Cutesy prose that was humorous at times. Overall, the content left much to be desired. If you need a book to tell you not to wear a white pantsuit to a wine tasting event, you deserve to spill some red down your front.

“Ms. Witherspoon’s first name + rhymes with bling” is certainly a memorable way to remember how to pronounce Riesling, though.

At last! A Kazuo Ishiguro book where all the loose ends are actually tied up!

I struggled to rate this film. I hate horror / suspense films, but mostly because the ones I have seen tend to be predictable, unrealistic, and not suspenseful. This film escaped that fate by leaving it up in the air for a long time whether or not the eerie happenings were readily explainable or caused by non-existent supernatural phenomena.

I was struck by the heroine’s uncanny prescience. She knew far too much without there being a means for her to learn it—at least not that we saw. We also were given no indication that she had even average sleuthing skills; I was under the impression from the first scene that she was a “bad girl” drifter who couldn’t be more than 22, if that.

There seem to be a number of debates on the IMDB messageboard and elsewhere as to the ending. I, on the other hand, thought it made sense.

The best part about this movie was that I couldn’t predict it. Perhaps we have reached a point in [horror] cinema where the only way to avoid a predictable ending is to be at least somewhat nonsensical. For that, I give it high marks. (I also will refrain from giving much away in this post; if you want to discuss the ending, drop me a line.)

I struggled to rate this film. I hate horror / suspense films, but mostly because the ones I have seen tend to be predictable, unrealistic, and not suspenseful. This film escaped that fate by leaving it up in the air for a long time whether or not the eerie happenings were readily explainable or caused by non-existent supernatural phenomena.

I was struck by the heroine’s uncanny prescience. She knew far too much without there being a means for her to learn it—at least not that we saw. We also were given no indication that she had even average sleuthing skills; I was under the impression from the first scene that she was a “bad girl” drifter who couldn’t be more than 22, if that.

There seem to be a number of debates on the IMDB messageboard and elsewhere as to the ending. I, on the other hand, thought it made sense.

The best part about this movie was that I couldn’t predict it. Perhaps we have reached a point in [horror] cinema where the only way to avoid a predictable ending is to be at least somewhat nonsensical. For that, I give it high marks. (I also will refrain from giving much away in this post; if you want to discuss the ending, drop me a line.)

This movie was released as “House of Voices” in the United States.

This movie was originally titled “Saint Ange,” which (in my opinion) was far better. I saw this movie for the first time on television, where it was also called “Saint Ange.”

Prepare to be agape for practically the entire duration of this film. Just when you can’t believe they did X, they go and do Y, which was ten times worse than X. A black comedy if there ever was one.

I, personally, was inclined to leap through my television screen and knock off a number of characters. Luckily, Peter Berg was a few steps ahead of me.

The women in the previews for the new show “Bridezilla” have nothing—and I mean nothing—on Cameron Diaz’s bride-to-be. If I were her fiancé, I would have called the wedding off at the nervous-breakdown-over-padded-chairs incident, if not long before. The young crippled children? A waste of Medicaid. Each and every insecure male moment? Oh, my ears.

The inability to tear your eyes away from the next debacle, coupled with multiple clever one-liners, made this worth watching once. The look on your friends’ faces the first time they see it makes it worth watching again.

The moral of the story? “The cool cucumber stays alive.”

I am not the type to see movies in theaters very often. (Especially not mainstream-as opposed to independent-movies.) However, after seeing this film, I quite literally returned to the theater eight times to see it again. When it came out on DVD, I bought it the first day and watched it repeatedly.

I have found that people either love or hate this film; there is little middle ground. I think the key to loving the movie is relating to one of the characters—even if the particular character you relate to doesn’t make out well in the end. (And really, do any of them?)

If you tell me you loved Closer, chances are you should be my friend—and that is not an invitation I make lightly.

...and I love Hungary, so I was excited to see a description reading: “A woman travels to Hungary to retrieve an old family heirloom, a couch.” However, this documentary has nothing to do with Hungary. It really has nothing to do with a couch, either.

The filmmaker is a 30-something female who claims she broke away from a very tight-knit Jewish community in Brooklyn after her parents divorce. Her father stops speaking to her when she becomes more “liberal” and does “daring” things like go to a “liberal Jewish” school. (Now, I don’t claim to know anything about Judaism, but I can’t imagine that getting divorced is a very devout thing to do.) She interviews various other women, presumably relatives, who also claim to have “escaped” from the community. However, these interviews are juxtaposed with scenes of her traveling Hungary and Russia for a year (on grant money!) asking distant relatives about the couch and ultimately shipping the couch back to Brooklyn—all in order to win her father’s approval and love.

Unfortunately for them, none of us who actually have backbones would ever endure the humiliation of being talked down to and even having to wear head-to-toe smocks to dinner so our fathers, who hate us for going to college and thinking for ourselves, will still love us. This lack of self-realization on all of the subjects’ parts made the movie especially hard for me to stomach. I enjoy documentaries for their insights; this one could have been insightful if the director were not in such deep denial herself.

If you are deeply fascinated with Judaism and/or genealogy, you may enjoy this movie. Otherwise, watch something else.

(Do not watch this film under any circumstances if you have OCD. All of the interviews take place on the old, decrepit couch—BAREFOOT. I had to shower after watching it.)