The ball got rolling, for me to see this one, at Mercado Group, my name for our bevy of professional librarians, now retired, who (a) devour media (b) have opinions about what’s worthwhile and (c) are Russell Crowe fans. And Nuremberg was just opening in theaters they told me, Russell Crowe a star therein.
I’d been casting about for a next film, ready to break the streak of rented noirs, and putting off Wicked 2 in case I could coordinate with another movie buff. So the fact it was pouring rain was no deterrent. The HotSpot Trip Planner (same as TriMet’s) advised an FX2 would get me to Fox Tower with time to spare that very afternoon (earlier today).
Having gotten there early (to the theater lobby) and with no one else around, I started doing voice to text into my phone, as I’m wont to do. This time my words were bound for Lithuania, which my longer term readers may recognize as part of my far-flung network. That’s apropos as the Baltic states are where a lot of this particular war happened, and is happening still depending on how you look at it. Lots of German armor has been heading towards Russia again.
Believe it or not, I’ve become a tad forgetful and even though I well-know Gladiator and should easily recognize the Beautiful Mind guy, I actually wondered for far too long, which one was Russ. Obviously he’s the fat German. Most people know that going in.
How could I be that confused? Maybe I’ve been indulging in too much Oregon cannabis? At least I’m not into salvia, also legal, and thanks to Paul, I own a specimen which, being a tropical plant, may not make it through the winter even indoors. That one gets lots of negative trip reports.
Anyway, back to the movie, we were 98% to the end I’m pretty sure. Our psychiatrist was back on the train, after the verdicts were in. We had taken in some gallows action, when all of a sudden a movie theater employee broke into the 1940s to bring us back to the 2020s: we needed to leave the theater now, as Fox Tower was on fire. The five or six of us left in an orderly fashion (this was a matinee on a Monday and most people are at work).
I came outside to an eerily calm scene, with fire trucks and firefighters everywhere, in full battle gear, but no one was running or shouting or seemed very flustered. Had the fire been put out already?
I scanned the building but didn’t see anything. This was no towering inferno spectacle. I decided my dog probably needed out, so I didn’t stick around long. I was on the FX2 heading home pretty quickly, snapping a few pictures as I exited the scene.
I haven’t read any reviews yet. I expect a lot of them will be positive. I thought the performances were all stellar.
The topic is very serious: man’s inhumanity. As a species, we fall short of what we think humanity should be. Do we have any institutions that might address these shortcomings? A lot of hope gets put into being law abiding, but as this movie points out, there’s not been much law in this area of altercation between nations, let alone enforcement thereof. We witness a similar situation some hundred years later (counting WW1 and 2 as a single war with an interregnum).
