Category Archives: Movies

Celebrate, Movies, People, Winter

Flow: Pancakes, Pizza, Beer, and a Movie

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In Maine, January was a dry month with little snow, but February has been quite a different matter, with a flurry of storms every few days. It certainly looks like winter at our home by the edge of the woods.

This weekend, in between snowstorms, our daughter Shannon and her husband Mike came for a visit to celebrate his birthday.

We are big believers in celebrating, and the whole of Saturday was mapped out for Mike’s birthday.

It started with a pancake breakfast. I know this is bragging, but Clif’s pancakes are the best in central Maine. So light and fluffy and delicious. The veggie sausage patties and home fries weren’t too bad either.

After a leisurely breakfast and lots of time spent talking—no, we didn’t solve the world’s problems, but we certainly tried—we headed into Augusta to Cushnoc Brewing Co. for pizza.

We started out with snacks.

Then we moved on to pizza.

What to do afterwards? Why, onward to Absolem  Cider Company, which is right here in little Winthrop, Maine (population 6,000), about three miles from where we live. We still can’t believe such a terrific place is so close to us.

To get to the old barn with its tasting room, there is a pathway lined with lights and snowy picnic tables, and it felt like a magical winter scene in the still, cold night.

Inside, the barn was dark and cozy, filled with folks drinking beer, cider, wine, and cocktails as they listened to Maine musician Kevin Leary. In a clear voice, he sang covers of Neil Young and other musicians.

Mike and Clif each ordered  a special beer called Mott the Lesser, a Russian Imperial Stout brewed by Tributary Brewing. It is the most remarkable beer I have ever tasted, with strong notes of coffee and caramel. I can only conclude there was alchemy in the brewing process.

We left after the music was done and headed back home, where there were presents and an interested dog. We had cake, of course, but I forgot to take a picture of it.

As we Mainers would say, it was a finest kind day, with one event just flowing into the other.

Happy Birthday, Mike!

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Watching

And speaking of flow…there is a wonderful animated movie from Latvia, Belgium, and France called Flow. It’s won a Golden Globe and is one of my favorite movies of the  year.  The story revolves around five animals in a world without people and thus has no human dialogue. But there are plenty of animal and nature sounds. Into this world, which looks post-apocalyptic with remains of human civilization, comes a horrific flood.

The main character, a black cat, bands together with a dog, a lemur, a capybara, and a secretarybird to survive the flood. There are scenes both terrifying and humorous as the animals cope with the ever-rising water that forces them out of their homes. The very last image, following a rescue, is as precise and moving as the ending line of a haiku.

If Flow comes to a theater near you, don’t hesitate to see it. And if it does not—Flow is, after all an indie film made for a few million dollars—do watch this beautiful, moving film when it is available through a streaming service.

 

 

Food, Movies

The End of September and a Mini-vacation: Movies, Movies, Movies

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This year, Clif’s birthday fell on a Friday, and our daughter Dee, who lives with us, decided to take it off so that we could have a three-day weekend. A mini-vacation, of sorts.

Longtime readers, knowing that we are all movie buffs, can probably guess what we did on those three days—go to the movies, of course. We each have a Regal Pass ($22  per month) that allows us to see any movie we want at no extra charge. Two movies a month pays for the pass, and we usually see at least four.

Friday, Clif’s birthday, was as fine a September day as anyone could ask for—sunny but not hot. Our movie that day was The Wild Robot, a lovely animated movie about a sentient robot named Roz who is shipwrecked on an island with no people. However, the island is home to many animals, whom Roz eventually learns to communicate with.  Equipped with an emergency beacon, Roz’s first impulse is to return home, but then she comes across an orphaned gosling. Reluctantly, Roz decides to stay on the island  until the gosling becomes a goose who can migrate south with the other geese. 

This heartfelt movie never veers too far into sentimentality. Even so,  I cried more than once. If you have young children in your life, take them to see The Wild Robot. If you don’t have young children in your life, go see it yourself. The Wild Robot, beautifully animated, will no doubt be nominated for an Academy Award. And it just might win.

After the movie, it was off the Red Barn for a big order of fried food. There was a misunderstanding at the Red Barn about the order, and we ended up with an extra helping of onion rings, free of charge. While we are enthusiastic eaters, there is a limit, and we brought home enough for another meal.

On Saturday, we picked up our friend Joel and headed to Maine Film Center in Waterville to see Megalopolis, written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Alas, I wish I could praise this movie as highly as I have The Wild Robot. Unfortunately, I cannot. On Rotten Tomatoes, Megalopolis is described as “A Roman Epic set in an imagined Modern America.” Accordingly, the theme of the film is of empires crumbling—with the comparison being between the U.S. and ancient Rome—and what might be done to stop the crumbling to make a good society for everyone.

So far, so good. But Coppola did not tell the story in a compelling way. Instead, he has characters declaim and pontificate. There is far too much telling and not nearly enough showing. The characters are flat and one dimensional, and by the end of this long movie, my only feeling was relief. There was no crying.

Still, as someone who  loves movie, I am not sorry I saw it. Francis Ford Coppola is one of the major film directors of our times. But for readers who don’t like movies as much as we do, I would advise a pass on this one.

After the movie, we went to Buen Apetito for Mexican Food and lively movie talk. We were all in agreement about Megalopolis.

Sunday brought us back to Regal Cinema for the animated movie Transformers One, a Transformer origin story. Even though it was loaded with action scenes, Transformers One was moving in its own way as two Transformers struggle with a corrupt society, a leader who lies to them, and the unraveling of their friendship. Surprisingly deep for a Transformers movie.

We capped the evening with drinks in our screen house on the patio. As the darkness came, we listened to crickets sing and barred owls call to each other. The solar lights blinked on, and we all reflected on what a good time we had had.

 

 

 

 

Movies

The Roles We Are Given: A Review of the Movie Sing Sing

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Last Saturday, at Maine Film Center in Waterville, I think I just might have seen the best movie of 2024. A bold statement, I know, as  many movies have yet to be released. But Sing Sing was such a good movie that it would take something really special to surpass it.

As the title suggests, Sing Sing takes place in the well-known prison on the banks of the Hudson River in New York. The story revolves around Divine G, played by the great and good Coleman Domingo, who has been imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit. Along with other inmates, he belongs to a theater troupe that provides creativity and meaning in a place where these qualities are in short supply. The plot of this movie is based on the real-life story of theater in prison, made  possible by a  program called Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA).

A younger inmate, Divine Eye (Clarence Maclin), joins the group and challenges the authority of the men who are seasoned members of the troupe. With only a bit of grumbling, the other men give way to Divine Eye and his desire for comedy rather than the drama the men usually perform. Hence Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code is born. It soon becomes clear that the troupe members are doing this out of generosity, hoping that Divine Eye, a sullen young man and a drug dealer, will be nurtured by art the way they have.

As the movie progresses, a friendship develops between Divine G and Divine Eye. They talk about where they came from, the roles they were given, and how they were boxed in by them. Acting allows the two men to see that there might be different roles for them that were not clear (or available) when they were younger.

Unlike most prison films, there are no scenes of brutality in Sing Sing.  Instead, there are scenes of everyday incarceration where the men’s cells are searched, and there are security checks.

Even more surprising, in Sing Sing there are moments of pure joy as the men rehearse and become friends with one another.

In the wrong hands, Sing Sing could have been a horribly sentimental movie with swelling music as the inmates are redeemed through art. However, the directing, the script, and the acting are so tight that the film never becomes maudlin. At the same time, Sing Sing has heart, and I was rooting for both of the Divines in this film.

As the credits roll, viewers learn that most of the actors in Sing Sing are men who were formerly incarcerated and members of the RTA program. This provides a note of poignancy and authenticity to this fine film.

Readers, if you have a chance, go see Sing Sing if it comes to a theater near you. If it doesn’t come to a theater near you, be sure to see it when it is available through streaming.

Movies, summer

Late Summer on Our One Acre; And a Movie Review of Ballad of a Soldier

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We have a little piece of land, one acre, on the edge of the woods. Those woods are part of a watershed of 2,729 acres—over 4 square miles—that drains to the Upper Narrows Pond, and this means they are safe from development. In the woods are many wild animals, including foxes, deer, porcupines, bears, fishers, raccoons, coyotes, and skunks. (I know that people need homes, but so do wild creatures. Getting the mix right is often difficult.)

One acre compared to 2, 729 isn’t very much, but at times it seems like the world to me, always changing, never static, variable with each season.  Our home, the driveway, lawn, and gardens all sit on this one acre. When I was younger, I would have liked more land to grow more food. But nowadays, with my creaky knees, our one acre seems exactly right: big enough for some gardens, enough space for our patio, close enough to the road, but not too close.

And what is mid-August bringing to our acre by the woods?

First of all, mushrooms. The opening picture is a close-up of them, and they remind me of little pancakes. When the focus is farther out, not so much. And note how green the grass is. This summer, we have had a perfect amount of rain, enough to keep things green and growing, but not too much to make things soggy and rotten.

The bee balm has passed, and I like the way the seed head looks against this hydrangea, which is starting to pass.

Bee balm doesn’t exactly thrive in my back garden, and I think this plant, normally a spreader, doesn’t get enough sun. I’m thinking of planting more hydrangeas in its place, but the hummingbirds love what does grow, and I like the bee balm’s splash of red, however thin. We shall see.

My own tomatoes are beginning to ripen, and yesterday I used a few in a sandwich. Because I was feeling bold, I also added some cucumbers. As my Yankee husband would say, pretty darned good.

Even though it’s still August, there are signs that fall is just around the corner.

And who is this in our backyard? Why, it’s the divine Miss Holly.

She belongs to our daughter Shannon and our son-in-law Mike, and we took care of Holly while they celebrated their fourteenth wedding anniversary in Vermont. (Happy, happy!)

Our backyard, completely fenced in, is perfect for dogs. Holly had a fun weekend of lots of treats as well as sniffing and patrolling the backyard. She’s wonderful company, bright and alert. Shannon and Mike picked her up yesterday, and we miss her.

There are still more weeks of August before we edge into September. More time for sitting on the patio by the edge of the deep green woods as we listen to the finches, the nuthatches, the chickadees, and the occasional haunting call of the bard barred owl.

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Watching: World Cinema

From the Janus Collection

Ballad of a Soldier, 1959
Directed by Grigory Chukhray

Warning: this review contains minor spoilers

Ballad of a Soldier, a Russian film set in World War II, came out at a propitious time, a few years after Stalin died, when there was a period of thaw during Khrushchev’s regime. This thaw gave Russian filmmakers a little more latitude, a chance to focus on the individual rather than the collective.

And focus director Grigory Chukhray certainly did, on beautiful nineteen-year-old Private Alyosha Skvortsov (Vladimir Ivashov). For his bravery in battle, Alyosha has been given a six-day leave to go home to visit his mother.

Two things get in Alyosha’s way: the chaos of war, which extends well into Russia, away from the front line, and Alyosha’s tendency to get sidetracked.

First he helps a wounded veteran, then he meets a lovely young woman, Shura (Zhanna Prokhorenko). Mishaps ensue. Alyosha misses a train as he goes to get water. He delivers a bar of soap to a soldier’s family, which delays him further. Hitchhiking and muddy roads slow him down even more. On a more serious note, the bombing of a train brings panic and death.

In one sense, this could be the story of any soldier in any war, but in another sense, this is the story of Alyosha, a nineteen-year-old who is easily distracted as young men (and women) often are.

Does Alyosha make it home to see his mother? I am not going spoil the ending. This movie, directed by a great humanist, is very much worth seeing and is available on Amazon to rent or buy. It is also available on Turner Movie Classics.

Art, Movies, Nature

To See: The Art of Noticing

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To see takes time…
—Georgia O’Keefe

Seeing is one of my obsessions. Not in the strict sense—although I place a high value on my vision—but rather in a more intuitive, artistic sense, to notice and to explore what is not always apparent.

All around my yard, there are creatures living their own lives, trying to get by in a world both hostile and abundant. Often they remain hidden, but sometimes I catch glimpses of them.

This little toad at the edge of my patio,

a grasshopper on what looks like a ripple of water but is really the top of our outside table,

and a tiny moth (I think) resting on a sage leaf.

Then there is this mouse, one of many who thinks inside is better than outside. Can’t say I blame the little rodents, but my thinking is opposite. Over the years we have trapped hundreds of mice, releasing them in a field far from here and with no homes in sight.

 

Even in a place that doesn’t seem to support nature, these birds make their home near this parking lot.

Nature—in other words, life—is all around us, if we take the time to notice. And to borrow from the writer Verlyn Klinkenborg, in the pattern of noticing lies the art.

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Watching: Movies
Museum Hours (2012)
Directed by Jem Cohen

Museum Hours seems to run tangent to what I just wrote about noticing the world around us. Much of the film takes place in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, where a museum guard, Johann (Bobby Sommer), befriends a woman named Anne (Mary Margaret O’Hara) who has come to Vienna to be with an ailing relative. Through their love of art, Johann and Anne form a bond (platonic), and they explore their past and present using various paintings as a springboard.

In Museum Hours, art is not a series of static pieces unrelated to life. Instead, art is about life, where the artist looked and noticed and captured something essential.  Museum Hours is one of the most illuminating movies about art that I have ever seen, and its ending moved me to tears: Art is around you in everyday life. All you have to do is look.

However, this is a movie that requires patience and attention. Museum Hours is so leisurely that even some of my indie-film-viewing friends found it, ahem, a little slow.

However, for those whose have the patience, Museum Hours is such a rewarding movie.

 

Art, Movies, summer

In Which I Write about August As Well As the Classic Film Alexander Nevsky

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For the first part of July, the heat was terrible in Maine—at least for Mainers. The heatwave coincided with the Maine International Film Festival, and Clif, Dee, and I were more than happy to sit in air-conditioned cinemas as we watched movies.

Then, around July 18, it was as though the weather gods flipped a switch, and suddenly we were in August. Black-eyed Susans and Queen Anne’s lace, not normally July flowers, were in full bloom. Crickets, another August treat, were singing at night, and during the day, grasshoppers buzzed.

And the weather? Delicious as only a traditional Maine August can be: hot and dry during the day and wonderfully cool at night. The windows are open all the time, and the air inside the house smells so fresh.

What will true August bring us, I wonder? More of the same would be nice, but in this time of climate change, who knows? Whatever the case, Clif, Dee, and I are enjoying this weather. We are spending as much time as possible in our screen house on the patio.

As we chat about this and that—often movies—we sip our drinks, and listen to the noises from the woods and yard. Gold finches twitter at each other as they vie for spaces on the feeders. A fledgling blue jay calls to its parents. Nearby, crickets sing their sweet song of summer, and in the far distance, in the woods, we  catch the ethereal song of a hermit thrush.

Magical might be a word that is overused, but magical is what this time is.

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Watching: World Cinema
Alexander Nevsky directed by Sergei Eisenstein

In my previous post, I wrote about how much I like foreign movies, and that our daughter Dee has a huge DVD collection of them. To be more specific, the major part of her collection is Essential Art House: 50 Years of Janus Films released by the Criterion Collection. Janus Films is a film distribution company founded in 1956 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and they helped bring world cinema to the United States with such classics as The Seventh Seal, one of my absolute favorites.

There are 50 movies in the set, and this should keep us busy for a while. (Don’t worry. I don’t plan to write about all of them. Only the ones that catch my attention.) The DVDS are in alphabetical order by title, and this is how we will work our way through the collection, starting with the first one, Alexander Nevsky, a 1938 Russian film directed by Sergei Eisenstein.

Alexander Nevsky is billed as a historical film, and strictly speaking, this is true. The movie is set in the thirteenth century, centering on the real-life conflict between Teutonic Knights and Prince Alexander. But really it’s a Russian propaganda film, featuring Russia against Germany, a reflection of the situation between the two countries in 1938.

As a result, the characters are stiff and one dimensional, with Prince Alexander being all virtue and valor and the Teutonic knights being a rotten bunch. Indeed, one of the bad guys even looked like an evil sorcerer, as though he had just slithered in from a fantasy movie. As someone who prefers character-driven movies, whatever the genre, this should have been a deal killer.

But it wasn’t. Alexander Nevsky has such a crazy energy that it carried me along. The battle scenes between the Teutonic Knights and Prince Alexander’s forces are nothing short of jaw-dropping, with hundreds and hundreds of extras and horses rushing toward each other. I don’t suppose there were many retakes of these battle scenes, and this was well before the time of CGI and special effects.

In addition, the movie is in black and white, and the cinematography captures everything in crisp detail.

So, in the end, who wins? Prince Alexander or the Teutonic Knights?  No spoilers here. Watch for yourself and see how a propaganda film can still be a marvel of early cinema.

July 31, 2024
Addendum: Yikes! I forgot to mention the rousing score and the composer, Sergei Prokofiev.  The music certainly added energy to an already energetic movie.

Movies

A Return to Blogging with the Maine International Film Festival

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After a horrible two-week heat wave and the Maine International Film Festival (MIFF), I have returned to blogging. I’ve certainly missed you all, and I’m happy to be back.

First, the heatwave. Hot and humid, then hotter and even more humid, complete with heat advisories. Heat advisories? In Maine? With the heat index, some days the temp was close to 100°. The best that can be said is that the heatwave is over for now, and today it’s rainy and cool, with the temperature being 67°. I’m wearing a long-sleeved shirt, and I’m as happy as only a Mainer can be in cool summer weather.

Now on to the Maine International Film Festival. Dee, Clif, and I have not been to MIFF since before the pandemic, and we were so happy to be back. The Film Festival features over 100 movies. Naturally, we couldn’t see them all, but we made a good effort, seeing 31 films in 9  days.

This might sound kind of silly, but it really is exhausting seeing that many films in such a short time. But it’s also fun and stimulating. We reconnected with old friends and met a few new ones. We talked about the movies we liked and the movies that left us cold. When you see that many movies, there are bound to be a few duds.

As the name suggests, the Maine International Film Festival features lots of movies from around the world, and part way through the festival, I realized how much I love foreign films. Thanks to MIFF, I went all around the globe—to Spain, France, Uganda, Mexico,  South Korea, Hungary, and Russia. I heard many languages, visited different cultures, and saw people who didn’t look like me. Yet, the concerns—the fears and hopes and feelings—were really not that different from mine. We are all human with similar needs and wants.

As it turns out, my daughter Dee has a huge DVD collection of foreign films, and MIFF has motivated me to start watching them, one a week. Even though MIFF is over, I can still go around the world.

Here are three movies that really caught my attention at the Maine International Film Festival:

  1. Close Your Eyes (Cerrar los ojos): A Spanish film about an actor who disappears during the filming of a movie. His disappearance haunts family and friends, and while the story revolves around the central mystery of what happened to the actor, Close Your Eyes is also a poignant look at aging and memory. This is a leisurely film that takes its time unfolding.  If action films are you thing, this is not the movie for you.
  2. The Midwives (Sage-femmes): This French movie follows two young midwives, Louise and Sofia, as they begin their first job in a hospital that is understaffed. The Midwives is by turns touching and harrowing as Louise and Sofia struggle in different ways to adapt to the stress of delivering babies under circumstances that are less than ideal. This movie is a lot more graphic than the BBC series Call the Midwife, but it never seemed inappropriate. Let’s face it: childbirth is a bloody, messy business.
  3. The Echo (El eco): A slice-of-life documentary about a farming family in a remote village in Mexico. The director, Tatiana Huezo, captures the rhythm and the beauty as well as the limitations and the hardships of living a life close to the land. Warning: There is a brutal scene of a goat being slaughtered, and I averted my eyes. Fortunately, this is the only scene of an animal being killed, and despite this violence, The Echo is very much worth watching.

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Readers might be wondering about the picture at the beginning of this post. It is a close up of an enchanting installation in the park next to the Maine Film Center and the Opera House, which hosted MIFF.

Here are some other photos of the Installation, a magical addition to terrific film festival.

 

 

Movies, Winter

Three months of March

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For most Mainers, March is the worst month of the year. After the long dark cold of December, January, and February, what we would like is a softening, some sign of spring. Instead, what we traditionally get is wet heavy snow, sometimes lots of it, followed by snowbanks packed with pebbles and dirt and then worst of all, at the end of the month, thick, dirty, oozing Mud. And, yes, I intended the capitalization. In March in Maine, Mud is a force of nature to be reckoned with. I have lost a shoe in the mud going out to the compost bin.

This winter, it feels as though we have had three months of March, with so little snow that some outside events in the area have been canceled. This February, we’ve had mud. The chickadees are singing their spring song, and friends have spotted red-wing black birds. Really? In February? So it seems.

Readers, fair warning: This does not look as though it’s going to be a good year for Snow-Gauge Clif. More about that next week.

Here is what our backyard looks like right now.

So many pine cones had dropped that I decided to go outside to gather them for kindling for our wood furnace down cellar.

How to cap this odd month? With a trip to Absolem to meet friends for drinks. My drink, which is featured below, was a delicious blueberry cider.

What will March bring? We shall see.

Watching

Drive-Away Dolls
Directed by Ethan Coen

Ethan Coen is one half of the talented Coen brothers team—the other brother is Joel—and together they have made and directed terrific movies such as Fargo, No Country for Old Men, and The Big Lebowski.

Recently, they have parted ways creatively. Joel Coen would go on to direct a striking version of Macbeth. Ethan has given us Drive-Away Dolls, a stinker of film that leads me to conclude that Joel was the talented brother of the team, and whatever Ethan might have contributed was guided and controlled by his older brother.

The plot is a classic Coen brothers set-up and should have been fun: Two young women, an odd couple, decide to go on a road trip and hook-up with a company that allows them to drive a car for free to Florida. In the trunk is a brief case hidden with the spare tire, and it turns out the women were given the wrong car. A bickering pair of gangsters come after the women, and what mostly ensues is explicit sex, lame jokes, and a stupid denouement, which all come together to make the movie seem far longer than its 1 hour and 24 minutes runtime. However, in all fairness, I must add that some people at the cinema were laughing away at jokes we thought were lame. Even though the jokes left us cold, they tickled the funny  bones of other folks.

I decided to write about this movie for two reasons: One, to warn fans of the Coen brothers what they are going to get if they decide to go to Drive-Away Dolls and are expecting a quirky, snappy movie reminiscent of the brothers’ past films. And two, if readers do decide to go see this movie, I would be very interested in reading what you think about it. Did you love it or hate it?

I enjoy reading opposing views as much as I enjoy reading views that match mine. So do let me know what you think of the movie if you see it and have a chance to leave a comment.

 

 

 

Flowers, Movies, summer

For the Rain it Raineth Every Day

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As I noted last week, you can get too much of a good thing, and this certainly applies to the nonstop rain we’ve been having.

WBUR, Boston’s NPR News Station, recently featured a newsletter with the headline “Weather whiplash hits home.”  Nik DeCosta-Klipa wrote that the “historic rain caused severe flooding in Vermont and washed out roads and farms in western  Massachusetts.”

In her post this week, Judy, of New England Garden and Thread, writes about the west side of New Hampshire, “which has seen a dam break and roads just disintegrate leaving communities land locked until it is safe to start repairs.”

In western Maine, heavy rain caused washouts and extensive road damage. However, in central Maine, where I live, there was not much damage. This reminded me that sometimes luck—or Fortune as the Elizabethans would call it—plays a big roll in life. If we lived fifty or sixty miles inland, we might be landlocked, too. But while the rain was heavy in our area, it wasn’t heavy enough to cause extensive damage.

While my gardens definitely look beaten down, the flowers are blooming, bringing spots of color to my shady yard.

A toad peeks through an opening of the green leaves of  a platycodon.

Various daylilies are in bloom.

I know I posted a similar picture last week, but I just can’t resist the red against the blue.

Finally, more peeking, this time it’s astilbe through ferns.

We’re supposed to have a few sunny days in a row this week, and I  am looking forward to them. We don’t have central air conditioning, and every thing is damp and sticky.

I’ve heard that summers are only going to be getting hotter as we go forward. We have to adapt, but we also must do what we can to stop the situation—climate change—from getting worse.

Perhaps this is foolish of me, but I remain hopeful.

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Book Reading

This Saturday, July 22, at 2:00 p.m., I will be giving a presentation at the Vassalboro Public Library.

This is the library I went to as a child, and it is one of the libraries featured in my Great Library Series.

I know many readers are far-flung, but if there are readers in the area, please do stop by if you have the chance.

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Watching

Movies: Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One

Last week, we had such a wonderful time seeing the new Indiana Jones movie that we made a bold move: We bought movie passes at our local cinema. For $20 a pass, we can see as many movies as we want. Normally, because of the cost of tickets, we are very judicious about which movies we watch at the cinema. Now, we can take a chance on movies we normally wouldn’t go to the cinema to see.

Mission Impossible is such a movie. I have to admit that I am not a huge fan of Tom Cruise—sorry Tom Cruise fans. But this seemed like a fun summer movie to see with some great supporting actors—Rebecca Ferguson, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, and Simon Pegg, to name a few—and off I went with Clif and Dee.

How was it? Well, there was a lot of action, including one extremely suspenseful train-wreck scene. (That seems to be a thing in movies.) Not surprisingly, Mission Impossible was short on character development, and in both books and movies, I love character development.

The plot revolves around a sentient AI gone rogue and the race to find two keys that will stop it. There will be a Part Two, and I couldn’t help but think that if some of the action scenes had been trimmed, one movie would have been just fine.

Mission Impossible wasn’t exactly a bad movie, but it wasn’t riveting either. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Tom Cruise is no Harrison Ford.

Next on the movie docket: Barbie and Oppenheimer. Or Barbenheimer as the two movies have come to be called because they are opening on the same weekend.

Stay tuned!

Addendum: I forget to mention how long the $20 movie passes were good for. They are good for a month. Going to two movies pays for the pass. After that, it’s gravy. Vegetarian, of course. 😉

Birds, Flowers, Food, Movies, summer

Birds and Blooms and Rain. Plus, a Review of the Newest Indiana Jones Movie

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In Maine, June was a very rainy month, and it seems that July is following suit. I know, of course, that too little rain is a terrible problem, but it is possible to have too much of a good thing. Although my perennials are thriving, my annuals are a bust this year. The tomatoes are tall and spindly with few blossoms; the cucumber plant looks stunted; and the nasturtium seeds rotted in the ground. According to Maine Public, this was one of the rainiest Junes on record, and if the weather gods don’t relent, this also will be one of the rainiest summers on record.

On Saturday, the weather gods must have been looking elsewhere because there was no rain for the entire day. Before they could change their minds, Clif, Dee, and I hurried out to the patio, where Clif made his legendary grilled bread. As we Mainers would put it, that bread was some good. We had small bowls of marinara sauce for dipping.

We also had drinks to salute this day without rain. The owl wine glass belongs to Dee, and we toasted Jackie Knight, a lover of owls.  (Jackie is the wife of blogging friend Derrick Knight.) Jackie, we love owls, too.

July is the time for fledglings, and with my wee camera I was actually able to catch this pair of woodpeckers. The one at the bottom is the fledgling, who with a squawking and fluttering of wings, followed and pestered its parent for food. I do love those fledglings, on the edge of independence but still young enough to want to be fed.

In the front yard, there are bursts of yellow and red to add variety to all the green.

Here is a closer look.

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Watching

Too Many Nazis

Movie: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

On July 4, Clif, Dee, and I went to Regal Cinema in Augusta to see Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.  Because of Covid, it had been three  years since we actually went to a cinema to see a movie. With all that’s available on streaming, I thought I was just fine not going to the movies. After all, we have a really nice television with a good sound system.

Turns out, I was wrong. As soon as I settled into one of those big recliners, and the room went dark, I was completely absorbed, enthralled, even. Once a cinephile, always a cinephile. Of course, it didn’t hurt that I was watching Harrison Ford, one of the biggest and most charismatic stars of my generation.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny followed the usual contours of the previous Indiana Jones movies: There were lots of bad guys—Nazis, again; a magical artifact that would cause big trouble if it fell into the wrong hands; a thrilling opening sequence where a digitally de-aged Indy ran across the roof of a long, long train; and chase scenes galore.  As you can see from the poster, Indy had his trademark whip and hat.

These repetitions could have made the movie feel stale, but they didn’t. Instead, it was a thrill to see Indy on the hunt again, this time for Archimedes’ Dial, which supposedly opens fissures in time. On that train, in 1944, Indy escaped with half of the dial, outwitting the Nazi astrophysicist Jürgen Voller (played by the excellent Mads Mikkelsen).

Is there another half of the dial somewhere? Is the Nazi astrophysicist obsessed with it? Does Indy, spurred on by his goddaughter Helena (a luminous Phoebe Waller-Bridge) go after the other half? Yes, yes, and yes.

But Dial of Destiny, with its themes of sorrow, regret, and the trials of old age, rises above the average adventure movie. After the thrilling chase scene on the train, the movie shifts to 1969, when Indy is no longer young. We see him at a low point in his life—sad, sleeping in his boxer shorts in a chair, drinking first thing in the morning. His old cocky days are long gone, and it gave me a pang to see him like this. While things perk up when his goddaughter Helena arrives on the scene, that sadness threads itself through the movie, elevating it.

Readers, I loved this movie and would gladly see it again. If you are an Indiana Jones fan,  get thee to a cinema, where you can see it in all its glory on the big screen.