Film Flashback: 1988 (the year I was born)

No, I did not see any of these films when they came out (my memory is good, not superhuman). I've actually only caught up on these movies in the last decade or so (a good portion of them in the last three years) but I think I have enough of a sense of the year 1988. I've always heard that it was a rather lackluster year, but I disagree. I've found a pretty good collection of some very diverse films to admire from that year, both comedies and dramas, some very controversial, some very exciting, with awesome performances, and I even got to throw in a foreign film in there (I still need to see much more though). I'll be catching up on more films from 1988 as I get to them, but as of right now, I think I've seen enough to make a solid Top Ten list, and the interesting thing about this list is that it's divided half-and-half between comedies and dramas. As always, before I dive into the Top Ten, I want to discuss a few other films that I found interesting and probably other people love as well.

First, out of the five Best Picture nominees, three made it into the list, so let me discuss the two that didn't, and those are The Accidental Tourist and Dangerous Liaisons. The former is by Lawrence Kasdan (director of Body Heat and writer of the Indiana Jones films) starring William Hurt as a travel writer who is recovering from the Death of his son and his wife (Kathleen Turner) leaving him. It's an amazingly moving performance by Hurt, but the film is honestly really boring. I never really felt it went anywhere, and the drama felt artificial, though I should note some touching supporting performances by Bill Pullman and Geena Davis (who won an Oscar for this film, but I honestly did not think she was the best). The other film, Dangerous Liaisons, is much more interesting. For those who remember the film Cruel Intentions (with Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillipe and Reese Witherspoon), you should know that it was a modern re-telling of Dangerous Liaisons, which was set in 18th Century France. The Marquise de Merteuil (the outstanding-as-always Glenn Close) wants his former lover, the Vicomte de Valmont (John Malkovich) to seduce the bride of her former lover before the wedding, but Valmont is after the Madame de Tourvel (Michelle Pfeiffer), a God-fearing married woman, so the Marquise offers Valmont one last night with her if he can prove that he has seduced Madame de Tourvel. It's a dangerous game they play, with love, lust, sword fights, and public scrutiny. I remember the final scene quite vividly, with Glenn Close's face in close-up, taking off her makeup.I'll have to see it again to remember it better, but I remember what was most worth it about it was Glenn Close's performance, and the lovely production design of 18th Century France.

Die Hard: This is a film I'd heard everybody talk about, including a teacher in my Dramatic Structure class who would always talk about it in terms of structure, but I didn't see it until after the summer of my Freshmen year of college. It's an iconic film for sure, with Bruce Willis as the bad-ass John McClane, and Alan Rickman is one of my favorite go-to guys for villains (even though my favorite of his performances is Professor Snape), but the action does get a little tiring for my taste, and maybe after years of seeing films like this with a regular guy risking his life to save a lot of people from terrorists (I grew up on Speed, and loved it) it didn't feel like anything particularly mind-blowing. I did have a lot of fun with it, and I do enjoy Bruce Willis in the role, as well as his signature line. I guess I just had to be there for this particular movie.

Beetlejuice: Tim Burton is a director I always admire for making gothic and quirky films (even though he overuses Johnny Depp from time to time). This is a silly film, but it's a lot of fun. It's fun watching Geena Davis and Alec Balwin play a recently deceased couple trying to cope with the fact that they are dead, and their many attempts to get these annoying new tennants out of their house. Michael Keaton is a hoot when he arrives on screen as the title character, our resident bio-exorcist, and Winona Ryder has always been a natural at these goth teenage roles. I'd probably put this film in my list if it weren't for another wacky but more clever comedy that came out that year (I'll mention it when I get to it), but there are moments in this one I'll always treasure, like the dancing dinner scene, and the shrunken head.

Stand and Deliver: When looking through independent films, I found this classroom drama about a Latino math teacher from Bolivia and his struggles to motivate an under-achieving class in a small L.A. High School to pass one of the most difficult exams in the district. It's a classroom drama that doesn't stray too much from that formula we've all come to know with films like Freedom Writers (the most recent example to come to mind) or Dangerous Minds, but it stands out because of a powerful Oscar-nominated performance from Edward James Olmos as Jaime A. Escalante, a man who levels with his students and never lets them off the hook. He's not a particularly nice guy. He constantly teases his students and uses them to entertain everyone else, but he doesn't do it to be mean, but he does it to challenge them to be better. He sees the potential in his students, and he sees a way out of the futures they have locked themselves in, a point that is made particularly strong in a scene where he comfronts the father of one of his students at a restaurant by telling him she could be smarter than him and even run the place. The film also deals with racism and prejudice in the way that no one believes in these kids because of where they come from, and their last names. I think this film just barely edges out of my Top Ten list. Despite the formula, I was very impressed by the performances (also from Lou Diamond Phillips and Vanessa Marquez).

Now, on to the Top Ten:


#10. A Fish Called Wanda: This is a perfect caper film/ love story with first-rate performances from Jamie Lee Curtis, John Cleese and Kevin Kline (an unusual Oscar-winning performance, and a delightful one at that). A Fish Called Wanda is the story of two American thieves, Wanda and Otto, who travel to London to steal $20 million in diamonds, and then double-cross one of their associates to keep it to themselves, unaware that this associate moved the diamonds to another facility, so Wanda now tries to get close to his lawyer, Archie Leach (John Cleese), and a love triangle ensues sending everybody into complete turmoil. Another associate is Ken Pile (Michael Palin) the stuttering animal lover who owns a bowl full of fish, one of them named Wanda, and keeps accidentally killing her neighbor's dogs. I remember seeing this right after seeing Charlotte's Web (the Dakota Fanning version) and then hearing Wanda telling Otto "a sheep could out-smart you", because John Cleese did the voice of a sheep in Charlotte's Web (love to have that irony). It's irreverent, it's silly, and very stylish, even when you have characters run over by steam-rollers in an airport, it's all in good (if somewhat mean-spirited) fun, but there's also a very touching and sensual romance along for the ride.


#9. Working Girl: I just re-watched this film for an Advanced Screenwriting class, and I'd forgotten how funny and touching it is. Not only is Melanie Griffith perfect for the role of a naive woman trying to be taken seriously in a business world run by men, but you also have the scene-stealing Sigourney Weaver making her presence known in every scene she's in and we relish it every time she opens her mouth. Tess McGill (Griffith) has just been assigned to Katharine Parker (Weaver) the first woman she's ever worked under, and she couldn't more grateful or impressed with her, until Katherin steals one of Tess's ideas and passes it off as her own, but when Katharine breaks her leg on a ski trip, Tess takes that as an opportunity to rise in the business world beyond simply being a secretary. She has great support from players the likes of Harrison Ford, Joan Cusack (as her best friend) and Alec Baldwin (as her sleazy ex-boyfriend) in a film about finding your way in a world where the odds are stacked against you and learning to do it by simply being yourself. It's a pretty common story in screenplays, since it creates so many obstacles for characters and so much room for characters to grow and change, which is why I think I appreciate it more now that I've been in the program as long as I have. It's not a subtle film, but it allows you to care for its characters and relish in this woman's victories (or just watch it to see Sigourney Weaver pointing at her with a crutch, which is priceless on its own). This is also the film that brought us Carly Simon's Academy-Award Winning Let the River Run for the opening and closeing credits, which really has nothing to do with the film, but it's a fun little gateway into the story nontheless.


#8. The Unbearable Lightness of Being: Based on Milan Kundera's novel, it's the story of Tomas (Daniel Day-Lewis) a doctor living in Prague who is also a very active womanizer. He likes to get physically involved with women everywhere, which include the incredibly sexy Sabina (Lena Olin, my favorite performance in the film by a mile), but it all changes when he meets Tereza (the beautiful Juliette Binoche), a waitress who falls in love with him but believes in monogamy and is very shy about her body. The first line of the film is "take off your clothes", spoken several times by Tomas (and once by Sabina) and that line sets the tone for this very erotic story about a man with no commitments who enjoys a very carefree way of life, and with it, comes a woman who is afraid of her own body. The Soviet Invasion of Prague in 1968 serves as a backdrop to this story of love, lust and sacrifice of oneself, as well as what it means to be alive and to enjoy the pleasures of life. I still need to read Kundera's book which I hear is superb (some say it's even better than movie) but on its own terms, the movie is quite beautiful and it further proves why Daniel Day-Lewis is one of the best actors working today (and I wish I could see more from Lena Olin, because I really loved her here). The film is long and a little slow at times, but it focuses on the beauty of each of its characters, even when those characters are struck with tragedy or fear, and there's a very erotic scene between Tereza and Sabina that I love, where they each take nude pictures of one another, each at their most vulnerable and most savage, they chase each other and hide from each other around the room. I particularly love how that scene reveals so much about each of these two characters.


#7. Mississippi Burning: Based on the real-life murders of two civil rights activists in 1964, this film examines a time in our history when not all men were created equal, at least not in the eyes of the people pf Mississippi. When certain men were looked down upon just because their skin was darker, and everybody turned a blind eye when people were killed. Beyond that, it's the story of two FBI agents coming into this town to investigate these murders, and they each have a different way of understanding things. Agent Alan Ward (Willem Dafoe) is the younger agent who plays by the book on all matters, while Agent Rupert Anderson (Gene Hackman) is a former Sherriff who understands these people better and knows that he has to be a hard-ass to get anything done in this town. It's in the dynamic between these two people that the film is at its most interesting, but the best scene in the movie in my opinion is when Agent Anderson visits the Deputy's wife (a very moving Frances McDormand) and she talks about the nature of hate. Hate is taught, and depending on where it comes from, hate can become your life, and this woman lives in a town filled with hate. It continues to baffle me how people can turn so blindly hate something, especially what they don't understand. Hatred leads to violence (as depicted in this movie) and violence only leads to more violence (which I discussed when I wrote about in Munich on another note), so it becomes a neverending cycle, but in this town, it seems to be all they know. They know that whites are superior and blacks are inferior and want to keep it that way. Alan Parker pulls no punches on depicting this hatred, and some of the speeches are really haunting.


#6. Running on Empty: I rented this film on iTunes recently and watched it on my iPod on a flight back home. I didn't know what to expect out of it. All I knew about it was that River Phoenix gave a really good performance in it, which he does, and it saddens me that we never got to watch this kid grow (he died of an overdose in 1993, he was 23 years old). Even at this age, he gives a mature performance where he plays the son of two fugitives who keep moving him and his brother around and changing their names so the FBI doesn't catch up to them. They're always ready to pick up and move away, ready to assume new identities and new looks and settle down in a new town until it's no longer safe. Danny, the eldest son, has only ever been close to his family and moving away is all he knows, but now that he may have a chance at a future (one of his teachers discovers he's a gifted piano player), he has to make a choice whether he wants to pursue it or leave it behind. His parents are played by Judd Hirsch and Christine Lahti. They're former activists who set a fire at a weapons lab to hinder the Vietnam War effort, and ever since then, they've had to be on the run, but now they also have to make that choice. Danny never chose this life, he was born into it, and it's not fair for Danny to have to pay for his parent's mistakes. Danny knows that, but he loves his family, and he doesn't want to leave them. His father believes that a family has to stick together and that's the way this family has lived all these years. I appreciated the unity of these characters who have nothing but each other, but more than anything, I really admire the choices written into the screenplay and these choices are up to the characters to make. They all have to search their conscience and think of the consequences of their actions. If Danny stays with his parents, he'll have to live with their burden for the rest of his life and never be able to have a life, but if he leaves them, he may never see them again since any contact could be dangerous.


#5. Mujeres al Borde de un Ataque de Nervios (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown): I've become a fan of Spanish director Pedro Almodovar in the last few years, and this is one of his earliest masterpieces. It's a screwball comedy about a group of women all caught up in the same apartment, all running away from someone, or looking for someone, and any one of them could crack at any second. Carmen Maura stars as Pepa, a dubbing-actress (someone who dubs over movies for Spanish cinema, since they dub everything there) who is having an affair with a married man, and she spends all weekend trying to track down this lover, and ends up running into his wife, his son (a young Antonio Banderas), his lawyer (who is now also his lover) and a friend of hers who nearly kills herself and has nothing to do with Pepa's lover (just the fact that she's in the apartment at the time and falls in love with Antonio Banderas in the film). The film includes a landlady who is a Jehova's Witness, and an effeminate cab driver whose cab Pepa seems to end up in every time she calls one. This is Almodovar at his wackiest, with so many amazing and memorable characters, car chases, phones, a lot of red all over the screen (which includes a spiked drink that many characters drink, called a gazpacho), and more than anything, Almodovar's keen understanding of women, an understanding I only wish I could have. It must be such a treat to live inside that head and want to tell those stories that he comes up with. If you want to take a look at this amazing director, I'd suggest you start with this film. It's so much fun (even if the beginning is slow) and it gives you a glimpse at the unique themes that Almodovar touches upon in his films. Carmen Maura is radiant in this role (for those who saw Volver, she played Penelope Cruz's mother in that movie).


#4. Big: Yes, that classic film about a boy who wishes he were bigger so he can impress a girl, and wakes up the next morning in the body of a 30-year-old man. This is a comedy that works primarily because it doesn't play itself for laughs. Tom Hanks doesn't go for cheap laughs with his character. He simply plays Josh Baskin as a regular 13-year-old boy who just happens to be in a grownup's body. It works because it's not just a goofy premise, but there's a character attached to that premise, and we as an audience become attached to that character and the many experiences he goes through. I love that the screenplay trusts its characters to bring the laughs instead of creating situation after situation (like a lot of awful comedies) just to try to make people laugh. There's one scene in particular I love to watch, and that's the scene where Josh (as played by Tom Hanks) is in a meeting where this one guy Paul (John Heard) discusses a new idea for a toy and throws so many statistics and why it works on the market, and at the end of the meeting, Josh asks what's fun about the toy. I wish more grownups could see the world that simply. Why is it fun? What do children like? It's also great watching Tom Hanks having fun with toys (yes, the keyboard scene with Robert Loggia is a classic), but there are also moments where he damn near breaks your heart. One scene that really gets me is the scene where he spends his first night alone in that horrible hotel room and listens to couples arguing next door and shootings in the street, and he crawls into his bed and starts crying. When I saw that scene, I knew it wasn't just Tom Hanks pretending to be a kid. I admit that when I first saw it, I was a bit uncomfortable with the romance with his co-worker Susan (Elizabeth Perkins) since I was constantly reminded that this is a kid, but then I started seeing what she saw and there's an irony there. He's supposed to be a child in an adult's body, but when Susan compares him to his old boyfriend (Paul), she says Josh is a grownup, and I love that irony, that a 13-year-old can be more mature than a grown man. Those are just some of many details that I love about this movie. And, one last thing, child actor Jared Rushton was quite a natural as Josh's best friend Billy.


#3. The Last Temptation of Christ: I just saw this film over the summer for the first time, but it made this much of an impression on me. I was afraid of watching the film, partly because of the fact that it's a film about Jesus Christ (a subject that has caused many to talk down to their audience) and partly because it's by Martin Scorsese, a director I have very mixed feelings about (on the one hand, I love Taxi Driver, on the other, I despise Raging Bull). I decided to give it a try because I was curious to see what Scorsese did with the story, but also the fact that it caused such a public outcry amongst Christian Fundamentalists sparked my interest, and I'm so glad I did. This is one of Scorsese's most underrated films. The first two hours tell us the story of Jesus Christ, the one we all know and have heard a million times, but in this interpretation, Jesus has all the perfections of God along with all the weaknesses of a man, which include being prone to sin and temptation (and lust, which I hear made a lot of people mad). There's a scene where Jesus is tempted by Satan in three different forms (as a snake, as a lion, and as fire) that I found to be quite exhilirating. However, the film really soars in its final 45 minutes during the controversial "last temptation". As he hangs on the cross to be crucified, a little girl who claims to be his guardian angel takes him down from the cross, and tells him that God wants him to live as a man, and we see what Jesus' life may have been if he were a man. During this entire section, I couldn't look away, and it all culminates in an impressive final shot of Jesus on the cross after he's resisted this last temptation of abandoning this crucifixion ordered by his father. I don't really believe in most of this and it continues to bother me that there are people who take the story of Jesus too much to heart that he must be portrayed perfect or else. I loved Willem Dafoe's portrayal of a man who carries a task much greater than what he can understand, but believes in nothing but love. He believes in a world where everyone uses love to co-exist and reign each other, and I agree with that, so it might be weird for me to say this, but it would be great if most people listened to what Jesus had to say, at least in the incarnation I saw in this film (because I'm not that familiar with the story of Jesus, so I'm only responding to what I saw in the film). I know I've spent a longer time on this one, but it's fresh in me and I can't recommend it enough.


#2. Who Framed Roger Rabbit?: I saw this film a few times when I was younger, but I didn't understand the true brilliance of the film until college when I was introduced to a genre called Film Noir. It's a tricky genre, but a fascinating one, since it deals with flawed human beings who are taken into a web of violent corruption, usually in the realm of seduction by a woman (typically called a femme fatale). This film has a lot of those elements, but mixed in with wacky cartoon characters that range from Bugs Bunny, to Mickey Mouse, to Droopy, and of course the title character Roger Rabbit, a white rabbit who is the star of a cartoon where he has to babysit a baby and everything always goes wrong. In the world of the film, people and cartoons (or toons, as they are called) co-exist in the city of Los Angeles circa 1947. Toons have their own little corner of the city called Toontown (kind of like Chinatown), but they do business with Hollywood studios all the time and act in these cartoons. Bob Hoskins stars as Eddie Valiant, a private disillusioned private investigator who is hired to take pictures of Toontown creator Marvin Acme with Roger's smoking hot wife Jessica Rabbit, but after Acme is found dead, Roger becomes the prime suspect, and he looks to Eddie to clear his name. The film is filled with such brilliant scenes and lines. One of my favorite is when Eddie takes the pictures of Acme and Jessica Rabbit, and we see the pictures, we realize they are just playing Pattycake (which for Roger Rabbit, is a form of cheating), and one of my favorite lines is late in the film, "that freeway idea could only be dreamed up by a toon". Los Angeles has become a city of freeways, so I love the irony of that line coming from Eddie Valiant (this whole plot is to destroy Toontown and build a freeway, but I won't say who the villain is. There's also the amazing Christopher Lloyd playing the sadistic Judge Doom who is after Roger Rabbit, and the sexy voice of Kathleen Turner as Jessica Rabbit, this film is also a technical achievement, fully mixing live action and animation, having characters from both worlds grab each other, and having animated characters hold live action objects (such as trays and guns and the works) and if you see the behind-the-scenes feature, you'll be amazed at how all of this was done without computers, and this is by Robert Zemeckis, a man who has worked on advancing technology in stop-motion animation lately (he directed The Polar Express and Beowulf recently).


#1. Rain Man: Sorry, I have to do this. It's not as dramatically or cinematically accomplished as some of the films I've mentioned above, but I first saw Rain Man when I was 13 years old and it has meant a lot to me ever since. It has a sentimental value that I can't deny, partly because the film introduced me to autism at a time when I thought there was something wrong with me. I had been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome about a year before I saw this film (though I didn't know about it until I was 14 years old), which is a milder form of autism that makes it difficult to socialize and absorbs you into special interests (which is movies in my case, as you may have guessed). I identified with the character of Raymond Babbit, in the sense that like him, I have a pretty good memory, I'm pretty good with numbers, but I also feel uncomfortable when plans change and new things are scary for me, and I also have a tendency to be alone, so this film was a really important part of a journey to understanding myself (and it's ironic that it came out the year I was born) but even as a movie by itself, I love it. Not only is Dustin Hoffman's performance outstanding, but the story itself is quite moving. It's the story of Charlie Babbit (Tom Cruise) a selfish car salesman whose father just died, a father he never really got along with or even loved, and he only goes to the funeral to find out what he got from the old man, which is really just a car and some flowers (well, a classic Buick and some prize rose bushes, but that's not what Charlie was hoping for). During this ordeal, Charlie finds out that he was never an only child. He had a much older brother named Raymond who was sent to an instititution in Cincinatti and has inherited $3 million of his father's money (even though he doesn't understand the concept of money). Charlie is forced by his own selfish tendencies to build a bond with his brother when he kidnaps him and is forced to take a cross-country road trip (Raymond refuses to fly in one of the film's most devastating scenes) if he wants to get half the inheritance. The road trip is filled with some hilarious moments (such as Raymond farting in a phone booth, or writing in his "serious injury" book, or even when he tells Charlie he has no underwear on because they weren't K-Mart boxer shorts), but other scenes are very moving. My favorite is when Charlie learns the origins of his childhood friend, the Rain Man, and learns when and why Raymond was taken away. The film may annoy some people (Raymond's autistic ways can get irritating), but it's a film that holds a special place for me and I continue to find it a very moving experience (and I'm also really impressed by Tom Cruise, who brings an unexpected heart to his character).

Well, that's 1988 for me. I don't know how many of you were around when these films were just released, or remember seeing them in the last few years. I'm actually also hunting down films from way beofre I was born and looking at different styles of directing and acting, and while a lot of these films already feel dated stylistically, what I love about movies is that if the stories are strong enough, they will never be dated, and that's one thing I feel is the case with a lot of these stories. Are there any films anyone else would like to mention from 1988? Or, how about the year you were born (if it's not 1988)? How much do you know about that year?

Labyrinth of Innocence: Pan’s Labyrinth

Guillermo Del Toro’s Academy-Award-winning film El Laberinto del Fauno (known to American audiences as Pan’s Labyrinth), is the story of Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), a 12-year-old girl in post-Civil War Spain who is moved to a mill out on the countryside after her pregnant mother Carmen (Ariadna Gil) marries the fascist Captain Vidal (Sergi Lopez). On her first night, Ofelia is visited by a fairy and taken into a mystical labyrinth where a Faun (Doug Jones) tells her that within her lies the spirit of Princess Moana of the Underground World, and she must complete three tasks before the next full moon if she wants to go back to her kingdom. As Ofelia manages her tasks, her wicked stepfather Vidal and his men try to fend off a rebel alliance that hides in the woods, unaware that his trusted housekeeper Mercedes (Maribel Verdu) is an informant for the rebels. Fantasy and reality co-exist in this morality tale of a fascist world that does not tolerate those that don’t agree with it, and disobedience may have a high price, but it is this lack of obedience that maintains a child’s soul intact.

Franco’s regime in Spain was centered on obedience. Franco was a man who killed all those who didn’t agree with him and kept his country running the way he wanted it. Vidal is the embodiment of Franco. He doesn’t forgive, he doesn’t let anyone go, and he punishes people in the cruelest of ways. We see this early on, when he hits a suspect in the face with a bottle, right in front of his father, before he can finish the search of his belongings, and then kills them both. After they’re both dead, he finds that they were telling the truth but, instead of admitting his mistake, he says “Learn to search these people before coming to bother me.” He also likes to torture people for their shortcomings. When they pick up one of the rebels who has a stuttering problem, Vidal tells him he’ll set him free if he can count to three without stuttering, knowing full well that he’ll never make it to three.

As brutal and confident as Vidal is, he’s also a man who is constantly trying to prove himself to someone, and he feels that the only way to do that is to keep everyone afraid and on a schedule. He’s also taunted by the larger-than-life memory of his own father who smashed his watch against the ground to show his son how a brave man dies. Vidal keeps a watch of his own and holds it every time he feels Death might be approaching. Moreover, he only wanted to marry Carmen so she could have his son, and he could prove himself to that son. Carmen represents those who suffer under Franco. She is trapped in that world and doesn’t know a way out. She’s not as imaginative as her daughter is, so all she can do is stay out of trouble, obey the rules set up by her husband, have the baby and provide a good life for her children. This ultimately becomes her downfall, because the narrow mind that she was forced to acquire kept her from seeing how a force beyond what she believes to be real was curing her and, in the end, she was forced to sacrifice her life to save the life of her newborn child (the captain’s orders to the doctor).

Ofelia is the exact opposite of Vidal, and we see how they start their relationship on the wrong hand (literally). Ofelia does what she feels is right, not what people tell her to do. She has a wild imagination and a very pure way of looking at the people around her, so she takes everything she sees at face value (though the fantasy world may have been all in her head). Her innocent nature and lack of obedience is present in every task she performs. In her first task, she was told not to get her dress dirty, but she chooses to go into the rotting tree and defeat the giant toad, which in the end ruins the dress her mom made her. In the second task, she’s told to let the fairies guide her into the Pale Man’s lair and not to eat or drink anything she may find on the table. As it turns out, the key she got from the toad doesn’t open the door that the fairies told her to open, and she lets her own instincts guide her to open a different door, and because the Pale Man shows no signs of life and there is so much food on the table, she figures no one will notice if two grapes are missing (leading to some horrible consequences). For her final task, the faun tells Ofelia they need a few drops of innocent blood from her little brother, but she refuses to sacrifice him, which ultimately causes the captain to retrieve his son, shoot Ofelia, and spill her blood into the portal. She ultimately descends into her kingdom, as promised by the Faun, where she’s told that she made the right choice by spilling her own blood before the blood of an innocent, which is something no one under Franco would question if they were ordered to do it.

Del Toro seems to favor those who don’t obey, and we see this also in the character of Mercedes. She takes an instant liking to Ofelia, because of her free spirit and reluctance to be pinned down by the captain, which is what Mercedes is fighting for. She works for the captain, but she’s secretly helping the rebels defeat him (partly because one of them is her brother). She’s a strong woman who understands the captain’s weaknesses and knows how to get around the house, and she keeps a knife close to her in case she ever needs it. She pretends to be obedient (and even goes so far as to call herself a coward), while her brother keeps risking his life fighting them.

The film is filled with little allegories and symbols that represent Franco’s Spain. One of them is Ofelia’s first task. It can be said that the toad in the tree is Franco, and the tree is Spain, and the task symbolizes how Franco keeps a tight rule on Spain and won’t let it flourish, so one of her tasks is to get a poisonous ruler out of a tree. There’s also Ofelia and the captain’s first meeting, when Ofelia greets him with her left hand, but Vidal grabs it and says she must greet him with her other hand. While the politics of this film are a little too clear and that may turn some people off (seeing how it paints the conflict as black-and-white), the story is engaging, the characters are unique and fun to follow and the fantasy sequences are breathtaking. As far as performances, my favorite one is Maribel Verdu as Mercedes. She surprises you with a character that is strong and cunning. You don’t mess with Mercedes. Even when she seems frail, you know you have to stay away from her. Ivana Baquero is lovable as Ofelia. She almost broke my heart in the scene where she places her head on her mother’s belly while she sleeps and asks her little brother not to hurt her mother when it’s time to come out. Sergi Lopez never loses sight of his horrible character. He approaches him as a fairy-tale villain, with his one-track mind and his brutality, but still manages to inject a little bit of humanity, particularly in the scene here he’s listening to someone in the table talk about how his father died, and we see how it strikes a chord in him when he denies the story.

The film can be summarized by one line spoken by Dr. Ferreiro, Captain Vidal’s private physician. “It’s just that, obey for obey’s sake, without thinking about it, that’s something only you would do, Captain.” Franco’s rule was about blind obedience and suppression of non-standard art, regional languages, and whatever else Franco didn’t agree with. We may be beyond Franco’s time, but this film teaches us to question people’s orders and be wary of their motives. Blind obedience leads to leaders like Franco, who know that no one will question him, so it’s important to question what we’re told.

Children of Men: A Not-So-Distant Future

What if the world became infertile? What if we knew that humanity would die out before the century is over? Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron explores this question in his 2006 film Children of Men. The film is set in the year 2027 in London, which is probably the only still-functioning city in the world. There hasn’t been a baby born in the last 18 years, and human beings seem to be tearing the world and each other apart. Cuaron takes a very unconventional approach to a futuristic action film by building a world that looks like a darker, more worn down version of our own as opposed to one with robots and flying cars. He explores a very plausible version of a world without the voices of children, without the hopes of a long-term future, and without the need to sugarcoat the violence that happens on the street, because there are no children to protect from the evils of the world. In this world, one man finds what may be the last remaining hope for the survival of mankind, and he must protect it from the political situation of the world they live in. Children of Men explores the issues of terrorism, illegal immigration and societal collapse, and the role they might play twenty years from now.

The film is told through the point of view of Theo Faron (Clive Owen), a depressed former activist who spends his days drinking, smoking and gambling in a state of suspended animation. The film doesn’t tell us anything he doesn’t know, and it doesn’t offer any exposition unless he’s present at the moment. Everything we find out about the world he lives in we see in TV monitors in the buses he rides in, or in the shop where he gets his morning coffee. It is this shop where we learn about the death of Diego Ricardo, the youngest person on the planet who was 18 years old, which further sets the world into despair. Early in the film, Theo is captured by an immigrant-friendly terrorist group called the Fishes (led by his former girlfriend Julian) who ask him to get transit papers for a girl named Kee, whom he later finds out is miraculously pregnant. The Fishes are protecting Kee so they can take her and her baby to the Human Project, a group of scientists looking for the answer to why the human race has not been able to reproduce. But Kee belongs to a world that doesn’t want her, because she is an illegal immigrant. “We're using England as a Green Zone, a comfort zone; the characters feel they're lucky to live there, but there's a big percentage of outsiders waiting to get in,” Cuaron says in an interview with Richard Von Busack of MetroActive.

The most blatant political issue in this film is the plight of illegal immigrants. Throughout the earlier part of the film, we either hear or see a commercial that urges people to report any illegal immigrants that might be living in their neighborhoods or their houses, even if those immigrants are related to or close friends with anyone living in London. The film depicts a culture of illegal immigrants known as “fugees”, which is short for refugees. Fugees are dumped together in camps that resemble the ghettos during the Holocaust, and the guards treat the fugees just as brutally. People are brought into Bexhill (one of the camps and an important location for the later part of the story) in buses, where the guards take these refugees and treat them like animals. Sometimes they’ll go into the buses, put a bag over these people’s heads and shoot them at random. As a Mexican, Cuaron is very close to this issue, since he lives with the issue of MExicans migrating to the States. “I have to question the ethics of borders when there is humanity in need,” he says in his Metroactive interview, “when we start segregating ourselves from what humanity needs ... we lose more and more of the sense of humanity as a whole.”

This political issue in the film is the reason why Kee, the first woman to get pregnant in 18 years, must be hidden from the public. She’s a fugee, and according to Luke and all the Fishes, the British government would never accept that the first baby born in 18 years is the spawn of a fugee. They would find a British woman to pass off as the mother. This issue is brought even further into the forefront when Theo and Kee have to go into Bexhill in order to catch the Tomorrow, the ship that would take Kee to the Human Project. The Fishes, however, have other plans that leave Theo and Kee on their own to catch the boat. Julian is killed early in the film, and that night, while Theo wonders around the house, he overhears Luke and Patric (another Fish) talking about an uprising they’re planning, and they need the baby to unite them and finally give fugees their rights. Apparently, the Fishes killed Julian because she no longer believed in terrorist attacks and she wanted to reach her goals peacefully, but Luke believes that they need a violent demonstration to get people to listen, and this event is the backdrop of the film and the reason why the Fishes chase after Theo and Kee as they try to reach the boat that will take her to the Human Project.

The film also has its political ironies. It explores humanity at the brink of perdition, at a point where the world is beginning to collapse, and yet drugs such as weed are still illegal. We learn this from Jasper, Theo’s hippie best friend who used to be a political cartoonist, but is now a caregiver for his catatonic wife. He grows his own weed which he sells to a guard at Bexhill, which he says is one of the perks of living next to a refugee camp. Euthanasia, however, has been legalized. There’s a product called Quietus that the government has been sending through the mail that allows people to kill themselves if they feel life is unbearable. There’s another scene early in the movie where Theo visits his brother, a rich art collector who continues with his work in beautifying his home by saying that he doesn’t think about the fact that no one will be around in 50 years to see all this. Claudia Puig from USA Today notes that “Picasso's seminal Guernica, hanging in the background of one key scene, creates a potent symbol of a world where art no longer matters and the most educated people sequester themselves rather than seek answers or challenge the status quo.”

Cuaron creates paranoia in this film by constantly trapping Theo and Kee into very small spaces, surrounded by turmoil. In a very impressive early long take, Theo is in a car driven by Luke, with Julian riding shotgun, and Theo is riding in the back with Miriam and Kee. They are suddenly surrounded by terrorists and they try to escape their gunshots and fire but they can’t get out of the car. The camera appears to be desperately looking for a way out, just like the characters, as it turns from the front seat to the back seat, desperately looking out the window. This unconventional long take enhances the feeling of entrapment that these characters have in this world they inhabit. Other scenes like this one include the bus to Bexhill, where they are confined to a seat and they can see the turmoil going on outside, and even that final scene in which Theo and Kee are on a boat, surrounded by water and nowhere to step outside the boat. Even in scenes where Theo is outdoors, we see him leaning up against the wall, making the space around him seem small, surrounded by the sounds of bombs and gunfire. There is another impressive long take in which Theo goes into a building looking for Kee, and people are shooting each other around him. He goes up a very narrow staircase looking for Kee. The camera frantically follows Theo, as he, and the camera, look for a way out, while the politics of what is going on around him have backed him into a corner.

In his review of the film, Roger Ebert said “Often I fear it will all come to this, that the rule of law and the rights of men will be destroyed by sectarian mischief and nationalistic recklessness. Are we living in the last good times?” This is where the strengths of the film lie. It’s set in a time that has not happened yet, but unlike most futuristic films, it feels plausible, because it builds on the current political situation and ages it about two decades to create a dystopia that might not be too far in the horizon. We’re dealing with terrorism and illegal immigration now, just like the characters in this film have to live with it every day.

Works Cited
‘Children of Men’ sends Star Message by Claudia Puig, December 22nd, 2006 http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/reviews/2006-12-21-children-of-men_x.htm
Making the Future: Richard Van Busack talks to Alfonso Cuaron about filming Children of Men, January 10, 2007 http://www.metroactive.com/metro/01.10.07/alfonso-cuaron-0702.html
Review of ‘Children of Men’ by Roger Ebert, October 5th, 2007 http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071004/REVIEWS/710040307/1023

America vs. the Hoovers: Little Miss Sunshine

It was the first film I saw in the theaters when I became a student at the University of the Arts. It remains one of my all-time favorite films, not just because I always enjoy the ride and I love the characters, but also because the themes of the movie relate to so many pieces of my life, including things that I think are wrong with the world. Little Miss Sunshine is a dark road-trip comedy, a touching family drama, but above everything, I believe the film is a critique of American society. It criticizes the American attitude of winning at all costs, it attacks America’s obsession with sex, and their obsession with hiding said obsession, and it criticizes the American dream, by showing a group of characters close to misery in their search for the American dream, and their discovery of happiness as soon as they reject that American dream and embrace each other.

The film tells the story of Olive Hoover, a little girl whose dream is to become a Beauty Queen, which is an ironic dream for this little girl, since her appearance suggests the opposite of beauty. She’s overweight, she wears dorky glasses, and she doesn’t have an eating disorder, but her dream is to be one of those girls who wear a tiara and a ribbon around her chest. Olive is surrounded by a group of adults who are all at different stages of chasing their own dreams, but none of those stages is success. Richard, her father, is a motivational speaker who is trying to sell his 9-Step program for publishing. Dwayne, her older half-brother, dreams of leaving the house forever as soon as he gets a chance and becoming a test pilot for the Air Force, and to show his disdain for his current life, he’s taken a vow of silence until he reaches that goal.

Her gay uncle Frank is past failure. His dream was to be regarded the #1 Proust Scholar in the United States, but an unrequited love he had for one of his students made him do some stuff he regretted, which got him fired, and led to an attempted suicide, and has now landed him on a cot in his sister’s house (Olive’s house). Her grandfather may have had a dream once, a long time ago, but now he just lives life one day at a time and enjoys himself, snorting heroin and sleeping around, because life has disappointed him and he just wants to do whatever he wants. Holding all these men together is Sheryl, Olive’s mother. She has no time for dreams, because she has to finance her husband’s motivational program, and care for all these men living in her house. She also provides the love and support needed for this family to go on, but with no help from any of the people around her, she can barely hold it together.

The film begins with Sheryl picking Frank up from the hospital, getting him settled in Dwayne’s room, and everybody sitting down for dinner, which is where we learn every conflict in this family before they get the news that will set them off on their road trip. During these scenes, we see symbols on many of the objects that represent America, like a McDonalds sign on the cups they drink from, or the clowns drawn on the pillows on Frank’s cot, which stand out from Dwayne’s somber room, filled with white wallpaper and a drawing of Friedrich Nietzsche. This room is the only room in the house that isn’t bright and sunny, and doesn’t have any symbols of American life, so it stands out from the house as a place where Dwayne doesn’t belong, and to an extension, a place where Frank doesn’t belong and is being placed in by forces outside those within the room. They are also eating bucket chicken for dinner on paper plates. These are American symbols that tell the audience that this family is failing at pursuing the American dream, and from the conversation at the table, we see that they are failing at being a family.

When the family gets a message that Olive will be competing in the Little Miss Sunshine pageant this Sunday in Redondo Beach (900 miles away from Albuquerque, where they live), the entire family is forced to crowd into their bright yellow VW bus for two days before they arrive at the competition that will change their lives together. I believe the yellow bus is a symbol for the family that travels inside of it. It may need a little push to get started again (once the clutch stops working), but it’ll get you where you need to go. The bus is an old VW that no one would consider when dreaming up the American dream, but the fact that the bus is a very bright and welcoming shade of yellow represents that the family already has what they need. They already have that ray of sunshine that they expect to gain when they’ve accomplished their dreams, they just can’t look past the fact that it’s a VW bus and their stuck together, but during their travels, the only thing these characters can count on are the bus and each other.

I’d like to talk about Grandpa. He dies half way through the film, but his presence remains throughout (and I don’t mean his body in the trunk of the car). In a way, he can be viewed as the mastermind behind the entire plot, and as soon as he’s gone, the family can do nothing but be surprised by what he has in store for them. Grandpa represents a complete rejection of the American dream and everything that goes with it. He’s been alive for 80 years, he’s lived through wars, through at least 10 Presidents, changes in technology, and the one thing he has learned in all that time is that the American dream, and all the rules he’s had to live by to achieve it are just not worth it. Early in the film, Grandpa has a conversation with Dwayne, and gives him a piece of advice, which is to “fuck a lot of women. Not just one woman, a lot of women”. Grandpa regrets having lived by the rules society provided him, like getting married and raising a family, that he wishes he could’ve had more women and more adventures. Now, he just wants to do what he wants, which got him kicked out of the last retirement facility he checked into. Richard pressures Olive to win the competition, but Grandpa tells her to just have fun. Before he puts her to sleep for the last time, he tells her that “a real loser is someone who’s so afraid of not winning, they don’t even try”, so even if she doesn’t win the competition, she’s still a winner, and that’s his view on what life is all about before it was tampered by the capitalistic society that is our country.

The film follows these characters as the dreams that still remain are slowly shattered. On the way to Redondo Beach for the Little Miss Sunshine competition, Richard learns that no one would buy his 9-Step program and there’s nowhere else to go from there, according to Stan Grossman (Richard’s agent, who was trying to get the program sold at an auction), so he’ll have to start from scratch, and probably go bankrupt. Dwayne breaks his vow of silence in a fit of rage when he learns that he’s colorblind. Olive takes some eye tests from the hospital where Grandpa died and tested them on Dwayne, and because of that, Dwayne found out he was colorblind and they won’t let him become a pilot if he’s colorblind. After both these dreams are shattered, there is still one dream that can be reached, and that is Olive’s dream, but throughout the film we find hints that this American dream should be rejected.

The waitress at the restaurant, and the mechanic who tells them about pushing the car, the only two people on the road that are of any help to them, are both Mexican. Mexicans are people on the hunt for the American dream, and in many cases, American rejects them, so the fact that the mechanic who helps them and the waitress who is nice to them are both from a country that the United States looks down upon, it says something about the American dream they should be rejecting. There’s also this subtle little hint in the motel room scene, where Richard and Sheryl are arguing and Dwayne can hear them through the wall. Frank tells him not to listen to that and turns on the TV, but Dwayne turns it off and says he'd rather listen in while his mother and stepfather argue. When Frank turned the TV on, President Bush was giving a speech in front of Congress. The fact that Dwayne turns the President of the United States off shows us that the movie is rejecting what America represents. It’s turning off the leader of the country (at the time) in favor of listening to the problems of people we’ve grown to care about. The road trip also foreshadows the American obsession with sex shown in Act III when the family gets pulled over by a cop, and the cop inspects the trunk (where Grandpa’s body is), but lets Richard go because some porn magazines that Grandpa had Frank buy earlier fell off the trunk and the cop is aroused by those magazines, so he lets him go, because he shares that obsession with Richard.

As soon as the family arrives at Redondo Beach to sign Olive up to the competition, the place we’ve been waiting the whole film to arrive to, we find that it’s the last place we want to be in, and in this room, we see everything that is wrong with beauty pageants, especially when little girls are involved. When Olive walks backstage with her mother, we see the other contestants in bathing suits, sometimes bikinis, with tans sprayed on their legs and giant hairdos placed on their heads. During the pageant, there’s an interesting cut to the beach outside the hotel, which looks empty and depressing. The MC is singing “America the Beautiful” to the pageant contestants as they stand next to each other, and as soon as it cuts out to the beach, we hear the MC saying “America, you are so beautiful…” before we pan over to Frank and Dwayne on the peer, leaning toward the ocean, and we hear Dwayne saying “sometimes I wish I could sleep till I was 18 and skip all this crap, High School and everything.” This is what American has done to both of these characters. They each had big dreams, and had them shattered by a country that would not accept them unless they were winners, and it’s through this conversation that Dwayne realizes you should “do what you love and fuck the rest.” What I love about this cut is how the MC says, “America, you are so beautiful” over one of the most depressing sceneries. It's like playing "What a Wonderful World" over images of massacre and carnage in Good Morning Vietnam. It’s good for a hint of irony.

Olive’s dance routine is the ultimate “fuck you” to American society. The reason why I say Grandpa appears to be the mastermind of the whole plot is because he’s providing a message to his family through this little girl who doesn’t understand a sexual dance. The way she does it is fairly innocent. She just memorized moves and is mimicking them on the stage, the way she rehearsed them, but we know that Grandpa choreographed this dance, which tells us a lot about him and what he wants to say to his family.

Thinking back on the music of this film, I realize that it did everything it could to sound foreign. The score is by Michael Daynna, with the help of a Latin group called DeVotchka (including an original song at the end). The motel sequences include mariachi music, and throughout, most of it sounds very ethnic to Southern American countries, which I believe is an attempt to alienate the audience from the country they’re in and get us to listen to other cultures with its music. The music, and the two Latino characters, is a subtle way of exposing another American hypocrisy, which is its openness to outsiders. It doesn’t delve on the subject and it doesn’t preach on it, but by celebrating it in a movie that ditches the American Dream, I’m led to believe that it exposes this hypocrisy by making the sounds of the film very ethnic, even if the film is not. I read a review that said that the song over the end credits sounds like it belongs in Babel. Now that I think about it, maybe that was the point, only it didn’t tell us about it.

The filmmaking techniques of this film rely heavily on the characters. During the initial scene, we cut to practically every character on the table, even if the conversation doesn’t necessarily involve that character at the time, or even if the character isn’t talking, the film treats them all as one unit together against that one common enemy, and that is the American Dream. Everything about the film establishes that the characters should be pursuing each other, the concrete and present human people they can depend on, and not some dream that they don’t know if they’ll ever reach. Every reaction from each character is important, which is why when Frank talks about his suicide attempt, it cuts to every character on the table. They are all there, and even though they tend to get on each other’s nerves and disagree all the time, this family is the one thing that each and every one of its members can count on.

People from all over the world come to this country in search of the American Dream, because we hear all of the success stories of actors and directors and writers and fashion designers, but this is the story of those unsung heroes looking for someone to sing about them, only to realize that all they need is each other. The film tells us that reaching for the American Dream can be futile, and it uses its formal elements to get us away from that dream, and reach toward what really does matter.

A Disney Princess: Damsel-in-Distress to Heroine

Last Thanksgiving, Disney released the film Enchanted. It’s the tale of a classic Disney damsel named Giselle who falls in love at first sight with Prince Edward of Andalasia. She’s about to marry him when Queen Narissa, afraid she might have the throne taken from her, takes Giselle and banishes her to present day New York City. During her time in New York, Giselle transforms from a classic Disney damsel-in-distress waiting for her prince, to a modern damsel who takes matters into her own hands to save the man she loves from the claws of a dragon (and this man is not the prince of Andalasia, but a divorce lawyer who helps her when she arrives to the city). It takes about an hour and a half to make that transformation in the movie. However, it took years for the Disney Company to move away from their classic damsel-in-distress to the kind of heroine that was brave enough to save those she loves. The journey started with Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, who were damsels waiting to marry their true love within seconds after meeting them. It moves into the late 80’s and early 90’s with The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin, where the damsels acquire a sense of adventure and defiance. It culminates with Pocahontas and Mulan, the women who are strong enough to fight for what want.
Disney’s first full-length animated feature was Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. It’s the story of a Princess who was so beautiful that it made her stepmother jealous, so she dressed her in rags and made her into a servant. When she realizes that she can’t make her any less beautiful, she sends a huntsman to kill her. The huntsman warns Snow White about it and she runs away to a cottage in the woods where seven dwarves live, and there, she waits for the Prince she’s dreamed of to come. One of the early scenes in the film has Snow White singing to a wishing well and all the animals around her where she says she’s wishing for “the one I love to find me today”. The Prince hears her voice and appears in the well’s reflection next to her. As she runs back into the castle, he sings to her, and they instantly fall in love. We don’t see this Prince again until the end, but we do get a song in the middle where Snow White tells the dwarves that someday he will come. The old Disney heroines were defined by these kinds of scenes. In these films, love is reduced to a single, magical, lustful moment that could last a lifetime. Another curious thing about her is that she is an expert at cleaning. It appears that Disney is selling the image that a woman’s place is in the home. Snow White cleans the dwarves’ cottage as soon as she enters, and tells all her friend to whistle while they work. She’s a maiden ready for a husband.
Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty are similar cases. Both of these ladies have a song in which they dream of a prince. Aurora, from Sleeping Beauty, sings in the woods about a Prince she met “Once Upon a Dream”, and while she sings with these animals, she meets Prince Philip. Aurora doesn’t know she’s a princess and already engaged to him, but it’s love at first sight. They sing together, marriage is discussed within minutes of this meeting, and a plan is set up to meet that very night. The climax of that movie is the Prince cutting through a forest of spines and fighting a dragon to get to the castle, to the highest room of the tallest tower, to kiss the Princess and wake her from her spell (much the same way it happens in Snow White, curiously). In Cinderella, the Prince (who is not even given a name) doesn’t quite save her, but she still needs to be saved by someone, and in this case, that’s her Fairy Godmother and all her animal friends who come to the rescue. She does, however, meet the Prince in the ball, and they immediately say they are in love with their duet “So This Is Love”. They only meet once, and they are already talking about marriage. Kathi Maio, in her article Disney Dolls, describes this type of women as “natural-born happy homemakers who lie in a state of suspended animation until a man gives them a life.”
After Disney’s Death, his company produced a bunch of films about animals that didn’t include any of these princesses. The first Disney princess to reach the screens after his Death was a little different than the ones that Disney used to make. For one, she had the tail of a fish and lived underwater, but that was not the only thing that was different about her. She was more independent than any of these women. Her dream was to seek adventure in the human world. Like the previous Disney princesses, she has a musical number that expresses her wishes, except her musical number is called “Part of That World”, which basically expresses her need to live in a different place. And, unlike the previous Disney princesses, she never sticks to her duties or obeys her superiors. She does, however, fall into the early Disney trap of falling in love at first sight. Faith Larson talks about this in her essay “Romance: Just Like In the Movies”, “’But Daddy, I love him’ says Ariel of Prince Eric, a young man who has never even spoken to her. How did she know that she loved him? She knew because he was a prince, of course! Though at times the princess movies show love for what it really is, most of the time they convey false messages about love and being in a relationship.” Their next film, however, would finally avoid this trap.

Their next heroine wasn’t exactly a princess, but she does fall in love with a prince. The difference here is, she doesn’t fall for him immediately. In fact, she is initially repulsed by this prince and wants to stay as far away from him as possible, but she can’t go anywhere, because she’s his prisoner. This heroine is Belle, the daughter of a crazy old inventor who lives in a small town in France. The town expects her to be like Snow White and Cinderella, but she’s much smarter and cultured than that, which makes her into the town outcast, and she finds shelter in the adventures found in her books. Her song expresses the wish “I want much more than this provincial life”. She does get much more when her father wanders into the woods and ends up in a castle where he’s taken prisoner by a prince who was turned into a Beast. Belle trades her father’s freedom for her own and lives in the castle as the Beast’s prisoner. The Beast accepts her trade as a final, desperate attempt to earn a woman’s love and break the spell that turned him into a Beast. Belle is initially taken aback, not just by the Beast’s appearance, but also by his uncontrolled, short temper. As the Beast grows to love her and tries to win her heart, she’ll discover that the Beast has a kind heart of his own and will eventually break the spell. This is the first Disney film where a love story unfolds and we see the characters getting to know one another before they fall in love (with human characters anyway, since you can make a case for Lady and the Tramp).
Disney’s next film, Aladdin, shows a similar relationship. Princess Jasmine isn’t looking for a prince. She’s a feisty girl who won’t just marry anyone who lays eyes on her. There is, unfortunately, a law that states that she must marry a prince by her next birthday (which is three days away), but she’s reluctant to obey this law if she doesn’t like the Prince she’s marrying. She meets Aladdin when she runs away to the marketplace in disguise, and he saves her from a guard. He becomes attracted to her, even before he finds out she’s a princess, but that won’t stop him from trying to impress her. He finds a lamp with a Genie who disguises him as a prince. Jasmine is not impressed with him originally. She is repulsed by the arrogance and empowerment he’s portraying, but it is after he takes her to see the world on his magic carpet that she’s won over by his honest charm and free spirit.
Ariel, Belle and Jasmine are women who break the conventions of the worlds that surround them in order to find their own version of happily ever after. But these women still became damsels in distress when a dangerous situation came about, which is something that would change with the company’s next few films.
In 1995, we were introduced to a woman who discovers a new world colliding with her own and will stop at nothing to discover this new world, and protect her own if she must. This woman is Pocahontas, a Native American woman living in Virginia when a British ship arrives to find gold beneath the ground. Pocahontas meets and falls in love with Captain John Smith, a celebrated sailor looking to explore this new land and conquer it. Pocahontas teaches John Smith that conquering the land will only kill the beauty that already inhabits it. It is this lesson that allows her to fall in love with a stranger, and ultimately convince her father as well as all the men from England that fighting each other will only lead to an ugly path. When John Smith is falsely accused of killing a Native American warrior, he is nearly put to Death, and the British prepare for a battle against them. Pocahontas rescues Prince John from Death by lying next to him and saying she loves him. She defies her people and everything they believe in to protect them and save the man she loves, which is proves the right thing to do when John Smith saves the Chief from a gunshot. Pocahontas is shown as a brave woman, but maybe not as brave as the one that came to the screen three years later.

Her name is Mulan, and she is a Chinese girl who defies the expectations of her village to become a housewife and enlists in the Army as a man. She would probably belong in the culture she was born in if she was more like Snow White or Cinderella, but she’s just not like that. She tries to bring honor to her family (or so they say in her village) by acting like she could be the perfect woman she’s expected to be, but when she’s alone, she looks into the well at her reflection, and sings, “when will my reflection show who I am inside”. When the Huns invade China, the Emperor asks for one man from each family to join the Army. Mulan’s family has only one man, and that is her aging father who is now barely fit to walk without a cane, so to save his life, Mulan dresses as a man and enlists in the Army. Mulan is a new type of Disney heroine. She’s not looking for romance, and she’s not looking to discover new places. She’s a woman who cares about the people she loves and will do anything to protect them. She takes matters into her own hands the way no heroine before her would. The film introduces one love interest for Mulan (in the form of General Li Shang), but the film never focuses on their story, and therefore, Mulan never becomes a damsel-in-distress. She becomes the damsel that takes all the men out of distress when she uses her wits and everything she learned in training to fight the Huns.
One last thing to note about these women from the early years to the later Disney movies is their appearance. Heidi Herberich compares Snow White to Ariel in her essay Body Image and Sexuality in Disney Princesses. “Snow White has an hourglass figure, but it is not accentuated. She is not voluptuous; in fact, in many scenes her chest looks nearly flat. She is slender, but her arms (and I suppose legs, if we could see them) are not overly thin. Ariel, on the other hand, wears nothing but two seashells. Her body is quite mature for a teenager, with cleavage showing nearly all the time. Her arms (and legs, when she gets them) are markedly thinner than Snow White’s. And her small waist creates a much more accentuated hourglass figure.” It’s interesting to think about how the earlier Disney films tried to avoid sexuality almost completely. If you look at Aurora and Cinderella, most of the time they wear dresses that cover up their chest completely, so we don’t see a hint of them having one, yet later on, Belle wears a yellow dress that bares her shoulders and shows some cleavage, Jasmine has a very sexy Arabian outfit that uncovers her navel, and Mulan is shown nearly naked in a few scenes (to emphasize the humor of her situation, but Disney would not have allowed this). Also, as they get sexier, they also get thinner. I spoke to a few kids once that told me that the worst thing is to be fat (their parents were outraged at this) and this can be shown with the image that is being sold in magazines, and even cartoon princesses. Heidi Herberich expresses her own concerns by saying, “In a day in which anorexia and bulimia are common plagues in every junior high and high school, it is important for parents to help their girls understand that the female body image presented in Disney movies is not realistic.” She’s also concerned about younger girls worrying about their breasts and asking for plastic surgery.
There was a time when a heroine in a Disney movie couldn’t get out of any situations on her own and had to wait for a handsome prince, or a gang of cute forest animals to come and save her. In Disney’s views, a woman was helpless, so he left the heroics to the men and left women in the home by making them good at cleaning houses. As the world and its image of women evolved, Disney heroines went to become women looking for adventures, until they were finally allowed to be brave. These women have entertained kids for years, and they may not notice the changes within these characters when they see them. I didn’t notice them when I first saw these films while I was growing up, but now that I’m older, I’ve noticed how ridiculous the love stories are in the older Disney movies, but I see them in the context of when the stories were first told, as well as the stories that came out while I was growing up. This may not sound important to people who only see these princesses as cartoons, but one thing to remember is that children are exposed to these films every day, and for better or worse, they are role models for little girls. Their views on beauty, love, bravery, adventure and certain other values may come from these hand-drawn women that were first introduced by a man named Walt Disney, and whose legacy continues today.

Links:
Reflections on Disney Princesses
http://scots.covenant.edu/faculty/davis/Disney%20Princesses/links.htm
“The Internet Movie Database” www.imdb.com
“Rotten Tomatoes” www.rottentomatoes.com
“Romance: Just Like In the Movies” by Faith Larson, http://scots.covenant.edu/faculty/davis/Disney%20Princesses/romance.htm
“Body Image and Sexuality in Disney Princesses” by Heidi Herberich,
http://scots.covenant.edu/faculty/davis/Disney%20Princesses/body%20image.htm
“Disney Dolls” by Kathi Maio
http://www.newint.org/issue308/dolls.html

Bridge to Terabithia (2007 film)

Last night on ABC Family, I came across one of the only Disney live-action film from the last few years that is worth anyone's time. It's the story of Jess Aarons (Josh Hutcherson), a miserable, constantly bullied kid who lives in a house out in the country with four sisters (two older, two younger), and he'd trade them all for a good dog. He has a difficult relationship with his hard-working father and his only refuge is in his drawings. At least it was until he met Leslie Burke (AnnaSophia Robb), a girl with a wild imagination and a constant smile on her face. Leslie introduces Jess to the world of Terabithia, a magical kingdom that both of them create in the woods behind their houses. In Terabithia, they are the rulers, and they fight trolls and evil creatures belonging to the Dark Master (creatures they model after bullies at school). It's a story about imagination, about a friendship that develops out of two kids were just too odd to fit in with the rest of their classmates. Neither of them ever had much luck making friends, and through this world that they created, Jess finally feels that his life is worth something, until tragedy strikes.
I wanted to discuss this film because it raises a really big question when it comes to selling a film. Bridge to Terabithia is a story about friendship and imagination, where not much happens, and the biggest plot point in the film is something that you can't put into a trailer. The film was heavily marketed as a fantasy film, and it gave the impression that it would be a film very much like The Chronicles of Narnia. I remember the way it was marketed on ABC Family last night. It was placed into a "Magical Weekend" along with The Chronicles of Narnia. It uses this marketing, because it draws audiences. The film opened strongly on Presidents Day Weekend with just over $28 million, and it ended up earning about $80 million in the US, and $120 million worlwide (with a budget of $60 million). So, the marketing was successful in the sense that it drew people into the film, but many complained that they were let down by the advertisement, because when they saw the film, they didn't get what they expected. A lot of people who read the book also complained about the trailers, because when they saw it, they thought the filmmakers had butchered the book by expanding on the fantasy world (which is not described in much detail in the book) and making it into a Narnia-like fantasy. But the film is actually very close to the book (even though the fantasy sequences are beefed up with some CGI).
I'm about to spoil the biggest plot point in the film, so if you haven't seen it, or read the book, read no further. This plot point became a real shocker for people, mainly parents who were expecting their children would see a nice family fantasy film. The film follows Jess and Leslie's various adventures in Terabithia, including hunting a giant troll, getting Jess's dad's keys back, and even a little detour into church where Leslie gives a new insight in how we can view religion ("I think God goes around damning people to hell, he's too busy running all this.") Jess has a crush on his music teacher, Miss Edmonds, who invites Jess on a trip to a museum to encourage his artwork. He thinks about inviting Leslie, but decides not to. When he comes back, he learns from his worried-sick parents that Leslie tried to swing across the rope that leads her into Terabithia, and the rope broke, causing her to fall into the creek, where she got knocked unconscious and drowned. From here on out, the film acquires a more solemn tone, dealing with grief and guilt, but finally acceptance of Leslie's death. I read on IMDB message boards that the film upset a lot of people who were not prepared for it, and for those who had lowered expectations, they were pleasantly surprised by how deep the film is. I was of the latter group. When I saw the advertising, I wasn't really sure I wanted to see the film, but then I read the reviews (which were surprisingly positive) and decided to go see the film. I already had the plot point spoiled (which is why I noticed a shot of Leslie waving to Jess, and though, they're setting this up to be her last shot, her big goodbye) but that didn't ruin the feel of the film for me. It made me feel like I was 10 years old, and now every time I see it, different scenes get me.
Another performance that really impresses me is Bailee Madison, who plays Jess's second-to-youngest sister Maybelle. She idolizes her big brother, and wants to be around him all the time, but he keeps pushing her away because he's embarrassed and annoyed by her, and part of the story is also about appreciating the people you have and the people who love you, because they may be gone one day. There's a scene that really got to me this one time I saw it on ABC Family, after Leslie's Death, Jess goes to look for her in Terabithia, but instead finds Maybelle trying to cross a fallen tree over the creek. First he helps her up from the log, but he then tells her to go home. In his anger, he even shoves her to the ground. The scene brought tears to my eyes, not just because of Maybelle being pushed away, but because of the way Josh Hutcherson displays his grief in that scene.
I'm actually really glad Disney made this film and didn't sugarcoat the story. I read about the book. Katherine Patterson wrote this book after her son lost his best friend (who was struck by lightning on a trip to the beach with her parents). He was 8 years old at the time, and she remembers how she had to deal with his grief, so she wrote this story for him, but also to show children how to deal with the loss of a best friend and how you can create this magical place for them that keeps them alive, even after they're gone. David Patterson, the author's son, co-wrote the screenplay for this film and was also a producer, so his emotions were very much on the screen when building the story, the way he dealt with his grief and how lively the friendship became. It's one of the few Disney films I've seen lately that looks to convey something beyond a wholesome message and actually teach children about the hardships of life and how people can move beyond those hardships. It also explores themes of socio-economic statuses (Jess's parents are constantly worrying about money, and therefore expect Jess to be down-to-Earth) and it looks for a non-oppressive way of viewing religion. It's a shame it was marketed the way it was, but in all honesty, this film had a target audience of children and teenagers, so it was going to be hard to draw children into watching what the film was really about. The advertising drew them in to the film, and then they got the surprise of what the film was really about, while still getting the CGI battles and special effects they found in the trailer (only on a much smaller scale). Fans of the book who expected the film to tell a completely different story were pleasantly surprised (except perhaps by the fact that Terabithia is actually visible to them) and those who can appreciate a surprise got it). To me, it was probably the most pleasant surprise I got last year, and I urge you all to give it a look.

Film Flashback: 2005

I'm not going to do a Top Ten for this year, because I want to evaluate this year in a different way. I was originally not a big fan of this year because I couldn't find any films that I was really passionate about, but I've recently been exposed to 2005 films again, and one thing I find very curious about most films of that year is how relevant they are, both socially and politically. 2005 was a year where almost everything was attacked, including capital punishment, homophobia, witch hunts, terrorism, racism, capitalism, pharmaceutical companies, oil industries, television, the police, I could go on and on. If you look at the five Oscar nominees for Best Picture of 2005, they all tackle on either a social or political issue, and there are plenty of films outside that list that tackle these issues as well. Let's start with the five nominees.


Brokeback Mountain: This film is viewed as either a piece of art or a punchline, a masterpiece or blasphemy, depending on who looks at it. I think it's one of the most beautiful films ever made (and I'm straight by the way). I was a bit put off by the pacing the first time I saw it, but in the years that have gone by, I've been able to appreciate the beauty, not just of the landscape and the music, but of the characters (and I haven't been able to watch this film without crying since Heath Ledger died). This film was a big deal when it first came out, because as far as I know, it was the first film that told a love story between two men. Yes, gay characters had been portrayed on screen before, but most of the time as stereotypes or funny sidekicks or understanding characters. Very few films had focused on a love story between two men, and Ang Lee did something even more daring by applying that to the macho stereotype of the American cowboy (something that I think outraged the Hollywood old-timers, which may have been one reason it lost the Oscar for Best Picture). Or maybe the one who was daring was Annie Proulx for writing the short story in the first place. Anyway, either admired or infamous, people still talk about this film, and despite the inevitable label it has earned as the "gay cowboy" movie, well, that label just proves that the film struck a chord in people and has challenged them to explore their own views on homophobia. As a movie, on its own, I believe it is simply beautiful (and the chemistry between Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal is still unmatched).


Capote: Philip Seymour Hoffman won a well-deserved Oscar for playing this brilliant writer. He's very flaumboyant, with a somewhat annoying voice, but there's a subtle genius in every word he says. You're uncomfortable around him, but he still draws you in to the story of his own self-destruction while trying to finish what he believes to be the best book he's ever written (I think this man could've used with some modesty, honestly). The film explores Capote as he forms a relationship with Perry Smith, one of two men who murdered a family out in Holcomb, Kansas and is now on Death Row. Capote writes a book about the murders, focusing on the two killers, and the film deals with Capote lengthy conversations with Perry Smith (chillingly played by Clifton Collins Jr.) as he learns more about him and creates the character for his book, and he wants to help him, but he also wants him to die already so he can finish the book and get it published (something that led him to drinking and never finishing a book again). The film explores this moral question of whether a book is worth someone dying over it, and it takes us into the mind of a man who is every bit as smart as Capote, every bit as articulate, but ended up on the wrong path and is now on Death Row. This film is not really a critique on Death Row, but how many people want to see a bright young man hung in the gallows, even if he did kill a family. Killing a killer doesn't make us anything other than murderers. It's not really justice, it's vengeance (a film explored in other movies in 2005, as well as the 1995 film Dead Man Walking). Do we really have the moral high-ground to choose who gets killed, and who doesn't. Perry Smith and his partner Richard Hicock did kill that family, and they had to pay a price for it, but Death is not a price. It's just an earlier entry to the world that everyone ends up in (how do we know that the killers won't end up in Heaven, while the people in government end up in Hell, or whatever comes up after this life?). The film doesn't explore these questions (since it's really a character study of one man and the way he uses a life for literature), but it raised the questions in me. It's one of the reasons I think it's an amazing film.


Crash: Just about every faculty in my department hates this film. They view it as a film that just hits you over the head about racism being bad. There may be some truth to that, because in all of my repeat viewing, I've noticed scenes that are just so heavy-handed they make me cringe, but there is an underlying theme to the movie. It's not about racism, it's about people. It's about the way people interact with each other, judge each other, have an inevitable reaction to each other due to race or socio-economic position. The film is about facing yourself. It is filled with characters who pretend to stand so high on a moral pedestal that they believe they can judge everybody else. These characters include Officer Tommy Hansen (Ryan Phillipe) who judges his partner on his racist tendencies before he realizes that he himself is prejudice against people as well, or Anthony (Ludacris) has a conspiracy theory against everybody around him, thinking he is the only good person in the world, until he is forced to look at himself. "You think you know who you are? You have no idea" or "You embarrass me. You embarrass yourself" are lines that explore this theme. There's also Sgt. Graham Waters who believes he is moral enough to say that he shouldn't frame a potentially innocent man, but he runs away from his real responsibilities which include his mother and his criminal brother. The film is heavy-handed and some scenes did need a lot of work, but there are also scenes of brilliance in the film, including the car explosion where Matt Dillon saves Thandie Newton character, or that moving scene where the locksmith tells his daughter about the invisible cloak. These are all people, and the message comes in the way these people interact and the racism comes out of that. No one is perfect. It's all just a matter of recognizing it in yourself, and seeing yourself as a flawed human being, and then you can judge others. This film won the OScar for Best Picture as a major spoiler, which adds to people's hatred of it unfortunately, but I still think it's a fascinating, if flawed, study of human interactions.


Good Night and Good Luck: I just recently re-watched this one in a class on political films, and it was probably my best viewing of it. It's the true story of Edward R. Murrow, the host of See It Now (an old news show on CBS) and his legendary battle with Junior Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy over his communist witch hunt. The film is co-written and directed by George Clooney, an actor who is known for being actively liberal, and he explores this story of a very courageous man, one who puts all current news anchors to shame with his willingness to expose what is wrong with the world and question it, despite the many warnings he gets from his fellow reporters. Even though the film is set in 1954, when television was still in black-and-white, I think it was very relevant for the audience of 2005, because we were at the beginning of Bush's second term of presidency, and his administration was taking many of the same actions that McCarthy and the HUAC took back then when convicting people based on rumors and heresay. Terrorism these days, as well as communism back then, are two very difficult things to prosecute and defend against because anybody could be either one of them, but I still believe that to arrest and convict someone, evidence and due process of law are still necessary. Laws were made to protect people from being unfairly sentenced. In this country, you are innocent until proven otherwise. No one has the right to exploit a state of fear and paranoia. The film also says a lot about television and the role it's taken in our society these days. I think television can be a wonderful tool if we only knew how to use it right, rather than just to entertain us and insulate us. Television can teach, it can broaden your minds, it can promote debate, it can challenge our perceptions of the world. The problem is, networks only care about making money, and people simply want to be entertained, so television only caters to the lowest common denominator, and even in network news, we are never challenged and we have even grown to distrust what we hear. I think that if we had more people out there like Edward R. Murrow (and amazing performance by David Strathairn), parents wouldn't be telling their children that television is bad for you. I think good, intelligent shows should be given more of a chance to gain an audience before the plug is pulled from them.


Munich: I haven't seen this film in a really long time, but I remember how impressed I was with it when I first saw it. It's long and tough to sit through, but Steven Spielberg brings one of the greatest rivalries in the world to the forefront, and that is the one between the Palestineans and the Israelis. However, what I admire most about Spielberg is that he doesn't give anyone in this film a free pass. It's a film about violence and terrorism. It's a never-ending cycle. As soon as somebody is bombed, the other side retaliates with a similar demonstration and so on. I spoke to some of my friends from the Jewish community in Mexico after watching this film (I'm Jewish myself, so Israel is kind of a part of my life), they told me they didn't like the fact that the Israeli government was portrayed in such a negative light. I think that may have been the point. Not to really color any one person in a negative light, but to color their deeds, their actions, their way of dealing with the terrorism in a negative light. The people they bomb in the retaliation from the massacre at the Munich Olympics seem like perfectly nice people when we see them, and we later find out that they were also involved in other terrorist attacks. Terrorism is never going to end if we all believe in this ideology of "an eye for an eye". Those who are involved with the government begin to live in fear of who might kill them next, because once you attack someone, someone else is coming out to get you, and if you kill a leader, someone else will be found to replace them and retaliate. As for the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestineans, and all the other conflicts that are present right now in the world, well, it's going to be hard to find a solution when children are still taught to hate one another, and people's minds are difficult to change as well. I don't think Spielberg ever thought about looking for a solution to this problem, but the problem persists. Violence is clearly not working. Non-violence worked for Gandhi, but that's another figure of whom there may be no other.

Those are the five Best Picture nominees, and as you can see, I spoke less about the films and more about the questions or discussions that can be drawn from those films, which I think is a good thing, because it means these films can spark up some debate, and it's one thing I think is very strong about that line-up (and a reason I may be underestimating 2005 as a film year). 2005 also saw the political thrillers Syriana and The Constant Gardener. I remember I seriously disliked Syriana when I first saw it because I couldn't make sense out of it, but I just recently saw it a second time, and realized the film, while still very complicated, is actually really good. It explores our global need for oil and what some countries do in order to get to that oil, but it also speaks to the game America plays with the Middle East, keeping those countries in trouble while they profit from their resources. Alexander Siddig plays Prince Nassir Al-Subaai, the successor to the Emir who has plans to make his country into a democracy, something the Emir doesn't want, since he appoints Nassir's idiot younger brother to the throne, and he is happy to continue reigning as his father did, and America is happy to keep the status quo they have, but in order to do that and to prevent a military coup by Prince Nasir, they must assassinate him, so they send CIA agent Bob Barnes (George Clooney, in an Oscar-winning performance) out to assassinate him. It goes wrong, however, and Barnes, after being the subject of an investigation, goes on a race against time to warn Nassir. Another plot consists of Bryan Woodman (Matt Damon), an energy analyst stationed in Geneva trying to cut a deal with the emir, which he only gets after his son is accidentally electrocuted in a pool, and Jeffrey Wright plays Bennett Holiday, a lawyer looking into the shady dealings of a merger between two oil companies. The film is complicated, but the basic story is that every one of these characters are trying to do their jobs and keep their sides of the world healthy. Nobody is innocent or guilty, nobody is good or bad, they are all just trying to survive in this world where resources are low, and we all need to get to them.
As for The Constant Gardener, I haven't seen the film in a long time, and what I remember more vividly is the love story and the outstanding performances from Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz (who won the Oscar for it), but I do remember that there was a conspiracy against pharmaceutical companies that exploted sick children in Africa to bring out a drug, and Rachel Weisz plays activist Tessa Quayle, who is murdered for knowing too much about it. I'll have to watch the movie again, but I do remember it being quite thrilling, and the scenes with the two leads make it come alive even further.

There was also some social and political commentary in summer blockbusters Batman Begins and War of the Worlds. That's right, Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds. Say what you want about the father/son angle, or Tom Cruise, or the ridiculous ending, but there's one thing that can't be denied. War of the Worlds succeeds in creating paranoia and showing how society can collapse when under attack. It's one of the few alien invasion films that actually felt dangerous. Very much like Jaws, War of the Worlds keeps the nature of the aliens as a mystery to the audience, so we're forced to watch how humans react to the invasion with the limited information we all have. All we know is they are killing people, and we could be next, so we use our basic instincts to fight for our survival. Where the film falters, in my opinion, is that it's hard to care for Tom Cruise's character (he comes off arrogant in the worst of ways) and some of the more manipulative moments are cringe-worthy, but the fear is there, and in my opinion, the film works because it manages to convey a true sense of fear. As for Batman Begins, that film explores the themes of justice and vengeance (which I discussed in Capote). Batman is a vigilante, a man who takes justice into his own hands because the government and the police in Gotham City are not acting in the name of justice. He's a man who sees the city collapsing around him, and he wants to do something about it. In the film, the League of Shadows (the group that trained Bruce Wayne to become Batman) believed that Gotham is a city that needs to be destroyed because it's tearing itself apart. That's a good question to ponder on. When something is not working anymore, including a society or a country, so we destroy it and try to build something new, or do we do something different? Do we stick to our old ways or do we try to fix it? It's one of the many things I admire about Batman Begins (other that the concept of bringing Batman into a world that is more like our own), the fact that it raises questions on justice and whether people have the moral high ground to go above the law in the name of the people, or to choose which societies should be destroyed. Can we really decide? Thenagain, in most countries, we do put our trust in one man whom we elect, so in a way, there are people who put themselves at the mercy of everyone in their countries, and we choose whether we can trust them with that moral high ground to make that decision, but what about those we don't elect and don't know about (like Batman, or in the real world, Al-Qaeida terrorists)?

Just to be clear, not every film in 2005 that I saw and enjoyed had a political or social agenda. There are three films I loved from 2005 that I love just for the sheer entertainment value and the love story (and two of them are based on true stories. One of them is Cinderella Man, the story of boxer Jim Braddock (an outstanding-as-always Russell Crowe), who made a comeback after the Great Depression and beat Max Baer to become the heavyweight champion of the world. I know I told you the ending, but really, it's no surprise. This is a classic sports movie about an underdog who has all the odds stacked against him and succeeds despite those odds being stacked against him, but the film is so uplifting and so powerful that it's hard to resist it (and it doesn't hurt that Paul Giamatti gives an energetic performance as Braddock's manager Joe Gould). The other one is Walk the Line, the story of country singer Johnny Cash (played by Joaquin Phoenix) and the love of his life, fellow country singer whom he keeps chasing, June Carter (the lovely Reese Witherspoon). What draws me in about this film is mainly the music and the chemistry of the two leads, and even though the film is a bit over-the-top at parts (the sink-breaking scene was way too much), it's so endearing. I love to see the relationship developing between two people who are part of that same world of country music, and while one is slowly sinking into the realm of drug addiction and depression brought on by this world, the other is strong enough to keep herself afloat, and even pull up a friend on the way.

The other film I wanted to mention was Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Now, this film doesn't display any political messages or try to say anything important. It's just plain fun. It's got such a lively humor, both for children and adults, such colorful characters, a clever plot, some ingenious inventions, a lot of vegetables, a few furry animals, and of course, cheese. Before I saw this film, I hadn't seen any of the shorts, but since then, I've gotten better acquainted with Wallace and Gromit and enjoyed some of their adventures. I particularly recommend The Wrong Trousers.

Anyway, that's 2005, a very peculiar year for cinema. Do you people have any other films you wish to discuss? Anything you'd like to add?