Scribblerchick's Movie Dish

Angels and Demons

I read the DaVinci Code right after it was released, and I was on vacation. I'll never forget it. I was mesmerized. I read it in less than a day. Of course, I had a lot of time to lie around the pool.

Sometime later that year, I read Angels and Demons, which was actually written before DaVinci Code. It was not as fast-paced, but it was still a great read.

When Davinci Code was made into a movie I was dismayed to see Tom Hanks in the lead. I love Tom Hanks; I just couldn't picture him as Robert Langdon. By the second time I watched the movie, Tom's casting didn't bother me. I was OK with him. In Angels and Demons [henceforth, A&D] Tom is more believable. I don't know why. Maybe I'm just used to him in that role.

I was really intrigued with A&D. I had forgotten a lot of the book. I was fascinated by the premise and the complexity of it. I loved the images of Rome, whether real or CGI, I didn't care. I loved hearing Italian, a language I studied for two years and never mastered. I never got bored. That's saying a lot. Most movies bore me, at some point.

My daughter, who is sharp in a way that defies definition, spotted the "bad guy" right away, and told me so. I informed her she was wrong. In the book there was a different "bad guy." I had to apologize to her after the movie.

I asked my daughter how she knew who the bad guy was: "It's usually when they're fidgety, they're nervous around other people, that's how I know."

I think one day she will make a brilliant police detective.

My son, who is 12 and loves all computer games, was not as intrigued, but he didn't fall asleep either. I think a lot of the ideas were over his head, is all. He may like it a lot better when he's a little older.

I liked A& D a lot. The only negative thing I must say is there was a lot of very graphic violence. The kids took it in stride, but I was cringing and uncomfortable, at times.

If you want to have a few beers and a laugh, go see something else. If you want to engage your brain and see an intellectual thrill ride of a movie, see A&D. 

Bottle Shock

Every once in a great while, I stumble on a delightful little movie and want to share it with everyone I know who likes movies. Bottle Shock - despite it's really unfortunate title - is just such a little gem. We watched it on DVD last night. I wish I had seen it in the theater.

I feel compelled to put in a little summary of the movie, so I am going to blatantly quote the synopsis on imdb.com:

"In 1976, Steven Spurrier, a sommelier in Paris, comes to the Napa Valley to take the best he can find to Paris for a blind taste test against French wine. He meets Jim Barrett, whose Chateau Montelena is mortgaged to the hilt as Jim perfects his chardonnay. There's strain in Jim's relations with his hippie son Bo and his foreman Gustavo, a Mexican farmworker's son secretly making his own wine. Plus, there's Sam, a UC Davis graduate student and free spirit, mutually attracted to both Gustavo and Bo. As Spurrier organizes the "Judgment of Paris," Jim doesn't want to participate while Bo knows it's their only chance."

Bottle Shock stars Bill Pullman and Alan Rickman. Alan Rickman has been a favorite actor ever since I saw him in Robin Hood - Kevin Costner's version - many years ago. (Another terrific little Rickman film is Truly Madly Deeply - rent it if you've never seen it.) Alan RIckman always brings such originality and watchability to everything he plays. He's never boring. His voice, oily and phlegmy though it is, is a unique instrument and he wields it as deftly as a great artist wields a paintbrush. Bill Pullman is just downright sexy, and I don't care if he is looking a bit old and paunchy, he's HOT. Plus, oh yeah, he's a good actor.

I remember 1976 quite well, even though I was only 14. I remember the Bicentennial celebrations. I was, for once, pleased to have been born on July 4th, because there were so many cool things to watch on TV, even though we were at the beach. The music was great. The Doobie Brothers ruled. I LOVE the Doobies. Always have, always will.

The California wine country is presented almost as another character here. You can tell that Director Randall Miller loves the area. He presents the rows of grape vines in loving detail, and I defy anyone to see this movie and not want to go there. I have always wanted to tour the wine country, and this strengthens my resolve to one day make that daydream come true.

The actor Freddy Rodriguez, who played Gustavo, is someone to watch. He really brought an amazing depth of character and nuance to his role. He almost stole all his scenes, he was so good. I want to see him in other things.

The only seriously annoying thing in the film was Bo Barrett's hair. It was dreadful. I mean, really nasty looking. I kept yelling at the screen "Get a HAIRCUT!" until the kids got really annoyed with me.

The silly hair doesn't ruin the movie, though. The movie is touching, funny, and delightful.

Sunshine Cleaning

I have to admit, a movie about a cleaning service didn't appeal to me at all when I saw the first preview for this film. However, I liked Sunshine Cleaning. It had some good life lessons and I was glad I took my daughter. Unfortunately, it never really ignited into a great movie.

Amy Adams plays a woman who cleans houses for a living, and eventually decides to become a cleaner upper of crime scenes. Her hapless sister helps her. Her boyfriend, a married cop (played by an alarmingly subdued Steve Zahn) helps her. Eventually, though, a crisis forces her to make some tough choices.

Amy Adams is a good actress, but her squeaky clean looks can sometimes get in the way. The character she's playing in Sunshine Cleaning, Rose Lorkowski, is a working class woman who has made some bad choices in her life and is not doing well, emotionally or financially. Amy doesn't look the part. She looks like a Junior League member having a bad hair day.

Amy has a lot of closeups in this movie. The camera pans over to her a LOT and her face seems HUGE, which makes the teeniest microdot of emotion bigger than life. I hate movies where there are not enough closeups, but this movie has the opposite issue.

Amy has an amazing ability to cry on cue, and look woebegone and weepy, with her big blue eyes. I am sure this has been a great asset to her in her career, but maybe she should practice not showing so much. Her performance was too filled with closeups and tears, and I wanted it to be more about the audience figuring things out than simply being shown the weepy lady.

I don't mean to imply that I hate Amy Adams. I think she has done some fine work. I really liked her in Talladega Nights [as Susan, Ricky Bobby's mousy assistant] and Charlie Wilson's War. I even liked her in Enchanted, a film I felt compelled to watch because I have two kids. Did not care for the movie, but she was great.

As a mom, I also have to say I was rather appalled by some of the writing in Sunshine Cleaning. I want to like a movie written by a female (Megan Holley) but there were some alarming scenes. Rose's son Oscar has no known father, and there is a running joke about that. He has issues at school that would have caused me to get him a therapist, or at least sit down and talk to the child about them. Rose simply pulls him out of school. You can't do that. You either have to homeschool your child or enroll them somewhere. There is obviously a lapse of weeks before he is re-enrolled in school. FInally, Rose is always leaving her son with someone else. Does she ever spend time with him? It seems not. Maybe that's why he's acting out at school. I know I am nitpicking, but that just bothers me.

Emily Blunt is always interesting to watch. She was far more interesting to me in the Devil Wears Prada than Ann Hathaway. Here, she has more scenes and a greater range to play, and she does an incredible job.

Alan Arkin is in this movie, and it has the word "Sunshine" in the title, which is enough to make me see it. Arkin is great. I loved him in Little Miss Sunshine.

Sunshine Cleaning is a good film for grownups and I recommend it. There are several scenes, though, I wouldn't show to a minor. I was a bit uncomfortable with my 17 year old daughter seeing them, but she didn't act like they bothered her.

One final note, which may seem trivial, but so what? This movie was clearly filmed in New Mexico, a part of the country I've never seen. I was fascinated by the landscapes. I could never live somewhere that's so flat. Really flat. Wow...

Australia

I had started to go see this movie when it opened a few months ago, but the nearly 3 hour length was daunting. I don't like to spend that much time in a movie theater. We always have a lot going on, like most families where mom works and there are two or more kids, I guess.

I had heard some negative things about the film. However, I enjoyed it very much. The characters were engaging, particularly the little half Aboriginal boy.

The plot had a few holes in it, I must say. However, they didn't bother me that much. They weren't glaring holes.

The story was rich, and realistic. The emotions were realistic.

I loved the cinematography. You had the feeling you were seeing the real Australia, not some phony Hollywood version of it.

I didn't like the last film I saw by the director, Baz Luhrman, which was Moulin Rouge. It just seemed silly and trifling, to me. Luhrman is talented and original, no doubt, but I didn't care for it. Australia is a very different film.

Australia is a much more ambitious story. It has elements of an old-fahioned Hollywood western. It's a fish out of water tale, with Nicole Kidman playing the English aristocrat who takes over a failing Australian cattle station just before World War II.

There's a lot about the racial prejudices that existed during that time in Australia. One of the key characters is a little half-caste boy, who narrates the story with the unflinching voice of a street-wise child. His voice seems very authentic and original to me, sort of like the little girl in Whale Rider. You understand the racial and social tensions quickly. You have to root for these kids.

Because of my own history, there was a moment when I just broke down and cried, and was sort of embarrassed by my tears, but I couldn't help it. I don't want to give it away. However, I will tell you the memories evoked in me. When I adopted my son, I was in Kazakhstan for 3 weeks, then there was the court hearing, and I had to come home for a monthlong waiting period while everything was finalized. Leaving Michael was terrible. He was mine, I felt in my heart, and yet I had to leave him and fly halfway around the world. I had to do it twice with Alesia - in May, after the first adoption trip, when I didn't know when I could come back for the hearing, and again after the hearing, when I had to come home and work while her adoption was finalized.

There is nothing more terrible for a mother than to leave her child in the hands of strangers and go far away. In my case, I had felt from the first day I knew of my kids' existences that they were mine - the adoptions were just a formality. They were always mine.

Anyway, 1939-41 was a tumultuous time, even in the Australian outback.

Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman were wonderful. They should be proud of this film, Australia. I wish the critics had been kinder to it. I hope it finds its audience with the DVD release.

The Bucket List

When this movie came out I thought ah, Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, sounds like a winner. Then the critics weighed in, and they didn’t like it. I don’t think the movie did well at the box office. What a shame.

It’s often lamented in Hollywood that movies are geared only towards people under 25. Those of us middle-aged or older are often ignored. Then when a movie comes out that is actually pretty good and proves the Hollyweird studio nitwits wrong [think First Wives Club, Driving Miss Daisy, etc.] you would think they would make more quality films for non-pimply people. Wrong. It remains horribly difficult for decent movies about older people to get made. The recent movie Mama Mia, which is all about people in my age bracket, just did spectacularly well at the box office. (I didn’t see it, nor do I plan to, but that’s only because I despise Abba songs.) We might see Mama Mia clones one day soon, but I am not holding my breath.

The Bucket List is not great moviemaking. It’s predictable. If you’re wanting something brilliant and innovative, don’t expect that. However, if you like thoughtful, intelligent films, it’s for you. Nicholson plays a reprobate – what a shock. However, he’s an interesting reprobate, as Nicholson characters always are. This guy, Edward Cole, is more flawed than most of Nicholson’s characters.

Morgan Freeman plays a three dimensional person, which is a nice change from always playing God. He makes a great God, but Carter, his character in the Bucket List, is fully human. He’s flawed. He frets over his long marriage which has grown stale. He smokes. He has regrets about not finishing college. His character is sort of an everyman, except for how smart he is. I don’t want to spoil it, but his intelligence is shown in a very interesting way.

Jack Nicholson’s character has more of a dramatic change in the film, but it’s not always clear why he changes. Then again, I don’t want to split hairs. I don’t like films with too much sturm und drang and “woe is me - I’m dying” kind of introspection.

[Something I read about the film pointed out a funny comparison. Jack Nicholson played the devil in The Witches of Eastwick, and Morgan Freeman has played God in several films. It’s like the ultimate showdown movie - not. I digress.]

The Bucket List is, in the end, about friendship. Both men have things to teach. Friends allow themselves to learn from each other in a way nobody else can. It reminds me of that email I get periodically about friends coming into your life for a reason.

Also, this movie appeals to people of all ages. Everyone in my house enjoyed it.

I watch how my mother handles being a senior citizen, and I admire her. She doesn’t complain much about not feeling good. She helps me out a great deal. She is a parent figure to my children, and they adore her. I ordered The Bucket List from Netflix and asked her to watch it, and she did. It’s hard for her to sit still through an entire movie, due to her arthritis. She liked it a lot, though. It spoke to her. She just had several people close to her die, recently, so The Bucket List was meaningful to her.

More importantly, my children liked the movie. Now what studio boss would think a 12 year old boy and 17 year old girl would like a movie about two elderly men with terminal cancer? They don’t think like that. They dumb everything down to the lowest common denominators; sex and violence.

Few parents show their kids as many movies as I do, however. Movies are the best teaching tools in the world. Show a child a good story with compelling characters, and they will remember the lessons from it.

This is what I truly think is the most important lesson of The Bucket List. At the end of your life, you don’t look back and think, wow, how great that I made a lot of money and hung out with famous people, and had a fabulously decadent lifestyle. You think about who loved you, and who you loved. That’s the message of this movie. That’s why it’s worth seeing.

Facebook Group

I created a group on Facebook called Movie Nuts Over 40. If you're anywhere from 30ish on up and want to, please join the group! We can trade opinions and have fun discussions. We can also have gossipy discussions about stars [like Christian Bale, hint hint].

Anyway, if you're on Facebook, come on over...

Defiance

I have been wanting to see this film ever since I saw the preview for the first time, a month or two back. I have a great fondness for any film based on historical fact. Defiance is based on a true story of 4 Byelorussian brothers who fled to the woods when the Germans overran their country and started killing the Jews, including their parents and wives. [I must resist the urge to give away the plot.]

It's an amazing story. I had never heard it, and I was raised on films about World War II.

As much as anything, Defiance is a character study, and the lead actors are magnificent.

I have long liked Liev Schreiber. He plays one of the two leads in Defiance. He is not the most handsome guy around, but he's an incredible actor. He inhabits each part he plays in a thorough, DeNiroesque way. He's an actor's actor. I remember seeing him years ago in  one of his first movies, a little-known Nora Ephron effort called Mixed Nuts, about a group of misfits calling a crisis hotline at Christmas, and he played his part in drag. [BTW, Mixed Nuts is an interesting movie to watch, and I recommend seeing it.] He was a very convincing woman - hard to imagine from his more recent efforts like Kate and Leopold or The Manchurian Candidate, where he's quite macho. He's 6'3, a big guy.

Daniel Craig is an excellent actor, but it's hard to watch him. He is so much the opposite of a sexy leading man - I hate to sound shallow, but I must admit I probably wouldn't go out with him. He has very intense blue eyes; fascinating feature, but I think an actor needs more than that...

We watched Billy Elliott the other night, and I thought what a talented actor Jamie Bell - and then he didn't do anything else, at least nothing I saw. Now a young man, he is one of the brothers in Defiance, and a brilliant actor. He conveys so much, just with his eyes, even when he has no dialogue. He's not conventionally handsome either, but he has a charisma that's electric.

One thing I really liked about Defiance is that it shows the brothers mourning the deaths of people they love, not just being silent and stoic. It showed men crying - big tough men. My kids need to see that. Emotions are not ignored. Grief is expressed.

Both my kids still know their Russian - even Michael, though he can't speak it, still understands it. A lot of the film has dialogue in Russian and subtitles in English. Alesia said the accents were very good. She got tickled by some of the mis-translations, though. At one point there is some dialogue about a guy being "a big pinecone" but it gets translated in English as "a big shit."  My kids thought that was funny.

I was pleased to see the theatre was very crowded this afternoon. It's a terrific film and everyone should see it. 


 

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Yesterday, I saw The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – the new movie with Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. It's a lovely movie . I really enjoyed it. In the story, a baby born in 1918 has the body of an old man, and as he gets older, his body gets younger and younger. The very premise is intriguing. I had watched the online trailer, with its Zelig-like photos in which the viewer finds Benjamin, and was entranced.

In the story, Benjamin lives most of his life in New Orleans. Much of the movie was filmed in New Orleans, and that made it worth seeing, by itself. It's such a beautiful place, so alive with history. If anything so preposterous could happen, it would happen in New Orleans, a city rife with voodoo rumors and spirits. When you walk down the street in the French Quarter, it's like being in a huge, noisy haunted house. I haven't been there in years, but I can close my eyes and see it like I was there yesterday... anyway, enough reminiscing.

The story of Benjamin Button was so rich and thought-provoking, it was like a poem you want to re-read, to catch the whole meaning of it. It’s got a lot of symbolism in it, which is so unexpected in a big Hollywood movie. I want to see it again.

It's not surprising to me that one of the writers also wrote Forrest Gump, another favorite movie of mine. Movies with archetypes and symbols and lyrical cinematography contain a drop of magic, at least to me, and I don't care what critics say, or anyone else. If you want to go to a movie and have an emotional experience, we are sympatico.

I like a good action movie, but once in a while I want something more substantial.

The actress who played Queenie, Taraji Henson, was wonderful. She deserves an Oscar. Brad Pitt also did a very credible job, and I've never thought much of his acting skills. Cate Blanchett was wonderful, as always. Jared Harris is an actor to watch. He was a great tugboat captain, and really a colorful character, and reminded me a lot of Richard Harris. I looked him up on IMDB and he is Richard Harris' son!

[caution: the next paragraph contains a spoiler]

My son was in a weird mood after seeing the movie. It might have bothered him on a subconscious level.

It’s a story about adoption, although that's not played up much in the press on it. When Benjamin is born, his mother dies, then his father leaves him on the steps of a boarding house for old folks, and the proprietor there, a young black woman named Queenie, raises him. Once he grows up, he learns about his birth parents, and gets to know his father. When he goes to the funeral with Queenie by his side, she remarks “He’s gonna be buried right next to your mother.” He gives her an affectionate hug and says “YOU are my mother.” Well, that didn’t make me cry in the movie, but when I was telling Mother about the scene later, it made big tears come in my eyes.

I cannot think of a better way to spend 2 hours and 48 minutes than to see Benjamin Button. It's an amazing film.

Quantum of Solace

I went to see Quantum of Solace the other day, and I shouldn’t have done it. I should have never seen that film. I was bored to tears, two minutes into it.

The last time I had seen a James Bond film was several years ago, in the company of two of my cousins. My cousin Dan was dying of cancer and wanted to see the latest Bond film, and of course, Mark and I took him. I was bored to tears there, too. At least Pierce Brosnan is enjoyable to look at for two hours.

Now, before you think I’m just anti-Bond, let me set the record straight. I recall going to see all the Bond films that came out in the 70’s and thoroughly enjoying them, despite being a bit annoyed at how sexist Bond is. The first Bond I recall was Roger Moore, and he was terrific. I subsequently saw the older Bond films on TV. Sean Connery was awesome, too. Handsome, sexy, and with a twinkle. Bond usually has a twinkle in his eye, and that’s a big part of the appeal. Craig has no twinkle. He looks like if a twinkle came near him he would beat it to death.

My daughter, 17, asked me in the film, “Why do all these people in the film except James Bond have ugly yellow teeth?!” I just shrugged. “I dunno. They aren’t American, sweetie.”

About 5 minutes into the film, my 12 year old son leaned over and said “This is a really loooooong movie. Can I go outside and play video games?!”

The main bad guy, “Dominic Greene” bears a striking resemblance to Roman Polanski [except with worse looking teeth]. That didn’t impress me. Turns out, his mother is from the same village where Polanski grew up. I don’t like Polanski. He deserves to be exiled – I don’t care how good a director he is. He had sex with an underaged girl and he doesn’t need to come back to America. I read quite a long article about his shenanigans and it horrified me... but I digress.

Here is the link to theIMDB writeup about QS. I now understand the plot. In the movie, it was too confusing.

One big appeal in all the Bond movies – the high tech gadgets – was missing from QS. One thing I really enjoyed and found intriguing is the computer screens that flash images across and you drag them off with your hands. I have seen this technology before, in Minority Report, but it must be pretty close to being available to the public now, I think. I also liked the voice-activated phone system. At one point Judi Densch is in the bathroom taking off her makeup and gets a phonecall and takes it without stopping what she’s doing. That was fun to watch. The car chases? Not so much.

The main Bond Girl in the film, Olga Kurylenko, is from Ukraine. She doesn't look it. She looks Spanish. Alesia was astonished when I told her the girl is Ukrainian. I didn't think much of her acting. Then again, Bond Girls don't have to be great actresses...

Twilight

Note: this is an interview of my 17 year old daughter Alesia. Alesia saw the movie Twilight this afternoon, with her friends Elena and Sasha.

DEE:
Did you like the movie?

ALESIA:
Yes, I did. I heard it was scary, but it was not scary. Any child could see that movie.

DEE:
Was the romance in the plot well done?

ALESIA:
Well, um...It looked realistic. The romance was pretty well done.

They were regular people, but sometimes they wouldn't show the vampire teeth, so that made it a little bit un-fun.

The vampire's eyes changed colors.

Edward didn't want to kiss the girl because he didn't want to kill her. He would get so excited, he could've killed her.

DEE:
So if he kissed her and killed her, it would be a short movie, huh?

ALESIA:
Yeah.

DEE:
Anything else you want to tell us?

ALESIA:
She became part of the vampire people but she wasn't a vampire. They protected her from the vampires that ate people.

DEE:
Ate them or drank their blood?

ALESIA:
Ate them. But they wouldn't show those parts. That's why I'm saying, it's not that scary.

DEE:
Everything I've read says the teen girls love Edward Cullen. What do you think?

ALESIA:
He's HOT!

DEE:
Is he a good actor?

ALESIA:
Not really.

He just looked like a normal person because they didn't show those teeth.

James is the bad guy with the ponytail. Edward had to protect his girlfriend from James. James killed the girl's mother - but they didn't show that.

Bella got bitten twice. If she got bitten three times she would've become a vampire.

DEE:
Would you recommend this to friends?

ALESIA:
Yes, if they like teen stories. Edward's girlfriend was REALLY in love with him. She didn't want to be apart from him.