Coastal Breeze News

By Monte Lazarus – [email protected] You don’t have to be a baseball fan to appreciate, enjoy and possibly choke up a bit, when you see “42.” It’s the story of 18 months in the life and career of Jackie Robinson. As with the few outstanding “baseball movies,” e.g., “Bull Durham,” “Bang The Drum Slowly,” “42” is not simply about baseball. Rather it is a fascinating study of a chunk of American society around the middle of the Twentieth Century, and some reflections on the inner workings of two of the movie’s main characters, Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey. When World ... Read More »

By Monte Lazarus [email protected] The beginning of “Zero Dark Thirty” is controversial and unsettling. Shortly after the first scene at the World Trade Center, the site changes. A CIA operative has an Al-Qaeda member in a dank dungeon – a “black site” – somewhere in Pakistan. It’s 2003. What makes the scene disturbing is the sequence of torture that takes place – slapping, naked abuse, waterboarding and ultimately forcing the prisoner, Ammar (Reda Kateb) into a tiny box. What makes the scene controversial is the question it raises. Some observers think it glorifies torture. Others believe it demonstrates that torture ... Read More »

REEL REVIEWS By Monte Lazarus [email protected] Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” is generally considered one of the greatest novels ever written. It’s been made into movies 13 times, and the Greta Garbo/Fredric March version of 1935 is widely recognized at the best. This latest edition is a balletic show-within-a-show that dances back and forth from footlights to backstage to “reality”. Despite the heroic staging, magnificent settings of St. Petersburg and Moscow of the late 1800’s, and a screenplay by Tom Stoppard, it falls far short. Keira Knightley as Anna is beautiful, but unconvincing. Jude Law is excellent, but wasted as her ... Read More »

REEL REVIEWS By Monte Lazarus [email protected] n 1865, the Civil War was draining the blood of North and South. Mr. Lincoln was personally ravaged by the war and was also determined to abolish slavery by passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. This piece of history and Mr. Lincoln’s remarkable life is the focal point of Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln”, based in large part on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals”. Daniel Day-Lewis is extraordinary as he cajoles, manipulates and threatens both Republicans and Democrats to pick off each critical vote. This is not the Lincoln of past movie makers; ... Read More »

REEL REVIEWS  By Monte Lazarus  [email protected] For the fiftieth anniversary of the James Bond movies, “Skyfall” is a perfect fit. Daniel Craig ranks one or two with Sean Connery as the best Bond of all. This Bond is very different. He’s not the suave, sophisticated James of yore, although he manages to handle a tuxedo fairly well. This is a gritty, darker Bond. This one can handle a motorcycle with the best while being able to play baccarat with the wealthiest. Of course, “Bond – James Bond” has his romantic moments, but they are momentary as he proceeds from peril ... Read More »

REEL REVIEWS By Monte Lazarus [email protected] Don’t be fooled by the title. “Flight” has very little to do with aviation; it has a lot to do about character, lies and deception, and morality. And, it’s beautifully done. The superb Denzel Washington plays “Whip” Whitaker, a first-rate airline pilot who is also an alcoholic, drug user and carouser. In the opening scene, Whitaker awakens after a night of sex and booze, lights one of innumerable cigarettes, gulps down a drink and snorts some cocaine. His lady of the night, a flight attendant, reminds him that he has a trip coming up ... Read More »

By Monte Lazarus [email protected] “ARBITRAGE” Richard Gere moves through “Arbitrage” like a sleek panther. Everything about him oozes wealth: not the Trump type of display, but the understated Gramercy Park Mansion type of polished dark wood and quiet elegance. Gere plays Robert Miller. As Miller, Gere is no longer the much younger playboy type of millionaire he played in “Pretty Woman”. He’s much older; his hair is wavy white; his face is more chiseled; his demeanor is suave, but cynical and dismissive of lesser mortals. He’s serious and so is the movie. It’s – a combination of whodunit (although we ... Read More »

REEL REVIEWS By Monte Lazarus [email protected] From the opening majestic shots of Alaska this is a different take on the Bourne series of films. Gone, regrettably, is Matt Damon. In “The Bourne Legacy” Jeremy Renner is Aaron Cross, ostensibly a Bourne-type successor. Renner is different; not as subtle an actor as Damon, but good enough as an action oriented, genetically altered super spy. Matt Damon was slated to do another Bourne episode, but he and director Paul Greengrass departed over apparent disagreements on the project. The new film is therefore set up with a different lead, cleverly injecting just enough ... Read More »

REEL REVIEWS  By Monte Lazarus  [email protected]   Woody Allen’s latest, “To Rome With Love”, is feel good fun. The movie is a pastiche of unrelated plots, while paying tribute to the Eternal City, with spectacular photography of Rome’s treasures. The plot? There isn’t one. Rather, the film begins with one of Rome’s elegant traffic cops introducing some of the characters and each story takes off. Woody Allen returns to the screen (he also wrote and directed) as Jerry, a neurotic – as usual – retired opera director, flying to Rome with wife Phyllis (Judy Davis) a strong-willed psychiatrist, to meet ... Read More »

REEL REVIEWS By Monte Lazarus [email protected] Denzel Washington is, well, Denzel Washington. He’s one of those rare actors who never seem to give a bad performance no matter the plot or script. In “Safe House” he’s Tobin Frost, a cool, cynical ex-CIA agent who is viewed by the Agency as having gone rogue. There’s no particular reason given for his apparent defection. Was it money? If not, what else? The film opens with magnificent views of Capetown, South Africa, but it doesn’t take too long for action to explode and continue through the film. Newly acclaimed Swedish director Daniel Espinosa ... Read More »

REEL REVIEWS By Monte Lazarus [email protected] Run; don’t walk, to see this movie. It’s advertised as a “silent”, but it’s not quite. There are a few sounds, and a continuous musical background. Other than that there’s no real dialog. On its surface the film appears simply to be a tribute to the silent movie era. However, that’s only the façade. Few of us remember silent movies. They dominated the screen until the late twenties when “The Jazz Singer” opened the new dimension of sound, and revolutionized the business. Yes, the film tells a story of a matinee idol of the ... Read More »

By Monte Lazarus  [email protected] The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Rooney Mara is mesmerizing as Lisbeth Salander, the tiny birdlike product of the Digital Age. She’s tattooed, pierced in all the wrong places, fierce, anti-social, abused, and sheathed in black leather and even wearing “Oliver Twist” gloves with the fingers cut out. Lisbeth is a genius computer hack. She joins forces with Mikael Blomqvist (ably played by Daniel Craig) a journalist who is on the wrong end of a very expensive libel suit. Ms. Mara’s performance is truly remarkable. The film is shot in cold, desolate Sweden where snow is ... Read More »

REEL REVIEWS By Monte Lazarus [email protected] The latest movie version of “Sherlock Holmes” (“A Game of Shadows”) is decidedly not the Holmes we know and love from the much beloved A. Conan Doyle stories, or even the old Basil Rathbone films. The new Holmes is a macho gunslinger and hand-to-hand fighter. He’s just not very smart. His favorite violin has gone missing. So, too, is his finely tuned mind. He’s now more of a comic book version complete with massive explosions. This time around, against a largely sepia background, Holmes (Robert Downey, Jr.) and sidekick Dr. Watson (Jude Law) more ... Read More »

By Monte Lazarus [email protected] “Hugo” is a charming mixture of the real Georges Melies, a French film pioneer, and Hugo Cabret, a 12 year old boy who lives in the Gare Montparnesse in Paris, and is a combination orphan, station clock minder, and part-time petty thief. The film is based on Brian Selznick’s 526 page book “The Invention of Hugo Cabret. In 3-D, the colorful and beautifully conceived and acted movie intertwines the stories of Hugo’s search for family after his beloved father’s sudden death in a fire; and the search of Georges Melies for his past life. Hugo lived ... Read More »

By Monte Lazarus [email protected] At the very beginning of this engrossing film, “The Descendants” Matt King (George Clooney) cautions us that Hawaii is not the total paradise we mainliners think it is. Matt is neither poor nor deprived. On the contrary, he is a hugely successful real estate lawyer, a descendant of generations of haoles (whites) and native Hawaiians, a member of an exclusive beach club and very well-off certainly by Hawaiian standards. Matt, however, is personally “thrifty”…he drives a small Honda; he lives in a modest home and he dresses in Aloha shirts and casual slacks. We learn immediately ... Read More »

By Monte Lazarus  From the opening bars of music this film is stamped “Director Clint Eastwood”. Mr. Eastwood serves us an inner look at the man who elevated the F.B.I. from a second-rate, narrowly limited police department to an all powerful force in the federal government. Interestingly, the movie is not about the intricacies of the F.B.I. It’s all about the psychological make up of the man who was obsessive, secretive, ambitious, single minded, sexually ambiguous, and amoral enough to lie and indulge in political blackmailing. Leonardo Di Caprio is J. Edgar Hoover from a 19 year old clerk at ... Read More »

By Monte Lazarus  David Frankel, who directed the hit “The Devil Wears Prada”, tries again with “The Big Year”, loosely based on a non-fiction book. By intertwining the lives and problems of three “birders” the plot uses the otherwise benign hobby of bird-watching to explore, superficially, their human problems. Champion Kenny Bostick (Owen Wilson) holds the one year world record for most birds seen. He’s pursued in another one year competition by Stu Preissler (Steve Martin) and Brad Harris (Jack Black). Bostick, a successful home builder with a gorgeous wife (Rosamund Pike) is obsessed with winning – the Great American ... Read More »

By Monte Lazarus  If you are not already cynical about the state of politics you may be after watching “The Ides of March”. This film is not about ideology; it keeps its focus on the human beings who tangle themselves in the political process. The story could easily focus on a Republican primary campaign by changing just a very few words in the script. The vital part is the human interchange. There’s virtually no end of double-cross, who leaked what, and the results of crass ambition. George Clooney, who also wrote part of the script and directed the film, plays ... Read More »

By Monte Lazarus  Don’t expect “Moneyball” to be an old, hackneyed, romanticized Hollywood film such as “Pride of the Yankees” in which Gary Cooper couldn’t even pretend to be Lou Gehrig (they had to reverse the batting scenes because Cooper couldn’t even pretend to bat left-handed), or the monumental flop in which William Bendix does a horrible impersonation of Babe Ruth. “Moneyball” based on a 2003 non-fiction story, is all about the backrooms of sports enterprise and the characters who set values on human performances. It’s much more like “The Social Network” than my own favorite “Bull Durham”. Brad Pitt ... Read More »

By Monte Lazarus From the opening montage and Sidney Bechet’s accompanying soprano sax you know that you’re in for a paean to Paris. Woody Allen scripted and directed this sweet, sentimental mix of fun and fantasy in which even the unbelievable is completely charming. Young, laid-back screenwriter and aspiring novelist, Gil (Owen Wilson) joins his soon-to-be wife Inez (Rachel McAdams) to Paris on a junket.  They’ve been invited to join Inez’s parents who are on a business trip. The parents are insufferable. Gil has a bit too much to drink, becomes tipsy and decides to walk the streets of Paris. ... Read More »