Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

We watched an oldie but goodie a few nights ago:  "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".  A goofy combo of old Lost in Space TV shows, Sci Fi movies of the fifties, and druggie seventies take on life, it catches just the right tone for delightful viewing.  It stars Martin Feldman as a man whose house is destroyed when aliens claim the earth, and Mos Def as the alien who saves him.  They hitchhike a ride on a space ship with amusingly boring aliens who read terrible poetry aloud.  Then they end up on a ship with Sam Rockwell, the King of the Galaxy and human Zooey Deshanel, queen of the space cadets, who is Feldman's crush.  Alan Rickman voices a depressed robot, and practically steals the show from Rockwell, who is terrific. 

I laugh out loud every time I see this movie, and it's a great way to unwind after hard day.  Spaciness has never been so easy to watch and participate in.  To me, this is better than the book and more relevant in any decade.  I know, heretical.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

I fractured my wrist in a fall, hence the gap, and also probably the brevity of comments until ith heals.  Last week we watched Ron Howard's "Rush", which my friend and I had seen in the theater and loved.  I don't even like cars, or racing yet I was riveted.  My friend suggested seeing it because she has a crush on Chris Hemsworth, and I readily agreed because he is gorgeous.  To my surprise, the story, true, is fascinating, the race scenes gripping and the acting excellent.  I was continually surprised with the twists in plot, and the contrast between the two rivals was thought provoking. 
Hemsworth as James Hunt and Daniel Bruhl as Niki Lauda are opposites, and yet both complex, with flaws and strengths that Howard reveals cleverly.  Bruhl really stands out, as does the woman who plays his wife, Alexandra Maria Lara.  Olivia Wilde is Hunt's wife, but is barely on the screen and not really developed.  It's Lauda's movie, because though both men had dramatic lives, it's Lauda who had to overcome the most.  I'll spare details, as you will want to come to the story fresh, as we did.  My husband loved the film as much, so it's a good couples' film and you'll have a lot to talk about after.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

Yesterday my movie buddy and I went to see "The Grand Budapest Hotel", Wes Anderson's new film.  It's quite funny and delightful, with an amazing cast, but Ralph Fiennes is practically the whole show.  His "lobby boy", an actor in his first film, is one note but perfect, with big liquid black eyes and a drawn on moustache, and the stare of an ideal straight man.  As usual, the set design is the real star, and the colorization; you can just be hypnotized by the visuals if the sound were to be cut off.  But this story is more solid, like "Fantastic Mr. Fox", with action and drama, all over the top.  Set supposedly in 1932, before the second World War that changed the old Europe forever and left many rich or titled people dead or in exile, it makes fun of luxury hotels while loving every inch of them.  There was a concept of service that is long gone now.  Maybe it only ever existed in the movies of the 1930s. 

Monsieur Gustave is a lost soul who has made his way up the ladder to Concierge.  He rules his palace with exactitude and love.  He has a thing for old ladies, and when one of them dies (Tilda Swinton) he inherits a painting and her estate, but is hounded by her relatives (led by Adrien Brody with the most electrifying hairstyle).  He and his lobby boy try to escape, are put in prison, and while all this action is going on, we glimpse Harvey Keitel, Edward Norton, Wilem Dafoe, Owen Wilson, Bill Murray and Anderson's irregulars.  It's great fun, except for a cat being thrown out the window.  "Moonrise Kingdom" had a dog being killed.  I don't understand why Anderson finds that humorous, and it makes me suspect psychopathic tendencies he is unaware of but seem bizarre and misplaced.

The story is told as a story within a story, so we see the lobby boy, now old (F. Murray Abraham), being interviewed by a journalist (Jude Law).  This 1950s setting makes the post communist world seem in stark contrast to the vanished world, and the barren, utilitarian design seem bleak and tragic.

I'm so happy to see Ralph Fiennes get a great comic role and run around the bases with it.  The film makes us reflect on how we hug our myths of "the old days" and why.  Underneath all the fun is the orphan nature of the lobby boys, the violence they have fled, and the horror of the world outside the door of the hotel.  We construct our stories to escape, and Anderson gives us the guilt free joy of playing along with us.  His dollhouse world is as rich as his imagination and ours.  It's like a balloon ride, where everything below is tiny and manageable, unless you think about it too hard.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

My husband finds it too depressing, so I watched "Traffic" by myself last night.  It is a downer, but beautifully crafted and acted, with a Shakespearean tragedy tone.  The colorization alone is gorgeous, and the movie has something to say.  No answers, but something powerful to say about the way we drag Mexico down and they drag us down, over drugs.  Each story is poignant and feels truthful.  The cast is phenomenal:  Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Don Cheadle, Luis Guzman, Dennis Quaid, Albert Finney, and many more fine actors getting their frisson going. Benicio del Toro won the best supporting actor Oscar for his role as a Mexican cop struggling to stop the carnage.

Does it help to lay out the true state of the drug war?  Maybe not, but Director Steven Soderbergh tried, and his film is an elegy to those who died or are crushed in this quagmire. Clearly, nothing has changed since 2000, when the film came out.  Kids still find it easier to get drugs than alcohol, no job can compete with the bucks to be made by drug dealing, the various administrations in Washington, D.C. pay lip service and have a show of force, but cannot control the flow of drugs.  Mexico is being crushed under the cartels' violence, and well meaning, ordinary families are losing their members to death and destruction. 

I personally adore Don Cheadle, and he is great in this film, hoping against hope he can make a difference, with all the odds stacked against him as a DEA agent.  Douglas is similarly distinguished as a judge who accepts the position of drug Czar and finds the war in his own home.  Zeta-Jones is fiery and truthful as a Lady Macbeth determined to keep her extravagant lifestyle no matter what she has to do.  Erica Christensen is amazing as a teenager lost in drugs.  And yes, Del Toro deserved the Oscar.  I haven't seen him since, but the quality of his work in this film is superior. 

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

I liked the old days when you could browse in a store and find DVDs you'd never heard of and discover treasures.  Nowaways, you must order, so no discoveries are made.  A few years ago I came across a BBC production of Elizabeth Gaskell's "North and South" (2004).  Set in the turmoil of the industrial revolution, with the culture in England changing quickly, we see a young girl, Margaret Hale (Daniela Denby-Ashe), brought up in rural southern England, forced to move to the industrial north when her father uproots them to move to Milton.  Margaret's immediate reaction is revulsion at the lack of culture, the sooty environment, the condition of the mills.  Her father takes on a student of classics, John Thornton (Richard Armitage), the owner of Marlborough Mils.  Gradually, Margaret's sympathies are engaged by the mill workers, their struggles and their kindnesses. 

Margaret finds herself increasingly attracted to Thornton, despite his strange and vulgar family, and he is drawn to her intelligence and refinement.  Their chemistry is powerful, and the plot and subplots are engaging and educational.  Sinead Cusack as Thornton's mother is excellent, as is Tim Pigot-Smith as the worker torn by who to trust and his desperation to support and save his family, including his young daughter whom Margaret befriends.  When Margaret comes into money, will she abandon her new friends and head for London or be pulled to a new and different life in a place she once scorned?

The series, at 233 minutes is well worth watching, and the class issues are fresh and riveting.  

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

We watched "The Last Samurai" last night and it is definitely a well done movie with excellent acting, cinematography and story.  For the first time, I noticed that it is ultra romantic, like "Last of the Mohicans' and "Dances with Wolves".  Each has a caucasian central character who embraces the tribal culture of a people undergoing swift and huge transformation.  Algren falls in love with Japanese culture:  the samarai code, the Buddhist philosophy, the simplicity of the life in the mountain village.  In the end, he leaves his own heritage to become an honorary Japanese.  In "Mohicans", Nathaniel is already half Mohican, having been raised by Chingnachcok, and he flows easily from one culture to another, although he has already chosen to be Indian.  Costner's character in "Dances" like Algren, is war weary, suffering post traumatic stress disorder, and ripe for a change of values and a dose of spirituality. 

Some of the scenes in "Last" have the look of Hokusai or Hiroshige prints.  There is a sense of time travel back in time, even if that era is fast slipping away.  Costner is pulled backward in time as well.  It is patently true that a person can be born into one culture but feel out of joint and "fit" more successfully into another.  All three of these heroes find their hearts and homes in tribal structures.  They are not really wild west individualists, they are beings who long for interconnectedness.  Ken Wantanabe's samarai warrior immediately sees his connection to Algren, and opens himself to learning about another culture.  After initial hostility, Algren responds.  This curiosity is the key to the attractiveness, liveliness and admiration we feels for these characters.  Wantanabe is fantastic in this role, for which he was nominated for a supporting actor Oscar.  The battle scenes are wonderful, and as in "Dances" so sad.  These warriors have seen too much.  They each make a retreat to heal themselves.  Algren's is at the village as he is healing from wounds.  Costner's is at the Sioux village and by himself on the plains.  Nathaniel retreats at the end, mourning his lost brother and what he has seen.  He and Cora head south for Kentucky, away from the French and Indian and Revolutionary wars.  Algren will disappear back into the village to live out his life.

There is nothing wrong with a romantic view of tribal people as long as you are aware that the picture you are getting is filtered through a white man's lens and not authentic.  After all, there were many older movies that romanticized pioneering whites as they killed the savages.  Such a picture may be beautiful, and lovely to look at, but it does not represent the way it was.  This is not history, folks, it is romance.  As such, it is a fine romance.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

The 1942 noir movie that introduced Alan Ladd to film audiences is fascinating.  It's a better than usual noir, from a book by Grahame Greene, which means it's got a complex plot.  "This Gun for Hire" is more than a crime drama, it is a spy case, with bad guys who are not just screwing over each other, but the U.S. of A.  Veronica Lake and Robert Preston are the ostensible stars, but it is Lake's and Ladd's movie, with him playing a stone cold killer who turns out to be something more, and her playing a songstress/magician who soothes the savage beast.  both her musical numbers are terrific.  Lake and Ladd are so beautiful it's no problem watching them, and they layer their performances nicely. One of the bad guys, Willard Gates, played by Laird Cregar is wonderful, as a crook with delicate sensitivities. 

Ellen Graham (Lake) has just gotten engaged to her cop boyfriend Michael Crane (Preston) when she is enlisted by a Senator to spy on Gates, so she accepts a job in L.A. at his nightclub.  Gates has already hired Phillip Raven (Ladd) to kill someone he says is blackmailing his boss.  But after the hit he double crosses Raven, who ends up on the same train with Graham and Gates.  The action is fast and furious, with lots of twists and turns.  The patriotic tones stem from World War II and the poison gas threat adds to the danger.  Graham can't tell her boyfriend what she's doing, and he tries to save her with none of the relevant information, with the bad guys playing him and only his instincts to go on.  The psychological bent to this film, like Hitchcock's "Spellbound" makes the characters more interesting and fun.

What's not to like with two gorgeous leads, powerful photography in black and white, and a plot with some meat on it?

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

I lent a DVD to my son last night, one I find funny, and we'll see if he agrees.  "Must Love Dogs" is one of those guilty pleasures, a sendup of online dating and the anxious world of finding love.  It stars Diane Lane as a divorced woman who is a preschool teacher, so she never is around possible dates, and her large family decides it's time for her to get back in the game.  Lane is very natural and funny here, though I'm not normally a fan.  Her two sisters and brother keep trying to set her up and putting her profile on dating sites.  Her father, played by Christopher Plummer, is a widower also looking for companionship, and one of his dates is Stockard Channing, here with a rare plum role (little pun intended).  Lane and John Cusack meet cute in a dog park with borrowed dogs, and then misunderstand each other.  Lane desperately goes on a bunch of dates from hell that are hilarious, and Cusack tries dating a bimbo.  They are miserable.  Lane beccomes attracted to a "separated" father played by Dermot Mulroney, the ultimate cad. 

This film is worth watching for one scene alone:  Lane meeting her date at a cafe and looking for a man with a yellow rose.  As she nears, she discovers it is her own father, and when she tries to laugh it off and sit down to eat, he shoos her away as he has another date soon.  Trust me, it's very funny.

Cusack and Lane have believable chemistry, even if Cusack's character seems to have no source of income and a loft that is ultra expensive.  Welcome to movie world.  He builds beautiful wooden boats nobody buys.  At least Lane's house you can figure was given her during the divorce, because as a preschool teacher she could hardly pay for a cardboard hut in an alley.  Maybe she owns the preschool.  It's a mystery.  These two are obviously made for each other, because they live in a place where money is not necessary.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

In the realm of film, the 1988 movie "Without a Clue" would not be on anyone's best film list, and did not create a sensation when it came out or after.  But it's reliable and silly and funny, and especially now, when the world is gaga over "Sherlock" with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Feldman, myself included, sanity needs nudging a bit.  Let's not take the whole phenomenon too seriously.  My husband adores "Without a Clue", and when I want to get on his good side I magnanimously offer to watch it with him, as I did last night.  Roger Ebert didn't like it much, but maybe he needed to laugh more. 

First of all, two absolute masters of the acting world let loose, and each is hilarious and obviously having a lot of fun.  Michael Caine, playing Reginald Kincaid impersonating Sherlock Holmes, is an example of a great comedian.  I burst out laughing a lot watching him be a idiot.  Ben Kingley, as Watson and the REAL mastermind of the detective work, is terrific as the humorless doctor, frustrated at every turn by his own creation.  Their teamwork is sublime.  The plot is interesting and plausible for fans of Sherlock, Jeffrey Jones is great as Inspector Lestrade, and the whole cast delightful.  There is also a modern kick to the idea of fame bearing no resemblance to talent.  Reginald is made to be before the newshounds and Watson, sadly, is not.  It's a Kennedy/Nixon kind of media issue.

The scenery and sets are terrific, and the whole movie goes by like a summer breeze.  No dark psychological hints here.  It's fun, pure and simple.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

The other night we watched "Cimarron", the 1931 version.  As a kid I had to read several Edna Ferber books for school, and I remember this one and also "So Big".  She was quite the popular writer in midtwentieth century, though no one much reads her now, and I think she'd be catalogued more in the Young Adult section.  Both my husband and I love things about this old version, directed by Wesley Ruggles and staring Richard Dix as Yancey Cravat and Irene Dunne as his wife Sabra.  Estelle Taylor is the fallen woman, Dixie Lee, and Sol Levy plays the tinker turned apprentice in Yancey's newspaper office.  Edna May Oliver provides comedy as a prissy lady who befriends Sabra, and Eugene Jackson plays the black boy who worships Yancey and follows them from Kansas to Oklahoma.

This film is epic, covering about fifty years from the land rush and settling of Osage territory in Oklahoma through the build up and ultimate city that evolves, and how the town and people change in response.  Richard Dix is a hambone in the silent acting way, all over the place and over the top, but the other actors are pitch perfect.  Irene Dunne is a revelation as Sabra, who slowly realizes her husband will never grow up, and always be absent on adventures, so she takes over the publishing and by the end of the film is in Congress from her state.  Dunne was nominated for an Oscar for this role, where she must grow up and grow old and learn things the hard way.  So there is a lovely feminist message quite refreshing for the time, though in the nineteen thirties women were empowered by the vote and taking up reins in many fields.  There is also a note criticizing anti-semitism, with the character Levy plays and Yancey's championing of him against bullies.  And racism is confronted as well, both by the loving heroic Isaiah, and by the son of Yancey and Sabra, Cimarron, who falls in love with his childhood Indian friend and marries her when he grows up.  She is the daughter of a great Osage chief, and their children make the symbolic assimilation possible. 

But it is the awe inspiring scenes with hundreds of actors, racing to grab land in the rush, and the gradual transformation of the town are magnificent and stick in my mind.   No animated tricks here:  legions of horses, riders, wagons, buggies and other means of transportation were required to shoot these scenes.  I said to my husband that it's certain people and animals died making this epic.  The scenes feel real in a way that modern technology cannot match.  Imagine Gary Cooper as Yancey or Cary Grant, and the movie would really be amazing.  As it is, it's well worth watching.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

There is a charming film from a few years back, with Janet McTeer and Adian Quinn, "Songcatcher", that is a bit of a history lesson, a romance and a musical all at the same time.  Set in the early 1900s, McTeer plays Dr. Lily Penierie, a musicologist at a college who gets fed up with the glass ceiling and decamps to Appaliachia to record the ancient Scots-Irish ballads that the mountain folk have sung for generations.  She lives with her sister and her friend, who run a school for the children around, and stirs up antipathy initially, but gradually gains the trust of the locals.  She also falls in love with Tom, played by Quinn, who questions her motives:  is she exploiting his neigbors like everybody else?  She discovers her sister and her friend are lovers, and encounters the prejudice in herself and later in the local people.  Her great adventures make a lively movie, and it's worth the price of admission to hear the singing.  Emmy Rossum pops up as a young girl taken in by Lily's sister with the voice of an angel.  Taj Mahal even has a small part as a blind musician.  The scenery feels authentic, and the sense of place is important to Lily, as she is becoming atune to her own true nature. 

Maggie Greenwald wrote and directed this film, and it's always fun to see what a woman does with a story.  This one is unabashedly feminist, but then I don't mind that one little bit!

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

Faye Dunaway is not my cup of tea.  She's too brittle and mannered an actress for me, and often too much a fashion plate instead of a warm human being.  But those qualities work for her pretty well in "Three Days of the Condor", a 1975 film directed by Sydney Pollack.  An adaptation of a best seller, this fast paced thriller has romance, danger and political relevance, today as well as at the time of it's making.  Robert Redford is a CIA agent who is basically a researcher a la Jack Ryan in the Clancy movies.  Like "Pelican Brief", some obscure research he's been looking into disturbs someone pretty important, and when he comes back to work from lunch, the whole office has been murdered.  He runs for his life, while trying to reach someone who can help him, but those people become the enemy as well.  He carjacks Faye Dunaway's car and forces her to let him hide in her basement flat.   She plays a lonely photographer who is lost and wanting to be swept up and he's just the man to do it.  With character actors like Cliff Robertson, Max Von Sydow and John Houseman, the dialogue is crisp and realistic.  Redford is at his gorgeous best, and his chemstry works with Dunaway.  This movie is like layers of onion peeled in shocking fashion.  At the end, you feel stunned, and the significance of this movie explodes.  It's a fun ride.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

One of my favorite movies is written and directed by Tim Robbins.  "Cradle Will Rock" is a fascinating look at the WPA in New York in the 1930s, during the Depression, when writers and directors and other artists were paid to create and develop.  This film features a play written about unionizing and the rights of workers, and Orson Welles and John Houseman figure in it.  The story is intrinsically riveting, an easy dose of history that is little known these days.

Starring John Turturro as a down and out worker, Emily Watson as a girl on the streets, Ruben Blades as Diego Rivera, John Cusack as Nelson Rockefeller, Joan Cusack as a girl with a crush on an Edgar Bergen ventriolquist played by Bill Murray, and with ahost of other familiar faces such as Susan Sarandon, Cherry Jones, Vanessa Redgrave, Jack Black, Paul Giamatti, and Hank Azaria.

Turturro and Watson are heartbreaking and  passionate, and Angus Macfadyen as Orson Welles and Cary Elwes as John Houseman steal the show.  There is humor, drama, love, tragedy and the whole human spectacle on display.

It is touching to see a time when the arts were supported, admired, considered essential to who we are as a nation.  I'd like to see high school students watching this in history class.  It's the best argument I've seen presented on the importance of creativity and the opportunity for expressing oneself.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

The 1988 movie "Arlington Road" is a scary movie in the best sense:  it makes you think.  Starring Jeff Bridges and Tim Robbins, and featuring Joan Cusack and Hope Davis, that makes four amazing actors in one film.  This film was shot before Robbins' best supporting Oscar and Bridges best actor Oscar.  They are in a "little" movie that should have gotten a lot more attention, but the subject matter was too dicey to play widely. 

Bridges is a college Professor Michael Faraday who is struggling with his grief over the death of his FBI agent wife killed by a right wing group.  He's trying to raise his boy alone, and when new neighbors move in who are super friendly and embrace the son into their family, he is initially happy.  But something is fishy:  the couple Oliver and Cheryl Lang (Robbins and Cusack) , seem to get creepier and creepier.  Have Faraday's obsessions with cult groups from the murder of his wife tipped him over into paranoia and madness?  His girlfriend (Davis) tries to calm him down, until one day she sees something that makes her suspicious as well.  It's a roller coaster of revelations that spirals at warp speed into tragedy.  I can't tell you more.  But the stranger down the street motif is the stuff of real life headlines, and our fear is not in question after the Boston marathon bombing and other similar plots.  Who is nice and friendly?  What does that tell us about the people around us?  Nothing. 

It's a fun dip into our own paranoia and conspiracy theories.  But after the film is over, you sit there thinking of how little we know others or ourselves, in a world turned upside down.  This film is way before 9/11, but it's worth watching as a mediation on our states of mind after.  Now we are constantly asked to report suspicious characters at airports, inform on others, and prepare for the worst.  What has our post 9/11 world done to us inside?

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

I'm fond of the 1946 movie directed by Orson Welles, starring Welles, Loretta Young and Edward G.  Robinson.  It's gorgeous to look at, with those closeups that black and white does so well.  Robinson is a Nazi hunter looking for Nazi's who slipped through the nets and disappeared in the U.S.  Clues lead him to the perfect college town of Hartford, Connecticut.  As in Hitchock's "Shadow of a Doubt", there is evil lurking behind the charming houses and lovely lawns.  He suspects Charles Rankin, a professor and tinker with clocks, who is repairing the clock tower in the square.  The Nazi Kindler was known to be fascinated with antique clocks, but Robinson really has no proof until someone turns up dead in the woods by the college.  By this time Rankin has married Young, and though she senses something, she refuses to believe her new bridegroom is anything other than what he seems. 

The cast is great, and the movie filled with small quiet moments that are just slightly off.  It's creepy and fun at the same time.  Welles makes a fine villain, and the danger to the wife, her brother, her father, and even her dog pulls us along a tense line of anxiety.  I think of all that talent lost in whatever anxieties Orson Welles fought with over his short career.  He ended up hidden beneath layers of fat, like Marlon Brando.  His few jewels still shine, but what might he have directed and acted in haunts us like the early death of Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

Poor M. Knight Smalayan.  He went from "The Sixth Sense" adulation to god knows what.  I haven't even seen any of his films since that awful one where everyone's committing suicide because of the trees.  Two of my favorite actors, Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel were in it, and I felt embarassed for them.  My husband loves "Lady in the Water", and we own "The Village", though it's a one trick pony, but the only two we can agree on are "Sixth" and "Signs".  I like "Unbreakable", but then Samuel L. Jackson is fascinating to me, but not enough for my husband to watch it.  But I'll always have a place in my heart for "Signs".

First off, the actors are perfect:  Mel Gibson as the pastor and widower, Joaquin Phoenix as his younger brother who was a baseball player, Abigail Breslin as the tiny daughter, David Caulkin as the son and Cherry Jones as the sheriff.  Thinking of what's happened to Gibson is sad, but that role was his apex, and he really could act.  People forget that.  Set in Amish country outside Philadelphia, a family struggling with grief and fear and loss is confronted by an alien invasion.  The corn field is made into a pattern overnight, and there are strange sounds and the dogs bark like something's up.  How this broken family copes and redeems itself in the process is the beautiful plot.  It's scary and hilarious at the same time.  I love seeing Phoenix do comedy like this, and wish he would more often.  He needs to be in a Wes Anderson movie.  The tension and the fondness you feel for these characters is powerful.

There are scenes I will never forget:  Phoenix, Breslin and Caulkin with aluminum foil cones on their heads to keep the aliens from reading their thoughts, the tender care the dad takes with the son when he has an asthma attack.  I love the scene when Jones has to tell Gibson his wife is dying.  Her compassion in the film engenders ours. 

This sci fi owes something to Steven Speilberg's "ET" and "Close Encounters", but it stands on its own firm feet as a film about how we handle adversity, and whether we tear each other apart or rise to the occasion.  It's a loving family film that ironically is not for kids.  Too scary.  He's addressing us parents directly, and on our side, unlike Speilberg, who shows parents as incompetent and blind.  Depending on your mood, you can slide one or the other into the DVD player.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

A hidden jewel in the DVD cabinet is "Powwow Highway", a Sundance winner from 1988,  one of my favorite films.  I'm Indian, so I may be biased, but in our redskinned hearts we love this movie, and Gary Farmer, who stars.  It's contemporary, honest and authentic.  Farmer is the guy in the cult film "Dead Man" by Jim Jarmeush, and his presence on screen is always powerful.  Farmer plays Philbert Bono, and A Martinez is Buddy Red Bow, two guys who couldn't be more unalike.  Bono believes in the old ways, and lives life as a quest.  Red Bow is a modern Indian, who is an activist and cynical about his own history and that of his people.  The two set off for New Mexico in Bono's "pony" to bail out Red Bow's sister, who is in jail.  Graham Greene, Wes Studi and Amanda Wyss bring their star power to the film. 

At 87 minutes, this movie is tight, action packed and emotionally moving, while being funny as well.  There is a learning curve here for Red Bow, that we get to witness, and a sense of what the benefits can be from not turning away from who you are and your history.  Farmer is the moral compass, and yet he's complex and real at the same time.  Red Bow lets go of some of his righteous anger, and gains compassion and a home.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

Well, the Oscars are now gone with the wind.  I enjoyed the show.  I like Ellen Degeneres, and also, let's face it, no one after Bob Hope has really come up to his standard.  I like a woman host.  I like her gentle humor.  And really, I don't care about the host, it's all about the awards, the dresses, wait...about the dresses and then the awards.

I was pleased "12 Years a Slave" won best picture.  I felt sad for "Gravity", but it's difficult to compare the two.  One is filled with narrative and characters galore, the other is silent and rests on the shoulders of one actor.  The actoring wins were unsurprising.  Yet not disappointing.  Leto and Nipongo were perfect choices, although Jennifer Lawrence was a strong contender for supporting actress.  McConnahey was expected, and he did a great job, but I would have prefered Chitwel Edjofor.  Blanchett was amazing, but the movie was awful, and subtly misognistic.  Blanchett owes nothing to Allen; she pulled that character out of the fire by herself.  But I saw tears in Sandra Bullock's eyes, and she carried her film without melodrama and showiness.  I admit I wish she'd won.

I'm thrilled a Black director's picture won artistically it was amazing and daring, yet thrilled Cuaron won as director, because his message was sublime and timeless and he executed it flawlessly.

I feel Spike Jonze deserved original screenplay and Ridley adapted screenplay, and wasn't it great a Black screenwriter actually won?

So, no real complaints, other than who was not nominated, and that's an old story now.

As to fashion, though I am a person dressed in jeans and sweaters and clogs, well, like the rest of the world, we live our princess dreams through this show, so without any qualifications or knowledge I'm happy to pipe up.  I think Sandra Bullock had the best dress, and was elegant and regal.  I loved Jennifer Lawrence's red strapless as well.  Angelina Jolie was the overall beauty of the night, with only Cate Blanchett to rival her.  I do not like dresses slit to the waist in front, and black doesn't work so well on Oscar night.  There.  I've made my stand.  Meryl Streep was less hideous, but she represents what I imagine I would look like if I had the misfortune to be invited.  Julie Roberts can't really dress for this occasion either.  Luckily, it means nothing about their acting ability, except they can't act their way into elegance.  I liked pale pink this year, on Camila Elves and others.  I think the Good Witch costume of Ellen was perhaps the best pink.  Jared Leto was the prettiest of them all, in his white jacket tuxedo.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

I'm an admirer of Peter Weir's films and have been since seeing "Picnic at Hanging Rock" decades ago.  "The Last Wave" is unique, and "Witness" and "Master and Commander" are watchable again and again.  But my all time favorite of his is "Fearless", starring Jeff Bridges.  For years I brooded about why it didn't get nominated for best picture, with only Rosie Perez was nominated as supporting actress.  I think Bridges should have won for this role, but he wasn't even nominated.  I finally received some satisfaction when he won for "Crazy Heart", though he should have for "True Grit", "The Contender" and "The Fabulous Baker Boys" or even "Starman".  Maybe he makes acting look too easy, or he can't shake the "Dude" from "The Big Lebowski".  It's always a mystery to me why the rest of the world doesn't agree with my taste, but there you have it.

"Fearless" is about a man who is in a horrific airplane accident, and survives unscathed and leads many others to safety.  If you are about to fly, don't watch this movie.  This crash is believable, capital B.  He is in a strange kind of shock afterwards.  His best friend and architect partner was sitting next to him, but Bridge's guy moved to comfort an unaccompanied boy as the plane descends rapidly.  That saves his life, and his guilt over surviving is also in the mix.  The boy becomes obcessed with Bridge's character, and causes his own son to be jealous.  His wife (Isabella Rosselini) is hurt and later angry because he won't talk about the experience.  He connects with a fellow passenger (Perez) who has lost her toddler son and is practically catatonic with grief.  They become best pals, and his sense of omnipotence comforts her.  There is a scene where he proves to her she could not have kept the child in her arms due to velocity and gravity.  It's one of the greatest scenes about how we are powerless to save those we love that I have ever watched.  Her spouse and his become jealous, but we see that they are in a different, parallel universe after such a trauma.  His partner's wife and his own pressure him to lie to the insurance people and he is coping with the fact that he saw him beheaded.  He cannot speak.  His shock and grief are beyond words. 

Now when I see this film I think of 9/11, but it was made long before.  The power of the film is that it seems to come from a place of deep, profound understanding of what tragedy, loss, grief and slow re-engagement with life look like.  Rafael Yglesias wrote the novel upon which the film is based, and his writing is excellent.  That helps.  But the director, cinematographer and actors bring the story alive.  Bridges is incandescent in his delusion, his heartbreak and courage.  Perez is his match.  She embodies the grieving mother so well that she incarnates the universal experience of losing your child.  Yet this film is not depressing.  It shows us the healing process that allows most of us to embrace life again, perhaps more fiercely, after losing a loved one.  A great film.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

We watched an oldie but goodie last night:  "Roxanne", Steve Martin's retake on Cyrano de Bergerac.  Martin plays Charlie, a fire chief in Oregon with a huge nose.  Daryl Hannah plays a grad student in town for the summer and searching the stars for a comet she found.  Shelley Duvall is Charlie's best bud, who owns most of the town and runs a cafe.  Damon Wayans, Fred Willard and Michael C Pollard are some of the hilarious characters who are volunteer firefighters.  These firefighters make the Marx Brothers look solemn, even the Three Stodges.  There are plenty of laughs and it's a delightful film overall.  However, the gender divide rears it's ugly head every time we see it.

My husband thinks it's fine that Hannah can't act and Martin ends up with her in the end.  Why not?  Every man to his fantasy, and Hannah is gorgeous to look at.  He admits it's a stretch that she plays a astrophysicist, but it don't bother him nohow. 

I see that on Planet Earth Martin should end up with Duvall, who has humor, sensitivity and is rich and pretty damn cute.  They have more in common, and they are both going to stay in this small town, Nelson, until the day they die.  It's paradise.  I can't buy the dream, and even with great effort cannot imagine the life Hannah and Martin would lead.  Also, like all women, I identify with Duvall not Hannah.  I'm not six feet tall with blond hair, blue eyes, pouty lips and a bod that is a man's ideal.  I'm not Duvall either, but she seems real and authentic in her role.  Believable, I think its called.

Now the thing is this, they put Duvall's character in the movie for a reason, since it's not part of "Cyrano", any version of it, so why?  Because they know us gals are going to have Hannah leaving at the end of the summer and then Martin will wake up and discover the true Cinderella.  They are fobbing us off, while pleasing every man who has viewed this film.  It's a cheat.  What really happens is he gets to sleep with her a few times, then she leaves.  She's not going to give up her career for him, I mean, he isn't John Jr.  Get real.

So when we watch together, we are in our own separate little worlds, his an absurdist dream and mine, of course, honed with the pragmatic edge of the real world.  Yes, men are from Mars and women from Venus.  I rest my case.