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Get Low is an entertaining story about an old hermit Felix Bush, played by Robert Duvall, in the 30's who after 40 years comes out of his cabin in the woods and decides he wants a "funeral party" before he dies. At this party he will explain to all assembled why he went into hiding and will raffle off his house and 300 acres. Duvall is always good, Sissy Spacek is good as the long lost sister to the one woman Felix loved. Bill Murray plays the funeral home owner who is eager to accommodate Felix and Lucas Black plays the very ethical young man who is Murray's salesman.
The series The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire, etc. from Sweden (loosely based upon the books of the same name) is excellent. I rented the first one from Netflix and saw the 2nd in theatre in Reno. These films are subtitled.
You may have seen the previous film about Coco Chanel in her youth. This film (with a different actress) covers the affair she had with the married Russian composer Igor Stravinsky.
Stravinsky is struggling somewhat because his music is very avant garde for the time. Chanel is very wealthy and secretly supports his entire performance season, theatre, staff, dancers, orchestra...all. She has a beautiful country house (mansion) and invites him to move in with his family - wife and five kids. She commutes back and forth to Paris to her Chanel studios.
Restrepo is a documentary shot over the 18 months of the deployment of one company of US Army soldiers to a remote outpost in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan. The journalists stayed with the company filming them in all conditions. We see a really bad patrol when one of the soldiers is killed, we see them interacting with local elders and with Afghan Army troops, and we see them during what little recreation time they had, etc.
Winter's Tale is excellent and should be a best picture nominee and a best actor nominee for the young woman who plays the 17 year old lead. Story follows the young teenager who is the oldest of three children with a mentally disabled mother and a father being sought by the police for escaping bond for arrest for cooking Meth. She is the sole caregiver for the family. When she finds out that her father has signed over their home and acreage of old growth forest to the bondsman and has disappeared, she goes searching for him.
The Kids Are Alright is a great film, a serious comedy about a new type of American family. Lesbian couple has two kids, one 18 year old girl and a 15 year old boy. Both conceived from donated sperm from the same man. It all seems like a happy family though the physician Mom is somewhat controlling and the landscaper Mom is much more easy going and New Agey.
Cyrus is a very good indie film. It is a bit of a comedy but mostly serious.
It has been 7 years since John's divorce. He's depressed and hasn't had a girlfriend since. He is overly dependent upon his ex-wife who is about to remarry. He turns to her at all hours to lament his life and seek advice. This drives her patient but exasperated fiance nuts.
I saw the indie film Mother and Child today. It was very very good. It follows three sets of people dealing with adoption. One is a 37 year old very successful but emotionally distant and manipulative attorney who was put up for adoption immediately after her 14 year old mother gave birth to her. She never knew her birth mother and lost her adoptive parents before adulthood. She has had 4 jobs in ten years in prestigious law firms and is very ambitious.
I saw Solitary Man today starring Michael Douglas. He sure looks his age in this film and given the point of the film, is intended to.
