Category Archives: Movies 2019

https://youtu.be/Zrq1wNwT6rw

I had no real intention of getting swept up in the 50th anniversary until I caught the final part of SBS’ three part documentary Chasing the Moon (available on SBSOnDemand). Then, reading the magazine part of the Age a week late, as is my wont, I read Stephanie Bunbury’s review of Apollo 11. “Let’s go see this!” I said. And so we did.

This documentary covers the nine days of the lunar launch, using only contemporary sources. There are no talking heads, and no analysis. The footage comprises material sourced from other countries (because NASA had taped over its own records of the moon landings) and a huge unprocessed collection of large-format 70 millimetre film that had been sitting in cold storage.  There was also a huge cache of 11,000 hours of audio recordings taken from the headsets of mission personnel.

It starts with excerpts of Kennedy’s 1962 promise to put a man on the moon, and it shows people gathering with their campervans and sunglasses to watch the launch. Once Saturn is launched, the action moves to inside the control room and the lunar module. There is no explanation – you just watch it happen, and even though we all know how it ended, I found myself holding my breath as the various stages unfolded.

It is a visual experience, and having seen it, I decided to listen to BBC’s 13 Minutes to the Moon, which is a completely aural experience. I have two regrets: first, I think I would have enjoyed the movie even more had I listened to the podcasts first, and second I wish I had seen it at IMAX.

Usually I rail and rant when a film ostensibly ‘based on a true story’ makes changes, but I didn’t feel this way with this film. ‘Red Joan’ is based on the true story of Melita Norwood, who used her position as secretary at the innocuous-sounding Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association to pass nuclear secrets to Russia. The film has shifted the action to Cambridge University, and made ‘Joan’ a brilliant student, rather than a secretary. But in this case, I didn’t mind. It’s usually the most dramatic scene of the film that prompts the most egregious truestory-to-film changes, and in this case it’s the scene of an elderly woman giving a press conference in her garden. There was a fidelity both to this event and the impetus behind it, so if the producers decided to go for Cambridge scenery and a bit of a feminist nudge, that’s okay with me.  Judy Dench doesn’t appear much in the film, which is a series of present day/ flashback sequences, and really the film belongs more to Sophie Cookson, who plays the young Joan. The two actresses are well cast because it didn’t strain credulity to believe that they were playing the same character.

My rating: 4 stars.

https://youtu.be/gVQpbp54ljA

This movie is based on the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks that spanned twelve locations over a period of four days. The film concentrates on the attack on the Taj Mahal Hotel, a dominating landmark in Mumbai that evokes British imperialism and the simultaneous presence of  obscene wealth and obscene poverty. The film reminded me of the disaster movies of the 1970s (Towering Inferno, or The Poseidon Adventure) where, as a viewer, you become invested in a small number of people amidst the anonymous and largely ignored carnage of other people as background. Perhaps we’ve grown up a bit, because not everybody here makes it out alive.

I saw this film at a Crybaby Session at a local cinema. I wondered if the gunshots and explosions would transform the snuffling little bundles into real crybabies, but the noise wasn’t too overpowering (perhaps they had it turned down?). There was a lot of violence here -rather too much perhaps as Wikipedia estimates the number of deaths at the Taj Mahal at 31 and I’m sure that the film depicted many more deaths than that.

My daughter-in-law and I had high tea at the Taj Mahal eight years later (see my travel blog entries here and here). Other than the memorial outside the hotel, there was no sign of the damage and carnage. It didn’t occur to us at the time, and it was sobering to realize, that many of the staff working there had experienced the terror attack.

Set in 1962, a world-class pianist engages the services of Tony Lip to drive him on his tour of the Southern states. The title refers to the ‘The Negro Motorist Green Book’, a guide to where Afro-Americans could safely fill up with petrol, get a meal, or stay the night.  In picking up on themes of racism, homosexual stigma and prejudice, it’s a worthy movie, but not Best Picture surely. Too  sugar-coated and feel-good.

My rating: 4 stars