Once again, it's movies-of-the-year time. (My source for all the movies I see these days is Netflix.)
1. A Five Star Life. 2013, Italy. A woman has the job of checking out the ratings of luxury hotels. Nice job, fabulous hotels. Amusing.
2. Cairo Time. 2009, Canada. Patricia Clarkson and Alexander Siddig. Hypnotic, as the atmosphere of Cairo gradually enters both the heroine and the viewer. Fabulous Arabic music. It's called "a delicate love story."
3. The Light Between the Oceans. 2016, UK, US, Australia, New Zealand. With Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander (who became a couple after making this film). From the original book by M. L. Stedman. Setting: a lighthouse in far southwestern Australia where it is said the Great Southern Ocean and the Indian Ocean meet. The story line (set post World War I) is centered around the moral dilemma of wanting a specific dream to come true. Alicia Vikander overplays her part, to my mind. Beautiful photography, wonderful setting.
4. Sing Street. 2016, Ireland, UK, US. Set in 1980's Dublin, a young teen, infatuated with an older teen-age girl, starts a band so that she'll have a place to sing and, he hopes, find that she's fallen in love with him. He and his fellow band members then put their energies into being creative rather than destructive as some of their classmates are. This is a rather sweet rendering of one boy's life and the initiative he takes in creating a new life for himself (and his friends).
5. Snowden. 2016, US. Oliver Stone's "biographical political thriller." I found it well done.
6. Strangers in Good Company. 1990, Canadian Film Board. A busload of 8 older women become isolated in the back reaches of Canada when their bus breaks down and they are left with the need to hone their practical skills. All they have is a lonely possibly abandoned house by a lake. No road (they reached the house on foot), no vehicle, phone, or furniture except a few things stuffed in a barn. And no food other than what they can come up with. Apparently, much of the script was made up by them as they went along. But each woman manages to tell her life. The theme then is that no matter who, each woman has led an interesting life. And the setting provides a good vehicle for listening to others without distraction or other obligations as well as for ingenuity and for letting time, not activities, dictate. Very low key, very real, there's nothing phony or contrived.
7. The Eagle Huntress. 2016, UK, Mongolia, US. Documentary. An apple-cheeked girl of 13 wants to be the first female in 12 generations of her Kazakh Mongolian family to become an eagle huntress. So with the aid of her father, she sets out to compete in the annual eagle festival. Stark gorgeous photography of the Altai Mountains in the far west of Mongolia. A fine film.
8. The Kind Words. 2016, Israel. 3 Israeli siblings look for their father when they discover on the death of their mother that the man who raised them was not their biological father. An important surprise greets them toward the end of their search.
9. The Man Who Knew Infinity. 2016, UK. Dev Patel, Jeremy Irons. A biopic about an Indian mathematical genius and autodidact who was admitted to Cambridge from India during World War I.
10. Their Finest. 2016, UK. This is a war comedy/drama set in 1940 London when propaganda films were being made to boost morale after Dunkirk. It's taken from the book, Their Finest Hour and a Half. An amusing film. There is also a lovely rendering of the song "Wild Mountain Thyme" ("Will ye go, lassie, go") sung by actor Bill Nighy.
11. They Were Expendable. 1945, US. Robert Montgomery, John Wayne, Donna Reed. John Ford started out directing this but broke his leg three weeks into the film, so Robert Montgomery took over. Montgomery also acted in it as a PT boat commander. It portrays the true story of the fall of the Philippines and the exit of MacArthur, and the PT boat squadron's early defense of the Philippines. It's beautifully photographed in black-and-white with understated acting, and a good story line. I had seen it as a child when it was first released and remembered it as being well done but had forgotten everything else about it. One of those "best of" old-time black-and-white films.
12. Unbranded. 2016, US. Documentary. 4 Texas A&M friends "adopt" wild mustangs to train and ride from the Mexican border to the Canadian, all on public land. They do this partly to help the horses from being penned up all day and partly to show that there is still enough public land that such a venture is possible. The adoption program comes from having too many wild horses trying to graze land that will not accommodate that many (including other animals) so a good number of them are corralled until someone comes along who can use them. Being wild, these were strong horses, used to 20-mile-a-day runs, and they did well on the trip. Gorgeous photography.
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