Movies, Name Meme
On Friday I discovered that Grace is Gone was showing here in Dallas, so on Saturday I went to see it. One thing that made me really happy was the movie was packed. In fact, there were more people in the theater than there have been at any movie I’ve seen in the last 3 years with the exception of the Harry Potter movies. It was very close to sold out. I guess the good press it’s getting is finally paying off. And
I thought this story was told very well. The two young ladies who play the daughters are both truly excellent, especially for child actors. The screenplay is wonderfully well-written, gripping, emotional and quite consistent. The characters are all very real and believable. I could go on and on for days about the fantastic job Mr. Cusack does in the lead role. You can really feel his grief, confusion, apprehension, anxiety ... In addition, the two daughters (one a pre-teen 12 and the other 8) are very realistic. You can even tell which takes after mom and which takes after dad, and that’s with mom not even appearing physically in the movie.
One thing I really liked is that part of the story is devoted to Heidi’s (the pre-teen) inward journey as she slowly and inadvertently discovers that something’s happened (though she doesn’t know what or even that it happened to her mother) and that her father is lying to her and her sister about it. Since she’s the one who takes after dad, she’s as avoidant as he is, never confronting him with the bits and pieces of facts she’s gathered, or with his strange behavior. She knows it’s something she’s not ready to deal with, so she acquiesces to the road trip, sneaks off for private time to sit and think and oh so slowly comes to a place where she’s ready to hear from her father that her mother is dead.
The ending is heart-wrenching, but cathartic, and there are several highly emotional scenes along the way. But the movie is never manipulative or judgmental.
At the end of the movie in that packed theater there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. Even the guys were sniffing and everyone was murmuring about how good the movie was.
And it was really that wonderful.
You know how sometimes a movie is so good that you don’t want to watch anything else? Grace is Gone is one of those movies. Thus, I wasn’t in the mood to watch other movies this weekend and only have reviews for the one I watched Friday night and one I kind of watched half-heartedly late on Saturday night.
The Friday night movie was
My Life without Me
I put this movie on my queue because I wanted to see more of Maria de Medeiros (who played Anais Nin in Henry and June), only to discover she has just a little bit part in this movie - a bit part she’s quite good in.
The movie itself seems to be one people either love or hate, depending largely on their attitudes toward death and grief. I happen to fall in the “loved it” category. It’s a very intimate depiction of the way one woman deals with learning that she has cancer and has approximately three months to live. Rather than telling her family and friends, she spends the next three months dealing with her impending death on her own, making and carrying out plans for her family the future and doing things she wants to do before she dies. It’s basically a serious and chick-flickish version of The Bucket List.
I personally didn’t feel that not telling her family was particularly selfish, since I think one’s death mainly belongs to one’s self and I understand she wanted to spare them three months of anxiety, worry and suffering, and give them instead three months of happiness and love. But I do understand why some people would have that point of view.
Sarah Polley is excellent in the lead role. I loved Mark Ruffalo’s performance as her lover, even though her affair is the one thing I didn’t like about the movie. (On the other hand, she’d only been with one man in her life and I can understand her wanting to have more before she dies, but still...) More and more I find Mr. Ruffalo one of the best actors currently working. There are several other smallish parts that are done very well, including Deborah Harry (yes, that Deborah Harry!) as the dying woman’s mother.
But the things I loved most about the movie I’ll discuss a bit below, because I want to do a compare and contrast of this movie with Grace is Gone since they have similar subjects and characters.
Overall, I thought this was a good, intimate and very well-acted and written depiction of one woman’s way of coping with death. If you don’t like the path she takes, you may find it infuriating, but the acting is across the board superb.
And the movie I watched late Saturday was
Walk the Line
I thought it was pretty good, but not great. I really don’t know much about Mr. Cash’s life, so I have no idea how well the movie depicts it. That makes it a little difficult for me to evaluate the performances. I did feel that Reese Withspoon’s performance was a bit spotty. Most of the time I could buy her as June Carter, but sometimes she was glaringly Reese Witherspoon and that tended to take me out of the movie. I didn’t have that problem with Joaquin Phoenix’s performance. But I will say this - if I was supposed to come to strongly dislike Mr. Cash, this movie really succeeded. If I was supposed to like him at the end, well, ouch! I was always kind of so-so on his movie. It’s fine but not something I seek out. But the drug use, adultery, obsession with and near-stalking of June and glorification of criminals left me cold. I think (but I’m not sure) that perhaps he became a better person in later years, but since that wasn’t part of this movie, I was left not caring much about him at all, and really wishing June would turn him down, even though I knew that wasn’t what happened. So, it was an interesting film that left me disliking its subject a lot.
Again, I watched it half-heartedly and I cared a lot more about the movie I’d seen hours earlier than I could possibly care about this one, so my watching was truly half-hearted. I didn’t like it well enough to try it again, though.
Now, a little bit of comparing and contrasting two of the movies I saw this weekend:
What I found interesting about watching these two movies one after the other (My Life without Me on Friday night and Grace is Gone on Saturday afternoon) was that they are both extremely intimate movies concerning the way people deal with grief and death, and they are both movies about regular, hard-working average joes rather than rich pretty people. In fact there are very few physically attractive characters in either move, yet you come to love for their character as the movies progress. The depiction of lower-middle class life in Grace is Gone and lower working class life in My Life without Me were, I thought, very accurate in every little detail. It’s unusual to see such things done well, and in my opinion only true indie movies can carry this out. I think most of the big names in Hollywood are so out of touch with most people’s reality that they couldn’t write it or act it to this degree even if their lives depended on it. That’s what made these two films so special for me. They really are about people I can identify with and care about.
And something not at all movie related:
HowManyOfMe.com
There are
31
people with my name
in the U.S.A.
How many have your name?
There are 6,533 people with my last name, and apparently 31 of them have the first name Elizabeth. I’m surprised there are that many.
I thought this story was told very well. The two young ladies who play the daughters are both truly excellent, especially for child actors. The screenplay is wonderfully well-written, gripping, emotional and quite consistent. The characters are all very real and believable. I could go on and on for days about the fantastic job Mr. Cusack does in the lead role. You can really feel his grief, confusion, apprehension, anxiety ... In addition, the two daughters (one a pre-teen 12 and the other 8) are very realistic. You can even tell which takes after mom and which takes after dad, and that’s with mom not even appearing physically in the movie.
One thing I really liked is that part of the story is devoted to Heidi’s (the pre-teen) inward journey as she slowly and inadvertently discovers that something’s happened (though she doesn’t know what or even that it happened to her mother) and that her father is lying to her and her sister about it. Since she’s the one who takes after dad, she’s as avoidant as he is, never confronting him with the bits and pieces of facts she’s gathered, or with his strange behavior. She knows it’s something she’s not ready to deal with, so she acquiesces to the road trip, sneaks off for private time to sit and think and oh so slowly comes to a place where she’s ready to hear from her father that her mother is dead.
The ending is heart-wrenching, but cathartic, and there are several highly emotional scenes along the way. But the movie is never manipulative or judgmental.
At the end of the movie in that packed theater there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. Even the guys were sniffing and everyone was murmuring about how good the movie was.
And it was really that wonderful.
You know how sometimes a movie is so good that you don’t want to watch anything else? Grace is Gone is one of those movies. Thus, I wasn’t in the mood to watch other movies this weekend and only have reviews for the one I watched Friday night and one I kind of watched half-heartedly late on Saturday night.
The Friday night movie was
My Life without Me
I put this movie on my queue because I wanted to see more of Maria de Medeiros (who played Anais Nin in Henry and June), only to discover she has just a little bit part in this movie - a bit part she’s quite good in.
The movie itself seems to be one people either love or hate, depending largely on their attitudes toward death and grief. I happen to fall in the “loved it” category. It’s a very intimate depiction of the way one woman deals with learning that she has cancer and has approximately three months to live. Rather than telling her family and friends, she spends the next three months dealing with her impending death on her own, making and carrying out plans for her family the future and doing things she wants to do before she dies. It’s basically a serious and chick-flickish version of The Bucket List.
I personally didn’t feel that not telling her family was particularly selfish, since I think one’s death mainly belongs to one’s self and I understand she wanted to spare them three months of anxiety, worry and suffering, and give them instead three months of happiness and love. But I do understand why some people would have that point of view.
Sarah Polley is excellent in the lead role. I loved Mark Ruffalo’s performance as her lover, even though her affair is the one thing I didn’t like about the movie. (On the other hand, she’d only been with one man in her life and I can understand her wanting to have more before she dies, but still...) More and more I find Mr. Ruffalo one of the best actors currently working. There are several other smallish parts that are done very well, including Deborah Harry (yes, that Deborah Harry!) as the dying woman’s mother.
But the things I loved most about the movie I’ll discuss a bit below, because I want to do a compare and contrast of this movie with Grace is Gone since they have similar subjects and characters.
Overall, I thought this was a good, intimate and very well-acted and written depiction of one woman’s way of coping with death. If you don’t like the path she takes, you may find it infuriating, but the acting is across the board superb.
And the movie I watched late Saturday was
Walk the Line
I thought it was pretty good, but not great. I really don’t know much about Mr. Cash’s life, so I have no idea how well the movie depicts it. That makes it a little difficult for me to evaluate the performances. I did feel that Reese Withspoon’s performance was a bit spotty. Most of the time I could buy her as June Carter, but sometimes she was glaringly Reese Witherspoon and that tended to take me out of the movie. I didn’t have that problem with Joaquin Phoenix’s performance. But I will say this - if I was supposed to come to strongly dislike Mr. Cash, this movie really succeeded. If I was supposed to like him at the end, well, ouch! I was always kind of so-so on his movie. It’s fine but not something I seek out. But the drug use, adultery, obsession with and near-stalking of June and glorification of criminals left me cold. I think (but I’m not sure) that perhaps he became a better person in later years, but since that wasn’t part of this movie, I was left not caring much about him at all, and really wishing June would turn him down, even though I knew that wasn’t what happened. So, it was an interesting film that left me disliking its subject a lot.
Again, I watched it half-heartedly and I cared a lot more about the movie I’d seen hours earlier than I could possibly care about this one, so my watching was truly half-hearted. I didn’t like it well enough to try it again, though.
Now, a little bit of comparing and contrasting two of the movies I saw this weekend:
What I found interesting about watching these two movies one after the other (My Life without Me on Friday night and Grace is Gone on Saturday afternoon) was that they are both extremely intimate movies concerning the way people deal with grief and death, and they are both movies about regular, hard-working average joes rather than rich pretty people. In fact there are very few physically attractive characters in either move, yet you come to love for their character as the movies progress. The depiction of lower-middle class life in Grace is Gone and lower working class life in My Life without Me were, I thought, very accurate in every little detail. It’s unusual to see such things done well, and in my opinion only true indie movies can carry this out. I think most of the big names in Hollywood are so out of touch with most people’s reality that they couldn’t write it or act it to this degree even if their lives depended on it. That’s what made these two films so special for me. They really are about people I can identify with and care about.
And something not at all movie related:
HowManyOfMe.com
There are
31
people with my name
in the U.S.A.
How many have your name?
There are 6,533 people with my last name, and apparently 31 of them have the first name Elizabeth. I’m surprised there are that many.