Our movie watching does not normally involve going to a theater. Most often, we are at home, watching big screen fare on our relatively tiny and old-fashioned 27-inch LDTV (!) screen. Unlike some, therefore, my movie reports are rarely current.
Plus, I don’t always get around to reporting on what we watch. So, Let me run through a few quickly in advance of the weekend.
What a Girl Really Wants
My movie watching partner is a ‘chick’ and so weekends include at least one ‘chick flick’. Last weekend we watched, for the third or fourth time, Kate and Leopold with Hugh Jackman and Meg Ryan in the starring roles, with a good supporting performance by Liev Schreiber. This movie is unique in many ways, but its real appeal lies, I think, in the way the girl is won.
Jackman plays a 19th Century Brit brought into the late 20th century. What wows the girl is his treating her with respect, showing her honor, defending her, and protecting her. He wins her affection by being a gentleman. What a concept, and by no means is it outdated. My impression, guys, is that it still is what a girl wants.
What Brothers Want
I really am not interested in yet another movie about the holocaust, but here we are with Defiance. We are told that this is based upon a true story. Aren’t they all?
I don’t mean to be snarky, for I am often moved by these stories of courage and integrity and forbearance in the face of such evil. This has all of that, and is a good story.
There just wasn’t much to make it stand out from the pack. Perhaps it was the young man fulfilling a Moses type role while denying the need for God that bothered me. “This is a miracle we will accomplish on our own,” he says, or something nearly like it. Perhaps it was that none of the characters were truly heroic (with the exception of the character played by Mia Wasikowska, about whom we will certainly be hearing more).
Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber (yes, him again – he’s one of my favorites) take sibling rivalry to new levels, and bring it all to a satisfying conclusion.
What the French Want
If Barb has a weakness for the action flick and the chick flick (the above two were her choices), I have a weakness for the quirky, offbeat drama. Bottle Shock fits the bill there admirably. This movie tells the story of a British wine snob, Severus Snape, (oops… wrong movie) who runs a wine shop in Paris. In a marketing ploy of international proportions he sets up a blind tasting comparing the classic French wines with the upstart Californian varieties. The result shocked the world.
At least that’s what I’m told. I was alive in 1978 when this happened, and it had no impact on my world.
But it makes a fun movie. It has elements of dramatic tension, of humor, of father-son angst, of friendship, and of the loser-stoner making good, getting the girl, and getting a very sweet follow-up role.
What No One Wants
Sometimes my desire for a quirky, offbeat drama leads me astray. The real fun of The Great Buck Howard was watching both Colin Hanks and his father Tom Hanks play in the same movie. As a father and son, no less. Pretty cool.
Buck Howard is based loosely upon the career of the ‘mentalist’ known as The Amazing Kreskin. John Malkovich is one of the most phenomenal actors out there, so that this film is also redeemed by watching a master of his craft create a character and sustain it through the whole movie.
I found that the movie failed to really sustain my interest. It wasn’t bad, exactly. The idea of watching the career of a man about whom it is said, “He is all washed up, and everyone knows it but him” does not make for very hopeful fare. There is, however, a note of redemption in the end, for which I was grateful.