Save the Last Dance (2001), 6

PG-13 | 1h 52min | Drama, Music, Romance | 12 January 2001
A white midwestern girl moves to Chicago, where her new boyfriend is a black teen from the South Side with a rough, semi-criminal past.
Director: Thomas Carter
Stars: Julia Stiles, Sean Patrick Thomas, Kerry Washington.
Randy Duncan ... ballet choreographer

Fatima Robinson ... choreographer 

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0206275/

Another inventory-browse purchase.

36 songs in the Soundtracks.

Enjoyable. The (good) ending got to me, so I was engaged enough for that to happen. But the dancing was Meh and the story was not so dynamic as all the featurettes would make it seem.

JS does most of her own dancing, and she's amazingly credible as a ballerina for someone who just started a month before shooting. (They did double her for some of the ballet.) But the "merger" of hip-hop and ballet for the finale was more just shrug-worthy contemporary dance. Nice use of the chair prop, though.

I also shrug at the interracial romance. The transplanted white girl doesn't really struggle much with acclimating to her (nearly) all-black environment. So all the dramatic issues the film touches does little more than that: touch the issues.

Rated 6.2 (53,772)

distr. Paramount, dir. Carter; 6

The Temptations (1998), 6

2h 30min | Biography, Drama, Music | TV Mini-Series (1998)
(2 episodes, presented as a film on the dvd)
Biography of the singers who formed the hit Motown music act, The Temptations.
Stars: Charles Malik Whitfield, D.B. Woodside, Terron Brooks.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0164292/
Another browsing-inventory purchase.

No songs in the Soundtracks; plenty performed onscreen.

I liked it, but not enthusiastically. The story has a lot of downside(s) for the characters, including tragic deaths. The Temps had a lot of members, 5 at a time, until they did a reunion tour when 7 came together.

Good to hear the music, but a good anthology (video) album could chronicle the career better. I didn't need all the personal stuff.

Lots of good, familiar faces whose names are unfamiliar.

Rated 8.5 (3,599)

distr. NBC, dir. (var); 6

Great Expectations (1946), 6 {nm}

1h 58min | Adventure, Drama, Mystery | 22 May 1947
A humble orphan suddenly becomes a gentleman with the help of an unknown benefactor.
Director: David Lean
Stars: John Mills, Valerie Hobson, Jean Simmons, Finlay Currie, Alec Guinness.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038574/
Watched online, ok print. Could've watched on Amazon Prime.

Watching the '98 adaptation made me want to see this again. Although my rating isn't much higher, this is a far better film, if only for the improved story. A lot more happens here than in '98. Plus JM is much more interesting than was E.Hawke.

But I can't say I recommend the film, nor even Like it, hence the absence of a 7 or a +. Again, the flaw of my ratings scheme, where too much gets packed into the number 6.

Rated 7.9 (20,243)

MGM, dir. Lean; 6

Great Expectations (1998), 6- {nm}

R | 1h 51min | Drama, Romance | 30 January 1998
Modernization of Charles Dickens classic story finds the hapless Finn as a painter in New York City pursuing his unrequited and haughty childhood love.
Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Stars: Ethan Hawke, Gwyneth Paltrow, Hank Azaria, Anne Bancroft, Robert De Niro.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119223/
Another browse-a-seller's-stock purchase.

A soft-core porn version of Dickens. Would he have written "I want you inside me"?

Not sure why some names were changed and not others. Pip is Finn, Miss Havisham is Ms. Dinsmoor.  Some things I don't remember well enough to compare: was Pip raised by his sister's boyfriend after the sister left? Did Pip become an artist?

This rambles, and Finn provides V.O narration that illuminates little.

The encounters with the convict (RD) are there, and are the best thing of the film. One of the best things from the novel/'46 film, Miss Havisham, is reduced to an eccentric rich woman (AB) who might be reclusive here; no cobwebs, dried out wedding cake, or fiery death.

GP as Estella is adequately antisocial, but nude or semi-clothed a lot.

I recognize the name EH, but this film could not have made him a star. Dull, sullen, boring.

Rated 6.8 (48,202)

Fox +, dir. Cuarón; 6-

The Remains of the Day (1993),, 6 {nm}

PG | 2h 14min | Drama, Romance | 19 November 1993
A butler who sacrificed body and soul to service in the years leading up to World War II realizes too late how misguided his loyalty was to his lordly employer.
Director: James Ivory
Stars: Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, James Fox, Hugh Grant.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107943/
Purchased recently during a shopping browse at a particular seller.

I've heard of Merchant/Ivory films, of course, but have never rated one, and probably have never seen one before. This one happens to have the highest IMDb rating of Ivory's dir. credits.

This should be in my wheelhouse. One of the plot threads is that the butler's master is one of the British aristocrats pushing the government into appeasing Hitler to avoid war (and because some actually support Hitler.) In an extra feature, AH says the Treaty of Versailles, which capped WW1, were too restrictive. I didn't study that enough to opine. This does portray the aristocrat (JF) ambiguously; he seems well-intentioned, which is the kindest way to interpret the Appeasement. But that doesn't really give me any new insights. (Chilling moment when the Germans arrive at the estate and case the artwork while waiting to be greeted by the host.)

I find the threads of the film overly complicated. We start with a voiceover by ET of a letter she wrote to AH some 20+ years after the events where most of the film is set, and when we have flashes forward, the characters are not aged enough to make it easy to distinguish where we are.

The extra features support the synopsis above, but I didn't get that from the film. My interpretation leans more toward AH's discomfort with having been part of the appeasement scandal (his master was not tried for treason, but some people think he should have been), which strangers inquire about incessantly. To extend that to his LIFE having been wasted as a servant (albeit the top servant in the household) seems excessive. If we list all the occupations where a life has been wasted, that would cover most of them.

So the writers/producers/et al intended to attack a way of life (landed gentry), which has been nearly destroyed by changing times, particularly the dissolution of the British empire. Not sure why they felt the need.

HG was an interesting character, onscreen very little. We meet him as a young innocent, but during the plans for Appeasement, he realizes the dangers of those efforts. We also get the events of normal life (ET's in particular) proceeding despite the momentous historic events occuring at the estate. The servants are accustomed to important people being there, so they pay no mind to the significance that we recognize with hindsight.

The strife between ET and AH, and AH's emotional repression, are the primary subjects of the film, but are diminished in importance by the Appeasement plot thread. So I found the film confusing, making me wonder what I'm supposed to follow and what I'm supposed to get out of it, especially since what I _did_ get out of it is not what was the creators intended.

Rated 7.9 (57,116)

Columbia +, dir. Ivory; 6

Battle of the Year (2013), 6

PG-13 | 1h 50min | Drama, Music | 20 September 2013
Battle of the Year attracts all the best teams from around the world, but the Americans haven't won in fifteen years. Dante enlists Blake to assemble a team of the best dancers and bring the Trophy back to America where it started.
Director: Benson Lee
Stars: Josh Holloway, Laz Alonso, Josh Peck.
Dave Scott ... supervising choreographer

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1532958/
Didn't find it online when it's turn came, and its low IMDb rating discouraged me from looking for it. Saw the trailer on another disc, found a purchase for less than Amazon wants to rent it.

41 songs in the Soundtracks.

This is close to being a 6+. It has heart and dance and sweat and beat. And very little violence.

However, b-boy is literal here; the only significant woman in the cast is the team's on-screen choreographer. And the editing of the dance is of the splintered school - so many cuts you wonder how long the boys can actually dance. Until the end of the film, that is. Then we get lengthier segments. A lot of the dance footage was delivered shaky-cam - very disappointing - but the segments are so short...

The dancing that was in focus and onscreen long enough to enjoy was mostly athletic and in-sync, as portrayed in the trailer. It would be nice to have another hour of cut dancing as extras. No such luck.

Rated 5.1 (8,728)
Actual reviews run the gamut.

distr. Screen Gems; dir. Lee; 6

Verdi: Falstaff (1979), 7+

2h 6min | Musical, Comedy
When Sir John Falstaff decides that he wants to have a little fun he writes two letters to a pair of Window wives: Mistress Ford and Mistress Page. When they put their heads together and ... 
Director: Götz Friedrich
Georg Solti ... conductor
Stars: Karan Armstrong, Gabriel Bacquier, Ulrik Cold.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0276124/

Premiered on 9 February 1893 at La Scala, Milan. Verdi's last opera.

Time: The reign of Henry IV, 1399 to 1413
Place: Windsor, England

This is a film, not a captured stage performance. I prefer this, although the lip-sync can be flawed, and sometimes is here. But we get the benefit of cinematic choices, and no audience or flawed mic placement.

This was filmed in a studio, and everything was brightly lit, including "midnight" in the woods. Although these are not wealthy people, this sets and costumes are pleasing.

Having music lightened the mood considerably, and halving the number of characters (per the Wikipedia article) makes this far more enjoyable than the play (discussed in the immediately prior post).

It's a shame that Verdi generated no other comedies; his only other effort is not in the standard repertoire, and suffers from his personal losses while composing it 50 years earlier than this.

I'll be curious why Greenberg lavishes so many lectures on this opera. I'm glad to have it in my collection, but I doubt that I'll want additional performances.

Rated 8.0 (15)

Unitel, cond. Solti; 7+

The Merry Wives of Windsor (1982), 6- {nm}

2h 50min | Comedy, Romance | TV Movie 27 Dec 1982
When Sir John Falstaff decides that he wants to have a little fun he writes two letters to a pair of Window wives: Mistress Ford and Mistress Page. When they put their heads together and ... 
Director: David Hugh Jones
Stars: Alan Bennett, Richard O'Callaghan, Tenniel Evans, Richard Griffiths, Judy Davis, Prunella Scales.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084325/

Watched this in preparation for watching the Verdi opera Falstaff, which I acquired in preparation for listening to Robert Greenberg's Great Course on the Life and Operas of Verdi, where he spends 6.5 of 32 lectures. (Only Rigoletto gets more than 2 lectures, and that only gets 4.)

Reading the synopsis beforehand, I knew I wouldn't like this. I'm offended by similar plots in opera, where at least I get the extra benefits of music and singing, Here I get the extra burdens of Shakespeare's archaic language and British accents.

Maybe I didn't give it a fair chance. I'll resist giving it a 5, because I really didn't pay close attention. I mostly wanted to document that his was a 6-, not a mezzo-6, and certainly not an upper-6.

BTW, did WS name the family Page to confuse us whether that was someone's job? It distracted me a lot in the beginning.

Rated 7.1 (108)
The people who like this least are men 30-44 (6.8) and women 45+ (6.9).

BBC, dir. Jones; 6-