AVS Discussions
Movie and TV Discussion => Movie reviews => Topic started by: Barry on December 05, 2019, 12:59:35 PM
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Netflix: Our Souls at Night
But first a preface:
I enjoy many kinds of movies, including the “small” personal ones, often with famous actors, but often with new and upcoming ones. For more than a half a century the theatres have been losing these sorts of movies. They are not yet extinct, but they are less each year.
I think TV was the biggest culprit. Before the mid 1950s there as the “B” movie, the smaller second feature that often featured “older” stars or less expensive “film noir” features. TV seems to have caused the diminishing of those in theatres. (Along with the newsreels and movie shorts.)
With the “B” features gone in movie houses, in the 1970s TV started making their own "small movies” and many were very popular. They included Brian’s Song and “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.” Soon, however, the TV movie morphed into mini-series, pilots for TV series and reunion shows.
Cable stations, including HBO, started making their own movies a decade or so ago. I remember Dorothy Dandridge and a Liberace bio movie.
Netflix and Hulu now not only make their own movies, but “buy” movies at film festivals that were made by other companies. These were once movies shown in theatres, but now will be available through streaming.
Ok: The review:
One such movie on Netflix is “Our Souls at Night!” starring Robert Redford and Jane Fonda in their fourth movie together.( The Chase, Barefoot in the Park, and The Electric Horseman.) Bruce Dern and Judy Greer have brief but important parts in this 2017 movie. This is a small movie, intimate, inexpensive, but well made. It concentrates on the relationship between the two, older main characters.
Fonda plays Addie Moore, an older woman who is looking not for romance or sex, but companionship. Someone to talk to at night, someone to be with now that her husband has past. Redford plays Louis Waters, also a widower, who carefully accepts Fonda’s offer for companionship. We see how they learn to be with each other and care for each other, in a realistic but not quite romantic way.
Soon they are joined by Moore’s grandson, played by Young Sheldon’s Iain Armitage. Iain and his dog bring them closer together until they must separate and find a new way to relate to each other.
I give this movie a grade of “B+.” It has great substance and is for adults, in a very “G” rated way. It is about adult issues and feelings. The chemistry between Fonda and Redford is tremendous. The movie is compelling, you want to know how and if things will work out (I won’t tell you.)
I guess I just miss this kind of gentle movie, with no villains, just a character study of two people who seem so real.
The audio and video is good, but nothing spectacular, it is not in 4k.
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Thanks Barry for the review. I have netflix so will check out this movie. :)