All the Way
Bryan Cranston (“Breaking Bad”) is superb as Lyndon B. Johnson in this HBO movie. Assuming office after JFK’s assassination (and under the lengthening shadow of Vietnam). Johnson achieved the greatest civil rights breakthroughs since the Civil War through glad-handing, backslapping, double-dealing and bluster. The screenplay nails LBJ as a wily, profane man who went where others feared to go. “That’s the problem with you liberals,” he says to Hubert Humphrey, “you don’t know how to fight.”
Back in Time
No less than Steven Spielberg pronounced Back to the Future as “the greatest time travel movie ever put on film.” Of course, he was one of its producers…and yet, many fans agree. The documentary Back in Time explores the making of that film and, more centrally, the fan subculture it continues to inspire. Spielberg is interviewed along with director Robert Zemeckis, screenwriter Bob Gale, actor Michael J. Fox and a gaggle of fans.
Peanuts: A Boy Named Charlie Brown
After Charles M. Schulz’s beloved “Peanuts” cartoon debuted on television, the next step was the big screen. Released for the first time on Blu-ray, A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1969) follows its namesake as he plods through life’s everyday adventures. Even kite flying becomes a frustrating exercise (especially when Snoopy aces it without even trying). The animation is generally simple (but there are some psychedelic moments!). Also out is the follow-up, Snoopy Come Home (1971).
Sunset Song
Director Terence Davies (The House of Mirth) adapted this lachrymose story from Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s novel. The dreams of a young girl in early 20th-century rural Scotland are thwarted by a brutal father and the death of her long-suffering mother; a happy marriage ends with World War I. A story of a woman’s resilience in a man’s world, Sunset Song is also a paean to the beauty of Scotland’s green and rainy land.
