Four-star movie: The Official Story

The Official Story
Director: Luis Puenzo
1985

An Argentinean mother is forced to question her government's official story of the "Dirty War" of the 1970s when she comes to suspects that her dearly loved adopted daughter may be the child of a murdered political prisoner. Her husband, who works in the government, tries to stop her quest -- he may not know the answers, but he doesn't want to, either.

This is an independent film that was apparently made just as things were changing in Argentina. It's an uncomfortable movie, because it doesn't give any answers, but asks many questions, while showing both the people who don't want questions asked and the people demanding answers.

Four-star movie: Oliver!

Oliver!
Director: Carol Reed
1968

It's hard to believe that this movie was directed by the same man who directed The Third Man and Odd Man Out. But he did, and he won an Oscar for it.

I love this movie. I saw it when it came out, at the golden age of science fiction 12, so I can't be entirely objective about it. It takes place in in unrealistic movie musical world, even though there are occasional nods to the dark sides Victorian London. I hadn't realized, until I did my homework for this watching, that Mark Lester didn't sing his own songs -- they were dubbed by Kathe Green. That may explain the small singing voice that never seemed to quite fit his spoken voice. But that's a small quibble compared to the color and music and spectacle of this movie.

Four-star movie: Olympia

Olympia
Director: Leni Riefenstahl
1936

First, my bias. I'm an Olympics junkie. I love the fact that there are four or so network subsidiaries broadcasting all the obscure sports of today's Olympics, even though I can only watch a fraction of it. So to see the very first Olympics documentary, and probably the first real sports documentary, was a remarkable experience.

That said, it's an amazing piece of work. It's remarkably modern-looking; there are many film techniques I recognize as used today.

I’m inclined to give Riefenstahl a pass on the German propaganda question for this movie. While there is glorification of the human body in the two introduction to the two parts of the movie, there is actually less nationalism than I've seen in US broadcasts of the Olympics. This is not, of course, true for The Triumph of the Will, which will show up much later, since I'm watching in mostly alphabetical order.