My Afternoons with Margueritte (2010)

Gérard Depardieu plays a simple man — a man who is supposed to be something of a simpleton — who encounters an old lady (sounds so much better in Spanish, una anciana, or someone in her third life stage) on a park bench. They bond over the pigeons he names for her. She reads to him from Camus's The Plague.

Ebert had it this way:
Germain believes he cannot read. Actually, we discover later, he was taught to read but never taught to have a shred of self-confidence. She begins to read to him — The Plague by Camus — and he is an ideal listener. With her as his catalyst, he makes slow steps toward self-esteem.

Through flashbacks, his lack of self-esteem is explained. At the root of it, lies his mother. The films has all the elements of a good work, but never quite sparkles. Ebert gave it three stars. I give it two. I found it quite similar to Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont, which I liked much better.


Mediocre.

Bridge at Remagen (1969)

Recommended by PN patron. George Segal emotes, does nice job as Army leiutenant leading a squad spearheading US advance across the Rhine. Ben Gazzara does good job as a cynical soldier who is, nevertheless, a crack shot and fearless. Robert Vaughn slightly overplays role as German major sent to hold the last standing bridge crossing the Rhine. Hitler has ordered the bridge to be blown up, even though that will strand 75,000 German soldiers. Despite efforts to hold bridge, an unofficial order given to vaughn's character by his commanding general,  he finally decides to blow it up, only to hVe the dynamite he was sent for the jon turn out to ne defective. In next to last scene, Vaughn's major is shot by firing squad. Film tried to show war was more than just shooting, anticipating "Saving Private Ryan" by three decades. Very good war movie.

Pursued

Probably reviewed in a New Yorker magazine sidebar column. Interesting seeing Teresa Wright in this role. Judith (not yet Dame) Anderson, ditto. Story holds up pretty well.

Why I left Goldman Sachs

Interesting look at the culture of Gokdman Sachs, by an insider.

City Island

Good acting. Great in spots. Enjoyable.

American Graffiti

Good music. Film did not hold up all too well. Still enjoyable.

Sag Harbor

Very well done.

The author blurs the line between fiction and memoir as he recounts the coming-of-age summer of 15-year-old Benji Cooper in the family's summer retreat of New York's Sag Harbor. "According to the world, we were the definition of paradox: black boys with beach houses," writes Whitehead. Caucasians are only an occasional curiosity within this idyll, and parents are mostly absent as well. Each chapter is pretty much a self-contained entity, corresponding to a rite of passage: getting the first job, negotiating the mysteries of the opposite sex. There's an accident with a BB gun and plenty of episodes of convincing someone older to buy beer, but not much really happens during this particular summer. Yet by the end of it, Benji is well on his way to becoming Ben, and he realizes that he is a different person than when the summer started. He also realizes that this time in his life will eventually live only in memory. There might be some distinctions between Benji and Whitehead, though the novelist also spent his youthful summers in Sag Harbor and was the same age as Benji in 1985, when the novel is set. Yet the first-person narrator has the novelist's eye for detail, craft of character development and analytical instincts for sharp social commentary.Not as thematically ambitious as Whitehead's earlier work, but a whole lot of fun to read. Copyright Kirkus 2009 Kirkus

Glory

From my writing the story of Blanco Gregor, the history teacher, I thought of this film. Watched it. Remains, in my mind, a magnificent film. The acting is superb: Morgan Freeman, Matthew Broderickl, Cary Elwes, Andre Braugher, Jihmi Kennedy, and, of course, Denzel, are superb. What a fine film. Ebert gave it 3.5 out of a possible 4 stars.