What We’ve Thought Of What We’ve Seen Lately
REVISED WEDNESDAY, 15 OCTOBER 2008, 18HR05
© A.J. Malouin 2008
(For ratings information, see our side-bar page “How Caryl & Al and The Film Snob Rate Movies”)
Remember, we don’t recommend that you spend time seeing any movie or film that is rated 10-31: life is tooooo short and the Really Good films & movies are tooooo many. Check out, also, our side-bar-page lists of “Ratings & Thumb-Nail Notes by Caryl & Al and The Film Snob, 2008” and “Rentals” Caryl & Al Tell You What To See Next”)
BOTTLE SHOCK
(Ratings: 9 by Caryl and 16 by Al.)
Here’s a bit of a tedious comedy about the time when California wines were finally able to stand up to French wines in blind taste tests. The term “bottle shock” refers to the fact that wines are not supposed to travel well in international flights: one more reason to drink them *before* you take off. A California winery determines to enter a French wine-tasting competition: they enter a Chardonnay which wins. The problem with the movie is that it never knows where it is going, drifting from hippie-California love-ins to serious wine-vine snippings at the raise of an eyebrow. A cobbled and unsatisfying afternoon, by anyone’s standards.
CLEAN AND SOBER
(Rating: 5 by The Film Snob.)
Michael Keaton and Kathy Baker are alcoholics trying to get sober. Morgan Freeman is the fellow who runs the rehab center. This is a heartfelt and meaningful examination of what it takes to get clean and sober. Interviews, Kathy Baker has said that people come up to her and say they’ve seen the film eight or 10 times. “That tells me it’s a useful movie,” she says.
THE DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES
(Rating: 3 by The Film Snob.)
Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick! What else could you ask for? (Okay, a theme song that lives forever in each of our souls.) The Lemon character sinks into alcoholism and pulls himself out of it. It is touch-and-go, however, whether his wife, the Lee Remick character, is going to decide to become sober, or not. A 45-year-old Blake-Edwards film the stands up well against the years.
LA FILLE COUPEE EN DEUX [A GIRL CUT IN TWO]
(Rating: 2 by The Film Snob.)
It’s French, with American subtitles. If you’re not frightened by that, rent this film Immediately. A black comedy by the genius director Claude Chabrol, “A Girl Cut in Two” tells the story of a delicious TV weather girl, played by Ludvine Sagnier, who is in love with a writer 35 years her senior. She settles, however, for marriage to a very rich boy her own age. The 50-something writer and the millionaire boy *both* have severe issues— and the result is a devastation of this sweet sexy girl, cut in two. Don’t miss renting this one!
HARDWOOD
(Rating: 1 by The Film Snob.)
If you had the dunk shot and the behind-the-back pass, would you rather live with your pregnant girl friend in Canada, or travel the world as a member of the Harlem Globetrotters? The guy who this film is about chooses the Globetrotters. Years later, the pregnant girl friend’s son is a full-grown filmmaker who sets out to investigate why the guy choose the Globetrotters. The former Globetrotter, his father, is a man he learns to both love and to come to terms with. This short film, nominated for an Academy Award, is a wonderful examination of what “family” means in the long run. Rent it and rejoice!
OBSLYHOVAL JSEM ANGLICKEHO KRALE [I SERVED THE KING OF ENGLAND]
(Rating: 2 by The Film Snob.)
Here’s a brilliant and dark comedy about a waiter in pre-World War II Europe who is intent on becoming a millionaire. Smart, poignant, and filled with beautiful women, the film starts at the end of the waiter’s life and works its way backward. The film is full of the glorious stuff that is a part of being alive, even as Hitler’s WW II works its way into our hero’s life. This bright up-lifting comedy has a slant and attitude that you’re not likely to see in any other film.
RIDE WITH THE DEVIL
(Rating: 3 by The Film Snob.)
A brilliant anti-Western directed by Ang Lee, “Ride With the Devil” tells the story of American Civil War Buskwackers — also known as Quantrill’s Raiders — who rode rough-shod through the Misouri-Kansas border during the early 1860s, fighting a guerrilla war against the Unionists. At the heart of the film is the Bushwackers raid of Lawrence, Kansas. Known as “The Lawrence Massacre,” this early-morning raid on the Unionist stronghold killed 180 men in the space of less than two hours. This film is a brilliant recreation of the attitudes, dialogue, customs, and morals which ruled those times in that part of the world.