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John Lennon and the Doppelgänger

Tuesday: Life with Father (1947)
      This movie is about a family who lives around the strict rules of the father. He has a very specific way he wants things done. He is a financial business man and keeps track of every cent. His family has grown to accept his ways. His wife knows how to get around him to get what she wants. He learns that he needs to make some changes and to let things be. I liked this movie. I don't know that I have seen a movie with Irene Dunne in color before. I'm also not sure this movie was originally in color because all the colors seemed extra bright and a little off.

Wednesday: The Prisoner of Zenda (1937)
      An Englishman goes to the Ruritarian countryside on vacation. There he meets the future king. They look exactly alike. They discover they are long lost cousins. The prince is there to celebrate before he is crowned king the next day. He drinks some wine that turns out to be drugged. His friends realize that his brother had tried to poison him so he could take the crown. The prince is only temporarily paralyzed. So they come up with a plan to have the Englishman pretend to be the king for the coronation. Then they will switch back. But the brother realizes something isn't right with this fake prince. He finds the real prince and kidnaps him. The Englishman must go on pretending to be the king. He falls in love with the soon to be queen. When the brother threatens to kill the prince, the Englishman must choose between saving the king and being with the woman he loves. I liked this movie a lot. Ronald Colman is my newest discovery. He played the Englishman/prince. He was a really good actor.

Thursday: Nowhere Boy (2009)
       This movie is about a young John Lennon. It is mostly about his relationship with his mother who abandoned him and his strict aunt who raised him. His mother had some mental health issues. But she never stopped loving her son. She was one of the biggest supporters of his music career. We see him learn to play the guitar and form his band. He meets Paul McCartney and George Harrison. I enjoyed this movie. Aaron Taylor-Johnson did a good job as John. His accent was good.

Friday: The Best of Enemies (2019)
     This is based on a true story. It is set in the early 70s. The school for the black kids in a North Carolina town suffers from a big fire. The kids need a place to go to school. The only other school is the white school. So that would mean integration. No one can agree on what to do. The main two opponents are Ann Atwater, a black activist, and C.P. Ellis, the president of the local KKK branch. The city council decides to bring in some outside help. A black academic named Bill Roddick comes in to set up a charette. Which is basically a big discussion between people from all backgrounds to help resolve the issues. There are board members who will vote based on what has been discussed and agreed on. Of course he picks Ann and C.P. to be his co-chairs. They have to learn to work together. Slowly they learn to be more accepting of each other and become friends. This is a good movie. I really liked that it was a true story about a KKK leader who ended up changing his ways and becomes friends with a black woman.

Saturday: Double Feature- Second Act (2018) and Robin Hood (2018)
       Second Act is about a woman who is tired of being passed over for promotions at work just because she doesn't have a college education. Her friend's son beefs up her resume and social network profiles and gets her an interview at a big merchandising company. She ends up getting the job. She has knowledge that helps her do well. But she can't keep living the lie and must decide what to do. This movie was a lot better than I thought it was going to be. It is a good romantic comedy.
      Robin Hood is still generally the story we all know with just some smaller changes. He is a rich lord who falls in love with Marian. Then his is drafted to fight in the crusades. When he returns home he discovers a lot has changed. The Sheriff of Nottingham has pushed all the poor to live by the mines and has increased the taxes. Robin works with John, who he met during the crusades, to steal from the rich and give to the poor. He also discovers that he was announced dead when he was in the crusades. Marian has moved on and is with someone else. Robin must win her back and defeat the Sheriff. I am so glad I only paid $2 to watch this movie. It was pretty bad. They just tried to hard to make it different. The acting was too intense. It was bad acting done by good actors. They tried to make the war with bows and arrows look like the more modern middle eastern war. Supporters of "the hood" nailed hoods to walls and posts. It just looked really stupid. They set it up to have a sequel. I think that is a bad idea unless you know for sure there will be a sequel. Otherwise it just looks bad when there is no sequel and you're just left with a weird cliffhanger ending.

Monday: Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956)
      Rocky has been on the run since he was a kid. He is constantly committing crimes, being put in jail, and then escaping. Finally he ends up in the army during WW II. He runs away from that too. To make some money he starts boxing. The army finds him and he has to go to army prison for a year. There he learns to be a better boxer. When he comes out he has instant success as a boxer. He falls in love and starts a family. His life of crime calls for him to come back after he loses a big fight. He ends up in trouble again. He must choose between his new life and his life of crime. This is a really good movie. It is based on a true story. It was Paul Newman's breakout role. It has some parallels with Rocky. The obvious being they have the same name. But they are also boxers both fall for a shy woman who doesn't like to watch them fight. I wonder if this movie was part of the inspiration for Rocky. Rocky was also the breakout role for Sylvester Stallone.

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