Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002)

  I watched this on Thanksgiving because it seemed appropriate.  This used to be my go-to movie when I was breaking in a new boyfriend and needed to see how much girly shit they would put up with.  True story:  one of them cried.

Sidda Walker (Sandra Bullock) wrote a play based on her childhood memories, memories her mother, Viviane (Ellen Burstyn), disagrees with vehemently.  Fearing that the two may never reconcile, Viviane's friends Teensy (Fionnula Flanagan), Necie (Shirley Knight) and Caro (Maggie Smith) travel to New York City and essentially kidnap Sidda, returning her to her Louisiana roots in order to show her the true story behind her mother's actions.

The relationship between mothers and daughters is a strange thing.  I don't know how it is for boys since I'm not one, but girls go through a time where mothers are the enemy and, if they're lucky, eventually grow to be equals.  Some people even end up being friends.  I think it comes from a level of understanding that is reached as you age.  When you're a kid, no one tells you things because they don't think you'll understand and you can't be trusted to keep your mouth shut.  When you become an adult and the floodgates open, it makes you wonder if you ever knew these people at all.  My brother didn't find out until he was fifteen that we were only half-siblings and that I had a whole other family he never knew about.  I didn't find out about a family member's prescription drug addiction until her funeral.

I totally get what this movie is saying about not judging the people you love based on half a story.  I'm not going to say that it's the best movie on family dynamics in the world, because it's not.  It's a pretty standard chick flick in that it's more about feelings than logic, but if you're into that sort of thing, knock yourself out.

The Natural (1984)

  I may have mentioned before that I am not a sports person.  This is true.  I have grown to enjoy attending certain sports, however, as there is something about the live event which is vastly more entertaining than watching it on television.  Sports movies tend to fall into one of two categories:  epic or complete crap.  The Natural might be the absolute apex of the epic category.

Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford) has an incredible talent for baseball.  He is on the verge of getting signed by a Major League team when he is shot by a crazy woman (Barbara Hershey).  Her motivations are never explained and it doesn't really matter.  The point is that she wrecked his entire life.  But, sixteen years later, at the age of 35, Roy gets another shot and is signed to the New York Knights.  The team manager, Pops (Wilford Brimley), thinks Hobbs is a complete waste of his time.  What he doesn't know is that Hobbs could be the one thing that gets him out from under the oppressive thumb of The Judge (Robert Prosky).

This is so much more than a baseball movie.  You could change the window dressing and this story would work anywhere.  It's about honor, fighting for your dream, and believing that you have a purpose.  Also about the dangers of following a strange woman up to her hotel room.  I don't think that gets emphasized enough.

My mom told me to make sure I wasn't sleepy when I started watching it because it's very slow.  I can see where she was coming from, but I want to make it clear that I never once got bored with the pace.  It is something to watch when you can pay attention, certainly, because there's way more talking than playing but don't be put off by the lazy nature.  It moves like honey and is bathed in the same color light.  Cinematographer Caleb Deschanel (yes, he's their dad) did a gorgeous job capturing the hazy sunshine quality of late spring/early summer and the film really evokes the feeling of baseball season.

Dirty Pretty Things (2002)

Happy Thanksgiving!    Ok, so the poster is a little misleading.  The deal, as near as I can tell, is that Audrey Tautou was everyone's darling after Amelie so they put her front and center, but she's not really the main character in this film.

This turned out to be a completely different movie than I was expecting.  I hadn't heard much about it, I don't remember it coming out in theaters, but I like Tautou and Chiwetel Ejiofor, who is actually the star, so I bought it.  I think I expected it to be something in the vein of The Last Seduction but it's more Extreme Measures, if you catch my drift.

Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is an illegal immigrant living in London.  He works as an unlicensed cab driver by day and a hotel desk clerk at night.  When he absolutely has to sleep, he rents a couch from one of the hotel maids, Senay (Audrey Tautou), an illegal Turkish immigrant, or goes to the hospital morgue to play chess with one of the porters (Benedict Wong).  It's not a great life, but he gets by.  That is, until he finds a human heart stopping one of the hotel toilets.  His boss, Juan (Sergi Lopez), is completely unconcerned but the incident makes him curious about Okwe's past.

It works as a thriller mainly because Ejiofor is so good.  I wouldn't say that it's a great movie necessarily, but it might be one that gets better on repeated viewings.  It is definitely not one to put in while you're trying to digest your Thanksgiving food baby, though, partly for the content and partly because it's fairly slow-paced.  If you're going to watch this, do it on a day where you're awake and perky, not planning your Black Friday excursions.

Syriana (2005)

  This movie was super-depressing.  It's all about power and greed and the corrupting influence of money.  These are important topics, to be sure, but they don't make for light watching.

The plot can basically be broken down like so:  the lives of a CIA field agent (George Clooney), a business advisor (Matt Damon), an emir's son (Alexander Siddig), a DC power broker (Christopher Plummer), a Texas oil man (Chris Cooper), and a lawyer (Jeffrey Wright) all intersect around a deal over oil.

As many of you regular readers know, it has been a struggle lately to get enough movies watched during the week to keep to my usual schedule.  This is because, like many people, I work full-time and also go to school.  So I'm reduced to watching movies and TV in 15-minute increments.  That is not the way to watch this film.  I'm not saying it can't be done, but it really shouldn't.  Especially if this is a subject you are at all interested in.  If you're a reasonably cynical or well-informed person, there's nothing here that you didn't already know/suspect but the execution is solid and there are enough famous faces sprinkled in that you'll want to pay attention.  Odds are good I'll never re-watch this film simply because I did find it depressing, but that shouldn't stop you if you want to see it.

Memories of Murder (2003)

  I'm really starting to appreciate the seamless melding of genres in Korean films.  This one starts out with the Keystone Kops, then morphs into Zodiac.  It's funny until it's not and you're on the edge of your seat and then left with an ending filled with poignancy.  I don't know how they do it.

In 1986, South Korea's rural areas did not have cutting edge police techniques.  So when a serial killer starts picking off women during rainy nights, the local force is completely ill-equipped to deal with it.  A detective from Seoul (Kim Sang-kyung) is brought in but soon finds himself at odds with the local lead detective (Song Kang-ho), who resents the city-boy's obvious contempt.  But as the bodies keep piling up, the two men must overcome their differences in order to track down the killer.

I had previously seen Mother by Bong Joon-ho and found it interesting but not particularly gripping.  Memories of Murder was much more in my wheelhouse because you know I love me some serial killer movies.

I have been sitting here staring at this screen, trying to figure out how exactly this movie is different from the 1001 other police procedurals and I cannot come up with a single reason.  But it is.  It made an indelible impression in my mind and there are scenes that I know will revisit me in the quiet moments between thoughts.  Maybe it was the cinematography.  Some of the master shots were just breathtakingly beautiful.  Much like the main character, I believe I will be haunted by this film for years to come.

Dirty Harry (1971)

  The older I get, the more I appreciate this movie.  This is now at least the third time I've seen it and it only gets better with each viewing.  I can't say that about a lot of movies I've seen.

Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) is a San Francisco cop.  He's not pretty, he's not nice, but if you need something done, he's your man.  And right now, he's exactly what San Francisco needs, because there's a lunatic with a sniper rifle out there calling himself Scorpio (Andrew Robinson) who is on a killing spree.  Harry and his new partner, Chico (Reni Santoni), must draw out the nut job while avoiding being his next target.

Long before there was hotshot badass cop Riggs from Lethal Weapon, there was Dirty Harry.  This movie gets bonus points for also being probably the most awesome advertisement for .44 Magnum handguns ever.  Seriously, I don't even like guns and I can quote that entire speech right now.

Stand by Me (1986)

  This is another of those 80's classics that I'd never watched.  I know a lot of people have very fond memories of it but it just did not resonate for me.

Four boys set off on a 30-mile journey on foot to see a dead body in the woods in the late 1950's.  Along they way, they deal with weighty issues children really shouldn't have to bear.  Gordie (Wil Wheaton) has survivor's guilt after the death of his brother (John Cusack) stemming from the realization that his parents definitely loved their older son more.  Chris (River Phoenix) has been labeled a bad seed just because of the family he was born into, no matter what his actions are.  Teddy (Corey Feldman) idolizes his father, even after the man almost burned his ear off, and struggles to reconcile his fantasy with reality, and Vern (Jerry O'Connell) can't find the jar of pennies he buried under the porch because his mom threw away his treasure map.  Okay, so maybe they aren't all weighty issues.

Like I said, this movie is held in extremely high regard by people, and if I had seen it when I was closer to the target age, I might have been one of them but as a 32-year-old woman who has seen her share of dead bodies, it just didn't hold much emotional appeal.  However, it was completely worth it to see John Cusack and the other boys as young as they were when they filmed it.  Wil Wheaton still looks almost exactly the same but holy shit did Jerry O'Connell grow up.

A Good Day to Die Hard (2013)

I have now watched this movie twice and I still like it.  I bought it, obviously, because it's a Die Hard movie and I have all the other ones.  The blu-ray came with an option for theatrical or extended cut, so I watched the extended.  Having only seen it upon its debut, I wasn't really sure if I would recognize the extended parts.  I'm pretty sure it was just more violence and maybe some more interaction between father and son.  I do know that they cut the phone call with daughter Lucy from the beginning.  It doesn't really change the movie in any way, so if you already formed an opinion you're probably going to keep it.  I stand by my decision that this is a fun popcorn flick and I support the R rating.  It's just not John McClane if he can't say "yipee-ki-yay, motherfucker".  Original review:  9/16/13     Everyone talked about how awful this movie was, but I liked it. Even now, it has a 14% on Rotten Tomatoes.  I liked it more than Live Free or Die Hard and that one was far more of an accurate assessment of what could happen in a SCADA attack.  Which may explain why it didn't do so well.

John McClane (Bruce Willis) goes to Russia after his son, Jack (Jai Courtney) is arrested.  What he doesn't know, since the two have been estranged, is that Jack is undercover on a CIA op to get Yuri Komorov (Sebastian Koch), a political prisoner, freed from custody.  Yuri has access to a file of information about the current Russian Minister of Defense, Chagarin (Sergei Kolesnikov).  Unfortunately, John McClane's mere presence is enough to throw off the most carefully laid plans.  After his op is blown, Jack and John must find a way to stop the bad guys and repair their damaged relationship.

This one made absolutely no sense whatsoever.  There were some serious narrative shortcuts going on here.  I recognize that, and yet, I still thought it was a fun movie.  If you go into it with low expectations, you'll probably have a pretty good time too.  I thought it was nice that they managed to get Mary Elizabeth Winstead back for some continuity and it's always good to see Bruce Willis blow stuff up.  I'm still on the fence about Jai Courtney.  They keep trying to make him happen but I don't know if he has what it takes.

Nixon (1995)

  I was really impressed with Oliver Stone's JFK so I thought I'd give his other presidential treatment a chance.  Turns out, I don't know nearly enough about the Nixon administration to be able to enjoy this movie.

I know some stuff.  Mostly from other movies like All the President's Men.  This only briefly touches on Watergate, however, covering from the late 60's through his resignation.  Since all of this happened before I was born, I did not have a firm grasp on who everyone was supposed to be so most of the characters meant nothing.

Richard Nixon (Anthony Hopkins) rose from a poor Quaker family in California to Vice President of the U.S. under Dwight Eisenhower.  He lost the bid for President to John F. Kennedy and then the California gubernatorial election, after which he promised his wife, Pat (Joan Allen), that he was done with politics.  They were not done with him, however.  After JFK's assassination, Nixon is persuaded to run again by some Texas businessmen, led by Jack Jones (Larry Hagman), who are dissatisfied by the current state of affairs.  He had previously campaigned under a tirade of fear and Communist paranoia spurred by his contemporary, Joseph McCarthy, and employed those same tactics to leverage his way into the White House, despite an almost pathological unlikeability.  Nixon became dangerously paranoid himself, and had every conversation in the Oval Office recorded, a fact which would later bite him in the ass.

It took me three days to watch this movie and I felt like it should have come with a companion history book.  That being said, Oliver Stone is a hell of a film-maker.  The acting is interspersed with actual news footage from the time, which is usually a tired gimmick, but here really does make it feel like it's part of the historical tapestry.  You can't really tell from the poster but Anthony Hopkins nailed the Nixon look.  He doesn't sound like him and the nose is wrong, but the mannerisms and sweaty skeeviness are dead on.  As good as he is, though, Paul Sorvino is absolutely amazing as Kissinger.  I totally didn't recognize him.  Every one else (and there are a ton of famous people in this) looks exactly the way that they always do, which made it even harder on me.  I didn't know who they were supposed to be, so it was hard not to think of them as just themselves.  Like, I don't know who Alexander Haig is, so now I think Powers Boothe was Nixon's right-hand-man.  Ditto for James Woods and David Hyde Pierce.  That probably makes me an idiot, but I'm ok with that.

Big Hero 6 (2014)

  Holy crap, you guys.  I have no idea what happened yesterday, but I could have sworn I published my post on Die Hard with a Vengeance.  That is my bad and I apologize.  Then I almost forgot to publish this one today!  What is going on?

But I remembered and we're just going to go from there like it never even happened.  Ok!

Hiro (Ryan Potter) is a whiz with robots, graduating high school at 13, but he really has no ambition other than to kick ass at underground bot fights.  His brother, Tadashi (Daniel Henney), convinces him to try out for an elite robotics program at the nearby college by showing him the personal health care robot he has built named Baymax (Scott Adsit).  Hiro impresses robotics genius Robert Callaghan (James Cromwell) and industrialist Alistair Krei (Alan Tudyk) with his invention of mind-controlled microbots, but then the entire hall goes up in flames.  Tadashi runs back inside to save Callaghan but neither man comes back out.  Hiro is overwhelmed with depression until he discovers that the fire was set to cover the theft of his invention.  He decides to turn squishy, non-threatening Baymax into a superhero to stop this masked man from taking over the city.

This was a much darker animated film than I was anticipating.  I was thinking it was just going to be a cute Marvel tie-in with a lovably squeezable robot and precocious child solving crime.  Instead, it's much more about grieving, the importance of friends, and the desire for revenge.  The theater was full of small children that probably did not understand a tenth of the themes being presented.  I'm not sure that it mattered to them, but it annoys me that parents don't do research.  Not all animation is aimed at the 3-5 age group.

It is not all dark clouds and adult themes, though.  Most of this movie is just as fun as you would expect it to be and I loved the setting of San Fransokyo.  It seemed like a real city with a ton of available storylines just waiting to be explored.  The plot didn't hold any surprises, but I didn't feel that diminished the impact or the enjoyment I felt.

There is a post-credit sequence (it's a Marvel movie) and it is absolutely adorable.  The movie also comes with an appetizer in the form of an animated short called Feast about a little dog named Winston and his big appetite.  I didn't think it was as good as last year's Paperman, but it's still really cute.

Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995)

  Gun to my head, I could not tell you which I loved more:  Die Hard or Die Hard with a Vengeance.  The original is a classic, but because it is set during Christmas, I find it hard to watch any other time of the year.  It just feels wrong.  Vengeance is not tied to a holiday, however, you can't have the third one without the first or the entire plot falls apart.  Let's just say they are both awesome.

John McClane (Bruce Willis) is targeted by a terrorist bomber named Simon (Jeremy Irons) and must perform a series of increasingly difficult challenges in order to prevent more explosions.  One of his first brings him into contact with a Harlem shopkeeper named Zeus Carver (Samuel L. Jackson) and the two become unlikely partners as they race to figure out Simon's true objective.

I have seen this movie like a billion times.  This is the first time I have ever turned on the feature commentary, though.  The director, John McTiernan, and the screenwriter, Jonathan Hensleigh, were the two main voices.  I found Hensleigh to be annoying as the track went on, but McTiernan had some real gems of information.  For instance, the only two substantial uses of CGI in the film were the water in the tunnel (which McTiernan hated because water is a bitch to get right) and the sandwich board in Harlem.  Apparently, they realized that morning that it would probably be a bad idea to have your actor actually wear a signboard proclaiming a certain racial slur in a populated neighborhood that may or may not care that you are only doing a movie.  So at the last minute, they switched it to a blank one and digitally added the letters later.

More fun facts:  they actually drove the cab through Central Park, it's apparently really hard to flip a Mercedes (they had to build a cannon), and John McTiernan bought one of the dump trucks.  Why the fuck you would buy a dump truck from your movie set instead of a hundred and one other cool props, I do not know.  But he has one.

Titus (1999)

  And we are back on track!  Normally, I like to give myself around 24 hours to really digest a movie but that just hasn't been in the cards lately, so you'll forgive me if this is a little spotty.

Titus Andronicus (Anthony Hopkins) is Rome's greatest general, most recently victorious over the Goths.  He has taken their queen, Tamora (Jessica Lange), and her sons as hostages.  When he returns, he learns that Caesar has died and left two sons, Saturninus (Alan Cumming) and Bassianus (James Frain) fighting over the people's vote.  Titus' brother, Marcus (Colm Feore) announces that the general has won the people and the empire is his if he wants it.  He refuses and backs the oldest brother, Saturninus, who immediately turns around and demands Titus' daughter Lavinia (Laura Fraser) for his bride.  When Bassianus runs away with her, Saturninus marries Tamora instead.  Now Empress of Rome, she turns all of her power to destroying the Andronicus family.

I have a couple of notes about this movie that aren't really relevant but I feel like saying them anyway.  One:  I put this in my queue two or three years ago and it is just my fucking luck that it shows up now when I'm reading The Merchant of Venice for my English class.  I cannot escape Shakespeare.  Two:  I'm 83% certain Alan Cumming dresses like his character here all the time at home.

This is probably one of the most stylistic adaptations I have ever seen.  Director Julie Taymor plays with ideas and themes without tying them to a particular time or place.  For anyone else it probably would have been a hot mess but somehow Taymor pulls it all together into a highly inventive fever dream of a play.

Oh, I should probably mention for those of you not familiar with the source, this is one of the bloodiest plays Shakespeare ever wrote and deals with rape, murder, and cannibalism.  Just, you know, FYI.

Darkwing Duck

I know the past couple of weeks have been kind of sparse.  It's one of those times where I've got a TV series from Netflix and one from my personal collection happening concurrently.  Well, technically, I'm borrowing Dexter from Christy.

I just finished season one of Darkwing Duck, so we should be back to normal starting tomorrow.  Remember Darkwing Duck?    I used to watch this, TaleSpin, and Chip and Dale's Rescue Rangers religiously as a kid.  When I saw that Netflix had it on disc I couldn't resist revisiting.

Superhero Darkwing Duck is St. Canard's premier crime-fighter.  With the help from his ward, Gosalyn, and pilot, Launchpad McQuack, Darkwing battles evil-doers from F.O.W.L.

Honestly, this show is primed for a comeback.  Superheroes are huge right now and Darkwing is a great cartoon.  It needs to be tweaked, of course.  I found it super irritating that the episodes didn't follow any sort of arc and that there were no introductions to supporting characters or villains outside of the pilot.  I'm not sure if that's just how they were aired or put on disc in that order, but I wasn't a fan of that.

The positive thing is that they are a great bunch of characters and villains.  There are so many storylines that could be done with them if someone would take the time to flesh them out.  I heard that Count Duckula might be getting a movie next year, so Disney needs to get on the super-duck train ASAP.

Dracula Untold (2014)

  This is not going to be the majority opinion, I am sure, but I really liked this movie.  I was that weird girl in elementary school who read every legend and account of Vlad the Impaler.  While I think the movie has some execution (ha!) issues, overall it took a tired old concept and revamped it (I am on a roll!) using what inspired Brom Stoker instead of his work.

Vlad Dracula (Luke Evans) was given as a child to the Ottoman Empire by his father and learned to be a ruthless killing machine, earning the name The Impaler.  He then left the Empire to rule the principality of Transylvania, married the lovely Mirena (Sarah Gadon), and had a son (Art Parkinson).  He is trying to be a good ruler to his people and appease the sultan, Mehmet II (Dominic Cooper), but when the sultan demands 1000 boys for his army and Vlad's son as a royal hostage, he realizes appeasement isn't really in the cards.  Desperate, Vlad turns to the monster in the mountain, a creature supposedly cursed by the devil to drink human blood, and strikes a bargain with him (Charles Dance).  Vlad will have three days of borrowing the vampire's power in order to defeat Mehmet, but if he drinks human blood during that time he will be cursed forever.

There were so many things this movie got right that it almost feels unfair to talk about the stuff they got wrong.  The main issue is that it draws too many comparisons to 300 and that is valid.  A lot of the scenes, including the one where he's climbing the mountain with a red cape billowing, could have been interchangeable.  All of the side characters were total shells -- I don't remember anybody other than his best friend (Diarmaid Murtagh) getting a name -- and they don't matter at all.  They focus so much on how good and self-sacrificing Vlad is, it almost strays into piousness.  The man murders a lot of people, so it strikes kind of a false note.

That being said, there was so much vampire lore here.  They got aversion to sunlight, silver, and holy items, enhanced strength, speed, and senses, the ability to call and transform into animals (specifically, bats), and of course the blood drinking.  The Master Vampire had a lot of similarities to Murnau's Nosferatu, while Evans went the more modern vampire-with-washboard-abs route, and the armor reminded me of Gary Oldman's in Coppola's Dracula.  But not in a "we're totally copying this" way, more of the "hey, we saw that too, wasn't it neat?"  It just felt like the makers had a lot of love for vampires and Stoker's version in particular, especially the way they tied up the ending.  It is open-ended but didn't feel like the obligatory push for a sequel.  Instead, it set up the cyclical nature of the story and left the rest to the audience.

I was not expecting a love letter to a horror icon.  I was expecting a popcorn flick with a decent cast.  I was pleasantly surprised and I think you will be, too, if you give it a chance.