skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Picture Paris - This HBO movie came and went in a blink, and it's too bad, because it's a delightful little movie that I want everyone to watch! It truly is a little movie, only 30 minutes long, but every moment is a pleasure. Julia Louis-Dreyfus stars as a housewife planning a trip to Paris. It isn't on On Demand, but you can find it on the HBO on your iPhone or iPad. C'est merveilleux.
My movie bender continues.
The Impossible - This is a great film. It's the true story about a family caught up in a natural disaster, and it's graphic and scary in a real life way. The acting is great - there's a little boy in this movie whose performance is touching. It's a movie with many breathtaking moments that will have you riveted to the screen.
Big Night - A couple of weeks ago, the food section in the Chicago Tribune featured a recipe for a Timpano. Apparently, in the movie Big Night, the brothers made a Timpano, and it's one of those unusual classic italian dishes. It turns out that a Timpano is a giant crust filled with every other kind of italian food, prepared in a big metal bowl, then baked for ages. It's meant for special occasions and will feed an army. In the movie it was quite beautiful. I have a plan (that may or may not materialize) to make a vegetarian Timpano. All I know for sure is that it will feature penne alfredo, eggplant parmesian and hard boiled eggs. It already sounds delicious.
I remember enjoying the story of a quirky failing restaurant hoping to be revived by a visit from Louis Prima. It takes place in the 1950s and it's much better than I'd remembered - a charming movie about brotherly love, italians, and food.
The Perks of Being a Wallflower - I love coming of age stories and high school movies. This is a really good one. It's about a boy starting high school after what we'll call a tough time, and his ensuing experiences and relationships. The characters are wonderful - in that mature idealistic carefree heavy thoughtful high school way. These characters will stay with me for awhile, and whenever this movie is on TV, I think it might be one of those that I watch no matter what. Like Dirty Dancing, Clueless, 16 Candles, Casablanca, Miracle on 34th Street, and so many others. If this is your genre, you can't go wrong. If you have a high school girl, there's a good chance that she will like this one.
Inside by Alix Ohlin - I really enjoy Alix Ohlin's writing. This is a timeline story, but I never fell into the chapters that way. For me it was about the characters. Grace, Anne, Mitch, Tug, and the characters we meet through their eyes. And isn't this a beautiful cover?
Promised Land - Something about this pretty sounding and looking movie didn't come together for me. It's somewhat slow moving which doesn't work for me any more, and the story is such that I kept looking for the lesson or the side I was supposed to be on, and even after the movie was finished, I still wasn't sure. Which is probably why it's a critical success. It didn't take sides too fanatically, and at the end of the movie, with the sides that were given, there is still much discussion to take place. There is a message in here somewhere. Is fracking bad or sometimes OK? Are corporations saviors or users? Are corporations honest or liars? Is life black and white? What is exactly the promised land?
Les Miserables - The miserable ones. When I was little, my mom was always talking about a guy named Jean Valjean. She said that he stole silver candlesticks, but she never said anything else about the guy. Shortly after I moved to Chicago, she came to visit and we went to see the new musical stage play. It started out with Jean stealing a loaf of bread, and I conked out. Next thing I knew, I woke up and he was running with silver candlesticks. I would periodically wake up and catch a few minutes of music, but just could not follow the story. A peak to my left found my mom nodding off too! So much for the classic novel by Victor Hugo and Jean Valjean!Understandably, I wasn't wild about the notion of seeing the movie. Except I saw the previews! and Hugh Jackman on Jeff Probst! and my friend Wendy liked it! It was with some amount of trepidation that I started watching, but I needn't have worried. This movie is fantastic. The story, the scenery, the acting, the cinematography, and most especially the music combine to make this one of the best movies of the year. Some of the tunes are recognizable, and it's an engrossing movie. Just fast forward through the songs if they slow you down too much. Especially Anne Hathaway. But go for it.
Flight - Here is a real contender for best actor and best picture. Denzel Washington plays a pilot who lands a commercial airplane under extreme conditions. The title Flight has many meanings when applied to the characters and events in this movie; it's not just about being a pilot. So let's talk about Denzel. He is one of the best actors of our time; he brings a masterful subtlety and emotion to every performance. There's this intelligent intensity so that whether or not you like his character, you still want to keep watching. See Flight, but not on an airplane, and preferably not just before a plane trip.
Silver Linings Playbook - Just go see it. Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert DeNiro and a cast of others in a love story in all directions. A good tale made into a better movie, and somehow told from different perspectives. Each one is watchable and engaging. This is my very favorite movie in a long time. Usually movies spend the best part of the movie doing the build up, and then the audience waits to see what happens, sometimes knowing exactly what's going to happen. In this movie, every scene is great, and the movie keeps getting better all the way to the end.
Life of Pi - The thing about Life of Pi, either about the book or movie, is that you get to choose to believe or not believe or simply wonder either way whether it really happened as Pi described. To bring this story to the movie screen with Richard Parker in all his wild glory is an amazing and beautiful thing. Kudos to the moviemakers. Here's a true contender for best movie.
I Hate Everyone . . . Starting With Me by Joan Rivers - Once again, I wish my dad was alive so that he could read this book. He would love it. He thought Joan Rivers was the funniest, and never missed her on The Tonight Show. In this book, she's true to form. Every other line is a punch line, and it's no holds barred. Joan is the comic voice of her time, sharp, edgy, fabulous. I love her on Fashion Police and have grown into her ribald humor. If you want or need to laugh, here you go.
From Van to Detroit Surviving the Armenian Genocide by Souren Aprahamian - I waited a long time for this book to be available, and it was worth the wait. Survivor memoirs is an amazing genre. How an individual survives, either alone or with others is so random in so many ways. Luck, strategy, intelligence, luck and more luck are what matters. In this case, Souren, born in 1907, was still a young boy when his mother literally carried him on her back to save them from being killed by the Turks. Souren, who was always curious and observant, lived a long life, worked hard and lived 101 years. His story is a history as well as an autobiography, and his writing is clear and detailed. The reader comes away from this book with a broader understanding of what it was like to live in those times in a big house on the outskirts of a village as the child of a well known and prosperous family. When around him, others took a wrong turn or made a fateful decision, he and his mom and his nephew kept going and found themselves alive in Detroit, on the other side of the world in a life they never could have imagined during the hard times.
Zero Dark 30 - Wow. They got Bin Laden, and here is the movie that tells the story of how it really happened, and why it took 10 years to do so. I think part of the critical excitement is that most of the critics are men, and they just can't believe that a woman directs good war movies. This is difficult to review without giving away so much of the story, so go see it (it's worth seeing), and then let me know what you thought. My emotions were more about Maya's role, and what she had to do in order to see out her mission. She was painstakingly thorough and she never gave up. She believed completely in what she was doing and she worked without distraction until she reached her goal. For me, that's where the power is in this story.
The Outcast by Sadie Jones - Here's a quick old fashioned read filled with frustrating characters. As the readers, we know exactly what's wrong, but we also know that there isn't much we could do about it even if we were there in the book. It's written with a bit of a pleasant British accent, and while most of the events are unpleasant, the daily lives these characters supposedly live are all geared toward proper pleasant activities. Something keeps one reading, though. Lewis Aldridge, the main character, is faced with choices every single moment, and we keep reading to see what he'll do because we want to care for him, and we so hope that he'll get a break or make a good choice. 
Ted - Redbox has me coming and going lately. It's close to home, it sends constant colorful emails to remind me to go to it, and it always has something new for me to try in return for a free movie. Just the sort of nonsense to waste my time, and just the sort of nonsense I seem to be buying into lately. ANYWAY. Yesterday morning, the Redbox email said that Ted was here! I didn't expect it to be in my local Redbox because Timothy Green still isn't there, but I tried and got it. Steve loved it, and I have to say, that for the time I was awake, it was pretty funny. The bear is cute, but never stops. Mark Wahlberg is good, but not my favorite in this role, and Mia Kunis is pretty, but it all got to be too much. Ted is a really cute bear, and probably disgusting, but the whole thing could have probably been a shorter movie. Overall there are funnier cute raunchy movies.
I'm on another movie bender. I haven't done this in years, but every so often I need to escape, and seeing a movie or two every day is a way to briefly forget about cold weather, snow, getting my life together and being present. I mean, who wants to be present and live in the moment ALL THE TIME? Most of us would be pretty bored. It's nice to go and live in someone else's moment for a couple of hours. Every day. This is also a good way to make the awards shows more meaningful if that's not a comical statement. Which it is. Come on folks, these are movies. Without further ado, I'd advise seeing
Argo - which you already knew you had to do. You have a bit of an idea that it's about rescuing hostages from Iran, but you didn't know that there were two groups of hostages, and this movie is about the group that got away so to speak. It's based on a true story, and it moves quickly, there is very little violence per se, and you'll come away thinking you saw a good movie. Best picture? I don't know yet.
Hyde Park on the Hudson - Bill Murray has become one of those actors you just have to watch, and in this case, he portrays Franklin Delano Roosevelt with aplomb. I enjoyed seeing how he lived, how he related in general to those around him, and how he entertained the King and Queen of England at a crossroads in history. I was left cold about the story that is the main reason for the movie. Laura Linney didn't deliver for me, and for that reason, this can wait until you can see it for free. Don't have to shlep to the theater, but if you see it at the redbox or library, and there is nothing else appealing, treat yourself to some Bill Murray. Plus the portrayal of Eleanor is pretty nutty. I wonder if she really was such a combination of clueless and wimpy. I'd thought of her as strong in body and personality. I think I have some reading to do....
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri - Whenever people ask me about favorite authors, I never think to say Jhumpa Lahiri, but she is definitely at the top of the list. Unaccustomed Earth is a generous compilation of long short stories. The short story's only fault is that it's sometimes too short, and the fault of the novel is that it can drag somewhere along the line. A long short story solves those concerns, to provide a story of perfect length. I love these people of Indian background, and I enjoy being allowed in to their particular way of talking, cooking, living, communicating and being seen in the world. Ruma, Pranab Kaku, Amit and Megan, Rahul, Sang, Hema and Kaushik populate these stories with grace and human fault. Hema and Kaushik are especially strong and their story is the powerful one that still moves me days later.
The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker - This unlikely story was the best book of my vacation. It takes place in Southern California, and at the very beginning we find out that the earth has slowed its rotation. This causes the days and nights to be unpredictably longer, and people are freaked because there is nothing they can do about it but adapt to an uncertain future. The narrator and protagonist is Julia. She has a wonderful voice and she's telling the story as an adult who hasn't forgotten what it was like to be a smart, thoughtful and observant 11 year old who lived through the changes of nature around her as well as those happening to her personally as an adolescent. She has close connections with the people around her, but as she grows up, she finds out that grown ups are not always grown up.
D'Jango - The best movie I've seen in ages. But not for everyone. I like how Quentin Tarentino asks the question: What would have happened if.....? And then he answers it with so much wit, action, excitement and violence that you just can't stop watching. You know that there are going to be some sacrifices. You know that your hero is going to win. You know that it is not going to be pretty. But you have to see it for yourself. D'Jango is a slave with no hope, until, improbably, and luckily, he gets an opportunity. And the story takes off. Action, excitement and violence by themselves aren't enough. For me it's the wit and the wink.
Normal Girl by Molly Jong-Fast - Miranda is a rich New York party girl who constantly parties and is slipping off the edge. Told in the first person, it's all the more poignant because the reader is left to figure out whether she is smart enough to realize what's happening to her. It's a quick read, intelligent and thoughtfully written.
This is 40 - It might as well have been titled This is 30 or This is 50, because these milestones come along no matter what we do. In this case, a husband and wife are turning 40 and have a great looking life from the outside. It's the inside where things are happening, though. Pure dramady just like we like it from Judd Apatow. I loved Albert Brooks and Jason Segel. Inspiration and wisdom sometimes come from the strangest places. Fun to watch as a very in the moment movie.
