Wknd Box Office: The Thing, Footloose, The Big Year, Toast, Sholem Aleichem, Weekend, My Afternoons w/ Margueritte

Here is an interesting article from http://www.debbieschlussel.com/  reviewing some of the movies that came out over the past weekend. This follows this post some of the movies from last week and  THIS POST about some movies that have been released over the past few years that you might have missed!  This all  follows this post about guidelines to chosing good movies to watch yourself!

Wknd Box Office: The Thing, Footloose, The Big Year, Toast, Sholem Aleichem, Weekend, My Afternoons w/ Margueritte


By Debbie Schlussel



Lots of new movies this weekend, but only a couple that I really liked.



* “The Thing“: Although this is technically supposed to be a prequel to the 1982 version with the same name, it’s kind of like a remake with a very similar story and events. And I liked it. It’s not the greatest horror/sci-fi thriller I’ve ever seen, but it wasn’t bad. It’s got suspense and alien creatures with a creepy, isolated frozen Antarctic setting, just like the original.



This one stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Joel Edgerton and is the story of scientists who discover an alien spaceship and an alien frozen in ice, which they excavate and take to their outpost. Winstead, a graduate student, and her boss, a scientist, argue over whether or not they should take a sample of the creature, which they believe is dead. Soon, the creature comes alive and escapes, and strange things begin happening with the scientists as they fight for survival. Who is a genuine scientist, and who is merely a host to alien forces?





Entertaining, but not anything you haven’t seen before. But pretty good for a prequel in terms of explaining why they are shooting at the dog at the beginning of the 1982 version. But they never do explain in this one why these scientists go for excavating the frozen creature instead of trying to explore the spacecraft, which seems more interesting.



TWO REAGANS




* “Footloose“: This is absolutely awful and painfully stupid. Looking back, I’m really not sure why the original 1984 version of this was such a hit. It’s essentially the same dumb, anti-Christian, anti-middle America story, though.



A small Texas hicktown, Bomont, outlaws dancing in public because they feel it contributes to the corruption of minors and because a few years ago some kids died on the way back from a dance. The city is under the influence of an evil, out of touch, right-wing, conservative Christian preacher, Dennis Quaid, whose daughter is a slut, Julianne Hough. Soon, a big city boy from Boston–some unknown actor with the world’s worst stage name, Kenny Wormald–comes to this backward town and does his best to rebel and find a way to get the town to change its mind and allow dancing. And, in the process, he schools the stereotypically backward town folk on their hypocrisies and how to break dance and enjoy hip hop. Ugggh.



Hokey, preachy, and, yes, this is an attack by liberal Hollywood on the Red States population and their conservative values. Like a broken record, and a very scratchy, old one at that. The bad covers of cheesy ’80s songs from the original 1984 soundtrack don’t help. Yuck. Oh, and one other obvious thing: all the bad people in the town are White. The many Black characters are the good guys, who help make the dance happen, provide the space for it, and teach the “backward” White kids how to dance. How touching. Not. This movie was bad enough in the ’80s. It’s even worse now. Some things–many things–should never make a comeback.



FOUR MARXES





* “The Big Year“: This wasn’t a deep or great movie. But it was entertaining enough. I thought birdwatching was a pointless and pathetic activity. But this makes it somewhat enjoyable, while poking fun at it.



Jack Black, Steve Martin, and Owen Wilson compete against each other in a “big year.” It’s a calendar year, during which birdwatchers travel all over and compete to see who can see or hear the largest number of different types of birds. They take pictures of the most beautiful and rare birds, but it mostly goes by the honor system.



Black is a loser who works a menial job and, in his 30s, lives at home with his parents. He mooches off of them to do the big year. Martin is a wealthy CEO who wants to retire from his company, despite the urgings otherwise from his underlings. And Wilson is the champion “birder” from the year before who doesn’t want anyone to break his record of 722 birds. Meanwhile, his wife feels neglected and is trying to have children with him, while he’s off hunting birds.



As I noted, it’s not a particularly great movie, but it’s not bad. It’s a very light, superficial movie. But sometimes that’s why people go to the movies.



ONE REAGAN




* “Toast“: This movie was extremely weird, though mildly entertaining. Based on the true story of British chef Nigel Slater, it mostly takes place in 1960s Britain. Slater’s parents are very boring, stuffy, middle class British people who hate fresh produce and won’t eat anything that doesn’t come out of a can. His mother is a horrible cook, and Slater loves reading about cooking. He dreams of becoming a great chef and tries to get his parents to try new foods. He’s not close with his father, and his family situation changes drastically. Oh, and he’s gay, though that’s a very tiny part of the movie. It mostly focuses on his development of his cooking talents and his baking competitions with his stepmother (Helena Bonham Carter), with whom he competes for his father’s and attention. In addition to the weirdness, parts of this movie were very sad and depressing.



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* “Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness“: I very much enjoyed this documentary on one of the greatest contemporary Jewish writers and storytellers, Sholem Aleichem (also spelled, Shalom Aleichem). But I’m not sure if non-Jews and those who are not interested in Judaica or Jewish history would find it of interest to them.



The film explores the life and times of Aleichem, the pen name of author Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich, the Eastern European author whose work was the basis for the famous musical, “Fiddler on the Roof.” It talks of his life in the “enlightenment” age of Judaism in which Jews learned secular subjects and wrote stories, etc. beyond the Torah. He wrote his work in Yiddish, the German-Hebrew hybrid language, and the movie explores the golden age in Yiddish literature from around 1860-1950. Among the experts interviewed in the movie is the great Ruth Wisse, the politically conservative Harvard professor who is a fantastic columnist and writer about political topics.



What I found most interesting is the movie’s observations regarding Aleichem’s insights about how America affected Jewish life and Jewish survival. He felt that Jews were so comfortable in America and that there was so little anti-Semitism that the religion would die out here due to intermarriage and assimilation. And regarding that, he was prescient. I also found it interesting that his “Tevye the Milkman,” on which “Fiddler” is based, has a different ending. In it, one of Tevye’s daughters marries a gentile and leaves Judaism. He disowns her, but she returns to him after leaving her husband and discovering that she was wrong to abandon the beautiful Jewish religion. In “Fiddler,” written by assimilated American Jews, Tevye accepts his daughter’s leaving of the faith and still embraces her, telling her they will see each other in America.



This is a great, short, sweet set of insights into one of the great minds and writers of 18th and 19th century Jewish literature and the changing face of Jewish life in the West. If you are interested in either of those topics, as I am, you will like this movie. Odd fact: Saturday Night Live alum Rachel Dratch does the voice of one of the female figures in Aleichem’s life.



FOUR REAGAN




* “Weekend“: I think this movie was trying to be the gay version of “Before Sunrise,” but it doesn’t cut it. I found this movie to be long, slow, and boring, not to mention that I really didn’t need to see the multiple gay make-out and sex scenes. Ick.



A bearded gay British lifeguard meets another bearded British gay at a bar and they have sex. Then, they meet up again and have more and more sex. But the lifeguard finds out that his new paramour is leaving for a couple of years in America and he is sad. The end.



Not for me, nor for most of you.



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* “My Afternoons with Margueritte [La Tete en Friche]“: Gerard Depardieu plays a large, illiterate, simple 50-year-old man who is considered a loser and rejected by his slutty, gold-digging mother. He now lives in a trailer on the property of her house, where she still lives in her drunken life as an old woman. One day, Gerard meets a classy, elderly woman in the town park. She encourages him to learn to read and gives him a book and a dictionary. The movie is about his budding friendship with the woman and how he “falls in love” with her, a 95-year-old who cares about him.



I’ve seen movies like this a gazillion times before, with a tighter, much more interesting script. This was long, slow, and boring, and just not very original, even if it wasn’t that objectionable. It was obvious, predictable, and manipulative without much there, and it wasn’t for me. And I doubt you’d want to spend ten bucks and two hours on it, either. In French with English Subtitles.



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