Category: Movies

Movie Review: The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

On By Norbert HauptIn Movies, Three StarsLeave a comment

The Rocky Horror Picture Show was first released over 50 years ago in 1975. It first was a box office flop, but by 1977, alternative movie theaters started midnight showings and it quickly created a cult following. I am aging myself when I tell you that I must have seen the movie at least 20 times in the years of 1978 and 1979, always at midnight, in Phoenix, Arizona. It was a great event to bring our friends and guests to.

While visiting my son and his girlfriend for Thanksgiving, we looked for cult movies to watch, and we talked about The Room, which my son had made us watch ten years ago. I will reassert here that The Room is the worst movie all all time. But speaking of cult movies, I remembered The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and so we watched it together. For me it was the first time after many decades, and while I had remembered many vignettes, much of it I had forgotten about. For instance, the singing lips through the initial scrolling of the credits was such an iconic feature – how could I possibly forget it?

The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a rock musical that crossed many cultural threshold in its time. It was also one of the first audience participation movies. People came to the theater dressed up like the characters, they recited key lines of dialog before they came up in the movie, and there was much audience participation, like throwing rice during the wedding scene, throwing toast and lighting cigarette lighters (we didn’t have smartphones with flashlights then). Going to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show was much more than just going to a movie, it was an experience that you took your friends to.

The film opened up the world for the LGBTQ+ community. It celebrated gender fluidity, queerness, cross dressing, sexual liberation and bisexuality in an unapologetic manner at a time when such images or concepts were rarely dealt with in mainstream society or media. It provided visibility and a sense of community for people who had few opportunities for public expression of queerness.

The music is pop rock and original to the movie. The songs stayed with me over the decades. In particular the “let’s do the time warp again” song is the one I think about when I think about The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Susan Sarandon has a lead role as Janet, and it was one of her earlier movies at the beginning of her career. Also, notable is Meat Loaf’s role as Eddie in the film. Tim Curry, who plays the lead character of Dr. Frank-N-Furter, was already a Broadway actor when he appeared in the movie. He rose to prominence with this role.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show was a sanctuary where outsiders, misfits, and young people exploring identity could gather without judgment. I was proud to be part of that world as a 20-year-old, just coming of age and looking forward in wonder to the world awaiting me. Life was just getting started. “Don’t dream it—be it” became a catch-phrase for me, and I still fondly remember those days.

Watching The Rocky Horror Picture Show with my family felt a bit like passing a torch. It was nostalgia all the way.

Movie Review: Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

On By Norbert HauptIn Movies, Two StarsLeave a comment

A friend of ours (RW) had repeatedly recommended that we watch Pan’s Labyrinth, since it was one of the best movies he had ever watched. So it was on my list, and when our family was looking for a good movie to watch on the evening of Thanksgiving day, we decided to try it. That was after almost an hour of browsing various good movies and watching trailers, only to reject one after the other. Pan’s Labyrinth is also on a list of the “125 best movies of all time you have to watch before you die”, so how can we go wrong?

Guillermo del Toro’s film El Laberinto del Fauno is a Spanish film in the Spanish language, with English subtitles. We did not expect that we’d be “reading the movie” when we chose to watch it on the evening of Thanksgiving.

In Spain in 1944, fascism under Franco is in full swing. Military all over the country is brutalizing the population. Resistance warriors fight back as much as they can, waiting for the war to end. The captain of the local military force is an exceedingly brutal man. He married a woman with a young daughter, Ofelia. The woman is pregnant, expecting the captain’s baby. Ofelia does not accept her stepfather. She lives in a fairytale world, full of magical creatures like giant bugs, fairies, an old faun, and many other “monsters.”

While the story unfolds of how the resistance fighters try to undermine the regime with the help of the general population, and how the military thugs use sheer sadistic brutality against their own people, Ofelia tries to get out of her impossible situation by the magic of the fairy tale world that only exists in her mind.

Pan is a Greek god which the Christians later borrowed to embody evil, like Satan. He had horns, goat legs, fur, hooves, and a grotesque overall appearance. Such is the faun that appears to Ofelia and leads her through a set of impossible tasks to accomplish her own return to the throne of her true royal father and to live her life as the princess that she really is.

Pan’s Labyrinth brings a little-known aspect of World War II to life, namely what went on in Spain under Franco, while Hitler and Mussolini did their own murderous and ruinous deeds. Is Pan’s Labyrinth a great movie you have to watch?

No.

Does it, in my opinion, belong on any list of great movies you have to watch?

No.

There is not a spark of happiness, the good guys don’t win and gloom lives on. Pan’s Labyrinth is a dark and mystical tragedy that, after watching it, left me numb.

Movie Review: The Penguin Lessons (2024)

On By Norbert HauptIn Movies, Three StarsLeave a comment

Penguins must be good teachers. When watching The Penguin Lessons I immediately thought of My Penguin Friend, a movie I watched last year.

It’s a very similar story. Through sheer coincidence, a penguin attaches itself to a human who is not necessarily interested in the bird, but over time taking care of it, falls in love with the animal. In this case, the human is an English teacher at an Argentinian prep school during the mid 1970-ies, when Argentina was taken over by a military coup which installed a fascist government. 30,000 Argentinian citizens “disappeared” during those years, never to be heard from again. This is the backdrop to the simple lives of a few teachers and school staff who support them. The penguin, seemingly one person at a time, befriends everyone at the school, and all lives are improved. The students pay attention to their studies, the teachers enjoy healthy relationships with the students and each other, and the staff serving them come to know them and include them in their lives.

How does a simple, single penguin accomplish all that?

It happens in My Penguin Friend, and it happens here, in The Penguin Lessons.

Watching this movie in 2025, when activities like those in Argentina in 1976 are occurring in our country today, all I can say is that we could use some penguins just about now.

Movie Review: M3GAN 2.0 (2025)

On By Norbert HauptIn Artificial Intelligence, Movies, One and a Half StarsLeave a comment

On a 5-hour flight, to make the hours go by, I watched a movie I would normally not be interested in. M3GAN 2.0, pronounced “Megan” is – you guessed it – a sequel to the original M3GAN, released in 2022. M3GAN was a horror-comedy. I did not watch it, since I am not much into horror, or comedy.

M3GAN 2.0 starts two years after M3GAN’s rampage. M3GAN is a robot, built by genius entrepreneur Gemma. When Gemma learns that M3GAN has gone rogue, she swears that she will from then on only work on protecting humanity from AI gone bad, but in order to save the world from another killer robot, Amelia, she has to give M3GAN 2.0 a body and take risks again.

Gemma, genius that she is supposed to be, in surprisingly juvenile in her thinking, and her niece Cady, whom she is raising, is the mother in the family. M3GAN (old and new) has a Barbie body with the head that looks a lot like Regan, the girl who becomes possessed in the 1973 movie The Exorcist. I wonder if that was intentional.

The movie is confusing at best. There are many, sometimes conflicting storylines. It touts high tech, parades mad billionaires, lectures about the security of AI, and imagines what a killer robot might do. The story seems too complicated, with too many plot twists to follow. And in the end, just like in the Terminator movies, the battle between two robots is solved by a karate-spiced fistfight. It seems we humans can only understand fights when they are done with fists, or maybe with guns, whether that’s what robots would do notwithstanding. Also, when showing the robot seeing or perceiving, the screen just shows what might be in their field of vision, overlayed by screen windows of JAVA code scrolling by rapidly. Yeah, that’s how robots see!

Of course, this is a movie for a general audience that does not know much about AI or code or robots, for that matter, it’s about entertainment, it’s about technology and its marvels. In that the movie succeeds.

Would I recommend you go see M3GAN 2.0?

No.

You’re not missing anything.

Movie Review: One Battle After Another (2025)

On By Norbert HauptIn Movies, Three StarsLeave a comment

On a quiet, almost dreamy Sunday morning in Kahului, Maui, my wife and I walked into the Regal theater in the downtown mall to watch One Battle After Another. We would not have been interested in this movie just from watching the trailers. It looks like a bang bang shoot me up action thriller that we’re usually not interested in. But we had a trusted recommendation that it was one of the best movies in a long time, so we decided to give it a chance.

The Regal in Maui has a weird setup with huge screens and, in this case, only less than 30 seats in three rows. The back row was taken, so we sat in the middle row, where we literally had to recline the seats all the way back and look up at a 45 degree angle to the huge screen looming over us. Not a comfortable way to watch a movie, and I would not want to go back to that theater.

The weird surroundings and the strange seating position were both jarring, so when the movie started with its first act, its extremely fast-paced opening, the rapid-fire succession of many scenes, the relentless and very loud music, it just helped transport both of us into another world, not one we particularly liked. I had my doubts at that time.

But minute after minute built the story, and once the second act came along, the deep suspense and the gripping story just took over.

America is more divided now than it ever was in my lifetime in this country. Today our ideological differences are huge, we have camps where immigrants are detained without due process, we are watching a militarization of our cities, and outright physical aggression is commonplace, at least if we can trust what our media feeds us. This is the backdrop for this story, and I have to refrain from taking sides and making any political statements or voice opinions. The timing of this film is impeccable, and it will make millions of us think about what we’re doing to our country.

The story starts when we are introduced to the French 75, a fictional radical left-wing terrorist group that frees detained immigrants with force, blows up military installations, robs banks, all as part of a left-wing ideology.  They wage One Battle After Another in their war against the government. The first act of the movie tells a story of radical politics, violence, repression and generational legacy.

There is Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio), which is not his real name, who is a bomb expert and there is Perfidia (Teyana Taylor), a black firebrand who clearly gets off sexually on physical violence and a mission of revolution. The two are a couple within the larger terrorist group, doing battle, until their child is born and they have to take very different turns in life. This is where the bang bang first act stops and the second act begins, following the life of Bob raising his daughter as a single parent in a makeshift, quiet life.

One of their military nemesis, Col. Steven Lockjaw, decides to come after them 16 years later with the full force of the US government to settle old scores. He hunts them down, and in a flurry of escapes, father and daughter are separated. Lockjaw is a ferocious soldier with a twisted, sick psyche who will stop at nothing to get his way.

Here is the strange part: Lockjaw is played masterfully by Sean Penn. For the first half of the movie I didn’t even realize it was Sean Penn. I had to look it up online during the movie and then I saw this character in a whole different light. Both DiCaprio and Penn are playing their roles like absolute professionals. They carry the movie. The sound track, if you call it that, is intense. Heavy piano scores speed the action and somehow my heartrate went along with it.

At the end of the 2 hour and 42 minute movie I sat there spent. It was difficult to watch. It made me think. Going back out into the afternoon Maui sunshine seemed surreal. It has made me think all day.

I am still thinking.

Movie Review: East of Wall

On By Norbert HauptIn Movies, Two and a Half StarsLeave a comment

Sometimes my wife takes me on a “blind movie date.” I went to see East of Wall last weekend without knowing anything about the movie or even its title. She walked me into the theater with my eyes closed.

Wall is a town in South Dakota off of I-90. In 1978, I drove west on I-90 across the country and I remember seeing billboards for “Wall Drug” for hundreds of miles, like “Have You Dug Wall Drug” and the like. After such a billboard every 20 or 30 miles, literally for hundreds of miles, once you get to Wall, you HAVE TO stop and see what it’s all about.

I just googled it, and here is a street view picture today:

Even 50 years ago, it looked like this, and after all the hype of the anticipation, built over two days of driving, at the end it was just a drug store with a cafe, gift shop and other touristy stuff.  But hey, it worked. I went to Wall, South Dakota, I stopped at Wall Drug, I don’t know what I bought, if anything, but I am writing about it almost 50 years later in a movie review. The campaign obviously worked.

East of Wall plays on a ranch in the South Dakota Badlands, well, east of Wall. Tabatha Zimiga is a young, tattooed woman with a bunch of teenagers, some of her own, and some wayward ones whom she has taken in to live with her, mostly girls. Her fiancé, John, tragically died by suicide a few years before, just after their youngest son was born. Tabatha had her first son when she was 16, followed by a daughter, Porshia, when she was 18. She herself was a child of a teenage mom. Her mom still lives with her on her broken down ranch. She struggles to make ends meet.

Tabatha is somewhat of a horse whisperer. She knows horses, and the runs a horse rescue ranch, training the horses, having her teenage girls exhibition-ride them at auctions, and selling them via TikTok. Her oldest daughter, Porshia, is her star rider. She has won many riding competitions, and all her siblings and step siblings look up to her as their star.

In comes a rich cowboy from Texas who wants to buy her ranch and spruce it up to make it successful. Will his ways work and will Tabatha fall for him?

As I watched East of Wall for the first 30 minutes, I didn’t know what to make of it. There were a lot of clips from smartphones ready for TikTok, of teenagers riding horses. There were teenagers hanging out doing not much of anything on the junk-strewn ranch. There were shots of rodeos and horse auctions. There were a bunch of women smoking and cussing and hanging around.

It turns out, East of Wall is played mostly by non-actors playing themselves. Tabatha Zimiga is playing herself in her own life on her own ranch. Porshia Zimiga is Tabatha’s real-life daughter. The teenagers hanging out at the ranch are the real teenagers the real Tabatha has taken in to raise along with her own.

East of Wall is a living testament to healing through grit. It shows how Tabatha and her ranch became a sanctuary amid grief, hopelessness and despair, both for young people and for horses. It portrays an unconventional family, a home built on mentorship and trust, freedom and life itself. The horses become symbols of strength and loyalty. East of Wall is a Western, but focused on women, on community and on emotion.

Movie Review: The Ballad of Wallis Island (2025)

On By Norbert HauptIn Movies, Three and a Half StarsLeave a comment

I review every movie I watch, and the reviews are all here. But when you scan for movies, you’ll notice that I don’t have too many reviews lately. That means I am not doing much watching these days. I am also not checking on what’s playing, most of the time.

Last weekend, my wife decided she wanted to take me to the movies. She picked one, didn’t tell me what it was, and I walked into the theater not having any idea about what I was going to see.

There is a remote island somewhere in the U.K. that can be reached only by small boats with outboard motors. There isn’t even a dock, so visitors have to get off the boat while the surf is rocking it, stepping knee deep, or worse, into the ocean.  That’s how remote Wallis Island is. There is a little general store, and a lone phone booth, and a villa on top of the bluff. Charles lives alone in the villa. His wife died some years ago. He can afford the villa because he won the lottery.

His favorite musicians are the folk duo McGwyer Mortimer. Herb McGwyer is a songwriter, singer and performer. He is still active as a musician, with an agent and a career, but slightly past his prime. Nell Mortimer was his partner, a singer and piano player. They recorded many albums together in their day, and they were lovers. Something caused them to split up years ago, and they went their separate ways.

Charles hires them for one private gig on the island. Herb is going there to perform to a party of “less than a hundred people” but he does not know Nell is also coming. Over a few days of acclimating, Herb realizes that the gig has exactly one – and only one – person in the audience: Charles. When Nell shows up, the boundaries between making music and romance quickly blur, and emotions run wild.

The Ballad of Wallis Island is a delightful story about artists on the other side of their prime, about lost love and nostalgic longing, about the quirkiness of life on a lonely island, about human emotions and passion. There is humor, but it’s quirky humor, and there are songs that resonate with the soul.

I loved every minute of it. I want my wife take me on more “blind movie” dates.

Movie Review: Absolution (2024)

On By Norbert HauptIn Movies, One and a Half Stars, Two StarsLeave a comment

Liam Neeson plays an unnamed thug, a grizzled gangster and former boxer in Boston. He does thug jobs for a local small-time crime boss. He realizes that he is approaching the end of his “career” because he keeps forgetting basic stuff, like the names of his friends and places he was supposed to go. He has himself checked by a doctor and finds out he has Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), a progressive neurodegenerative disease caused by repetitive brain trauma, such as concussions from boxing. There is no cure and no treatment. The doctor tells him it will just get worse. He won’t live long.

As a result, he tries to get his affairs in order. He finds a girlfriend who has her own ghosts but somehow sees a kindred spirit in him. He has a daughter whom he abandoned in his younger years and she has a son. The daughter wants nothing to do with him, but he manages to get a connection with the grandson and he tries to redeem himself.

But the underworld has him solidly in its grip, and he can’t escape.

Absolution is not a Liam Neeson old hero action movie. It’s a slow study of an aging gangster with no place to go. As such, it is difficult to watch. There is not much of a story, or lesson, or feel-good spirit. The thug has a bad life, and it’s not getting better.

Absolution is boring and deeply depressing film.

Movie Review: My Penguin Friend (2024)

On By Norbert HauptIn Movies, Two StarsLeave a comment

My Penguin Friend is inspired by a true story.

A young Brazilian fisherman named João lives with his young wife Maria and their young son Miguel in a picturesque fishing village. On his birthday, Miguel asks to go out fishing with this father. The weather is not good, but João can’t say no to his son, and they row out. Soon a storm overtakes them and in the struggle to survive and get back, Miguel drowns. João’s heart is broken. 

The story skips forward several decades, and João and Maria still live in the same house. They are old now, but it appears that they have not touched Miguel’s room. They live in eternal grief with no apparent joy left in their lives. Just the hard work of a fisherman. 

One day, João rescues an injured penguin from an oil slick, brings him home, carefully cleans his coat, and feeds him back to strength. The penguin stays for a while, recovering, and a village girl gives him the name Dindim. Maria is not all that happy about the new pet in her kitchen, but she sees João blossoming with joy about being able to care for an animal that needs help. 

Penguins are migrant birds, and one day Dindim leaves for the south. To everyone’s surprise, and most of all to João’s, Dindim comes back the following winter to stay. And the next winter. João’s life is transformed. He has a penguin friend. 

I found out later on IMDb that 10 rescue penguins portrayed Dindim in the movie. Approximately 80% of the scenes feature real penguins. For the remaining 20%, where real penguins would face safety risks, CGI was used for 15% of the shots, while animatronics accounted for the final 5%.

This is a feel-good movie with a simple message, a little corny at times, but a nice change to the usually Hollywood fare of fast action and superheroes. It’s just about a man and his penguin friend.

Movie Review: Good One

On By Norbert HauptIn Movies, Two StarsLeave a comment

Sam is a well-adjusted 17-year-old high school girl. Her father invites her to go on a backpacking trip in the Catskills, a couple of hours north of New York City. Scheduled to come with them are Chris’ best friend Matt, and his teenage son. But during the morning of the departure, Matt and his son have a huge fight, and Matt ends up going alone. His marriage is shot, and his son is suffering from it.

During the trip Matt and Chris are the immature ones, and Sam keeps an even keel. What 17-year-old girl wants to go hiking with her middle-age dad and his friend? Sam apparently does, and she actually enjoys herself. Until Matt does something very wrong.

Good One is a slow-moving film. I have hiked in the Catskills and the Adirondacks. It’s remote, green, muggy, buggy, often muddy, with rough trails and steep hills. It’s a place to get away from it all. Good One brings that to us. There is no sound track. Just crickets and frogs and bugs and talking. Most of the talking is done by the two men, unloading their problems, their regrets, their hurts, and the girl does most of the listening. The movie creates this slow walking mood that gradually turns into unease.

Then Sam takes charge.

Movie Review: The Six Triple Eight (2024)

On By Norbert HauptIn Movies, Two and a Half Stars, War1 Comment

During World War II in Europe, mail delivery from and to the troops in the war became spotty at first and eventually was completely halted. Entire aircraft hangers filled up with undelivered bags of mail with no hope in sight. This demoralized the soldiers, who did not get any mail from home, and also created horrific anxiety when parents and relatives at home didn’t hear from their sons and daughters overseas in the war.

The 6888th Battalion was an all-black Woman’s Army Corps, with 855 female soldiers, commanded by Major Adams. The military brass didn’t believe women, let alone black woman, could meaningfully serve in the war. The soldiers faced open racial discrimination and abuse not only from common soldiers, but all the way from the general corps. When the 6888th was mobilized to Europe to sort and deliver the mail, nobody believed it was possible and they were set up to fail.

They were given six months to do the job, and Major Adams agreed to get it done. Little did she know that there were 17 million pieces of mail involved,  entire mountains of letters.

The Six Triple Eight is a historical drama with appearances of a few major actors in minor roles, including Dean Norris, who we know as Hank in Breaking Bad, as General Halt, Susan Sarandon as Eleonor Roosevelt and Sam Waterston as President Roosevelt. Also notable is Oprah Winfrey as Mary McLeod Bethune, the famous civil rights activist and member of the inner circle of Roosevelt. Kerry Washington does a remarkable job playing Major Adams.

This movie is about racial discrimination and the challenges black woman faced in the mid 20th century. There are a lot of heroes in the story, and eventually the underdogs succeed against all odds. It’s a bit of a tear jerker and overall a quite satisfying movie.

Movie Review: Conclave (2024)

On By Norbert HauptIn Movies, Three Stars1 Comment

I went to see the movie Conclave not expecting to enjoy it much. Its subject matter does not personally appeal to me.  The word conclave comes from the Latin word clavis (key) and the prefix con, which means a place that can be locked up.

Based on ancient church custom, the cardinals that elect the next pope are sequestered in the Sistine Chapel until a pope is chosen. It’s a very political process. Back through the ages, they just had to be locked in, but in today’s world of communication devices, mobile phones, and “bugs” this is a little more challenging. As everything related to the old Catholic religion, the process is terribly ritualized.

After the previous pope dies unexpectedly, his good friend, Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) is assigned the task of running the conclave. What he didn’t expect  was that he’d discover a trail of secrets and intrigues that could upset the politics of the church.

There are some tremendous plot twists along the way that make the movie not only an educational experience, teaching about this obscure process in the church, but give it the feel of a thriller.

 

 

 

 

Movie Review: Carry On (2024)

On By Norbert HauptIn Movies, Two and a Half StarsLeave a comment

When we searched for a Christmas Movie on Christmas Eve, we found only the old and cheesy ones that we view every year, or the ones with bad or drunk Santas, and of course a lot of Christmas chick flicks. Then we stumbled upon Carry On.

The first five minutes were boring, and I thought I might not make it very far into this movie. Then it picked up, sort of like Die Hard did, when very bad guys started showing up.

It’s Christmas Eve at the LAX airport, one of the busiest travel days of the year. The TSA team is getting a pep talk from their boss Phil Sarkowski (Dean Norris, who we know as Agent Schrader in Breaking Bad). Everyone is assigned to their stations. The rookies, the ones with one bar on their epaulettes, get to do the grunt work and interact with the public, while the leads, the ones with two bars, man the scanners. Young agent Ethan Kopek (Taron Egerton) has not received any promotion in three years. His girlfriend, who also works at the airport, is pregnant. He knows he needs to get a promotion, and the lobbies Phil to let him work the scanner for the day. Phil gives in.

It just happens to be a day when a group of terrorists try to smuggle a bomb onto a plane. They were expecting another agent at the machine whom they were going to blackmail. When Ethan shows up, things get complicated quickly, both for the terrorists as well as the TSA. The action escalates quickly, and soon I found myself riveted. The entire plot line is reminiscent of Die Hard, when a single hapless hero is forced to take on a band of ruthless terrorists.

Carry On is full of action and suspense, but there are also some very serious plot holes. When they come around they are obvious and you just have to look the other way. At the end, I was surprised how much I enjoyed watching this movie. I am not sure how realistic the TSA action was represented, but I am sure I will never see the TSA guys at the airport quite the same way.

Movie Review: A Complete Unknown

On By Norbert HauptIn Cool People, Four Stars, Movies, MusicLeave a comment

When Bob Dylan arrived in New York City in 1961 he was 19 years old and a complete unknown.

That’s the start of the movie A Complete Unknown. I was too young then, not even five years old, so I didn’t witness that epoch of music. I didn’t really get into Bob Dylan music until I was about 14, around 1970. But ever since then, I would call Dylan my favorite musician, and I do it to this day. Many years ago I painted a Dylan portrait, as I liked to do with some of the iconic artists I admired (Beethoven, Henry Miller, Nietzsche). Dylan belonged in that collection.

Over the years, I accumulated pretty much all of Dylan’s vinyl records, and  lost them in later years during one of my moves.

When we entered the Regal movie theater on the afternoon on Christmas day, opening day for A Complete Unknown, all seats were full, and the average age of the moviegoers was probably around 75. We were on the younger side. And there it was quite obvious: Dylan had a momentous impact on not only the music of his generation, and many other musicians that followed him, but also on the emotional lives of his followers. When you search this blog for “Bob Dylan” you get dozens of entries returned, referring to movie and book reviews, and many other references to Dylan, and how he influenced my critical thinking, my artistic endeavors, and how his style affected my own poetry writing. I have to admit that I am not much of a musician; the only instrument I ever used was a harmonica – and fittingly, the first song I ever learned on the harmonica as a 16-year-old was Blowing in the Wind.

A Complete Unknown follows Dylan’s early career through his initial quest toward electric music during the iconic performance at the Newport folk music festival of 1965.

Timothée Chalamet plays Bob Dylan, and he does an amazing job. During the movie, he has to play and sing 13 Dylan songs. He practiced for over five years preparing for this so he could sing and play his own guitar as well as the harmonica. Dylan’s style on the harmonica is unique and unpredictable, and even that Chalamet mastered, along with the voice and the guitar. Noteworthy is also that Monica Barbaro, who played Joan Baez, also did her own singing and brought a convincing performance imitating the iconic singer’s unique voice.

How do you cram four extraordinary and foundational years of an iconic artist into a two hour movie without shaving off many details, like the massive influence of the Beatles on American music during the same period, and how that affected Dylan? You have to pick your battles and focus on the most poignant episodes and illustrative events. Those of us who are really interested in Dylan, the artist, have read numerous biographies for all the detail we need.

A Complete Unknown is just one more adventure to have when experiencing Dylan, the icon, and for me, this made a 4-star movie.

 

 

Movie Review: Wicked (2024)

On By Norbert HauptIn Movies, Zero Stars2 Comments

My wife, son and I decided to go to the movies on Thanksgiving Saturday afternoon. I just got back a week ago from New York City, and I remembered that Wicked was advertised everywhere, on huge billboards on Times Square, in my hotel, and at random places around the city. We had also heard that it got high ratings and praises. How could we go wrong?

We went very wrong. Within five minutes I noticed that I had lost interest in the movie, and there were two hours and 35 minutes more to go! Pretty soon I found myself nodding off. I stuck with it because I wanted to be there for my family. By the time an hour had gone by, all three of us were looking at each other. We had noticed some people in front of us leaving earlier. We ended up leaving just a little over an hour into the movie. It turns out that all  three of us had trouble staying awake. We thought the singing was bad and cringy. There was no story. We kept thinking that it would get better, but it just never did.

Walking out of the movie was a relief. The post-movie conversation over a pizza  and beer was all about the utter disbelief that we had just spent over $19 times three for this film. It was an outright painful experience.

I can’t remember the last time I had actually walked out of a movie theater. This was therefore memorable. I can’t give anything better than zero stars.

Do not go.