Yesterday the
NY Post's Sara Stewart included
The 15:17 to Paris on her list of the worst films of the year. And what arrived in the mail from Netflix in the afternoon? You guessed it. Well, it's always better to go into something with tempered expectations. If
15:17 is one of the worst movies, 2018 will go down as one of the best years ever for cinema. I wonder if perhaps Stewart allowed her politics to affect her judgment. Whatever. I reacted to the flick as I do to almost all of Clint Eastwood's directorial work. It's solid but does not soar. It's the story of the three young Americans who stopped a terrorist from inflicting mass casualties on a train traveling from Amsterdam to Paris. Told in non-linear form, the majority of the narrative highlights where the men's origins, their youth, which was average, normal, despite difficulties at school. I thought the scenario stayed way too long with the happenings on their European vacation. It seemed filler to pad the running time past 90 minutes. The confrontation, of course, is intense and viscerally satisfying. Eastwood boldly cast the three young men, Spencer Stone, Alek Skarlatos and Anthony Sadler, as themselves. Stewart cited this as the film's major drawback. Poppycock. I enjoyed their work, and I believe most movie fans would too. 18,000+ users at IMDb have rated it, forging to a consensus of 5.2 on a scale of ten, a bit low perhaps. It was a modest success at the box office, returning $56 million on a budget of $30 million. Dorothy Blyskal adapted the screenplay from the book co-authored by the heroes and Jeffrey E. Stone. I doubt anyone would find anything offense in the film, although there is bloodletting during the foiled attack. Here are, left to right, Skarlatos, Sadler and Stone:
It was another gorgeous December day. My thanks to the woman who bought
Zero Footprint: The True Story of a Private Military Contractor's Covert Assignments in Syria, Libya, And the World's Most Dangerous Places by Simon Chase and Ralph Pezzullo, and to the 71-year-old Asian gentleman who purchased a poetry collection and
The Graduate by Charles Webb. Having seen the film, he was curious about the novel. Although he was born in China, his English is very good. In describing his love of printed books, he used the word "intrinsic." When I said Kindles have an impressive advantage in the user being able to enlarge the print, he said: "Why not just use a microscope?" I laughed out loud.
I also had a visit from Bad News Billy, who selected three books for his grandson, and delivered double-good tidings. He recently had a pacemaker installed and feels and looks much better, and his patent has been accepted. He has a picture on his iphone of the booklet the company created to explain his work. He came up with an idea for a device that helps roofers. May it attract a big buyer.
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