Movie Review by Joan Ellis –

Here’s how the studio describes The Current War: Directors’ Cut: “The dramatic story of the cutthroat race between electricity titans Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse to determine whose electrical system would power the modern world.” So off I went with pleasure to see the history of what changed the world as nothing else ever has. What I saw is no such thing, but let’s start at the beginning.

Actor Benedict Cumberbatch has created Thomas Edison a man whose mind is rooted full time in his creative/competitive mode. Nothing wrong with that for a man who changed the world, but was Thomas Edison really as eccentric as actor Cumberbatch has made him? Is it possible the actor wanted to jazz up a history story in an effort to be creative? Perhaps, but the story itself is anything but dull.

Our history was hit with two inventors at the same time. Edison insisted that George Westinghouse’s AC current was dangerous while his own DC was safe. It’s fascinating to watch America gain the use of time after dark. Absorbing also to watch those tall poles holding the wires that to this day deface our roads and our country. Another surprise unfolds. It seems impossible that Edison’s invention came less than a century and a half ago to turn us into a world that could function after dark. Some negativists called it “a hobby for the rich.”

One of the great strengths here is that the film conveys strongly the reality of a world that lived in darkness after dusk until the late 1800s. Candles lit the evenings of the world and this movie conveys the atmosphere of life lived by that light alone. In every season, as dusk approached, the daily lives of everyone on earth changed to darkness. All human activity was limited to what could be done in candlelight.

Surrounded by fine performances by Tom Hall as Edison’s assistant, Michael Shannon as Westinghouse, and Nicholas Hoult as Nikolai Tesla, Benedict Cumberbatch’s Edison is an angry man who creates all the commotion around himself. The invention that changed the world takes second place in this movie to Edison’s creation of a juvenile competition.

If we manage to bypass that personal exaggeration, the rest of the movie is fascinating. The strength here lies with director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon and writer Michael Mitnick who have imagined so well the atmosphere as the world first lit up in spots and then spread. Wherever electricity came, culture changed overnight. In just the century-plus since Edison, Westinghouse, and Tesla, we live in a world where darkness limits nothing. The power of the invention changed the world in a blink.

In the shadow of such achievement, is it rude to ask why some genius hasn’t figured out how to do away with the telephone poles that ruin the beauty of our landscapes? Those wooden uglies haven’t changed a mite in the century plus since Thomas Edison changed the world.

Film Critic : Joan Ellis
Film Title : The Current War: Director’s Cut
Word Count :
Running Time : 1:47
Rating : PG-13
Date : 27 October 2019

Movie Review by Joan Ellis –

“There’s only one of her.” So says a friend of Judy Garland in the new film Judy. That comment summons the complications in the grand new wave of biographical fictions that are flooding our theaters. Many of them are finely made, as this one is. What’s more fun than looking under the surface of someone who has charmed much of the world? For those who are seeing her as a past performer, Judy Garland is just a famous singer. For those of us who were alive during her time, she is something else.

This movie digs into the culture of her family and her era and for me it just doesn’t make the grade. The reality: Frances Ethel Gumm was born in 1922 and spent 45 of her 47 years loving to sing even when sickened by pep pills and sleeping pills supplied by her vaudeville performer mother. Her life behind the scenes became one of collapses and illnesses leading to a series of suicide attempts starting at 28. In the same period, she won a special Oscar and went on to score in movie and stage musicals.

In June of 1968, on Saturday night, I sat in the relatively New Jersey Garden State Arts Center to hear Judy sing and watch her perform. She had collapsed 15 minutes into her first show and was taken to Riverview Hospital. Next time round, we could all feel the deep audience support for the singer whose voice and antics we all loved and sensed she was close to the end. It was sad.

The most interesting part of Rene Zellweger’s new portrayal of Judy is her consistent lack of self-puffery or ego. Judy is a damaged woman in her 40s, loved by the world until she falters from drink and drugs. Then the comeback in England, and her final downfall as audiences threw napkins at her. Her walkouts and bursts of temper are sad and grim but they represent her own decay that is never aimed at hurting others. Her self-destruction is aimed entirely at herself. We feel sorrow, not anger at the behavior that follows. She is entirely self-oriented but not cruel to anyone.

Rene Zellweger has a fine voice and creates a character thoroughly rooted in the real Judy Garland but for those of us who saw her at the end of her performing life, if feels odd. It’s not Judy. I suggest, with an apology, that you ask your contemporaries for their opinions. For me, the realities of Judy Garland’s career and her on-stage weakness and final collapse in the late ‘40s are vivid. Is it possible that watching real life tragedy engulf someone just carries a message that says “Leave this one alone?” Judy Garland’s voice and behavior were hers alone and it’s tough to watch even a good actor try to capture that. She had a mixture of personality, drive, and love of song that were unique.

Film Critic : Joan Ellis
Film Title : JUDY
Word Count : 498
Running Time : 1:38
Rating : PG-13
Date : 29 September 2019