In Theaters: ****The Magic Faraway Tree (2026)

 This is a fun movie.  Tim and Polly Thompson (Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy) move to the country with their three children Joe, Fran and Beth (Phoenix Laroche, Billie Gadsdon and Delilah Bennet-Cardy) for economic reasons and also to bring their family back together.  The kids are always on devices.  They hope to raise tomatoes and make spaghetti sauce.

The forest is inhabited by faeries, and Fran discovers them.  They aren't all small but adult size faeries.  Silky, Saucepan Man, Mr. Whatzisname and Moon Face (Nicola Coughlin, Dustin Demri-Burns, Oliver Chris and Nonso Anozie) who adventure with the kids to different worlds.  Beth wants to go home and writes to her grandmother (Jennifer Saunders) who is down on her daughter and the chances of her succeeding.  Beth also makes a wish the tomatoes will die.  Her wish is granted but she realizes that is not what she wants.  She and her siblings are off to find a world where they can fix the problem.  The get a spell that will fix it, but Dame Snap (Rebecca Ferguson) captures them and does not intend to ever let them go.

This movie is delightful in their fantasy and the world is magical.  The characters are interesting.  Andrew Garfield does a great job as the father who will do anything to save his family.  

James Stewart, Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn Movie: The Philadelphia Story (1940)

 This is a very good romantic comedy.  C.K. Dexter Haven (Cary Grant) and Tracy Lord (Katherine Hepburn) divorced about two years ago.  Lord is getting remarried to George Kittridge (John Howard).  Haven decides to crash the wedding, and bring two journalist along, Macauley Connor (James Stewart) and Elizabeth Imbrie (Ruth Hussey) as a joke as Lord does not like social journalists.  

Everybody gets too drunk at the dinner party before the wedding.  As a result Lord is saved by Connor and Kittridge thinks she has been unfaithful.  The wedding is called off, but Haven steps in to be the groom.  Lord has come to realize and focus on the good times they had.

Cary Grant, James Stewart and Katherine Hepburn make a great team.  It is good relationships can grow and evolve.  

Alfred Hitchcock Movie Review: **** Rebecca (1940)

 A young lady (Joan Fontaine) (we don't get her name but she is a ladies companion to an abusive old woman (Florence Bates)) falls for Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier).  He is a widower and it is assumed his wife suicided.  She was fished from the sea.  When they return to the house (they married and wed while on vacation) the head housekeeper and caretaker, Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson) does not accept her.  She plays psychological games with her, and even encourages her to jump off the cliffs and commit suicide.  She is obsessed with the first Mrs. de Winter.  She insists Mr. de Winter can never love the second Mrs. de Winter like he loved the first.  

This movie has a very strange twist about the first Mrs. De Winter.  Turns out there wasn't a great love between the Mr. de winter and the first Mrs. de Winter.  She was playing around with George Sanders (Jack Favell).  The twist is that the first Mrs. de Winter is discovered in a boat.  She was not fished from the sea as was supposed.  This sets of series of inquiries.  

This movie won the Oscar for best picture.  It is obvious why.  The psychological intrigue is well played.  Mrs. Danvers is really evil, as is Jack Favell.  

Animated Movie Review: ***An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991)

 This is the last movie with James Stewart.  He plays the sheriff dog, Wylie.  Fievel (Phillip Glasser) and his family go west due to a swindler.  The cat they befriended, Tiger (Dom DeLuise) gets left behind but follows on stage coach.  Fievel gets thrown off the train because he discovers the plot of the cats, to make a big mouse trap and eat all the mice.  Cat R. Waul (Jon Cleese) is the leader of the cats.  Wylie, Fievel and Tiger all display heroics to free the mice of the cats.  Wylie provides words of wisdom.  "Just remember, Fievel. One man's sunset is another man's dawn. I don't know what's out there beyond those hills. But if you ride yonder head up, eyes steady, heart open I think one day you'll find that you're the hero you've been looking for."  

This movie is nostalgic being Stewart's last roll before he passed away a few years later.  

Spanish Music Review: Placido Domingo and Pablo Sainz-Villegas: Volver

 Plácido Domingo is on vocals and Pablo Sainz-Villegas is on guitar.  There are three instrumental guitar pieces and those are the numbers I like the best.  Plácido Domingo sings mostly of love.  One song is in Portuguese where he sings of a city, Coimbra.  He also sings of love in history of love: 

Siempre fuiste la razón de mi existir, Adorarte para mí fue religión, Y en tus besos yo encontraba, El calor que me brindaba, El amor y la pasión

You were always my reason for living, adoring you was my religion, and in you kisses I found the warmth that you gave me, love and passion.  

My favorite song is one I had hear before.  It is an instrumental here, Guajira Guantanamera.  It is played with lots of passion and spirit.  It is a song that stirs the blood.

Movie Review: ****Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)

 Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant)is dead set against marriage.  In fact he wrote a book against marriage.  But love takes over, he falls for and marries his neighbor's daughter, Elaine Harper (Priscilla Lane).  He comes home to tell his aunts who raised him, Abby and Martha (Josephine Hull and Jean Adair) and discovers a body in the window seat.  He now has a problem on his hands.  The aunts admit that they have been killing elderly gentlemen because they look so peaceful when they are dead.  They advertise for boarders just for that reason.  Mortimer's brother Teddy (John Alexander) is mentally ill in which he believes he is Teddy Roosevelt.  The aunts impose on him to bury the "yellow fever" victims in the locks (the basement).  They have collected twelve gentlemen so far.  Another brother returns, Jonathan (Raymond Massey) after years out of the house.  He is a criminal and has a corpse in the rumble seat of the car.  He brings Dr. Einstein (Peter Lorre) with him who is to operate on his face for a disguise.  Mortimer decides the best thing to do is get Teddy to a sanitarium.  He ignores his new wife while he works on this, and keeps sending her home to her father's house next door.  That night Teddy takes the victim to the basement and Dr. Einstein brings the body in from the car.  He ends up in the window seat.  The aunts are well liked by the police and they are in and out of the house which interferes with Jonathan and his escapades.  At one point Jonathan has tied up Mortimer and is ready to kill him when the police come into the house.  Dr. Einstein hits Jonathan. on the head to keep him from killing one of the police officers.  The director of the sanitarium (Edward Everett Horton) finally arrives to take Teddy.  He has been playing his trumpet scaring the neighbors.  The aunts don't want him to go and in the end they decide to go as well.  Dr. Einstein, the fake doctor, signs the papers and makes his escape.  They finally recognize Jonathan from the police bulletins and haul him away.  Mortimer is sure his marriage won't work because of his family genes.  However he learns from his aunts that he is actually adopted.  He and Elaine can finally get on with their honeymoon.

Funny and macabre at the same time.  The aunts are distressed when a body ends up in the locks that is not one of "their gentleman."  They talk about the bodies in the basement with the police but Mortimer convinces them they are crazy so nobody goes down their to look, except for the new wife.  

A Frank Capra movie.  It has its funny parts, and its part that are too chaotic and loud.    

Movie Review: ****^ October Sky (1999)

 Homer Hickam (Jake Gyllenhaal) wants to build a rocket having been inspired by Sputnik.  And so he recruits a team from school, Quentin Wilson (Chris Owen) is the nerd and the brains behind the group; O'Dell Carroll (Chad Lindberg) who help with tracking the rockets; Roy Cooke (William Lee Scott) who has a car.  Their first rocket gos sideways, and Homer's father (John Hickam), who isn't keen on the idea of rocketry, orders them off company grounds.  He is the foreman.  Homer feels he favors his older brother, Jim (Scott Miles) who plays football and gets a scholarship for football.  The company is a coal mine which extends several miles, but they do find a place to test their rockets, and they slowly get better.  They use a company engineer (Elya Baskin) for some of the parts.  Miss Riley (Laura Dern) is a school teacher who encourages the boys to enter a science fair.  It could be a springboard to get a scholarship and an education and work away from the coal mines.  Homer's mother (Natalie Canerday) is also supportive.  

At want point they close up their project.  They are accused of starting a fire and are hauled off to jail.  At this time Homer quits school and works in the mines because father is injured in a mining accident. During this time Miss Riley encourages Homer to read a book on rockets and trajectory.  Through this he determines it couldn't have been their rocket that caused the fire.  Using their calculations they are able to find the rocket they couldn't account for.  They actually see the rocket and it is a weather apparatus from the military.  Homer comes back to school and they are off to the county science fair--and actually win.  They are off to the national fair, and only Homer is able to go due to school budget restrictions.  At the fair the De Laval nozzle is stolen and Homer's picture of Dr. Wernher Von Braun, a rocket scientist.  His father has the machine shop worker make him a new part and they ship it to him.  And they win the first prize.  All the boys in the rocket project go to college and have careers outside the coal industry.  Homer works for NASA.  Homer and his father resolve their differences.  

This movie is based on a true story and the memoirs written by Homer Hickam called Rocket Boys.  Miss Riley gets sick and dies but she knows she helped the kids become successes.