What's Playing at My House

Keeping Mum

Oh my word. This is one of the best comedies I've seen in months and months.

I will say, the movies I have seen lately fall more into the "Horton Hears a Who" genre. So that explains some things. [Mini-review: Brilliant animation. Otherwise a snore and not deserving of its great reviews. I'll take the Incredibles 10 times over first.]

Keeping Mum brings out the firepower: Dame Maggie Smith. Rowan Atkinson. Kristin Scott Thomas. Even Patrick Swayze, whom I normally wouldn't count as "firepower." But he's damn funny. In a really creepy way.

 

Short plot summary, no spoilers: Rowan Atkinson is a vicar in a little community, married to Kristin Scott Thomas. They've grown bored with each other and she's sleeping with Patrick Swayze, her golf instructor. They hire Maggie Smith as a housekeeper and she quickly gets the family back in shape, albeit through some creative means.

If you liked State and Main, or Fargo, or Rushmore, you'll love this. Me? I'm buying the DVD asap.

The Pursuit of Happyness

I enjoyed this 2006 movie starring Will Smith. It's an adaptation of the real-life story of Chris Gardner, today a successful stockbroker in Chicago, who was frequently homeless while he trained as a stockbroker in the early 80s in San Francisco.

Frankly I had to forward through a lot of the sad parts. That was a new one on me....something so sad I couldn't watch it. There are a number of scenes where Gardner and his son spend the night in a homeless shelter, struggle to scrape up enough money for food, etc. I couldn't watch them. I am turning into a big wimp in my old age.

The film does hit you over the head a bit much with the message. But it's a great movie and you'll find yourself cheering for Gardner all the way through.

War of the Worlds

I can sum up my thoughts on Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds in just a few sentences.

• Can we all agree that Dakota Fanning, while clearly talented, is the creepiest child actress ever?

• Here's a movie formula for you: Nonstop action + little plot + too much dark lighting = One annoying movie.

• Seriously, the problem here is, it's all shoot 'em up, and you get little to no reason to care about anyone who dies. And only slightly more reason to care about those who live. You will run out of adrenaline before the movie is half done.

• It is now hard for me to watch Tom Cruise without thinking of the media firestorm over his religion. Do we really all care that much? Do we all realize how few Scientologists there are in this world? Do you really think he's more of a threat to your daily life than say, poisonous spiders? I didn't think so.

• To sum up: I've seen better out of much lesser directors than Spielberg. I'm hoping for more the next time out.

Schindler's List, The Pianist, Sophie Scholl—The Final Days

I returned The Pianist and Sophie Scholl to Netflix a couple weeks ago, but I've had trouble sitting down to write this post.

The Pianist arrived first, and I watched it pretty soon thereafter. I was not far into the movie before I started mentally comparing it to Schindler's List.

Schindler's List is both one of my all-time favorite movies, and one I have only seen once. I bought the DVD as soon as it was available, but it's sat wrapped on the shelf here ever since. If you've ever seen the movie, you know why. It's incredibly hard to watch. But just better-than-words cinema, and great work on one of the toughest subjects.

The Pianist's cinematography will catch your eye immediately. It's not black and white, but throughout the movie, the colors are muted, almost blurred. The movie has both a dream quality -- nightmare I guess -- and feels removed thanks to this effect. It takes you through the Polish ghetto and Nazi occupation through the eyes of  Władysław Szpilman, the Polish musician who barely escaped being shipped to a death camp and instead spent the war years hiding in bombed-out Warsaw, often at the brink of starvation or death from various illnesses. He survived through the kindness of acquaintances, and a German army officer.

I think you need to see movies like this in the theater. You wouldn't say this movie is slow, but you have to allow yourself to be pulled in. And of course, you don't want to be pulled in. But it's good for you. Like Brussels sprouts. If you have a choice between this and the stupid comedy flavor of the day, I hope you'll choose Brussels sprouts.

It was interesting to watch Sophie Scholl immediately following The Pianist. I think I'd first read about Sophie Scholl went it was nominated for an Oscar, and I added it to my Netflix list then. This is really a fabulous movie. While I enjoyed both Sophie Scholl and The Pianist, I can unequivocally say that Sophie Scholl is more relevant to your life today. The cinematography is also a big player in this movie, but it's a little different than in The Pianist. I'm not sure exactly how to describe it, except to say that it feels flat -- in a good way -- and at the same time, I felt like it emphasizes the immediacy of the action and dialogue. Now you're wondering what the heck I'm talking about, so you'll just have to see it for yourself.

Sophie Scholl is about a young woman, her brother and friends who are working to resist the Nazis in Munich at the university. They formed the White Rose group, writing and distributing leaflets anonymously.

The film is fairly accurate to real events, including several accounts of Scholl's courage under interrogation and at their trial, right up to the moment of her execution. You only hope you would be half so brave.

If you only see one of these three, it has to be Schindler's List. Sophie Scholl now runs a close second to me. The Pianist is a very good movie, more than worth watching, but I feel like it's more a snapshot in time, one man's extraordinary experience, as opposed to the other two, which I believe tell greater truths about the Holocaust.

An Inconvenient Truth

Fabulous and riveting. You must watch it now. What took me so long?? Al Gore is an evangelist.

Akelah and the Bee

I was pretty skeptical about this movie. The cast sounded good. But I didn't expect to like it. I like relatively few kids' movies. I guess my standards for them are pretty high.

Akelah and the Bee is about an 11-year-old girl in South Central LA who is pushed to enter the school spelling bee. She wins, and it's obvious she can spell practically anything. So her principal and his friend, a Stanford English professor on sabbatical, groom her for the national spelling bee. Her overwhelmed, widowed mother [Angela Bassett] is furious; she thinks this is a waste of time for Akelah [Kiki Palmer]. It's a good movie that sounds all the right notes about believing in yourself and working hard for a goal. I did find the mother's protests a bit hard to believe.

But all in all, I have only one complaint. The script makes incredible efforts to make the characters sound like they really live in the urban inner city. To the point where the preteens curse left and right, everyone speaks in a thick urban accent, and uses lots of slang.

Hey, I get it. I cursed a lot in 7th grade myself. The people in this movie are poor. Most of them aren't Caucasian. They live in South Central. But like many people do when trying to portray the South on film, you all went overboard on playing to the stereotype. I think this effect is perhaps so pronounced because part of the script involves Akelah's professor/tutor [Laurence Fishburne] coaching her on grammar, too. But really.

Worth watching? Sure, especially if you have preteen kids. But if you're squeamish on language, I'd steer clear.

A Prairie Home Companion

Let me start this one by confessing my wild bias:
I love, love, love Garrison Keillor and Prairie Home Companion. To the point where, when I turned on the radio last year or the year before, and there was a news story celebrating his life's work, I panicked and thought he had died and I seriously had to sit down and Google it right then, hyperventilating all the while.

Turns out it was some kind of 30th anniversary retrospective or whatever. Whew.

This man is the background music of my weekends. So you know I am going to like the movie. And I did. I loved it.

But I only think you should see it under one of two conditions:
* You, too, are a big PHC fan.
* You like movies like State and Main.

This one is quirky. But if you fall into either of the two above categories, this one's for you.

Friends with Money

First, sorry that I have not posted lately. I guess only those of you with me in your feed readers are still coming back, it's been so long. I have watched a few movies recently -- not many, but a few -- but none that I wanted to comment on one way or the other until I had Friends with Money come up in my Netflix queue.

I expected to like this movie [yes, I sometimes watch movies that I don't expect to like. I'm weird.] and I did, but... well, the one thing about it I have to tell you is a spoiler. So just stop here if you don't like to know the end.

Joan Cusack is one of my favorite actors, and she's excellent here. As is Frances McDormand, who's not-so-quietly clinging to reality while she struggles with her life. And Simon McBurney, the husband who is clearly gay [well, clearly to everyone but him and McDormand, who plays his wife]...so funny. Great commentary on modern urban life.

I found the relationships between the friends to be very believable. Women really do talk about each other like that. We're just trying to help. Or make ourselves feel better about ourselves, because we're not as bad off/fat/crazy/codependent as you are. But we would never, ever say that to your face. We certainly don't want to hurt your feelings. It's not like you can help it.

So, here's my problem. At the end, Jennifer Aniston finally meets a man she likes, played by Bob Stephenson. To all appearances, he's just as poor and quirky as she is, but she is not embarrassed to share him with her much wealthier friends.  And unlike every other man she's ever met, he's not out to take advantage of her. Then we learn, that even though he lives like a starving, slobby college student, he's rich. Really rich, like no need to work rich.

Now that I've put that down here, I'm having trouble describing my problem with it. Maybe it's this. There's a part of me that says, no matter who you are, we all have to justify our existence here. Rich, poor, stuck in the middle, life is what you make it and when you add up the score at the end of the game, everyone ought to have something to show for their time here. While in some ways, Aniston's character is among the happiest in the movie, she's certainly the most aimless. She flails around for direction half-heartedly, mostly content with her lot. And Stephenson -- his goal in life seems to be finding a better frozen dinner. Great, you've got all this money, what the heck are you doing with your life?

Yes, that is what bothers me. I disagree with the life choices of two of the central characters.

But a pretty good movie, nonetheless.

Groundhog Day 2: AKA Ladder 49

I rented Ladder 49 with the fondest hopes. I love Joaquin Phoenix [my man was robbed when Phillip Seymour Hoffman took Best Actor in 2006]. I can take Travolta in the right role [nothing will ever, ever beat Saturday Night Fever]. I like firefighter movies. Apparently, you don't get Backdraft every time.

This movie starts out OK. Dude gets trapped in a burning building after rescuing terrified civilian. Then we start with this flashback motif, seeing how Phoenix came to be a firefighter and learned the trade as a rookie on the force. How he met his wife. Had kids. Etc., etc., etc.

Etc., etc., etc.

At 70 minutes, I was ready for the movie to wrap up. I'd had my fun, gotten the adrenaline rush, ready to be done.

This movie lasts 115 minutes.

It's the first movie in a long time I just cut off [somewhere around the 90-minute mark]. It just got to be so repetitive. I have a friend at work who'd seen the whole thing. From what she told me, I'm glad I stopped when I did. It certainly wasn't worth any more of my time.

Blood Diamond: Couldn't Do It

I have really been anxious to watch Blood Diamond, the critically acclaimed picture about the trade in conflict diamonds*. So I was delighted when it arrived yesterday. About 30 minutes into the film, what I feared had happened: I couldn't watch it.

Right around the time I had my daughter, nearly 8 years ago now, I suddenly lost the ability to watch very scary shows and in particular, TV shows and movies that put children in danger. While I don't have nearly as intense a reaction as I had several years ago, I am still put off by lots of films and shows. And though I really wanted to see this movie, I just couldn't do it.

So, let me recommend it to you -- what I did see was great -- but say, if you can't stand gore and violence, and children in danger, please don't waste your money.

* Diamonds mined by children or adults in slavery, and/or those used to finance war and violence. It can be difficult for a consumer to ascertain the history of an individual stone. Estimates vary of how many diamonds come from shadowy origins, with diamond promoters asserting just 1% and human rights activists saying as many as 20% could come from negative backgrounds.