Peter Murmann

Movies, Drama

Anora

Early on in watching Anora, I had the idea that this was a remake of Pretty Woman with a lot more skin than my grandmother would’ve appreciated. But the film then moved far away from a romantic comedy when the friends of the Russian billionaire’s son, Ivan,  who plays the Richard Gere character in this film, learn about rumors that Ivan has tied the knot with a hooker.  What a shame on the family! Apparently, the billionaire’s parents have given an associate in New York the task of keeping the spoiled son out of trouble.
The film has three parts. The first one takes an attractive, American hooker and a charming young Russian billionaire and seemingly makes them fall in love with each other, although that is not what both of them had planned. In the second part, the adult supervision of Ivan is trying to make this love undone, and the third part I’m not revealing here because I don’t want to spoil your movie-watching experience.

Movies, Documentary

Coldplay Documentary “Head Full of Dreams”

In all the videos I’ve seen about Chris Martin, the lead singer and creative force behind Coldplay, I always get the sense that he is a very nice chap. Some months ago, I discovered that a documentary about the band’s 20th anniversary in 2018 had been released. Watching it, you get the sense that the other three members are also very nice human beings.

What makes them nice, in my book, is that none of them are particularly confrontational, so arguing about which songs should go on an album is hard for them, and I can relate to this. Watching a documentary about a successful band gives us the wrong impression that somehow the band’s success was preordained because they had superior skills. But as I found out in college, any band that plays on a college campus on a Saturday sounds amazingly good, and becoming a world-famous band involves a considerable degree of luck. When Chris Martin formed the band with the other members, he already had big plans for becoming very successful, and they are clearly among the few bands that can fill stadiums.

Movies, Documentary

Love has Won

I recently came across the documentary Love Has Won, which tells the story of a young American woman who formed a cult around herself, convincing her followers that she was “Mother God.” The rise of smartphone technology after 2008, with the introduction of the iPhone and Android devices, has made documentary filmmaking significantly more accessible. Today, the challenge is not the lack of material but rather the task of selecting and shaping the most compelling footage.

Movies, Drama

Departures

For many years, I have recorded films that I want to see in a to-do list software called OmniFocus. There are 128 items on the films list. One of them is Okuribito (a foreign language film). It is in position No. 5, which means it was recorded many years ago. I searched for the film and found that it is called Departures in English. To my surprise, it won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2009. This was probably how it ended up on my list of films to watch 15 years ago.

Movies, Drama

Romeo and Julia

Shakespeare wrote his play Romeo and Juliet in 1596. I just learned that there have been at least 30 major motion pictures of the play. I once read that there is a new Romeo and Juliet film every year, but I could not confirm this. In any case, Shakespeare’s genius lies in his ability to find, reshape, and invent stories that resonate with human beings across centuries. My first encounter with Romeo and Juliet in a film was in 1996 when Baz Luhrmann cast young Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio in a modernized version set not in historical Verona, but somewhere in the United States. I remember liking this transposition of the storyline into modern America. I just learned about the 1968 version of Romeo and Juliet by the Italian director Franco Zeffirelli because the actress who played Juliet in Zeffirelli’s film (Olivia Hussey) recently passed away.