Colette – nf
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This film takes place in 19th century France showing differences between the haves and have nots. Colette is a budding author who has an affair with and falls in love and marries Willy, a prominent writer and publisher. Colette happens to be a skillful author herself, and once her husband realizes that he has married a talented writer, he publishes his wife’s novel “Claudine” with his name as the author. The book becomes an acclaimed literary success. Willy reaps the rewards with his wife’s literary accomplishment, which goes on also to be a successful play.

The developing story takes place in upper class French society and there is a clear depiction of the sexuality between men and women as well as between women and women.

This cinematic production is based on real life characters and four novels by the French author Colette published between 1900 – 1904. They were originally written in diary form and describe the growth to maturity of a young girl, Claudine, starting when she was 15.

The significance of this film is not only that it realistically captures French upper-class society with all its splendor, but it also vividly depicts the main characters and their underlying conflicts. It examines the expected roles of the sexes and how strong women were able to challenge these expectations.

The film stars Keira Knightley as Gabrielle Colette and Dominic West as Willy and it was directed by Wash Westmoreland. It was an engaging period piece and a story about a woman who, herself penned stories.

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Money Monster-rm

George Clooney and Julia Roberts are a combination that usually would be a must see movie for us. We weren’t disappointed this time but the plot is a stretch to make this a great movie.

A disgruntled young man (Jack O’Connell) is quite upset that he lost his $60,000 listening to the advice of TV money guru, Lee Gates (George Clooney). He breaks on to the TV set and puts the money man into a bomb jacket with his thumb on the detonator. Patty Fenn (Julia Roberts) is the TV director behind the scenes talking into the earpiece in Gates’ ear. The plot involves a company led by a shady CEO by the name of Walt Camby (Dominic West) who claims it was a computer glitch that caused his company to lose $800,000. All of this is taking place “on air” with the New York City Police responding to this dramatic event. This theme could have ripped from the current headlines. After all, one of the presidential contenders is warning us about the unsavory deals of all the Wall Street guys.

Director Jodie Foster is pulling the strings behind this movie and does a pretty good job. She may have missed one detail as one of us thought that the Dow Jones average shown on the screen that was at the bottom of the TV screen as the action was taking place on camera never changed, so that must have been a slip up.

In the end, we are left with the idea that the financial markets are subject to the behind-the-scenes activities of unsavory people, and you better be careful listening to them. That probably is a bad rap about most of them (at least we hope so). (2016)