Old So What

 In the mood for something spooky this fall? Look no further than Repo! The Genetic Opera. This hard rock Opera movie, has songs with great lyrics, blood, and a great premise. A bleak future where people seek perfection through constant surgeries; sound familiar? Only if you miss a payment, they repo back what they operated on. Paul Sorvino is a powerhouse as the head of the company that performs these surgeries. Alexa PenaVaga belts out ballads that will have you rebelling against your own inherited genetics. Anthony Head is tortured Repoman forced to do all the dirty work to protect his family. But my favorite character is the mysterious Graverobber, who wrote the movie. You won't be disappointed with this movie.

  Another excellent movie available on YouTube is:   The Painted Veil based on the story by the well-known writer, Somerset Maugham. The main characters, Kitty and Water Fane (Naomi Watts and Edward Norton) start out as unhappily matched, but end up coming together as a couple in love.   Unfortunately, it’s too late. Described as a “Chinese period romance,” with a backdrop of the real event of the cholera epidemic in early 1900s China.   (It should be said that any movie in which Edward Norton is involved can be counted on as being really good because the man is both creative and a perfectionist!) The supporting cast includes Diana Rigg and Toby Jones.   Highly recommended by this author.

  to go for! Did you know that YouTube has free movies! And some of them are really good, and well worth watching again or for the first time. One example is Dangerous Liaisons (the Chinese version.) Starring the very attractive actors: Zhang Ziyin, Jang Dong-gun and Cecila Cheung, who form an appealing and most accomplished cast. (A mention must be made for the director as well, Hur Jin-ho.) The plot is the sexual dares of two of the characters which end in disaster for all the characters.   Love triumphs just so far.   You know the chance for a happy ending all around is very slim, but this movie captures your interest (and, yes, your heart) until the very end.   Watch this one. You won’t be disappointed!

  In case I didn’t mention it in Part 1, and I didn’t, the film, “Bridge of spies” was based on the Berlin Wall, (built by Communist East Germany in 1961), and how various world powers swapped two famous prisoners trapped on either side of it.   Rudolf Abel was the convicted Russian spy and Francis Gary Powers was the convicted spy from the US. The hero in real life who should be mentioned in capital letters, was the American attorney, James Donovan, who actually achieved this difficult feat…in real life!

  You will enjoy this 2015 film I’m very sure. It has everything:   good script, good director (Steven Spielberg) good producers, (one of whom is Steven Spielberg)   good actors. Based on a good story. A true story.   It grabs your attention and holds on in no small measure to the acting ability of its star, Tom Hanks.   He should be called:   Mr. Believable. You find yourself so caught up, so captured by the story and actors that you end up rooting for everyone, even a communist villain. Warning:   This is a feel-good film!

An internationally, well-respected actor is now appearing in a film on a YouTube channel. I won’t say his name… I won’t name the other stars or cast… Because I want to shield him. Why? Because he was a rare talent, a one-of-a-kind, and one of everyone’s favorites.   Now deceased, when he was young, he was truly beautiful…OK, then, handsome complete with a charming accent.  (Maybe most accents seem charming to us, Americans, I admit.) Now, as an older actor, he was still charming, but clearly should no longer be playing romantic leads. When a close-up view of the back of his head appeared on the screen, wearing a large bald spot, really large, toupee-style large, then I became angry. The following scenes had the toupee in place, that’s how we know for certain that this lapse was a giant mistake. It’s clear that no one on-staff at the film or in his employment had looked out for his interests, for his dignity, which I am certain included concealing missing hair. There is us...

Now showing on Netflix Starring and directed by Bradley Cooper with Carey Mulligan A movie is very much like a train. It leaves the station, and through dialog and other controls, (including the actors, the screenplay, sometimes the costumes and set design), winds itself along on the tracks of a story. With a successful film, the viewers of the movie also participate. They are right there with the director, cast and camera crew.  They are all in. But the “train” called “Maestro” leaves the station without the passengers. They are left still sitting alone on the waiting room benches. They are not taken along for the ride. This is a movie that wants to get your attention, and it does to a certain extent. Its method is a sharp, quick and innovative style. It wants to show you how different it is from other movies.  It wants to break through, to became a new genre.  Maybe it tries too hard.  It’s exhausting.  All the effort shows.  We don’t want to see “the lit...