What's Playing at My House

Somebody remind me if I forget again

I do not now, nor have I ever, liked a Woody Allen movie. It apparently doesn't matter how many times I watch them, thinking, "Oh, now I'll get it." I have tried for almost 20 years now, and I've never, ever liked one. I've seen several W.A. movies multiple times, and they don't get better with repetition.

Feel free to castigate me in public, or behind my back, for failing to appreciate one of the great American artists. I hate him. He's a whiner and a wimp and I can't think of any Woody Allen characters I like.

That's all.

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.

The Virgin Suicides

First: I love Sofia Coppola.

I had long avoided this movie, because of my well-publicized inability to watch hard movies about children. While this movie -- not a spoiler -- obviously revolves around the suicides of five sisters, its focus is much more on the effects their lives had on a group of boys their age. And on the feeling of the age.

Also, this: Kirsten Dunst, she's amazing.

Each of the five of the girls in this movie is less a person than she is the sense of a teenage girl. Coppola perfectly captures the egotism teenagers have. The characters -- the boys in the group, and the five sisters -- each see the world revolving around themselves. They bump into the other characters, they act as catalysts, but the central action to each character is what happens to that character.

I'm not really doing a good job of explaining what happens, but I'll just say this: You should see this movie. It's great film, and it's fun to watch. Except for that whole suicide thing. That part sucks.

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.

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.

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.

The Age of Innocence

I saw this movie when it came out, and I remember liking it. But I just watched it again last night, and I'm now thinking this is one of the best movies I've ever seen.

Superlatives are so shopworn nowadays that I'm having trouble deciding how to describe The Age of Innocence. How about instead, I'll start with a confession: Normally, I'm a major stickler for reading the book before seeing the movie. To the point where I bought all three Lord of the Rings books and whipped through them when I heard the movies were in production, so I'd be ready to watch them. [Review at a later date....] For some reason, I have never read The Age of Innocence [Edith Wharton, 1920, Pulitzer-winning book]. After seeing the movie again, I'm dying to.

I don't know if my book club friend Jamie reads this blog, but I will apologize to her if she does and this post has already made her faint. We have a long-running dispute: Who's better, Ernest Hemingway or Jane Austen? It turned out that neither of us had read the other's favorite author, being so turned off by the style. And I'm the Hemingway girl. We agreed to read at least one book of the other's choosing, and I waded through Pride and Prejudice last year, only so I could make her read a Hemingway. 

If you've read the two of those, you may also be surprised that I'm so in love with this film. I am curious to see if I like the book. I'll have to report back on that front. But what a masterpiece Martin Scorsese has created here!

A. The actors are incredible. Put Daniel Day-Lewis in a film about the dogcatcher and I'm there. This is a great role for him: he so often plays the angry man, but this character is fabulously multi-dimensional. Lewis is engaged and then married to Winona Ryder, who is exquisite here as the bland face of convention, though possessing a depth we don't appreciate until later. The scenes between Michelle Pfeiffer and Lewis are maddening as they struggle to avoid sweeping away in their emotions. Maddening in a it-makes-you-feel-like-they-must-feel-and-you-can't stand-it-any-more-than-they-can kind of way. The supporting cast is also crucial: they personify the sharp edges hidden under the polite veneer of 1870s New York high society, building a stockade around Lewis' character he is unable -- and unwilling -- to break through.

B. Have you ever felt so sorry for rich people? Is anyone in this film really happy?

C. The costumes and settings are so perfect, so what you imagine the time period was like [at least for the upper crust]. FYI, The Age of Innocence won an Oscar for costume design. Well-deserved. Why it didn't have more, I can't explain to you.

The Grifters

I wasn't expecting The Grifters to be so, so, disturbing? Thought-provoking? Funny? All of the above.

First off, this movie is not a comedy. But you will laugh at several points throughout this flick, about a bunch of crooks scamming random people and also each other. I don't know that you'd call Grifters a drama exactly....it's really more of a character study than anything. And my, what disturbing characters.

Stars John Cusack, Annette Bening and the fabulous Anjelica Huston, along with a lot of other people you'll know. Watch for Jeremy Piven as a sailor on the train. And J.T. Walsh is in there -- this guy was in everything in the 80s and 90s prior to his untimely death in 1998. I especially remember him as Lt. Col. Markinson in A Few Good Men. But I'm off topic.

This movie came out in 1991, giving us the answer to the question: Has John Cusack always been this good? Yes, he has. Not to say I've loved all of his movies....but there aren't many I wouldn't recommend.

Showing the complex relationship between Roy Dillon [Cusack], and his mother Lilly [Huston], and his girlfriend Myra [Bening],  The Grifters takes you right up to the edge and then pushes you over. Would you betray those closest to you? For how much? Is everything, even your deepest relationships, just a scam if there's a profit involved? How easily can you see other human beings as nothing more than the means to an end?

It's a fabulous movie, but it's certainly not a feel-good. More like, you'll swear you're not the same species as these folks when the movie's done, but deep down, you know it's there. At least a little bit.

Babel

I saw this several days ago and I'm still not sure what to say about Babel. It is a hard movie to watch, but you can't stop watching, either. I loved the way they moved between the interwoven storylines: unlike some movies using the same technique, you don't see the stories in exactly concurrent timelines. The whole movie happens over the course of a few days, but you have to watch the whole thing to understand how each storyline fits together and matches up with the others. The effect reinforces the title. And this is one of the best-titled movies of all time.

If you haven't seen it, I won't go the spoiler route this time around. [Though I'll go ahead and confess I can't see the problem with discussing the entire plot of a movie before seeing it. I get so frustrated with people who won't tell me what happens in a movie if I haven't seen it. A. I don't like surprises -- in the movies or in real life and B. I'm not watching many movies to find out what happens, but instead for the experience of it happening.] But I'm not giving away anything to tell you these three storylines:
* An American and his wife [Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett] traveling in Morocco have a harrowing vacation
* while their children have a terrifying time with their nanny at home
* while there's a teenage girl in Japan in massive pain.

It's one of those movies where you can't truly call anyone the lead. But good night, these actors are incredible. In some ways, Pitt's and Blanchett's parts serve only as a vehicle for the others to be relevant: they are catalysts with reactions abounding around them.

Bottom line: See this right away if you haven't already. See it when you're in the mood for a serious flick, though. And don't be surprised if you think, "I have to think about that," when it's over.

I know I'll buy the DVD. It's not a watch-every-weekend sort of movie, but it's one I want to have.