mikesilversteinusa Reviews

Doubt (I) (2008)

Intelligent script, World Class acting. Riveting

[10/10 · 14 February 2021]

A grew up in the 50's and 60's in a Catholic urban neighborhood, and everything seemed spot on to me.

There's a seven minute scene in this movie between Meryl Streep and Viola Davis that is - to me - the most remarkable and memorable piece of cinema brilliance I've seen. The two women, working together on this set, became fast friends. And this particular scene was Davis' rocket to stardom.

When Davis received her star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame in 2012, Streep was there, not just to cheer her on. She gave a speech, saying,"Viola Davis is possessed. She is possessed to the blazing, incandescent power. She is arguably the most immediate, responsive artist I have ever worked with," Meryl Streep then went on to describe Davis's ability to be "so alive she glistens" and to "write paragraphs with her eyes."

Watch the interplay between Meryl Streep and Viola Davis, and you will understand the respect, the admiration, and the brilliance they share.

The Shot Felt 'Round the World (2010)

I lived through so much of this....and it's true

[10/10 · 25 March 2019]

I was too young to remember when my cousin Lois came down with polio. I was just an infant when she became the second victim of the 1948 Los Angeles polio epidemic. She survived, walked with a limp, but her hair turned snow white.

She was well enough two years later to go door-to-door collecting for the March of Dimes. One woman asked to see her credentials. Lois had never heard that word before, so she showed the woman her tracheotomy scar. The woman gave her a contribution and called the LA Times. Lois was on the front page the next day.

Lois died last year, suffering post-polio syndrome and COPD.

I remember my Mom and Dad talked about whether they should volunteer me to be a Polio Pioneer. We lived in Pittsburgh, and there were going to be tests of a vaccine in schools in the East End of the city.

I remember the day a doctor and nurse came into my first grade classroom. with equipment including a bunsen burner.

"There will be no crying," said our teacher Mrs Cutler, "You are not kindergarten babies any more. No crying."

There was none, as they called us to the teacher's desk, one by one, row by row. Amazing to us today, they reused the needles, sterilizing them with the flame of the burner.

And I will never forget going home for lunch on April 12, 1955. We were all told to watch the News at Noon, for there would be an important announcement. The man came on the TV and said the vaccine was safe and effective. I was sitting on the living room floor, watching, and sipping some tomato and rice soup. I will never, ever forget how Mom leaned over, sat down, and hugged me, crying. "Oh, the children," she said over and over. "The poor children!"

I read in the newspaper today that Dr Sidney Busis died last week. He was 97. While Jonas Salk and Julius Youngner and the others were in the basement of the Municipal Hospital developing the live vaccine, Dr Busis was working 16 hour days, often 7 days a week during summer polio epidemics. Dr. Busis was on the third floor, performing tracheotomies on young victims who were struggling to survive.

Dr Busis, who is among the many Pittsburghers featured in this documentary, had four young sons. He made certain to change his shower after work and put on a change of clothes after leaving the hospital, in the hope that his four boys not be needlessly exposed to the polio virus.

Sidney Busis was a cousin of mine. When I was young, he would make house calls to see me when I was sick. I knew him when I was a young man, but he never once mentioned to me that he worked with Jonas Salk. He never bragged.

The great thing about this documentary is that it features many people - doctors, researchers, polio survivors, parents, all kinds of people who did their part in helping to conquer this terrible plague.

Salk is a hero among many heroes.

The Night of the Hunter (1955)

As a child, this movie gave me nightmares. It still does.

[10/10 · 11 March 2019]

Nearly sixty years ago, I stayed up late one night to watch Night of the Hunter on the late movie one weekend night. I was 12 years old. My parents were asleep. I watched it alone. It scared the hell out of me.

To me, the Reverend Harry Powell WAS the devil, and when little John - fleeing late at night for his life - turns and says, "don't he NEVER sleep?" - that instant became seared in my consciousness. Evil never sleeps. And sometimes it may even come your way singing gospel hymns in a deep baritone.

Sixty years later, I have a deeper appreciation of this film. The cinematography and lighting are beyond spectacular. This may be Hollywood's finest use of the German expressionism of the silent era. There is symbolism and metaphor throughout this masterpiece, giving it a dreamlike quality. Or, should I say, a nightmarish quality.

Robert Mitchum's Harry Powell is simply perfect. To me, he is up there with Hannibal Lechter as the scariest movie villain ever.

And Lillian Gish is the perfect foil.

This masterpiece stands alone in many ways. It is a child's nightmare come to the screen. Having seen it as a child, it is still the stuff of my nightmares. And viewing it as an adult, I have gained a deeper appreciation of how Agee, Laughton, Curtis, Mitchum, Gish, and others crafted this story into a classic for all time.

Won't You Be My Neighbor? (2018)

Love Is At the Root of Everything. All Learning, All Relationships. Love, or the Lack of It

[10/10 · 19 June 2018]

That's not the conclusion of this breathtaking documentary. That's pretty much how it gets started. And it gets much, much deeper from there.

We are all the cumulative effect of what we have seen, done, and experienced in our lifetimes, and, deep within us, remains the child we once were. For millions of us, Fred was a true friend of that child, and seeing his kindness, his patience, his wisdom, and his love awakens that child within us, and the tears begin to flow. Mine certainly did.

As a newly-ordained minister whose calling was child development, young Fred Rogers hit the lottery. He found a job in Pittsburgh, literally across the street from the University of Pittsburgh, which had on its faculty four giants in the field of child development: Eric Erickson, T. Barry Brazelton, Benjamin Spock, and Dr. Margaret MacFarlane. What he learned from them he combined with his deep religious faith, informed, above all, by the commandment to love thy neighbor as thyself.

He tells us that the greatest gift you ever give is your honest self. That children must be loved, and must know that they are capable of loving and worthy of being loved. And that - dear friends - is what he meant when he said you make this day a special day, just by being you - and I like you just the way you are.

Fred Rogers gave us the greatest of gifts, because the man we saw on the screen when we were young was, in fact, his honest self. There are no skeletons in his closet. None. But there are stories and film clips that will leave you breathless or in tears.

The timing of this movie's release couldn't be better. With the decline in the civility of our public discourse all all that is going on around us, Fred Rogers takes us back to a much gentler time and reminds us who we are and where we came from. This documentary can make you stop and rethink who you are and what you are doing with your life.

Other celebrities and public figures may be like shooting stars, lighting the skies only to flicker out and be gone. Some may be like the planets or stars, moving about and sometimes drifting out of sight. But for more than three decades, Fred Rogers taught us that we were of value, and so were other people. He helped us navigate the mysteries and drama of childhood. He showed us the difference between right and wrong, and we trusted him. Fred Rogers was like the North Star, always pointing in the direction of True North. Even today, as we are grown, when we are lost or confused, we can seek him out, and he will show the way home.

See this movie. Enjoy the stories, anecdotes, and video clips. Bring plenty of Kleenex and have a good cry. And relearn the lessons that Fred taught us when we were small. Nourish the child within you, and your heart will be glad.

I, Tonya (2017)

Great fun, Great acting. But alternative facts.

[9/10 · 8 January 2018]

So you want blue collar? You want drama? How 'bout a family where Dad's a welder, who works two jobs so that his blue collar daughter can have the money for skating lessons? How 'bout her "best Christmas ever," when her two brothers get hockey sticks and so does she? How 'bout her mom being legally blind, and never really able to see her skate. And how 'bout her brother getting into a fistfight with her Dad, and he dies of a heart attack?

Nope. Not Tonya. Nancy Kerrigan.

Tonya wasn't blackballed because she was poor. She was blackballed because she was trailer trash. And the pecksniffians who run the figure skating racket didn't want any WWE story lines, even though the dramas were certainly ratings boosters.

Of course, like any WWE story line, you gotta have a heel, and Tonya and her friends in the Axis of Evil are the perfect heels. And, like WWE, a lot of this is kayfabe.

The movie is great fun. The acting is world class, and Allison Janney seems to be a lock for Best Supporting Actress. This flick is like watching two hours of a car crash. You know what's coming, but you can't take your eyes off it.

It nails the landing, especially the end.

The Post (2017)

Nothing subtle about the First Amendment either

[10/10 · 22 December 2017]

The Post is a solid Hollywood retelling of the events surrounding the landmark Supreme Court case of New York Times v United States (1971), in which the Nixon Administration sought to prevent publication of documents detailing the secret history of U-S involvement in French Indochina and Vietnam. Those classified documents - the so-called Pentagon Papers - made it clear that multiple administrations were untruthful with the American public about growing involvement in a land war in Southeast Asia.

The New York Times had first access to the secret papers, and Neil Sheehan wrote a blockbuster front page series that rocked political Washington to its core. But after the first part was printed, the Nixon Justice Department went to court and got a federal judge to issue an injunction forbidding the Times from printing additional stories from the classified Pentagon Papers due to national security concerns. Times executives and reporters were threatened with possible criminal charges under the Espionage Act.

The Washington Post played second fiddle at first. The Times had the story, and the Post was playing catch up, but with the Times stymied, Post staffers were all hands on deck trying to gain access to the Papers or find the source. Some of the Papers were literally dropped in their laps.

"The Post" tells the story of how the Washington Post got the first sampling of documents, how they tracked down the source, how they got the Mother Lode of documents, and how Post publisher Katherine Graham faced the decision of whether or not to publish the documents at a time when the future - indeed the very survival - of her family's newspaper was very much in doubt.

Having lived through this myself as a very young Washington reporter at the time, I can assure you that the movie accurately captures the high drama of those few decisive weeks. The First Amendment really did hang in the balance. And reporters really did face the very real possibility of going to jail.

Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks co-star as Graham and Ben Bradlee, and they are perfect in their roles and even better in their chemistry. Katie Graham was the owner of the Post and she made the major decisions, but Ben ran the operations. Streep captures Graham's initial doubts, indecision, and her strong will. Hanks is just as solid in his portrayal of Bradlee, who may have been the day-to-day boss at the Post, but still had to take orders from Graham. I'm not sure if Streep or Hanks ever met Graham or Bradlee, but they seem to have known them. The on-screen interaction is as good as anything Hepburn and Tracy ever did, She's the strong woman, and he's never once emasculated.

Meryl Streep is going to win the Oscar for Best Actress for three reasons. First, because she's that good and deserves it. Second, because she's Meryl Streep and she's always that good. And third, because the message of this movie is a message that resonates today. When Streep accepts the award, she should thank Donald Trump and the ghost of Richard Nixon for making it all possible.

There are times when the script gets a little preachy, but that's probably because it's meant to be. It's all done in vivid colors, because there's nothing subtle about our First Amendment rights and freedoms. Not back then, and certainly not now.

It may at times be a bit over the top, such as one scene when Graham is leaving the Courthouse and passes what seems to be an endless line of young women who are looking up to her in hope and admiration. While that rope line of young women was an obvious exaggeration, Graham was and remains an iconic and inspirational figure and, as one famous conservative once observed, extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Graham put herself, her fortune, and her sacred honor on the line in defense of freedom.

This movie is meant to be a movie for our times, but it's a classic American tale. It's about a great metropolitan newspaper, and the fight for truth, justice, and the American way. It's about the values some of us still cling to. And high among the hierarchy of those values is that of a free people informed by a free press in an open marketplace of ideas.

The message of this movie is as clear today as it was 46 years ago, in Justice Black's stirring opinion when the Supeme Court affirmed the right of the Times and Post to publish the Pentagon Papers.

"In the First Amendment the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors."

This is, indeed, a lesson for our times, and for all times.

Wonder (I) (2017)

It is a Wonder how they threaded the needle so perfectly

[10/10 · 24 November 2017]

This is the adaptation of a book written for children and young adults. The book was a runaway best-seller, and director Stephen Chbosky was determined to keep the movie true to the book. The book was as predictable as an Afterschool Special and there was nothing subtle about the plot. It's manipulative as can be. It's formulaic. If the movie was to remain true to the beloved novel, it had to be all these things.

And yet, Chbosky has created a wonder of cinema that kids love and makes their parents and grandparents weep unashamedly. We may know where we are going with this movie, but it is an unforgettable journey. Stephen Chbosky threaded the needle here, keeping true to R.J. Palacios' book, painting the plot, dialogue, and action in vivid colors so that kids will understand and love it, and yet making it intelligent enough that adults love it even more, and on many different levels.

The screen writing is brilliant, and the acting ensemble is breathtakingly good.

Jacob Tremblay may be a once in a generation young actor. Owen Wilson and Julia Roberts are perfect in their roles as Auggie's parents. Izabela Vidovic takes your heart as Auggie's older sister, who has needs of her own. And Mandy Patinkin and Daveed Diggs hold it all together - brilliantly - while dispensing the wisdom (and Afterschool Special lessons) that we all need to learn, and learn again.

Patinkin - as Mr Tushman the Principal - tells the students that Auggie might not be able to change the way he looks, but we can change the way we see.

And courageous young Auggie, who has been through so much, reminds us that he's not the only person with needs. "Be kind," he tells us, "for everyone you meet may be fighting a hard battle."

This movie is this generation's version of what Pauline Kael called Capra-corn. It is unapologetically sentimental. It manipulates you and plays on your emotions. It's all about good and bad, about the values we hopefully learned as kids, and need to relearn as we become more worldly.

And like Capra's movies, the audiences love Wonder far more than the reviewers. That's why this movie had the highest audience testing ratings in Lionsgate's history.

Take your car, take the subway, take your family, and see this movie. It's that good. And bring Kleenex.