Category: Movies

Missed Movies: Solitary Man

Michael Douglas There are two types of good movies.  First, there is the movie that you enjoy while you watch it and then never really think about again — until you are flipping TV channels and come across it and think, “Oh yeah, this was good.”  Second, there is the movie that you continue to ponder long after you watch it. The movie may stay with you for any number of reasons.  Maybe a character reminded you of someone. Maybe the movie puzzled you in a good way. Maybe there was a scene you cannot stop thinking about.

The 2009 movie Solitary Man falls into the latter category for me. The movie features one of Michael Douglas’s great acting roles and is worth it for that alone.  Douglas plays a womanizer and former car dealership owner who sees many of his bad decisions catch up to him. You may not like or admire the character, but he comes across as a real person, not a caricature, and you most likely will want to see what happens next.

Solitary Man has an excellent cast, including Susan Sarandon and Jesse Eisenberg (recently in The Social Network).  The scenes between Douglas and Danny DeVito are excellent in a way that may only be possible when played by two old friends portraying two old friends.  In the DVD extras, Jenna Fischer (who you might know from The Office) recalls how when she read the script before knowing the cast, she could only think of Michael Douglas in the lead role.  Douglas does such a great job, there is only one other person I could imagine in the role.  As he has aged, Douglas reminds me more and more of his father, Kirk Douglas, who I might also imagine here as Ben Kalmen.

[I am not giving away much about the ending, but if you plan to see the movie and do not want to know more about it, skip this paragraph.]  The ending of Solitary Man is one reason I keep thinking about the film.  The end is not an exciting explanation point, but more of a small question mark.  I was reminded of a Tom Hanks movie where a lot of people did not like the ending, but I did.  Here, the ending seemed perfect and true to the movie and the character.  If you have seen Solitary Man, you may read more of a discussion of the ending in this interview with the writer/directors.

Like many movies in my Movies You Might Have Missed series, you should not watch Solitary Man expecting it to be one of the great movies of all time, but it is a small, entertaining, and thoughtful movie that you might enjoy.  I’m surprised that the movie did not get the attention that it deserved.  Some reviews at the time praised the movie as a smaller version of Douglas’s fine work as an aging English professor in Wonder Boys, because of some similarities between the characters.  But the movies are very different, so you should not be expecting Wonder Boys II.

While Douglas’s Wonder Boys character had more of a slapstick element, Solitary Man seems more grounded in day-to-day reality.  There are moments of humor, but Douglas creates a real character of flesh and blood.  And, even though you may not admire the character, you will see flashes of humanity and real life here. And that is what creates movies you think about long after the screen goes dark.

Missed Movies is our series on very good movies that many people did not see when first released.

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    Missed Movies: Amelia

    If you avoided the movie Amelia (2009) in the theater because of the bad reviews, you might want to check it out on DVD/Blu Ray/HBO.  The movie about Amelia Earhart may not be a great movie, but it is an entertaining story about one of the most interesting people from the early twentieth century.

    I may have a lower standard for biography movies than fictional movies because biopics have the added bonus of teaching me about events that actually happened while I also realize that the director and writer are restrained by true-life events.  For example, because we don’t have the information, the movie rightfully avoids showing the actual crash that ended Earhart’s life in her 1937 attempt to circle the world, although it follows her up until the moment radio contact was lost.  A fictional story would have been able to dramatize the crash.  Further, biopics often are restrained to a certain formula to try to cover a large number of years in a person’s life and to make it a cohesive story.  That’s one of the reasons that Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story was able to do such a funny send-up of otherwise excellent biopics like Ray and Walk the Line.

    Amelia Earhart’s life was so ground-breaking it’s difficult to convey how important she was for aviation and women’s rights in less than two hours.  But the movie does a good job in telling the story, with excellent acting from Hillary Swank as Earhart and Richard Gere as her husband, George Putnam.

    One small piece of history I learned was that when Gore Vidal was a child, he knew Amelia Earhart because his father had a relationship with her.  Gore has seen a lot of American history.

    Earhart was an amazing person and aviation pioneer:  first woman across the Atlantic as part of a crew in 1928, first woman and second person to fly solo across the Atlantic in 1932, first person to fly solo across the Pacific between Hawaii and California, as well as a leadership role in several organizations promoting aviation.  The movie does a decent job of telling the story, and it’s worth a rental.

    Bonus History Tidbit:  Who was the second person to fly an airplane non-stop across the Atlantic after Lindbergh?  Clarence Chamberlin, although he carried a passenger.  He was in the competition for the Orteig Prize money with Charles Lindbergh and others to be the first to fly an airplane across the Atlantic.  He would have beaten Lindbergh, but a former navigator sued him and kept him grounded for awhile, which allowed Lindbergh to beat Chamberlin.

    Chamberlin flew across the Atlantic on June 4-6, 1927.  Lindbergh made his flight on May 20-21, 1927, winning by just two weeks.  Had Chamberlin beaten Lindbergh, would Lindbergh still have been the national hero?  It’s possible, as his was the first solo flight, but the media focus was on on being the first non-stop flight and winning the $25,000 Orteig prize, and Chamberlin would have won the prize if he were first.  If Chamberlin had been the national hero, would that have spared Lindbergh the tragedy of his son being kidnapped and killed?  Would it have spared America of seeing its national hero accused of being pro-Nazi?  Few have heard of Chamberlin because Lindbergh beat him, and Chamberlin may have been the lucky one after all.

    Missed Movies is our series on very good movies that many people did not see when first released.

  • Why Wasn’t Conviction a Best Picture Nominee? (Missed Movies)
  • Nicolas Cage Shines In Modest But Surprising “Pig” (Short Review)
  • Is “Captain Fantastic” Fantastic?
  • Runaway Train (Missed Movies)
  • Tommy Lee Jones and “The Homesman” (Missed Movies)
  • A Balance Between Culture and Fun: “In Bruges” (Missed Movies)

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    Amelia

    Happy Thanksgiving!

    If you are traveling this holiday, put on some Ray Charles and enjoy the trip — just like these guys in the best Thanksgiving Day movie.

    Even if you decide to “Mess Around,” have a safe and happy Thanksgiving.

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    Missed Movies: The Man From Earth

    If you enjoy intelligent science-fiction movies, you might want to check out The Man From Earth (2007) on DVD/Blu Ray.   I did not hear of the movie when it came out in 2007, so I’m guessing a lot of other people missed it too.  All you probably need to know is that Jerome Bixby, whose writings were used for episodes in the original The Twilight Zone and Star Trek series, is the screenwriter for The Man from Earth.  If you liked The Twilight Zone, you’ll most likely enjoy this thought-provoking movie that in many ways plays like an extended version of one of those shows.

    Man from EarthThe movie begins with friends visiting a college professor (played by David Lee Smith) at his home in the country as he plans to move out-of-town.   As they sit in his home among the last boxes, they begin to inquire more into his background and why he is leaving.  It is not too much of a spoiler to tell you that he reveals that he has lived for centuries and has to move on before people realize he does not age.  The friends — who are experts in areas  such as biology, anthropology, psychology, and religion — question his claims.  What follows is a fascinating meditation on life, morality, and time.  Is he playing a joke, telling the truth, or is he mentally ill?

    The movie is not perfect, so I suggest you go into it with modest expectations.  And if you prefer your sci-fi with high-octane action and special effects, you might want to skip this movie that has no special effects and limited action.  But if you like thought-provoking movies, you’ll probably enjoy watching this one on a rainy autumn day.  If it sounds interesting, I suggest you rent it immediately without learning more or even watching the trailer, which doesn’t capture the movie very well.  You can’t make conversation look fun in a minute.  If you want to see the trailer, though, it is here.  If you subscribe to Netflix, the movie is available for instant streaming.

    One final tidbit:  Bixby thought up the idea for The Man From Earth in the 1960’s when he was doing his television work, and he completed the story on his death bed in 1998.  The story was circulated through the Internet and gained enough attention that it was eventually made into a movie.  I need to go call the Internet and thank them.

    Jerome Bixby’s The Man from Earth on Amazon

    Missed Movies is our series on very good movies that many people did not see when first released.

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    Is it Safe?: Torture American-Style

    In the movie Marathon Man, there’s a famous sequence where the Nazi war criminal (played by Laurence Olivier) uses dental tools on Dustin Hoffman’s mouth to torture him into answering the code question “Is it safe?”  I remember the movie from my youth, as well as movies like The Deer Hunter, which shows America’s enemies using torture techniques on American prisoners of war — played by Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, and John Savage.  In The Deer Hunter, the captors force the three Americans to play Russian Roulette and punish the soldiers by putting them in an underwater cage full of live rats and dead bodies.

    Watching these movies as a kid, these torture techniques were things that our enemies did.  Americans do not torture.  If we adopt the techniques of the bad guys, then there is no longer a difference between us and them.

    Torture has been in the news lately because of the release of former Pres. George W. Bush’s book, Decision Points.  In it, he describes how when the CIA asked him whether he would support waterboarding Khalid Sheik Mohammad, he responded, “Damn right!”  Former Vice-President Cheney has stated he is a “big supporter” of waterboarding.

    Waterboarding is torture in violation of international law.  But what about when government officials feel the country is in danger and it is necessary?

    Pres. Obama has been criticized for his failure to investigate and prosecute the Americans who used torture techniques.  I understand his aversion to opening up a partisan fight.  Some claim, though, that the failure to pursue the perpetrators leaves a precedent for future presidents that torture techniques will be tolerated.

    There’s an old joke about a man who goes to a woman and asks, “Will you sleep with me for a million dollars?”

    The woman thinks for a few minutes, and responds, “Sure.”

    Then the man asks, “Will you sleep with me for ten dollars?”

    The woman says, “Certainly not!  What kind of woman do you think I am?”

    The man responds, “We’ve already established that.  Now we’re just negotiating on a price.”

    The joke reminds me of our attitudes about torture.  You’re either for it or against it, and then it’s just negotiating when to use it.  Nobody advocates torture for jaywalking.  If you’re for it, it’s for the extreme situations.  So you can’t rid yourself of the responsibility by saying “I only advocate it for certain situations.”  You’re pro-torture or anti-torture.  That part is simple.

    Unfortunately, the line about what my country does and tolerates is not as simple as I believed when I was a kid watching movies.

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