From the Netflix Movie Vault

Shirley MacLaine, Meryl Streep, Postcards from the EdgeThese two interesting movies couldn’t be more different, though both are based on best-selling books and turn on the unlikely matter of insurance. The more fun was Postcards from the Edge (1990), which, through a horrible coincidence, arrived just after Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds died. Postcards is based very loosely on Fisher’s semi-autobiographical novel, and the obvious question is whether Reynolds was “really like that.”  Fisher said not and, suffice it to say, when Reynolds wanted to play the mother in the movie, director Mike Nichols told her she wasn’t right for it. (Nice Vanity Fair story here about the real mother-daughter relationship.)

I was apprehensive about sitting through another Hollywood druggie movie, even one billed as a comedy-drama (trailer), but in the first moments Meryl Streep walks into the frame, and I knew I’d be in good hands. Not only her performance as Suzanne Vale (Fisher), but Shirley MacLaine’s as Suzanne’s wine-drinking, self-absorbed, hyper-critical mother make the film worth seeing. Small roles for Annette Bening, Richard Dreyfuss, Gene Hackman, and Dennis Quaid are fun too. The strength of the performances means the movie holds up, nearly 30 years after it was made.

After a disastrous overdose, a stint in rehab helps Suzanne get her act together, but the only way anyone will give her another role is if she lives “supervised”—that is, with Mom. Otherwise, the studio will never be able get insurance for her. Returning to Mom ain’t easy. While you can see she totally adores her mother, she fears being “sucked into her massive orbit,” as Hunter Harris said in Vulture. Despite Suzanne’s shaky grip on herself, Streep plays it so you can’t help rooting for her, and you know she’ll come out all right.

Rotten Tomatoes critics rating: 90%; audiences 66%. (Interesting split there.)

In-The-Heart-Of-The-SeaBy contrast, 2015’s In the Heart of the Sea (trailer) is pretty darn depressing, if less emotionally engaging. It’s a seafaring adventure film about the 1819, real-life voyage of the Essex, a whaler out of Nantucket. While hunting whales in the South Pacific, the hunters enrage an enormous white sperm whale—virtually as long as the Essex itself—that takes its revenge on the ship, its whaleboats, and the crew. The Essex sinks, and the three remaining whaleboats struggle toward the coast of South America. Eventually, only eight crewmen make it back to Nantucket. Sound familiar?

The framing device of the story is that young author Herman Melville has an all-night interview with Thomas Nickerson, the Essex’s cabin boy and last surviving crew member. For decades, he has been keeping the secret of what actually occurred on the voyage and the desperate return trip. The ship owners, rather than have the world think whaling is too dangerous to invest in or insure (!) maintain the ship was lost when it ran aground.

But Melville is following rumors there’s more to the story, and by the time he leaves Nickerson’s company is determined to write what becomes The Great American Novel, Moby Dick (1851). In real life, both Nickerson and the first mate, Owen Chase, published accounts of the ill-fated trip, and these did inspire Melville’s book.

The film has exciting special effects—storms at sea, overhead views of the ship and the whales. Whale-killing is an unsavory business, and viewers can only be glad smellovision has not been invented. Good performances from Ben Whishaw as Melville and Brendan Gleeson as the aging sailor. Unfortunately, I didn’t find the Essex’s captain (Benjamin Walker) and first mate (Chris Hemsworth) very compelling, and I don’t know whether that was because of wooden performances or a bad script. Director Ron Howard clearly aspired for more here. As a fan of seagoing adventures, I wish he’d achieved it.

Rotten Tomatoes critics rating: 42%; audiences 53%.

Do I Need Your Love, Babe?

eight-days-a-week, Beatles, Ron HowardThe new Ron Howard hit documentary about the Beatles, Eight Days a Week – The Touring Years (trailer), is a love letter to the musical group and the exuberance of youth. Using sometimes grainy footage of early performances up through the final live performance at Candlestick Park (and the final-final live performance for a few people, including unsuspecting passers-by, from the roof of their recording studio), the Beatles as a phenomenon still amaze. They not only had a brutal tour schedule in this period, 1962-1966, they transformed the music industry and changed the culture through their truly overwhelming and unprecedented worldwide popularity.

That popularity led to nearly riotous conditions for their concerts and forced promoters into using stadium venues for the first time. They just couldn’t risk the hordes of disappointed fans in a conventional, smaller-capacity concert hall. It also forced the band away from stage performances, where they made their money, and into the studio where they could actually hear themselves think. Right. They were musicians.

For a long time and during this intense period, they were also very good friends and colleagues. The members were strengthened by their closeness, always having each other to rely on. In an archived interview, George says something like, “I always felt sorry for Elvis. He didn’t have that. It was just him.” If a decision had to be made, they all made it, including the decision not to play in segregated venues in the United States, a provision included in their contracts.

It was 52 years ago that the Beatles’ first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, an event watched by nearly 40 percent of Americans. They came on the scene during a tumultuous time here, amidst civil rights and Vietnam War protests, and only a few months after the assassination of President Kennedy. And while the boys appear sweet and lively in these old clips, there’s that clap of nostalgic pain, too—knowing what happened later and knowing what was lost, including youth itself.

They were So Young when crushing fame and amazing music happened to, around, and within them. That they managed themselves with such grace is astonishing. Ron Howard and producer Giles Martin (son of Beatles’ recording producer George Martin) have done a great job in creating a film to introduce a new generation of fans to the group. Recent interviews with Paul (looks old!) and Ringo (looks great!) bring out new information and insights, and a worldwide call for footage from people who took their film cameras to the concerts brought lots of new visuals with a startling sense of unstaged immediacy.

And there’s lots of head-filling, memory-sparking music too.

Rotten Tomatoes critics rating: 95%; audiences 86%. In theaters and streaming on Hulu.“Yeah, yeah, yeah!”