes often breaking the image into chunks, or from above, giving us the POV of a camera instead of putting us into the action. The music is either pop/rock tunes or a non-stop jazzy score, both serving to remind you consistently that you’re watching a movie. Dwayne Johnson plays Kerr with some heavy make-up—which both hides The Rock nd draws attention to its setting in the years 1997 to 2000. Fans of the currently robust sport will marvel at the lack of structure and profile it had in its early days, known more for its brutality than its athleticism. The UFC wasn’t popular, and there is what happened, which is that Kerr's coach became a figher again in order to pay the bills and they came close to fighting each other. The film also highlights the steroids, the recreational drugs, the risk of opiate addiction in a sport that invovles a lot of pain, and the chaos both in and out of the ring.

The Fire Inside (2025)

This is a biopic or dacudrama about Claressa “T-Rex” Shields, who is an American professional boxer and mixed martial artist from Flint, Michigan who is widely regarded as one of the greatest female boxers ever. She was born in 1995 and became a double Olympic gold medallist (2012 and 2016), the first time when she was just 17 years old and coached by a man who basically volunteered his time to teach her to box. She is the first boxer, male or female, to hold all four major world titles across two weight classes simultaneously. The movie does a nice job of telling all of her story, which is a severely impoversihed childhood, an unstable living situation and a coach who changed her life, maybe even saved it. The story of her rise to success is told in the way of all great sports sotries, where you basically know the outcome but still enjoy watching it unfold. The back end of the movie is what happens after she wins, which is nothing at all. She is expecting to be showered with riches and she is all but ignored. The reality of life after the Olympics is equally well told.

September 5 (2024)

This is a dramatic retelling of the violent kidnappings of the Israeli national team by Palestinean terrorists during the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. The script was nominated in the category of Best Original Screenplay and it is my last movie to watch in that category (it did not win). Most of the movie takes place inside a TV control room, where ABC Sports broadcasters faced an unprecedented crisis. The first surprise is that the lead actress from the film The Teacher's Lounge (one of last year's nominees for Best International Film) is in this as a reporter/translator who provides the link for the ABC reporting team on what is being reported on German television--she is very good, and I was glad to see her in an American movie. It is hard to remember, having lived through the first Persian Gulf War, which took place during prime time viewing hours, that there had never been a televised event like this before. It took a while to realize that if the entire world could see certain aspects of the crisis live and in real time, that meant the gunmen could also see it, adapt their tactics to counter the efforts of police, and indulge in political theater for a billion-plus viewers. The movie manages to picture the madness through what feels like both fresh eyes and period broadcasting. It make you feel like you’re in the thick of it is a remarkable achievement, even though the movie ultimately thins itself out by glossing over historical and political context and treating the incident as a primer in media ethics. Well worth watching.

A Complete Unknown (2024)

Wow. Just wow. I first saw Bob Dylan in the early 70's when I was in high school--I was, in retrospect, lucky to have a boyfriend who was into really great music, and while Dylan had some unevenness as a performer, he is an incredibly gifted lyricist. Watching Timothee Chalomet inhabit his character for a couple of hours was amazing for me. I knew most of the story and the sequence of events--I am, afterall, a life long fan of Dylan. While I saw the Grateful Dead way way more live, I listened to Dylan's music more than any other music across my lifespan. My children know his music, at first because they had little choice, it surrounded them, and late for enjoyment. Ballads, songs that tell a story, are my favorites, and his are some of the best. So it is impossible for me to judge this a a cinematic work--I loved spending time listening to Chalomet's renditions of Dylan's songs, both musically and vocally, because it evoked all of those experiences over decades of my life, and he was pitch perfect at the details. I appreciate his dedication to his craft and how faithful to his subject he was able to be. This wasn't overwhelmingly successful on the awards circuit, but it was one of the most enjoyable movies of the year for me to watch.

The Six Triple Eight (2024)

There is a lot to like about this movie, especially if you are a bit of a Tyler Perry fan--I admit that there is a lot of melodrama in his writing and directing, but he is a star when it comes to telling stories about African-Americans and his actors are largely black, which I appreciate. This is based on a true story of the women of the all-Black 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion who faced ruthless racism while serving during World War II. It is told through the eyes of Lena Derriecott King, a woman who joins up after her true love is killed in action, and Major Charity Adams, her commanding officer. The situation is this--the black regiment is marginalized in blatantly racist ways--but then Mary McLeod Bethune, a close personal friend of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, took up their cause and volunteers them for a Herculean task. Mail was not leaving the front and it wasn't being delivered there either and it was easy to relate to the idea that it was causing morale problems for the troops and a lot of anxiety for loved ones at home. Ms. Bethune, who was able to advance the stature of African American women through her friendship with Roosevelt, put forth that the 6888 could do the task of sorting the mail--which they did, despite enormous obstacles, both real and manufactured. They were the only black women to serve in Europe during the war, and the end of the movie shows a number of them who are still alive today--at 100 years old, more or less. This is nominated for an Academy Award in the Original Song category, and you have to watch to the end to listen to it.

Maria (2024)

This is nominated in one category for the 2025 Academy Awards--cinematography. It is one of my favorite categories because while the story is important, the atmosphere is what a movie creates and those that create it best are ever more enjoyable to me, even when the story is less engaging. That summarizes my feeling about this film. Angelina Jolie plays Maria Callas, the exceptional American-Greek soprano, with an ethereal presence, grasping the intense grief of the once-in-a-generation singer who’s been losing her voice. In the beginning, sings “Ave Maria” from Verdi’s Otello, perhaps both as a little prayer to her past, and as a reckoning with her present. The voice we hear belongs to Callas throughout, but the actress is giving it her all otherwise. The end is inevitable--the film starts there-—Callas died in 1977 at the young age of 53. There is an icy yet mournful quality to the story being told, as Callas walks through Paris streets and reflects on her life and her carrer. This is essentially a compassionate ghost story on the beloved things we lose, as they deteriorate and slip away.

Priscilla (2023)

Let me start off by saying that this is not an enjoyable viewing expereince. I didn't know it when I watched it, but it is a Sophia Coppola film, and as one review said, her pictures are all, in one way or another, about captivity and isolation. For the characters held captive the cage is often a gilded one, and the cage in search of a bird. I could not say it better myself. The movie is written by the director and based on Priscilla Presley’s 1985 memoir Elvis and Me, and honors the author by giving us her perspective. Elvis famously met Priscilla Beaulieu in 1959 when he was in the U.S. Army, stationed in Germany; Priscilla was the daughter of another officer stationed there and was, well, 14 at the time the two were introduced. It was still creepy from my perspective, not so much in the pedophile sense, but rather that the shy superstar was looking for a touchstone, more of a person to possess rather than a partner, and by wooing someone so young, he managed to get mostly what he wanted for far too long. She was captured by him and it took her a long time to figure out how to escape. All of this is interesting, but not to watch, so look for this one if you are interested in what Priscilla has to say, but not for any other reason.

Flamin' Hot (2023)

We watched this because it was nominated in the category of Original Song, and in the past movies nominated only in this category have been much more light-hearted and fun than other big time, multiple category nominees and as we get deep into what is usually our three months of watching serious and high quality films, it is nice to have a bit of a break, and this movie provided that. This is the origin story of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, which might veer slightly off the straight and narrow of the facts in order to provide a better story. It follows sometimes unreliable narrator and main character Richard Montañez from a rough, impoverished childhood, a mistake-filled adolescence, to an adulthood with some regrets. In the 1980s, he’s a desperate man looking for a second chance to provide for his family. He catches a break with the help of his adoring wife, Judy, and lands a job on the janitorial staff of a Frito-Lay plant in Rancho Cucamonga. Not only does Richard work hard, but he also pays close attention to the machines and what all goes in to producing the products. Over time, he learns how they work with the help of a reluctant mentor, Clarence C. Baker, and he has higher ambitions for both of them. He gets to thinking about how Frito Lay might make a product Richard’s hard work and tenacity lead him to invent a new spicy blend of snacks based on the flavors of his childhood. He then jumps the corporate ladder to pitch it to Frito Lay’s parent company president, Roger Enrico and the rest is his tasty history. The thing that was least believable for me was that Frito Lay acknowledged his intellectual property and idea and rewarded him for it. The song is good but not my first or second choice in that category.

May December (2023)

This is a present day depiction of the Mary Kay Letourneau case, which depicts the Mary Kay character (Julianne Moore) and the twelve-year old boy she raped, and got impregnated by. The names have been changed but the story remains the same. In the movie, twenty years after their notorious tabloid romance gripped the nation, Gracie Atherton-Yu and her husband Joe (twenty-three years her junior) are getting ready for their twins to graduate from high school. Hollywood decides to do a movie about them as this vast change is occurring. Actress Elizabeth Berry comes to spend very up close and intimate time with the family to better understand Gracie, who she will be playing in a film, and as a result, the family dynamics unravel under the pressure of the outside gaze. Joe, never having processed what happened in his youth, starts to confront the reality of life as an empty-nester at thirty-six. Elizabeth and Gracie study each other, the similarities and differences between the two women begin to ebb and flow. Gracie is without remorse, and Joe has let her live that way for a very long time, something that may not remain once the kids leave home. Set in picturesque and comfortable Savannah, Georgia, May December is both a fairly cringe worthy and bracing exploration of truth, storytelling, and the difficulties (or impossibility) of fully understanding of what lies below the surface in any situation.

Rustin (2023)

This film acts as a a portrait of Rayard Rustin, the gay civil-rights activist, close adviser to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Pacifist, ex-con, singer, lutist, socialist — he had many lives, but he remains best known as the main organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The movie opens with Rustin losing an argument about marching at the Democratic National Convention in 1960. Rustin’s concept of the purpose of such a march would be to send a message to the party and it’s nominee that unless the Democrats take a stand against segregation, that “our people will not show up for them.” He gets soundly shut down, but it is an echo to the future, where a similar headline ran in the New York Times in January of this year. Don’t worry though, Rustin gets his day. The story picks up three years later shortly before Rustin begins organizing the 1963 march, shifting the movie into high gear with bustling characters, clacking typewriters and ringing phones. The movie has been criticized as flawed, but the scenes depicting the organizational skills required to pull off such a huge feat—250,000 people being transported to and from Washington, DC and fed in between without a whiff of trouble from the protesters is in itself quite remarkable and a joy to watch. This is primarily about Rustin as a political force, rather than his struggles as a mostly closeted gay man. The former has been largely forgotten and the later might explain why that happened.

Maestro (2023)

This is all about the legendary composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein--it is at the same time technically dazzling and emotionally frustrating. The script follows a well-trod, episodic path: This happened, then this happened, then this happened. Ultimately, it falls into the same trap as so many biopics, especially prestige pictures with major award aspirations: In covering a huge swath of an extremely famous person’s life, it ends up feeling superficial. This, for me, was at the heart of the frustration. And yet, you should see it. Yes, this sounds contradictory, but the film is so consistently spectacular from an aesthetic perspective that it’s worth watching. The cinematography, costumes, and production design are all evocative and precise as they evolve with the times over 40 some-odd years of Bernstein’s life. It makes you feel as if you’re watching a movie that was made in the ’40s and continues to do so with each era. The one thing that is missing, for me, is the music. While Bernstein’s music is woven throughout—including an amusing use of his “West Side Story” prologue during a period of marital discord—we never truly understand him deeply as a musician or a man. He’s a legend, a larger-than-life cultural force in mid-century America whose persona extends far beyond the rarefied circles of the classical music world. Maybe saving that for the next biopic.

Golda (2023)

There are a lot of negative reviews of this movie, which focuses on Golda Meir during the 19-day Yom Kippur War of 1973, when Arab forces, led by Egypt, attacked Israel during its holiest time of the year. It was a dire and deadly situation to be sure, and it severely tested Meir, who remains the only woman ever to hold that leadership position in Israel. There is a lot of dissatisfaction with the make up required to turn the svelte Helen Mirren into the matronly Golda and her constant smoking are both distracting. I myself do not share that view—it is a shocking reminder of how ubiquitous chain smoking was in that time period (the same is true in Maestro as well), but to eliminate it takes away a dimension of the stress, tension, and fatigue that was in play at that time. I found Mirren’s portrayal of Meir to be nuanced and while I do not know much about her, neither do the reviewers, or at least that was not the focus of the criticism. The added dimension for me is that I watched this while the escalated war between Hamas and Israel is ongoing, that the more time that passes does not diminish the peril of the situation in the Middle East right now, and the history of what happened in 1973 is only part of the bigger story. Meir was an inspirational woman, who was born in Ukraine (another country under siege right now), grew into adulthood in the United States, and helped guide a young Israel at a time of great threat.

Oppenheimer (2023)

This is a stand out because despite the fact that this is a solid three hour movie, for once I did not feel that the same story could have been told in a considerably shorter time frame. Once of the reasons it runs long is because it is not just telling the story of Oppenheimer's life or how was came to create the bomb we dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but also about the politics of war. Oppenheimer is depicted as a driven man who saw physical principles in his head, while dreaming and awake. He was not an all round physcicist--he was clumsy in the lab, his math was not up to snuff, but his ability to take the information that was known and create a theory around it and move forward was unparalleled. He was also Jewish and had studied in Eurpoe leading up to the war, and he knew that it was his people that Hitler was targeting, so he was passionate about beating the Germans to developing the atomic bomb. As a person he was complicated at a time when sublety was unappreciated, and he came under fire time and again for Communist ties. Both his wife and his former lover were card carrying members of the Communist Party, as was his brother, so the scrutiny was not unwarrented, and while the film doesn't go too far into this, in J. Edgar Hoover's America being Jewish meant you were suspect, even without the Communist ties, and after the war, people that Oppenheimer had offended plotted to get even with them, including Lewis Strauss (played brilliantly by Robert Downey, Jr.), who was particularly bent out of shape about him, but it is easy to see how it happened--Oppenheimer, as portrayed here, cared little about what people thought of him personally, and struggled with not pissing people off. This is well worth watching.

Nyad (2023)

This is at core a pretty standard story of an uplifting sporting feat, a familiar tale of triumph over adversity, in this case man versus ocean, ocean almost always winning--but not every single time. The story is told by married documentarians, who earned an Academy Award for their jaw-dropping 2018 film “Free Solo,” so while it is a docudrama, the story is told in a recognizable documentary format. Nyad was a legendary long-distance swimmer and former ABC “Wide World of Sports” correspondent and the movie tells the tale of her quest at age 64 to swim from Cuba to Florida, a brutal stretch of 110 miles. When Nyad finally crossed successfully, with the help of a crew of coaches, kayakers, and a medic, it was her fifth attempt. We witness all the setbacks, all the ways in which the journey went frustratingly wrong before it went right. An unexpected encounter with a swarm of box jellyfish provides a harrowing scene of nighttime horror, the weather is a constant battle, the current along the route is relentlessly not on the swimmer's side, as examples. Warning, Nyad is not a nice person--she is egotistical, narcissisticly self-centered and self-important, perhaps qualities one needs to accomplish this feat, but she is not great girlfriend material. Despite all that, this is a very enjoyable movie with great to watch, Annette Benning as Nyad and Jodie Foster as her coach and friend do a phenomenal job acting, and this is a rightful Oscar contender. Streaming on Netflix.

Elvis (2022)

Here's what I have to say about this. I was not a big Elvis fan before I saw this, and watching it didn't really change that for me, but it did give me a different perspective on him without really answering any of the points that it raises. That said, it is a very entertaining movie from start to finish, and Elvis was a performer of the finest kind, and this does do justice to that. There are two main characters, Elvis (played quite ably by Austin Butler, which is no small feat) and his long time manager, Colonel Tom Parker (played by Tom Hanks). The actors in these roles knock them out of the park and save the movie from the fact that there really is no there there, that it doesn't break new ground or provide much in the way of insight. Tom Hanks as Parker is amazing--the story is told through his eyes, and he is a straight ahead con man, one who guided Elvis' career in a way that suited his style of control best. It would not surprise me if either or both of them is nominated for an Oscar--so far, the movie has a well deserved spot on the short list for Makeup and Hairstyling as well as Sound.

tick, tick, Boom (2021)

This is part musical and part docudrama about making a musical. It is based on an autobiographical one-man show of the same name by Jonathan Larson, the astonishingly talented writer/composer of the fabulously successful Broadway show “Rent”. He is played by Andrew Garfield, an amazingly versatile actor in his own right. It is also a tribute, and an expression of gratitude, for the almost baton-like passage of support from those who Larson describes as a vanishing species, the creators of musical theater. Larson’s thanks include the foremost musical theater artist of the 20th century, Stephen Sondheim, an early mentor. One review that I read stated that Sondheim was passing along the help he received from another Broadway titan, Oscar Hammerstein. The movie is also a thanks to Larson from director Lin-Manuel Miranda, who might be seen as his successor. Miranda, who starred as Larson in a theatrical performance of this play, directs the film with a deep understanding of the passion, struggle, and ebullience of an artist committed to an art form that requires a lot of money and a lot of other people to be brought to life. This film is explicitly theatrical, going back and forth between Larson’s story and his one-man show telling the story, which tragically ended with his preventable death right before his Broadway debut.

House of Gucci (2021)

OMG, so many unlikable people. Then again, this is Ridley Scott, not a man to shy away from unpleasant people and it is a docudrama, so one needs to adhere, more or less, to what is known about the events of the day. The end result is a sweeping yet wildly imbalanced rendering of the celebrated Gucci fashion empire’s scandalous history, full of backstabbing, betrayal, greed, and even murder. While the movie is not the sum of its parts, there is a lot to celebrate here. The story itself is a spicy enough foundation that comes with sufficient amounts of flamboyance, one that sees Lady Gaga's charactger convert herself into an ambitiously avaricious character who consumes all those around her and spits them out. It also features an unrecognizable Jared Leto dialing yet another transformative role up to eleven, and contains plenty of solid performances portraying the troubled business that stems from what has become a troubled family. The Italian accents are insufferable (we were accidentally watching the dubbed Italian voice track and it was definitely an improvement) but all else is mostly well played acting of unlikable people.