I was hesitant to watch this film because I did not really like Howl’s Moving Castle, but my five-year-old stepdaughter needed some entertaining so we decided to try this. She was enchanted (although a little scared in parts) and so was I. The animation is beautiful, but the story, a twisted fairy tale with ghosts, spirits and monsters, was engrossing. You never knew where it was going. It reminded me a lot of Alice in Wonderland. Highly recommended.

Of course you watch this movie because of Marilyn Monroe. The cutesy idea of a brash cowboy seeing the world for the first time and deciding to get himself a girl (if she likes it or not) hasn’t really aged that well. The funniest moment was at the rodeo when they decided there wasn’t enough animal cruelty and made a monkey distract the bulls. I was shocked to find out that Don Murray (Beau) received an Oscar nomination for his performance. Really? 99% of his lines were delivered in a grating yell. Monroe does better, but I don’t think it is the highlight of her career. This was the first color film I had seen of Monroe, and I was shocked at how much make-up they poured on the girl. Honestly, I thought she looked very clownish – the yellow hair, white make-up, and red lips were distractingly unnatural. Not a complete bust, but I doubt it is many people’s favorite.

I enjoyed this movie until the very end when they featured the different songs from the new play. They gave off the feeling of watching vignettes from totally different movies – the only one which even plausibly fit into the plot of the play was the last dance sequence. The others, although cute and catchy, came off as being thrown in despite the fact that they didn’t enhance the story.

Unfortunately I watched the much, much better “Anne of the Thousand Days” about a month before I saw this film, so comparisons were inevitable as it dealt with almost the exact period in history from beginning to end. The relationship between Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn is one of the most interesting and world-changing in history so I don’t believe they will ever stop making movies about it, but hopefully they won’t make any more like this one. What “The Other Boleyn Girl” does is remove the politics from the story. It is a perfect example of people assuming that history was inevitable and presenting it as such. It practically deletes any mention of what Henry’s divorce meant to England as a world power or to religion. Let no one be mistaken – the politics and effects of their relationship is what makes it so interesting, not the fact that they were very briefly in love. After all, Henry VIII slept with a lot of women. When you take the politics out of the movie, you not only dumb it down, but you leave the audience with simply a love story in pretty clothes. Which I guess could have been made to work – they did manage to get a very talented cast. But for a story which is boiled down to just the passion – it is a passionless piece of work. And the fact that it tried to give any credability at all to the incest charge was the hammer in the coffin. It was, however, very beautifull shot – so 2 stars.

I don’t think I “got” this movie, but I also don’t think that the director (Jame Campion) gave her audience much of a chance with this mess of a story. The first part was very interesting – Kate Winslet is an Australian girl on vacation in India and ends up joining a cult. Her family manages to trick her back to Australia, and hire a cult exitist, P.J. (Harvey Keitel) to unbrainwash her. Winslet is good in the role and pretty much the only saving factor to the whole film. I couldn’t buy into the “love” story since it basically was Keitel taking advantage of an incredibly f-ed up young woman. Maybe that was the point, but the film came off as much more disturbing than profound.

“The China Syndrome” reminded me a lot of “All the President’s Men” – an intelligent suspense centered around the news. Instead of newspaper reporting, we have Jane Fonda, a pretty news anchor pigeon-holed by her bosses into doing the light and friendly pieces instead of real news. During a location piece about nuclear power, she and her team, including Michael Douglas (also a producer of the film), witness what they think is an “accident” but are thwarted in their attempts to put it on the news. One of the shift leaders, Jack Lemmon in a dramatic role, at first tries to reassure them about plant safety, but is driven to desperate measures when he realizes what risks the head people are taking in order to make a profit. It’s nice to see films that respect their audience’s intelligence and attention span.

This musical, the first collaboration between Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra, has a cute set-up – two sailors are out on leave for three nights and head to Hollywood to find some girls. Kelly’s Joe is known as the “Sea Wolf” because of his skills with the dames, and shy Clarence (Sinatra) tags along to see if he can for once get a girl and not spend his entire leave in the library. Their plans are quickly derailed when they are picked up by the police to help bring a runaway boy (Dean Stockwell – how cute!) home to his Aunt Susie – who turns out to be a singer making ends meet by working as an extra.

The movie goes along quite nicely for the first half of it. However, at 2 hours and 20 minutes, it is too long. These are really talented people and the film showcases them each well, including the piano player Iturbi, but as it progresses it relies more and more on showcasing them individually instead of collaboratively which gives the film a fragmented feel. Probably best remembered for the animation sequence when Gene Kelly dances with Jerry from Tom and Jerry (although I must admit I like the Family Guy version with Stewie better), the film has lots of sweet moments and memorable routines.

This film reminded me a lot of the screwball comedies of the thirties – not particularly witty, but lots of silliness and charm. It also reminded me of “Dude, Where’s My Car?” in the fact that I didn’t have a single thought in my head the entire movie – the mental equivalent of eating cotton candy. It’s not brilliant, by all means, but it did make me laugh out loud in several places and I enjoyed the exuberance of the whole thing.

Was the Seinfeld episode where Kramer gets a one-liner in a Woody Allen film (“These pretzels are making me thirsty.”) inspired by Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s one-line in this film, or is it just a coincidence?

The plot of “Breaking Away” does not sound all of that different from lots of movies you’ve seen before – technically its a mix of a coming-of-age story of four friends after high school and an underdog sports movie, complete with rich college kids for enemies. But instead of being cliched, the film comes off as very fresh and, ultimately, much better than anything I expected. “Breaking Away” centers on four friends following high school who live in the college town of Bloomington, Indiana. They, however, are not headed for college – they are townies, referred to as “Cutters” by the college kids because of the town’s stonecutting trade. Following Dennis Quaid’s character’s firing from the A&P, the other three quit and are looking around for a job where they can all work together. It is lovely how the film captures the uncertainty of the time – finally free of school, but facing a future that isn’t as wide open as you had always assumed. I think it accurately caught the true feelings of being working class in a college town, surrounded by kids your own age who you can’t help but resent because they live in such a different world and have every opportunity open to them. The class lines are crystal clear and the four friends repeatedly clash with the college students, even if neither side really understands why.

The main character is Dave, who took up cycling in a big way and idolizes everything Italian – so much that he renamed the cat Fellini and talks with a fake Italian-accented English. His father doesn’t understand him and is always upfront with his opinions, but not in an unloving way. His mother uses her son’s interest in Italy as a way to add culture to her own Indiana-based life. The cycling sequences are good, full of energy and have you rooting like all good sports movies, but the film itself is rooted in the characters, which I think is what makes it so well done. It is funny and heartwarming without being trite.

My only issue with the film was that it seemed not to decide how much we would be going into the three other friends’ lives. Jackie Earle Haley has a girlfriend he plans on marrying, Dennis Quaid has a brother who is a cop who looks out for him, and Daniel Stern hints at a father who is always happy to see him fail. The film flirts between having them be supporting characters and co-leads, which made me feel as if scenes were missing. But a good sign of a film is one which makes you want more, and it creates such good characters that you can see whole glimpses of their lives through the few vignettes offered. It really is a treat of a movie that I can’t believe I had never stumbled upon before.