{"id":6423,"date":"2017-03-02T08:09:17","date_gmt":"2017-03-02T13:09:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6423"},"modified":"2017-03-23T09:22:13","modified_gmt":"2017-03-23T13:22:13","slug":"from-the-netflix-movie-vault","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6423","title":{"rendered":"From the Netflix Movie Vault"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ShirleyThese two interesting movies couldn\u2019t 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 <\/em>(1990), which, through a horrible coincidence, arrived just after Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds died. Postcards<\/em> is based very loosely on Fisher\u2019s semi-autobiographical novel, and the obvious question is whether Reynolds was \u201creally like that.\u201d \u00a0Fisher said not and, suffice it to say, when Reynolds wanted to play the mother in the movie, director Mike Nichols told her she wasn\u2019t right for it. (Nice Vanity Fair<\/em><\/a> story here about the real mother-daughter relationship.)<\/p>\n

I was apprehensive about sitting through another Hollywood druggie movie, even one billed as a comedy-drama (trailer<\/a>), but in the first moments Meryl Streep walks into the frame, and I knew I\u2019d be in good hands. Not only her performance as Suzanne Vale (Fisher), but Shirley MacLaine\u2019s as Suzanne\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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 \u201csupervised\u201d\u2014that is, with Mom. Otherwise, the studio will never be able get insurance for her. Returning to Mom ain\u2019t easy. While you can see she totally adores her mother, she fears being \u201csucked into her massive orbit,\u201d as Hunter Harris<\/a> said in Vulture<\/em>. Despite Suzanne\u2019s shaky grip on herself, Streep plays it so you can\u2019t help rooting for her, and you know she\u2019ll come out all right.<\/p>\n

Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> critics rating: 90%; audiences 66%. (Interesting split there.)<\/p>\n

\"In-The-Heart-Of-The-Sea\"By contrast, 2015\u2019s In the Heart of the Sea<\/em> (trailer<\/a>) is pretty darn depressing, if less emotionally engaging. It\u2019s a seafaring adventure film about the 1819, real-life voyage of the Essex<\/em>, a whaler out of Nantucket. While hunting whales in the South Pacific, the hunters enrage an enormous white sperm whale\u2014virtually as long as the Essex<\/em> itself\u2014that takes its revenge on the ship, its whaleboats, and the crew. The Essex<\/em> sinks, and the three remaining whaleboats struggle toward the coast of South America. Eventually, only eight crewmen make it back to Nantucket. Sound familiar?<\/p>\n

The framing device of the story is that young author Herman Melville has an all-night interview with Thomas Nickerson, the Essex<\/em>\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

But Melville is following rumors there\u2019s more to the story, and by the time he leaves Nickerson\u2019s company is determined to write what becomes The Great American Novel, Moby Dick <\/em>(1851). In real life, both Nickerson and the first mate, Owen Chase, published accounts of the ill-fated trip, and these did inspire Melville\u2019s book.<\/p>\n

The film has exciting special effects\u2014storms 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\u2019t find the Essex<\/em>\u2019s captain (Benjamin Walker) and first mate (Chris Hemsworth) very compelling, and I don\u2019t 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\u2019d achieved it.<\/p>\n

Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> critics rating: 42%; audiences 53%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

These two interesting movies couldn\u2019t 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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"From the Netflix Movie Vault - two films for different ICYMI tastes: A Hollywood family comedy-drama and a seafaring adventure","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[440,272,366,266,57,104],"tags":[868,869,866,218,871,410,870,416,616,867,872],"class_list":["post-6423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventure","category-comedy","category-drama","category-history","category-movies","category-the-morgue","tag-carrie-fisher","tag-debbie-reynolds","tag-herman-melville","tag-hollywood","tag-in-the-heart-of-the-sea","tag-meryl-streep","tag-postcards-from-the-edge","tag-real-life","tag-ron-howard","tag-shirley-maclaine","tag-whaling"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1FB","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6423"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6427,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6423\/revisions\/6427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}