The Greatest Night in Pop 

Directed by Bao Nguyen
Released on Netflix Jan 19, 2024

Watch Time: 2 hrs, 37 min

The Greatest Night in Pop is a documentary about the making of “We Are the World” – a behind-the-scenes look at what happened when, in 1985, 40 of pop music’s biggest stars got together to record the song to raise money for starving children in Africa and the US. (It raised more than $80 million, $214 million in today’s dollars.)

What I Liked About It 

The extraordinary talent, tenacity, and cooperation that was needed to record the song in a single night. They started on it after a music awards show in LA that had ended at about midnight, and the challenges were enormous, not the least of which were the competitive egos of the performers.

The star of the documentary turns out to be Lionel Richie, who, with the initial assistance of Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones, got so many celebrities to participate, and then kept everyone working together for more than seven grueling hours of production, until after seven in the morning.

Critical Reception 

* “Director Bao Nguyen is wryly bemused by the now historic celebrity assemblage and thankfully intrigued by the logistical and creative demands of creating an anthem.” (The Age/Australia)

* “The Greatest Night in Pop is one of those wonderfully wish fulfilling, ‘man I wish I could’ve been a fly on the wall…’ documentaries.” (Baltimore Magazine)

* “It’s almost like they knew there’d be a film eventually made of this. They have an incredible amount of footage.” (NPR/Los Angeles)

You can watch the trailer here.

Yesterday

Directed by Danny Boyle
Starring Himesh Patel, Lily James, Ed Sheeran, and Kate McKinnon
Initially released Sept. 24, 1919

Watch Time: 2 hrs

Yesterday is not a great movie in any sense, but it does not pretend to be. It’s essentially a romantic comedy tied to a fun conceit: A young man wakes up from an accident in a world that is almost exactly as it was before the accident… but certain things are different. For example, there is no such thing as Coca Cola. Just Pepsi. And, to his astonishment, nobody has ever heard of The Beatles… or any of their music. Which means all of their songs are his to sing… and take credit for.

What I Liked About It 

* As a lifetime Beatles fan, I loved the conceit. Imagine what fun it would be to be the “creator” of some of the world’s greatest contemporary music and lyrics.

* I also liked the idea of casting of Himesh Patel in the lead role of Jack Malik, a struggling Indian-English musician and songwriter. His ethnicity is surprising. It made everything about the plot and interactions just a little bit more interesting. (And he does a great job of being Beatle-like adorable.)

* A quirky contribution to the film was Ed Sheeran, who plays the role of Ed Sheeran, whose career is in full swing until it is interrupted by this upstart writing and singing these amazing songs.

* The romance between Jack and Ellie, his pal and road manager, was workable, but thin. Without the conceit of Jack reinventing The Beatles, the relationship would not have been enough to carry the film. Nonetheless, and to her credit, Lily James does an admirable job playing the boyishly pretty and ditzy Ellie – and providing a good counterbalance for Jack’s innocent earnestness.

Interesting 

Yesterday began as a screenplay by the American writer Jack Barth. Barth had been struggling to sell screenplays for decades. He conceived the story when it occurred to him that if Star Wars had not been created and he came up with the idea, he would not be able to sell it. In Barth’s script (which he called a “meditation on professional disappointment”), Jack did not find success with The Beatles’ songs.

Critical Reception 

* “Director Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) and screenwriter Richard Curtis (Love Actually) have divergent cinematic sensibilities, but they meld well enough in this bittersweet, slightly wacky musical fantasy rom-com.” (Chicago Reader)

* “It’s a chocolate egg of a film: sweet and satisfying enough to distract you from the fact it’s completely hollow inside.” (Independent/UK)

* “Give Yesterday credit for taking a sideways approach to honoring The Beatles. But this Boomer fantasy only pretends to dive into a true appreciation of what made the group a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon.” (Detroit News)

If you are a Beatles fan and in the mood for some light and uplifting entertainment, you’ll like Yesterday. If you are not a Beatles fan and are looking for a Class A romantic comedy like When Harry Met Sally, you’ll be disappointed.

You can watch the trailer here.

Climate the Movie: The Cold Truth 

A documentary written and directed by Martin Durkin
Released March 23, 2023

Watch Time: 1 hr, 20 min

In addition to providing an impressive fact-based counter-argument to the dominant narrative about this high profile and hotly debated subject, Climate the Movie takes a look behind the politics and the science to reveal a vast and interwoven complex of businesses and special interest groups that together comprise a trillion-dollar industry.

What I Liked About It 

It felt serious and sober – as close to trustworthy as an argument can sound about such a politicized issue.

By providing a longer-term perspective on climate change, the film demonstrates, quite convincingly, that, far from facing extinction from global warming, the globe is very gradually recovering from a multimillion-year cold spell. And while cold spells like this typically mean less life and less growth, warming is generally a good thing in terms of expanding the number of plants and animals on Earth.

There are also lots of interesting little nuggets of information that explain why the basic facts about climate change are in dispute.

The people behind Climate the Movie are asking viewers to share it… and are making it very easy to do. You can watch the entire thing here.

Cuomo and Carlson on Media Ethics, Mistakes, and Moving Forward 

This gives me hope for people with diverse views having civilized conversations.

Munich, The Edge of War 

Directed by Christian Schwochow
Based on the book Munich, by Robert Harris
Starring George MacKay, Jannis Niewöhner, Jeremy Irons, and Sandra Hüller
Released in 2021
Currently streaming on Netflix 

Watch Time: 2 hrs, 11 min

Someone had recommended it to K. I liked the title. We sat in the den, dishes of spaghetti and glasses of a red blend by Prisoner, a brand I can recommend, and hit the Play button.

Munich: The Edge of War is a spy thriller. And a good one, I thought. But it is also an account of England’s diplomatic relationship with Hitler in the years just before WWII.

The main characters are fictionalized, but the story is largely factual. It is true that Chamberlain did take the view that by giving some concessions to Hitler, he could keep England out of the war. It is also true that Chamberlain went to Munich and signed an agreement that England would do nothing against Germany, so long as Hitler promised to cease his planned invasion of Czechoslovakia, which Hitler agreed to and then reneged on.

What I Liked About It 

The plot is tight. The mood is tense. It takes place in 1932, when we meet the main characters, Hugh Legat and his German friends Paul von Hartman and Paul’s girlfriend Lena, at a party celebrating their graduation from Oxford University.

It jumps from there to 1938. Legat is working as the private secretary of Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister. Germany has invaded Poland and it’s clear to many that he aims to conquer all of Europe. But Chamberlain is part of a considerable contingency of political leaders and Englishmen that believe Britain can – and maybe should – avoid getting into a war with Germany.

Hitler convinces Chamberlain to come to a meeting in Munich to work out a deal (The Munich Agreement) whereby England will allow Germany to seize control of Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia.

Meanwhile, his old friend Hartman, who was a Nazi supporter when the two were in university, is now working days as a translator in Berlin for the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs and nights plotting to overthrow Hitler, who, he thinks, will destroy the Germany that he loves.

What I Also Liked About It 

As regular readers know, I’ve been doing a lot of research on the Arab/Israeli conflict and the Israel/Hamas war. One thing I’ve learned that is indisputable is that the history of Palestine since the end of WWII is the history of Arab terrorists in Palestine attempting to commit genocide against Israel – and then, when Israel defended itself successfully, those same Arab and Palestinian leaders (some of whom had direct ties with Hitler during the war) asking England and the US to arrange peace between them so they could find a “two state” solution. And each time they achieved a cease fire, they immediately attacked Israel again.

It’s impossible to watch this movie without noticing the similarity with what has been going on since England engineered the famous Partition Agreement in 1947. It boils down to the question of whether it is possible to believe that someone or some group of people committed to genocide can be trusted. Hitler proved to Chamberlain and the rest of the world that he could not be trusted. It makes me wonder why so many US presidents, and now so many Americans, believe that the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah can be trusted today.

Critical Reception 

As I said above, I thought this was a very good movie – easily as good as all the movies that were nominated for this year’s Academy Award. So I was surprised to discover that the critical reception of Munich: The Edge of War was mixed, at best. A few examples:

* “A plodding bureaucratic procedural that features many, many characters strategizing in various spaces with furrowed brows and clenched jaws, mostly in relentless medium close-up.” (New York Times)

* “Once various ducks have been gotten in a narrative row and the conference starts, the movie becomes pretty good.” (Boston Globe)

* “A mixture of well-researched historical fact and pure fiction, Munich: The Edge of War is a smart and entertaining thriller that suffers from just one thing: We all know how it ends.” (Washington Post)

You can watch the trailer here.

All of the Academy Award Nominated Films

This may be the first time I’ve ever done this. Over the past several months, I watched all 10 of the movies that were nominated for the Best Picture Oscar.

It may also be the first time I’ve felt that all of the nominated films deserved to be nominated.

In case you haven’t seen some or all of them and you’re interested in my two cents, here they are in order of my preferences, along with brief notes on each.

1. The Zone of Interest 

A distinctly different Holocaust film, with a clever perspective and great performances.

2. Oppenheimer 

It aimed to be a big and important film, and it met its ambitions completely.

3. Poor Things 

Wild, crazy, inventive, and exuberant, brilliantly shot and with a great performance by Emma Stone.

4. American Fiction 

A simple, straightforward drama about something that never should have happened in American book publishing. Jeffrey Wright’s performance was perfect. He carried the film.

5. Past Lives 

I have a prejudice towards Asian dramas and particularly Korean romantic movies. Past Lives delivered everything you would want from this genre: a good, believable story, emotionally moving visuals and music, and two adorable leads.

6. Killers of the Flower Moon 

The film didn’t quite measure up to the book (which I read for my book club), but it was nonetheless very good, with many good performances and lots of issues to think about later.

7. Anatomy of a Fall 

There are several things about this film that could have and did disappoint many critics, including the unsatisfactory denouement. But the photography, the music, the scenery, and the acting kept me fascinated all the way through.

8. The Holdovers 

You’ve seen this story a dozen times, and yet you won’t be bored or disappointed seeing done again with a great cast and good performances by all.

9. Maestro 

I’ve always been interested in Leonard Bernstein. Not just because of the music he made, but also because of the many rumors I’d read about his personal life. I wouldn’t call Maestro a great film, but it was good enough to earn the nomination.

10. Barbie 

I didn’t know what to expect, but I was prepared to be disappointed. I wasn’t. I was happily entertained and not bothered by the various woke “messages” because the film never took itself very seriously.

Andrew Tate’s New “Fireblood” Commercial

Andrew Tate 

Andrew Tate is loathed by lefties, because he has a very old-fashioned view of the proper roles for men and women in the world today.

The mainstream press has been hard on him, even circulating a false story that he had a brothel going in Romania. I see him as a very successful, but also brash, tough-guy influencer whose ideas are closer to Jordan Peterson’s than Attila the Hun’s. If you check him out on YouTube, debating TV hosts and the like, you’ll see what I mean.

I found out about him from BG, the 16-year-old son of TG, an old friend. Within six months last year, BG transformed himself from an overweight game-binging sloth to a lean, mean learning machine. He devotes himself to training and studying, and he’s grown more respectful and courteous, to boot. I attribute this to the macho teachings of Andrew Tate.

That one transition was so remarkable, and so improbable, that I became a Tate fan. But there has always been one thing that bothered me about him: His style of debate, although reasoned and rational, is very aggressive. When he’s in a heated debate, knowing he was a champion kickboxer, I find myself worrying that, at any moment, he’s going charge his opponents and pummel them into submission.

I want to say to him: “Relax. You are smart. You don’t have to be so dominant. Take yourself a little less seriously. Make a self-effacing joke once in a while.”

I never had the opportunity to coach him, but he seems to have gotten the idea with this pseudo commercial about a supplement he is supposedly selling called Fireblood. I thought it was funny. Tell me what you think.

Click here.

How the Michelin Tire Company Became Synonymous with Fine Dining 

I never associated the Michelin restaurant rating system with the Michelin tire company, but they are connected.

Watch the fascinating story of how the “star” system originated here.

The Tourist

Directed by Chris Sweeney
Starring Jamie Dornan and Danielle McDonald
Series 1 (6 episodes) premiered Jan. 1, 2022 on BBC One; currently on Netflix
Series 2 (6 episodes) launches Feb. 29 on Netflix

Watch Time: 1 hr. per episode

Plot: An Irish tourist wakes up with amnesia in a small-town Australian hospital and must use the few clues he has to discover his identity before his past catches up with him.

What I Like About It 

1. It’s a gripping and fast-moving series that satisfies its genre as a dramatic thriller. And it provides something extra for fans of cinema in that the script is inspired by the intelligent zaniness of the Coen brothers (but a bit darker) and the direction is reminiscent in many ways of David Lynch (but a tad more sober). The combination is a fascinating, freaky, and often funny series that will give you enjoyment on several planes and at multiple levels.

2. The lead actors, Jamie Dornan and Danielle McDonald, are both very good and perfectly selected for their roles.

3. And speaking McDonald… Her character reminds me of Frances McDormand’s in the Coen brothers’ Fargo. In McDonald’s case, she is an overweight, underconfident, but intuitive low-level policewoman who, against the wishes of her superiors, inserts herself into the case and becomes not just a principal character but a deserving leading lady.

Critical Reception 

* “This funny, suspenseful six-part thriller doesn’t merely keep us guessing. It keeps its amnesiac hero guessing, too.” (NPR)

* “Dornan finds a quirky, unsettled way to play a man who doesn’t know who he is without resorting to the cliché of the lost soul.” (Roger Ebert.com)

* “A pulse-pounding series packed with humor and philosophical questions.” (The Guardian)

You can watch the trailer here.

Friday Night Blind 

A short (just over 13 minutes) documentary that follows the minor struggles and triumphs of a trio of visually impaired friends who meet once a week to go bowling.

Watch the whole thing here.

“This Muslim Israeli Woman Is the Hope of the Middle East” 

From Bari Weiss, writing in The Free Press…

“Lucy Aharish is one of the most prominent television broadcasters in Israel. But that’s not the thing that makes her exceptional. The thing that makes Lucy stand out is that she is the first Arab Muslim news presenter on mainstream, Hebrew-language Israeli television.

“I’ve done many interviews that have stayed with me. This might be the most moving of all.”

Watch Weiss’s interview with Aharish here.

1. Society of the Snow 

Directed and co-written by J.A. Bayona
Released Sept. 9, 2023 (Venice Int’l Film Festival)
Streaming on Netflix Jan. 4, 2024

Watch Time: 144 min.

In 1972, a Uruguayan plane, chartered to transport a rugby team to Santiago, Chile, crashes into a glacier in the heart of the Andes. Of the 45 passengers on board, only 16 manage to survive. The film, an adaptation of the book by the same name, documents the accounts of all 16 survivors.

What I Liked About It 

The story was familiar to me. It was sensationalized because those that survived for 72 days until they were rescued (until they rescued themselves) had resorted to cannibalism to stay alive, and the direction of the film emphasized the horror of it all.

I also very much admired the photography, the sound effects, and the music. All artfully done. Also that the dialog was entirely in Uruguayan Spanish.

What I Didn’t Like 

It left me emotionally exhausted and depressed. It took me 24 hours to get back into a good frame of mind.

Critical Reception 

Society of the Snow received mostly favorable reviews. It is an Oscar nominee for Best International Feature Film of 2023.

* “The material is fundamentally gripping, and parts of it are tough to resist…. But Society of the Snow is a perverse movie to watch the way most people will see it – on Netflix, in the comfort of their homes, with a refrigerator nearby.” (Ben Kenigsberg, The New York Times)

* “As a film that attempts to honor its victims while simultaneously offering graphic details, it both improves upon previous iterations of the material and exposes the limits of the story itself.” (Shirley Li, The Atlantic)

* “A fervent film, heartfelt and shot with passion and flair.” (Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian)

You can watch the trailer here.

2. A World Within a World: The Bay Houses of Long Island 

Produced and directed by Barbara J Weber and Greg Blank 
Originally aired on PBS Oct. 15, 2020
Currently streaming on Amazon 

Watch Time: 1 hr.

A recommendation from KG: A documentary about the history and traditions of the bay houses on the South Shore of Long Island, not far from where I grew up.

Bay houses are small shacks that have stood on Long Island’s South Shore marshlands since the 1700s. Of 40 of these homes, 14 miraculously withstood Hurricane Sandy – unofficially referred to as Superstorm Sandy – in 2012. A World Within a World explores the lives and experiences of bay house owners in the Town of Hempstead from both a historical and a contemporary perspective, capturing their perseverance and endurance.

You can watch the trailer here.