A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Why didn't I see this sooner, perhaps in a theater? Probably because Won't You Be My Neighbor? came out not so long before. But now seems like a good time to explore promising stress relief.

In 1998, Lloyd (Matthew Rhys), an Esquire writer based loosely on Tom Junod, has such a reputation for scathing articles that almost nobody will agree to an interview with him anymore. His editor, Ellen (Christine Lahti), gives him a different kind of assignment: 400 words on Fred Rogers (Tom Hanks), as part of a series on heroes. Lloyd is not happy about this; neither is his wife, Andrea (Susan Kelechi Watson), partly because he'll have to fly from New York to Pittsburgh, leaving her alone with their baby for a while, and partly because she worries what he'll write about her childhood icon. But Rogers has a way of helping people deal with their emotions more healthily, which is especially important when Lloyd holds a serious grudge against his own father, Jerry (Chris Cooper).

Source Code (2011)

This is one of those titles that automatically turned me off: "I'm not enough of a computer geek to get into this." But such snap judgments lose their effectiveness with time, and the continuing popularity of SC was hard for me to ignore. Besides, I liked director Duncan Jones' work on Moon, and here was another sci-fi.

Twenty minutes into the future, if the already dated phone tech is any indication, a terrorist bombs a train in the Chicago area. An experimental government program under Dr. Rutledge (Jeffrey Wright) retrieves the last eight minutes of memory from one of the victims and sends the mind of biologically similar U.S. Army CPT Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) into it, enabling him to spend eight minutes finding the bomb and its planter however he can. He can retry any number of times, but the sooner he succeeds, the better their chances of preventing the bomber's next attack.

The Sapphires (2012)

My best guess for how I ever learned about this film is that it was advertised as I prepared to see another. Based on the subject, I'm not surprised it hasn't been talked about much in the U.S., despite financial success within its home country. Still, stories about singers tend to draw me in, so I chose it from my list.

Based on a play based very loosely on a true story, it takes place in 1968, starting at an Aboriginal Australian reserve. Three adult sisters -- in descending order of age, Gail (Deborah Mailman), Cynthia (Miranda Tapsell), and Julie (Jessica Mauboy) -- gain the attention of talent scout Dave (Chris O'Dowd), probably the first White person to recognize their merit as singers. He gets them on a tour -- along with their semi-estranged cousin, Kay (Shari Sebbens) -- performing soul classics for U.S. troops in Vietnam. Their most immediate concern, of course, is that the army can't fully guarantee safety.

Dreams (1990)

Wisely marketed by Netflix as "Akira Kurosawa's Dreams," this is my first anthology viewing since...well, another Kurosawa piece. It's also from later in his career than anything else I've seen. I figured I'd like it better than Dodes'ka-den, partly because dreams are bound to be at least close to fantasy.

There are eight stories, generally set in 20th-century Japan. In "Sunshine Through the Rain," a young boy ignores his mother's warning not to go into the woods on a day with the titular weather, because kitsune have weddings then and don't brook human witnesses. In "The Peach Orchard," another boy, missing the peach trees that his family clearcut, sees their strangely human-shaped spirits. In "The Blizzard," four mountain climbers are on the verge of succumbing, possibly to the yuki-onna, before reaching their camp. In "The Tunnel," a former WWII commander walks through a tunnel and meets the ghosts of men who died following his orders and don't know it yet. In "Crows," a budding artist imagines(?) himself meeting an anglophone Vincent van Gogh (Martin Scorsese!) in France and traversing the scenes of several paintings. In "Mount Fuji in Red," a nuclear meltdown rapidly depopulates the volcanic area, with most people deciding they'd rather drown than face cancer. In "The Weeping Demon," on another mountain, radioactivity has effectively turned humans into demons in a Buddhist hell. And in "Village of the Waterfalls," a traveler discovers a contented Luddite village.

Support Your Local Sheriff! (1969)

Gee, I saw my previous western comedy only about six months ago. But this was made 30 years later, near the time of more offbeat westerns, so I expected it to feel pretty different.

Jason McCullough (James Garner), a drifter with plans to move to Australia, stops at the fictitious young town of Calendar, Colorado. As a gold rush town, it's very expensive for the time, so he opts for a temp job -- as sheriff. Why, especially in a brawl-happy town where sheriffs have never stuck around long enough to collect pay, thanks to the Danby clan? Well, for all his casual air, he'd hate for Joe Danby (Bruce Dern, the only surviving actor today) to get away with the murder McCullough witnessed. Besides, he has a quick and accurate draw, which he's kept under wraps to avoid the wrong kind of attention until now.

Scent of a Woman (1992)

Had I known that this story takes place on a Thanksgiving weekend, I would have waited a few more weeks. After all, I can't fill November with seasonally appropriate fare like I do October. As it is, I prioritized SoaW solely because it was one of the most esteemed '90s flicks I hadn't seen yet.

Prep schooler Charlie (Chris O'Donnell in his star-making role) is not in the same economic bracket as most of his peers, so he can't return to his Oregon home from New England for the holidays yet. For extra income, he agrees to look after completely blind, retired lieutenant colonel Frank (Al Pacino) for the weekend while Frank's niece, her husband, and their kids go on vacation. It soon becomes obvious why they're not taking him along and why nobody else applied for the job: Frank's a jerk. Immediately after the rest of the family leaves, he takes charge and flies off to New York City, with Charlie reluctantly in tow and unable to return when he wants. Frank's goals are to crash the Thanksgiving dinner of his brother's family, live it up like an alcoholic millionaire at the Waldorf-Astoria...and commit suicide.

A Bridge Too Far (1977)

As often happens, I felt obliged to watch a movie featuring someone who recently died, in this case Sean Connery. He's one of the actors I've watched most, so there weren't many promising titles left. This one's pretty popular but has a bunch of other big names and countless speaking roles, so I wasn't sure it would showcase him well.

Based on a book that's at least partly based on reality, it tells of Operation Market Garden: In 1944, British, American, and Polish forces plan to use paratroopers and tanks to capture numerous bridges in the occupied Netherlands. Many soldiers doubt the feasibility of the mission, as it involves considerable travel along narrow roads, there's fog to consider, and even if the Germans don't send their best, they won't be pushovers. If you know this chapter of history, you know the doubts are correct.