Six Movies for Thought: Helena from the Wedding; The Romantics; As Good as it Gets; Jeff Who Lives at Home; Morning Glory; Heartburn

This last week has been a film-infusion. There were actually seven movies, but I won't mention the seventh, I don't think.

If one wanted a "snapshot" of my viewing style, this week is perfect.

Rather than choose one or two of these films to write about, I'll try something new. I'll take you through all the movies I saw over the week, and you'll get an idea of my landscape of film experiences, a more accurate picture than if I were selective.

First, there was "Helena from the Wedding," which was a disappointment, but queued me up for film-viewing for the rest of the week. The main character, Alex, is an attractive man but clueless, recently married, to an enchanting but too-young-for-him-seeming sweet lady named Alice. Alice is a nonentity. It's all about her husband, who watches her thoughtfully.

The movie opens with the two of them driving to their country cabin, silently, snowy landscapes behind. I loved the opening: a little dialogue, but not much. Simple scene: unloading the groceries, 'welcome into our little world.' It promised to be one of those quiet movies. Soon, though, you realize that Alex is unsatisfied by his wife. She acts like a little girl, seems basically asexual. Then the plot devolves, because a really sexy woman shows up for their New Year's party, (Helena, of course) -- along with a few other clowns. It becomes one of those couples-getting-away-together themes. They have conversations about life-stage things like marriage, divorce, career, changes from their past, etcetera. A worn-out plot, that no one has ever done as well as "The Big Chill," but you keep watching because the main character is such a nerd. (Obviously, his staring at Helena will not lead to anything, because his neediness is transparent.) I've seen this actor in better roles, more fitting for him, such as Rolling Stone "Reporter," a geek who did ride-alongs with marines in the Iraq invasion, in "Generation Kill."

The stars this time are the friends: Jessica Hecht as Lynn, drama queen drunkard who keeps asking her husband to fetch and carry; and Paul Fitzgerald as Nick, a man who's already done the midlife crisis thing, been abandoned by his too-young mistress, is wiser than his friend Alex and now pretty much shameless. You see the story through the eyes of Alex, but you keep watching because of everybody else. And, in another classic "how not to end" conclusion, Alex has a 'moment' by the river, with friend Nick beside him, and you're more interested in what Nick says than whatever internal insights Alex might be having.

I was then in movie-thinking mode, though, which was perfect for watching "The Romantics," an unapologetically romantic film in all senses of the word. We are talking CHEESY. But I have to confess that I still love to watch Katie Holmes, even though she and Tom Cruise were on the pages of the tabloids for years, and even though I know she's not a good actor. She does certain things very well. She does the gaga lines, the moody eyes, the moonlight walks, very well -- and in this film she even has scenes where she's walking in nylon stockings across a grassy knoll, under the aforementioned moonlight, heels in hand, searching for her lost love. Yes! And she recites poetry, and she leans against an oak tree when he leans in to kiss her. So, you can more or less see the movie now in your head, right? Do you also LOVE this kind of thing? ...Bonus: Anna Paquin as rival, the best friend who stole the man away. Anna Paquin isn't bitchy, though; she is likeable. Especially when she's wearing a green face mask and sneaking cigarettes the night before her wedding. Without saying anything, her nervousness just radiates through the screen. (Anna Paquin is a good actor.) So I give this movie five stars. Most people would say it's terrible. In my opinion it hit the right notes. It did what it set out to do. Also, the ending is nice. It's romantic. :)

"As Good as it Gets" was a repeat for me. I had seen it before, long ago, once upon a time, when I was a kid. Whenever that was, when it came out. Yeah. (I was 21.) Here's the interesting thing: I didn't understand it back then. I remember my reaction: my brain felt blurred. I didn't get it. I didn't know why Jack Nicholson was not just repulsive. I didn't know why Helen Hunt was at dinner with him, when he was so clearly weird; I didn't buy them as a romantic couple. I don't think I even registered the gay artist neighbor as one of the important characters, what with the silly dog and all. (Not to mention my not appreciating Greg Kinnear until ten years later when I saw "Feast of Love," which I now want to watch again... He's terrific.) Anyway, I knew other people loved this movie but I myself had been too immature to understand. So, bring it on again, I thought. Maybe this time it will be good. And, sure enough, I am now capable of getting it. Especially the OCD part, which it occurs to me that my 21-year-old self had no knowledge of. (As in, did I even know what that was about? Was it recognizable to me? I'm not sure.) Also, though, the desperation of Helen Hunt's character, Carol the Waitress -- which this time made me cry. When she breaks down to her mother and says she didn't realize how far in the wrong direction things had gone... Oh boy. It's an adult movie, folks. Why did I even watch it at age 21?

More on Jack Nicholson in a little bit.

So far, so good. A nice movie-watching week. But then things ramped up, on into the glorious: the next three movies were actually mood-shakers, make-you-think-ers. Sigh.... This is what I love about watching a lot of film. You get on a roll.

"Jeff Who Lives at Home" has a dumb title, and I wish I could give it a better one. Suggestions? Jeff is a lot like a lot of guys in my generation; he's like guys I've known in real life, one of whom was actually named Jeff, too. He's a pothead, lives with his mom, can't seem to figure himself out, spends too much time in his head. Maybe it should be called, "Jeff Like a Lot of Guys." In the beginning, he has a great meditative monologue about another movie, which is a nice writerly nod to "Signs," and/or to film lovers as an audience. (We know how Jeff feels right away; we relate to him right away; it makes this movie a movie for those who love movies.)

I don't know Jason Segel as well as I should, considering he's part of the Judd Apatow gang. All I can say about him right now, acting-wise, is that he's very familiar, and probably benefits from that. I liked his performance in "Jeff Who Lives at Home" mostly because I felt like I knew him. (Side note: This familiarity-thing is true of a lot of actors, many of whom have carried a career on it, like Jeff Bridges and Philip Seymour Hoffman and Jeff Daniels and others, and not a strike against them; it simply means they capture a moment in history better than the next guy. They 'fit the bill.')

But it wasn't the acting that made this movie great. In this case, it was the writing. The writing is original -- the plot (the story) is unexpected, and surprises you over and over; so too the dialogue, which is quirky and emotional at the same time. Jeff wanders about town, in a freewheeling kind of way, hopping on the backs of trucks, etcetera, following his nose (and a boy named Kevin). You just never know what will happen to him next. He encounters his own brother, Pat -- more than once -- and assists in a sloppy spy operation on Pat's wife, who may or may not be having an affair. Each of the brothers has issues, we learn; even though Pat's the one who has a job and marriage, he lacks insight into himself and could stand to benefit from his brother's contemplative path. In some ways, the story reminded me of "The Big Lebowski," only not so over-the-top like the Coen bros. do -- this is quieter, more familial; but it does have that theme of 'pothead goes on wild ride and winds up being the smartest person he meets.' There's a bit of substance here though, in the brothers opening up and learning from each other, as well as in a surprising twist at the end of the movie that is downright profound. It plays out like a classic piece of drama, and I really can't give anything away about it here. You have to see it.

A few days later I watched "Morning Glory," which was a bit of fluff, but I ended up thinking a lot about it, so it had an effect that makes it worth writing about. The premise of "Morning Glory" is simple. Rachel McAdams plays a driven career woman, Becky, whose life is dedicated to her work 100% (she gets up at 1:30 a.m. for a 4:00 start time producing a morning talk show). Her dream is to be a producer on "The Today Show." She has no relationships, no other interests, and so on. At the beginning of the movie, she's fired from her job managing the New Jersey local morning broadcast and gets a lot of flak from her mother and other people. What are the chances you'll ever go national; you can only go down from here. She's told to give up on this dream. But she persists, calling everyone she can think of, sometimes applying twice for the same job, until something comes through in New York City. A national network. Of course, it's a total loser situation; she gets a morning show that's tanking. It's absurdly bad, with horrible staff, no money, building falling apart, doorknobs falling off and the whole nine yards. She's immediately told about past producer turnover and how little time she has to bring the ratings up.

Pretty simple. And the plotline is simple, too. You know from the beginning that Becky's going to succeed, because she's so cute and passionate, so it's only a matter of watching it unfold. How will she manage it? This is meant to be a fun, silly comedy. And it is. She has to get her two primary anchors to work together (Harrison Ford and Diane Keaton), despite their differences (Harrison Ford plays a former news journalist, dour and depressed by the necessity of lowering himself in this capacity; and Keaton plays a bubbly, somewhat desperate, somewhat typical television 'personality' -- eager to please, sometimes too eager). The staff of the show must agree to do ridiculous things to get the ratings up, like in one case, ride a roller coaster live on camera, or in another, face off with a sumo wrestler (Diane Keaton, by the way, fell and injured her head during the filming of this scene, and some New Yorkers living in a nearby skyscraper recorded it, so you can see the whole thing happen -- thanks YouTube).

The movie's kind of funny, but it succeeds in going beyond what it should have been (a bit of fluff). The true joy is Rachel McAdams, herself, as you see her running around in heels and suits, bounding across sidewalks, dodging taxis, impossibly energized, cheerful, pulling you into her corner, an unstoppable force of nature -- even in the face of the gloomy, aging Harrison Ford character and his negative appraisal of the morning show phenomenon, which is not 'real news' (a point of view that reflects your own, by the way). Becky is our heroine: she takes it on, accepts the challenge, and makes you believe. And, it is actually inspiring!

I said I thought a lot about the movie. And I did. Why? It was such a failure at the box office, and arguably an embarrassment for actors of this caliber, to participate in a total fluff product. However, I can see the work that went into it, and the heart that went into it. Into every bit of it. Even Patrick Wilson (most gorgeous man alive) plays it up as Becky's love interest, and though his part is minimal and could have been withdrawn from the story, he makes it sweet, he makes it dear; he shines a flattering light on the soul of our heroine. Through him we see just how deeply invested she is (who would forego a night with Patrick Wilson to spend hours trying to motivate an aging newsman?). The character of Becky, by sheer will, makes the impossible possible. She turns the whole story and all the characters around. With the support of some talented actors, but little else, Rachel McAdams turns the whole movie around, energizes it and makes it good. That's a lot of work, and in my opinion worth reflecting on.

It was a supposedly dumb movie I'd love to see again.

So, finally, for my last film of the week, I come to "Heartburn." This is -- and I wouldn't lie -- a hidden treasure. Who ever heard of it? I discovered this film entirely by chance, while perusing a list of Jeff Daniels titles. Jeff Daniels has a teeny-tiny role here. The main characters are Rachel and Mark, played by Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson. The writer is Nora Ephron and the director, Mike Nichols. Yikes!!! Can you stack it up better?

It's a story about marriage, and it's just beautiful. In the beginning, the unlikely couple meet at a wedding. There are no bells ringing. Their encounter looks like it has all the potential of a one-night stand. Soon enough, though, they are so charmed by each other they are getting married themselves. This all happens very quickly, so you know it's not about how they fell in love. It's about what happened after. In my head I kept comparing it to "Another Year," a film that has a dreamy but mysterious marriage in it -- an unrealistic ideal. These are the two films I've seen that really make you think about what marriage is. In "Heartburn," there are lots of beautiful details, and they feel real. The couple buys a house that needs repairs -- lots of repairs. They have trouble with their contractor, of course. There are small arguments and there's dust. (The house will never be fully renovated, in fact. They will live with unfinished walls for years.) Then, there's the first pregnancy, and singing. Rachel and Mark spend an entire evening singing every song they can think of that has the word 'baby' in it.

Eventually, there's trouble, and it's a little foreseeable, especially by the way Rachel keeps saying, "I'm so happy!" ...But it happens nice and slowly, and not in any way you could predict. It takes a long while for the couple to realize they can't stay together, and along the way there are plenty of moments when you, like they, think it might work out after all.

Meryl Streep is so different here, so subtle and perfumed, so fragile and strong. She's beautiful, of course. And young. She's delicately laughing at dinner parties. But then later ... she's curled up on top of her bedspread with her rice pudding. She's grocery shopping with a vengeance. She's at the hairdresser having a revelation, her eyes opening slowly in the mirror, while a bimbo teases her bangs. She's cooing with her little girl on an airplane, her hands forming the itsy-bitsy spider. She is, in fact, a real woman. She is so good at this that you can forget all the 1,000 other movies you have seen with the famous "Meryl Streep" starring in them. This is mind-blowing, folks. You can watch her and actually forget who she is.

I am tempted to credit Mike Nichols for that fact, because he is a genius, and those scenes are his creation. And I partially credit the age of the film (Meryl did this before she did so many of those other things -- she was new unto herself, even). But I do think this performance was outstanding, and kind of magical.

Which brings me to Jack Nicholson. Not as much was required of him; his character was one-dimensional. Perhaps the film's only weak point was that Mark's point of view is hidden from us. Nevertheless, I thought about old Jack and how diverse he is. Sure, this was a simple role for him. Play the husband who is too good-looking for his wife to see through. You don't think he's good-looking? He can be good-looking. He can do anything.

I most often tend to think of him as "Chinatown." (Snarky, jerky, quick-minded, sharp-edged.) For a lot of people he's "The Shining." (Demented, exaggerated, scary.) There are performances where he's stunned me, like "About Schmidt." Or those where he's repulsive, as mentioned above, in "As Good as it Gets." I've seen him play a retired astronaut and The Joker. In "The Departed," he pulled off being violent, not to mention Irish -- which should have been unbelievable. When you give it a little thought, it's an amazing body of work.

It's tempting to say we've seen too much of Jack and Meryl. But I picked up this little movie this week, and by accident got to discover them both anew, seeing their talent as if for the first time. So, I guess I will close with a grand statement. After years of uncertainty, I am ready to admit that Jack is the best actor of his generation. And I'm ready to say the same for Meryl. Watching them act together is a damn fine way to spend an evening.

You've Got Mail

What a refreshing thing it is to watch something as purely moment-defining as "You've Got Mail," which has recently regained popularity in the wake of Nora Ephron's passing. Simply the first few auditory moments of the film make it worthwhile: you get to hear the sound of the old 2600 baud modem dialing, and its tinny whistle and rumble before connecting. The sound reminds me of the emotional excitement I used to feel when connecting to the Internet in the mid-90s. Although I never used AOL and so never had a computer tell me directly "you've got mail," my emotion was the same. I used to get email. Real email, you know, that had nothing to do with my job. It was personal. I was always breathless, waiting for that "connection," and even used to sing along with my modem.

Nostalgia for an earlier Internet time transforms this movie. The plot about the competing bookstores, itself riddled with nostalgia, especially now when even the mega-super-store type bookstores are going under, can't engage our attention as much as the old-fashioned Internet romance. How strange! Now that we are "always on," always connected, and expect our mobile devices to serve as stand-in brains, remembering our schedule and reminding us to go to the grocery store, I think Internet flirtation has gone the way of the card catalog. Needless to say a text message from a boyfriend holds as much satisfaction as the one that reminds you to buy onions.

So: First, the old traditional romance of books and letters disappears via the fiber-optic Internet addiction. Then, email and chat rooms become the source of adrenalin rushes. Then, the Internet becomes a series of shopping networks and advertisements, "always on." Then, our mobile phones replace our memories and reshape the outlines of our every day lives. The Internet is banal! So we're now already ready to wax nostalgic about Internet flirtation? Must be! Makes sense when you think about it. What would Nora Ephron have written next? Has romantic life passed away along with Nora? Was "You've Got Mail" the very last truly romantic film that represented "the now" (the now of the time it was made)? Will every romantic film from now on necessarily be looking backward?


I know that was what I liked about it. Nostalgia for the Internet, as ironic as I find that.

There really isn't much else in "You've Got Mail," unless you happen to enjoy Hanks and Ryan -- I found myself realizing for the first time that, although I've grown up with Hanks ever-present on screen, I'd never really looked at him before. This time I studied his face closely. He's as comfortable as an old bathrobe. There's nothing sexually attractive about him. As for Meg Ryan, well, ditto. Her little half-tilts of her head and hips are so familiar, they have ceased to be cute. And as I said, I don't really buy into the story about the poor little losing bookshop. It doesn't feel real -- not as real as their email exchanges do! I think Nora must have known this, too. If it did feel more real, if we were inclined to resent Hanks as a "big businessman" (yeah right), then the romance wouldn't be pulled off in the end. So you kinda have to subconsciously accept that the bookstore-competition plot is not what the movie's about. It's about the Internet romance, at the time such a hugely shared phenomenon that this movie captures its moment with perfect clarity.

The High Cost of Living

This film was absolutely beautiful, both inside and out. I was really moved. It reminds me of the way I felt the first time I watched Laura Linney, in You Can Count on Me, except this was a better film. That feeling of getting to know and care about people so deeply in only 1 1/2 hours -- that feeling of understanding the world of the characters almost as if they were real people; your world and theirs become one; you become enclosed together in sensation -- it was that, plus, it was a REALLY engaging story of an ethical dilemma. So many times the movie critics go on and on about "a real human story," or a character facing "tough choices," but the movie itself won't live up to the description. In The High Cost of Living, Zach Braff is so skilled that his character's ethical dilemma becomes your own. I also think the title of the movie is completely fitting. What does it cost to be a human being? What kind of pain or sacrifice is required to connect (truly) to other human beings around us?

That's what it's about. (Not only death, which the title suggests, although yes, there is a death in the film. But I think the title means more and the film carries more meaning.)

Including this one, I have now seen Zach Braff in two very touching movies. The first one was Garden State, which many of us of a certain generation could relate to. The typical sort of Generation X movie. (I mean my generation, otherwise known as "those who grew up in the 1980s" - a group of us born mostly between the mid 60s and the late 70s - a group of which I was on the tail end - also considered the generation that followed the baby boomers.) It was filmed almost 10 years ago. Zach Braff was a lot younger then, as was I. He did an excellent job portraying a young man in his 20s who is smart, handsome, capable, and yet rather lost. That word, "lost," describes how a lot of us felt in our 20s, and maybe beyond... Walking around, almost silently, the character of Andrew carried an inner burden and an inner universe of feeling, but did not know what to do with it. Where to put it. There seemed to be no place for it in the post-1970s superficiality that denied us the passion of our birthright. "Garden State" was also about human connection, about how to strip life down to its tiniest and most essential details, and how actually to share those with another person (!). It was a love story, despite appearances (there were a few standard tropes in there that made several people shout 'bildungsroman!' like a knee-jerk reaction).

But getting into his late 30s now, Zach Braff is a grown-up man. He's different; he seems to own himself. He's got facial hair and looks mature. And he's gotten even more skilled as an actor. He brings a gentle roughness to the character of Henry ("High Cost of Living"), lets us know that Henry is not a bad guy, not a scary guy, even though he's a drug dealer and clearly walks on the wrong side of the tracks. Braff also lets us know, subtly, that Henry is a lonely person. He's not out there advertising his loneliness; he's not desperate, but he sure could use a friend (someone who's not strung out). He's actually quite...normal...almost, except for the drug-dealing lifestyle. What went wrong with Henry? We won't know exactly, but Braff will let us know that it wasn't irreversible. In Henry's encounter with an upper-class, quite lovely, pregnant housewife named Nathalie (in French-speaking Montreal) we begin to see his real soul emerging. Is it too much? Some of the critics have laid into the sensitivity of this movie.

There are some potentially risky elements that might weaken the impact were they not so beautiful. Montreal as location suggests internationalism and cultures colliding, because Henry is "American" (i.e., from the United States) and these people speak French. There is also the class conflict between the couple, (Nathalie and her husband), who are enchantingly well-off and reside in a very good neighborhood, and Henry, dweller of the urban jungle, selling drugs on the street and in ratty back bathrooms and in basements. You get the idea. So when Henry collides literally with Nathalie, and it changes his life, the movie says "now his real soul begins to emerge..." Is it too much?

For me, it struck just the right note, not only because I feel a generational kinship with the actor, but because of people we've lost, like David Foster Wallace, who believed that it was not possible to write real emotions simply and straightforwardly anymore, in this age of commercials. Or like Heath Ledger, whose blunt-edged emotions in "Brokeback Mountain" were a stunning sight to behold, like watching someone fall from a cliff. We need more of this. We need beauty and humanity, and beauty in humanity. Quite frankly. We just do.

And Zach Braff - who would seem from the outside to be not the right person for the job (he's so little-known as a serious independent film actor, and for years worked an awkward part in a lame television slapstick serial) - does it perfectly. This movie is beautiful, and he carries the meaning of it just beautifully.

Another Year, Black Swan, Blue Valentine (contains spoilers)

OK, so here I am on January 17th, and I'm finally getting into the seasonal film rush. I'm a little behind, but then again so were the movies, many of which didn't come out until New Year's or shortly afterward. So much for being able to watch tons in December, during break, the way I used to.  Anyway. Let's get to it. I've seen three of this year's biggies so far.

Another Year was probably the best of the three. It was subtle, comic, moving, and it offered real intellectual food, if you know what I mean -- it asked questions and provided plenty to think about. It featured two people (one of whom the adorable Jim Broadbent) who were successful in life, in that way that doesn't require money or fame or anything superficial. True success, in the way that lights life up, requires self-contentment and a sense of home. A sense of place. Another Year showed us what the good stuff is. But it was interesting, not boring as you might think this kind of picture of contentment would be. The central couple, the happy couple, were surrounded by people who were not happy. In fact, they were surrounded by people who reminded me of me and nearly everyone I know: normal, i.e. fucked up in many ways.

The resulting tension was what made the film poignant and delicious and gave me plenty to think about. What was it about that couple that made them so happy? Was it their gardening? Is the lesson of the film simply that those who work in a garden, diligently maintaining it season after season and then enjoying the fruits of their labor, will be happier? Or was it their patience - their calm demeanor, the way they approached every emotional drama with great fortitude, as if radiating the vibe of "this too, shall pass"?

And how were we to feel about them (we, the audience)? Jealous? Annoyed? There were actually scenes where their moral superiority bordered on annoying. It was mildly irritating, (particularly when I as an audience member was so easily able to relate to one of the other characters, or at least partly, able to relate to little things like the tendency to say too much while drinking), but I was never irritated enough to lose my sense of respect. Overall, the film left me with a kind of respectful awe, a kind of mellow appreciation and reflection. It said to me something like: There is indeed such a thing as a happy life. And maybe gardening has something to do with that, but it's way more than that. There was a kind of maturity and graciousness, a higher-order mindset, that I saw in the film and wanted to emulate.

Of course, if I consider myself an artist, I might be more inclined to compare my life to that of the ballerina in the hypnotizing film Black Swan. Although I can't relate at all to the desire to self-mutilate or self-torture, at least not bodily, I do understand the mental struggle that comes along with the desire to create something beautiful. To create a work of art. There is a swelling passion in the heart of every artist that threatens to burst. It is the most important thing in the world, but also has the power to destroy you. Mostly because of pressure -- a pressure that you have chosen for yourself. A height you voluntarily strain to reach. In Black Swan, you get to feel what that pressure is like. You get to feel it bodily. The little glimpses of self-mutilation (even though you know they're imaginary) will make you curl your fingers and make your shoulders shudder. It's as if the heroine, seeing something in herself that is less than perfect, has a perpetual itch to scratch. And scratch she does--scratch, and tear, and cut, and nearly snap her fragile bones in half. It's a horror film, of course, and the joy of it is never quite knowing what's real and what's not. Is she really hurting herself? Or will she be beautiful in the end? And that is how it feels to approach art. You don't know if you are really doing it or not, but you feel more sensitive the closer you get. You can feel it in your nerve-endings.

After those two extremely rich and rewarding film experiences, I was very, very disappointed in Blue Valentine. Can't blame the actors -- Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling acted their little butts off. (She's one for whom I would ordinarly say "anything with this actor's gonna be good.") They really gave it everything they had. Frame by frame, they were going for it. But they really didn't have much to work with. They should have. In theory. And maybe they thought they did -- On the surface this seems like the kind of movie that has a great purpose. They might have convinced themselves. They thought they were acting in a love story. I too thought this was going to be a love story, a deeply engaging and sad one.

There was no love in the thing. (Except maybe the love they had, as parents, for their little girl.) The idea was simple: you start with a marriage and you see a relationship falling apart. In order to get you to care, you will see flashbacks to show you how they were when they started out. A very simply designed script like this can be elegant. It doesn't take much.

The main problem here was not the falling-apart part, which was excellent, and with any kind of backstory I would have been crying my eyes out because the performances were so good. (My favorite part: Ryan Gosling's shoulders, his inadequate but determined strength as he tries to physically if not emotionally hold on to his wife, even as she's crying 'no no no no no no no.')

[A bit more on that: The actors were amazing. Seriously. The sweat they put into it. The resistance to each other. The fighting. The swirling around drunk in a last attempt at a date night. The obviousness with which they try but can no longer connect. Swish, swish, I'm drunk, you're drunk, let's try to connect even though all the muscles in our bodies are telling us we must resist.]

So obviously what was missing was the backstory. There were flashbacks, yes, but there was no "relationship" in the early phase of the relationship. The two meet, flirt, dance around on their first and apparently only date, and that's it. It's cute but does that make me believe they fell in love? That ONE scene? I want to scream "How can you take such a simple, elegant script premise and still manage to fuck it up by leaving out the obvious?"

Yup. That was it for backstory. After that, what happened to them? After their one date? Well, she gets pregnant of course. (It's unclear who the father is, but it doesn't really matter.) Let me state the obvious: *that* particular detail does not a love story make. Instead, it has the opposite effect. It made me feel that, (besides "whoa! this happened already, this pregnancy?"), indeed their relationship was doomed from the start. She never loved him. So of course she wasn't going to last being married to him for more than a few years, when after all, all he was to her in the beginning was an "I'll step in and take care of you" guy. That is a typical, even trite, scenario and doesn't move me at all.

I didn't cry, needless to say, when she said she had fallen out of love with him, because I didn't see any hint that she'd ever loved him in the first place. They got together because she was pregnant, and I'm supposed to care?

Well, it was disappointing. But at least I can say now that the relationship I am in has a pretty damn good chance of working out. At least it starts with love. You can't have a love story that doesn't start with love. Not even a sad one.

Young at Heart

I watched this old movie, quite by accident. Though I rarely channel-surf, I hit upon this movie the other night and became hooked. I even recorded it; I have since watched it a couple more times. What was it, Doris Day's seductive voice? She has a way of speaking that is feminine and melodic, gentle, and yet commanding. Her voice goes into a whisper for effect and yet it can also rise up quite matter-of-factly when the need arises. Was it the time warp evoked by the trio of blonde hairdos, by the 1950s attire? (As the three sisters look up at once, smiling in perfect stylized synchronicity, not a hair out of place, all lip-glossed and golden, it reminds me of an Olympic sport... Were all the women in the 50s so perfectly put together? I think of Plath and how she suffered for it.)

No... These things moved me, but what really hooked me, I think, was Frank Sinatra. Honestly, his character cast a spell. Barney Sloan. The gaunt cheeks, the deep self-pity. Doris Day stood in contrast, as what Barney called "the gay-young-thing type." She was all sunshine and he was all gloom. Exactly as billed.

But more than that - The way they talked to each other - it evoked the most poignant aspects of a time when our culture was fundamentally different, when certainly women approached men a different way, and likely vice versa. Yet although men may have been said to have the "power," at least politically speaking, women had the real power when it came to romance. Laurie (Doris Day's character) was like the muse -- she provided the beauty, the inspiration, the magnetism which in turn provided Barney a reason to live. But I oversimplify. She was commanding, as I mentioned, and nurturing as well. A woman in charge of herself who could be "someone to watch over" him. (Yes. He sang that song in the film. She was watching.)

How is it achieved? I wonder. This balance of seduction, attraction, beauty, femininity, with strength, presence, confidence? And why do women now feel that if they intentionally make themselves attractive to men they'll lose respect, at least self-respect? Why do women now feel that to be powerful they have to be "ballsy" and hard -- stiff, unmoved, like Hillary Clinton? It was her downfall ultimately that she fought exactly this internal battle. Although I raged against that fact as a feminist, when I watch Doris Day I think maybe Hillary could've learned something from her. Am I crazy?

But in the movie, you wouldn't see all this without him. Man and woman truly complement each other here. That's the hook. Say all you want about Doris Day. It all boils down to Barney - Sinatra acting Barney - and the way he appreciates her.

There's a scene where he's in a bar, playing piano and singing ("Just One of Those Things"), and smoking his cigarette, feeling down on his luck, and the whole picture, which has since become cliche -- but at the time was not, so it's OK -- and Laurie walks in, and he's surprised to see her. "What are you doing here?" he asks. "I could ask you the same question," she says, "And a few more besides." He tells her about his latest round in the battle with the Fates. The latest bad card they have dealt him. He's in love with her and she's about to be married. Why, he asks, does she have to be so beautiful? If only her eyes were dull or her nose shiny...

As I said, she's perfectly put together, but it's his appreciation that really draws out the magic; it's his pain that makes this scene romantic. He wants her. Sinatra's able, somehow, to make us feel this quality of wanting. Throughout the movie, with his stance, his face, his voice (of course), we see a man wanting. A man needing. And he's no less masculine for it!

She's totally in charge of herself, even when he seems to stop feeling sorry for himself, when he stands up and says he's going to fight for her. Even when she starts to cry, because she feels so deeply for him. She might seem to be acting like the weepy female, but she's acting conscientiously like a woman who's careful with a man's ego. So she allows him to say "Go." And after a pause. "Go!"

Maybe this is the romantic movie I've been looking for. It's not one or the other of them, but man and woman together, as I said before, in perfect complement.

The Notebook

I wonder why everybody was gaga over this movie. Supposedly it was "so romantic," "so moving," it would make me cry, ("even made my dad cry," one friend told me), it was the "greatest love story" in modern film. Sure. What are we, desperate for romance?

I remember so well that conversation with my girlfriend when I remarked on the lack of great romance in films these days. Where's the passion? Where's our Clark Gable, our "Gone with the Wind"?

"You should see 'The Notebook.' It even made my dad cry."

Well, now I've seen it and, apart from appreciating the quite lovely Rachel McAdams, I didn't enjoy it. A great romance has to have conflict. These two young people fell in love smoothly enough, but there wasn't much in the way of passion, of tormented desire. They really didn't have any conflict. They were happy-go-lucky. Then what happens? Sure, sure, they're separated - it's a plot twist and causes a temporary delay to the relationship, but does that cause conflict within their love? No. The love doesn't suffer from it, there's no doubt they still love each other just the same. It's so obvious that they're going to get back together anyway, since the whole time you've got the two of them together in old age narrating the entire story. So where's the intensity? Where's the emotion? Where's the heat?

Hell, I think there was more passionate romance in some of those old "Dawson's Creek" episodes where Pacey is pining for Joey but can't make a move because she's Dawson's girl. And everybody said that was corny - but they liked "The Notebook"?

Charlie Wilson's War, The Jane Austen Book Club, My Summer of Love

What do these three movies have in common? The enchanting, daring Emily Blunt. I've become a great admirer of hers. The first time I saw her in a film - which I won't discuss right now - was actually something else, something called "Gideon's Daughter." That was beautiful, too, but I've decided that in this blog I'm going to write reactions to movies I've just seen. I won't start writing about all the movies I've seen in the past. It would be fun, but then I'd never get anything else done.

So let's talk about these three. In "Charlie Wilson's War," Emily Blunt has a very small appearance, but it's crucial. It happens so fast you almost don't realize it's happening. We've just barely been introduced to the character of Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks); so far we've seen him in two settings: 1) Las Vegas and 2) his office. In his office we see women with big hair, cleavage and a mysterious efficiency belying their bimbo looks. So we've gotten a quick and dirty impression of who the man is and what he likes and the way he likes it. OK. Then there's a small scene in which Peter Gerety comes in as a Texas preacher demanding a defense for displaying a creche on secular land. He brings along his daughter Jane (Emily Blunt), for no apparent reason. Note she seems quiet, reserved, conservatively dressed - a good Christian girl. And she's just sitting there, waiting patiently while everyone runs around. Cut to the next scene. Jane is now in Charlie's suite, wearing only his shirt, sipping a cocktail. She continues to undress until she's wearing only underwear, and then we see her lounging on the sofa, her perfect long legs extended gracefully before us. She is a vision of seduction. Charlie, however, opts to take the phone call from Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts) instead of paying attention to Jane.

Why this transition in Jane? Why is she in her underwear? How did Charlie seduce the nice Christian girl? How did the nice Christian girl turn out to be so sexy? And why is Charlie not taking advantage of the situation? Why give Emily this short and seemingly meaningless appearance? The phone call has to be really important.

It is. It's the phone call that gets the whole plot moving. Joanne gets Charlie to go to Houston, then she gets him to go to Pakistan, then she gets him to go into Afghanistan, and the rest is history. So think of it! Think of how important this phone call has to be to get the movie rolling. And then, further think how attractive and seductive Emily Blunt has to be, in order to highlight the importance of the phone call - that Charlie should choose to ignore her and stay on the phone.

In "The Jane Austen Book Club," Emily Blunt plays a lonely, snobbish young French teacher named Prudie, unhappily married to a man who doesn't appreciate her. She's the odd woman out in the book club, having been invited on a whim by a stranger, while the other women know each other already. At the outset, Prudie's probably your least favorite of the women in the club, (Maria Bello is probably your favorite), unless you like lonely, prude-y, pale-faced women with dark hair and light eyes. At first we don't sympathize with her plight of being married to an unappreciative husband. (That is a worn-out cliche and the film suffers for it as well as others scattered throughout.) No, the only thing worth noticing about Prudie at the outset of the movie is that she is very pretty in an unopened-flower kind of way.

Then one of her students forms a crush on her, and this blurs her sharp borderlines for a minute, and then her aging-hippie mother shows up with some marijuana and this too, creates a mess in Prudie's life and she begins to be more interesting. At some point in Prudie's gradual mellowing, when she begins talking to the book club members, we find out she has never even been to France. She cries, "A French teacher who has never been to France!" (or something like that). Ah, no wonder she was so upset her hubby wouldn't take her abroad.

I won't tell you how, in a climactic moment, Prudie unfolds, but I will say that it takes a really good actress to achieve the scope of change her character has to come through in a limited number of scenes. (And she's taking turns with Maria Bello and Kathy Baker and Amy Brenneman and others, almost competing with them for attention in a badly-constructed movie.) In an otherwise lame movie, Emily Blunt takes us from uninterested to curious to hooked - and admiring. Once again.

And if you really want an exciting performance from Emily Blunt please see "My Summer of Love," an exceptionally daring film about two British girls who try each other on for size. One is poor and orphaned and being raised by an ex-con-turned-preacher brother. That's Mona (Nathalie Press) whose accent tells us everything we need to know about her. The other girl is Tamsin (Emily Blunt) whose accent is very refined. Tamsin rides in on, literally, a white horse to save Mona from her brother, poverty, and boredom above all. She says in effect, 'Mona, you're a wild one, but come into my mansion and try on some beautiful dresses. Try on my life for a summer. See if you don't come out feeling beautiful.'

Tamsin is a self-described "fantasist" and she sure can weave a tale, whether it's a ghost story or a love story. She does tell Mona these and other stories quite convincingly, sipping red wine and making the viewer feel haunted or bewitched, right along with Mona. There's even one tall tale about Edith Piaf, and her alleged crimes of passion (I will admit, adding the gorgeous French voice belting out "La Foule" in the scene does provide support for Tamsin's spell-casting over Mona). What crime of passion will Mona commit at the end of all this, we wonder.