Downton Abbeys third season finale on PBSs Masterpiece was, to say the least, a spoilers paradise. The episode, which saw the Granthams and. From a husbandandwife team comes an emotionally compelling, brilliantly acted film about a Russian dancer. Share this Rating. Title The Surgeon 1995 4. Want to share IMDbs rating on your own site Use the HTML below. Les Freres Scott Saison 7 Episode 6. Tenderness Full Movie Online Free' title='Tenderness Full Movie Online Free' />Nina Movie Review Simone Biopic Is All Wrong. Its a sign of our audacity as listeners and human beings that we automatically assume great singers belong to us. When it was announced, sometime in 2. Zoe Saldanaan Afro Latina of Dominican and Puerto Rican descent, with light skin and delicate featureshad been cast in an upcoming Nina Simone biopic, the online outcry among Simone fans was noisy and impassioned. Simone, who died in 2. Civil Rights activist who later swayed toward militancy. In other words, her identity as a performer was inseparable from her identity as an African American woman. The Internet protest over Saldanas casting came with a list of actressesViola Davis, Kimberly Elise, Mary J. Blige who had originally been considered for the role who looked more like Simone. Later, the appearance of on set pictures of Saldana, in a prosthetic nose and dark makeup, didnt help. If only Saldanas lack of resemblance to Simone were the biggest problem with Nina, which was written and directed by Cynthia Mort making her feature debut. Nina focuses mostly on the last 1. Simones troubled life, with sprinklings of flashback to earlier moments. Even so, the timeline is jumbled and confusing. This is a movie with no center, let alone any real beginning or end, but the story more or less starts around 1. Saldanas Simone, after brandishing a gun in front of a recording executive after learning shed signed all her royalties away years ago, is arrested and admitted to a psychiatric hospital. A nurse there, Clifton Henderson David Oyelowo, recognizes and befriends her, and also reminds her that shes free to leave the hospital whenever she wishes. She asks him to become her assistant Shell take him with her back to Paris, where she has lived for many years, having given up on the racism and overall inhospitableness of the United States. Henderson quickly realizes the mistake hes made. Simone makes impossible demands and then berates him for not measuring up. Shes a troublesome performer, irascible, ill tempered and almost impossible to book. Henderson, though hes moved by her fragility, cant take it. He gives up and returns to the States, but Simone follows him and promotes him to manager. Their story of minor ups and major downs continues, culminating with Simones triumphant return to the States for a concert in Central Park. At least, thats what I think happens in Nina This is the sort of movie where you stumble out thinking, What the hell did I just see Mort pinpoints a few of the key injustices in Simones lifefor example, the fact that her early ambitions to become a classical pianist were thwarted when the Curtis Institute, in Philadelphia, refused to accept her. A title card at the films end reveals that the school awarded her an honorary degree in 2. Oyelowo gives an even tempered, thoughtful performance, but he cant anchor the mess around him. And Saldana is all wrong. With her perpetually downturned mouth, she captures Simones imperiousness and anger but almost nothing else, and shes mannered to the point of cartoonishnessshes impersonating an idea of Simone rather than trying to get to the truth of the woman. Worse yet, the musical numbers, in which Saldana does her own singing, have no heat They capture little of the singers fierceness or tenderness, the seemingly contradictory poles of her genius. A Nina Simone novice seeing this picture would have no idea who this complex, magnificent artist was, or why she mattered. To get a sense of what Simone was really like, Liz Garbus straightforward but sensitive documentary What Happened, Miss Simone Its still hard to say, though, if the problems with Saldanas performance are her own fault. Those who protested her casting may see the movies failure as a victory, but thats a dangerous route. What if Saldana had played the role without the prosthetic nose and the makeup which, admittedly, is mottled and just looks strange, and had been left free to channel the spirit of Simone using her voice, her eyes, her gestures and her soul Nina is just sad for everybody. Guitarist Al Shackman, one of Simones longtime sidemen and her close friend, recently wrote in the Huffington Post that Simone had once told him shed have wanted Grace Kelly to play her in the movie version of her life. Simone identified with Kellys grace and beautythis was how she felt inside. But she also knew that wish could be seen as a betrayal of her identity as a black woman, and she swore Shackman to secrecy, a confidence he obviously broke. But if he hadnt told this wonderful story, would any of us have thought about the Grace Kelly inside Nina Simone Because surely, shes there. The story is important for another reason. When we love an artist, we all feel a sense of protectiveness and appropriationits like owning shares of stock. But to whom, really, does Nina Simone belongIf Nina proves anything, its that Simone is elusive and free, which is just as it should be. Polina Review Risky Leaps, Moving Odyssey. Given the customary fate of beautiful, talented, self possessed Russian heroines, a sense of foreboding might accompany viewers into the voluptuous world of Polina, despite its gorgeous dancing and people. And passion. And art. And Slavic melancholy. Well, no one ends up under a train. But its certainly an epic. And its certainly cinema. Directed by the wife and husband team of Valrie Muller and Angelin Preljocaj, Polina could provide some of that good P. R. Russia sorely needs, even as Stalinist repression echoes.