Official Secrets (2019) –Netflix
***

In 2003, the United States was secretly engaged in obtaining information in conjunction with Great Britain in order to blackmail members of the UN Assembly to get them to vote for a war against Saddam Hussein, who was being accused of having weapons of mass destruction, which he was ready to use against the United States and Great Britain. A British intelligence specialist, Katharine Gun, read a secret intelligence communication confirming that this was the case and leaked this top-secret information to the British press.

This 2017 movie directed by Gavin Hood and starring Keira Knightley will draw you in and allow you to identify with this very brave woman. While it ultimately turned out that Saddam Hussein did not have such weapons of mass destruction, the heroine of this film knew at that time that she would be facing serious charges of treason, but bravely did what she thought was the right thing to do for her country and the world, in order to possibly stop a war.

The film also stars Matt Smith, Matthew Goode, Adam Bakari, Indira Varma, and Ralph Fiennes. It is directed by Gavin Hood with a screenplay by Goode and Gregory, and Sarah Bernstein. It is originally based on a book The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War by Marcia & Thomas Mitchell.

This movie captures the audience as we identify with the heroine and see how she almost loses her beloved husband and faces serious charges of espionage. This movie will keep you on the edge of your seat as well as giving you a great history lesson.

Colette – nf
***

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.

***

Love Actually-nf

Through the magical power of Netflix, we are able to go back in time, 14 years and view an ensemble film that we recall was well received at the time and was nominated for a Golden Globe award. You will see a number of familiar faces in this movie who turned in great performances. This includes Hugh Grant, Liam Neeson, Colin Firth, Emma Thompson, Keira Knightley, Laura Linney, Allen Rickman, Billy Bob Thornton and others who we didn’t recognize but who were quite good.

The movie is the brainchild of writer-director, Richard Curtis. This setting is on the other side of the pond in London, England. The film is about couples being attracted to each other and falling in love. There are about 10 separate couples involved but the stories do interconnect. There is a British prime minister who falls for his assistant, a screenwriter who is drawn to a young Portuguese woman although they can’t speak each other’s language. There is a married CEO who is smitten by his secretary. There is even an approximately 10 to 12-year-old boy who is certain that he is in love with a girl in his class and is getting advice how to declare his love by his recently widowed dad. Contrast that scenario with two porn stars who aren’t moved by their coupling on the set but find themselves in a budding romance off screen. The movie takes place around Christmas time which adds to the joyous feel good mood which emanates from the screen. There is a great soundtrack which facilities the exciting emotions sprouting forth before us.

The title suggests that this movie is a celebration of love. We would beg to differ on this point. Just about all the characters have a relatively superficial relationship and very little knowledge of each other at the point where they believe they are falling in love. Certainly, we understand this could be a very exciting time for people experiencing this great attraction to each other. If this were real life, many of the relationships would soon cool off and unfortunately, it might even taken several years of marriage before they would go their separate ways. So while the title is Love Actually, we think it might better be called Actually Attraction. Nevertheless, it was a great film to watch. The DVD also has an interesting narration of the movie while it is playing by the director-screenwriter, Richard Curtis who discusses the film with some of the well-known actors who appear in it (2003)

 

**

Laggies – nf

The term Laggies, according to Director Lynn Shelton comes from an informal term used by Orange County teenagers when referring to themselves as a group such as “Come on Laggies, let’s all go to the mall.” The screenplay by Andrea Seigel was originally written to take place in Orange County, California, but the setting was moved to Seattle, Washington. However, Shelton liked the way the term Laggies sounded and kept it as the title.

The meaning of the film to us is similarly vague and hard to figure out. Granted it is about a generation far from our own, but we thought that we usually get teens and 20’s even if we are quite removed from their time to bloom.

Megan (Keira Knightley) is a 28-year-old college graduate who has a Masters in Family Counseling but hasn’t really found herself. Her best friend, Allison (Elle Kemper) is getting married and all her good friends are attending the event. Megan’s long-term boyfriend (Mark Webber) is ready to propose to her and they plan to go for a quick small wedding ceremony in Las Vegas. However, Megan meets Annika, a 15-year-old teenager (Chloe Moretz), who she encounters when she’s asked by her to buy beer and alcohol for her and her teenage buddies. Megan can relate to Annika and is comfortable hanging around with her and her friends. She tells her boyfriend that she’s going to go to a conference for a week and then they will get married. In the meantime, Megan stays in Annika’s house where she meets Craig, Annika’s single dad (Sam Rockwell) who is an attorney. Anika and Sam seem to really like each other and have a one-night sexual encounter. Incidentally, we also have learned a little earlier that Megan’s father (Jeff Garlin) was discovered by Megan to be fooling around with the mother of the bride at the wedding of Megan’s best friend, which bummed out Megan. Megan is about to fly to Las Vegas to marry her long-term boyfriend or will she?

So we conclude that the movie is about growing up and deciding which relationships are really important. However, there is no real depth to the storyline. We don’t really understand why the characters do what they do, although they do seem to be the wiser for going through these experiences. The director, Ms. Shelton knows her way around Seattle having directed her previous movies in the city. The acting was very good. Ms. Knightly was very appealing as Megan, the young woman who has to find herself. In the DVD features accompanying the film, we see her talking in her native language (British English) and we appreciate how well she has mastered the American dialect in the film. This movie was a little fun to watch but we didn’t get much out of it. We conclude that we can’t recommend it, even to the teens and 20’s looking for a good movie to kick back on. (2014)

*****

The Imitation Game- sp The Turing Test is a method that is supposed to help determine if artificial intelligence built into a modern computer is indistinguishable from the human mind. There was only an indirect subtle reference to this test in this movie, which however, was all about the complicated yet very human mind of Alan Turing. This is a Bio-Pic with a screenplay by Graham Moore adapted from a biography by Andrew Hughes as well as other books written about this man. It is produced by Graham Moore, Nina Grossman and Teddy Schwarzman who shepherded it through a few incarnations where it was almost made by a major studio but ultimately ended up as an independent production in the hands of the Norwegian film director Morten Tyldum (known for The Headhunters) starring Benedict Cumberbatch who plays Alan Turing. The movie dramatically reminds us of horrendous threat of Nazi Germany to the world during WWII and introduces us to the team led by Turing that is working in Bletchley Park in England trying to break the German Enigma code which could give the allies the edge to win the war. One of the team members is a woman by the name of Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley) whose great intelligence stands out and gets the attention of the leader who becomes very close to her. Alan Turing is shown to us as a brilliant young man with a personality often shown to be associated with Asperger’s Syndrome. It turns out Turing also is homosexual which he had to keep as a deep secret as during those times because it was a crime itself punished at best with chemicals (hormonal castration). Mixed into the film is a touch of espionage where you least expected it to be. Breaking the Nazi code would mean the saving of millions of lives and the defeat of Germany. Yet it must be a gigantic secret because if it were known, the Germans might change the code. Recounting how all of this done was a great cinematic accomplishment led by a sensitive, nuanced and multilayered performance by Cumberbatch who is certain to receive an Oscar nomination for best actor. In addition to Knightley there are excellent supporting performances by Mathew Goode (who may be recognized as recently playing The Good Wife’s opposing attorney in that TV series), Mark Strong, Rory Kinnear and Charles Dance. In the end this is the story of a tragic hero who saved many millions of lives and who is probably the father or the grandfather of the modern day computer but yet was never truly appreciated during his life. This movie, which was made by a dedicated team that wanted to rectify this situation, deserves to be credited as one of the outstanding movies of the year (2014)

***

A Dangerous Method – rm-  As people who have some some acquaintance with psychoanalytic theory and it’s history, we were drawn to want to see this movie. The psychiatrist among the two of us found it a more enjoyable experience although we both found many deficiencies in the movie. This movie, directed by David Cronenberg, with a screenplay by Chrisopher Hampton which came from a book by John Kerr, of course is based on real people and highlights the break between Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung who at one time Freud had thought would be his heir apparent to the psychoanalytic movement. The movie starts off in the early 1900s as a young women, Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley) is involuntarily brought to the Burgholzi, a  psychiatric hospital in Zurich, Switzerland, run by the famed Eugen Bleuler. Her exaggerated mannerisms and dramatic presentation suggests the type of “hysterical” patients who were known to be hospitalized in those days. Jung (Michael Fassbender) becomes her psychiatrist at the hospital and begins to use the new psychoanalytic method which Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) in Vienna has advocated. He ultimately is shown  becoming drawn into a sadomachistic sexual romantic affair with her. Jung travels to Vienna and meets with Freud several times in which they discuss theoretical issues as well as this patient. Over time Freud is depicted as becoming disenchanted with his previously highly regarded younger colleague. The reasons for this rift would appear to be Jung’s willingness to go beyond Freud’s concept of sexuality and psychic determinism and bring in such ideas as the supernatural, premonitions, telepathy, religion and many others that were not explained in much detail in the movie. In fact, the more well known ideas of Jung about the collective unconscious , symbolism and dream analysis were not very well clarified. Freud appeared to be concerned that any significant deviation from his main thesis and what he believed was the scientific method might be a reason for his theories to fail to gain wide acceptance. As best we can determine, in reality the actual affair between Jung and Speilrein was suspected, but historically it was  not universally agreed that it had actually occurred. In this movie it is shown that  Speilrein wrote to Freud and told him of her affair after Jung rejected her. Freud did not believe her and she subsequently is depicted as convincing Jung to acknowledge the affair to Freud who then gave this as an additional reason for cutting his ties with Jung. Once again Freud is very concerned about the appearance of his analytic movement and such behavior as an affair with one’s patient  at that time as well as at present would be highly unethical. The nature of the affair and the meaning of their attraction to each other is really a key part of this movie, whether it actually happened or not. The characters in their dialogue state that Jung, who is shown being torn by the relationship, views attraction to his patient to be  on the “dark side” and that with his wife on the “loving” side.  Yet he declares his undying  love for Spelrein and is bereft by her leaving him. We are not provided with real insight inot this relationship nor any significant understaning of Jung’s conflict. The film also does not do enough to explicate Jung’s ideas and their influence on Spielrein. While we more often proclaim that a movie should have been tightened up and shortened we believe this film needed a clearer illustration of the ideas that this story was supposed to be  about.  The acting in the film was very strong. The atmosphere of Freud’s office, the streets , people’s dress, horse drawn vehicles and early motor cars made it a wonderful period piece. But alas, as much as we were interested to learn about these people, we felt we came up short in our understanding as well as in caring about them.  (2011)