Thumbnails Oct 24

by Tony Medley

Lee (10/10): 116 minutes. R. This isn’t just one of the best movies I’ve seen this year, it’s one of the best of the Century. Lee Miller (Kate Winslett) was born in 1907 and became a prominent model for many magazines, including Vogue. Because she was a vibrant, ambitious woman she tired of modeling, moved to Paris, studied surrealist photography and opened her own studio. She hobnobbed with the avant-garde and the film opens with her vacationing with her libertine friends in 1938 shortly before the start of WWII in the South of France, lunching outside, two of the women topless (including Lee), setting the tone of their milieu.

Thus begins the complex movie that introduces Lee Miller to a world who has never heard of her. This is not just a slice of her life, but a pivotal slice. It’s one of the best war movies ever made. But it’s not about a battle (like 1945’s A Walk in the Sun, 1949’s Battleground and Sands of Iwo Jima and 1998’s Saving Private Ryan). This shows the results of the devastation caused Parisians by the Nazis occupation, circas 1940-44, which is as effective as showing the war itself. Those scenes brought to mind Oscar Hammerstein’s song (melody by Jerome Kern) The Last Time I Saw Paris (1940), which always brings tears to my eyes.

The battle scenes show the lengths to which Lee would go to get the pictures she wanted, and the horror of battle as Lee was in personal danger on the war front.

Lee fought to be assigned to photograph the war. When she was finally successful, she met fellow photographer David E. Scherman (Andy Samberg) and they travelled the war zone getting their pictures, including the iconic shot of Lee in Hitler’s bathtub.

Directed by first-timer (an award-winning cinematographer) Ellen Kuras, the stellar cast includes Alex Skarsgård, Marion Cotillard (in a heart-rending performance), and Andrea Riseborough. Although apparently there were problems with the script (whatever happened, I think it is Oscar®-quality) the credits go to Marion Hume, Liz Hannah, and John Collee.

The method of telling the story is brilliant. An older Lee (also Winslett) is being interviewed by an unidentified much younger interviewer (Josh O’Connor) and she is telling her story in flashbacks. When it ended, I was sitting there stunned.

This was a pet project of Winslett and she took pains to concentrate on the part of Lee’s life that would present a true picture of her character. It gets an R rating probably because of the several topless shots (Winslett has never been shy about displaying her breasts). While I realize why they are in the film, I don’t think they are worth having a PG film be converted into an R rating because this is a wonderful film for young people to see.

A Very Royal Scandal (10/10). 3 Episodes of 60 minutes. Amazon. Tells about the interview of Prince Andrew (Michael Sheen) by Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis (Ruth Wilson) and the machinations leading up to it. The Brits do these things so well and this is no exception. With outstanding performances by Sheen and Wilson, it is based on Maitlis’s book “Airhead: The Imperfect Art of Making News.”

The Wonderland Massacre & The Secret History of Hollywood (9/10): Four episodes, MGM+. Produced by and starring crime novelist Michael Connelly who conducts the interviews, this delves deeply into the ghastly 1981 murders in Laurel Canyon, and how it involved Liberace and his boy toy lover, Scott Thorson, and suspect Eddie Nash among many others. LA Assistant District Attorney Mitzi Roberts lays the groundwork in Episode 1,saying “everything we know about Hollywood; we had a porn star as a suspect; drugs and money and Liberace; Hollywood nightclubs, and everything we know of what the ‘70s and ‘80s were in Hollywood, this mystery has.”

The Perfect Couple (9/10): Netflix. 6 Episodes. TV-MA. This is the best streamer I’ve seen since “Big Little Lies,” which also starred Nicole Kidman. In fact, this is referred to as Kidman’s “Big Little Lies replacement series.” That was a disappointment to me because I was hoping there would be a sequel to that outstanding tale.

This one is about a rich Nantucket family getting together for a wedding when one of the guests is murdered. It delves into the lives of each character as two dogged police detectives try to figure out what happened and whodunnit. Directed by Suzanne Bier with multiple writing credits, it stars Liev Schreiber along with Kidman and Dakota Fanning along with a host of other equally talented but lesser-known actors. Although the setting is Nantucket, the bulk of the series was shot in Chatham on the southeastern tip of Cape Cod. That doesn’t lessen the excellent cinematography(Roberto De Angelis and  Shane Hurlbut) and production design (Sarah Knoles) of the beautiful settings that appear in the series.

This isn’t just about whodunnit, though. Like “Big Little Lies,” it’s mostly about the relationships among all the characters. It’s not as good as ‘Lies, but it’s close.

Recommended Reading: “The Clifton Chronicles” by Jeffrey Archer, 7 unputdownable books that must be read in order. Then you can segue into Archer’s Detective William Warwick Series of seven books also to be read in order. That should keep you busy for months.