I recently watched the charming 2011 film Hugo set in 1931 about an orphaned boy who, trying to avoid being sent to an orphanage, lives secretly in a railway station in Paris in the area where the large clock tower is. The film is directed by Martin Scorsese and is quite different from the gangster films that he is famous for. A key scene involves a train whose brakes fail and it crashes through the barriers at the end of the track and out of a window before falling to the street below. The idea for this was based on an actual accident that occurred in 1895 in the Montparnasse terminal and was captured in this iconic photograph.

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My uneven relationship with this mega-franchise continues. After reasonably enjoying the first three installments (episodes IV, V, VI), I was totally turned off by the first of the prequel trilogy (episode I) and swore off the next two. When the series was rebooted, I heard good things about episode VII The Force Awakens and found it reasonably enjoyable, although it seemed to be simply a remake of the original episode IV. Last night I watched the most recent episode and it was really awful.
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This is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad film. I cannot be clearer than that. Anyone who loved this widely praised film that garnered six Academy Award nominations (including for best picture, best actor, best director, and best supporting actress) be warned: you are going to hate this review. My instincts told me not to watch this film. I knew that it dealt with the world of high fashion, something I know little about and care even less. I knew that it was set in the world of the British aristocracy, a group that I despise as pretentious parasites. So why did I overrule my instincts and watch it? It was because Daniel Day-Lewis has acted in some good films and had said that he was retiring and I wanted to see what film he had chosen as his swan song. Also Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 91% rating and Metacritic gave it 90% so I figured that there must be something in it worth seeing.
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I was never a fan of ice-skating, an event whose appeal eludes me and whose inclusion as a sport in the Olympics mystifies me. But it is hugely popular, though perhaps less so now than about two-decades ago. But like everyone else, I heard about the infamous event in which Nancy Kerrigan was attacked during the US trials to select the team in 1994 when an assailant came and hit her on the legs with a baton. She recovered enough to make the team and win a silver medal. A rival skater Tonya Harding was accused of being behind the attack and she came eighth after a mishap with her laces. This film is Harding’s story though, as with all biopics, one has to be wary of its accuracy.
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