Tag Archive for: movie reviews

Rare Exports review

Check out Lily’s review of the 2010 movie, Rare Exports.

It’s that time of year again, where Christmas songs play in every shopping center and people life to snuggle up with cocoa to watch holiday movies. If you’re tired of Elf and It’s a Wonderful Life, and are looking for something a little darker this season, might I suggest you give Rare Exports a chance. Written and directed by Jalmari Helander, this 2010 release will have you laughing and gasping at the same time!

Set in Finland on Christmas Eve, the film follows young Pietari (Onni Tommila), his father Rauno (Jorma Tommila), and several of Rauno’s friends, as they take on a mighty evil that a nearby excavation has awakened. Let’s just say it’s been making a list, checking it twice, and as it turns out, nobody’s nice. While this tongue-in-cheek dark comedy doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test (truly, not even close), it is surprisingly heartwarming.

You’ll have a jolly good time watching this refreshing take on the tired “bad Santa” trope of Christmas horror movies. You can access this movie through the library on DVD, Hoopla, and Kanopy.

*My tip to you is to stock up on gingerbread cookies before you press play. Trust me, you’ll see why.

The Holly and the Ivy review

Check out David’s review of the 1952 movie, The Holly and the Ivy.

A refreshingly adult departure from the usual run of Christmas movies, The Holly and the Ivy (1952) is an English family drama set during the Christmas holidays in 1948. Though not without warmth or good cheer, it’s also a film with serious things to say about how parents and their grown children relate to each other.

Each Christmas, the Gregory family returns home to Wyndenham, a remote village in rural Norfolk, where the head of the family, Martin (Ralph Richardson), a country parson, resides with his daughter, Jenny (Celia Johnson). Martin’s youngest, Mick (Denholm Elliott), is in the Army. His other daughter, Margaret (Margaret Leighton), leads a sophisticated life in London. There are two elderly aunts (Margaret Halstan, Maureen Delany), an uncle (Hugh Williams), and, this year, Jenny’s boyfriend, David (John Gregson), who wants to marry her and take her away to South America, where he has a job opportunity. But that would force Jenny to leave her father alone as he’s approaching old age.

Margaret arrives late on Christmas Eve, and, after going out on a pub crawl with Mick, informs Jenny she has no intention of giving up her life in the city to take Jenny’s place caring for their dad. Later, Margaret shares surprising revelations with her sister about her experiences in London during the war, things she has not been able to tell their father. And on Christmas morning, Mick has a confrontation with his dad, accusing him of being unapproachable. In fact, all three of the Gregory children feel they can’t bring their problems to Martin because his profession puts a barrier between him and the realities of life. Eventually, a moving and dramatic epiphany brings the family together just as church services are about to begin on Christmas morning.

It’s hard to describe the charm of this film, set in an England long gone, but still surprisingly relatable in its universal depiction of a family, and the power of Christmas. The performances are uniformly excellent, from the stars to the delightful supporting players (especially Halstan and Delany as the eccentric aunts). The Holly and the Ivy was written by Wynard Browne and Anatole de Grunwald, and directed by George More O’Farrell. The music is by Malcolm Arnold. I enjoyed discovering this film and I think you will, too.

Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo review

Check out David’s review of the 1944 movie, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo.

Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944) has been called the most accurate film portrayal of the Doolittle Raid on Japan during World War II. Made while the war was still raging, it was based on a best-selling memoir by one of the pilots, Col. Ted Lawson. Despite the film being a docudrama rather than a strict documentary, nothing was sensationalized or romanticized in portraying the mission. And a daring, harrowing mission it was—a long-range retaliatory air raid on some of the Japanese main islands on April 18, 1942, four months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Sixteen B-25 bombers were used in the raid—heavy aircraft that were required to take off from the short deck of an aircraft carrier, the USS Hornet, which involved considerable training beforehand. This training takes up the first part of the film.

The second part consists of a short period on the Navy carrier, the take off, and the raid itself—an exciting, suspenseful sequence that’s a triumph of taut filmmaking and amazing special effects. The final section of the film is about the aftermath of the raid, when some of the bombers came down in China. This is an equally dramatic and absorbing part of the story. Van Johnson plays Ted Lawson with just the right mix of youthful brashness and sincerity. Robert Walker is Dave Thatcher, the navigator of Lawson’s plane, the “Ruptured Duck.” Phyllis Thaxter plays Lawson’s wife, Ellen, and there’s a good role for an up-and-coming actor named Robert Mitchum. Spencer Tracy takes on a supporting role as the man in charge of the raid, Lt. Col. James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle. The screenplay is by Dalton Trumbo (Exodus, Spartacus); the direction, by Mervyn LeRoy (Random Harvest, Quo Vadis).

With a bit of honest sentiment and a lot of fascinating detail, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo really delivers the goods and keeps you interested for its full 138-minute running time. It’s a stirring and accurate document of a mission that boosted US morale in the early, dark days of the war.