Cairo Time

Cairo Time I think is about how one defines fidelity in a relationship, especially when one is in a situation that is out of place of what one has been used to.  Patricia Clarkson plays Juliette, who is a writer in a women's magazine (the Glamour or Vogue type) who comes to meet up with her husband who works at the U.N., but he is delayed in the Gaza area so she is on her own for a few days in Cairo. He has asked an old colleague, Tareq (Alexander Siddig) to drive her to the hotel and set her up there. Tareq runs into an old girlfriend at the airport who invites them to her daughter's upcoming wedding. He is retired already despite being youngish (younger than Juliette at least) and now runs a men's only traditional coffee hangout, so for the most part he can come and go as he pleases.

At first Juliette is at sea trying to fill up her day without being bored. Here, her identity is not as an independent woman, but "the wife" and finds she is expected to conform to those boundaries.  She attends a consulate function by herself and meets another of her husband's colleagues, Kathryn (Elena Anaya) who invites her for a daytrip to meet her family out in the desert. The two talk a bit about following the men in their relationships. Later Juliette rashly decides to take a bus to Gaza alone, and during a tense checkpoint, she is advised to return to the city (she's the only Westerner on the bus, and one of the few women). During this ride she befriends a young woman who asks her to do a dangerous favor, which Juliette consults Tareq on.

Every now and again Tareq either comes to meet Juliette to take her about the city, or she seeks him out at his coffee shop and they spend the day together, even staying out very late and coming back to the hotel at dawn, or she even becomes a bit more daring and ventures out on her own a bit. These meetings are usually unplanned. Of course they end up attending that wedding, which leads Juliette to consider what she wants, just when her husband returns to her.

Charlie Countryman

Shia LaBeouf plays Charlie, a young man whose mother has just died (Melissa Leo, and Vincent D'Onofrio is the stepdad, they are hardly in the movie). He has a vision of his dead mother who tells him to go to Bucharest to assuage his grief, and he does so on a whim. On the plane he meets a zestful Romanian man who tells him of his daughter, and he dies on the flight, leaving Charlie to track the daughter down, Gaby (Evan Rachel Wood). Charlie is instantly taken with her (and they also share the recent death of a parent) and is caught up in her messed up life and the crazy things that happen to him while he is in Bucharest.

Gaby is separated from her abusive and violent husband, Nigel (Mads Mikkelsen), whom she found out, after they married, was a drug dealer. Charlie by chance meets Nigel's cohort at a strip club and learns of a videotape showing them doing something illegal, which is what Gaby's father has used to keep Nigel away. But now that the father is dead, Nigel comes back to claim Gaby despite Charlie trying to unbind her from his clutches. In the several days he is here, he is always trying to save her or find a way to keep her out of Nigel's grasp.

Morning Glory

Here's an ex-prisoner movie, but since it's based on a book by LaVyrle Spencer, you know it has a romantic bent. It's a made-for-TV film.

Set in the Depression era on the brink of World War 2, just-paroled Will Parker (Christopher Reeve) looks for work, and answers an ad from widowed farmer/mother Elly Dinsmore (Deborah Raffin, also a co-writer on this one). She’s known as a recluse and is looking for a “husband” to help her tend her farm, especially since she is pregnant.

Elly warns Will to keep away from the bee colony, it was managed by her dead husband and she considers it a danger now, but Will insists it can be a moneymaker and defies her. He becomes part of the family, first in a marriage of convenience, but then as these films often do, it turns into a more meaningful relationship with Elly.

The sheriff (JT Walsh), local waitress/loose woman (Helen Shaver) and other narrow-minded citizens make trouble for Will. Nina Foch plays a kindly librarian who knew Elly when she was younger and continues to be a helpful friend. In an unusually non-villainous role, Lloyd Bochner is a lawyer who helps them when Will is arrested for a serious crime.

Near Dark

Caleb (Adrian Pasdar), a young cowboy, picks up a pretty girl, Mae (Jenny Wright), whom he thinks he can charm into having sex. When she panics as the sun comes up, he promises to take her home, after a kiss. She obliges, and in addition bites his neck. Later as he begins to get sick, he is abducted by Mae's "family," some rogue vampires (Bill Paxton as the wild card Severen, Lance Henrickson as the leader Jesse) who are not too happy to find he is a new member and not just a meal.

Meanwhile, Caleb's father (Tim Thomerson) tries to find him, thinking he's out joyriding. Caleb at first is confused as to his physical state but doesn't want to leave Mae, even if she is not as vulnerable as he first thought she was.  Essentially, Caleb wants to have it all--the girl, to have a life in the daytime, and to be rid of Mae's violent and twisted family.

Directed by Kathryn Bigelow.

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

Although the trailers probably framed this as an outright comedy, it is mostly a romantic drama with most of the ha ha comedic elements at the beginning of the movie, and the comedy throughout is a little more in the black comedy vein. I think the story is helped by being written and directed by a woman.

The film is almost exactly as the title indicates. Steve Carell plays Dodge, an insurance salesman who still goes to work although an Earth-ending meteor is set to hit in three weeks time. As the days tick by the movie shows us how different people react, some keep to their routine, such as the tv anchorman continuing to professionally report on the state of the world (Mark Moses), or Dodge's cleaning lady continuing to come every week. Others, like Dodge's friends (Rob Corddry, Connie Britton, Patton Oswalt, Melanie Lynskey), live it up like there is no tomorrow.  And as we know the tomorrows are ending soon.

Dodge sees his downstairs neighbor Penny (Keira Knightley) crying when she breaks up with her boyfriend (Adam Brody). He lets her stay the night and later helps her escape during a riot. Fleeing in her car with an abandoned dog, each have a last desire--she's missed all the commercial planes flying out of the country so Dodge offers her to take her to a man he knows who has a plane, so that she can see her family one last time; he wants to track down a high school sweetheart after finding a mislaid letter where she says he was the love of her life.  We can see that for him a lot of his desire is of the "what if" he had done this or that throughout his life, and yet he is still unmotivated to act until this last moment.

It becomes a roadtrip as they meet friends and strangers and we see how they too have reacted to this end. Penny has a military friend (Derek Luke) who is hunkered down in a bomb shelter. A man who gives them a ride has a death wish (William Petersen). They stop at a family restaurant chain where all the employees have taken matters in their own hands. They also hook up with Dodge's estranged father (Martin Sheen).

The Host (2013)

Stop the insanity! I thought after the Twilight series was over we would be through with the combination platter of Stephenie Meyers and the movies. Unfortunately this is not the case.

The Host bases its story on a science fiction precept that aliens have invaded earth and taken over human bodies. The aliens, tentacled glowworms, are inserted into humans and take over the bodies, destroying the personalities of the human host (the film doesn’t say who performed the first surgery, since the glowworms obviously have no opposable thumbs). Some human citizens have become rebel factions, hiding out in the desert against these new invaders. Even a few who have been overtaken don’t take kindly to their new way of life, with their minds still active but trapped by the invading being called "souls" in the movie (ugh). One of these soon-to-be-disgruntled humans is Melanie (Saoirse Ronan), who is living a nomadic life with her young brother when she is chanced upon by another survivor, Jared (Max Irons). For a time they live in the lonely outback away from civilization and the film doesn’t say how, but Melanie is soon captured and invaded by a being who is closemouthed and wants to be called the Wanderer. Be sure to remember that--it is Wanderer with a capital W.

Wanderer is interrogated by a Seeker (Diane Kruger, another Capital Letter Alien), who wants to find out where the other rebels are hiding. Since at this point in the story, Wanderer/Melanie only knows of the existence of two other rebels, the importance the Seeker puts into her interrogation seems inflated to me. We the audience see that Melanie’s personality has not disappeared, and in fact still exists in her body, trying to coerce Wanderer not to give away the location of where her brother and lover might be. This internal struggle causes Wanderer to escape, fighting with Melanie's personality to save Melanie’s human friends and family, yet also maintain both Melanie and Wanderer’s own survival. She locates the desert caverns where her brother and, she finds, others are hiding: her uncle Jeb (William Hurt) and a few hot guys who alternately want her blood or her bod--Melanie’s lover Jared who distrusts her now that she has been overtaken by Wanderer, and Ian (Jake Abel) who also is distrustful but I guess becomes aroused enough to eventually defend and fall in love with the personality of Wanderer.

Wanderer lives with the rebels, with some defending her and others wary of her, but hot on her heels is Seeker. Seeker and the other aliens eventually track her down and Wanderer gives up a lot to save her friends.

QWERTY

This indie romance focuses on the relationship between two outsiders. An oddball guy Marty (Eric Hailey) working as a security guard at a mall loses it when he complains about a $50 pair of trendy underwear, thus losing his job. But a quirky customer Zoe (Dana Pupkin) defends him and they start a romance despite his apparent misanthropic personality.

Zoe works at the DMV sniffing out licentious license plate numbers/words to revoke, and gets Marty a new job at the complaint desk where his pessimistic character is fulfilled. She eventually reveals her love of the word game Scrabble despite being shy about joining a Scrabble club at a library. Each brings out the unfulfilled character of the other.

But as expected, there are obstacles.  Zoe brings Marty home to meet the family but it doesn't go well as even she doesn't get along with them. Marty begins to feel like an outsider again, although he encourages Zoe to indulge her love of Scrabble, enough so that she gets over her shyness and enters a Scrabble championship, where she goes up against the narcisstic defender of the title. Filmed in Chicago.

I'll Come Running

I think is hard to categorize this movie as it has elements of an independent, foreign, romance, drama, and light comedy script. I would categorize it most as an independent drama.

A Danish tourist, Pelle (Jon Lange) is in Texas with a couple friends. They are at a Mexican chain-type restaurant where they flirt briefly with the waitresses, one whom forms a quick bond. Veronica (Melonie Diaz) claims not to be able to pronounce Pelle's name so nicknames him Milhouse from The Simpsons cartoon TV show character (Milhouse is sort of a geek/milquetoast) after they have some repartee about that show. Pelle in turn nicknames her Lisa, also a character from The Simpsons, and they address each other with these names throughout this story.

Pelle gets a message from a friend at home, Soren (Christian Tafdrup), who has gotten a job for him, so Pelle decides to cut his vacation short as his vacationing friends move on. He changes his flight but has a day more before his flight leaves, so Veronica/Lisa and her roommate invite Pelle to a party, after which Pelle/Milhouse stays the night since he has nowhere to stay. He and Veronica have some casual sex and bond a little over the next day or so, but Veronica often reminds him about the impermanency of their relationship, and gets him to get in a cab to return to the airport.

Unfortunately a tragedy happens and despite Veronica's knowing very little about Pelle (not even his real name) she impulsively goes to Denmark, and manages to get inside his apartment. His friend Soren is dismayed to learn the bad news and can't seem to get over it. He seems to have his heart on his sleeve in a way about Pelle. Soren embellishes Veronica's relationship to Pelle's parents, making her more important in Pelle's life than she was.

Les Visiteurs du Soir (The Devil's Envoys)

This French film from the 1940s has a feel similar to La Belle et le Bete, the Jean Cocteau version of Beauty and the Beast, although less fantastical.

The plot concerns two disciples of the devil, Gilles and Dominique (Alain Cuny and Arletty), in the Middle Ages. They aim to destroy the relationships of some humans, probably because they are bored and have nothing better to do, but mostly at the devil's whim. It appears they have blood contracts with the devil so can't escape their plight. They play the part of traveling minstrels, sent to the castle of a widowed Baron (Fernand Ledoux) whose daughter, Anne (Marie Dea), is engaged to be married to Renaud. Renaud (Marcel Herrand) seems to value Anne only as a thing to be conquered, so when Gilles sings mournful love songs at a pre-wedding banquet, Anne can't help but be drawn to him instead. In a sequence where Dominique stops time (she's actually a woman who masquerades as Gilles' brother/minstrel partner), she and Gilles take Renaud and Anne out to the garden where each seduces their respective prey. Later Dominique also plays up the Baron, revealing to each of her men that she is really a woman.

The lustful Renaud as expected takes to Dominique quite readily, and doesn't even want to be reminded he has a wedding soon. The Baron though, still faithful to the memory of his dead wife, finally allows himself to succumb to Dominique's charms and feels protective of her.  Anne and Gilles' relationship is more serious, as Gilles really does fall in love with Anne. Then the devil himself appears (Jules Berry) in the guise of a lord seeking shelter from a storm, creating machinations so that Gilles and Anne are caught together, thus sentencing Gilles to death. Meanwhile, both the Baron and Renaud duel over Dominique. Anne promises to marry the devil if he will release Gilles from his blood contract.

Strictly Ballroom

Usually I am not a fan of really broad comedies. I think this '90s film comes from a time when Australia's comedies were mostly of the broad type, at least the ones I saw that came my way. But there is also a romance and music and dancing, creating appeal across many fronts. It is a film by Baz Luhrmann, part of his Red Curtain trilogy (along with Romeo & Juliet and Moulin Rouge), and based on a stage musical he made in the '80s.

The plot concerns the competitive ballroom dancer Scott (Paul Mercurio). For all his life he has trained as a ballroom dancer, a culture that is a big part of several generations of his family. His parents, Shirley and Doug (Pat Thompson, Barry Otto), also were competitive when they were younger and now run a dancing academy. Among the hopefuls is the amateur Fran (Tara Morice), an ugly duckling who knows she can never match the glamour of the ballroom. When Scott tries to include new showier steps in his performances that are outside of the standard rules of the ballroom community, he is pressured into following the rules by his manager Les (Peter Whitford), the competition head Barry (Bill Hunter), and other dancers.

But Fran sees him practicing his new steps and Scott is grudgingly convinced to have her as a temporary partner since no one else wants to risk dancing with him. He also meets Fran's father, a notable flamenco dancer (Antonio Vargas), who helps Scott perfect his paso doble. Scott later finds out something about his own father and a shared dream that he now has the opportunity to make real.

One From the Heart

This unusual musical drama was directed and co-written by Francis Ford Coppola.  The lore is this initially low-budget film ended up costing FFC $25 million, and many of his films in the next decade or two were used to pay off debts incurred in the making of this film.

Frederic Forrest and Teri Garr are an unmarried couple who are feeling the dullness of their relationship creeping up on them. The setting is Las Vegas, where Frannie works at a travel office. We see she fantasizes about the tropical locales she advertises, wanting a romantic holiday and a man to match. Although Hank works as a mechanic, he too has a dreamy side as he collects discarded casino decorations, his latest acquisition is a big ruby ring.

On the July 4th weekend, Frannie wants something romantic, but Hank can’t offer her much. They argue, and she goes off in a huff to commiserate with her friend (Lanie Kazan). Hank’s coworker (Harry Dean Stanton) also commiserates with him and they visit a casino where Hank sees a beautiful circus performer, Leila (Nastassja Kinski) who wants to escape the drudgery of her job. Frannie is swept up by an attractive man, Ray, whom she finds out later is a waiter with dreams of being a lounge singer (Raul Julia). Both Frannie and Hank have found an exotic and temporary lover, who might run away with them.

Liberal Arts

The synopsis of this movie, 35-year old returns to his alma mater and falls for a 19-year old, would probably draw in the wrong sort of audience. At its base, this story is about the fear of growing old, as well as also about connecting with people and experiencing life instead of sequestering oneself in books or nostalgia.

A New York college advisor Jesse (actor, director and writer Josh Radnor) is invited by an old professor (Richard Jenkins) to speak at his farewell dinner. This gives Jesse the opportunity to visit the campus of his alma mater in Ohio, where he feels nostalgic for what he considers were good times there—where once he could allow his thinking to be free and not be shackled by what he now sees are adult cares and worries and closemindedness. He meets a young woman, Zibby (Elizabeth Olsen) who is the daughter of his professor’s friends. They get to talking about books, and Zibby’s studies in improvisation and music theory shows she has an open mind to these liberal discussions about literature. The two begin to bond through discussion of books. At first everything seems innocent, but soon Jesse feels a little out of touch and even a little old as he observes Zibby with her friends and her casual and friendly manner toward him, despite their age difference. She makes an honest play for him romantically which unnerves him and he escapes back to NYC.

At the same time, Jesse sees another old professor (Allison Janney), whom he also admired as someone who opened his mind to classic romantic novelists. But she is now jaded. Jenkins’ character also feels as if he made a mistake in choosing to retire, and wants to return to his job. Jesse also meets another student, Dean, an outsider genius type who suffered a breakdown the previous year. Jesse can understand Dean’s standoffishness with other “normal” students, in his own attitude about being a bit snobby about literature, which is tested when he finds Zibby reads trashy vampire novels. Zac Efron also has a role as a non-student, an atypical character who offers weird but sage advice that Jesse takes.

Northanger Abbey (1987)

It seems like in recent years it’s been pretty hard to ruin any Jane Austen adaptation. Most likely, truncating the length of the novel to fit the length of a feature film or the right casting might be the hardest thing to do. In earlier years many of these adaptations were shown in America on PBS, including this one of Northanger Abbey. I remember seeing it there years ago (this one is from the 1980s), but I haven’t read the book nor know much about it. The plot concerns a young woman who reads gothic novels and fantasizes about them. If this script were to be transported to a modern day setting, it would unfortunately show how weakly developed the characters are and how poor a script this is, pushing forward romantic elements instead of character and relationship development. From what I have read about it, the Austen book was supposed to make fun of the gothic novels of the day. This tv movie though, gives no indication that we are sharing an inside joke.  It's the oddest adaptation I've seen.

Step Up Revolution

This is part of a group of movies called Step Up which has dancing as part of its plot; this is the fourth one and I have not seen any of the others.  The movies often follow a basic formula: the dancers come from urban backgrounds, there is a romantic couple that is divided by the plot of the story, there is some other urban issue, but there is always a happy ending.  And of course, lots of dancing!

In Revolution, the most central character is Sean (Ryan Guzman) whose dayjob is as a waiter at an upscale Miami hotel owned by real estate mogul Bill Anderson (Peter Gallagher). Sean and his friends, which include a few who work with him at the hotel, have an underground flash mob dance group called The Mob. They currently remain anonymous and are trying to win an internet contest by getting the most viewer hits on their videos.

Sean sees a pretty girl at the beach, Emily Anderson (Kathryn McCormick), neither at first knowing their respective connections to Bill Anderson. When Sean learns who her father is, he keeps that fact from his friends, especially when Anderson fires Sean's friend Eddie for being late and Eddie becomes resentful and in a dance segment attacks Anderson as being a fatcat.

Later the friends learn that Anderson is buying up riverside property to develop more hotels, which currently house small businesses by local citizens. The Mob decides to move their target from winning a contest to making a statement, and try to draw attention to the needs of the small business owners and local residents, and sabotage Anderson's meetings about his real estate development.

The Sentiment of the Flesh

Be prepared to open your mind!  In this French film, an anatomical/medical illustrator Helena (Annabelle Hettmann) meets an internist Benoit (Thibault Vinçon) when she goes for x-rays for back pain. He claims the spine x-rays are inconclusive so uses a more advanced machine, which she comes to realize is his way of seeing her, much as a painter will see his subject in his own particular way.

They start an affair where the physical knowing of each other becomes, literally, more than skin deep--he does an MRI to view her internally--and then she convinces him to "know" her in an extreme and dangerous way.

Moments of Love

Moments of Love as was I expected.  Like its title, the dialogue wasn't very deep and most of its production values reminded me of a telenovella.  It’s a romantic drama from the Philippines, and its core love story is between two characters who live in different times.

Marco is on vacation in a countryside bed and breakfast with a couple of friends.  One day an old woman, Rosa, pushes him out of the way of a speeding car and she gets knocked over.  She remains in a coma while Marco feels guilty to be a survivor.  The old woman's granddaughter Lianne is distraught but warms up romantically to Marco.  Rosa's daughter--Lianne's mother--at the beginning is angry that her mother insisted on coming to this area but she too realizes the accident is not Marco's fault.

At the bed and breakfast Marco tries to make a phone call on an old telephone, and somehow he is connected to a woman living in 1957--Divinna.  Her father owned the plantation business the bed and breakfast sits on, which in her time was her family's home.  Divinna's father has promised her in marriage to the landownder to pay off debts, but the fiance is a selfish brute.  Divinna and Marco talk to each other about their mutual concerns, at first not realizing they are in different times.  Soon Marco figures things out and makes Divinna promise to meet him in 2006.

Bluebeard (2009)

This French film is directed by Catherine Breillat, a filmmaker known for using sexual themes involving (usually) young women/girls.

Two sets of sisters relate the story of Bluebeard, the murderous wife killer of the old fairy tale. In the sisters of 1950s France, the younger of the two, Catherine, seems to know how to push her older sister Marie-Anne's buttons as they explore an attic in a country cottage. Catherine daringly taunts her about the story of Bluebeard, which scares Marie-Anne. The film goes back and forth between these girls and the girls of the fairy tale they are reading, which takes place in medieval times.

In the medieval story, teen sisters Anne and Marie-Catherine have just lost their father and since they are female, the well-being of their futures are dependent on marriage. As in the 1950s story, it is the younger sister, Marie-Catherine (Lola Creton), who is the central figure. She sees Bluebeard's castle in the distance and is captivated by the stories of him and the many wives who have disappeared without a trace. This doesn't scare her. In fact, when Bluebeard (Dominique Thomas) offers marriage to her or her sister despite knowing they have no dowries, Marie-Catherine is pleased to take the chance.

Titanic

Admittedly I have never watched this film before in its entirety, just snippets here and there, and have absorbed all the pop culture references the entertainment industry have made about the Celine Dion theme song, or Leo DiCaprio’s proclamation that he’s “king of the world!”

This year the film is being re-released, in 3D, I assume for both the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, as well as production company Paramount, who made this film. The 3D is most readily visible in shots of the underwater wreck and the modern day story, and the early scenes on the ship, but disappointingly, during the spectacular hour long section when the ship slowly sinks, there were not many 3D elements that I could make out at all. (This portion of the film does not need 3D to make it any more exciting and believable, so I would suggest you skip the upgrade to 3D if possible.)

Do we all know this film by now? The modern day story that frames the historic love story is about a treasure hunter (Bill Paxton) who has found the long-wrecked Titanic, and hopes to find a noted blue diamond that he believes sunk with the ship. An old woman (Gloria Stuart) sees a news report and contacts him. She is Rose, who was a young woman when her fiancé gave her that diamond while they were on board the Titanic. Her story brings us back over 80 years to when she was 17 (played by the perfectly casted Kate Winslet), betrothed much against her wishes to the dastardly Cal (Billy Zane, figuratively twirling his mustaches in every scene). Due to the death of Rose’s father, her mother Ruth (Frances Fisher) hopes to make this lucrative match so that she and her daughter will be set up financially and remain in high society.

Meanwhile, Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio), a young, poor American adventurer and artist, is on his way back home from Paris. He gambles for and wins two tickets for the Titanic in a poker game, allowing him and his Italian friend Fabrizio (Danny Nucci) to gain entrance to the doomed ship bound for America.

Eat, Pray, Love

Gag, Pray for a quick death, and Hated this movie! Another self-indulgent American is dissatisfied with her life, and thinks the answer lies in things outside of herself.

This movie, based on a book, stars Julia Roberts as a woman searching for meaning in her life, and who decides to globetrot the world to find it.

Free event: Casablanca

It’s Oscars month at Transistor, the vinyl record store! March films (all free!) have been winners of this prestigious but often contentiously disputed award. First up is an easy one we can all agree on—Casablanca, which I am ashamed to say I have not seen!

Casablanca
Monday, March 5 , 2012
8:00 p.m.
Transistor
3819 N. Lincoln Avenue, Chicago