Ordinary People

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20140201_040737Calvin (Donald Sutherland) and Beth (Mary Tyler Moore) are two ordinary people who meet with extraordinary circumstances when their oldest son dies in a tragic accident and leaves them grief-stricken and unable to cop with their suicidal surviving son, Conrad (Timothy Hutton).

They seem like an ordinary family, but grief has a way of throwing things off-balance, of demanding things of people they are perhaps unable to give. And this family is one of those stiff upper-lip types, with no foundation for talking about feelings, unused to having things go wrong.

Conrad is drowning in survivor’s guilt. His parents are reeling. They are coping alone, poorly, Ordinary-People-23-11-09-kcicily, until director Robert Redford skillfully peels back the layers and exposes their beating hearts.

It’s a bit uncomfortable to watch, a bit grim. This is the dirty laundry that everyone’s trying hard to conceal. Judd Hirsch plays a therapist who helps to ruthlessly dissect the great WASP psyche. Even when pointing fingers, the film still strives for sensitivity. For just a little while, the mask of self-control slips, and we’re the recipients of raw pain between searing walls of silence.

Ordinary_People_2750391cThis was Robert Redford’s first directorial effort and it won him the Oscar for best director. It was also the screen debut of Timothy Hutton, and he walked away with an Academy Award for best supporting actor (Mary Tyler Moore was nominated for best actress despite having less screen time than Hutton; she lost to Sissy Spacek for Coal Miner’s Daughter).

Oscar controversy: Ordinary People won the Best Picture Oscar in 1981, some people say “stealing it” from Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull. Ordinary People is by no means a bad movie, but Raging Bull is a pretty seminal film, maybe the greatest sports movie of all time, De Niro’s a tour de force, and the Academy has a history of snubbing Scorsese. In hindsight, Raging Bull is the one that’s held up the best, and appears on lots of 50 best ever lists, but you can watch and decide for yourself.

 

Reign Over Me

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Man this movie looks gorgeous. And sounds gorgeous. What a soundtrack. It makes me wish this was a better movie. I think it’s a good one, but it coulda been a contender, you know? It really could have been something, and it came close.

Charlie Fineman (Adam Sandler) is a puddle of grief and sadness. He lost his wife, his dog, and his three beautiful little girls in 9\11 and now he’s alone in the world and wants to keep it that way. He won’t let anyone in because that would mean remembering. He roves the streets of New York on his Segway and you know it’s the dead of night because the streets are empty and just in case they’re not, he’s encased in the safety of his headphones, draining out even the slightest chance of human contact. He’s a mess, but this opening scene is a tender meditation.

Then one day his old college roommate Alan (Don Cheadle) sees him on the street. Charlie is so locked into his PTSD he can’t even recognize a man he lived with for two years. The two rekindle an odd friendship, Charlie on shaky footing but believing Alan is safe to let in because he never Reign Over Meknew his family. But Charlie’s mental health is so deadened that Alan can’t ignore it, and seeks to find his friend the help he’s been staunchly refusing for years now.

Charlie is a portrait of grief that’s interesting and devastating to gaze upon. His house, once a family home, has degenerated into the saddest bachelor apartment you’ll ever see. His kitchen is in a constant state of renovation and demolition because that’s the last thing he and his wife fought about, and he can never quite bring himself to finish the project they started together. It is not lost on me that this is the third movie about grief and demolition that I’ve seen this month alone – Demolition, of course, and Life As a House, and now this. There must be something to it, this destruction of an old life, something cathartic. But it also made me think about those times when I leave the house mad. What if your last words were angry ones?

shadow_528x297Sandler’s performance is moving but undisciplined, yet leaves absolutely no doubt that what we’re dealing with is a fucking broken heart. When he finally tells his story, it’s an effort, an ordeal not to look away. He sits in his dark apartment, playing video games, the imagery of which is not lost on the audience: a giant colossus is meant to topple in an attempt to bring a woman back to life.  It’s sad and futile, and no matter the good intentions, we all must grieve in our own goddamned time.

Good Will Hunting

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Good-Will-Hunting-01-4This movie is worth watching if just for Ben Affleck’s matching windbreaker and tear away pant outfits alone. He has the EXACT wardrobe of my Catholic school gym teacher\music teacher\ librarian, who accessorized hers with orange lipstick, a popped collar before they were cool, and faux-black curls that reached at LEAST three inches in height.

Matt & Ben, god love em. I love how these two high school drop-outs laboured to make the college classroom scenes authentic, but couldn’t be bothered to learn how to use a mop. I love Hollywood for that. Actors can learn to box and DJ and make a béarnaise sauce, but they can ben-affleck-and-matt-damon-owe-everything-to-good-will-hunting-co-star-robin-williamsnever convincingly fold laundry or pump gas. Why is that?

Anyway. The interesting thing about this movie is that it fools you with its quirkiness and quick wit into not seeing the incredibly predictable story arc. Sad, abused, troubled kid is actually a genius and he just needs someone to provide the Armour-Piercing Statement: “It’s not your fault” enough times to crack through his tough-guy veneer and get some healing on. Despite the basic cliché upon this film is predicated, the film succeeds in its smaller bubbles of truth. The defense mechanisms feel true. The relationships are charismatic. And blessed be, it avoids the gift-wrapped perfect ending. I like the ending of this movie so much, I’ve written about it before:

Like every other morning, Ben Affleck pulls up to Matt’s house with a product-placement cup of coffee, and jobs up the front stoop in his latest sport-douche look. This time, though, the last time, he knocks on the door, and no one answers. We already know that Ben has always secretly hoped for this very thing: he has said that his favourite part of the day is between his knock and Matt’s answering, that length of time where he can imagine that his brilliant friend has left his desultory life behind to chase the starsbenny. So we know that Ben is happy, but we also know that he will inevitably also be sad, having just lost his best friend, and having no such escape route himself. It’s a very bittersweet moment where not a single word is spoken, but so much is said. All of this is communicated with just a slight grin, but the script and the director have set this moment up so perfectly that it plays on the audience’s emotions for all it’s worth. Love it.

 

101 Dalmatians (1996)

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Pongo the highly intelligent dalmatian is not just Roger’s best friend, he’s his alarm clock, personal assistant, and milkman. Roger is a video game developer but no one’s interested in his dalmatian game because it lacks a proper villain, a desire to annihilate.

Meanwhile, at the House of DeVil, Cruella (Glenn Close) runs a fashion empire and her look would makes Miranda Priestley look like a schlub; indeed, the devil wears DeVil. Anita (Joely Richardson), owner of Perdita, and one of Cruella’s top designers, attracts Cruella’s attention and inspires a spotted fur coat that has her boss salivating for the soft fur coats of dalmatian puppies. Unbeknownst to Anita, Cruella will stop at nothing to get her hands on the real thing. And thanks to a mutual swim in a park pond, Anita and Roger meet, and their dogs fall in love. So do they of course, and after a double wedding comes a double pregnancy (perhaps it’s lucky that Cruella only covets the skins of puppies and not babies).

Fifteen puppies come, and Cruella shows up with a cheque and a sac before Perdita’s even licked them clean. Not liking the wild glint in her eye, Anita and Roger refuse to sell them to her in a true moment of no fucking kidding.

Cruella kidnaps them anyway of course and only a strange network of animals can get them back.

Over 200 dalmatian puppies were trained for this film, and 20 adult dogs as well, some of them truly frightened of Glenn Close in full costume, hair, and makeup. I don’t know how costume designers Rosemary Burrows and Anthony Powell failed to score an Oscar nomination for their wondrous, over the top looks.

John Hughes, who wrote and produced, got the biggest paycheque for this film than for any other in his career because he snagged a piece of the merchandising and a staggering 17 000 different items were pumped out for the film’s release. There’s definitely a Hughes flavour to the film, particularly in the second half when the movie starts to feel like a doggie version of Home Alone.

This is perhaps the first of Disney’s live action remakes, and another, a prequel starring Emma Stone as Cruella, will hit theatres this spring.

As Good As It Gets

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tumblr_m1ehh5O2Z81rra86mo1_1280It’s impossible to tell if it’s this movie that’s not aging well, or if it’s me. Maybe I’m just getting more curmudgeonly with every passing year, but this movie seemed better in my memory than it did in the re-watching.

Jack Nicholson, who is superb, plays Melvin, an obsessive-compulsive gentleman who lives an extremely regimented life until two things stop him in his tracks: a diner waitress, and a mangy dog.

The first: Helen Hunt is, playing a martyr named Carol, or you know, just doing the Helen Hunt thing. I’m immediately annoyed with her character. Being a single mom is so hard, guys! And article-1350653-000B108A00000258-682_634x481asthma: the worst! She got an Oscar for this, so I guess I’m just being hard on her. She plays the only waitress that will serve Melvin at the only restaurant he’ll eat in. When she doesn’t show up to serve him his usual three eggs, over easy because her son is sick, he shows up at her house hungry with a doctor in tow.

The second: Greg Kinnear plays Simon, Melvin’s arty neighbour. Melvin is not what you would call a sociable man anas-good-as-it-getsd has no love for any of his neighbours, or their acquaintances, or their pets. In fact, Simon’s pup Verdell takes a trip down the trash chute early on because Melvin can’t stand the sight of him. But once Cuba Gooding Jr. brow-beats Melvin into caring for the dog while Simon recovers from a vicious attack, certain aspects of pet ownership start to feel enticing – particularly when little Verdell starts to imitate some of Melvin’s idiosyncracies.

Always worth a mention: Jack Nicholson was also awarded an Oscar for his work on this film, and this one I can get behind. Melvin’s only communication with the world is a series of as-good-as-it-gets-41-4degrading insults – racist, sexist, homophobic, you name it, he spits it out. And yet we love him for it, almost. We certainly forgive him. Just a lift of his bushy eyebrows and we’re his. The fact is, there’s great dialogue between these players, full of irony and thoughtful observation. It really makes you wish the plot didn’t follow such a conventional path. If only the film makers were brave enough to follow the characters down their authentic, quirky paths instead of playing it safe.

The dog, by the way (played saucily by “Jill the dog”), never received an Oscar for her stellar work on the film, but did pick up a UK Shadows Award, presented to the best dog actor, and I think a imagescase can be made for hers being the most charming role of them all. Technically Verdell was played by 6 dogs (Timer, Sprout, Debbie, Billy, and Parfait) but Jill was undoubtedly the star – Greg Kinnear (who was nominated for an Oscar but lost to Robin Williams for Good Will Hunting) describes being “upstaged by Jill”: “She’s got these lashes and big eyes… and when she walks onto the set everybody just says ‘oooh’.” Jill and company are Brussels Griffons and terribly cute. I’m sure she could melt the heart of any obsessive-compulsive, and I don’t know that there’s a higher compliment I can pay than that.

Northpole: Open For Business

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Okay, so first thing you need to know is that there are several secret Christmas cheer ‘power stations’ around the world upon which Santa relies for powering his sleigh as he does his annual globetrotting Christmas Eve run. The Northern Lights Mountain Inn in Vermont is one such station, run by Grace for many years, who threw legendary Christmas Eve parties there each year. But Grace has passed and the inn has been willed to her niece, Mackenzie (Lori Laughlin, of “bribing her kids into college” fame). Mackenzie has fond memories of her childhood there but she’s a businesswoman now and she sees the inn as a money maker – if she fixes it up first.

Lucky for her there’s a handsome single father handyman (a familiar Hallmark hybrid) named Ian (Dermot Mulroney) around to nudge her in the right direction. Still, Santa is worried, so he sends intrepid elf Clementine (Bailee Madison) to help her see the value in keeping the inn open – and perhaps to help her reclaim her missing holiday spirit.

Have you ever played a win-lose-or-draw type of game with your family over the holidays? One person draws and the rest have to guess? Never be on Sean’s team. He is a very poor artist. He drew The 12 Days of Christmas and it looked a lot like this, only sloppier, and with some extra random squiggles and lines:

which he later told us were turtle doves but he couldn’t remember how many were in the song or any other thing that was in the song. Anyway. My sister on the opposing team suggested that their pencil was less pointy than ours, punishing them with a handicap. I suggested her team had 3 handicaps, gesturing not very subtly at my my brothers-in-law on either side of her. Har har. And guess what. THEY WON. It was humiliating. Thanks a lot Sean. You’re off the team and potentially out of the family.

Anyway, my point is that at the end of a vigorous and competitive game of win lose or draw, there’s a whole bunch of scrap paper with terrible drawings, and I do believe this script was cobbled together by guessing what those scenarios might have been and then stuffing them into a movie where they don’t necessarily make sense, but who cares? Is anyone actually paying attention? A prescription for a Hallmark movie is never written without an entire bottle of chilled white wine, so you’re already having a good time.

The Christmas Ornament

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Kathy (Kellie Martin) is newly widowed and trying really hard not to hate Christmas this year, but it’s a whole onslaught of memories that she just isn’t really able to cope with yet. But she’s got a really good friend in Jenna (Jewel Staite, god I love her) who is determined to see her friend through her hard time. And, you know, maybe push her a little toward happiness and moving on. Do we want to call that meddling or simply best-friending?

Anyway, Kathy is still trying to run her dead husband’s dream of a bicycle shop which makes no money. I’m pretty sure in his dreams it did make money, at least a little. And he probably never intended to have it send her to the poor house, but it’s hard to let go. Almost as hard as it is to put up a Christmas tree full of “memories on branches,” or ornaments as we call them. But pushy bestie Jenna insists, conveniently, since that’s where we meet love interest Tim (Cameron Mathison).

Love interest! But isn’t that too soon?!?! Maybe. But the heart wants what it wants, baby.

I just wrote a review almost bursting at the seams with Christmas-themed masturbation references to celebrate Hallmark’s esteemed legacy of plugging its own products within its movies. That movie focused on their greeting card line. This movie reminds you: we sell ornaments too! Say what you will about the themes and quality of their holiday movies, Hallmark knows what it’s doing; these schmaltz-fests move merchandise and make housewives swoon as men are pictured courting ladies with patience and real romance, never asking for more than a chaste kiss.

Write Before Christmas

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Jessica gets the ole dumperoo by her grinchy optician boyfriend just before the holidays so she redirects her Christmas cheer toward 5 of the most important people in her life. She buys 5 beautiful and pricey greeting cards and pops them in the mail, spilling her guts. It is somewhat convenient that a greeting card giant takes over a whole channel just to put out tonnes of free advertising via 90 minute long sappy romantic holiday movies which often encourage gratuitous exchange of Christmas greetings. It’s called corporate masturbation. I mean it’s not, but it should be. Petting the reindeer. Spilling the eggnog. Marching the penguin. Polishing the candy cane. Frosty’s five fingered hug. Okay I’ll stop but only because I’ve received notification from WordPress that I’ve reached the limit for made-up masturbatory euphemisms for one post, and I HATE getting those.

Anyway: a Hallmark movie. On the Hallmark channel. About sending Hallmark cards bought in your local Hallmark store [and by the way, you can also buy Hallmark movie merch on their website]. Jessica (Torrey DeVitto) sends 5 cards: to her widowed aunt, her old music teacher, her enlisted brother, her best friend, and a washed up pop star whose music once inspired her. Anyway, you might think $15-$20 is a lot to spend per card but Hallmark would like to remind you that 1. they pop up and 2. you might get a boyfriend. So pretty much a bargain. That’s right: one of those cards nets her a dude. Luke (Chad Michael Murray) is a photographer who likes Christmas enough to dress up as Santa on an annual basis (at least) and likes Jessica enough to kiss her when her ex-boyfriend is looking.

Meanwhile, each of the cards spins off another story of people finding connections at Christmas. I wouldn’t quite put it in the Love Actually category but if you’re in the market for a little holiday porn, I think you could do worse. It’s exactly the kind of background noise that might be nice as you…write out your Christmas cards? Also, I hear it pairs well with wine.

Holiday Joy

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Joy is a shy and fairly unpopular high school student who hates Christmas ever since her mom died. She watches the perfect family next door through her window and wishes she could be more like them. But then she gets hit by a car and gets her Christmas wish, sorta. She wakes up skinny, and with highlights. She’s friends with her popular next door neighbour and she’s dating the high school hottie.

Old Dorky Joy is trapped inside the body of new and improved Cute Joy, and Dorky Joy marvels at her luck. Varsity volleyball! Shopping pals! Bigger boobs! But Cute Joy doesn’t play the clarinet. And Cute Joy is the daughter of the perfect family next door. Dream come true! She has a mom again – not her mom, granted – but a mom who cooks and cleans takes care of the kids. Joy’s been filling in that role for so long in her own home she’s forgotten what it feels like to have someone take care of her.

But of course, Joy is about to learn that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. Sometimes grass that looks green is actually astroturf. The perfect family next door is actually pretty jerky, and her own family really nosedives without her. It’s life-swappy although not quite in the conventional different body way. It hits really hard at themes of being grateful for what you have and not comparing yourself to others – of course, our young hero has to learn this the hard way. They very hard way. But from the moment of her car accident-induced transformation, we know how this will go, and we aren’t overly invested in it either way.

This is not a good movie but if you’re counting down to Christmas with a movie a day, this certainly fills a date on the calendar. And if you like something mindlessly festive on in the background while you wrap or bake cookies, this is awfully mindless. So: not a complete waste of time?

Santa Girl

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In the North Pole, Christmas is a business and the head honcho, Santa (Barry Bostwick), is preparing his daughter Cassie (Jennifer Stone) to take over the family business. Cassie is not thrilled with her destiny – she’s been betrothed to Jack Frost practically since she was born, her career path is a lock – she’s a teenager who just wants to assert some independence. Can you blame her?

Cassie strikes a deal: in exchange for a semester to study “abroad,” she’l return to pick up the Santa reigns and marry as she must to merge the Kringle empire and secure Christmas forever. Cassie knows Christmas is important but for now she’s very happy to escape. Santa sends an elf, Pep ( McKayla Witt) to keep an eye on things but when he drops his daughter off at her dorm, you almost wish he could stay – if you think most dads are pretty discerning about who their daughter dates, imagine if her dad was Santa Claus, who knows exactly who’s been naughty and who’s been nice. Instead, he counsels her that in order to fit in with humans, she should hide her true self and her special abilities, and just blend in.

Anyway, this isn’t some girl power movie, it’s a Christmas rom-com, which means Cassie’s about to meet two seemingly viable suitors: the handsome and rich JR (Joshua Cody) and the broke but sweet Sam (Devon Werkheiser). There are still 102 days until Christmas and plenty of time for things to go wrong.

With the protagonists being so young, this movie is both more cringe-worthy yet more forgivable so than most others in its genre. It has a fresh-ish take on Christmas romance that involves falling in love but falling into other things too, which is important at any age.

Santa is a CEO and a single father – is he also a modern man? Cassie is a curious and independent soul – can she also buckle down to do her duty? And is the world prepared to accept a Lady Claus? Only Santa Girl will tell.