Another human interest story

Philomena

Crit

If we were making a top ten list of the Roman Catholic Church's suckiest places and times, most of us would rank Spain of the late 14th and 15th centuries number 1, the U.S. in the late 20th century might be midtable somewhere, but surely there would be a place near the bottom for Ireland in the mid-1900s. Expanding on a secular tradition dating to the early 19th century, several Irish convents, under cover of Christian ministry, took in so-called Magdalenes--young women and girls whose commission of carnal sins had become manifest--and exploited the circumstances by engineering lucrative adoptions by wealthy Americans, and by binding the fallen women to years of indentured servitude.

This is not the first cinematic treatment of the scandal--The Magdalene Sisters (2002) was an angrymaking contemporary account--but it's the first that I'm aware of that looks back from the recent past, through the barely fictionalized perspective of a woman (happened to read this while waiting for the film to start) encountering after-the-fact stonewalling eerily similar to another on the top ten list imagined above. And it's certainly the only one directed by Stephen Frears with Judi Dench as the questing mother and Steve Coogan as the cynical journalist who allies himself with her. Subtle? Not particularly. Manipulative? Well, yeah. Did I mind? Not a bit of it.

Trailers

• One Chance--Heartwarming true story of a fat opera lover who scores on a talent show.
• Heaven Is for Real--Heartwarming true story of an adorable little boy who makes an eschatological round trip.
• Labor Day--Heartwarming Joyce Maynard story about a romance between an escaped con (Josh Brolin) and a single mother (Kate Winslet).

Enter the Martini castle

It's a Wonderful Life

(1946)

It may have been 29 Thanksgivings ago that I first saw this, but I think it was 30 years, and that establishes a lot more elegant narrative, that I've been watching this for almost exactly half of my life, so let's go with that.

Thanksgiving 1983 (or maybe '84, but let's say '83) was a different world, so I was channel surfing on the cable and came upon the Charleston contest/swimming pool scene and stayed with it until a commercial, then surfed on. Maybe a half-hour later, I surfed onto the same scene on a different channel, and this time I believe I stayed with it.

In any case, though I got a late start, it has been part of my holiday-season idiom ever since; this was doubtless my twenty-somethingth screening, and it continues to reward me every time. Somehow, "Capra" remains for some a shorthand for simple-minded feel-good films. Whose mind is simple, then?

Oh, by the way, this year's title invokes the allusion of the title of my son-in-law's Xmas music sampler, which is mostly wonderful.

Bird's the word

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Crit

"That didn't suck" is how I began my review of The Hunger Games, almost 20 months ago. Reviews had been weak, and I had really enjoyed the book, and my expectations were low. This time reviews have been enthusiastic, but I thought the middle book of the trilogy was a decline from the first in just about every way, so I didn't know what to expect.

Well, not only does this one not suck, it's pretty terrific, an improvement on the book in pacing and in achieving (for me, anyway) the emotional response necessary to make us want these people not only to live but to carry us forth into the final third (books) or half (film, since as seems de rigueur nowadays for adaptations of trilogies--coincidentally, on that 4/1/12 when I saw The Hunger Games, I also had my first look at the trailer for The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 2--the third book will be split into two movies).

All the additions to the cast, especially Jeffrey Wright and Amanda Plummer as Beetee and Wiress and Jena Malone as Johanna (yes, the flash-in-the-elevator scene is included, yes, it's very funny, and--spoiler alert--no, we don't get Katniss, Peeta, and Haymitch's pov), own their roles, and while I could complain that Paula Malcomson gets less screen time than Ma Everdeen's role in the book promised, that's certainly one reason why the pacing was an improvement over the first film's as well as over the source.

One fine popcorn muncher, that.

Trailers

• Divergent--Pretty sure this isn't a silent film, but the trailer was until the very last instant, when the projection room finally fixed the glitch. Targeted to the audience interested in stories about touch young chicks (Shailene Woodley here) in dystopia.
• I, Frankenstein--Not to be confused with the 2015 treatment of Mary Shelley's story promised on IMDb, this one seems to plop the monster down in the Underworld franchise, or something like it.
• Vampire Academy--A Harry Potter/Clueless mash-up, could be a hoot, or merely hootable.

You need a montage

Team America: World Police

(2004)

I defy anyone to show me better marionette sex scenes.

Effrayante normale

La Vie d'Adèle (Blue is the warmest color)

Crit

It's reasonably safe to assume that I'm the only person to see this film through the eyes of participation in filming one particular lesbian coming-of-age story that's not in French or 3 hours long. (Have I mentioned, by the way, that the DVD release [lots of fun extras!] is imminent and you can already get the fantastic soundtrack?) So even though there's no comparison, it's up to me to compare them:

• number of leading ladies whom the camera loves: a tie, 2-2. Though I have to admit that if we had this to do over I'd have lobbied hard for blue hair on Danielle.
• awkward dinner with the ostensibly straight girl's house: I give us an edge on this, if only because the spaghetti Bolognese that Adèle's father proudly serves features pasta that clearly has been overcooked and doused in way too much sauce. As nasty as that food got as the takes piled up, I'll take good old American murdered cow and fries.
• dancing: more in La Vie, but that's partly a function of its almost double running length
• classroom scenes: ditto and ditto
• naked portraiture: we show more of the process, they show more of the product--and, it being France (specifically Lille, which is an interesting switch from the usual suspect), nobody gets in trouble
• hot lesbian sex scenes: OK, they kick our chastely draped ass here, and yes, it's a fair question whether the raison d'être of these scenes is more the male gaze than the narrative imperative. Google the title and "controversy" for more than you can possibly want to read about this.
• breakup scene: both are extremely painful to watch, theirs is more cruel and brutal
• reconciliation scene: can't compare them, but the coffee shop meeting in La Vie is very similar to and completely different from the L.A. health food restaurant meeting in Annie Hall.

So, but, wait: did I like the film? Yes, but. I liked that it's very much about sex but also about how life makes it impossible for sex to be enough. I empathized with both characters, though more with Adèle contrite for fucking up than with Emma unforgiving for a relatively small and understandable and in retrospect complementary lapse. But 3 hours? I can give no satisfactory answer to the "why" that must follow from that question.

Nouvelle drague

I Am Divine

Crit

Aware of the calendar all day, I was actually walking to the movie theater wondering how the historic date might fit with a documentary about a great big female impersonator notorious for eating dog doo on screen. Not that far a reach, as it turned out: a clip from an early John Waters film shows a very young Divine in an iconic pink pillbox hat (it's a b/w film, but we know what color it is), portraying a wife in the process of becoming a widow, scrambling out of an open limo and onto the trunk. Golly.

Waters tells us that Divine transgressed against the already transgressive drag culture. Well, yeah, but I guess I was looking to learn a little more. It's a perfectly OK film, worth seeing, but smaller than life, which is precisely what its subject was not.

Hard-hearted woman

Great Expectations

Crit

To those who know of my academic background as well as my cinematic obsession (and you wouldn't be here if you didn't know about the latter), it will seem as strange to you as the realization did to me that not only have I not read the novel, I had never before seen any adaptation of the story save this excellent episode of South Park, which is surprisingly true to the story (though--spoiler alert!--it turns out that the Dickens version includes no robotic flying monkeys).

So I was much more involved in the story itself than all you Dickens buffs, and the best thing I can say about the film--and this is a very good thing indeed--is that I've been contemplating devoting a year to reading a ton of Dickens, and this encourages me further in that ambition. Maybe not 2014--I'm rather leaning toward David Foster Wallace for that calendar year--but sometime in the teens.

One note about the acting: as Miss Havisham, Helena Bonham Carter is every bit as creepy as in any role she's ever performed for her spousal equivalent.