Bright Star

Every so often you get bored with writing reviews—and I don't have a supervisor or editor (that should be obvious by a scan of the material) and I do this as a hobby and a form of preserving some space in my brain. But, one gets tired of writing Thesis/Description/Particulars/Summation on a perpetual basis. One gets in a rut, which isn't good for me (the writer) and you (the reader, one hopes). So sometimes, one experiments.

This was one of those times.

Looking back on it, I find it amusing, not exactly helpful as far as details, and the writing almost as tortured as the doomed romance portrayed.

Eh. "You win some, you lose some"...just like love.

Composed at the time of the film's release...

 

"Perish the Thought"*

There are many artists I would put inside the director's pantheon,
But of all those chaps, among my faves is Jane (the Aussie) Campion.

Her heroes (mostly female) both imbue and fight the schisms
that go along (as well they might) with social ostracism,

maintaining self, their specialness, not merely as statistic
that goes against the status quo of things paternalistic.

Campion works in mythic films, the types you can get lost in,
But this one takes some pages from that other Jane (Ms. Austen).

For though her films have, in the past, explored romantic themes,
I'd call them cautionary, "love's not always what it seems."

But this tale of Miss Fanny Brawne and lovin' bard, John Keats
shows a more impassioned love, although keeping it discreet.

It's not like modern movies where the sex is done to death
The most explicit this one gets is int'mate shuddering breaths.

The costumes are exquisite, the period details, right
Abbie Cornish and Ben Whishaw make you feel their love's delight.

It truly is amazing the director took this chance
to realize, to dramatize unmodernized romance

I wouldn't be surprised to find this one in Oscar's thicket.
That's why I grant Bright Star a most deserv'd "Full Price Ticket."**

* Shall I review Bright Star in verse?
(I don't know. I could do worse)

** My old blog—from where this thing comes—had a rating system (which I now don't do because I hate them and hate the parsing—3 stars or 4 stars? Hmmm), which based movies on the amount of money you should spend on it, which went (from highest to lowest):

Full Price Ticket

Matinee

Rental ("Rental? What's THAT?!")

Cable-Watcher

A Waste of Time 

When I started B/C-L, I abandoned the rating system entirely, as I've reconsidered the monetization of worth, but, at the time, I thought it was a good idea, as it was inspired by the quote from Alfred Hitchcock: "A good film is when the price of the dinner, the theatre admission and the babysitter were worth it."

Women Talking

Only Women Bleed

or

...Then What's a Heaven For?
 

"The Following is a Product of Female Imagination" says the title once the opening narration of Women Talking is finished—opening line: "This all happened before you were born"—and it's a bitterly defiant statement as we've just learned that the women of a Mennonite colony--who are being systematically drugged with cattle tranquilizers, raped, beaten and often impregnated--have been chastised by the men of the colony that their accusations are hysterical, or that they're being visited by ghosts or demons or that it is all a product of "wild female imagination," and holds no truth in reality. Their reality.

 

"Wild female imagination." "Female Imagination" does not bruise and it cannot make pregnant. Men do that in their male imaginations and plots. Because they can. Because they think they can get away with it. Because they can't do it any other way. Because they're allowed to get away with it. Because their authority can't be questioned.

 

And because accusing the men of it (they say, because it's "their colony") will mean that the women won't be able to go to Heaven for their "lies." The men, presumably will, because there's nothing in The Ten Commandments about hypocrisy.

The men have now gone into the neighboring town to try and make bail for the accused attackers. They will be gone for more than a day, and, when they return, the women are expected to apologize...and if they don't recant, they will face excommunication and, of course, not be able to reach the Kingdom of Heaven.

So, while the men are gone, the women take a vote—their first—and because they are prohibited from learning to read or write, It's done with pictographs and X's. 

There are three choices. Stay and Submit. Stay and Fight. Flee. Leave the colony.

The vote is split between "Stay and Fight" and "Leave the colony" and so, the women choose representatives to discuss what will be done, the ramifications, the logistics, what will come next. And to keep a record of their discussion, they recruit the one male left behind, August (Ben Whishaw)—whose family was excommunicated due to his mother's objections to the men's dictates—to record the minutes of their meeting, a record to be left behind.

Three generations of women discuss what comes next: elders Agata (Judith Ivey), Janz (Frances McDormand), and Greta (Sheila McCarthy), daughters Ona (Rooney Mara), pregnant with the child of her attacker, Mariche (Jessie Buckley) and her children, and Salome (Claire Foy) all gather in a barn-loft to discuss their options and make the decisions before the men-folk come back. They know the situation is intolerable—although Jenz decides that she will stay and leaves the discussions early—and they have to decide what sort of life they want for themselves. And for their children, who are also subject to the men's attacks—the most recent attack was on Salome's four year old daughter.

It's a particularly appropriate time to have movies like this, as women's autonomy is under attack in this country and throughout the world (it's why the recent adaptation of "The Handmaid's Tale" recently resonated so much in the collective zeitgeist—while the 1990 film of it couldn't make its costs back—and as the #MeToo movement exposed the pervasive inequities in the power structures as women cemented their places in the workplace and in government). The only way to fight the entrenched power structure is in an organized group-dynamic that can up-end the status quo and maybe drown it out.

Women organizing and re-asserting power is as old as "Lysistrata," but writer-director Sarah Polley (Away From Her and Stories We Tell), has other things to discuss in Women Talking besides Fight or Flight. Good Lord, one of these days the Library is going to have a "Revenge" genre in their DVD selections, and that easy solution is dissected and vivisected in the course of the movie, because some of the women just want revenge. This multi-generational congress weighs options based on need, principals, philosophies, and viable futures...which includes going to heaven. In a way, it is it's own version of Twelve Angry Men—call it Eleven Angry Women—where prejudices are revealed, motivations are explained, and minds are changed. And it's performed by some of the best and subtle actors in the field.

If there's a complaint, it's that the introduction is a little rushed, some of the circumstances of the women involved not made clear from the outset, leaving an audience-member confused rather than intrigued. And Polley desaturates her images so far into the gray scale that it could almost be black-and-white. As some directors (Welles and Bogdanovich and Ford) have pointed out, sometimes color can be just too pretty for what you're trying to convey and the film-matter, though set on acres of fields is far from verdant. The film is a tough-sell, anyway, perhaps the distributors insisted on a color film, and this was Polley's solution.

And for anyone who grouses that the film is any sort of "stretch" it's based on a book that took as its inspiration, what was called "The Ghost Rapes of Bolivia," where, beginning in 2005, women in a colony began to be subjected to this type of outrage and decided to leave, trusting in God that She would provide.

No Time to Die

James Bond's Swann Song

or

In The War of Orphans, Winning is Who You Leave Behind

or

"Tell Mother I Died Game" ("Well, It Just Goes to Show No One's Indestructible")

 

The continuity-conscious Daniel Craig era of the James Bond series has had a through-line simmering throughout all of its previous four films—"Don't trust anyone." 

From Craig's first film, Casino Royale, when the newly designated "00" agent James Bond has a moment of romantic weakness with the wrong person, continuing to the next film when he finds that his service has been compromised, and that the allied CIA works to cross-purposes, through Skyfall, where his boss "M" (Dame Judi Dench) sacrifices agents (including himself) indiscriminately, to the last one, where he discovers he can't even trust his past, this version of Bond walks under a cloud of suspicion, never letting his armor down, lest he be betrayed...by anyone. 

By the time of Craig's fourth film, SPECTRE, he has tipped so far over the edge that he draws down on a random mouse to ask it "Who sent you? Who are you working for?"   

As the song (from Quantum of Solace) says: "...someone that you think that you can trust is just another way to die."

The official series' 25th entry*, No Time to Die, sees Craig's James Bond retired in Jamaica and recruited—by CIA pal Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright)—for an operation that eventually reunites him with the people he does trust to go after people he can't, something involving a missing scientist. Another one. Hey, the series has been going on for nearly 60 years, everything can't be original and nor would the many "James Bond" devotees not allow the "familiarity factor" to creep into the story ("Where's the Aston Martin?" "Where's the martini line?" "I didn't hear 'Bond...James Bond!" "Is he going 'rogue' again?"**).

Still, with all the Fleming novels having been filmed—in one form or another—and a good smattering of the short stories included, the filmmakers have been hard pressed to keep Bond current, the movie-plots being set "a few minutes from now" with call-backs from past novels and films spattered in, as well as acknowledgments from other sources that the producers use to know that they know they're being watched.*** And the films have for the most part been formulaic—Pre-Credit Sequence/Main Title/Meeting with M/Visit to Q/Two Women (at least) with one being of mixed loyalty/The Sacrificial Lamb/Meet the Villain/Big Finish (with Explosion)/Sting in the Tail With a Challenging Henchman/"James Bond Will Return in..."—so that there were things you could count on. Rules were played with, but some you just didn't violate.

 

No Time to Die up-ends them.

As I mentioned, the Craig films are continuity-conscious. When last we left James Bond (Daniel Craig, pushing it this time, in all aspects—age, acting, etc...), he had crushed the international crime league, S.P.E.C.T.R.E., and brought to ground (literally) its ring-leader, Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Christoph Waltz)—but didn't kill him—instead walking off into the London night with Dr. Madeleine Swann (Lea Seydoux), daughter of the mysterious SPECTRE middle-man Mr. White (seen in three of the Craig's). The last shot of SPECTRE had the two seated in Bond's recently re-constructed Aston Martin, sharing smug, self-satisfied smiles. They were meant for each other.

No Time to Die begins with an episode from the past (not involving Bond, but will), and the story of the two scar-crossed lovers on a European honeymoon of sorts that is ruined when Bond is attacked visiting the grave of...Vesper Lynd (the "other woman" from Casino Royale). Coincidence? Not much of one, and as Swann and Bond are high-tailing it out of there, it's revealed that Blofeld has engineered the whole thing from his prison and implicates Madeleine. Despite her protests, Bond puts her on a train and she's out of his life. Bond and his trust-issues again.

In the past, we'd gotten used to the disappearing Bond-girl act, where after the final clinch of each movie, she is never seen...or mentioned...again. "Who?" But, the fact that Seydoux is even there—and she's the only actress playing the same Bond-woman part over two movies—means that she's special. And that the producers have "borrowed" a piece of music from the series' past (written by John Barry!!) to serenade the Bond-Swann romance means she's more than special. More on that later—Madeleine Swann Will Return.

Five years later and Bond is retired in Jamaica and alone, spending his days fishing, cooking and (probably) drinking. One day, he comes back to his house and sees evidence that someone had been there—someone who smokes cigars. He goes into town, realizes he's being followed, and manages to catch the culprits in the act. It turns out to be Leiter and a State Department official Logan Ash (Billy Magnussen) who are trying to get Bond to help track down Valdo Obruchev (David Dencik), a biochemist who has recently been kidnapped by SPECTRE. Bond had a hand in bringing him in during his tenure, and under the agency's careful watch, the man had been working on something called the Heracles Project, a form of targeted weaponized virus. MI6 lost him and the CIA is trying to get him back.

But, they're not the only one. Also tracking him in Jamaica is a "00" agent from MI6, in fact, the new "007" ("I'll bet you thought they'd retired it"), Nomi (Lashana Lynch), who's also on the look-out for the chemist. Despite her warnings to back off, Bond travels to Cuba, where SPECTRE agents seem to be gathering. Nomi is there too, and with the help of a new CIA agent (Ana de Armas), Bond walks right into a viper's nest.

The Cuba sequence, with its fights, the jokey repartee of Bond and "Paloma," their pauses to drink, while Nomi is skulking in the background looking for opportunity is probably the highlight of the film. It works like a violent dance, with a Cuban jazz background (part of Hans Zimmer's functional score) that gives it verve and a sense of hysteria. That it follows one of the creepiest scenes in a Bond film probably helps to provide that sense of chaotic relief.

But, just because that's the giddy apex of the movie doesn't mean the rest of its bad. There's a hell-bent Aston Martin chase in an Italian villa, a spooky cross-country shoot-out through a foggy Norwegian forest that is terrific, and another example of those spectacular villain lair designs that have always set the series apart from its competitors. 

This is another of those Bond films that stun for how well done the practical effects are, the cinematography—by not one of the upper tier of photographers—is lush and colorful, the editing is crisp and tight (while giving you a sense of continuity and flow—something not apparent in Quantum of Solace), and the sheer kinetic verve of the action sequences goggle. Credit director Cary Joji Fukunaga for his precise direction and making a movie that never feels like it's 2 hours 46 minutes in length ("We Have All the Time in the World," indeed!). It's a bit of a miracle, really.

Fukunaga has also inspired Craig's most intense performance as Bond, part of which must also be credited to Phoebe Waller-Bridge's re-write of the original Purvis/Wade script. Fukunaga's practice of letting the actors "wing it" gives the film a richer, fuller life, much more than the standard Bond direction of "line (beat)/funny line (beat-beat)" that makes the viewing of the older films of the series seem awkward. Here the dialogue fairly scampers when Craig's present, and only slows to a crawl when Rami Malik's puppet-master Safin appears. "He's kinda creepy" is how he's described early and, indeed, he is, reminiscent of a trembling Peter Lorre, with a philosophy that's a bit hard to decipher, though natter on about it he does. The Bond villains have some motivation, whether it be greed, errant activism, or a power grab. Safin is simply crazy, but a self-important, rambling crazy.

Now, this is going to be a spoiler-free review, but, as mentioned, this one up-ends things, but not in a way that anyone who's read a book by Bond-creator Fleming wouldn't recognize. Because the Bond films have only flirted with a strict continuity lately means they can get away with it with no harm done. The older films had a strict "Bond is fresh with each adventure" edict, which the Craig films have ignored. Bond never got hurt in the old films, but now they keep track of the scars. This is Craig's last film—he's been doing it for 16 years, longer than anybody, and wife Rachel Weisz was getting annoyed he was coming home broken. There will be another Bond, but whether the series will be as continuity-conscious next go-'round hasn't been decided. 

Original Bond producer Cubby Broccoli always maintained that Bond should be "at the top of his game" and that nobody would be interested in an "early Bond" origin story. When his kids got control, they tried it with Craig and it's worked. But, now that they've done it, there's no need to do it again. Bond may go a different route, like going back to stand-alone movies. Maybe they'll do Cold War period pieces. Maybe they'll remake a couple of the bad ones. Who's to say? And who's to say who'll be the next Bond. Finding Craig was something of a miracle despite the initial nay-saying, so I'll trust their judgment on the matter.

 

One thing is certain and that is, as the credit says "James Bond will Return." As long as the British flag flies, and the box office receipts are healthy.

 

* "Official" refers to the films made by EON Productions (founded by Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli), starting with Dr. No in 1962, and featuring the Ian Fleming titles they had the film-rights to, which—at the time—excluded "Casino Royale" and (owing to an early '60's plagiarism suit) "Thunderball". "Casino Royale" appeared ("unofficially") as an episode of CBS-TV's "Climax" (starring Barry Nelson as "Jimmy" Bond, American) and a 1967 "spoof" film starring David Niven, Peter Sellers and Woody Allen, before EON got the rights to it for the first of Daniel Craig's films. Thunderball became an EON presentation when the fellow who won that lawsuit wanted to make his movie with Sean Connery and worked out a deal with EON to "present" the film—with Connery—thus avoiding any competition that might hurt box-office receipts. However, when that same guy wanted to remake Thunderball (which, contractually, he could do after ten years), things were so contentious between him and EON that both sides battled in court before that remake (called Never Say Never Again and starring Sean Connery) was released in 1983, the same year as EON's Octopussy starring Roger Moore. EON now owns the rights to both the books "Casino Royale" and "Thunderball" (even including those "un-official" movie versions). They've since been doing original stories for ages, (and over several agents), and it's a wonder when some morsel of the original Fleming writing sneaks undercover into the films.

 

** The series' Bond has "gone rogue" in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Licence To Kill, Die Another Day, Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, Skyfall, and SPECTRE. It's as if the producers have preferred Bond's role to be less a company man and more of a rebel.

 

*** Hmm. Live and Let Die was put in during the craze for "Blax-ploitation" films, The Man with the Golden Gun was taken out of its novel-locale of Cuba to be set in Hong Kong, Thailand, and Cambodia to catch the "Kung-Fu" craze, Moonraker timed to take advantage of the Star Wars-prepped audience, Octopussy threw in some Indiana Jones action, Goldeneye's Xenia Onatopp was a soul-sister to Never Say Never Again's Fatima Blush, the fight sequences of late owe much to the "Bourne" series, and the Austin Powers movies stole all of the series' leering jokes leaving the Craig films to be a bit more stoic—although the Bond screenwriters stole the "villain-is-a-relation-to-the-hero" bit from Goldmember...as either series might say "Tit for Tat" 

 

Related Links: Now I've Seen Everything Dept.: The James Bond Series 

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Written at the time of the film's release...

Saturday is "Take Out the Trash" Day.

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (Tom Tykwer, 2006) Give the director of Run, Lola, Run a zillion dollar budget and a best-seller to adapt and you get this monstrous little curiosity, with a role for Dustin Hoffman, yet. 

Unfortunately, Twyker can't meet the film's biggest challenge-communicating the sense of smell and doing it delicately, of course. The director can do little more than ecstatic shots of Ben Whishaw's Jean-Baptiste Grenouille huffing and puffing and sniffing the air--actually the other way around. And one just can't buy the novel and film's biggest conceit—that the young amateur perfumer can sense parts per million like a super-bloodhound, hours, even days after the source has passed. It's an idea at odds with the visual of a Paris in squalor that Tykwer has (quite rightly, I'd bet) presented. Young Grenouille has this incredibly sensitive snoot in a town of open sewers, outdoor markets and the thousand natural scents, both beautiful and repugnant, including the perfumery used by the citizenry to cover it all up. It doesn't read that he'd be so olfactorily fine-tuned.

That's the major hurdle. The other is the coarse rankness of the material, where women—it's always women—are killed serially, covered in animal fat to immediately preserve their scent, then the fat is scraped off and reduced down to its basic (one would presume) pheromone, and collected as an eau de copse. The plot all comes down to a...boil...when Alan Rickman's protective father suspects his daughter is being stalked by the little stinker, and highs her to the hinterlands at full gallop. Despite his precautions, Grenouille is able to track them on-foot despite the daughter's intoxicating scent being mixed with that of a sweating horse.

This is where Tykwer's inability to sell the scent works to his advantage. You're not supposed to think about that in the absence of evidence.

There are other troubling aspects to it, but let's come right to the nitty of the gritty. Perfume is just another in a series of serial killer movies which (sorry) boils down women to objects with an aspect to be coveted and destroyed for. It's not unlike House of Wax (whichever version) or the skin-suits of The Silence of the Lambs. Despite being gussied up with period detail, sophistication of technique and aspects of subject matter, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is just another horror movie with pretensions of grandeur. Despite all the attempts to cover it up, you can't hide the basic stink.

Mary Poppins Returns

Impractically Perfect In Every Way
or
Wind's in the East, Mist Comin' In/Like Something is Brewin', About to Begin/Can't Put Me Finger On What Lies in Store/But I Feel What's To Happen All Happened Before...

Having experienced Walt Disney's Mary Poppins as a child back when it was released in theaters away away back in 1964 and having it seared into my memory as a favorite—even after an adult re-appraisal had me concluding that P.L.Travers iconic flying nanny was something of a bitch—I had many reservations going into Disney's Mary Poppins Returns. 

One should never do that. It's just bad form. It could preemptively spoil one's enjoyment of such things, even if said things are, by nature, sequels, given to expectations and reflections of the first. Prejudices. Better to walk in with the expectations of a child—"Tell me a story!" Take it from there. Put away childish things and preconceptions. Leave the past behind, even though there are traces of echo informing your opinion. Nostalgia is for sissies. Don't let the old influence the new and just (forgive me for using the phrase in regards to another Disney film) "let it go."

(Okay, enough hedging, how is it?) Terrific, actually. I'm not a fan of musicals, but when they're exceptionally well done and the songs have a reason for being there and play with the language, then I become a fan of them. And Mary Poppins Returns delivers. I know when I'm enchanted by a movie—a smile has appeared on my face—and I was flashing incisors throughout most of the movie for just the sheer brio and panache of it. I have minor picayunish quibbles—consigned to near the wrap-up—but I won't spend much time on them. Best to concentrate on what's good, and there's plenty.

The Songs—the filmmakers don't shy away from it, they know they have tough competition from such Sherman Brothers songs as "A Spoonful of Sugar," "Chim-Chim-Cher-ee," "Feed the Birds," "Stay Awake," and, of course, "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious." But they face it head on, not with an overture, but with the first song, the place-setter, featuring Lin-Manual Miranda's "leerie" (lamplighter) on the rounds turning off the gas-lights around London.

Director Rob Marshall (of Chicago and Into the Woods) stages this with lovely swooping camera movements that allow the eye to breathe a little while never distracting from the song, but the song is a gem, and just the first of extraordinarily tuneful melodies that have added complications and variations to the patterns, less repetition, with dexterously placed book-smart, syncopated lyrics by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman (with consultation from the surviving Sherman Brother, Richard M.). Maybe too dexterous, too complicated for wee folks to wrap their tonsils around. That may not be a bad thing, but might work against the songs becoming immediate "hummable" (that requirement for greatness) standards. It doesn't make them any less noteworthy, though, and there's precious little "filler" material amongst them.

The Plot—The story has Mary Poppins (an extraordinary Emily Blunt) returning to the Banks house at Cherry Lane at the time of "The Great Slump." The Banks children, Michael (Ben Whishaw) and Jane (Emily Mortimer) are now grown and in crisis. Michael still lives there with his three kids, Anabel (Pixie Davies), John (Nathanael Saleh) and Georgie (Joel Dawson), and trying to cope with recent death of his wife and the imminent foreclosure of the family home. Sister Jane is a constant presence helping with the children's care, even though in many ways they are now more grown up than their grieving father, a starving artist who has recently taken a clerk's job at the Fidelity Fiduciary Bank that his father worked for. The head of said bank is the scoundrelly William Wilkins (Colin Firth in slow burn mode) who is a grasping opportunist and has little good about him (save for some laudable anti-discriminatory hiring practices).

The kids are little adults, aware of the family crisis, and in need of a childhood, which Ms. Poppins is there to provide, but also to help Michael get through this rough patch, and help all heal with the grieving process, and not look to the past but embrace the present and the possibilities of tomorrow. Oh..SPOILER ALERT!

Grief is quite a mature theme for a kid's movie (as was the original's premise of the saving of Mr. Banks, who had lost the ability to be a father while handling the role of the bread-winner*). But, Michael, after a life of arrested development (way to go, Mary!) following his bliss sketching and letting his wife deal with the financial ramifications, is now at his wit's end taking an actual job in order to make ends meet, and providing for his family (minus one). Boo to the hoo. This puts a lot of pressure on poor Ben Whishaw to not make Michael a pathetic loser, but, the actor manages to make the character understandable and sympathetic, which shows how fine an actor Whishaw is.

And since we're on the subject: 

The Performances—Look, we all love Julie Andrews—even if you've never supported her movies—and her Mary Poppins is, indeed, practically perfect in ever way. But, give it up to Emily Blunt, her Mary is better, a bit more like the P.L.Travers conception, with less of the obviously loving looks in the eye, but more of the controlling, adroit, slightly conceited, but no less incandescent spirit that is Mary Poppins ("We're on the brink of an adventure, children. Don't spoil it with questions!"). Given her precedent, then she must be perfect in every way. Rest assured, she is, with occasionally surprising additions of sauciness. I'd hire her to look after my kids in a heart-beat.

How is Lin-Manuel Miranda?—he's a surprising choice to portray a cockney labourer, but does he have the charisma to pull it off? Oh, yeah. Miranda has that "gotta dance" enthusiasm that can go either way in one's affections, but the man is such a trooper, he's immediately ingratiating, and welcome every time he appears.

Universally, every performance is accomplished and twinkly, the kids not cloying, and actually endearing, Julie Walters' housekeeper is a stitch, the cameos by Meryl Streep (at one point, Miranda says "I can't quite place your accent..."), Angela Lansbury, and Dick Van Dyke are delightful, all in service to a marvelous entertainment.

Which leads to...

The Production—The staging and direction by Marshall is sumptuous, accomplished, but feels a bit elephantine, almost a bit like the difference between the original Mary Poppins and George Cukor's film of My Fair Lady (the poster displayed above even resembles Bob Peak's poster for that film) released around the same time.** I put that down to the editing, which was a bit snappier in Robert Stevenson's film, but also because computer animation allows for greater scrutiny of images, in contrast to the matte paintings of the original.*** That might account for the feeling of "lingering" in the film. This is merely a "quibble" on my part.

But, when it comes to the traditional animation, Marshall insisted on "old-school" with line-drawn animation for the "Royal Daulton China" sequence, which is seamless and is the best integration of live-action with cartoon since Disney first experimented with it in 1923. It is all-together great and leads to a Music Hall sequence that is delightfully presented and shows off Blunt's and Manuel's musical talents at full throttle. 

I had a big smile on my face throughout a large part of Mary Poppins Returns, the kind that I rarely get most times, but happens in those instances when  a movie not only transports me, but challenges me because it is so smart and accomplished, and where there's ample craftsmanship in every aspect, but it also evokes delight. 

There is so much sturm and drang in movies these days, that it is wonderful to see a good movie that is so sweet during the Holiday season. Makes me nostalgic for those special event movies that catered to the whole family in those times and where everyone would enjoy themselves...and the movie.

Walking out, I thought to myself that the only thing the original had that this one lacks is memory.

But, give it time. This one will become just as cherished and only be more appreciated with repeat viewings.

* Oh, this is just silly, but it makes me think of a mash-up of Mary Poppins with The Godfather where Mary visits Lake Tahoe to help Michael Corleone not lose his family while trying to protect them. 

** In that year's Oscar race, there was a bit of a controversy: Julie Andrews was nominated for Best Actress for Mary Poppins, but also nominated was Audrey Hepburn who was chosen by Warners President Jack Warner to play the role of Eliza Doolittle, which Andrews had originated on Broadway to great acclaim. The choice of Hepburn over Andrews was considered a great snub, but left Andrews available to do Poppins, her first film role.  When Oscar time rolled around, the Academy chose Andrews for Best Actress.

*** The masterful work of Peter Ellenshaw, whose work is acknowledged in the film.