The tension builds slowly in Old Henry (2021, not rated, 99 minutes) and you may be tempted to stop waiting to find out what it’s all about.

Truth is, it’s easy to stay with it.

There are no “stars” in Old Henry, and no Hollywood gush.

It’s a 1906 Oklahoma western that doesn’t need a soundtrack. There is father-son conflict and bonding galore.

There is persistent necessity to consider the yin and yang of what’s right and what’s wrong and a lot of the in-betweens.

You’ll learn a few things you don’t already know about the real-life Henry McCarty who called himself William Bonney and is known to history as Billy the Kid.

You can take some time to think about this: are we who we were, or are we who we are, or can we be who we want to be, or should we be who our loved ones think we are…

It was awarded “Best Feature” at the 2021 Almeria Western Film Festival.

Request Old Henry on DVD through the Minuteman Library Network

Request Old Henry on BLU-RAY through the Minuteman Network

Download the digital audiobook Billy the Kid: the endless ride by Michael Wallis

Request the book Billy the Kid: a short and violent life by Robert Utley

Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003, rated PG-13, 100 minutes) is historical fiction about Johannes Vermeer’s enigmatic portrait of an unknown young girl, circa 1665.

It’s a breathtaking, tantalizing love story…the master, Vermeer (Colin Firth), and his maid, Griet (Scarlett Johansson), explore the boundaries of passion, but without real hope.

This poem is my “Thumbs Up!” review:

in flagrante
So close, but they tremble alone,
shaken by knowledge,
they almost embrace their passion,
each moving to the boundary
without transgression,
but not without hurt.

The master, the worldly one,
the master in his house
filled with the baleful women
of his family,
tempted to the edge

of the precipice…

She, a maid with one name,
the child innocent,
heedless of her woman’s heat,
trespassing unaware
and ever nearer
to the mystery
that she barely understands.

She sits for him,
he moves his brush
but does not avert his gaze.

He beckons,
and she becomes
the girl with a pearl earring,
she feels the lush weight of it,
his fingertip sears her skin,
she inclines to his touch,
the gem at her ear,
and she trembles again
with a start of pain
that thrills but does not fulfill her.

He trembles in a long moment
with forgotten desire,
sees beyond his need
and steps back to his easel,
granting her more time
in the childhood she must learn to leave,
giving her a peace
that will be a bereavement,
a keening memory…

They look again at each other,
mute, apart, yet bound,
their bond unnamed,
without hope,
withering,
without joy…

Inspired by Girl with a Pearl Earring (1999) by Tracy Chevalier

Stream or download the movie Girl with a Pearl Earring through Hoopla 

Stream the movie Girl with a Pearl Earring through Kanopy

Request the DVD of Girl with a Pearl Earring through Minuteman 

Download the audiobook of Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier through Hoopla

Request the book Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier

Download the music soundtrack from the movie Girl with the Pearl Earring through Hoopla

Dangerous Liaisons (1988, rated R, 119 minutes) is not a garden of delight. 

If you aspire to a working understanding of good and evil, you could do worse than listen to the riveting chatter of the leading personae: the Marquise de Merteuil (Glenn Close) and the Vicomte de Valmont (John Malkovich). They choose each word with careful, deliciously ribald, austerely cruel, and domineering intent.

This is a boundless exposé of the worst elements—of human intrigue, self indulgence, hubris, vaunting egos, and careless poaching of souls—that masquerade as amour. Dangerous Liaisons is an ultimately degraded experience for both the characters and viewers, who must condemn the marquise and the vicomte for so many lives destroyed…death is an anticlimax in Dangerous Liaisons.

The marquise and the vicomte are burdened with a moral framework that shuns the absolute—they have unimaginably unsatisfied desires, and no intellectual imperative of right and wrong.

They swirl through their lives, casually jousting with each other as they amuse themselves in controlling the fates of other men and women, without realizing that they are not in control of their own fates.

The movie is based on a 1782 French epistolary novel titled Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos de Laclos, available in English translation.

View the movie Dangerous Liaisons through Hoopla

Stream the French language movie version: Les Liaisons Dangereuses through Kanopy

Request the DVD of Dangerous Liaisons through Minuteman Network

Request the BLU-RAY of Dangerous Liaisons through Minuteman Network

Borrow the ebook of Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos de Laclos (in English) through Hoopla

Request the book Dangerous Liaisons by Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos de Laclos (in English) through Minuteman Network

Atonement is a story of lives of irredeemable sadness. Ian McEwan wrote the book that is faithfully portrayed in this 2007 film (rated R, 123 minutes) it got seven Oscar nominations—starring Keira Knightly (Cecilia), James McAvoy (Robbie), Romola Garai (child Briony), Saoirse Ronan (18-year-old Briony), and Vanessa Redgrave (mature Briony).

In brief: a child tells a dreadful lie about her sister’s lover, forcing both of them to live separate, desperately tormented lives during World War II.

This poem is my “Thumbs Up!” review.

Unforgettable
This memory is lava hot,
it mingles, lava slow,
in all my thoughts,
in all my mind.

It is a crumble, peat, dark,
peat rich, no single whole,
but bits of all.
I cannot grasp it entire.

It fills me,
it is full of me,
full with my dread imaginings,
full with my discarded dreams,
so full…

It burns, it sears,
a red haze in my every gaze,
a scarlet shackle on each heartbeat.

I accept the impotence of atonement.

My long-ago childish deed cannot be undone,
that indulgence in excitement
and attention and novelty

and vengeance and purest love.

Unbidden, I saw an act I didn’t understand,
two lovers, I cherished them,
their coupling had no inner meaning for me,
yet showed they had more love for each other
than each for me…

Later, a twisted crime he did not—could not—commit,
yet I accused—“I saw him”—I lied,
to hurt him and to keep her, apart, for me.
That lie broke them.
At that moment, the words tasted brave
and older than my years.
The taste became gall.
Later, I was to know that I killed them.
My life has been my penance.

Now I understand what I could not see
and could not then feel.
Now I feel their horror that I invented
in place of their happiness.
Now I endure the unhappiness
they could not escape,
the terror born of a child’s simple plan
in a child’s heart.

…I keep those false words—“I saw him”—
spoken in righteous innocence,
in unknowable ignorance,
in unremembered pleasure…

I did not know I was trading my portion of happiness
for a memory that I keep
in a hole in my heart.

Request the DVD of Atonement

Request then novel Atonement by Ian McEwan

Download the audio book of Atonement by Ian McEwan through Hoopla

Request the audio book on CDs of Atonement by Ian McEwan

This irrepressible, inscrutable movie is about bad people who are sort of really good people, and sort of good people who refuse to let really bad things become their way of life.

Red is a murderer. Red is the philosopher-king of Shawshank Prison. For my money, Red is the main character. He repents his crime, he does the time, he comes to understand Andy Dufresne’s untouchable devotion to regaining his rightful freedom, and Red finally, doggedly, walks the line of rock walls in hayfields in Buxton until he unearths the final proof of a friendship, and hope.

Andy remains a mysterious character. We know he’s innocent, cruelly and unjustly entombed and forgotten in hell, we know what he does in Shawshank, we admire his motivation, and yet we know the man only as Red knows him. Red is a passive observer, responsive to Andy’s intellect, but Red never really understands Andy’s private self.

The movie is based on Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, a novel by Stephen King.

Request The Shawshank Redemption on BLU-RAY

Request The Shawshank Redemption on DVD

Request the book Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King

Request the audio book The Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King

Among more than 30 film adaptions of Oscar Wilde’s 1891 novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, a 1945 release (not rated, 110 minutes) starring Hurd Hatfield as Dorian Gray is generally acclaimed as the best. It got four Oscar nominations. Different viewers will have different opinions.

Just indulge the fantasy element: a painted portrait ages grotesquely while its subject, Dorian Gray, lives an unimaginably dissolute life and never looks older than a handsome 20 year old. Gray’s impulse to sell his soul for eternal youth was an offer The Evil One couldn’t refuse.

The 1945 black and white version superficially treats Gray’s moral struggles and capitulation which are so vividly probed in the book. A young Angela Lansbury was nominated as Best Supporting Actress for her rather placid role as Sybil Vane, Gray’s first victim. The actors talk too fast.

I like the 1973 version (rated TV-14, 111 minutes) starring Shane Briant as Dorian. The pace is natural, the cinematography is well staged in color, and the script obviously reflects the often meditative tone of the novel. Briant is a credible Dorian. The women in this production are rather conventionally feminine and they tend to be a part of the scenery.

A 1976 version produced as the BBC Play of the Month (in The Oscar Wilde Collection/British Broadcasting Corporation, not rated, 98 minutes) is a theatrical departure from Wilde’s penetrating exploration of Dorian’s corruption and anguish. Peter Firth superficially plays Dorian, and the production minimizes the horror of the painted portrait. Sir John Gielgud and Jeremy Brett offer their marvelous acting talents to redeem this version.

A 2009 film titled Dorian Gray (rated R, 112 minutes, Ben Barnes as Dorian) gets this classic story mostly wrong. This is a Hollywood-ized version, with too much action, too much graphic sexuality, and too much violence. Wilde’s philosophical ruminations on good and evil get lost. Colin Firth as Dorian’s amoral mentor, Lord Henry Wotton, is a quite believably demonic tempter and a cad.

Stream The Picture of Dorian Gray (1973 version starring Shane Briant) through Hoopla

Watch The Picture of Dorian Gray (2009 version starring Colin Firth) through Kanopy

Download the audiobook of The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde through Hoopla

Download the ebook of The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde through Hoopla

Request a copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde through Minuteman

Stamina is one thing you need to load up on so you can watch The Iceman Cometh (1973, rated PG, 239 minutes), based on Eugene O’Neill’s impressive 1939 play. Pathos, not so much. Your usual willingness to embrace pathos will be fully engaged, because O’Neill boiled this play in pathos.

Here’s the short version: A bunch of broke-down drunks in a 1912 Greenwich Village bar sprawl in their chairs, mutually reinforcing their relentless pursuit of a maundering besotted state that creates the milieu for exercising their pipe dreams. When their hero, the traveling salesman they call Hickey (Lee Marvin), tries to talk them into exorcizing their pipe dreams, they oh so tentatively agree…but they fail in oh so predictable ways.

Finally, Larry (Robert Ryan)—forlorn, a lapsed anarchist—mutters “Life is too much for me, I’ll be a weak fool, looking with pity at the two sides of everything ‘til the day I die.” The Iceman Cometh distinctly examines only one side of everything. It’s a slow eruption of despair. The film is a masterpiece of truth-telling. Hickey tells some truths about life that are all too real for some people, and all too horrid contingencies for the rest.

Watch The Iceman Cometh through Kanopy

Request the play The Iceman Cometh by Eugene O’Neill through MinuteMan

Request The Iceman Cometh on BLU-RAY

Request The Iceman Cometh on DVD

Request 20th century interpretations of The Iceman Cometh; a collection of critical essays, compiled by John Henry Raleigh

Request Eugene O’Neill: Complete plays, 1913-1943

The Bridges of Madison County (1995, rated PG-13, 135 minutes) documents the chance intersection of the unremarkable lives of Francesca and Robert with all the heat and dazzle of slow-moving lava, without its destructive power. They come together, they permit each other to nourish their beautiful personae, and they generate a passion that consumes without burning.

Francesca (Meryl Streep) and Robert (Clint Eastwood) come together too late in their lives, after unbreakable commitments have been made to other cherished persons who, regrettably, are not like themselves. They understand that they must be content with the short lifetime of their dalliance. They honor their love by deeply understanding its nature, and by accepting the permanent separation that their unyielding integrity requires. Robert whispers to Francesca: “…this kind of certainty comes only once…”

The Bridges of Madison County is a love song, a courtship, a delicate primer on yearning, a too brief opportunity to know how it feels to be in love like that.

Request the DVD of The Bridges of Madison County through Minuteman

Request the novel The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller through Minuteman

Request A Thousand Country Roads: an epilogue to The bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller through Minuteman

Stream the original sound track from The Bridges of Madison County through Hoopla

The African Queen (1951, rated PG, 105 minutes) was an adventure film when adventure had more to do with intrepid characters and the right thing and joie de vivre than with car chases and bullets flying every which way.

Charlie Allnut (Humphrey Bogart won an Oscar for Best Actor) kindly offers to take Rose Sayer (Katharine Hepburn was nominated for Best Actress) on a boat ride—in his broken down scow (The African Queen) on an unforgiving river in German East Africa in 1914.

Rose, the unworldly widow of a missionary, learns to manhandle the tiller, pours all the gin overboard, and generally civilizes Charlie quite enough. That scruffy bon vivant teaches her about pluck, honor, and kicking the old boiler to keep the boat going. They risk their lives for the war effort by sinking the German warship, and they decide to get married. Ain’t love grand?

Even if you saw the movie long ago, try it again.

Watch The African Queen through Hoopla

Watch The African Queen through Kanopy

Request the novel The African Queen by C.S. Forester, which is the basis for the movie 

Request a DVD of The African Queen

If you think that all good movies have Super Bowl excitement, don’t bother watching Scent of a Woman (1992, rated R, 157 minutes).

This obviously many-splendored film has grit, gusto, a pretty good tango, a red jaguar with pedal to the metal, a man confronting the downside of his life, a young man struggling with right and wrong, and the magical mix of truth, justice, and passion.

Army lieutenant colonel Frank Slade (Al Pacino, he won his only Oscar for Best Actor) rides the tiger of his past. He and Baird School student Charlie Simms (Chris O’Donnell) work through the highs and the lows of Slade’s blindness and Charlie’s rush to maturity as they learn about themselves and learn to trust each other.

Pacino won the Oscar for his sensitive portrayal of Slade, who rediscovers reasons for living, his own humanity, his devotion to integrity, and his grandchildren. If you’re a grandparent, you’ll probably agree that the last 90 seconds of the film may not be the best moments, but they are the endearing gift of Scent of a Woman.

Request the DVD through the Minuteman Library Network

Watch Discovering Al Pacino now through Kanopy

Request the book Al Pacino in Conversation with Lawrence Grobel through Minuteman