Your Sister's Sister

The story begins a year after Jack's brother has died. Jack (Mark Duplass) hears his friends revering his brother at a gathering but angrily insists they didn't really know him as he knew the whole picture and said he was a bully too. His best friend Iris (Emily Blunt), who was the brother's ex girlfriend, says he needs some space so tells him to go up her family cabin to be alone, which he does.

 There he meets her sister Hannah (Rosemarie Dewitt) who also decided to go there to be alone, to nurse the pain of a breakup. That evening they commiserate, mostly about her, and end up having drunk sex, even though Hannah is a lesbian.

The next day Iris decides to visit on a whim and the threesome spend the weekend together in the cabin and many sibling emotions, good and bad, come to the surface.

Snow White and the Huntsman

This version of Snow White follows on the heels of the comedic but slight version starring Julia Roberts earlier this spring. In this version, the storyline follows a little bit more of the original source story and remains a dark fairy tale, but doesn't quite live up to its premise.

Kristen Stewart plays Snow White, whose father remarries when he is enchanted, magically or otherwise, by the beautiful Ravenna (Charlize Theron). Ravenna kills him and takes over the kingdom, and banishes Snow White to a dungeon where she is kept for a decade. Meanwhile, Ravenna continues to kill virgins to suck their souls and eats the hearts of birds, both to keep herself forever youthful. She is abetted by her brother Finn (Sam Spruell) who is more a minion than a beloved sibling. She is also advised by her magical mirror that when Snow White comes of age, she will be more beautiful than Ravenna, which convinces Ravenna that now is the time to take Snow White's heart to keep her eternally young. Thus when Snow White escapes her prison, Ravenna sends the Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth) after her.

He follows her into what is know as the Dark Forest, but Snow White's goodness protects her from the insiduous magic there.  Later, she and the Huntsman are befriended by some dwarf miners (there are eight of them), and she is able to draw out a magical elk in the fairy's forest, something that has not happened before. It is Snow White's goodness which is strong enough to defeat the queen. Snow White rallies her father's old friend the duke, who is the father of her childhood friend William, to support her cause.

Past seven days

Did you see my comparison of Snow White and the Huntsman and Mirror, Mirror?  Two very different movies.  I didn't get to Moonrise Kingdom, it was all sold out!  (A good sign!)

The Chinese Feast
Snow White and the Huntsman
Strings
Venice
Your Sister's Sister

Snow White and the Huntsman vs. Mirror, Mirror

I thought I'd compare two recent movies about Snow White, one which is still on current screens.

Get the Gringo

This is a new Mel Gibson film, but was released in May through video-on-demand via DirecTV and not traditional theatres (at least for now).

The plot involves an American lifetime criminal played by Gibson, who is unnamed (but known in the credits as The Driver) who with his partner has apparently stolen a huge amount of money right by the Mexican border.  He crashes his getaway car through the fence dividing the U.S. and Mexico. Mexico is well-known for its corrupt police forces, so the Mexican officers see the stacks of money and innocently state they will take this case, now that the robbers are on their soil. They throw the Driver into a prison called El Pueblito (modeled after real prisons in Mexico). El Pueblito, as per its name, is a little town, where you can buy anything, has many services--even illegal ones, and as a character says, “the world’s worst mall” is an apt description of this setting. Prisoners can also pay to have their families live with them, so that the family unit can stay together (yeah, I don’t know who thought this was a good thing nor how it punishes the prisoner). 
Driver bides his time to make an escape, by observing everyone and studying the hierarchy in El Pueblito.  Despite its restrictive setting, there is a lot of money moving around El Pueblito, much of it passing through the hands of a big shot criminal, Javi (Daniel Gimenez Cacho), who gets to come and go as he pleases and takes his cut off every deal that goes on. His lackeys are his brother and cousin.

Another guy, Bill (Dean Norris), some sort of shady government lawyer, tries to get Driver out of prison in trade for a cut of the money that was stolen. But Driver is not interested in working with anyone but himself.

Other key characters are a widow and her son (Dolores Heredia, Kevin Hernandez, known as the kid and the kid’s mother). The kid sees Driver observing everyone, as well as Driver's ingenious robbery of a drug dealer during a fire, and the Driver grudgingly takes the kid under his wing. The kid reveals a hatred of Javi due to Javi having his father killed for a despicable reason, that threatens the kid’s life too, but ironically Javi protects the kid’s life, at least for now. The Driver eventually mentors him as a father figure and helping him defeat Javi.