Posted on February 12, 2013 at 4:06 pm
Be sure to check out our exclusive clip from the film “Bless Me, Ultima.” Set in New Mexico during WWII, the the film is a beautiful coming of age story about a young Chicano boy and how his life is forever changed when an old woman comes into his life and introduces him to the power of faith. It expands nationwide on February 22.
http://vimeo.com/56061123
Posted on February 12, 2013 at 8:00 am
Celebrate the birthday of our 16th President with some of the classic movies about his life. Reportedly, he has been portrayed more on screen than any other real-life character.
Coming soon to theaters: Saving Lincoln.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-J3LhG46ZYStill in theaters, you can see the Oscar-nominated Steven Spielberg epic, based on Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
And on the National Geographic Channel, based on Bill O’Reilly’s book:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxiu2JtnZBwOn DVD:
Young Mr. Lincoln
Abe Lincoln in Illinois
Gore Vidal’s Lincoln
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxrbIcXBYyY
Sandburg’s Lincoln
Posted on February 8, 2013 at 8:00 am
Thanks to Beliefnet for inviting me to write a tribute to our movie of the month, “Sleepless in Seattle.”
Sleepless in Seattle is like a valentine to love itself, that exquisite balance of improbability and inevitability that can make people 3000 miles apart who have never met feel as though they have always known each other and are meant to be together. Or, to use the word that Sam (Tom Hanks) and Annie (Meg Ryan) use in the film, “magic.”
Sam is an architect who moved to Seattle with his young son Jonah (Ross Malinger) after the death of his wife, played in brief flashbacks by “Law and Order’s” Carey Lowell, who conveys so much warmth and spirit that we miss her, too. On Christmas eve, Jonah calls into a late-night radio program to talk about his concerns for his grieving father. The host asks to speak to Sam and Annie, a reporter for the Baltimore Sun, hears the broadcast. She is driving home from celebrating her engagement to Walter (Bill Pullman), but there is something about Sam’s description of his late wife that she finds captivating. She thought she was happy with Walter. We in the audience know she can’t be though. First, his name is Walter, not the name of a movie leading man. Second, he has a lot of allergies, a movie signifier that he can’t be a romantic ideal. In the trying-on-the-heirloom-wedding-dress scene with her mother in the attic, we see that Annie’s mother has some reservations, so we feel comfortable having our own. Most important, when Tom Hanks is in a movie with Meg Ryan, we know where this is going. They had such appealing screen chemistry that it is hard to remember they only co-starred three times. The other two were the classic “You’ve Got Mail” (also written and directed by Nora Ephron) and the uneven but still-worthy “Joe Versus the Volcano.” Sam and Annie never speak to each other until the very end of the movie, but the famously detail-oriented Ephron made sure we got the message of the essential connection between them with many subtle cues. For example, Annie goes in a door in Baltimore and Sam comes out of the exact same door in Seattle. Ephron flew the door across the country, knowing that almost no one would notice it consciously but that it would contribute to our understanding that they were going to be together.
The characters in this movie are very influenced by another classic romantic film, “An Affair to Remember,” with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. (That movie is a remake and the original, “Love Affair,” is well worth watching, but skip the third version with Warren Beatty and Annette Bening.) While Annie and her best friend love to weep together over that movie’s portrayal of the redemptive power of love and integrity, Sam and his friends joke about it, and tease a female friend (played by Hanks’ real-life wife, Rita Wilson) by saying that they prefer to cry over “The Dirty Dozen,” Sam can’t help taking a leap of faith to see if Annie just might be waiting for him where Cary was supposed to meet Deborah, on top of the Empire State Building.
More than two decades after it was made, some elements of “Sleepless in Seattle” seem dated. The movie might be very different in an era of cell phones and Google. But like the classic songs on its soundtrack it has a timeless appeal. Indeed, we can imagine that some future made-for-each-other couple who just doesn’t know it yet might just be inspired by “Sleepless in Seattle” the way Sam and Annie are inspired by Cary and Deborah.
Posted on February 7, 2013 at 6:00 pm
How did so many great performers get stuck in this awful movie? And why, why?
There’s one scene in this ugly and poorly paced road trip comedy that has the straight-laced Sandy (co-producer and star Jason Bateman) hiding in the bathroom because he is so agonized by what is going on in his hotel room. The scammer who stole his identity (Melissa McCarthy) is drunkenly seducing an even tipsier guy named “Big Chuck” (“Modern Family’s” Eric Stonestreet) and two heavy people wanting to have sex must be funny, right? Sandy runs the water in the bathroom and wraps his head in a towel to block out the sounds and thoughts. As we went back and forth between the not-funny gyrations in the bedroom and the not-funny disgust in the bathroom, I was wishing I had a towel to wrap around my ears. And my eyes.
Sandy Bigelow Patterson is a loving husband and father with a pregnant wife (Amanda Peet) holding onto a $50,000-a-year job at a financial institution where the big bosses are getting million-dollar bonuses, not for performance but for “retention.” Director Jon Favreau (“Iron Man”) has a small role as the obnoxious partner who explains why he is worth all that money and a monkey could do Sandy’s job. “I’m going to get you a copy of The Fountainhead,” he says, an overused signifier of soul-less arrogance.
Then, out of the blue, a group from Sandy’s office splits off and hires him at five times his old salary. But his happily ever after is ruined when an identify thief takes advantage of his gender-neutral name (many not-funny jokes are made about Sandy’s overall unmanliness and how girly the name “Sandy” is). She has not just blown out his credit card accounts; she has outstanding arrest warrants. Sandy’s new boss gives him one week to straighten it out and the mild-mannered Sandy decides that what makes sense is for him to leave his family in Colorado and go to Winter Park, Florida to find the other Sandy and somehow bring her back to Colorado and get her to confess her crimes.
But she does not want to go, so she puts up a fight. Worse, she loudly sings along to the car radio. Even worse, through all kinds of trauma and misery she still manages to sport pale blue eye shadow left over from the 1960’s. To further complicate things, she is being chased by a skip tracer because she owes a lot of money (Robert Patrick) and by a couple of elegant-looking hoods under orders from an imprisoned crime kingpin who wants her killed.
A sloppy script from Craig Mazin (some of the mid-“Scary Movie” franchise and the lackluster “Hangover II”) shows no sense of character, and dragged-out direction from Seth Gordon (the wonderful “King of Kong” and the hideously awful “Four Christmases”) shows no understanding of comic momentum. And the film criminally mis-uses not just the exceptional talents of its two leads but also Stonestreet (we are subjected not just to disconcerting, almost random personality shifts and casual racism but also his bare butt), rapper/actor T.I., Genesis Rodriguez (she needs a new agent after this and Schwarzenegger’s “Last Stand”), and Robert Patrick (ditto after this and “Gangster Squad”). McCarthy is as good as it gets in full-on, fearless, “yes, and” commitment to the moment that should be ideal for a character whose skill is constant re-invention and on-the-fly assessment — is this a time for aggression? a play for sympathy? But it is all surface, and an unpleasant surface at that. Sandy #2 is both selfish and needy, the relentless morphing leaving us with nothing — no one — to connect to. And when the classic-turned cliché mismatched road trip formula requires the pair to develop growing sympathy and respect from each other and from us, including, ugh, a makeover, it just collapses.
Parents should know that this movie includes extended sexual humor with very explicit and crude references and explicit situations, brief nudity, drinking and drunkenness, some drug references, very strong language, violence including shooting, punching, collisions, theft and fraud.
Family discussion: What made the characters change their minds about each other? How did Sandy and Diana see the rights and feelings of other people differently? What do you learn about Diana from her encounter with Big Chuck?
If you like this, try: “Midnight Run”
Posted on February 7, 2013 at 6:00 pm
Those “ask your doctor about” commercials for medication always have a lawyer-imposed “side effects may include” section briskly recited by the narrator in the second half of the ad in the same bright but soothing tones used for the near-miraculous results described in the first half. It is a difficult choice to balance the risks and benefits of some of today’s pharmaceuticals, made more difficult by the conflicts of interest that doctors and drug companies face in balancing what is best for the patients with what is best for them.
Steven Soderbergh’s nicely nasty and genre-bendingly twisty thriller takes place at the heart of this conflict. Emily Taylor (Rooney Mara of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”) takes mood-lifting medication to deal with the crushing stress she faces with her husband Martin (Channing Tatum) in prison for insider trading and the loss of all their money and their luxurious life in Connecticut. Martin gets out after four years and promises her that he will get it all back for her. But the stress is too much. After a suicide attempt, her new psychiatrist, Dr. Jonathan Banks (Jude Law), who earns a little extra money with a cushy “consulting” fee from a drug company pushing a new anti-depressant, prescribes medication, and then more medication to deal with the side effects of the pills she is already taking. We know from the very first scene that this is not going to turn out well.
The drug that “helps stop the brain from telling you you’re sad” and lets you “take back tomorrow” is something “everyone takes.” “It doesn’t make you anything you’re not,” the doctor explains. “It just makes it easier to be who you are.” But is his recommendation compromised by the $50,000 he gets just to “go to a few meetings, recruit some patients, track some data?” Law is excellent as the doctor who wants to do the right thing but may want to do right by too many people. And his judgment may be further compromised by a problem from his past.
Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns (“Contagion”) build some meta-surprises into the story. And just about anything more I can tell you after that would require a spoiler alert, so I’ll just say that the less you know about the movie before seeing it, the better you will be able to appreciate it. In fact, don’t watch the television commercials. They give too much away. But if you need to know more now, I’ll just say that the movie’s biggest surprise may be how conventional it turns out to be.
