MOVIE - Birdman

(R) 1:59

Wide Release 10/17/14

Friday, 12/20/14 at ElCon

RT Critic:  93    Audience:   86

Cag:  4.5 Liked it a whole lot

Directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Fox Searchlight

Michael Keaton, Edward Norton, Emma Stone, Naomi Watts, Zach Gilafialankas

My comments:  Yay! An interesting, well-acted and crafted, "outside-the-box" movie.  An excellent choice to celebrate beginning a two-week vacation. (And, quite unforgettable....)

RT Summary:  BIRDMAN or The Unexpected Virtue Of Ignorance is a black comedy that tells the story of an actor (Michael Keaton) - famous for portraying an iconic superhero - as he struggles to mount a Broadway play. In the days leading up to opening night, he battles his ego and attempts to recover his family, his career, and himself. 

MOVIE - Saint Vincent

PG-13(1:43)

Wide release 10/24/2014

Viewed 10/31/14 with Cyra Sadowl at ElCon

RT Critic: 74   Audience:   83

Cag:  4.5 Liked it a lot

Directed by Theodore Melfi

The Weinstein Company

Bill Murray, Melissa McCarthy, Naomi Watts

My comments: This is dubbed a COMEDY, but I think that is entirely wrong.  Even black comedy doesn't do it.  There is absolutely some humor in it, but for the most part it's the story of how people cope with sadness and grief in their lives.All four of the major actors were terrific.  Melissa McCarthy is NOT playing this for laughs, she's a mom with stress and problems and an injured past.  I had gone to this thinking it was a comedy, and as the credits rolled I realized it was so much more than that.  Good movie.

RT Summary:  Maggie (McCarthy), a single mother, moves into a new home in Brooklyn with her 12-year old son, Oliver (Lieberher). Forced to work long hours, she has no choice but to leave Oliver in the care of their new neighbor, Vincent (Murray), a retired curmudgeon with a penchant for alcohol and gambling. An odd friendship soon blossoms between the improbable pair. Together with a pregnant stripper named Daka (Watts), Vincent brings Oliver along on all the stops that make up his daily routine - the race track, a strip club, and the local dive bar. Vincent helps Oliver grow to become a man, while Oliver begins to see in Vincent something that no one else is able to: a misunderstood man with a good heart.

MOVIE - Silver Linings Playbook

R (2:00)

Supposedly widely released 11/21/12 (but not here in Tucson!)

Viewed Monday, 1/7/13 at El Con

RT Critic: 91  Audience: 90

Cag:  Awesome/Terrific/More-than loved it *6*

Directed by David O. Russell

The Weinstein Company

Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert DeNiro, Jacki Weaver, Chris Tucker

I was totally entranced by this film.  Bradley Cooper was wonderful as a bipolar man trying his best to keep his life together without medication.  Robert DeNiro, the father who loved him (and ultimately had similar mental disabilities as his son), was so believable. Jacki Weaver, the mom, was right-on perfect (I though she was an aged Sally Struthers throughout the movie) Chris Tucker, who played the in-again, out-again friend, added just the right touch.  And Jennifer Lawrence just shined.  She nailed the part.  What a cast!  What a story!  Such fantastic acting!!!!  I loved it. And I'd watch it again and again.

MOVIE INFO

Life doesn't always go according to plan. Pat Solatano (Bradley Cooper) has lost everything -- his house, his job, and his wife. He now finds himself living back with his mother (Jacki Weaver) and father (Robert DeNiro) after spending eight months is a state institution on a plea bargain. Pat is determined to rebuild his life, remain positive and reunite with his wife, despite the challenging circumstances of their separation. All Pat's parents want is for him to get back on his feet-and to share their family's obsession with the Philadelphia Eagles football team. When Pat meets Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), a mysterious girl with problems of her own, things get complicated. Tiffany offers to help Pat reconnect with his wife, but only if he'll do something very important for her in return. As their deal plays out, an unexpected bond begins to form between them, and silver linings appear in both of their lives

MOVIE - Bernie

Funny - not ha, ha, ha, but he, he, he
Limited release 4/27/12
Viewed Tuesday, 6/5/12 at El Con
PG-13 (1:44)
RT Critics: 90 Audience: 87
cag:  Liked it
Director:  Richard Linklater
Millennium Entertainment
Jack Black, Shirley MacLaine, Matthew McConaughey

Hey...this is basde on a real, true-life story!  And all three of those main actors, as well as the many who played town residents, were TERRIFIC!

Bernie Tiede is a 39 year-old almost-genderless/somewhat effeminate undertaker.  He has charisma, not a mean bone in his body, and a penchant for elderly women - at least caring for them, there seems to be no sexual innuendo at all in his compassion and relationships.  He sings (beautifully), is very active in his church, cares for everyone and anyone with the same 100% compassion, and comes to befriend an affluent, sour, mean new widow named Marjorie Nugent.  For some reason, although she hates everyone, she is quite taken with Bernie.  He travels with her, cleans her counters, cuts her toenails, and advises her about giving her money away to charities.  However, after a time, she gives him a beeper and expects him to be constantly at her beck and call. She's a really mean woman, too. Then, to his shock and surprise, she pushes him to far one day and he picks up their armidillo-shooting shotgun and shoots her in the back. Instead of turning himself in, he pretends....for nine months...that she is still alive, though failing and in and out of the hospital and nursing homes.  When he is discovered, Sheriff (?) Danny Buck  (McConaughey) goes after him tooth and nail.

The movie is put together like a documentary, with lots and lots of interviews of the townspeople of Carthage, Texas.  They are a riot.  I wonder if any of them are the REAL townspeople?  It's really cleverly done and full of humor all over the place.  It's surprisingly complex and though-provoking, too.  Thoroughly enjoyable.

At the end of the credits you see the real people, first in photos and then a video of the real Bernie in prison - sitting across from Jack Black, the fake Bernie.

MOVIE - Easy A

Delightful. Fun. Clever Released 9-17-10 PG-13 (1:33) 9-22-10 at El Con (with Marlene & dau. sitting behind me!) RT: 85 cag: 90 Director: Will Gluck Emma Stone, Patricia Clarkson, Stanley Tucci, Thomas Haden-Church, Olive Penderghast Sone, who is WONDERFUL in this part) gets the reputation of being hard and fast because of one overheard lie. Before she knows it, she's becomes the easiest girl in school - by reputation only. What happened to her might drive other girls to suicide, but because of her keen sense of humor and her ability to laugh at and with herself, she more than survives. Her parents, played by Clarkson and Tucci, are wonderful, totally unreal, and so much fun to watch. Thomas Haden-Church plays her high school English teacher....and he's great, too. There are so many reference to literature - from the Scarlet Letter to Huck Finn to Judy Blume - and many reasons to laugh and chortle. Set inj Ojai, California (which has a much smaller actual high school), it was filmed there, too. I've driven through there, just outside of Santa Barbara. I could tell. You can't take this movie seriously, it's not meant to be serious. If you do, then you're an old fart (even if you're 12). It's meant to be funny, silly, and give you a chance to roll your eyes a half dozen or so times. It's just plain fun....and quite well done.

MOVIE - Cyrus

Nowhere as good as expected
Released 6-8-10
R (1:32)
7/22/10 at El Con by myself
RT: 81 cag: 6 6
Director: Jay Duplass
Marissa Tomei, John C. Reilly, Jonah Hill

A very lonely divorced man is thrilled and surprised to begin a love affair with an attractive woman, then discovers she has a manipulating post-teenage son.

I had really high expectations for this movie. There was something off for me. I expected it to be more of a comedy - but it wasn't really very funny. Just sort of sad. I love all three actors, but this didn't seem to be a great vehicle for any of them. The movie got a lot of good reviews, what's wrong with me?

MOVIE - City Island

A new favorite
Released 3-10-10
PG-13 (1:43)
5/13/10 at El con with Laraine
RT: 84% cag: 95%
Director: Raymond de Felitta

Andy Garcia, Julianna Marguilies, Steven Strait

This is the best movie I've seen since Sunshine Cleaning, which I adored. El Con movie theater is a mainstream movie theater that uses one of its 20 theaters for movies with less buzz...or something like that....because it's the only place those movies play in town. And then it had Andy Garcia and Julianna Marguilies that drew me even more. Sooooo entertaining. Soooo funny. Such great acting.

Andy Garcia plays Vince Rizzo, a corrections officer in a prison near New York City. He lives on an island off the Bronx. A real place, I'd never heard of it. He has a quirky, funny family that is in a bit of a crisis....he and his wife (Marguiles) are keeping secrets from each other, the college daughter is also keeping major secrets from her parents, and the high school son has an obsession that's just a riot. If I tell any of the particulars it will ruin the story, because it's watching these secrets unfold that make it so entrancing. The major secret is the glue that binds the entire movie, and that is a young man who is incarcerated at the prison where Rizzo works. So good, so good, so good! (and so is the acting. Ezra Miller, the young man who plays the son, is just TERRIFIC, sweet and funny, and Steven Strait, the young "hoodlum" is fantastic...and soooo great to look at!

In one scene, Garcia and Emily Watson (another lead) are traveling in a tram above the city. I've got to look this up. I love New York. I've researched it, I've adventured all over. But a tram? That's a new one for me!
I'd go to this one again tonight. Hmmmm. Maybe I will!

MOVIE: Date Night

Funnnnny and fun
Released 4-9-10
PG-13 (1:28)
4-28-10 at El Con with Fran, Sheila, Kate
RT: 67% cag: 87%
Director: Shawn Levy

Steven Carrell and Tina Fey have chemistry. I think they adlib half the movie, and it's a riot. They are a married couple with two children, they work hard, live in a NYC suburb in New Jersey, and love each other. They have a boring "date night" each week, where the next-door neighbor babysits and they go out to a movie, then the same restaurant and have the same meal. Well, they decide to spice it up and go into Manhattan to a new, hard-to-get-into restaurant. Needless to say, they can't get in. So when they hear the hostess calling three or four times for a reservation that no one answers, they take it. And that starts the ball rolling.

What happens is, of course, improbable. But....who cares....?? It's fun and moves quickly and very cute. There's a scene that includes James Franco and Mila Kunis that's really terrific....one of the best acted funny scenes I've seen in a long time.

Go see it if you just want to laugh. The acting is great. This was a good one.

MOVIE - Julie and Julia

Wonderful movie - almost perfect!
Released Aug. 7, 2009
PG-13 (I'm not sure why....) (2:03)
Nov. 25, 2009 at Crossroads with Fran
RT: 74% cag 96%
Director: Nora Ephron
Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, Stnely Tucci, Chris Messina

Nora Ephron took two memoirs and wove them together. Beautifully. Then Meryl Streep BECAME Julia Child. What a performance! ! ! ! ! Superb doesn't cover it. She was incredible. Believable. Lovely. Special.

Amy Adams' Julie Powell, unhappy to have moved to a tiny apartment above a pizza shop inQueens and with her cubicle-telephone job taking calls concerning the World Trade Center, takes on a personal challenge. She loves to cook. She adores Julia Child, so decides to make every single recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. In one year. 365 days. And....to blog about it all.

The movie weaves Julie's story - with its many ups and downs AND her super-supportive husband with Julia's story - with its ups and downs and HER super-supportive husband (go Stanley Tucci!) beautifully, beautifully. Two hours and three minutes (with five or six previews beforehand) is a long time to sit, but I could have doubled that. Just plain fun.

MOVIE - A Serious Man

I adored this offbeat black comedy
Released Oct. 2, 2009
R (1:45)
10-29-09 at El Con with Sheila
RT: 85% cag: 93%
Director: Coen Brothers (Joel & Ethan)

Get ready to time travel to 1960's Minneapolis, full of Jefferson Airplane music, F-Troop, Rabbis, bar mitzvahs, and angst, angst, angst. Larry Gopnik, a color professor of physics, slowly watches his life unravel. SPOILER: Anti-semetic next-door-neighbors, mentally disturbed brother who's moved in with the family (and spends most of his day draining the cyst on the back of his neck), wife who is leaving him for an acquaintance, a Korean student who is trying to bribe him into giving him an unfailing grade, a pot-smoking, naked sunbathing next-door-neighbor, visits from the cops, many trips to his lawyer (Adam Arkin) and a number of rabbis...and on and on. We also see what's going on in his son's life, watch this junior version of dad.

Okay, it seems deranged to laugh at the horrible situations that happen to this guy. But you can't help it. It's not long before you realize the only thing you CAN do is laugh, and you sit back and enjoy the wreck of his life. There's quirkiness at every twist and turn. :What else could happen?" you keep asking yourself....and then you find out! This also has one of the best endings I've seen in a movie in a long, long, time.

I'm still thinking about the short beginning piece, which doesn't seem to have anything to do with the storyline at all. I've just about figured it out, though. It's put there to make you think, I'm sure.

Yup, loved it. I guess I'm a bit warped, 'cause you'd have to be, I think, to love this movie.

MOVIE - The Proposal

Charming and really, really funny - a feel good movie!
PG-13
108 minutes
Released June 19, 09 (Dede and I tried to see it in LA on opening night, but all had were first row seats, so we declined.)
7/6/09 at El Con by myself
RT: 46% cag 90%
EW: B+
Ryan Reynolds, Sandra Bullock, Betty White, Craig T. Nelson, Mary Steenburgen

Lots of good, loud laughs go along with this movie. You can't take it too seriously, and you can certainly enjoy Bullock and Reynolds sparring with one another. Great timing, perfect smirks, incredible bodies, and Betty White is.....hysterical!

Sandra Bullock is the executive editor of a high powered publishing firm in NYC, Reynolds has been her executive assistant for three years. She's one scary boss- sort of like Meryl Streep in Devil Wears Prada, but toned down a tiny bit. The whole company is afraid of her. Reynolds loathes her. But when she discovers that she's about to be deported to Canada, she instantly comes up with an idea to marry him so that she can stay in the US and keep her job. Enter the Immigration service with all their questions, send the couple to Alaska for "Granna's" 90th birthday, and you more or less have the major premise of the storyline. Bullock in her high heels and tight ass are a little over-the-top when they arrive in Sitka, but I guess they really want the audience to see her mellow out, so there has to be a big difference. These two actors really "work" together.

Alaska, for this film, was actually Bearskin Neck, Rockport; a mansion near Singing Beach in Manchester, and Gloucester - all in Massachusetts. What fun it must have been for the residents to watch the film. The set/setting was great.

Totally enjoyable, I didn't want it to end. The "interviews" at the end during the credits were really fun, too, but I ended up not reading the credits because of listening and laughing through them. Full audience (smallish theater, but it was Monday night...), very noisy before the film started. Loads of laughs and no squriming or talking during the 108 minutes. Everyone seemed to enjoy it.

MOVIE: Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Rating: Still mulling it over
Viewed: Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2008
Rotten Tomato Rating: 80%
People gave it 3.5 stars (out of 4)
Mine: Lower, I think...60% ?
EW: B- cag: B-
Genre: Black Comedy
PG-13 (1 hr. 36 min.)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS ACADEMY AWARD, Feb, 2009 - Penelope Cruz

Woody Allen's newest. Barcelona.
Romantic comedy? Hmmmmmmm.

Fantastic performances from all the leads: Javier Bardem, Scarlett Johansson, Rebecca Hall, and Penelope Cruz. Beautiful people. Beautiful setting. Hall's part was very Woody Allen-y. She was great. So was Bardem, a doll to look at, smoldering...reminds me lot of Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Penelope Cruz was .... Penelope Cruz. And I never realized Scarlett Johansson's lips were quite so. . . . full. Okay a lot of elipses here. But I've done a great deal of mulling about this movie today.

Cristina (Johannsson) and Vicky (Hall) are best friends spending their two-month summer vacation in Barcelona with an American couple (Patricia Clarkson is the female, not sure of the husband). One night, enjoying dinner in a cozy restaurant, they are approached by sizzling artist Juan Antonio (Bardem), who propositions them. They go for it, Cristina wholeheartedly, and Vicky kicking and screaming. Well, they both end up having a fling with (and falling in love with) said hunky Spaniard. His crazy (literally) ex-wife, Maria Elena (Cruz), who he still loves, enters the picture and really shakes things up.

There are no happy endings here. My favorite character, Vicky, seems destined for a dull, boring, existence from which she'll never be able to extricate herself. Cristina's never going to know what she wants. She'll continue as a dabbler, in love, in art, in everything she tries. Maria Elena is going to kill herself soon, and probably take Juan Antonio with her. What fun.

Actually, it was an okay movie. It was narrated throughout, which I didn't care for, finding it disconcerting and unneeded. Okay, these are all my humble opinion (humble?), but this is what I've been chewing on all day. I may add more once I've chewed even further!

(8/29) A comment , part of a positive review of the movie: "One of the year's most charming and sly works -- as well as perhaps the saddest film in the filmmaker's entire oeuvre." Someone agrees with me!