Movies Worth Watching

I finally got caught up on some of my movie viewing! I watched the trailer for the upcoming movie Christopher Robin and I realized I had never gotten around to watching Goodbye Christopher Robin. 

While the upcoming movie is a Disney production, the film was released this past fall is a British production. It's a biographical treatment of AA Milne's relationship with his son, and the toys and games that inspired him to write Winnie-the-Pooh and the books that followed. I always love 'the story behind the story' and understanding what England was like in the 1920's, struggling to recover from the shock and ruin of World War I, only enhances the cultural value of Milne's greatest works.

I didn't intentionally watch two movies starring Margot Robbie, but both were well worth  my time. I, Tonya is a stylized portrayal of the Olympic figure skater Tonya Harding, who was banned from the spot after she was connected with the attack on fellow figure skater Nancy Kerrigan.

I watched this movie with my husband. He was hoping for an approach more like a documentary, but I liked the way the movie mixes facts with opinions and hearsay because that is the way was story was told in 1994. We didn't have court documents, we watched news programs and read tabloids, and made our own judgments about her and her family. Although the movie has some funny parts, I can't help but think of the whole story as a tragedy. Tonya Harding came from nothing and made it all the way to Olympics; a story worthy of Horatio Alger. If things had gone differently, she would have been a hero.  .  .as they are, she'll always be seen as a villain.

I love movies that don't really revolve around plot, instead offering us a glimpse into the character's life. Napoleon Dynamite is kind of like that, and even though Juno does have a central conflict, it also functions that way. 

This movie was advertised as a comedy-drama, but what really drew me in is it's 'coming of age' theme. I am a huge sucker for coming of age stories; in fact I did my final paper for one of my Children's Literature grad school courses on the movie Now and Then.

The story centers on Christine, aka Ladybird, a girl who attends Catholic high school. That alone would endear a story to my heart, but since it takes place in 2002, and I graduated highschool in 2000, I couldn't help but feel nostalgic.

I hope to do some more movie watching during my spring break.