Adnerb the Movie Nerd

Movie reviews from a middle school teacher's perspective

Hotel Mombai

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This is a very hard movie for me to review.  It is definitely well-made and tries to stick to the facts as much as possible.  However, by the time the movie was over, I felt depressed and hopeless.  A movie that tells us a tragic story about horrible events usually tries to  lift us up in some way and give us hope for the future.  I did not walk away from this movie with that kind of feeling at all.  “Hotel Mombai” tells the story of a series of terrorist attackes that rocked the city of Mombai in 2008 and left over 178 people killed and many more injured.  Several public buildings and areas were targeted, but the movie concentrates on the seige of the Taj Mahal Hotel.  Dev Patel  plays one of the luxurious hotel’s waiters who misses out on a lucritive (but eventually deadly) plum job because on his way to work he accidentally dropped a shoe  and was not properly attired (this hotel is very much the upper class hotel usually seen in British period pieces).  I usually love Dev Patel, but he really didn’t have a lot to do other than run and hide while trying to guide the guests.  Other actors you might recognize are Armie Hammer as the husband of a wealthy socialite and Jason isaacs as a retired Russion Special Forces agent.  Their characters didn’t have much to do than get killed, and there was no opportunity to develop them in a way that you are involved in them. The movie is at its best showing the devestation, terror and bloodshed the terrorists inflict on their innocent victims, and their motivation-religious fanaticism inspired by a shadowy Pakistani leader known as “Brother Bull.”  As usual, men like him avoid any actual involvement on their own.  They send the desparate young men, fired by misplaced passionate anger and religious fanaticsim  directed at the ones they think are responsible for their lot in life.  It’s really not anything new for these events.  This movie definitely earns its R rating as the violence looks very real and it seems overenthusiastic, if that is the word, in showing the dying, and the heartless, religion driven hatred and spite of the perpetrators.  I had to avert my eyes many times.  The movie did include some of the heroics, especially by the hotel staff, many of whom risked their lives to help the guests and fullfill their mantra, “Guest is god.” It clearly depicts a government, local or national, clearly unprepared and utterly inefficient in responding to the crisis.  I really wanted to see more of the positive stories  and less of the blood and body parts.  In fact, I wouldn’t recommend this movie to you if you are not a fan of realistic violence.  In the wolrd today, with these kinds of attacks frequently in the news, this movie was a little too real for me.

On the Basis of Sex

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I didn’t know anything about Ruth Bader Ginsberg before going into this movie except that she seems like a Bad Ass.  After seeing this movie, I have concluded that she IS a Bad Ass!!  “On the Basis of Sex” follows the life of RBG from her time at Harvard Law School as a married undergrad to a ground breaking case that got her career going.  That case helped to toppled decades old laws that discriminated against men as well as women.  Her case, Moritz vs. the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, was distinctive for involving sex discrimination against a man.   Charles Moritz was denied a $600 tax deduction because it was ruled that a man could not be considered a caregiver.  Ruth knew all about discrimination as she faced prejudice, condescension and ignorance in her pursuit of a degree and then a career in law.  As a lot of women back in the day found out, a woman had to work twice as hard to succeed in traditional male occupations.  Once she got her degree, she had a hard time finding a law firm that was willing to hire a woman, even one who was at the top of her class. One prospective employer assumed she would get pregnant and quit while another told her that women were too emotional.  Through it all, her husband Martin, a successful tax lawyer, supported and believed in her.  One potentially tragic  episode in her life occured while she and her husband were both in law school; and Martin ( played  by Armie Hammer) is diagnosed with testicular cancer.  At the time there was about a 5% survival rate, yet they pulled through it all, and he subsequently was a great helper in her reaching her goal. Though the focus of her efforts was sex discrimination (a term they modified to a less aggressive gender discrimination-it was the 60’s after all), she and her team (including her daughter and the ACLU) attacked the issue using the test case involving a man. Ruth, in a fine performance by Felicity Jones, manages her classes, his classes(while he battled cancer) and their daughter as they get through this trying time with an even stronger marriage.  While I found this movie interesting and extremely topical, it is a little slower paced than most movies and I found my self losing interest here and there.  But the performances are great and the plot is full of information that was new to me.  I came out of this movie with a greater respect for the justice that some have nicknamed The Notorious RBG.

First Man

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‘First Man’ is a well made film that explores the mostly forgotten aspects of the story of Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon.  It is a pretty accurate portrayal of not only the steps NASA’s space program went through to reach that goal, but also the emotional toil the space program took on Armstrong and his family.  We are given an in-depth look at how the astronauts trained and what it was like to be in an early space capsule.  I learned a lot about Neil Armstrong (as portrayed by Ryan Gosling) that I didn’t know.  He comes across generally as an emotionally stunted stoic, barely talking to his wife and sons, terse and distant with his peers;  and yet the movie touchingly depicts his soft vulnerable side too.  To Armstrong, going to the moon was not a big ego trip to become a celebrity; it was his job.   I understand that some people are up in arms because the movie doesn’t show Armstrong actually planting the American flag on the moon; and have implied that this movie is insufficiently American-centric, or even anti-American.  Those are definitely people who have not seen the film and perhaps should actually see it before commenting (the flag is shown on the moon in background, and there is scarcely any way the events can be portrayed as done by anyone but Americans).  I do not want to spoil the film, but there is another focus of this movie that comes out, something else that happened up there.  This isn’t a movie for everyone though.  It is not as exciting or fast paced as say “Apollo 13” or even “The Right Stuff.”  I was also disappointed in the way Claire Foy, playing Armstrong’s wife Janet, was underused.  I do understand this wasn’t her story,  I just wished she had been given more screen time.  All in all I think anyone interested in the early days of the space program will want to see this movie.

I, Tonya

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Director Craig Gillespie uses a fake documentary style to illustrate the Tonya Harding story that I quite enjoyed.  There are mock  interviews with a variety of people who played a part in her life.   Margot Robbie’s Tonya Harding is a tough-as-nails skater whose horrible childhood feeds her competitive nature.  Allison Janney plays her mother in one of the great supporting performances as an abusive mother who abysmally maltreats her daughter, then has the audacity to declare she should be thanked for giving her the drive to succeed.  For those of you unfamiliar with Tonya Harding, the basic plot line leads up to the time that her ex husband hired someone to break Nancy Kerrigan’s knee, thus allowing Tonya to have a better shot at an Olympic medal.  Poor Tonya was used and abused by family, husband, and even Olympic judges.  I came away with a new respect for Margot Robbie’s acting talents as well as Tonya Harding herself.  If  you are interested in the world of figure skating or have always wondered about this dark event in Olympic history, I recommend you check out this movie.

The Post

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Are you looking for a powerful, riveting movie that will give you a historical perspective of the ’70s and yet is very relevant to today’s influx of fake news and assaults on the First Amendment?  If you answered ‘yes’ to that question, ‘The Post’ is the movie for you.  I was a teenager when Nixon was president, and I had heard of The Pentagon Papers; but really didn’t know what all the fuss was about.  This movie schooled me, that’s for sure.  Steven Spielberg directs this timely story that defends freedom of the press even when what is published could embarrass or even implicate those in authority and in the public eye.  Meryl Streep plays Katharine Graham, the first female publisher of a major American newspaper, while Tom Hanks plays Ben Bradlee, her editor-in-chief.  The basic plot involves how the Pentagon Papers, which outlined how every president since World War II lied to the American public about our involvement the Vietnam War,  were acquired by several major newspapers – and the basic Constitutional issue of whether they should be allowed to publish them or not.  President Nixon tries to use his power to stifle the publication (sound familiar?)  of the papers, citing national security.  The Post’s, and press in general’s, contention is that a free press, particularly when the government is lying to its people, is a critical protection as established in the Bill of Rights.  I think you know what happened!  The large supporting cast are all pros and really help to make this movie exciting.  I especially enjoyed Bob Odenkirk whose character, Bob Bagdikian, has a key role to play in the shenanigans.  I really think everyone, Republicans, Democrats and anyone with concerns about our country  alike should see this movie and take a look at how real news is made!