penniah Reviews

Screen Two: Heaven on Earth (1987) Season 3, Episode 9

I'd like to find this, too...

[9/10 · 25 March 2006]

I still have a soft spot for this movie, after all these years. The young actors playing the four main characters were so touching, and the music was so haunting I can still hear it in my head. Of course, it was scored by Loreena McKennitt, so it had a very haunting quality that she captures so well. R. H. Thompson was one of my favourite performers, in the role of the grieving widower who is falling for the young woman to whom his late wife convinced him to open their home. I found especially interesting the attention to the society of the time and place. People were moved by charity to help the orphans from overseas, but once closer to home, the gossip and tolerance of cruelty were less than charitable.

I taped this movie from TV years ago - it was on a *Beta* tape, not VHS!! (All you young'uns out there go look up "Beta") so anyhow that tape is long since useless. The NFB in Canada did release it on video, I borrowed it (again, years ago) from the public library in Winnipeg. But unless Masterpiece Theatre decides to market its back catalogue ( which I doubt will happen) we are likely out of luck. Incidentally, I watched it when it aired on MT, and it had been edited for time (it aired in Canada, and likely the UK, before that). The Canadian version was longer, but I can't remember what was cut for the MT version.

Dancing at the Blue Iguana (2000)

Some really great moments

[23 March 2003]

I was really impressed with Sandra Oh's performance in this film. Everything else aside, she was brilliant. Her Jasmine is a sensitive poet who has real potential, but she's stuck in the sex trade and, like so many real women in that position, is afraid of trying to get out. The familiar, even when it is terrible, is easier to face than the unknown. (For the same reason, battered women stay with the men who beat them.) She takes some steps, but when her boss cruelly tells her that her job is who she is, she gives up. Any tentative confidence she felt is gone. Later, she dances in front of her new boyfriend, not so much to say "This is who I am" but "How could you possibly love me?" It's like, on some level, she was daring him to still love her. How the audience, and especially her boyfriend, could not see how this was killing her soul, is not amazing, but typical - people see what they want to, and in a strip bar, it's T&A, not despair or no self esteem. Her poetry, beautiful, but so cynical and sad, also show the despair she feels. Having been in a damaging relationship, I can say for a fact that Sandra Oh's performance is right on the mark - from trying to be tough, to pushing away someone who cares (while hoping he'll "save" you by continuing to believe in you), to sharing feelings of despair with someone in the same boat - this is all so completely real.

I was also struck by Daryl Hannah's performance as the airhead, always high, who has hopes that are completely out of reach because her lifestyle is sabotaging her dreams. Without two brain cells to rub together, I wonder what she did with all that money...

Jennifer Tilly's character was good too, and provided some fairly uncomfortable humour - when she ripped into the happy mom at the doctor's office, saying "I'm gonna have this baby, and he's gonna sell your kid drugs in the schoolyard" I laughed, but it had an Oh-my-gawd-she's-completely-off-her-rocker quality to it. Plus her scene as the dominatrix trying to deal with her battered and boozed up stripper friend was priceless.

Yeah, the plot (what plot?) goes nowhere, but watch it as a very realistic few days in the emotional lives of some very sad characters.

Kate & Leopold (2001)

insulting to women

[1/10 · 4 June 2002]

I went to this movie hoping for something light and enjoyable, but it didn't do anything for me but make me hate just about everyone connected to its making.

Here's a woman who has it all... so of course she's unhappy. Oh, and she's rather needy and self-absorbed, too. It takes a guy who is 100 years out of his time to make her realize this, and to make her come to the conclusion that she'd be happier in a world where not only is there no rat race, but no rights for women. She just needs a man, darnit! She doesn't need to maybe find the right career for her skills, or maybe choose a slower-paced life in her own time... no, she just has to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge to a time when women didn't even have the vote, in order to be happy.

Right. I can't begin to effectively express my contempt for this movie.

The Lover (1992)

Left me hot and cold... (spoilers)

[5/10 · 1 June 2002]

Let's get this right out of the way... yes, the sex is explicit. Guys, if you're looking for a movie with sex that you can get your girlfriend to watch, go find the unrated version. It's well done and doesn't have cheesey porn music.

That being said, there are other interesting points to the movie. The characters are perhaps one dimensional, but let's be honest - so are a lot of people out there. I don't understand why moviemakers are so often blasted for portraying people who aren't layer upon layer of insight and revelation. Real life is often not like that anyway.

These are good renditions of people trapped by convention and culture. The Chinaman is an outsider, socially unacceptable, who won't step outside the customs that bind him. If he follows his heart, he will lose everything. So he doesn't. The Girl is much the same. When she is alone with her lover she drops the pretense that her milieu demands. But when she is with her family, he is just another man with a skin colour not her own, and she ignores him. With a little encouragement from her, her lover might have dared to step outside custom. But she was seduced by a rich, mysterious, older man and does not want what would come after if they did decide to defy everyone. She's already poor and sad; she doesn't want more of that life. After their affair is over, she experiences regret, but not because she misses what their life would have been, but because she misses the excitement in her sad life.

At the end, you see how it really was: years later, he phones and says how he will always love her. He was, in truth, her lover. But as the narrator stresses in the opening, she had been fifteen and a half. This was not a story about two lovers, but the one. How many fifteen and a half year old girls do you know who are capable of mature unselfish love, the kind that demands real sacrifice? That's right, not too many. Real love between these two was never in the cards; while one partner may have been capable of it, the other was not.

As far as story goes, there's not much. It's pretty basic, but great movies can be built on other things too. It's a beautiful film, as well. But the one biggest problem is the sex. It was done too well for a movie that didn't have much to put in the spots where there was no sex. The sex is hot. Then she goes back to school. Or home. Yawn. I kept expecting that maybe someone would do something in protest of her behaviour... her drug addict brother or her mother maybe. Or maybe the younger brother might shoot somebody... something!! But nothing. Blah.

All in all, very nice to look at, but pretty empty, and very uneven.

Night of the Comet (1984)

a good bad movie

[7/10 · 1 June 2002]

I remembered this movie fondly from my teenage years in the eighties and a friend of mine tracked it down for me so we could screen it at a science fiction convention. Now that it's over 15 years old, it could be considered a classic... okay a young classic.

Some parts of this movie are just baaaad. The clothes, the music, the dialogue, the sets, a lot of the acting... hmmm that's most of the movie, come to think about it. But I give it a 7 anyway cause I love watching this dopey thing! Don't take it seriously and you'll have fun.

I have one question though: When Hector runs away from the pre-teen zombie in his house, why does he run down the street to get away? Instead of going to his truck, which is parked right out front? After all, he's heading back to LA, it's his truck, it would just make sense, right??? Whatever.

I love this movie. It's goofy fun. But if you were born after 1980, you probably just won't "get it".

Panic Room (2002)

great suspense movie!

[8/10 · 21 May 2002]

I don't get out to many movies any more, so I'm glad I picked this one. I'm a huge Jodie Foster fan anyway, so the movie gets points for that, and although it was pretty much by the numbers (no real twists) it did what it did very well. Loved the three, brutal, bumbling intruders!

Save the Last Dance (2001)

excruciating. can't believe I sat thru it.

[4/10 · 21 May 2002]

I got dragged to see this movie when my movie group outvoted something else intelligent. All I can say is this: Personal insecurity shakes girl's confidence. Guy convinces her to believe in her talent. Girl dances. Everyone's happy.

I've seen this movie before. Right - Flashdance. I'll take that one over this any day.

Almost Famous (2000)

loved it

[9/10 · 21 May 2002]

This was a great movie - I especially liked the character Penny Lane - when faced with humiliation she finds the strength to bounce back (plus she has a great line: "What kind of beer was it?")

Patrick Fugit was really good too, and Frances McDormand was a riot. The scene where she reads the riot act to the rock star was hilarious. Then there was the drunken dive into the pool... "I am a golden god!!" Many laughs and many touching moments, too in this movie.

The Wrong Guy (1997)

funnier than I expected

[7/10 · 21 May 2002]

I don't usually go for stupid comedy - for example I avoid Jim Carrey like the plague. This movie came on late night TV and I was too lazy to change the channel. The scene were Nelson finds his boss dead was priceless, though, as well as many other stupid moments. So it's not Gone with the Wind. But it was a great time waster - and I stayed up to watch the end, which is something.

Contact (1997)

my expectations were more than satisfied

[9/10 · 21 May 2002]

I loved the book Contact, and waited years for the movie. It was too bad that Carl Sagan didn't live to see the finished product; it would be interesting to hear his comments on the movie's strengths and weaknesses.

I gave the movie a 9 out of 10 because I couldn't help but compare some things a bit unfavourably to the book.

I liked Jodie Foster in the movie, but she didn't quite fit my picture of Ellie - I pictured Ellie as a bit more polished - Foster plays her a bit too much like a science student through the entire movie. The biggest mistake though, was turning Palmer Joss into Ellie's lover. I guess Hollywood doesn't think that a man and a woman can have a relationship based on mutual respect and intelligence without banging boots.

But aside from that and a few other details, I enjoyed this movie immensely. James Woods was great; and it was nice to see that they left the President female.

Recommended Highly!

Out of Africa (1985)

A beautifully thought-provoking film

[9/10 · 11 May 2002]

Spoilers abound!

What sticks with me most about "Out of Africa" is the music, mainly because it is full of the heartache and joy that is in the story. So many times music is just background noise, but here it effectively narrates Karen Blixen's emotions. Her joy in the land, the hurt she feels each time she is abandoned, first by her husband, then by Denys each time he leaves. She needs them more than they need her.

Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) was a storyteller, and sometimes it takes time to tell a story. So it seems right to me that this movie takes its time. If you don't have time to savour a tale, you might as well read a newspaper. Life of made up of everyday banality interspersed with memorable moments. Only in Hollywood do stories unfold according to a strict timetable.

Another memorable aspect is the depiction of the English colonial culture encroaching on the African civilization. Karen is guilty of this, for example when she tries to start a school for the natives living on her plantation. But the love she feels for the people is so apparent, and also the great respect she has for her houseman. While it is tinged with a certain white superiority, you nonetheless feel she is learning to leave that behind and become closer to being a part of the place. But she will always remain outside because she is white. However, she doesn't fit in with the Colonial types, either.

I love Meryl Streep in this role. She conveys so much with just the look on her face, the set of her jaw or her body language. She doesn't need words to show the humiliation she feels when she finds out her husband gave her syphilis, or when she looks around for him at the New Year's dance and he is nowhere to be found.

I was disappointed with Robert Redford. He's certainly fine to look at, though maybe a bit too all-American. He is somehow off as an Englishman; not due to the lack of an accent (I can get past that), but perhaps because he has that American forthrightness in his lectures on preserving the African culture and land. However the characterization of Denys I find curious as well; he is always trying to show how he truly has the Africans' best interests at heart, even though he is as much an outsider as any other white person living there. It seems somewhat hypocritical, but then, people in real life are rarely all pure crusader, or all self-interested. I suppose the mix is realistic.

One theme that runs through the movie is that fate and circumstance have a large part in these people's lives. A particularily white point of view is that we control our destinies, but many native cultures place a much larger emphasis on the things which control us. Perhaps that is because we are so rich with things that we can use to improve our lives (the colonists have so many things; Karen loves hers, and ships them all from Denmark) and maintain an illusion of control. The natives live much closer to the land, and are more susceptible to the hazards of nature. But so are we; we just aren't aware of it all the time. Karen learns it over time, most especially when fire destroys the plantation when her first good crop comes in. Coffee was never meant to be grown that high up the mountain evidently, and nature steps in to rectify the situation.

I could go on, but I won't. There are so many things I admire in this movie. I like the fact it is slower-paced; it gives you time to consider what you've just seen, and to consider the characters, their motivations, their growth. I could watch it over and over.