Posts tagged London
“The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” All Right in the End
May 19th
“Everything All Right in the End”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is about a hotel in India of that name, but ending in even more words of “For the Elderly & Beautiful,” it is a beautiful, lovely, and funny movie, and it just might be the best movie you will see all year.
Based on the 2004 novel These Foolish Things by Deborah Moggach, the movie follows seven British pensioners who accept the offer from the hotel’s new owner and manager to travel there and kick-start its business.
In fact, the brochure that persuaded the seven strangers to go to India for a new adventure was Photoshopped to look like what the young manager hopes it will look like, and after they arrive, he adds “Now with Guests” to the hotel sign.
The manager’s name is Sonny Kapoor, he is played by Dev Patel of the 2008 Slumdog Millionaire, and when the new arrivals complain about the hotel’s condition, Sonny assures them with his optimistic philosophy, “Everything will be all right in the end. If it’s not all right, then it is not yet the end.”
The most well-known actors playing the pensioners, who are all there for different reasons, are Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson, Bill Nighy, and Maggie Smith, and although it is difficult at first to keep them and their stories straight, just sit back, relax, and let them all be as wonderful and enjoyable as the sights, sounds, and colors of India itself.
One of the pensioners has been forced to sell her London flat, another one lived happily in India 40 years ago and is returning to settle a matter that has been bothering him all that time, another one doesn’t like foreigners, but requires a cheap hip replacement, one unhappily married couple lost money in a bad investment, one woman is looking for a rich husband, and the final pensioner is a man who is lonely and just looking for some female companionship.
In the meantime, Sonny has his own romantic problems, because his mother doesn’t approve of his girlfriend and has her own plans for his future bride.
And don’t think that the pensioners will find what they are looking for within their own group.
Remember Sonny’s optimistic philosophy?
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, when it comes to the end, will leave you thinking that everything is all right.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“The Woman in Black” Is a Movie in Trouble
Feb 11th
A Movie in Trouble
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
The Woman in Black is a traditional ghost story, and of all the movies about ghosts that have ever been made, this is one of them.
In fact, the only reason to see this yawner with all the tricks and twists and turns of a traditional ghost story is to see Daniel Radcliffe trying to act like an adult in his first starring film role after the “Harry Potter” movies ended in 2011.
Now, seeing as how this is a story about ghosts that wants the audience to take it seriously and realistically, you have to ask yourself one question: “Do you believe in ghosts?”
Well, do you? And then ask yourself more questions.
Radcliffe plays Arthur Kipps, who works for a law firm in London in either the late 1890s or the early 1900s, whose wife died four years earlier while giving birth to their son, Joseph.
Arthur is sent to a little village in northern England to go through the papers of an old woman who died and report if the law firm should take over the house that she left, which is known as the Eel Marsh House and sits on a piece of land whose only access by road is covered by water whenever the tide comes in.
Arthur is told that this assignment is to prove his worth to the head of the law firm and is his “final warning.”
When Arthur arrives at the village, he gets no cooperation at all from the villagers except for one man, Sam Daily, whose son died many years ago, and whose wife could only be called crazy.
In fact, many children in the village have died, and Arthur eventually learns that there is a connection between their so-called “accidental” deaths and the appearance of a mysterious “woman in black” who is seen occasionally and who has a connection with Eel Marsh House.
Well, naturally Arthur stays at the house to go through all the old woman’s papers, scary things naturally happen, and naturally Arthur sees the woman in black more than once, along with many more mysterious events.
Of course, there are many cheap audio and visual shocks designed to scare the audience, but it is possible not to be scared.
The Woman in Black is a movie in trouble with a really cheap ending.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
Anonomyous – Movie Trailer
Oct 28th
Set in the political snake-pit of Elizabethan England, Anonymous speculates on an issue that has for centuries intrigued academics and brilliant minds such as Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, and Sigmund Freud, namely: who actually created the body of work credited to William Shakespeare? Experts have debated, books have been written, and scholars have devoted their lives to protecting or debunking theories surrounding the authorship of the most renowned works in English literature. Anonymous poses one possible answer, focusing on a time when scandalous political intrigue, illicit romances in the Royal Court, and the schemes of greedy nobles lusting for the power of the throne were brought to light in the most unlikely of places: the London stage.