The Prom ( Netflix)
*****

The cast of a Broadway Musical has hopes and expectations for a great review on opening night. However, much to their disappointment and despair, the reviews are just the opposite, and their show is doomed to close.The cast tries to find something that will put them back in the limelight and come upon a story about a High School in Indiana that is trying to deny a young lesbain couple the right to attend their prom together. They decide that this is their opporutity for relevance and they travel to Indiana where they meet the couple as well as the high school principal and other important players in this drama and participate in shaking up stronlgy held beliefs and biases.

Enough with the outline of the plot. What makes this a sensational movie is that it stars Meryl Streep, James Corden, Nicole Kidman, Ariana Grande, Michael Key Keegan, Kerry Washington, Tracey Ullman, and many other great performers. It is directed by Ryan Murphy. We did not previously quite appreciate the musical talents of this great cast, but if anything, they are over the top. As the plot develops in the small town with all the complications of this gay couple challenging the set ways of the Midwesterners, the Broadway interlopers break into song and dance. You may not have known that these great actors can really belt out musical pieces. The choreography was also fantastic. The storyline will push all your buttons. The result is a movie worthy of the best on the Broadway stage and full of lofty ideals and great fun!

The Undoing – Six Episode TV Series on HBO
****
This six-episode TV series stars Hugh Grant, Nicole Kidman, and Donald Sutherland with an excellent supporting cast, especially a young boy played by Noah Jupe. This mini-series is based on the novel “You Should Have Known” by Jean Hanff Korelitz. It is created by veteran TV producer David E. Kelley and is directed by Susanne Bier. This “whodunnit” will hold your attention and if you have any tendency to binge, you will take this one in just a few gulps. A doctor who is a caring pediatric oncologist finds himself accused of a brutal murder of a woman with whom he was having an affair. There are hints that the killer might possibly be his wife, a successful psychotherapist or perhaps the husband of the murdered woman. A couple of other suspects flash through your mind as this story unfolds. As you might expect, there are some great courtroom scenes. This is well worth the six hours of running time of this series.(2020)

***

BOMBSHELL-rm

You have heard about the situation where Roger Ailes, the long-time creator and boss of Fox News Network was ousted from this position by the Murdock family who owned the Fox Enterprise, after charges of sexual harassment were validated against Mr. Ailes. This film, with an all-star cast of actors and actresses who were made to resemble the real people they played, tells the story of the brave women who made this happen. The story centers around Megyn Kelly who is played by Charlize Theron. We see the pressure and sexual harassment she received by the powerful boss of Fox Network, Roger Ailes, played by John Lithgow, who is depicted as the obese and somewhat wobbly boss of the mammoth network. We also follow the experience of Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman), a fading anchor at Fox who after some agonizing tells her story of being harassed and actually starts the ball rolling against Mr. Ailes. We also meet other players, men and women at Fox, some familiar and some who worked behind the scenes. They are played by excellent actors and actresses and their work is interspersed with actual film clips. While the story is quite dramatic and revealing and a very important one to document, we found it somewhat disjointed. In the end, however, it will be an important part of the epic story of American television journalism. (2019)

*****

Boy Erased – sp

Conversion Therapy is a pseudoscientific practice of trying to change an individual’s sexual orientation from homosexuality or bisexuality to heterosexuality using psychological or spiritual interventions. There are 14 states and the district of Columbia that have banned Conversion Therapy for minors. There are also scattered counties and communities throughout the country where there is no state ban which have made laws against this practice (see map). This essentially means that in most of the United States, parents can mandate their children to stay in such a program. Since the medical and psychiatric communities have clearly established that sexual identity and orientation (straight, gay or bisexual) is determined at birth, any attempts at re-orientation are doomed to fail and have the potential to create more conflict and emotional turmoil.

This movie is based on a memoir by Garrard Conley which told his story of being the son of a Baptist pastor who is outed by his parents and then forced to attend a church conversion program with the purpose of “curing his homosexuality”. The experience that he goes through in this program is quite gripping and heart wrenching. The audience not only suffers through seeing things through his eyes but also sees the torment that some of the other attendees are going through which includes one young woman.

The three lead actors are outstanding. Lucas Hedges plays the young man. Nicole Kidman is his mother and Russell Crowe (who appears to have put on considerable weight for this role) does an excellent job as the minister who is the boy’s father. The film is directed by Joel Edgerton, who was also the screenwriter and played the role of Victor Sykes, the harsh and heavy-handed leader of the oppressive conversion program. The conflicts, psychological pain, turmoil and anger of the young man were very clear. At the same time, we saw the loving feelings, misguided but good intentions, that the father had for his son. The father-son love for each other despite their major life conflicts was depicted quite well as was the mother’s love and ultimate insight into the situation.

At the conclusion of the film, we had the opportunity to meet with Kerry Roberts, one of the producers of the film who brought the book to her production company and who told us about how the real-life family followed the story of it being brought to life. It should be very interesting to see how this film plays in most of the Unites States and the reaction and places where such so called “treatment” is allowed and can impact the lives of many young people. (2018)

**

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)

***

Lion-sp

This is a beautiful story based on real life that will deeply move many people and it would not surprise us if it is an award contender. Therefore we don’t want to discourage potential viewers, but we thought it could have been done much better and shorter.

It is the story of a young Indian boy living in one of many poverty-stricken areas of India who joins his older brother on a late night adventure as they set out to try to make a few rupeess doing child labor tasks. He gets lost and separated from his brother ultimately falling asleep on a train ending up a couple of thousand miles away from his mother. The plight of Saroo is poignant enough by itself but the appeal of this young child played by a young Indian boy Sunny Pawar, who was chosen for the part over thousands of children, emotionally draws in the viewer.

Saroo is ultimately adopted by a loving Australian couple (Nicole Kidman and David Wenham) which is the equivalent of winning the lottery. Fast forward about 25 years into the future and this now young man (Dev Patel of Slumdog Millionaire fame) is having flashbacks of his childhood which are preventing him from moving forward with his life. The problem with the movie is that there was no fast forward but rather many long drawn-out scenes often showing countryside, trains winding through mountains, maps with pins in it and attempted reconstruction by the now young man as he tries to figure out where he left his mother and brother. There are endless views of Google Earth as Saroo now tries to reconcile his childhood memories and find the place where he came from. We meet a second child adopted by the Australian parents who we really don’t get to know very much about nor do we understand Saroo’s relationship with his girlfriend Lucy (Rooney Mara), who seems lovely but we get no insight into what makes them tick as a couple since Saroo is now preoccupied with finding his birth mother and of course doesn’t want to hurt his loving parents who raised him.

We have written about the search for biological parents among adopted children and variations of this meaningful psychological theme have been played out in many movies.(click here to read article) Perhaps we can identify with the story because we try to imagine how we might feel if we were in this situation. This movie based on a book by the real Saroo which was put into a screenplay by Luke Davies and directed by Garth Davis. At the conclusion of this 120-minute movie, as the titles were being shown, there was an actual brief film clip of the real Saroo introducing his adopted mother to his biological mother which to us was the most moving moment of the film. (2016)

****

Rabbit Hole –sp David Lindsey–Abaire as screenwriter for this film, based on his own Pulitzer Prize winning play, really gets into the head and the emotions of two grieving parents 8 months after the death of their five year old son who died running after his beloved dog. We never meet Danny and barely see a picture of him but we come to clearly understand the relentless pain in all it’s forms which his parents Becca (Nicole Kidman) and Howie (Aaron Eckhart) are feeling. Each of them are  grieving in his and her own way which despite sharing this most personal tragedy and a good previous relationship, there seems to be  no room for empathy between them. Becca’s quest to find some way to deal with her deep dark feelings leads her to establish a relationship with Jason (Miles Teller), the 18 year old high school senior who swerved his car, which he confesses to her may have been going a mile or two over the speed limit, which led to the tragedy and  now has created a bond between them. Becca’s somewhat religious mother (Diane Wiest) whose son died at age 31 , eleven years previously, provides a counterpoint from where she is coming. Nicole Kidman who saw the original play and started the ball rolling to make it into a movie chose John Cameron Mitchell to direct it. Mitchell and Lindsey Abaire who were guests at our screening acknowledged that they complemented each other as they explored the fine points of this film. The director, who had only a 4 million dollar budget, shared with us that he let the actors steep  themselves into their emotional  roles which he appeared to nimbly direct as well as spending  a great deal of time in editing the fine points. He gave a touch of humor to   a primarily a dark movie and kept us the audience observing at a slight distance from the unimaginable tragedy. We did not shed a tear for the young boy who we did not meet or really know. As mental health professionals who have worked with many grieving patients, we had the feeling that we were empathizing with people we cared about, as we might with a patient who is   involved in their own dynamics that are unfolding before us at somewhat rapid pace. The fact that the writer, director and the actors really nailed the complicated feelings and interactions without ripping apart the guts of the audience (which they could have easily done) may be judged a shortcoming of the movie by some or the height of sophistication by others.

This movie also merits comparison with four other movies which we have seen in the past year and each of which shows attempts at dealing with grief in a different manner.

A Single Man shows Colin Firth in an Oscar nominated performance as George a college professor whose lover has died in an auto accident and in his grief he is on the verge of suicide when he meets a young student who cares about him. Robin Williams does an excellent job as an unsuccessful writer in World’s Greatest Dad grieving   a teenage son who committed  suicide. The father pretends his late son has written the story of being bullied and the result is a game changer for the community and for the dad which gives some meaning to this tragic loss.  The Lovely Bones deals with the murder of a young teenager (Saoirse Ronan) who had just begun to feel the glimmers of romance which leads the audience to feel her parent’s unresolved grief despite the youngsters ethereal existence. There is a small amount of compensation as the killer is caught through the efforts of the girl’s sister.  The film, which most closely resembles the Rabbit Hole, is The Greatest which brought together a comparable great performance by Pierce Brosman and Susan Sarandon who are the grieving parents of a teenager killed in car accident while he is with his girl friend played by Carey Mulligan. The potential for the parents to live with their grief is the unborn child being carried by the young girl friend whereas  in the film which we reviewed today,   the hope for a better future is only hinted by a subtle but important gesture at it’s conclusion. We thought these two were both excellent films The  Greatest didn’t achieve the critic’s Oscar acclaim and it appears that the Rabbit Hole may get some such bids. However overall, we rated the Rabbit Hole a notch lower. We certainly do believe that  this movie is the finest example and should be used as a teaching tool and stimulus for discussion for those who are studying the grieving process as well as a movie worth seeing for anyone interested in these all too real human emotions. (2010) ****