Rich Heldenfels, Pop Culture Wanderer

My mother, Alice Heldenfels, has passed away. This is her obituary. Alice Davis Heldenfels is now in heaven, asking everyone if there’s anything she can do for them. Mrs. Heldenfels, 93, passed away on Saturday, Feb. 1, following a brief illness. She had most recently lived in Warwick Forest but resided most of her life on Crittenden Lane in Newport News. Born on May 16, 1926, in Crisp County, Georgia, the former Martha Alice Davis early on demonstrated a knack for mathematics and science, and the precision of those fields was something she applied to everything else in life. As a child of the Depression, she learned early on about the importance of hard work and careful living – along with the need to have fun. How else to explain the certificate that 13-year-old Alice received for completion of a course in Hawaiian guitar? She graduated from the former Georgia State College for Women (now Georgia College & State University) in 1948 with a B.S. in mathematics and...

The latest version of "Little Women," written and directed by Greta Gerwig, is a lovely adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's much-adapted novel, one made especially so by its emphasis on what it meant to be a woman in a world run by men. The options left to women are few: marriage is the main path to solvency, and writers of fiction must have young women married or dead by the end. That life turns out all right for most of them is appealing, but it's built on the idea that "Little Women" is a romance, and that in the real world sometimes you have to sell out a cherished idea in one area to achieve what you need elsewhere. And even though "Little Women" is set in the past, the idea of What Women Must Do is also part of the contemporary "Bombshell," as well as Margaret Atwood's novel "The Testaments." These are all blending in my head because I saw "Bombshell" and "Little Women" on consecutive days re...

An actress not long ago said it did not matter if she liked or disliked characters she played; it was only important to understand them. Pretty much the same thing might be said about moviegoers: they won't mind if a screen character is terrible as long as they can see why. The biggest problem, then, with "Uncut Gems" is that the explanation for the central character is only that he is not nearly as smart as he thinks he is; beyond that, we see that he is an ass to everyone around him, but never why he is such an ass. This, I admit, is contrarian. The movie has gotten raves from reviewers -- 92 percent on Rotten Tomatoes at this writing -- with Oscar talk attached to Adam Sandler for adding this bold, bracing performance to his short list of departures from often stupid comedies. The comedies, of course, are his bread and butter; "Murder Mystery" was reportedly the most-watched original on Netflix in 2019, and many of my Film Appreciation students last ter...

The above title comes from James Agee, who used it for short takes on several movies he had not yet gotten around the reviewing. In a previous column he had lamented, "I should review several of the films mentioned below at some length, and I hope that at length I will. But I have left so many films unreviewed, some of them weeks or months old by now, that I can begin to catch up only be reviewing them now, somewhere near as briefly as possible." I know the feeling. While I have posted some full reviews below, I've had a long list of other movies I've been meaning to get to. This is the peril of trying to see a lot of films (more than once, Agee wrote round-up columns) and then to find the right words -- or the right energy -- only to never get around to it. So here, in short form, are other films I've been seeing. Judy. Grade: B plus. Yes, Renee Zellweger is spectacular as Judy Garland in this portrait of the singer-actress after her career had largely wan...

During my years at the Beacon Journal I wrote or co-wrote with Malcolm Abram a bunch of columns about holiday music. You can still find a compilation of those pieces here . Over on Facebook, I've been posting a holiday song every day since December 1.

In another time, and with one key omission, "Richard Jewell" might be talked about in a different and more positive way. The tale of a security guard who discovered a bomb at the Atlanta Olympics and then was wrongly suspected of being the bomber contains the elements of a painful, relevant film. It is reminiscent of another wrongly-smeared-hero film, "Sully," also directed by Clint Eastwood. But these days "Richard Jewell" also reminds that the context in which we see movies always matters -- that what a film says and does is always filtered through what we as a culture see and do. And that still does not take away a huge problem in the film: the portrayal of real-life reporter Kathy Scruggs (played by Olivia Wilde) who is seen not only as aggressive and ambitious but as more than willing to trade sex for a scoop. There is no reason to believe that the real-life Scruggs did that, and since she is dead she cannot defend herself. Others have spoke...

I want to say something deep and profound about the latest "Star Wars," which is supposed to complete a nine-film saga and complete the story that began all those years ago with Luke and Leia and the rest. But the movie is not particularly deep, and not at all profound. It is, in the end, just OK: a circling back through familiar tropes and scenes from other "Star Wars" movies; an apology for "The Last Jedi" (which I liked), and in both cases a re-presentation to the audience of things it believes that the fan base wants.  To draw a really bizarre comparison, it's the onscreen equivalent of Trump's six-page impeachment letter, giving the base what it expects and the heck with those of us who valued something more/better/different (that is, again, "The Last Jedi"). But, as part of a part of that base, I was more or less content about the whole thing, willing to endure a clunky and overlong series of fights and battles -- and cheap ...

You may recall an item here some months back where I talked about an anti-gay email I had received and how I wanted to respond to it.  My editors chose not to include it because they did want to give a platform to homophobia. Unfortunately, homophobes are finding plenty of platforms and the megaphones to shout from them. The ad above was taken off Hallmark Channel when viewers complained about seeing a same-sex couple in the ad, with one anti-gay bunch of bigots threatening a boycott of Hallmark over the ad. Because, to them, LGBT people -- including those who are loving, who marry, who raise children -- cannot be family-friendly. What crap. ( Hallmark has now reversed its decision.) But not the only crap. In my Q-and-A column, I recently included an item about Shepard Smith leaving Fox News. And in the email came a note about Smith that was so nasty and vulgar about Smith and his private life that I can't bring myself to quote it here. (This week, another letter al...

Thanks to a Regal Unlimited card and my wife's masterful handling of our schedule, November has been loaded with movies in theaters. I have thoughts on all we've seen below, including the blockbuster "Frozen II," but first up is the best of the lot, "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood," with Tom Hanks as Fred Rogers. Hanks is wonderful as the children's-TV host, capturing his warmth, his thoughtfulness and his challenging of himself and others. I knew Rogers a little; I arranged for him to appear at a press conference for the Television Critics Association, and he gave me a fine interview for my book Television's Greatest Year: 1954. A memorable aspect of the book interview was Rogers's repeatedly urging me to include a section about Frieda Hennock, a crusading member of the FCC in the early '50. An even more noteworthy part of the TCA appearance was Fred encountering some children who had brought him gifts in the lobby of the hotel...

Joker, the disturbing origin story of the character from director (and co-writer) Todd Phillips and actor Joaquin Phoenix, is the bleakest of comedies.  Late in the film, Arthur Fleck, who will become Joker, says that he has long thought his life is tragedy only to realize it is a comedy. But his life, and the film, are comedies only in the sense that the Joker sees the word -- one daring everyone else to admit that they don't get the joke. That Phoenix is brilliant cannot be argued, and with an impressive resume already he may become the second actor to win an Oscar playing the best known of the Batman villains. But the movie overall, as watchable as it may be, is a too-familiar consideration of the connection between private madness and public heroism, of the rage of the disenfranchised against the unfeeling elite, of Bernhard Goetz, of the themes evident in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver and King of Comedy . It's no accident that Robert De Niro plays a talk-show host i...