Cinema Hype

So, here we are in 1943. Casablanca.

What is there to be done about this movie? How can anybody, especially anybody sitting barefoot on a sofa in 2009 actually review it? The jury is pretty much in by now, and I think it’s going to do okay. Seriously, if you don’t like Casablanca…well, I’m not sure we can be friends anymore. This is the movie, the movie with something for everybody: it’s funny and sad, suspenseful and romantic, perfectly and endlessly quotable. It is possibly the least overrated movie ever.

It’s that quotability that’s probably kept Casablanca popular through the years: aside from its compulsive watchability, it’s one of the most-quoted, most-ripped-off movies ever made. You hear the dialogue and see the scenes duplicated in so many places that they’ve ceased to be from Casablanca at all, as far as the collective consciousness goes. And so instead of a review, we’re going to talk today about the legacy of Casablanca: five lines Casablanca gave the world.

- “Play it again, Sam.”
Ironically, nobody in the movie ever says these exact words in this exact order (the closest line is, “Play it, Sam. Play ‘As Time Goes By.’”), but like so many other co-opted lines, it doesn’t really matter anymore. It’s since been used for a Woody Allen movie, a chain of consignment sporting-good stores, and many, many bad jokes.

- “As Time Goes By”
Okay, not so much a line as a musical entity. But this is the song for loving and longing, and it’s practically a character in itself. By the end of the movie, you don’t really want to hear it anymore, just as Rick doesn’t (sort of)—not because it’s not a good song, but because you’ve seen too much, just as Rick has.

- “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
As noted in When Harry Met Sally—a Casablanca fan film if ever there was one—”best last line of a movie ever.”

- “Here’s looking at you, kid.”
Whether or not you’re annoyed by Rick calling his perfectly-adult girlfriend “kid”—gentlemen, I’d avoid this if you want to keep your own perfectly-adult girlfriends, not to mention your man parts—this one’s become a classic for toasts, unoriginal romantic moments, and general cheesiness. However, in the context of the movie, it’s super-super-poignant. (This line is prominent in yet another Nora Ephron/Meg Ryan vehicle, Sleepless in Seattle. Apparently Ephron has a thing for this movie, which seems perfectly respectable in a screenwriter.)

- “We’ll always have Paris.”
Like all of the memorable lines from Casablanca, this one’s a heartbreaker in the context of the movie. On the other hand, it remains relevant: somebody, someplace, will always be remembering a time he or she had in the City of Love, most likely when it isn’t being invaded (”the enemy wore gray; you wore blue”). This one’s also been used in millions of other places, most recently (…maybe) in mutilated form on an episode of Chuck (”We’ll always have Omaha”). Everybody can say this at some point, though, right? Everybody’s got a Paris in the heart or on the mind?

That’s it. (Well, that’s not it—we haven’t even gotten to “Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but someday, and for the rest of your life!”—but that’s five.) From all of pop culture, I say: Thank you, Casablanca.

Next up on Project 501: Going My Way (1944)

Project 501, Oscar winners, Best Picture winners, Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart, Woody Allen, Play It Again Sam, Nora Ephron, When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, Meg Ryan, Chuck

AHA! You thought you could get rid of me, but I just keep coming back. Yeah.

Okay. Maybe not. If you didn’t think you could get rid of me, I appreciate that. I wish I could say that I was off doing something exciting, or at least had planned a little blog vacation, but unless taxes and mild sleep deprivation count as something exciting, I’m going to have to disappoint.

So let’s have some catch-up time, shall we? Just a few things on my mind?

- It appears that Zac Efron has a movie coming out this weekend, which keeps confusing me when I see the TV spots and think, “You guys. HSM3 came out last fall! You can stop with the commercials!” Only recently did I discover that it’s a whole separate movie. Allegedly.

- I mostly find Efron sort of off-putting—something about his attempts to seem sexual while actually coming across completely asexual—but I do like him in the remake of Hairspray. Gotta give props for his rocking out, complete with knee-slide, on “Ladies’ Choice.” On a semi-related note, with two minutes and a proper pair of scissors, I could get his hair out of his face, once and for all. (I also say things like, “Get off my lawn!”)

- Just to be clear, the 2007 Hairspray is a movie I keep coming back to on account of its general delightfulness. I love everybody in it and everything about it, and every single one of you should see it. Amanda Bynes and the super-hot Elijah Kelley, in particular, make me happy when skies are gray. Like so:

- Did you hear that the Coen brothers are supposedly adapting Michael Chabon’s hardboiled Jewish-Alaskan detective novel The Yiddish Policemen’s Union? It’s just too perfect: the Coens’ particular brand of brutality mixed with humor should hit all the high points beautifully. It’s awhile off, but nothing bad ever came of ridiculously high expectations, right?

- While I sort of loathe Russell Crowe on a personal level—to the point where I often skip his movies, even though I get that he’s super-talented—I am excited about State of Play, which comes out this weekend. We could use something exciting in this sad little spring lull. That, and I like the idea that Helen Mirren hangs out in my neighborhood (fictionally). Very exciting!

- Speaking of Mirren, check out the cast on her upcoming adaptation of The Tempest (Mirren plays a gender-switched version of Prospero)! The Tempest has always been my least favorite of Shakespeare’s plays, but I might be tempted to show up for this.

Nice talking to you all. See you tomorrow. Promise.

Zac Efron, 17 Again, Hairspray, High School Musical, Amanda Bynes, Elijah Kelley, Coen brothers, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, Michael Chabon, Russell Crowe, State of Play, Helen Mirren, The Tempest

I suppose it’s to be expected that the best picture of 1942 is a war movie, but it’s interesting that this war movie has no soldiers’ camaraderie, only one gun that comes to mind, and very few airplanes actually appearing onscreen. Almost the entire movie, in fact, takes place on an English country (or at least suburban) estate. Mrs. Miniver is the other side of the war-movie coin: the home-front movie.

Mostly, it’s refreshing that Mrs. Miniver addresses the wartime lives of civilians; from the very beginning (1927’s Wings), the Best Picture ranks are studded with the other kind of war film, the kind with trenches and guns and lots of mud. Movies like Mrs. Miniver seem like an alternative expression of war, a collective mental processing that is more familiar for many but no less dramatic.

It’s a good movie with cute kids, a sweet love story, and some truly fascinating and/or terrifying moments. Director William Wyler’s version of the Blitz is downright scary: a confusion of dark and noise. Another sequence, where the titular Mrs. Miniver encounters a downed German pilot on her property(!) is wonderfully suspenseful (and sort of interesting—what does one do?).

It’s strange, though, how this generally kinder, gentler account of the events of 1942 never manages to get really intimate. One would think that a look at wartime civilian life would be forced to move in close, to get into the nooks and crannies of people’s lives and find the small human dramas there. Instead, Wyler practically stands across the street and shouts, and because of that the audience is stuck outside of the world of the movie. We’d like to get to know Mrs. Miniver (Greer Garson); after all, she’s so nice that an old man in town names a rose after her. But somehow, knowing that her neighbors love her isn’t enough to make the audience do the same, and we never really do get to see what makes her, or anybody else, tick.

Next up for Project 501: the perpetually amazing Casablanca. Join me! Nobody doesn’t love Casablanca!

Project 501, 501 Project, classic movies, Mrs. Miniver, Oscar winners, Academy Awards, Best Picture winners, Greer Garson, William Wyman, war movies

Quick, readers. I need you to describe the city of Paris. You have two hours, one major storyline, and the characters of your choice, but you’d better get the whole thing—every little complexity. No cheating.

Ready?

Go!

Unlikely, right?

This is the idea behind the 2006 release Paris, Je T’aime: a love letter to the city of love, a wild stab at capturing a place so sprawling in size and mythos and emotion and complexity that the longest film in the world couldn’t even pretend to scratch the surface. The “movie” is a collection of short films, a grab for a million little pieces, sorted by neighborhood and director—a mosaic of place, a cartoon speeding by like the pages of a flipbook.

The eighteen short films in Paris, Je T’aime are like a sampler of narrative and directorial styles, from sweetly quirky (think: Amelie) to gaudily horrific (think: Elijah Wood as a French vampire?!), with a distinct leaning towards the bittersweet—which is probably as it should be. In the city of love, most of the films are about love: love requited and unrequited, soured and sweetened, completely lost and downright bitey (again with the vampires). They are mostly lovely; if not, wait six minutes and you’ll find something you like better, which is much like Paris itself. Also like Paris, the beauty is in the small moments. It’s a quick, quiet tour of a city full of corners, and the form follows the function amazingly well.

Paris, Je T’aime is noticeably not the insider’s perspective on Paris—most of the directors, and about half of the actors, are not French, and one wonders whether, for example, the Coen brothers spend a lot of time in France. (Maybe they do; I wouldn’t know.) In fact, it’s a pretty even split between the Paris of Parisians and the Paris of everybody else, which speaks to the way that everybody wants a piece of Paris, but also poses the question: What would Parisian directors say about their own city? Or does it matter? Maybe it isn’t really theirs anymore, anyway.

Paris, Je T’aime is an entertaining and thoughtful look at everybody’s favorite (or apparent favorite) international city; check it out when your attention span is feeling short, or when you’d just really like a good crepe.

Paris Je T’aime, short films, Coen brothers, Gurinder Chadha, Elijah Wood, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Gerard Depardieu, Paris, movies about Paris, France, dvd reviews

Let’s just get this out of the way first thing: I’m not sure I’d ever heard of How Green Was My Valley until Wikipedia said it was next up for Project 501. I think I assumed it was a war movie; I assume (and this may be a sign of a bad attitude on my part; whoops) all Best Pictures are war movies until I hear otherwise.

But this…well, you guys, call me a sap, but it’s lovely. Sweet and sad and funny and lovely. How Green Was My Valley is not a war movie; it isn’t even a “one family through the ages!” movie, which is always my second guess. Instead, it’s a family drama/coming-of-age story set in a Welsh mining town at the turn of the century, and it’s totally worth curling up with on a rainy day sometime.

Here’s why, among other things:

1) Maureen O’Hara: ‘Nuff said, right? Who doesn’t love Maureen O’Hara? NOBODY, that’s who. She is wonderful here as always, playing the nobly semi-tragic lover. Equally heartbreaking is her cute but obnoxiously duty-bound minister boyfriend, played by Walter Pidgeon.

2) Roddy McDowall: McDowall, aged 12, is really the star of the show–his role, Huw (we’re in Wales, remember), is the kind of part for which today’s child actors (or, more likely, their parents) would sell a major organ. He’s in full-on urchin mode, as he 1) falls into a frozen river, 2) spends a few months as a pitiful but well-adjusted invalid, 3) learns to walk again, 4) gets the tar beaten out of him by mean upper-class schoolboys, 4) learns to box and starts beating the tar out of others, 5) goes to work in the mines, and 6) goes back into a flooded mine to save his possibly-dying father. All this, and he doesn’t even age! I mean, SERIOUSLY. The Culkin and/or Fanning parents probably have a remake in the works as we speak (Elle would totally get an Oscar nomination for playing a boy).

3) Choral singing!: So, here’s a rule of thumb that’s prone to extreme and disastrous misapplication: Always say yes to a men’s chorus. (Remember that long Dunkirk beach scene in Atonement?) Apparently the Welsh miners here are also trained Welsh singers—maybe they sing all day, a la the Seven Dwarves?—because each important moment in Valley is marked by wonderful, if incongruous, singing by the menfolk. It’s weird, and beautiful, and you kind of have to just go with it.

Valley probably wouldn’t win Best Picture today; it’s not sharp or showy or particularly depressing. But those are the things that make it good (Netflix calls it “a gentle masterpiece”, and I quite agree), and perhaps relevant to its time, and an all-around pleasure to watch.

Next up on Project 501: Mrs. Miniver

How Green Was My Valley, Maureen O’Hara, Walter Pidgeon, Roddy McDowall, Oscar winners, Best Picture winners, 1941 movies, Project 501

In celebration of everybody’s favorite rodent-related minor holiday, I give you a video…

…and a “classic”—i.e. you may have seen it before around these parts—review. Enjoy.

What happened, exactly, to Bill Murray? Did he just get older? Did he experience some mental shift? Did he consciously decide to change his whole brand of comedy, or did it just…happen? He’s taken on a different persona, traded the slapstick for the understated, become a quiet comedian, and ventured into unexplored territories of facial hair. It’s mostly a twenty-first-century phenomenon; sometime after Charlie’s Angels and before The Royal Tenenbaums, he made a shift. Groundhog Day, it seems, is something of a “bridge” movie: chronologically, we see an early-90s film. From a thematic perspective, though, we’ve got an early showcase for the Bill Murray of the 00s.

It’s not that nothing in Groundhog Day is silly or physical–the cold-shower scene is pretty over-the-top, and there are certainly funny faces involved here–it’s just that Murray becomes so stoic as he lives the same day over and over again. He deadpans his way through his weatherman scenes, several expository monologues, multiple suicide attempts, and one ridiculous groundhog-napping. It feels like he’s working on his shtick, here, staying totally calm in increasingly frantic circumstances. He’s looking ahead. He’s previewing the new millennium, no?

People who don’t like Groundhog Day usually make the same complaint: they don’t like seeing the same scenes over and over again (thirty-three times, if Wikipedia is to be believed). The repetition doesn’t interrupt the rhythm of the movie, though; instead, it sets the tempo. It’s a movie of short scenes repeated in quick succession, but arranged in such a way that we see the arcs of Phil’s experience: he’s afraid; he’s thrilled; he’s shrewd; he’s increasingly discontented; he’s striving to get it right. Technically, there’s repetition, but it’s not boring: there are changes in mood, small changes in dialogue as Phil refines his personal script, complete changes of intent. The character changes, even if the lines don’t, and that’s what separates “thematic choice” from “broken record.”

The humor in Groundhog Day is sort of like Murray himself: the truth is, both Good Phil and Bad Phil–or Noisy Bill and Quiet Bill–are fun. For having the sappy romantic-comedy ending that it does, the rest of the movie is remarkably and wonderfully snarky. Phil judges the people in Punxsutawney, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t mockable in the first place, and the movie acknowledges that. Bad Phil is fun to watch–he’s mean, but he’s not stupid, and he’s not not funny.

Alternatively, the aforementioned romantic-comedy ending is almost too much, but then there’s the implication that just “getting the girl” hasn’t been enough: when Phil uses his situation to seduce Rita (Andie MacDowell), he fails. When he uses his situation to become a good person in general, he succeeds in winning Rita and he gets to move on with his life. The movie ends up being more about wholeness and un-self-centeredness than anything else; Rita is just a symbol of that (being whole and un-self-centered herself, of course). It’s here that things go into dangerously sugary territory, but, with a little doubt-benefiting, things work out. The ending scene–in the front yard of the B&B–is so over-the-top sweet that we can only assume director Harold Ramis saw the sugar-shock potential and decided to embrace it; it becomes part of the hyperbole of the movie, sort of. It works, in a goofy, “I hope that was on purpose” kind of way. And anyway, Phil’s so happy to see February 3 that it’s hard to hold it against him, isn’t it?

Happy Groundhog Day to all! See you…tomorrow?

Groundhog Day, Bill Murray, Andie MacDowell, holiday movies

I’m just going to get this out there: Ryan Gosling makes one fine-looking crack addict. Give the man some skinny-guy clothes and a few swipes of undereye shadow, and he still looks better than, say, John Mayer on a good day.

I’d also argue that not many actors would pull off the role of Dan Dunne, history teacher/addict extraordinaire, as convincingly as Gosling does. It’s not the angsty drug-addled parts that show him off; any Christian Bale will do for the serious-eyed stuff. What makes Half Nelson a brilliant intersection of actor and character is the charisma he brings to the rest of Dan’s life—he tells little jokes and makes silly faces and relates to his eighth-graders like he actually cares about them. He’s cute. He’s funny. He has a cat. He’s a mess, but he makes us like him, even as we know what he does on his summer vacation. And that—the normalizing, the un-tragicizing, of a drug addict—is not nothing.

Gosling’s likability, then, goes a way towards softening the blow of Half Nelson, but it’s still not exactly Finding Forrester: addict teacher forms (platonic) relationship with 13-year-old on the brink of becoming a dealer herself. Who saves whom—assuming that anybody is saved, period—is up in the air. It’s a sad little movie, more about hope and hopelessness (or maybe change and repetition) than about actual drugs, and it makes you want good things for Dunne and Drey even as you’re not sure those good things are likely to happen. And that’s probably the best thing about Ryan Fleck’s movie: the setting and the past and the future and just about everything else are murky, but the emotional imperative remains clear. You will like these people, and you will root for them. And if you come out with any hope for them, then that’s a step in the right direction.

dvd, dvd reviews, ryan gosling, ryan fleck, half nelson

I said, awhile back, that I’d be watching and writing about Alfred Hitchcock’s suspense movies: not the gory ones, not the birds-plucking-your-eyes-out ones or the chocolate-syrup-down-the-shower-drain ones, but the ones cat-burglar ones, the chase ones, and the action-packed ones. I said I didn’t want to watch anything scary. I didn’t want to be afraid to go to bed with the lights off.

Technically, in this world of Saw and The Ring and The Grudge, North by Northwest qualifies as a non-scary movie. Nobody’s being haunted (in the literal sense), and there’s nothing going bump in the night—Cary Grant is far too suave for that, anyway. But in another sense, the oh no this could happen to me sense, it’s—what’s the word?—terrifying. It’s the story of an innocent man getting the wrong end of the mistaken-identity stick, of being hunted and of having nobody to trust. It’s probably not the first film of its kind, but it’s the best-known, and hundreds of movies (anybody seen Eagle Eye?) have since paid tribute to it. It’s a groundbreaker in the area of unknowing fear.

On the other hand, you’d think an action-suspense film of this variety would move a little faster. Pacing is North by Northwest’s downfall, if it has one: Hitchcock crams a lot of scenes in, but doesn’t cut anything down to compensate. Many of the important scenes are ridiculously long, and not because they’re building in suspense; the Grant/Eva Marie Saint seduction scene, for example, goes on for so long that the tension actually begins to loosen up. The famous airplane-crossroads scene also runs longer than is strictly necessary, and while the ending of that scene is fantastic, you get the feeling that Hitchcock was feeling just slightly self-indulgent in the editing room. And maybe he’s right, in a way; they’re good scenes, and maybe he’s right to show off a bit. But he might have done better to pare things down to their essences. It’s a flabby movie, is what it is, and just a pinch here and a pin there might have done the trick.

Coming up: More pre-Halloween Hitchcock!

I just got my voter information packet in the mail. I know everybody’s tired of the election and/or wringing hands about its outcome, and I’m stuck on both of those boats, too. But I’ve got to confess: I love voting. Every time I stand in line with all my neighbors, every time I crowd into the little booth, every time the voting guy hands me my sweet little “I Voted!” sticker, I feel this wave of enthusiasm for my country and for the democratic process (which is also probably why my voting record is so terrible—voting with my heart is not the same as voting with a winning party or candidate, which is depressing).

So today at the mailbox, I had a tiny moment of patriotism, and thought I’d share it with you. Here are some movies to tide you over until election day (or give you an excuse to turn off the news).

The Patriot: Why a bunch of Australians star in this Revolutionary War family drama isn’t clear, but it has “patriot” in the title, so there you go.

Cimarron: This excellent family saga, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1931, isn’t about the founding fathers or any other official moment in American history, but it’s a love letter to the land, to the wild west, and to the American people. Eighty years after its release, the opening scene—thousands of people rushing into Oklahoma at the sound of a starting gun—is still downright impressive.

To Kill a Mockingbird: Another non-governmental, non-military classic, with fairness, decency, intelligence, and courage as its heroes.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington: If I meet Frank Capra in the afterlife, and if I tell him about my warm-fuzzy ballot-box experiences, I bet he’d totally get me. Capra was a warm-fuzzy kind of guy, as far as I can tell. Anybody who extends his kind of goodwill to the American political process must be persistent in hope.

Black Hawk Down: Hear me out on this one. I firmly believe that a few public showings of this movie would do our nation good—not everybody’s into war movies, and not everybody’s into movies where the Americans aren’t the traditional heroes, but telling the truth is most definitely patriotic.

Forty-two days, everyone. I’m ready.

You know, in the course of watching all of the Best Pictures (officially, as in Academy Award winners) since 1927, it’s to be expected that DVD may not be the medium of choice. Some of those movies are old, and not all of them have aged well in the collective consciousness: when it came time to watch Cavalcade, for example, Netflix all but laughed out loud. I hightailed it down to my local library and found that nobody had checked out the VHS version in years.

But there are some movies out there that, for various reasons, should logically be near the top of the DVD-conversion list. Take Rebecca, winner in 1940 and next on the Project 501 calendar. Winning Best Picture doesn’t seem to be enough to warrant a DVD release, but Rebecca is the only Alfred Hitchcock film to have done so, which you’d think would count for something. It stars a very young Joan Fontaine and a less-young Laurence Olivier. It’s based on a best-selling novel, and it’s one of the best-known and best-aging winners in Oscar history. Am I crazy to think that somebody, somewhere must have wanted to commit it to DVD?

Yet here we are, with Netflix giving me the crazy-eye and the library barely even acknowledging its existence—they carry the more semi-recent Masterpiece Theater version on DVD, sure, but the classic Hitchcock rendition? VHS only. Maybe I’m becoming old and crotchety before my time, but: what is this world coming to? I can’t fathom it. Thank goodness I still have a VCR (see again: prematurely old and crotchety).

For information on the origins of Project 501, see here. For all existing Project 501 reviews, see here or click the “501 Project” listing in the sidebar.

I broke out my copy of The Science of Sleep the other day.

I first saw that movie on a bad date: anybody who talks through the previews can’t possibly be good news, right? (Don’t think I’m above shushing my own date. Nicely.) (Am I still single? Why do you ask?) We were in the smallest theater at a local art house, and he chattered all the way through the previews and into the beginning of the movie. Seriously, Gael Garcia Bernal was trying to show me his dreams, and the guy next to me—with whom, oh yeah, I’d arrived—couldn’t stop talking about…something. I don’t know. I’ve blocked it out.

So I ditched the guy but kept the movie, got it for Christmas, if I recall correctly. I keep it around and watch it occasionally, probably more than average for the rest of my collection. It’s a keeper.

But the thing I want to know about this movie is, how do I never remember the poignancy of it? I remember laughing, thinking it was creative and clever. I remember that the love interest has a lot of yarn in her apartment (it’s relevant to the plot…really). I remember the stuffed horse and the one-second time machine. I do not remember Bernal’s character, Stephane, mourning his father and breaking the hearts of everybody around him as he tries to grow up—to move out of his little-kid race-car bed, among other things. And I certainly don’t remember the poignant hopefulness of the final scene. It’s a lovely scene, a promise of good things to come, but it’s a sweet little tear-jerker every time.

Next time it’s a gloomy, gray day, and you have an afghan to snuggle up with, and could use a little something mild and funny and sad, check out The Science of Sleep. It’s by the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind team, only shorter and with fewer sharp edges, and (literal) sweet dreams, to boot. You’ll like it. (Just don’t talk through it.)

Everything I know, I learned from Gone With the Wind:

- The Sound of Music TOTALLY STOLE the whole making-clothes-from-curtains motif! It was apparently Scarlett O’Hara, and not Maria (soon-to-be) von Trapp, who pioneered roaming around [Atlanta] in nothing but some old drapes…only to have it stolen in wonderful fashion (ha, pun semi-intended) by Carol Burnett:

- If you can’t have what you want, marry somebody you don’t love. They’ll die a conveniently rapid death, leaving you to repeat the process until you decide you don’t want what you wanted anymore. Works every time!

- Horseback riding—and jumping in particular—is baaaaad.

- Radishes are disgusting.

- Clark Gable must have had the biggest (male) butt in old Hollywood. (Not actually new news—Project 501 has already covered It Happened One Night and Mutiny on the Bounty (click for reviews!), after all—but the way he wears his pants up to his armpits is not helping. Whether the pants are a cause or an effect of the size of his rear end is unknown.)

- When you find yourself in trouble, consult your local Hooker with a Heart of Gold. What she lacks in stature in the (above-board) community, she makes up for in practical advice and financial know-how.

- A wonderfully flawed character can carry a four-hour movie, no sweat.

- A pair of wonderfully flawed characters can constitute one of the greatest love stories of their century, regardless of how badly they need professional help.

In summary: Delightful in its willingness to go big or go home. Silly, dated, and not super-sensitive to the needs of anybody not white and male, but still awesome enough to be compelling 70 years after its release.

Next: Rebecca (1940), the only Hitchcock to win Best Picture.

For the origins of Project 501, click here; for other Project 501 Best Picture reviews, click here.

Project 501, Academy Awards, Best Picture winners, Gone With the Wind, Scarlett O’Hara, Rhett Butler, Clark Gable

My ten-year high school reunion has been cancelled. Or maybe it never existed. Either way, my surprising desire to find a show-offy dress and pay $50 to revisit the Benicia High School class of 1998 has been squashed, and all too soon.

It’s too bad, really. I made a pact with a friend that we’d go together. She even has a built-in date, and she still said she’d come with me. We were just dying to show up and tell everybody that we invented Wite-Out (Post-Its being taken, obviously), only to be caught in our web of lies and, as a result, create our own fashion line. You know, like Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion? Anyone? Bueller? Ah, well. I guess we’ll have to save our plans for the twenty-year.

It’s too bad that Romy and Michele never picked up much of a cult following, as far as I can tell; the average “I’m the Mary! I’M THE MARY!” reference just doesn’t get the same recognition as a garden-variety “I think I’ve got the black lung, Pop.” You’d think the smart-girl demographic would have picked it up somewhere between Troop Beverly Hills and, say, Mean Girls, but it seems to have been wrongly relegated to Saturday Afternoon TNT Land (as opposed to Saturday Evening TBS Land, which is a gold mine, though I suppose those with lives might see things differently). The truth is that these blondes have been unfairly maligned, or at least ignored–they’re smarter than they look, with a plot and some actual jokes and a pleasingly silly perspective on the eighties, as well as a killer ballet rendition of “Time After Time.” Who doesn’t love “Time After Time”?

And so I’m here to say: Come on! Love the shiny dresses with marabou trim! Revel in the mean, popular girls getting their comeuppance! Order the Businesswoman Special! If you don’t have your own high school reunion, you can at least attend Romy and Michele’s. I think I will.

Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, Lisa Kudrow, Mira Sorvino, Time After Time, reunions, high school reunions, Troop Beverly Hills, Mean Girls

Tonight, CH HQ stands silent and empty. Silenter and emptier, anyway. College roommate, partner in crime, and all-around freakishly close friend Al has been living (appropriately) in my living room for the last nine days, and now she’s gone. Al and I met on our freshman camping trip, just like the college brochure said we would, and bonded over a mutual love of The X-Files and…well, that’s about it. But the Mulder Connection can’t have been too bad; that fateful day hike to Dungeness Spit was nearly ten years ago, and she’s still my favorite dumb-conversation partner and road-trip buddy.

So wouldn’t you all like our filmic highlights? Of course you would.

When Harry Met Sally: I say this not because it’s our shared favorite movie or because we’ve seen it eleventy thousand times (though it is and we have), but because of Sally’s best friend Marie (Carrie Fisher), who probably taught us both to say, “You’re right. You’re right. I know you’re right.”

Bring It On: Public service announcement: When you and your roommate find yourselves at the video store, and you want to rent an overrated “dance” movie about a boy who hates boxing, and your roommate wants to get a cheerleading movie with the finest opening sequence in all of filmdom, and many excellent moments throughout, GO WITH THE CHEERLEADERS. (Addendum: Still working her magic, Al bought me Bring It On: All or Nothing for Christmas. Let me say that it is no competition for the original, but it is fabulous nonetheless, both ironically and kind of genuinely. How many “critically acclaimed” “theatrical releases” can say that?)

I Love Lucy: Okay, not a movie. But if we’re going with screen friends, nobody’s got our vibe more than Lucy and Ethel—the famous chocolate-factory scene? We could totally do that, and more. Just ask us about the time we locked her car in a parking garage overnight. Constant fun, we two.

Charlie’s Angels: Why are there so few girl-buddy movies these days? Don’t friendships come in pairs anymore, or has the bathroom-pack instinct spread? Anyway, Al and I saw this movie at least twice in the theater, and I completely believe that she could execute a Lucy Liu roundhouse kick on any troublemakers. Either that, or she’d poke them in the boob. True story.

Keeping the Faith: I had it wrong before. We’re not Lucy and Ethel, we’re Brian Finn and Jake Schram! Except that we’re girls. And neither Catholic nor Jewish. But, you know. We’re FRIENDS. We WORK TOGETHER. Do you see where I’m going, here? Stop being so detail-y, you.

See you soon, Al. The air mattress awaits, always.

friendship, friendship movies, friends, movies, When Harry Met Sally, Bring It On, Bring It On: All or Nothing, I Love Lucy, Lucy and Ethel, Charlie’s Angels, Lucy Liu, Keeping the Faith

I’m pretty sure I can state the essence of Junebug in fifteen words or fewer, but I’m also pretty sure what I have to say is not the same as what writer Angus MacLachlan would say about his movie, or even want to hear about it. I’m also convinced that I speak for the people. Want to hear it?

Him, paraphrased: Junebug is about connection and lack of connection, about family, and about the fragmentation of modern life.

Me: Junebug is about Amy Adams and her enduring talent and general awesomeness.

If nothing else, I believe I have the Academy voters on my side: they nominated Adams’s performance for Best Supporting Actress in 2005, and not for nothing. Her performance is an early indication of what she does best: committing fully to being the sweetest (but not the brightest) girl in the world. For example:

I’m not going to lie: Junebug might have been called The Movie Where Amy Adams Makes Me Laugh and Cry, and Not Much Else Happens. She’s just that good, and the material works hard for her. To be fair, the rest of the cast also puts in a good effort. Embeth Davidtz goes above and beyond her usual cool-as-a-cucumber routine—she and Adams work some surprisingly good chemistry—and Ben McKenzie and Alessandro Nivola do what they can. But the script ultimately doesn’t help them out. Even if the performances are good, there’s not enough story articulated to include the viewer. It’s like trying to read MacLachlan’s mind, as if he had everything planned out but misjudged the amount of information the audience would need to stay connected, and the overall sense is more one of frustration than anything else—we want to know, but we’re left trying to follow threads that don’t really lead anywhere. If MacLachlan really was going for lack of connection, he got it. Too bad, too.

Amy Adams, Embeth Davidtz, Alessandro Nivola, Ben McKenzie, Junebug, Best Supporting Actress 2005, Angus MacLachlan