Golda

Year 18, Day 176 - 6/25/26 - Movie #5,356

BEFORE: All right, I've confirmed 42 docs for the Doc Block - I'm going to make one last pass on my list to try to get the total up to 50, but I think it's a long shot. The chain is kind of telling me that it only wants to be 42 docs long - last year I did 49 and it sure felt too long, so I should probably take the hint. Still, I've got a couple more days off before I have to report back in to one of my jobs, so maybe...I know, just take the win and move on. 

Helen Mirren carries over again from "The Duke". This one has surfaced at a time where it may have some relevance, after Israel has been in the news within the last year for starting a war, and of course once again there's no peace in the Middle East, so let's take a look back through history to another war, maybe I'll get some understanding. 

THE PLOT: Focuses on the intensely dramatic and high-stakes responsibilities and decisions that Golda Meir, also known as the "Iron Lady of Israel", faced during the Yom Kippur War. 

AFTER: I was alive during the Yom Kippur War of 1973, but honestly, this is the first time I'm ever hearing about it. I guess when you're only 5 years old you don't really pay attention to the wars around the world, and maybe your parents also protect you a little bit so that you don't. The first time I remember even thinking about the Middle East was probably around the time of the Camp David accords, where Begin and Sadat sat down with Jimmy Carter and a few things got worked out - but that kind of comes at the end of this movie, almost as a follow-up. 

Golda Meir was the first female Prime Minister of Israel, to date the only female head of that country's government. But she was there at the start when Israel became a country in 1948, she was one of the signers of Israel's Declaration of Independence. She served as Labor Minister and then Foreign Minister, appointed by David Ben-Gurion, and retired in 1966 for health reasons. But then in 1969 she was back, becoming Prime Minister after the death of Levi Eshkol, and during her tenure she made many diplomatic visits to Western leaders to promote peace in the Middle East. The only thing that could possibly get in the way of her plan was some country like Egypt or Syria (or both) starting some kind of military campaign against Israel - I mean, come on, really, what are the odds? 

According to this film, she received intelligence reports that Egypt was amassing a large force on the other side of the Suez Canal, and word was that a war would start by sundown. Israel's forces were largely caught off guard, and Golda Meir refused to launch a pre-emptive strike, because, well, how would that look? Israel could be seen as the aggressor in that scenario, and that really didn't fit in with the image of a country seeking peace, to strike first. However, a large portion of the country's forces were mobilized in response to the threat across the border, then Syria launched an attack as well, so the troops were ill-prepared, also throwing Meir and her defense minister, Moshe Dayan, for a loop. Egypt and Syria both infiltrated different parts of Israel, gaining land between October 7 and 8. Moshe Dayan proposed an air strike on Damascus, Syria, however Israel was short on planes, and had to ask Henry Kissinger, the U.S. Secretary of State, to send them some extra jets. 

Kissinger was in a bit of a bind here, because he was trying to maintain good relations with all of the parties involved, like to keep the oil flowing from Egypt and Syria to the U.S., however he was also Jewish and had a relationship with Golda Meir, therefore he sent the jets, but I'm guessing it would have been a scandal if those other countries found out where Israel got them. 

On the fifth day of the war, Major General Ariel Sharon proposed sending the 143rd Tank Division across the Suez Canal to challenge the Egyptian armies. Israeli intelligence learned that the Egyptians would not be able to cross the canal for two days, because that would leave Cairo undefended - then when they did, they were defeated by the Israeli tank forces waiting for them. A few day after that, Sharon's forces crossed the canal at an undefended point, and despite being ambushed, they held their position - meanwhile the Third Egyptian Army got barricaded and Egypt was forced into negotiations. Kissinger came back to talk Golda Meir into accepting a ceasefire, but she went ahead with her plans because Israel had the upper hand at that point. 

What followed seems a lot like what we went through after the Israel-Palestine conflict - diplomatic talks, exchange of POWs, and a re-drawing of borders based on who won and who lost. History doesn't repeat, but it often rhymes. Golda Meir got treated again for cancer, and maybe it's just who she was or maybe the times were different, but apparently, according to this movie, if you were the Israeli Prime Minister you could light up a cigarette right there in the hospital while you were receiving cancer treatments. I suspect times have probably changed, and you can't do this today, or maybe only the leaders of countries could do this. 

 A year later, Golda Meir testified before a commission regarding her conduct during the war - this film is rather non-linear, it's possible that the whole war is seen here during flashbacks while she is testifying, but I suppose other answers are possible, perhaps it just jumps around in time for artistic or confusing reasons. Anyway, Golda does not mention how her general's plan to monitor communications from Egypt failed to warn them of the attack - either the eavesdropping didn't work, or perhaps nobody was listening to the monitors at all. Either way, her generals dropped the ball, but she took the hit for not being ready to respond to the attack at first. Instead she chalks her delay up to resistance to retaliate, however she still maintained that she felt the Yom Kippur War was inevitable, even if nobody knew when it would arrive, they knew war was coming. Umm, OK, that's your defense, if you're comfortable splitting hairs like that. 

And four years after that, Golda is seen dying in a hospital bed while watching footage of her meeting with Sadat in 1977. Still, she's chain smoking, so I guess some people never learn - I'm pretty sure that smoking in a hospital ward while using an oxygen tank is a recipe for disaster. But again, it was a different time and that's how addicted some people were to smoking in the 1970's. 

Directed by Guy Nattiv

Also starring Camille Cottin (last seen in "A Haunting in Venice"), Rami Heuberger (last seen in "Schindler's List"), Rotem Keinan (last seen in "The Operative"), Emma Davies (last seen in "The People We Hate at the Wedding"), Lior Ashkenazi (last seen in "Norman"), Dominic Mafham (last seen in "Ophelia"), Dvir Benedek, Ed Stoppard (last seen in "Nanny McPhee Returns"), Ohad Knoller (last seen in "Operation Finale"), Liev Schreiber (last seen in "The Daytrippers"), Jaime Ray Newman (last seen in "Made of Honor"), Zed Josef, Henry Goodman (last seen in "Their Finest"), Jonathan Tafler (last seen in "Yentl"), Ellie Piercy (last seen in "The Dig"), Mark Fleischmann (last seen in "Enola Holmes 2"), Daniel Ben Zenou, Sara Matin, Dalia Librus, Kit Rakusen (last seen in "Jay Kelly"), 

with archive footage of Menachem Begin, Jimmy Carter (last seen in "The Iron Claw"), Henry Kissinger (last seen in "Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything"), Golda Meir, Richard Nixon (last seen in "Rather"), Anwar Sadat, 

RATING: 5 out of 10 aerial photographs

The Duke

Year 18, Day 175 - 6/24/26 - Movie #5,355 - FATHER'S DAY FILM #12

BEFORE: Just one week left in June now, and that's also one week until the start of the Doc Block, neatly coinciding with July 1 to line up the best film for July 4 and the (nearly) All-American line-up of documentaries for our country's 250th Birthday - I added a couple more films into the mix, so I think now I'm up to 41 or 42 docs. I mean, 50 would be great for 50 states and 50 stars on the flag, but I don't think I can make that happen in time. 

Helen Mirren carries over from "The Last Station". Keeping track of everyone who appears in every doc is going to be a logistical nightmare, that's why I started early by compiling the cast lists in advance, but it's still going to be a lot of work, all that archive footage. Today's film has footage of John F. Kennedy in it, so he's got a bit of an unfair head start. Honestly, I don't know who's going to have the most appearances, it could be a U.S. President or it could be a talk-show host like Johnny Carson or Conan O'Brien or Letterman or Cavett, I'm just fairly sure we'll have a new front-runner when the Doc Block is over, the leader right now is still Jason Statham with 6 appearances this year. 

THE PLOT: In 1961, a 60-year-old taxi driver named Kempton Bunton steals Goya's portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery of London. 

AFTER: This film is intended as both comedy and social commentary, but it is based on a true story, the real 1961 theft of a Goya painting from London's National Gallery - now we the audience have a tiny bit of information at the start of the film about who nicked the art, but you kind of have to read between the lines a little to figure that bit out. It is very easy to leap to the conclusion, as the police did, that Kempton Bunton stole the painting, simply because he was the one who was trying to return the painting for the cash reward. Which raises a few questions, namely was there honestly a reward being offered for the painting's return, or was this just a desperate attempt to lead the thief to come forward, in order to claim that reward? It sure does not seem to be a "no questions asked" type of reward if Bunton showed up with the painting (approximate value: 140,000 British pounds) and they didn't just hand him a check, or even a cheque. Nope, he was arrested and put on trial, for a number of several but connected charges. They charged him with the theft of the painting, the theft of the frame, and also for the damage done to the country's citizenry as they were deprived of the opportunity to enjoy the sight of the painting for several weeks. 

Yes, we're exploring the vagaries of the British legal system once again, second night in a row, and just because a man tries to return a painting for the reward money, naturally that man immediately becomes the prime suspect in the art's disappearance, but, you know, other answers are possible. His fingerprints were not on the painting, but he could have worn rubber gloves. There was no footage of him entering the gallery or taking the painting, but who knows, maybe this elderly bus driver and part-time bread baker was somehow a criminal mastermind and an expert at avoiding cameras and picking locks. Hey, it could happen. 

After all, this is a guy who tried to get out of paying the license fee for his television, because he had disabled the coil on the telly that allowed the signal from BBC1 and BBC2 to be picked up, he claimed that he only watched the other channels, and not the ones financed by the U.K. government, therefore he didn't owe any money to the government for their services. Well, the TV inspectors didn't really see things his way, Mr. Bunton argued that TV should be free for all people, but especially senior citizens who were already having enough trouble making ends meet on a limited income. And he was willing to campaign and petition around his neighborhood for support on this issue, while his wife would have much preferred if he paid the 2p or whatever the fee was, then she could enjoy watching her TV without the fear and shame of breaking the law. 

My own father was kind of the same way, we never had cable TV when I was a kid, because my father felt we shouldn't have to PAY for television, it should be free, and after I moved to New York City I couldn't WAIT to get cable and the hundreds of channels that came with it. Years later I offered to buy cable for him because I knew how much he and my mother enjoyed PBS shows, and they deserved to watch them in HD, plus all the shows on A&E, Animal Planet, etc. We fought for years about this, but finally I just went ahead and arranged the cable installation and had the bills sent to me, and this was just a couple years before they stopped sending TV signals out over the airwaves, and suddenly everybody had to have cable if they wanted clear reception. You know, it kind of benefited me because then I got to keep enjoying cable TV when I went and visited them - but I had to kind of force my father around to my way of thinking. 

Anyway, Kempton had a difficult time after he lost his taxi driver job because he was too talkative and tended to say a lot of crazy things - he then kept promising his wife he'd find a new job, however he tended to sneak off to London to try and drum up press coverage for his TV license cause, while also trying to get someone at the BBC to buy his scripts to turn into TV shows. Kempton also got a job baking bread, but made the mistake of pointing out his supervisor's inherit racism in forcing the workers with darker skin back off their breaks earlier than the white workers. Kempton's wife worked as a housekeeper and babysitter for a local councillor and his wife, however once Kempton got accused of art theft they were forced to fire her, as they were afraid of bad publicity. Kempton's son Jackie worked on building boats, while his elder brother Kenny who lived in Leeds had a job in construction but you know, that probably meant he did low-level jobs for the mob. 

Meanwhile, the police are working hard to try to figure out the identity of the thief, they even brought in a handwriting analysis expert to study the notes that Kempton was sending to the newspapers, in which he was suggesting a plan to exhibit the painting to raise money for his political cause of paying for the TV licenses for older people, however when this plan seemed like a no-go, he resorted to just walking back into the museum with the painting to try to return it via the lost & found department. This was the point at which he got arrested. 

His barrister's propsed defense argument in court involved around proving that Kempton never meant to "steal" the painting for good, but just to "borrow" it for his fund-raising campaign with plans to return it once he'd raised the money for the TV licenses. The court couldn't really view this as a valid excuse, for fear that other people would then walk into art museums and help themselves to the valuable paintings whenever they were short on cash. Well, you can't blame a defendant for trying. But something happened as Kempton was giving testimony on the stand, he just seemed so plain and down-to-earth and friendly that he won people over. It was really hard to believe in the first place that an older man could have been such a nimble thief, plus he didn't really fit the profile of "criminal mastermind" at all, so he was acquitted of the crime of stealing the painting, however the jury did hold him responsible for the theft of the frame, which was never returned or ever found. 

Meanwhile, back at home the true art thief reveals himself, and then of course WHY Kempton was willing to take the blame and go on trial and serve time made perfect sense. Eventually even the police figure out who the real thief was, but re-opening the case and having another trial might cause them to be seen as inept, plus the fact that Kempton was incarcerated even though he was innocent would give him a reason to sue them for false imprisonment, so the police intentionally did not pursue the matter any further. Really this became a comedy of errors across the board, and while not much of it is laugh-out-loud funny, a lot of it is slice-of-life, isn't-that-quite-peculiar funny. 

Really, there's just one thing missing - the film could have used an animated bear who liked marmalade and wears a rainhat who also could have been falsely accused of art theft and gone to prison for it. I mean, this all feels a bit like a "Paddington" film only it doesn't have Paddington in it. Do you remember someone used to alter the "Garfield" comic strips to remove Garfield from every panel? Those were kind of weird because there was just empty spaces where Garfield should have been and it all felt kind of surreal and sad. Yeah, this is kind of like that, it's definitely a Paddington movie without Paddington. I wonder if somebody could add him now, using A.I. JK. 

The real theft was so famous that it got referenced in the first James Bond film, "Dr. No" - the painting of the Duke of Wellington is seen in Dr. No's hideout, implying that maybe he was the one that took it - well, at the time it was just as good a guess as any.

Directed by Roger Michell (director of "Morning Glory" and "Notting Hill")

Also starring Jim Broadbent (last seen in "Jay Kelly"), Matthew Goode (last seen in "Imagine Me & You"), Fionn Whitehead (last seen in "Voyagers"), James Wilby (last seen in "The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare"), Anna Maxwell Martin (last seen in "Alan Partridge"), Sian Clifford (last seen in "See How They Run"), Charles Edwards (last seen in "The Witches" (2020)), Charlotte Spencer (last seen in "Dark Shadows"), John Heffernan (last seen in "Official Secrets"), Aimee Kelly (last seen in "The Personal History of David Copperfield"), Richard McCabe (last seen in "Gladiator II"), Joshua McGuire (last seen in "Saltburn"), Jack Bandeira (last seen in "Venom: Let There Be Carnage"), Sam Swainsbury (last seen in "Thor: The Dark World"), Andrew Havill (last seen in "The Last Vermeer"), Neal Barry, Craig Conway (last seen in "The Current War"), Michael Hodgson, Dorian Lough (last seen in "Far from the Madding Crowd"), Sarah Beck Mather (last seen in "Deep Cover"), Michael Mather, Austin Haynes (last seen in 'The Boys in the Boat"), Simon Hubbard, Matthew Steer (last seen in "Criminal"), Val McLane, Michael Gould (last seen in "Radioactive"), Heather Craney (last seen in "Child 44"), Claire Lams, Stephen Rashbrook, Ashley Kumar, Darren Charman (also last seen in "Deep Cover"), Sparrow Michell, Michael Adams (last seen in "Papillon" (2017)), Steve Giles, Andrew John Parker, Cliff Burnett, Sarah Cotton, Sarah Annett, Alice Stokoe, Sharon Facinelli, with archive footage of Sean Connery (last seen in "What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears?", John F. Kennedy (last seen in "Apollo 18"), Joseph Wiseman (last seen in "Dr. No")

RATING: 7 out of 10 ginger nut biscuits 

The Last Station

Year 18, Day 174 - 6/23/26 - Movie #5,354 - FATHER'S DAY FILM #11

BEFORE: Well, darn, I went and programmed this film, then it seems like it disappeared from Hulu just a couple weeks later. I realize everything has an expiration date, but these things do tend to happen at the worst times. I'm programmed to make it to July 1 in a set number of steps, so I can land the right film on July 4. Usually it's no big deal, if a film is gone from Netflix, maybe it went to Hulu - if it left Hulu, maybe it went to Tubi or Roku, I don't mind a few ads. This one isn't screening anywhere that isn't going to charge me an additional fee, like YouTube or Apple TV, and I haven't found a new pirate site to replace the one that got shut down. 

Wait, maybe I can find a replacement film, another film on my list that could just happen to connect the same two films, that I could just drop into the place, with no lengthening of the chain.  Sure, there are two films I could watch instead - but one is a romance film, and it's firmly entrenched in a chain saved for February, so I could screw up a whole month's worth of films by watching that now. The other substitute is that film set during Christmastime about the dying mother, which I already passed on once, and now I'm saving that for Christmas some year. 

So damn it, I have to pay the $4 today to watch this film and keep the chain going without tearing apart a set chain of a week's length just to try to end up in the same place, I honestly don't even know if that would be possible. YouTube gets paid today, because iTunes is just a hollowed-out shell now, they never have any movies that I want to watch any more - and I can watch YouTube on my computer and not my phone, at least. OK, so that's the plan, pay the fee and I can stick with the chain that I know is going to get me to the Doc Block. John Sessions carries over from "Denial". 

THE PLOT: A historical drama that illustrates Russian author Leo Tolstoy's struggle to balance fame and wealth with his commitment to a life devoid of material things. 

AFTER: I have to admit I don't know much about Leo Tolstoy, I mean the man as opposed to the author - you can know an author by his works, but is that all that he was?  This film is an account of the last year of his life, 1910, during which his almost cult-like followers wanted him to create a new will, one which would place his copyrights in the public domain, which seemed like a very Socialist thing to do, and Socialism was kind of having a moment right around then on the Russian political scene. However, Tolstoy's long-term wife seemed to have other ideas about who should own those copyrights and profit from the book sales after his death. Well, she had gotten used to living in a nice big house and all the comforts therein, who could blame her? 

We see the strain on the marriage through the eyes of Tolstoy's new secretary, Valentin Bulgakov, who is assigned the job by Chertkov, the leader of the "disciples" known as Tolstoyans, not "Leo-Crats" as you might imagine. Valentin can see both sides of the argument, especially after Tolstoy's wife Sofya is very nice to him, but he also understands how much the author means to the entire nation, and there seems to be growing sentiment against the aristocrats and the other people who "own" stuff - shouldn't wealth be better distributed among the population?  Ah, but Valentin hasn't seen the other side of Sofya, the long-suffering wife who might also have anger issues or mental problems. Well, sure, who wouldn't after 40 years of marriage? These two can't be in the same room for 10 minutes without talking about killing each other. Yeah, that tracks. 

Tolstoy, of course, has 14 children, that's what makes this another addition to the Father's Day themed programming. See, I knew there was a reason why I stayed the course and didn't drop in a substitute film... Tolstoy came from a family of old Russian nobility, his father was a Count, and he was the fourth of five children, but both parents died before he was ten. When he went to university, his teachers described him as "both unable and unwilling to learn". After running up gambling debts, the simplest (?) thing to do was join the Army and fight in the Crimean War - hey, that's my favorite go-to Jeopardy answer whenever there's a question about Russian Wars! His war service and two trips around Europe turned him from a privileged noble into a non-violent anarchist - well, sure, OK, I love that for him. Who knew that he had a running correspondence with Gandhi?  

After founding a number of schools for the children of peasants, Tolstoy decided to get married, and he chose Sophia Behrs, sixteen years his junior and the daughter of a court physician. She acted as his support system - secretary, editor and financial manager - giving him the freedom to write "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina". They had 13 children, eight of whom survived past childhood. But as Tolstoy became more radical in his views, the relationship with his wife kind of deteriorated, the film represents the ultimate result of all that. We see Tolstoy leave his estate after signing the new will, he really just needs to be somewhere else to "continue his work". This is that condition we call "artist brain", where an author or filmmaker refuses to admit that he's old and really needs to retire.  

Leaving his wife behind has unintended results - when she learns that he has left to parts unknown and has no plans to return, she immediately heads for the lake and tries to drown herself. Well, love makes people do some funny things sometimes - she couldn't stand to live with him any more, but the thought of living without him was even worse. He had taken a train to Astapovo station, which was literally (and figuratively) the end of the line - he apparently became ill at some point along the way. Their daughter Sasha did allow her mother to see him briefly before he died, I suppose that was the least she could have done. The new will stood for a while, but in 1914 the Russian senate allowed the copyrights of his works back to his widow. 

Helen Mirren does most of the heavy lifting here, Christopher Plummer is much more passive, but to be fair, he was playing Tolstoy as a pacifist. However, remember that he was also an anarchist, and we just don't really get to see that side of him here. Paul Giamatti is pretty passive too, but his character is a schemer, and the actor only gets to do his trademark "temper flare-up" thing once in this movie - probably the most Giamatti-esque that Paul Giamatti ever got was during his performance in "Big Fat Liar", I realize that now. Well, that and "Private Parts" and "Sideways", I realize you could edit a whole compilation together of scenes with characters played by Giamatti losing their tempers...

Directed by Michael Hoffman (director of "The Best of Me" and "Game 6")

Also starring Helen Mirren (last seen in "The Thursday Murder Club"), Christopher Plummer (last seen in "The Exception"), Paul Giamatti (last seen in "Big Fat Liar"), James McAvoy (last seen in "The Bubble"), Patrick Kennedy (last seen in "The November Man"), Kerry Condon (last seen in "In the Land of Saints and Sinners"), Anne-Marie Duff (last seen in "On Chesil Beach"), Tomas Spencer (last seen in "Beyond the Sea"), Christian Gaul, Wolfgang Hantsch, David Masterson, Anastasia Tolstoy, Maximilian Gartner, Nenad Lucic, Henning Mosselman

RATING: 6 out of 10 broken plates

Denial

Year 18, Day 173 - 6/22/26 - Movie #5,353

BEFORE: Now I've really got to boogie, because it's just nine days until the start of the Doc Block and I've got nine films to watch to get there - so no more skip days in June, we're gonna ride this narrative train until we run out of rails. 

Sally Messham carries over from "Aftersun", and I really didn't have too many options coming out of that one, I mean it was either punt and look for another Paul Mescal film, or just go with this one. This is easier, I think.

THE PLOT: Acclaimed writer and historian Deborah E. Lipstadt must battle for historical truth to prove the Holocaust actually occurred when David Irving, a renowned denier, sues her for libel. 

AFTER: This is a movie about the vagaries of the British legal system, as a Holocaust denier began to make arguments in favor of the theory that the Holocaust had not happened, it was all just a big misinterpretation of the facts of World War II, he started causing disruptions during lectures given by Deborah Lipstadt, an American historian and author. According to David Irving, Hitler did not have a particular grudge against Jewish people, he only put them in labor camps, not concentration camps, where a lot of them just happened to die natural deaths, as people tend to do. According to him, Hitler put a lot of groups of people into labor camps, like gypsies, gay people, the poor and the unhoused and the physically disabled - and he only had their best interests at heart, like who couldn't use the extra exercise and the structured life that only a labor camp could provide? And the meals, I mean, don't even get me started on the free meal service, you probably can't beat the food served to you in the chow line at a labor camp, plus the feeling of camaraderie that only comes from being on a work crew with a thousand other people, working from sun-up to sundown with no breaks. Concentration camps? Perish the thought, why would a practical German man like Hitler kill all those people when he considered them a resource, he would have put all that labor to good use!  

But when American historian Deborah Lipstadt labeled him as a "Holocaust denier", essentially calling him a nut and a wacko, he sued her and her publisher for libel, now ordinarily you might think that he would be seeking damages if he could just prove that her depiction of him had damaged his reputation, however in the U.K. the burden of proof in such a case would like with the defendant, in other words he would win his case unless the author could prove that her statements were true, and that he was lying about the Holocaust when he said it didn't happen. Therefore to win the case against her, Lipstadt and her legal team had to prove in court that the Holocaust DID happen, 60 years after the fact. Meanwhile Irving would have his day in court and a platform to state his own beliefs, as far-fetched as they might seem.  

This all hearkens back to the infamous "McLibel" case, where the McDonald's restaurant corporation sued a couple of environmental activists who were circulating pamphlets that promoted "What's Wrong with McDonald's" listing things about the company that they did NOT want people to know, like the animal cruelty endemic to their products, the damage done to the environment, low wages paid to employees and the overall unhealthiness of their foods. McDonald's, an American corporation used to American laws, sued the activists for libel and then found itself in the unique position of having to prove that those facts about the company were untrue, in order to win the case. Yes, the company then had to prove, after filing the suit, that McDonald's burgers, fries and shakes were NOT unhealthy, and that their method of harvesting cows and tearing down forests to create more pasture land were things that were GOOD for the environment, which of course they were not. At some point McDonald's Corp realized they would NOT be able to prove these things and settled the case.  

The best irony came at the end of the proceedings, when it was revealed that in a secret meeting, McDonald's said they would allow the activists to continue to criticize McDonald's privately, to their friends, but needed to cease talking to the media. The activists' response was that they would agree to these terms, but only if McDonald's would stop advertising their products and instead only recommend the restaurant privately, just to their friends. 

To prepare for her defense, Lipstadt and her lawyers visited the site of the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp, along with a research team, while a historian explained the operation of the gas chambers. Armed with this information, the legal team felt qualified to present their proof to the judge in the case (a single judge was determined to be more efficient than a jury of citizens, and surpisingly, Irving agreed to this) but the legal team also wanted to minimize the testimony of the author herself, they just wanted to present the facts and felt that perhaps she would be too emotionally involved. Also she wanted to call witnesses who survived the camps to testify, and the legal team nixed this as well, which really annoyed and confused her, like wouldn't the people who were there be the best witnesses?  

But since the primary goal was to discredit the arguments and evidence that Irving was using to support his claims, the legal team wanted to just focus on this, because it was the quickest path to legal victory. If they could poke enough holes in his "factual evidence" or prove that he was lying with his claims AND new it, that would be enough to win the case. As the trial concluded, the judge pointed out a paradox, that even if Irving was incorrect and the Holocaust happened as most of us believe, if he believed his own incorrect claims, then he could not have been lying as Lipstadt had asserted - meaning that he had a God-given right to be wrong, as harmful as that might seem to the Jewish faith. The defense lawyers countered that if Irving has acted in an anti-Semitic way, then that itself is proof that his falsification of history was deliberate. 

Well, the judge ruled for the defense, which meant that Irving was not believable and had really fudged the facts to support his own claims, and therefore the Holocaust did happen and umm, hooray, I guess? Haters are still going to hate, of course, there's nothing we can do about that, but we should be calling out lies and deceit and alternative facts whenever we see them. Are you listening, U.S. press over the last two Trump terms? That is your JOB, to call out the B.S. when you see it or hear it, and if the President is spouting alternative facts, that needs to be reported on, every single time. Because if you let it slide a few times, then he knows he can get away with it, again and again and again, and then, where are we? Oh, right, we're in a dictatorship where the man in power gets to determine what news gets reported and what doesn't, which comedians are allowed to say things about him on late night shows. He's been chipping away at our freedom of speech for ten years now, haven't we had enough of that yet? 

Directed by Mick Jackson (director of "The Bodyguard")

Also starring Rachel Weisz (last seen in "Runaway Jury"), Tom Wilkinson (last seen in "Burke and Hare"), Timothy Spall (last seen in "The Love Punch"), Andrew Scott (last seen in "Back in Action"), Jack Lowden (last seen in "Capone"), Caren Pistorius (last seen in "Unhinged"), Alex Jennings (last seen in "The Wings of the Dove"), Harriet Walter (last seen in "Man Up"), Mark Gatiss (last seen in "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning"), John Sessions (last seen in "Belfast"), Nikki Amuka-Bird (last seen in "Rumours"), Pip Carter (last seen in "1917"), Jackie Clune, Will Attenborough (last seen in "Hunter Killer"), Max Befort, Daniel Cerqueira (last seen in "Fade to Black"), Laurel Lefkow (last seen in "Jay Kelly"), Elliot Levey (last seen in "The Lady in the Van"), 

Helen Bradbury (last seen in "The Dresser" (2015)), Jacob Krichefski, Abigail Cruttenden (last seen in "The Theory of Everything"), Hilton McRae (last seen in "Macbeth" (2015)), Andrea Deck, Lachele Carl (last seen in "Wit"), Paul Hunter, Amanda Lawrence (last seen in "Matilda: The Musical"), Basil Eidenbenz, Edward Franklin, Ziggy Heath (last seen in "How to Build a Girl"), Sean Power (last seen in "Lost in London"), Tom Clarke Hill, Jeremy Paxman (last seen in "Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie"), Julie McCarthy, Bob Edwards, Amber Batty (last seen in "Philomena"), Nicolas Tennant, Ian Bartholomew (last seen in "Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre"), Laura Evelyn (last seen in "Last Christmas"), Darcey Brown, Kirsty Curry, Michael Epp (last seen in "The Brutalist"), Ellie Fox (last seen in "Jason Bourne"), Glym Grimstead (last seen in "Saltburn"), Anne Wittman (last seen in "The Mystery of D.B. Cooper")

RATING: 6 out of 10 components in an English breakfast

Aftersun

Year 18, Day 172 - 6/21/26 - Movie #5,352 - FATHER'S DAY FILM #10

BEFORE: Scheduling wise, I don't think this could have worked out any better - it's not just Father's Day today, it's also the first day of summer, the solstice, so a film where a teen girl goes on a summer holiday with her father to Turkey, well, it's almost a little TOO perfect, if that could be a thing. Sure, I just programmed it here because it's a film about a father, but I'll take the other calendar connection too. 

Paul Mescal carries over from "Hamnet". 

THE PLOT: Sophie reflects on the shared joy and private melancholy of a holiday she took with her father twenty years earlier. Memories real and imagined fill the gaps between as she tries to reconcile the father she knew with the man she didn't. 

AFTER: To understand this film (because the first reaction when it was done was, "Umm, so what? What was the big deal about this film two years ago?") you have to learn a little bit about the filmmaker, Charlotte Wells. Her father died when she was 16, and she took a trip with him when she was 11, much as the main character does here, and it was really the last solid amount of time they spent together before he passed. So I think we can assume here that Sophie represents Charlotte, at least as a stand-in, and we can also assume that Sophie's father passed away not too long after their vacation together. That's not IN the film, but it's implied subtext because she's looking back on the past events with a blend of nostalgia and confusion, trying to understand what took place before because there is no NOW, she no longer has a relationship with her father because he is deceased, hence all the flashbackery. 

It would not have been difficult to mention at the end that this was Sophie's last trip with her father, or that he died a few years after the trip, maybe that would make things a bit too simple and would hit home for the director, possibly making the film also a little less universal, cutting back on the mass appeal. While if the ending is ambiguous or not detailed about what came later, there's a greater chance it will connect with more people who could see themselves somewhere in the pairing of Sophie and Calum Patterso. Live audience members may find it hard to relate to a dead character because they are not in fact dead themselves. 

So there's a lot that the film does NOT tell us about their relationship, instead we're supposed to try and understand the small so we can extrapolate the large. They connect with each other, they joke around, they have running gags between them, they talk about a lot of different things, and they get under each other's skin. See? Very relatable, that could be any father and daughter, or father and son, you can maybe see yourself or a version of you somewhere in the mix. But this is still best described as "semi-autobiographical", so we have to dive deeper into the life of the director to figure out what the movie is NOT telling us outright. Wells has apparently discussed the father-daughter dynamic in her other films, after all. 

LIke Sophie, Charlotte Wells did NOT live with her father, her parents had separated (or maybe not lived together in the first place) but she's described him as a very "involved" parent. He just couldn't continue to be involved with her mother, for some reason. She made a short film titled "Tuesday", about a 16-year old girl going to her deceased father's home and grieving his loss. She also made a short titled "Laps" about a woman who was sexually assaulted on a crowded subway train. "Aftersun" also details how Sophie's father's depression acted like a barrier between them while on holiday together - and we see Sophie making videos, and watching those videos later helped her piece together her memories of her father.

There are some confusing flash-forwards of Calum in a crowd, with light and darkness alternating maddeningly, in slow motion perhaps, so it's very difficult to determine what's going on. Later in the film, it becomes clear that we're seeing a dream that adult Sophie had about her father dancing at a rave, with strobe lights, and she's watching her father dance. But as she approaches him, and they briefly embrace, he then falls away from her, end of dream. And he is lost to her, the symbolism is finally made clear. Adult Sophie wakes up next to her wife/girlfriend, and I'm not allowed to draw a connection here between her sexual orientation - sorry, gender identity - and her complicated relationship with her father, because that would get me in a great deal of trouble, straights aren't allowed to do that. I suppose it's just easier to say that she was one way when she was 11 and kissing boys, and then she was different as an adult and found that she preferred girls. 

I'm glad I read into the background of the director, because I was wondering if there was an implied sexual relationship here between Sophie and her father - in addition to scenes of him rubbing tanning lotion on her (a very normal parental thing, but hey, you never know) and then also they are forced to share a bed because the hotel screwed up their reservation, they were supposed to get a room with two beds but they did not. It seems a little off that this man shares a bed with his 11-year old daughter, even if circumstances forced it. There's one scene where he's hungover and he seems very stressed when he woke up - I'm not saying they had awkward sex together, but it is one possible interpretation, if the footage is somewhat ambiguous. I'm probably reading too much into it and finding things that are not there. 

Hey, probably it's just an innocent week that a father and daughter spent in the country of Turkey two decades ago, they had some good meals, they sat in the sun, they did some karaoke (well, ONE of them did) and they did some tai chi and white person dancing. These are the times that teens need to cherish with their parents, because they never know when they could no longer be possible. Kids, even if your family vacations totally sucked (and I went on a few stinker trips with my parents, I had to sleep in a cargo van because my father was too cheap to pay for a hotel every night) you'll still have to look back on them when you're an adult and wonder how the hell you survived all the endless embarrassment. 

Happy Father's Day to all the fathers, stepfathers, grandfathers and father figures out there!

Directed by Charlotte Wells

Also starring Frankie Corio, Celia Rowlson-Hall, Sally Messham (last seen in "Artemis Fowl"), Brooklyn Toulson, Spike Fearn (last seen in "Alien: Romulus"), Harry Perdios, Frank Corio, Ruby Thompson, Ethan James Smith, Onur Eksioglu, Cafer Karahan, Kayleigh Ann Coleman, John Stuifzand, Typer Mutlu, Kieran Burton, Nijat Gachayev, Sarah Makharine, Erol Cengizalp. 

RATING: 5 out of 10 resort staffers dancing the Macarena

Hamnet

Year 18, Day 171 - 6/20/26 - Movie #5,351 - FATHER'S DAY FILM #10

BEFORE: Let's get right into the second half of Movie Year 18 - sorry, no halftime break here. I know that's very important to sports but this is not sports, except when it's about sports. It's Father's Day weekend and I got here right on time with my films, you should be able to easily figure out what I picked for the Father's Day film. But this is a great lead-in that's also very father-centric, from what I hear. 

Emily Watson carries over from "The Legend of Ochi". 

THE PLOT: In late 16-century England, Agnes, a healer sensitive to the world around her, builds a home with William, a local tutor and aspiring playwright. As their lives fracture, they are tested by distance, silence and grief. 

AFTER: Sure, this is a solid Father's Day weekend film, but how much of this is truth? We live in a world that still debates who William Shakespeare really was, or if he was ever real at all, or just another playwright writing under another name. Part of the problem was that there was such bad record-keeping back in the 1600's, it's almost like they didn't know how to keep a database or a proper phone directory or an e-mail contact list at all. And was he Shakespeare or Shake-Spear or Shaqspere or some other person at the end of the day? Similarly, we are told here that "Hamnet" and "Hamlet" are essentially the same name. Really? Are they? Same goes for Anne and Agnes, because I learned that Billy Shakes was married to one Anne Hathaway, only, umm, not the one that's famous and living now. Duh. Where the official records are concerned, it seems that if somebody could get half of the letters in someone's name right, that legally counted, it was close enough. 

There's a record of someone taking down a deposit for the marriage of "William Shagspere and Anne Hathwey", and well, close enough, I guess? There's another document that says the guy who wrote all those plays was engaged to "Anne Whateley", so either Shakespeare had two families or nobody back then was that concerned about proper spelling. These days if you even get somebody's pronouns wrong, you're in for an earful, imagine how Briitni or Sophya or Tiphaniee is going to completely LOSE IT if you spell their name wrong on their coffee cup. Right? 

Still, I'm taking all of these events portrayed here with a grain of salt, because, well, nobody really knows. Did Shakespeare truly love his wife, or was it a marriage of convenience? Did he marry her just because he got her pregnant? And what does a guy who wrote all those sonnets really know about love, anyway? In his will he left her his "second-best bed", and I really want to know who got the first-best one. Something could be rotten in the state of Denmark, just saying. What happened here is that someone noticed the similarity between "Hamlet" the play title and "Hamnet", the name of Shakespeare's son, and kind of reverse-engineered a story behind the story, thinking of possible real-life events that could have helped inspire the story of the tortured Danish prince, Hamlet. In this scenario, maybe Shakespeare saw himself as the late King, who appeared to Hamlet as a ghost in order to offer him advice and tell him that his uncle, who is now his stepfather, plotted to murder him. Yeah, people believed in ghosts back then, they also believed that there was an angel of death who would fly over people's houses and randomly select people to die, because they just didn't have the science that would explain things like the plague and other transmitted diseases. Shocker, there's no angel of death, I think most people have dispensed with that, but plenty of people still believe in ghosts - so progress is slow. 

Maybe we can agree that Shakespeare was working some personal stuff out through his plays, like he maybe wasn't the bestest father, he lived mostly in London while working on his plays, and his wife and kids lived in Stratford. This film (based on a speculative novel) would have you believe that his wife Agnes (or Anne) was some kind of forest-dweller/healer, and could not stand to live in a city situation. Or the kids had some kind of COPD or other mild disease and needed to live near open air, or perhaps that's just what their mother wanted for them. See how it's all a bit unclear? We can't really understand why people did what they did 400 years ago because it was a different time and people believed different things. 

Some people back then had maybe never seen a play before, and they didn't know you weren't supposed to talk to or touch the actors on the stage. Late in this film we see Agnes attend an early staging of "Hamlet" and she's very rude, she screams at the actors because it's her reality up on the stage, that's her husband as Hamlet's father's ghost and the young man playing Hamlet looks a lot like what her son would look like, had he grown up. Oops, spoiler alert, but hey, one out of every three children died back then from various diseases that they didn't even know how to prevent. So if you made it to adulthood in the 1600's, you kind of beat the odds, and if you were very lucky, you might make it to the old age of 40. Shakespeare made it to age 52, which was something, maybe he lived longer because he and his wife lived separately - if they had lived together his life could have been shorter and only FELT twice as long. 

I'm reminded of that early audience that saw a film of a train and they all thought they were about to get hit by a train, they didn't understand what images on a movie theater screen were. Well, that's what Shakespeare was up against, he had to keep reminding the audience that all the world's a stage, and that these actors on the stage were just shadows of life, and if they have offended, "think but this, and all is mended, / that you have but slumbered here / While these visions did appear."  In other words, nothing is real, and if you don't like the play, please bugger off, because you probably were sleeping through it anyway. Note that Shakespeare even had to tell people to applaud at the end of "The Tempest", "But release me from these bands / With the help of your good hands." Way to kiss up to the audience, right? People were all kind of dumb that way. 

We also learn here the problem with trying to foretell the future - Agnes has a vision of two children sitting by her own deathbed, but then is surprised when she gives birth to fraternal twins, making her total number of children three. Uh-oh, now part of her does NOT want her vision to come true, because that means one of her kids will die early. Well, it was common. But she kept reading Hamnet's palm and predicting a great and long future for him, so, well, there goes THAT method of prophecy, too. She also had no idea that her husband would become such a famous playwright, but I guess nobody saw that coming, not even William himself. And she said Hamnet could join his father's theater company when he grew up, and well, he kind of did, but not in the literal sense, just as a character in the most famous play of all time. 

I guess the moral here is to just keep on living, and doing what you do, because you never know when that book, play, film or podcast you've been working on is going to really hit. And if it doesn't, well at least you gave it your best shot. Also, don't let anybody tell you who you can and can't marry, and what kind of life you need to have together - that's up to you and your partner, it's not up to anybody else to define or pigeon-hole. Also, your life is going to be part comedy and part tragedy probably, so you've got to learn to be ready for both. You might win an Oscar for your work, or you may just watch someone else in the film you were in win one, while you get overlooked. It happens. 

I did work at a screening of this film, and there was a Q&A after with most of the cast, including Paul Mescal, Jessie Buckley and Emily Watson. For some reason I don't seem to have a photo of that event, I wonder why. 

Directed by Chloe Zhao (director of "Eternals" and "Nomadland")

Also starring Jessie Buckley (last seen in "Women Talking"), Paul Mescal (last seen in "Gladiator II"), Joe Alwyn (last seen in "Kinds of Kindness"), Jacobi Jupe (last seen in "Peter Pan & Wendy"), Olivia Lynes, Justine Mitchell (last seen in "Imagine Me & You"), David Wilmot (last seen in "Ordinary Love"), Bodhi Rai Breathnach, Freya Hannan-Mills, James Skinner, Elliot Baxter (last seen in "1917"), Dainton Anderson, Louisa Harland (last seen in "Lost in London"), Noah Jupe (last seen in "No Sudden Move"), Raphael Goold, Shaun Mason (last seen in "Death Defying Acts"), Matthew Tennyson, El Simons, Clay Milner Russell, Sam Woolf, Hera Gibson, Jack Shalloo (also last seen in "1917"), Javier Marzan (last seen in "Paddington"), Zac Wishart, James Lintern, Eva Wishart, Effie Linnen, Laura Guest, John Mackay (last seen in "Living"), Albert Mccormick, Faith Delaney (last seen in "Here"), Smylie Bradwell, 

RATING: 6 out of 10 hard-boiled eggs

The Legend of Ochi

Year 18, Day 170 - 6/19/26 - Movie #5,350 - FATHER'S DAY FILM #9

BEFORE: Here we are, at the halfway point for Movie Year 18. Though can I really call anything a halfway point when I've been doing this for so long? Halfway to what? It's just another year, after all - what an exciting year it's been already, and still there are miles to go before I sleep. Just kidding, I sleep all the time, but usually I crash just before the end of a movie. Maybe I sleep too much, but can you ever sleep too much? 

Willem Dafoe carries over again from "Inside", that's four films for him if you count "The Phoenician Scheme" from January, and I have to - so he'll make the year-end countdown for sure, and so will Emily Watson, who gets her third appearance tomorrow as we head into Father's Day weekend. I think I saved the most relevant father-based material for that, but we'll see. I think tonight's film qualifies, too. 

THE PLOT: In a remote village on the island of Carpathia, a girl is raised to fear an elusive animal species known as ochi. But when she discovers a wounded baby ochi, she escapes on a quest to bring him home. 

AFTER: Sure, plenty of father-clashing going on here in this film - Yuri is a teen girl who's been raised by her father, Maxim, to hate and hunt the Ochis. She doesn't get to REALLY participate in the hunt, because that's work for boys and men. (Down with the patriarchy!) He gives her a token Swiss Army knife, but come on, the boys have guns and spears, how's she going to defend herself with a pocket knife? The real insult comes when Maxim talks about how the Ochis "stole" his wife, preventing him from having the son he always wanted, so he adopted Petro, who was orphaned at a young age. Clearly Maxim prefers his pseudo-son over his real daughter, maybe some people can relate to that. 

So who can't see the rebellion coming? Yuri realizes that the Ochi creatures are not vicious, they're just misunderstood, and this creates the chasm between her and her father. Look, if it wasn't this, it was bound to be something else - like clockwork, when we're teens we usually end up rejecting everything our parents stand for, whether that's their religion or their profession or their hobbies, at some point if our goofy Dad is into it, we want no part of it. Relatable. So Yuri takes off with the little ochi she rescued on a mission to return it to its family, its mother was killed but maybe she can get the little one back to his tribe. 

I'm not going to lie here, there's an amazing similarity between the ochi and Grogu from "The Mandalorian". Just going to put that out there and mention that the "Mandalorian" TV series came first, but this film predates the "Mandalorian" movie - make of that what you will. But at least I'm getting to both movies within the same month so I can compare and contrast. In the first two seasons of the Disney "Mandalorian" series, there was an attempt to figure out what Grogu was and maybe get him back to his people, whether those people were Jedi or his own species, and it took a while, but eventually it came to pass that your family is the armor-clad bounty hunters you meet along the way, not some Jedi that are halfway across the galaxy, let's say. 

So we kind of expect nothing less here, as Yuri's escape from her father puts her in peril, but also back in touch with her estranged mother, who has not only been studying the Ochi and their lifestyle and language, but she secretly already taught it to Yuri years ago, in the form of flute music. So Yuri has a unique ability to learn the trilling language of the Ochi, in fact she already knows it, which is maybe just a bit too convenient. The convenience factor also comes into play when we're dealing with a fictional animal species, it can be whatever the director wants it to be - cute, friendly, sometimes vicious, and with a "language" all its own. Who's to say this couldn't exist, except for the fact that we know that it doesn't, anywhere in the world? 

The symbolism of the "lost bird" is clear - if a bird leaves its nest, and is taken in by humans, if it returns to its old nest, it could be rejected by its parents, because it has the "smell of man" on it, and therefore by extension if a person runs away from home, or say, goes away to college, they can never really return home to their parents without some form of problems, because they've seen a different part of the world, they are no longer the same person and they won't see their own parents the way they used to, nor will the parents see their child in the same way. 

This is a very different, unusual film, and I usually try to reward that - however the conflict between the animals and the girl's father is rather by-the-numbers when you get right down to it, so naturally I'm torn here. It's very original except for the parts that seem like every other lost animal saved by humans kind of story, like "Born Free" or "E.T."  In the end, this felt like a monster film made by Wes Anderson, if he were to make a monster film it might be all weird and twee like this is, and Willem Dafoe would definitely be in it, front and center. 

My biggest problem was trying to understand the things Yuri was saying, the actress has a distinct strong accent that made it hard for me to know what she was saying - remember that I'm half deaf in one ear. So when it got really bad I had to switch from the DVD I made (with no captions) to watching the last half of the film on Hulu (with captions, ah, so THAT's what she said...). But sure, cast foreign people to speak English with a thick accent, that won't make things difficult for viewers at all!

Directed by Isaiah Saxon

Also starring Helena Zengel (last seen in "News of the World"), Emily Watson (last seen in "On Chesil Beach"), Finn Wolfhard (last seen in "Saturday Night"), Razvan Stoica, Carol Bors, Andrei Antoniu Anghel, David Andrei Baltatu, Eduard Mihail Oancea, Tomas Otto Ghela, Eduard Ionut Cucu, Zoe Midgley, Stefan Burlacu, Emanuel Stoicescu, Andreea Mustata, Gabriel Spahiu, Pulu Mircea Lascus, Victoria Dicu, and the voices of Paul Manalatos, Alexandra Dusa, Ana Maria Cucuta, Alexandru Condurat, Anna L. Coats. 

RATING: 5 out of 10 geese and cats missing from the farm.