browser life

Working on this in bits and pieces while making copies of medical records. Unfortunately, I've been so focused on this doggone Mayo visit that I can barely remember the movies I watched, even though some of them were excellent. But I'll say a few words at least about each one.

My last review was in September. The next movie I got was "Best in Show", a parody of dog shows that Dan started to watch with me and decided he didn't like about 10 minutes in and left. I thought it was extremely funny, but my sense of humor and Dan's differs somewhat. Anyway, the film is a star-studded extravaganza with a fair amount of ad libbing going on. There is an extremely neurotic married couple showing a Wiemaraner who practically come to blows over a missing toy bumblebee. Another couples' relationship is strained when the husband finds out that his wife has slept with practically every man they run into. There is a guy who looks and sounds pretty much like his champion bloodhound. And I particularly enjoyed watching the gay couple because they did the most ad libbing. But the funniest of them all was Fred Willard, who played the "color commentator" at the dog show. He knew nothing at all about dog shows, and he kept saying the most inappropriate things. This movie is best appreciated if you watch a real dog show first, so you can see how accurate the comedy is.

Next, we were overdue for a movie of Dan's choice. He picked "National Treasure", of particular interest because part 2 was filmed in South Dakota this year. This was part one starring Nicholas Cage as a man on a scavenger hunt of sorts to discover a message hidden in the Declaration of Independence. This leads him to all sorts of historical sites and improbable sources of information. You must possess a very powerful suspension of disbelief to really get into this, particularly the part about stealing the original Declaration from its heavily guarded glass case. If you disengage your sense of logic and just go along for the ride, it is fairly enjoyable.

After this, I was ready for some more high brow fair. I chose "The Queen" starring Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth in the days right after Lady Diana's death. The basic story line is the royal family's reaction to Diana's sudden demise. The queen at first does what traditionally befits her status; she keeps her mourning private and expects her son and grandsons to do the same. Diana was no longer in line for the throne, so she did not qualify for the usual machinations of a head of state's funeral. But Diana was treasured by the British public, and they cried out for a pop star funeral, no matter how inappropriate or appalling it was to the royal family. Tony Blair ended up playing the go-between because he rightly realized that if the royals fell out of favor, his reputation as Prime Minister would be affected as well. So he works very carefully but diligently at persuading the queen to address the public and allow an unprecedented extravagant farewell for a woman who was still a princess to her admirers around the world. Helen Mirren does a fantastic job of showing us the humanity behind all the dignified pomp and circumstance.

For even more dramatic tension, I went for "Notes on a Scandal" next. Judi Dench is excellent as a sarcastic, snobbish teacher who views her new colleague, played by Cate Blanchett, with great disdain. But it seems Ms. Dench protests too much. One begins to suspect that she is just lonely, and so it comes as no surprise and a bit of a relief when she reaches out to the young art teacher in a gesture of friendship. Their relationship becomes almost pleasant, but not quite, because Ms. Dench's character is difficult to like. And then Ms. Blanchett's character does something that could ruin not just her life, but others' as well: she falls for a student, and her new friend finds out. Cue the jealously, emotional blackmail and plot twists. Great writing and acting all around. Made me wonder about some of the creepy teachers I had as a kid, heh heh.

Continued on my streak of watching Oscar-nominated actresses with "Transamerica". Dan watched it with me. This is the story of a former man about to have sexual reassignment surgery to fully become a woman. She is played by Felicity Huffman. She looks so different here from her character on "Desperate Housewives" that I almost didn't recognize her at first. Not just makeup, but her demeanor, the portrayal of the awkwardness of a woman trying to move about in what is still technically a man's body. And the manner of speaking, not just a lower voice, but the inflection which is typically less varied in a man than a woman. She portrays all this quite well. If only the writing and plot had been a bit better, and then the whole movie might have been Oscar material. Basically, her character finds out right before the surgery that she has a son, fathered when she was still living as a man. She meets the boy but does not reveal her identity, pretending to be from a church, and that's the part that didn't quite ring true with me, that the boy just buys the church lady story. They end up on a cross-country road trip with plenty of adventure. I really enjoyed it, but I did have a nagging sense that I could have enjoyed it even more.

Next, I moved on to a movie my friend Robert recommended, "The Science of Sleep". This is about a socially awkward man whose dream life is much more interesting than his waking one. He falls for a woman who is as creative as he is, but he has difficulty properly conveying his feelings in a waking context. He does try to introduce her to his dream world, but it comes at a price. Normally, I do just fine with movies in foreign languages, but this one confused me, perhaps because I was watching it while extremely fatigued. The main character speaks Spanish, but he is living in France, and his French is terrible, so that people around him cannot understand him unless he speaks to them in English (assuming that they know English). So the subtitles are translating grammatically incorrect French with a Spanish accent, or something like that. Anyway, the dream sequences were pretty cool, and I liked how his dreams began spilling into the waking world, which reminded me of "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind". I should try watching it again sometime when my brain is working better.

A foreign language film I had a much easier time with was "Volver". I hadn't seen anything by Pedro Almodovar in quite awhile, and Penelope Cruz was in it, so there were two good reasons to watch. Ms. Cruz plays a woman who is dealing with multiple crises. First, her mother dies in a fire. Then her aunt passes away, but not before her mother's ghost is spotted or at least heard in her aunt's village. While she is dealing with this, something happens to her husband, and she must figure out a way to cover this up and to survive economically. She does this by cooking for a film crew in an abandoned restaurant that is supposed to be for sale. And then she finds out the truth about her mother, which I don't want to spoil here. There is humor, drama, surprise, beauty and darkness in this movie, and I highly recommend it.

Back into the drama realm: the next movie I saw was "In the Bedroom", which Dan watched with me. It's the story of a couple with a college-aged son who falls in love with an older single mother, played by Marisa Tomei. Their relationship is reasonably well-accepted by everyone except single mom's ex. There is an awful confrontation that results in the death of the couple's son, and everything changes. They become consumed with mourning and with seeking justice in an unjust system. This movie didn't seem to have gotten a lot of publicity when it came out in 2001, at least I don't remember it, but it is definitely worth watching.

I continued the dark theme with my next choice, "The Hours". It's the story of three women in three different time frames who are connected in some way. Nicole Kidman plays Virginia Woolf, and she is nearly unrecognizable as the inspired but tortured writer. Julianne Moore portrays a pregnant American housewife in the 1950's who reads one of Woolf's books. And Meryl Streep is an editor in present day New York whose life parallels the book Moore's character was reading. All three women have strong feelings for other women and some sort of dissatisfaction with the men in their lives, but their stories have a lot of differences, too. The resolution of all three stories is tragic but inevitable. Not for those looking for something cheery, but very well done.

Finally, something I'd been meaning to watch for a few years, "Boys Don't Cry". I was already familiar with the story because it really happened, during the early '90's, I think, and I remember reading all the local newspaper coverage on it. Hilary Swank portrays Teena Brandon, a girl who is transgendered but cannot afford the treatment or surgery to transform into a boy. She leaves her hometown of Lincoln and passes herself off as a young man named Brandon Teena. Gender issues aside, this was a person headed for trouble, with a history of auto theft, forgery and other legal entanglements. But Brandon wants a fresh start and shows up in a small town where no one knows him. He gets off on the wrong foot almost immediately and makes friends with a group who will be a bad influence on him at the very least. Things become more complicated when he falls for the ex-girlfriend of one of his new buddies. When Brandon's past and true gender are discovered, the results are disastrous. Even if you know what eventually happened to Brandon, it is quite shocking and difficult to watch. Hilary Swank is entirely credible as Brandon, and I can't think of many other actresses who could convincingly pull the role off. Amazing.

It took me three days to put this together this time. I have "Pursuit of Happyness" at the house now, and I'll watch it before I leave for Rochester if I get finished packing and copying medical records soon enough.