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Reviews
Lucky Hank (2023)
Smart and smarting
A university-set character(s) study, with the title character in the throes of several crises.
Bob Odenkirk is, as always, solid and funny. I imagine he must have been caught by the source material (the novel "Straight Man" by Richard Russo) to follow Better Call Saul with this very different piece. From the resulting series I can see why he liked it: angular and funny characters, spiky dialogue, and insight into how people deal with the mundane, the ridiculous, and the profound. And, since they're university types, the words are important to them, and to us.
When, late in the series, Hank confronts the father who abandoned him it was nearly perfect for such an impossible exchange.
Kudos to all associated with this.
Messiah at the Foundling Hospital (2014)
Informative and Entertaining
An excellent little (1 hour) documentary about the origins of Handel's Messiah and The Foundling Hospital in London.
It has to pack quite a bit in, with musical performance, the years-long effort by Thomas Coram to found the Foundling, Handel's late career woes, and social history of mid-18th century London and the early years of the Foundling Hospital.
Yes, there are some (non-musical) recreations but they are generally played with informational voice-over and not just mime.
A wonderful aspect of this is the sterling performances of bits of Messiah by the Gabrieli Consort and Players (as always with period instruments, but this time in period dress, too) under Paul McCreesh dressed as Handel. It includes fine singers Lucy Crowe, Andrew Staples, Ashley Riches and the spectacular countertenor Iestyn Davies, recorded in period style in St Paul's Church in Deptford, London.
I knew a lot of this story of how Messiah helped fund The Foundling Hospital, but I learned a lot and got so see some wonderful performance, too. Recommended.
The Oratorio (2020)
Who knew?
Who knew that a freed Haitian slave was a prime benefactor of Old St. Patrick's Cathedral in NYC? That the librettist of three of Mozart's most beloved operas ended up a greengrocer and the first professor of Italian Language at Columbia University?
This documentary was made, it appears, as an introductory piece for PBS's airing of a recreation of the first New York concert of Italian-style "operatic" singing in 1826: an oratorio assembled by Lorenzo da Ponte (Mozart's librettist).
Old St. Patrick's (on Mulberry St.) is Martin Scorsese's childhood church, and Scorsese interviews (and clips from his films featuring the church) are scattered throughout, with information about the neighborhood and the Church's importance to the texture of his Little Italy. Jim Gaffigan's family still worships there, and he and his wife have some brief interview clips that talk about the current congregation.
But much of the documentary is information about Da Ponte's remarkable life, Pierre Toussaint (the Haitian ex-slave mentioned earlier), the history of Old St. Pat's itself.
This is not a slick eye-candy documentary but it's packed full of fascinating information and left me shaking my head in amazement several times.
If you've ever walked by the walled yard of Old St. Pat's and wondered how it got that way, this explains it -- again with an important bit of NYC history.
A good way to spend an hour.
Heavenly Creatures (1994)
A complex, textured film
Heavenly Creatures is a wonderfully textured work. It attempts to make the lives of these two troubled girls come alive, and it succeeds -- through practically everything cinema can offer: wonderful screenplay and dialogue, great use of sound and music, 3-d animation, precise and moving acting, and more.
Some have said it's a violent film, but there is only one scene of true violence -- at the very end. The rest of the movie attempts to get us to inhabit the world that lead to that act. It manages to be moving and beautiful along the way ... until we are faced with the horrific consequences.
I've never read The Hobbitt or other Tolkien books (and have an aversion to that fantasy stuff), but the fact that Peter Jackson, who made this movie, is making the Lord of the Rings series makes me think they may actually be worth watching. (Written in Jan 2001, long before the first of these LOTR films are completed.)