**

The Beguiled-rm

Three years into the Civil War, a pre-teenage Southern girl picking mushrooms in the woods stumbles upon a wounded Yankee soldier (Colin Farrell) after a battle has moved on. She brings the injured soldier to a woman’s school where she lives with eight females ranging from a teacher to two or three preteens in a large beautiful old southern mansion which housed the school.

Here is where the title of the movie becomes important. Before we looked it up, we thought the word “beguiled” has a meaning somewhere between “attracted to” and “seduced by”. The actual dictionary definition that we found in Merriam-Webster’s (online of course): is “to lead by deception… hoodwinked… to deceive by wiles…” So this movie appears to be about what this soldier living with these girls and women did to them… and what they did to him. The movie which was directed Sophia Coppolla, daughter of Francis Ford and Eleanor Coppolla is a remake of an older movie of the same name from 1973 starring Clint Eastwood with an apparent slight change in emphasis. We haven’t seen the earlier film but we believe this new version is more from a female perspective.

We were on the edge of our seats for the first half of the film but then found that it didn’t hold up. We both felt that the plot turned unbelievable. The women were played by strong actresses that included Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst and Elle Fanning, but we really didn’t come to understand any of the the character’s backstory and we felt we were left high and dry at the conclusion. (2017)

***

Hidden Figures-sp

Prior to John Glenn’s historic flight circling the earth as the first person in orbit, something went wrong in the planning which required new landing coordinates to be calculated. Glenn asked NASA control to “have the girl check the numbers.” He was referring to Katherine Johnson (Taraji Henson) in this fascinating movie about the little known story of the role that black women played in the space program.

The setting was the early 1960s. There were still “for colored only” bathrooms in the NASA Government facility in Virginia. A group of bright, black women mathematicians were working in a segregated office doing work, supporting the program. Another one of these women was Dorothy Vaughn (Octavia Spencer) who was initially a supervisor in name only and deserved to be officially promoted to that position. Another black woman in this story was Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae) who despite being a recognized mathematician in the space program had to fight to be able to take some courses to qualify in order to get an advanced degree. At the end of the film, we learned that she ultimately became one of the top engineers in the NASA program. We also learned that Katherine Johnson at the age of 96 recently received the presidential medal of freedom for all her groundbreaking work at NASA.

So much credit deserves to go to Allison Schroeder and Theodore Melfi co-produces, who became aware of this story due to a book by Margot Lee Shetterly of the unknown situation where black women were excluded from positions which they deserved to hold in the NASA program. Fox Studios ultimately took on the movie and Theodore Melfi directed his vision of the story which was quite on target.

The cast was magnificent. In addition to the three women mentioned above, special credit should be given to Kevin Costner who played Harrison, the guy who ran the space program and headed up all the stuff at NASA that made things fly. We recall a cigar chomping Jim Webb who most probably this character was based on. There were also excellent performances by Kirsten Dunst, Aldis Hodge, Mahershala Ali, and Jim Parsons.

This movie should be seen by everyone in order to understand this piece of American history that has been overlooked for years. Although this was not, in and of itself a great film, the stellar performances and important story it tells are not to be missed.(2016)

* *
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – nf – We had the thought that we better write this review before it was erased from our minds. Actually with this movie you had to buy into the idea that you could arrange to have the memory of a person and everything associated with him or her completely eliminated from your brain. Jim Carey who has been known to play in movies with unusual concepts plays Joe a nebbish guy who falls in love with Clementine a somewhat flakey girl with blue hair played by Kate Winslet. She is really into him and they get along great until she tires of him and decides to sign up to completely erase him from her memory. He gets wind of this and is very hurt so he decides to likewise with any memories of her. Wouldn’t you know it that while he is in the induced sleep having the memories removed, he and she in his thoughts decide not to go through with this. However the erasing team is far along in the process. In fact the team has their own issues which are a subplot in the movie. Now we enjoy a good comedy and science fiction story but we both felt that his movie didn’t really work. Perhaps the movie was raising the question can true love triumph even when people recognize each other’s flaws. However it was a long tedious pathway to get there and we hope to lose the memory of this movie to make room for better ones. 2004