The Holiday: Always on my holiday-watch list

Movie Review: The Holiday (2006) on Hulu

If you're looking for light-hearted film fare over the holidays, go directly to The Holiday. We've come to rely on this rom com from 2006 for laughs and heart-tugs like we did Love Actually from 2003, only this is easily more watchable and feeling slightly less chaotic. Give it a try if you haven't already (on Hulu.com and Amazon.com). 

The Holiday has two professional women, played by Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet, with troubled love lives skipping town (and men) for the holidays by swapping homes. Kate leaves her cozy cottage in Surrey England, Cameron gives up her luxurious layout in Los Angeles, hoping to bury their troublesome relationships behind them for the next two weeks. And after a few mix ups on first arrivals, things seem to go really well. Until Cameron meets Kate's handsome and available brother, played by Jude Law, and Kate meets Cameron's advertising jingle composer suddenly newly available, played by Jack Black. We've never seen Jack Black as a love-interest actor, but he's very likeable in this role. Add to the mix Cameron's elderly next door neighbor, played by Eli Wallach, who is retired, lonely, and just needs a little respect and love. 

This is an adorable film with no bump-your-head-on-the-ceiling-beam message, just good comedy and romantic fun that happens to take place during the Christmas to New Years holiday--like Love Actually and Die Hard and, recently, Love Hard. Honestly, I don't know how you can miss watching this film made simply to sit back and enjoy. I'd rate The Holiday A+ for Always on my holiday-movie list.

Spy: A Seriously Funny Spoof of Spy Capers

Movie Review: Spy (2015)
Version: Library borrow

Melissa McCarthy is a real comedic treasure, and no where is it more apparent than in Spy, a 2015 spoof of James Bond and other spy capers. Capers actually spells out this story line quite well.

McCarthy plays Susan Cooper, a desk-bound CIA analyst who supports the on-site capers of master spy Bradley Fine (played by Jude Law). But when Fine is shot dead, Cooper takes on the assignment of hunting down his nemesis Rayna Boyanov (played by Rose Byrne), who possesses a nuclear bomb and intends to sell it to the highest bidder. In the mix is Fine's CIA competitor spy Rick Ford (played by Jason Statham, who usually plays a villain), a bungler who refuses to accept Cooper as an equal in the field but can't ever quite keep up with her. Allison Janney is excellent as Elaine Crocker, the director of the CIA, who must decide whether to send Cooper into the field.

If you watch this film, make yourself sit through the first half, which is slow as most of the jokes are embarrassingly immature visual prat-fall type humor. Then about half way through the movie someone woke up and the actual fun begins. The jokes become genuinely funny and McCarthy is really on her game. Seriously (how ironic, right?), make yourself sit through the first half to get to the funny material. It's like drinking the melt water at the top of the iced beverage to get to the good stuff below. You will be glad you did. The chase scene is hilarious, beginning with McCarthy's hijacking of a motor bike. The comedic genius goes on from there, one funny scene after another. You will be glad you sat through the first half to get here.

If you're a Melissa McCarthy fan, this is a perfect vehicle for you. It's a gem!

Genius: A Deeply Emotional Film Well Worth Viewing

Movie Review: Genius (2016)
Version: Library Borrow

Good books are usually a collaboration between the author and the editor. A relationship develops between the writer and the wordsmith, in which the one creates and the other molds. Based on the book, Max Perkins: Editor of Genius by A. Max Berg, Genius sensitively taps the deep well that is this subject, which in this case is the all too-short time author Thomas Wolfe and editor Max Perkins worked together.

This is a good film that didn't gross much at the box office,yet deserves an audience for its superb acting, it's great writing, and its well paced plot.

The story unfolds in depression-era 1929 as Max Perkins is sitting in his office editing a book by Steinbeck. A colleague walks in with a heavy sheath of typed pages and hands them to Perkins. "Is it any good?" he says. "No, but he's a genius." Perkins takes the tome home and on the way reads in on the train, and on the walk to the house, and in through the door, up the stairs, past the wife rehearsing for a play, daughters playing in the living room, office, bedrooms, and every other quiet room of the house. He finally settles in a closet. He is enraptured by the book. The next day, Wolfe walks flamboyantly into his office, sure that, like every other publisher in New York City, Scbriner & Sons won't think the book is any good. Perkins surprises him with a $500 advance and wants to get to work on it right away.

From there, Perkins guides Wolfe on decisions into making Look Homeward, Angel from 1100 pages into a more compact book. Elated at publishing his first work, Wolfe is eager and compliant at the hands of an experienced editor. Once the book is published and becomes a bestseller, Wolfe writes his second novel, some 5,000 pages long, delivered in handwritten pages. Wolfe is less pliant with what he sees as his masterpiece of visualizations, but Perkins helps him focus less on vibrant descriptions and more on impactful language that brings the story into focus. They work on the book for two years, wrestling back and forth over excessive language to publish Of Time and the River.

Subplots in the story include Wolfe's complex relationship with his patron and lover, Aline Bernstein, a theater set decorator with a waning marriage and a jealous attachment to Wolfe. Also Perkin's family, who can't get enough time with husband and father Perkins because of the time he spends on Wolfe's books. Intertwined are interactions with F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway.

The characters are rich and earthy, played to great depth by Colin Firth as Perkins, Jude Law as Wolfe, Nicole Kidman as Bernstein, Laura Linney as Perkin's wife Louise, Guy Pearce as Fitzgerald, and Dominic West as Hemingway. If anything is out of the ordinary, it is the excess with which Law plays Wolfe's eccentricity. Perkin's hat may well have gotten a credit -- he wears it in every scene, till near the end. Was it a metaphor for the man who wore but one hat in life, that of extraordinary editor to great writers?

You don't have to be an author or editor to appreciate this film. It offers fine acting, great writing, elegant cinematography, and beautiful set decoration. You feel for the characters as they work through the plots and subplots. It is a deeply emotional film. Genius is well worth your viewing.