Somehow I have been
losing track of writing about movies. We saw two in the past few weeks.
“Sully” is one of
those movies I might have been best not seeing. From my perspective, about the
last thing in the world I want to think about is an event like this one. What
happens to someone on full-time supplemental oxygen when a plane goes down in
the Hudson River? There seem to have been one or two folks on that flight who
needed significant help during the evacuation. But when I fly, not only do I
need help getting around but I have to schlepp along a rather heavy portable
oxygen concentrator, and I am just not sure what would have happened to that. I
imagine I would have been forced to ditch it. That would have left me with rather
little resource to move around, jump down the slide, and wait for the rescue in
the cold with the water just at the edge of the wing of the airplane.
That is not to say
that I have actually shunned flying. I have flown with supplemental oxygen many
times and hope to continue to do so. I just choose not to spend too much time
thinking about the potential risks, which probably makes me no different than
anyone else who boards an airplane or even an automobile.
But if you can get
past seeing a plane disabled in mid-air as something that might happen to you,
and watch it more as an amazing event that happened to one hundred and
fifty-five other people, many of whom truly rose to the occasion and helped
ensure that all of them survived, it was really a very good film. The film
presented a sort of back-story that suggested that Captain Chesley Sullenberger
had not quite dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s when he made the decision to
land the plane in the river. But from what I have been able to read, although
such concerns may have been expressed, they were never substantiated; to the
contrary, it seems fairly clear that he in fact saved all those lives. Whew.
“Little Men” is a
very touching film about two young boys from very different backgrounds who
form a close friendship. Jake has grown up in Manhattan with his mother, a
psychotherapist, and his father, an actor for whom roles no longer seem to be
coming. The downturn in fortune as well as the death of Jakes grandfather forces
them to move from their nice Manhattan apartment to a smaller two-family home
in Brooklyn; the other half is rented to a woman who lives with her son, Tony,
and runs a dress shop. Despite their rather different backgrounds, Tony and
Jake become good friends.
What starts out as a
reasonably amicable relationship begins to sour as Jake’s parents try to
increase the rent on the apartment. While it is never completely clear it seems
that Tony’s mother was involved in a long-term affair with Jake’s grandfather.
Whatever the case, all of this is a strain on the relationship between Tony and
Jake. A.O. Scott wrote
There is also a
protest against the banal imperatives of maturity, and above all against the
ways that adults ignore and discount the emotional lives of the young. Kathy,
Brian and Leonor would do anything for their sons except take their
relationship seriously, and the possibility that something as precious and real
as friendship could be sacrificed because of money registers as a profound
insult.
All and all it is a
very touching story and a nicely done film.
Welcome, autumn!
Love,
Rebecca
No comments:
Post a Comment