2013 - SAVING MR BANKS or portrait of an artist as a terrible person.

If you having a burning desire to watch a film about the creation of the Disney version of Mary Poppins, this film is for you.  Saving Mr. Banks is a long trudge back and forth between the author P.L. Travers tragic childhood in Australia and her bitchy behavior with Disney's creative team during the making of Mary Poppins.

It's pretty clear as the film goes on with it's crisscross story structure that the audience is going to understand why Travers ended up the way she did. In this film Travers finally sees the light when the Sherman Brothers the composers of Mary Poppins stick in the "Lets's Go Fly a Kite" song which brings Travers around.  After about 90 minutes of setting up what an emotionally damaged person Travers is this seems kind of like a cheat to wrap up the story.  Only in a Hollywood movie and particularly a Disney movie, could the core issue of P. L. Travers tragic relationship with her alcoholic father be resolved with a song

Andrews, Disney, Travers

 

The film has a good cast.  Tom Hanks is a likable guy who plays the likable Walt Disney.  Emma Thompson is a pro and does what she can do to soften the character.  The rest of the cast is filled in with decent actors like Paul Giamatti and Colin Farrell.  The director John Hancock has done a decent job keeping a way to long movie perking along.

However, 20 minutes digging around on the internet reveals that Travers was a lot nastier person than she was as portrayed by Emma Thompson.  In particular she mostly ruined the life of her adopted son and apparently was shunned by her family towards the end of her life. 

125 minutes.

2009 - THE BLIND SIDE, white woman fantasy about a black football player but not that kind of fantasy.

Affluent rich southern couple living in Atlanta take a big scary black football player into their home.  They help him get a good education while turning him into a star football player.  This is all supposedly based on a "true" story.   The movie is poorly written and directed and photographed like a TV show  Not a good movie but a moderately entertaining one.

"If a large number of people like something it is probably of low quality" to quote the famous musician Sun-Ra.  This is the working definition of that saying.  You get it all in this movie, the Rocky like training sequences, the cute wise beyond his age nine year old boy, high school cheerleaders and Sandra Bullock wearing really tight clothing. 

Sandra Bullock looks great and although she is never going to perform in Medea, she delivers the goods for the audience.  At least Bullock brings a little sincerity to her performance unlike Meryl Streep who has decided to actually stop acting in her movies.  

This is a feel good Lifetime channel Christmas movie, overall pretty stupid and kind of racially insulting.

The screenplay was by John Hancock, the running time is 129 minutes.