Peace, love and misunderstanding (2011)

Ebert likes it a bit more than I did, but he, of course, captures the film in his inimitable style.

"Peace, Love & Misunderstanding" is an undemanding formula picture that's a lot of superficial fun and not much more. Would it surprise you that within 24 hours Diane and both of her children have commenced romances with locals, and that many truths will be exchanged between Diane and Grace? Woodstock is presented as a place where the 1969 festival still more or less continues, many of the flower children apparently having never left. It's very upscale in a laid-back way, like Aspen or Telluride, and Grace, for example, seems to have unlimited funds, although there's a reason for that.

 Undemanding, yes, but more than a bit maddening, for someone (me) who lived through the Sixties, even if on the fringes. Fonda's Grace saw everything, did everything, knew everyone: she calls musicians Jimi and Jerry. Her character is actually somewhat wooden; she is a stereotype.

Because Fonda is (very capably) playing a send-up of her image, the character I found most interesting is Catherine Keener's Diane. She's a Manhattan lawyer, nursing anger with her mother after all these years and making it a point not to drink or smoke — as a rebuke, perhaps. She quickly falls under the spell of Jude (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a local furniture maker and guitarist, age-appropriate, handsome, understanding. Meanwhile, daughter Zoe locks hearts with Cole (Chace Crawford), even though she is a vegetarian and he is a butcher. Young Jake is smitten with Tara (Marissa O'Donnell), a coffeeshop waitress who wins him with a shy smile and superb latte.

I agree. But the movie has its limitations, and that prevents the characters from being complex. That was probably intentional.

These three interlocking romances mesh with Grace's non-stop adventures and assorted heart-to-heart talks, and that's about the size of it. Director Bruce Beresford seems content to deliver a charming comedy and sidestep the deeper family issues that the film could have addressed. So, all right, on that level, the film works for me. It essentially focuses on the three women, and Fonda, Keener and the fast-rising Elizabeth Olsen look plausibly like three generations from the same genes. Olsen, indeed, looks a great deal like Keener, and that is a sincere compliment. It's the cheekbones when they smile.

Yeah, it worked. Three of four stars? Seems a mite much; two would've been a mite short. So I give it 2½ stars.Joe Morgenstern liked it less than Ebert, and makes some interesting comments. Rotten Tomatoes critics gave it 29%, its public 31%: cruel, but just.

Liberal Arts

Very good film. No special effects. No wanton sex. Very cerebral (characters read books!). In other words, a mature film —which, of course, had terrible box office. Ebert quite liked it, as did I.

Josh Radnor's "Liberal Arts" is an almost unreasonable pleasure about a jaded New Yorker who returns to his alma mater in Ohio and finds that his heart would like to stay there. It's the kind of film that appeals powerfully to me; to others, maybe not so much. There is a part of me that will forever want to be walking under autumn leaves, carrying a briefcase containing the works of Shakespeare and Yeats and a portable chess set. I will pass an old tree under which once on a summer night I lay on the grass with a fragrant young woman and we quoted e.e. cummings back and forth.

The  entire review is worth quoting, really.

"Liberal Arts" has been criticized in some quarters as a sitcom, in part because Radnor stars in a famous one, "How I Met Your Mother." Those who see it that way are well-guarded. God forbid that they would ever "fall for anything." I strive to leave myself vulnerable.
There is a word to explain why this particular film so appealed to me. Reader, that word is "escapism." If you understand why I used the word "reader" in just that way, you are possibly an ideal viewer for this movie.

Merci beaucoup .

The best exotic Marigold Hotel (2011)

an ensemble cast consisting of Judi Dench, Celia Imrie, Bill Nighy, Ronald Pickup, Maggie Smith, Tom Wilkinson and Penelope Wilton, as a group of British pensioners moving to a retirement hotel in India, run by the young and eager Sonny, played by Dev Patel.

Gets 78% & 79% in Rotten Tomatoes. About right. Wilkinson charcater is very well portrayed. Patel's seems a stereotype that nearly drowns in syrup. Ebert liked it. As did Stephen Holden in the Times: The screenplay does a reasonably skillful job of interweaving its subplots and of creating some mild surprises. This is a programmatically feel-good movie whose tempered optimism and insistence that it’s never too late to leave your comfort zone and explore new horizons stays mostly (but not always) on the safe side of sentimentality. Besides its sterling cast, its ace in the hole is its pungent depiction of Jaipur’s teeming streets, which give an otherwise well-mannered movie a blinding splash of color.

Definitely, maybe (2008)

An old favorite that holds up nicely.

Great opening sequence. Kevin Kline shines in a small role ("be a man; drink." "Are you comfortable?" a nurse asks him as he lies in a hospital bed after a heart attack. "I make a living," he answers, continuing, "give us a smile, sweetheart, I've been waiting all my ife to use that line."). And Maya ("What's the boy word for 'slut'?"). The five main characters are good. Quite enjoyable. Still.

Then She Found Me (2007)

Stephen Holden in the NY Times is positive: “Then She Found Me,” a serious comedy, is more impressive for what it refuses to do than for its modest accomplishment. The directorial debut of Helen Hunt, who plays April Epner, an anxious 39-year-old kindergarten teacher in New York City, it has all the ingredients of a slick, commercial farce, which it emphatically is not. 

Better than most of the crap that has been made in the last decade.

Black Balloon

Another film that I saw coming attractions for (from the DVD of Captain Abu Raed), and interloaned. A family moves to a new neighborhood; the father is in the armed forces, his wife is heavily pregnant, and they have two grown sons: Charlie, who is autistic, and Thomas, 15, who is charged with caring for his older brother. There is some excellent acting, especially, I thought, by Luke Ford, who plays Charlie. Autism is shown is its different parts: Charlie's behavior, its effects in his family, the ignorance of others. Quite well done, though the ending was a bit weak.

The extra man (2010)

Wanting a film to watch, unable to find anything much, on Friday I searched for Kevin Kline films, and found this one.

Louis Ives (Paul Dano) heads to New York City following an embarrassing incident that forces him to leave his job. He rents a room in the apartment of Henry Harrison (Kevin Kline), a penniless, wildly eccentric playwright. Additionally, he accepts a position with an environmental magazine, where he encounters green-obsessed co-worker Mary (Katie Holmes). But it’s Louis’ new home life with Henry that really sparks his imagination. Developing a mentor/apprentice relationship, Henry exposes Louis to the duties of an “extra man,” a social escort for wealthy widows.

Enjoyable. Good. Interesting. Yet ... uneven. Still, I enjoyed watching it. Stephen Holden in the Times puts it well.

John C. Reilly's character does not work at all. Katie Holmes's character could have been more developed. Dano and Kline are wonderful.

Fever pitch (2005)

What a piece of garbage. Jimmy Fallon plays a school teacher whose entire life is defined by his fanaticism: he is not just a Boston Red Sox baseball fan, but everything in his life is about the baseball team. I imagine there actually are people of his ilk. Drew Barrymore plays a driven career woman who for some reason falls for this guy. Inexplicably, the film gets 64% - 62% readings in Rotten Tomatoes. Luckily, the DVD was damaged, and I got a good reason to turn this thing off.

Water for Elephants (2011)

Cute, had its weaknesses, but it worked, for me.

Easy A

Stereotyped character, silly story. Mediocre.

Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter is re-imagined as a contemporary high school comedy in this tale of a scheming student who plots to give her popularity a boost by painting herself the easiest lay in school.

Not well done.

Crazy, stupid, love

A fun film. Originally skeptical that I would be watching another sappy love story (and ready to leave after short interval), I was utterly surprised by the film, and how much I liked it.

Steven Carrel (unpleasant memories of watching a very small bit on an "Office" episode did not come back to me at first, for I was not quite sure it was him playing Cal) plays a husband who is blindsided by his wife while they are pondering what dessert to order; rather than agreeing to split a sweet she says I want a divorce. She (played nicely by Julianne Moore) has decided that, after 25 years of marriage, and hitting her forties, she needs something different. She also announced she has "slept with David Lindhagen" (played with some understatement by Kevin Bacon; that name becomes something of a tagline).

Ryan Gosling plays Jacob, a womanizer who, sick of hearing Cal complain about being cuckolded by David Lindhagen, decides to remake Cal into the man who he might never have been, but should be. Gosling holds back from doing a parody of the Casanova who scores with ease (an interesting aspect of his conquests is that he catches not just white women, but also black women; of course, this being a movie, almost of all of them have gorgeous bodies and are attractive).

Emma Stone plays a woman who is about to become a lawyer, and whom Jacob hits on early on in the film. She rebuffs his advance, and goes back to hoping that the lawyer she's dating will propose marriage to her. Her friend, Liz, tells her to stop playing it safe, to stop going for PG-13, and to loosen up and live.

There are various other characters that work: Cal's 13 year old son, in love with a 17 year old babysitter, who in turn is in love with Cal. And there are twists: the first woman whom Cal hits on and scores with (played with aplomb and plenty of cleavage by Maria Tomei), turns out to be his son's teacher.

The films works, is fun, and I enjoyed it quite very much.

Gideon's daughter

Reading a review of a new film, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, I chose this film as another Bill Nighy work. Terrific choice. His character, Gideon Warner, is a fixer, a PR man, the one to go to for advice, a power broker. At that he's good. As a father, he is not. He is losing his daughter, who is about to graduate and go to Colombia to do good. Nighy has an understated, less-is-more acting style, and he does wonderful work with this character. The excesses are left to others. As he bumbles along, Gideon meets a couple who wants someone in government to listen to their story of how their child was killed. No one does. Gideon arranges it. Both Gideon and Stella drift toward one another in an adult love story that leaves one wanting more.

What do women want (to read)?

The Wall Street Journal (March 14, page D1) has an interesting article about what women read when there is no lurid cover on the book to embarrass them.

Electronic readers, and the reading privacy they provide, are fueling a boom in sales of sexy romance novels, or "romantica," as the genre is called in the book industry.
As with romance novels, romantica features an old-fashioned love story and pop-culture references like those found in "chick lit." Plus, there is sex—a lot of it. Yet unlike traditional erotica, romantica always includes what's known as "HEA"—"happily ever after."
Kindles, iPads and Nooks "are the ultimate brown paper wrapper," says Brenda Knight, associate publisher at Cleis Press, of Berkeley, Calif., a publisher of erotica since 1980.
Mainstream publishers are launching digital-only erotic labels to feed demand. At the end of the month, HarperCollins UK will launch Mischief Books, with the tag line "private pleasures with a hand-held device."

Read more about it at:Books Women Read When No One Can See the Cover

Slumdog millionaire

Finally saw this 2008 film. A Mumbai teen who grew up in the slums, becomes a contestant on the Indian version of "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" He is arrested under suspicion of cheating, and while being interrogated, events from his life history are shown which explain why he knows the answers. In doing so, the film shows a slice of Indian society. Finely done.

White Wedding

Fun film. Started out strong and funny, weakened at the end, especially in its use of predictable and wooden stereotypes. Nonetheless, even in its use of two-dimensional white supremacists, the film makes good points

The brothers Bloom

Ebert gave it 2½ stars, and that is just about right.

At a certain point, we think we're in on the moves of the con, and then we think we're not, and then we're not sure, and then we're wrong, and then we're right, and then we're wrong again, and we're entertained up to another certain point, and then we vote with Bloom: The game gets old. Or is it Stephen who finds that out? Bloom complains, "I'm tired of living a scripted life." We're tired on his behalf. And on our own.

 The problem with the movie is that the cons have too many encores and curtain calls. We tire of being (rhymes with perked) off. When an exercise seems to continue for its own sake, it should sense it has lost its audience, take a bow and sit down. And even then "The Brothers Bloom" has another twist that might actually be moving, if we weren't by this time so paranoid. As George Burns once said, "Sincerity is everything. If you can fake that, you've got it made." A splendid statement, and I know it applies to this movie, but I'm not quite sure how.

Jen

 Management summarized:

Mike Cranshaw has a chance meeting with Sue Claussen when she checks into the roadside motel owned by Mike's parents in Arizona. A bottle of wine 'compliments of management' jump starts a cross-country journey and unique courtship between two different kinds of people who are both ultimately looking for the same thing: a sense of happiness. Mike sees something special in button downed Sue that inspires him to take a chance and hit the road to go after her. However, once he reaches Maryland, he finds that Sue has no place for an aimless dreamer in her carefully ordered life. Obsessed with making a difference in the world, Sue falls back in with her ex-boyfriend Jango, who promises her a chance to head his charity operations. Mike finally finds something worth fighting for and the two embark on an interesting journey to discover that their place in the world just might be together.

Sounds preposterous, and almost becomes so, but, it works okay. Steve Zahn plays the nerd who makes a move on Jennifer Aniston's Sue. I happen to like Aniston's work; here she pulls more substance out of a shallow character than many other actresses would. Woody Harrelson is preposterous in a crappy role he does justice to. Aniston can not make much happen with her role as Olivia in Friends with Money. The movie is silly,hangs on by a thread, but even Joan Cusak can't help Aniston salvage this mediocre film.

Last chance Harvey

Insipid, at best. Devoid of much anything. Oy.