SUNSHINE CLEANING

I've been watching movies and not writing about them. So here goes.

I saw Sunshine Cleaning on Netflix streaming a few days ago. It was a 2009 movie opening first at the Sundance Film Festival in 2008.

The movie had closed-captioning but was wide-screen format (with a wide screen computer the characters looked short and wide. Fortunately my eyes can adjust that, making it appear in proportion.)

Main Cast: Amy Adams as Rose Lorkowski, Emily Blunt as Norah Lorkowski, Alan Arkin as Joe Lorkowski, and Mary Lynn Rajskub as Lynn (who also appeared in Julie and Julia with Amy Adams.) Written by Megan Holley. Directed by Christine Jeffs.

I expected a comedy. It was a semi-serious movie with a few laughs. It was a professionally done movie, acting flawless, but the plot was not exciting.

The best part of the movie (for me) was the fact it was filmed in Albuquerque, NM, where I live. I recognized many of the buildings and roads.

However, Jonathan Miller, criminal lawyer and author of Rattlesnake Lawyer mystery series who spoke at SouthWest Writers organization in March, said that NM is so unique and different, a writer has to make NM one of the characters. This was missing in Sunshine Cleaning.

For instancee it had only one Hispanic character who didn't even use the NM accent. I don't know why I included this. No one really cares. I find accents fascinating. As it was a "blue collar" story, maybe I missed something.

It was a "slice of life story" more than plot or even character driven.

It was some what dull but not boring. Watching it is up to you.

Impromptu

I watched this movie via Netflix streaming. I had to watch it on my computer's smaller screen with no closed-captioning. The upside is that close up I can hear and understand everything.

It hardly seems appropriate to watch and talk about movies when there are thousands of people suffering in Japan from the earthquakes, tsunami nuclear power plant explosions, not to mention their lack of homes, water, food and gasoline.

I think an escape from reality isn't all a bad thing. If you can avoid feeling guilty for being so well-off and wasting electricity, it's not "bad" to sit down with a movie for a couple hours instead of constantly being worried about the world situation.

Impromptu is a 1991 movie about the woman writer who used the pen name George Sand and the start of her relationship with the composer Chopin. As with all stories based on real people, we have no idea if it was even remotely historical. It was entertaining.

The acting was good. It starred Judy Davis and Hugh Grant with a good supporting cast which included Mandy Patinkin.

The costumes and accents were also good. I think it's beneficial to the audience when the producers keep the accents from all characters the same. It was a modified English probably spoken by early Americans as influenced by British. The accent used by Chopin was not overly done. None of them tried to do French and Polish. (It was set in France and Sand was French. Chopin was Polish.)

Anyway, I finally understood why the movies use costumes and accents. It's not to portray people accurately (though that helps) but it's so that the actors can get into and remain in character. That's wonderful.

So, if you want to find a movie to stream from Netflix, it's one of the movies available. (Many of the movies from Netflix are only on DVD and that's takes time to mail, receive, mail, receive...

PS: I was just wondering the other day why I have never seen Hugh Grant in anything other than a comedy. He was young in this. It was a serious role. He was believable and did well.

Bridget Jones's Diary

Click title above for IMDb info about this movie

Bridget Jones' Diary is shown on television every now and again. I certainly hope they continue to show it. There are always new "fans" and repeat "fans" to make it worthwhile.

As romantic comedies go it's one of the classier ones. It's cute and well done. I think people of all ages are able to appreciate it, watch it over and over with as much enjoyment as the first time they saw it. The story line is good, though I think we all know true love doesn't really happen that fast with as little basis the movies show us.

It starred Renée Zellweger, Hugh Grant and Colin Firth. The movie came out in 2001 when Hugh and Colin were both 40 years old. Everyone spoke with British accents including Rene who is, as far as I know, not British, so I assume it was a British movie. (And I have no idea how old she was or is.)

I was musing the other day that even Colin Firth himself has been cursed with the responsibility of all motion picture stars, that of having to do at least one romantic comedy in their lives if they want to further their careers.

I suspect part of the reason is that audiences LOVE romantic comedies, even the sappy ones, regardless what the critics think of them. A good or even so-so romantic comedy can put you on the map and grant you hundreds of die-hard fans forever.

Colin Firth is rather the stiff-upper-lift type of Englishman. He is able to convey a well-rounded character while showing little emotion, just a well placed, intelligent comment. One would hope he gets a role in which he can smile for a change.

Hugh Grant is a bit more silly in his roles even when he is revealed to have a serious or mature side. He plays the attractive, smooth-talking bad-boy
in Diary. Actually he is the type of man I like both in movie roles and unfortunately in real life. He's good in this role without stealing the show away from everyone else.

In short, Renée is adorable, Colin is desirable, and Hugh is lovable. And the script, direction and editing were good.

I would like to see the sequel to Diary again mostly because I have only seen it once. In that one, if I recall correctly, Bridget makes the mistake of falling for the bad-boy's lies AGAIN (haven't we all done that?)but ends up with the sweetie after all.

Man, he's a forgiving guy. Are all British men like that? One would hope that all men were...but, you know, romance is fantasy after all.

Thanks to everyone for bringing this movie to the big screen and now a lot small ones. It's enjoyable.

Another thing, I have a feeling Matthew Goode probably hoped Leap Year would be a popular mainstream movie like Bridget Jones's Diary instead of just a regular romantic comedy. Maybe the critics didn't like Leap Year, and Matthew didn't either, but millions or at least thousands of people loved it. And Matthew, like I said before in this blog, all movies aren't Shakespeare or, in this case, Bridget Jones's Diary.

TV MOVIES: Lying to Be Perfect

Click on title to see IMDb entry on this movie

Photo of Poppy Mongomery

Some of the good movies don't get their start at the theater box office. They're the made-for-a-particular-channel movies. And I don't particularly mean HBO or other premium channels or even PBS mini-series.

I'm speaking of the movies made for Hallmark and Lifetime and other channels. Many of them feature one or two known television stars (mostly from a popular series or a previous series) and a lot of supporting actors no one ever heard of unless they've seem them in another TV series or movie.

Several other merits of TV movies is that they have breaks for commercials built in and don't just cut for a break in the middle of a sentence. They don't have to cut out pieces of them to fit in commercials. And they don't have much cussing that needs to be bleeped out. (And heck, I remember the days when a movie that was in color instead of black and white was considered a good movie.)

I just watched one today. I use that term loosely 'watched.' Often I have the television on for company or just plain noise when I'm doing something else. Today I was knitting and straightening my room. (That usually mean I move things around from from pile to pile or stick them in another room.)

It was Lying to Be Perfect. I think that was a take off on Dying to Be Perfect. I suspected it would have something to do with dieting and was curious if they were going to spread a bunch of crap about dieting can save you, etc.

It starred Poppy Montgomery who played an FBI agent on Without a Trace. She's British but does a good American accent. I assume it's because she lived here now.

In this movie she played a "fat" girl with two "fat" friends. She worked as an editor at a publishing firm. She was an aspiring writer and when her proposal was turned down by her firm she invented a young beautiful British girl who won fame and a book contract with her firm.

In the meantime, she and her two women friends made a pact to start living healthy, exercising and eating right, and raising their self-esteem so they could start living the lives they wanted.

Of course the main girl had to confess to lying about her secret (which I would just claimed was my pen name, of course.) She had to reveal her identity eventually and by then, of course, she was a knockout.

But all the girls realized that it was their sense of self-worth and their attitudes towards themselves that needed healing not just their overweight.

I think they did a tolerable job of showing women losing weight without giving women the world over the idea that just looking good is the solution to all their problems. I think a couple of the lessons they "taught" was about finding courage to be yourself, learn to accept and love yourself, and if you're good at something you just have to express yourself with your talent as yourself and the truth will prove it to you. And the truth never hurts.

To be absolutely clear, some of the movies on LMN, Lifetime and Hallmark and other fancy channels can be quite awful. But some of them are quite good. Written by real writers and played by good actors even if they aren't famous or looking perfect.

If you happen to tune in to one you don't like, turn it off. Remember my rule "Life is too short to read crappy books and watch crappy movies." (So stop doing that unless you're attempting to write a movie blog.)

CEMETERY JUNCTION

Writers & Directors: Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant
Staring: Christian Cooke, Felicity Jones, Tom Hughes, Jack Doolan
With: Ricky Gervais, Ralph Fiennes, and Matthew Goode


I watched two movies yesterday. Black Swan at 4 Hills Theater, Albuquerque, NM, and the Netflix rental I saw at home afterwards was Cemetery Junction. I rented it to see Matthew Goode in yet another role. He had a smaller part but was, as always, good. I enjoyed seeing yet another hair style, and hear him use a different British accent than his own.

It's a UK movie from 2010, set in 1973, in a neighborhood where Ricky Gervais grew up. Cemetery Junction is an actual road junction in Reading, Britain. According to this story, it's a town in which people get stuck and live the same lives as their parents, never quite getting away to the outside world. I don't know if that's true, I've never been there (and never plan to visit.)

I am beginning to notice the subtle differences between English accents in Great Britain. They have a distinctive accent in Reading. I enjoyed hearing it in Cemetery Junction.

The movie is a comedy. Three boys--changing into men--discover themselves while in repetitious pastimes that they realize they must soon give up. They find themselves changed by these circumstances and by their own choices.

The town in the movie did look pretty dull. (And some of the residents were quite weird.) No wonder the kids had to create their own excitement. A couple times it landed them in jail. Luckily they had an older lovable cop friend who gave them some guidance.

It's not a laugh-out-loud comedy. It's not silly. It's touching and funny and thought-provoking. Oddly enough, Ricky Gervais who co-wrote and co-directed this story, played a non-funny part as one of the boy's father.

It has a happy ending and nothing awful happens in the movie. My favorite kind of movie.

I liked it better than Black Swan which I also saw yesterday.) I would watch Cemetery Junction again. (I might even rent Black Swan after it's on DVD awhile. I will have forgotten most of it by then.)

Enjoy Cemetery Junction if you like British comedy. (I wish more young adults would watch movies like this one, they might learn something. Though didn't we all have to learn to grow up the hard way?)

Black Swan

Click Title above for link to IMDb.

I saw two movies Saturday. I find that when I have some free time I have to stop in for popcorn. When I got home my Netflix DVD was in the mailbox, so I popped it into the DVD player. I wanted to see it right away mostly because there was nothing worth while on satellite TV. I will NOT watch Wheel of Fortune. It's the longest half hour on television. The slowest and most boring show in American. Maybe the world.

Anyway. The two movies I watched Saturday can't be compared to each other. They were completely different genres. Not even similar. Yet they were opposites. One was American and one was British. One was good. The other one was bad. Guess which one?

All I can say is that I am not watching my way through all the Academy Award Nominees for Best Picture this year. In fact, I may never trust the Academy Awards again.

I already saw The King's Speech several weeks ago before it won Best Picture in the BAFTA & the Academy Awards.

I was expecting more from Black Swan. I thought Black Swan was so-so. It was not one of those movies you say "wow" when you come out of the theater. Not like, for instance, Inception.

I think some movies are done as "art." I usually appreciate them. Then there are the movies that are "art for the sake of art." Maybe that's what the Academy is looking for. I'm just looking for good movies.

The movie I didn't like was Black Swan. I must admit I went to see it out of curiosity so I passed on the 3-D version. Even so, the movie was mediocre. I suspect the 3-D version was also mediocre because there was nothing in the movie impressive enough to warrant 3-D except the performance of the black swan.

Natalie Portman won the awards for best actress both in America and Brittan. I never really cared for, or noticed, Natalie Portman (her acting, I mean. She's probably a great person in person.) I never thought she was a major star in major movies. So I'm baffled that she won the Academy Award. I had the sense that she was holding back in this movie. Strange that the movie was about a ballerina holding back in her performance.

Unusually when I come out of a movie about an insane person I feel a little insane. I'm impressed with movies that can draw me in like that. That's the test of a true psychogical drama. Black Swan didn't do that for me. (It was either the lack of intensity within the movie or my meds are working really well now.)

I think all Black Swan does is convince it's true what they say in psychology: a psychotic person doesn't know they are. If someone thinks they might be insane, they aren't.

The costumes were monotonous except in some of the fantasies. The whole movie was done in monotones. Albeit intentionally. I liked the dashes of pink. And the stuffed animals; they were good.

I'm still curious just what character Mila Kunis was playing. But she was super. I wonder why she didn't get the nomination for best supporting actress?

I realize other people have other tastes and, of course, we all appreciate and rave about different movies. Others love the movies that I think stink. That's why there is a wide range of diversity in entertainment. I think that's wonderful.

I thought Black Swan was an OK movie. It's worth watching but I recommend waiting til it comes out on DVD and pop your corn at home.