The new movie “Searching” is another recent example of a film that is shot entirely with social media within a computer operating system. This seems to be a new film making idea that may have legs and one reason for this has to be a greatly reduced budget.

The story of this film is a timeline of about 17 years as a husband and wife have their first child and some tragic circumstances follow that include the possible kidnapping of the couple’s teenage daughter. I found this movie most impressive while watching the investigation by the father on his and his daughter’s computer as he desperately tries to find his daughter’s whereabouts using websites that include Facebook, Facetime, Google Search, and many other social media methods. I for one did not know that you can perform a Google Search using just an image as this method was used towards the end of the film. The twists and turns as this story develops are very well done and while the ending – that some might think was a little over the top, for me worked extremely well and made sense considering the story up to that point.

Searching stars John Cho and Debra Messing as the police officer who is called in to help finding Cho’s missing daughter. I thought the acting was very well done and the story extremely well told throughout. It all holds your attention and it all makes logical sense – an ingredient lacking in so many movies I have seen recently.

The Rotten Tomatoes rating for this movie are a very high 91% and I mostly agree with this rating.

I highly recommend Searching.

The new World War 2 movie “Operation Finale” is about the capture in 1960 of the architect of the “Final Solution” Adolf Eichmann during Germany’s dominance in Europe. Memories of the worst time in human history come back to all of us when we see movies like this one and for all of us the atrocities of the years 1939-1945 where 6 million Jews and 4 million other innocent civilians were exterminated, are beyond all comprehension. Its still hard to believe that the years 1939-1945 are less than 80 years ago rather than something that happened in ancient times 2000-5000 years ago. Adolf Eichmann was one of the few leaders of the 3rd Reich to escape prosecution to South America and this story is mostly about the intricate complexities of his capture in Argentina and flight back to Israel where he could stand trial for his crimes.

The problem with this film is the middle part where the group that was assigned to capture him were delayed with many problems and had to wait around in Argentina for many days for their opportunity to leave. This part of the movie dragged on way too long and involved conversations with Eichmann who did admit who he was, feeding him and even a scene where he had to go to the bathroom. All of this was not necessary and should have been mostly eliminated from this movie. This part seemed to be the part of the screenplay where they had to add filler to make the movie last 2 hours. The Rotten Tomatoes rating for this movie are a low 62% for the reasons I stated above. I thought the acting was good, mainly from the only named actor in this film, Ben Kingsley who played Eichmann.

I give a marginal recommendation to Operation Finale mainly because its about the history of the worst time in world history during World War 2.

An excerpt from the IMDB page for Neil Simon’s biography summarizes his career very well:

Almost every one of his 30-plus plays, mostly Broadway comedies, has also been adapted into a motion picture– the greatest such achievement of any playwright/author, even surpassing William Shakespeare. As a result, Simon has received more Oscar and Tony nominations than any other writer in the history of show business.

Some years ago I read both of Neil Simon’s books Neil Simon’s Memoirs and Rewrites: A Memoir because for anyone who has ever had any ambitions to be a writer for movies or Broadway, Neil Simon, along with Woody Allen is just about the best there has ever been.

I was so impressed with the ups and downs of Simon’s life as a writer and the incredible number of hours and hard work it took to write and then re-write so many times for so many of his plays until he got the rhythm and the timing of each line – just right.

Show business is one of the toughest businesses there is and Simon went through his share of financial problems along the way of becoming one of the greatest writers of comedy of all time. He also signed away the rights to arguably his greatest play “The Odd Couple” too soon and for far less money that he should have gotten. Soon after the Odd Couple became a highly successful TV series in the 1970’s.

Simon’s personal life was extremely challenging, losing his wife of 20 years to breast cancer when she was only on her late 30’s – leaving him to raise his 2 daughters alone. One can only imagine how difficult it was go through something like that as he tried to move on with his life and career. Simon was married 5 times, including twice to the same woman and also to actress Marcia Mason.

Neil Simon died yesterday, August 26th at age 91 – and left the world with a body of work that is a standard for all writers who will follow. He will be greatly missed and his great works will always be admired and remembered.