Past seven days

Gearing up for the holiday weekend, but it was a pretty full week of movies.  Happy Thanksgiving to you!

The Big Lebowski
Dallas Buyers Club
Inside Llewyn Davis
Kuroneko (A Black Cat in a Bamboo Grove)
North By Northwest
The Reivers
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013)
Singin' in the Rain
Standing Silent Nation
Strangers in the Night
A Touch of Sin

Personal Services

I think the British do this sort of comedy well (although there are dramatic elements in the story too). This is a slightly odd movie and perhaps not for all tastes due to its plot and main character (and the poster!)  It is inspired by the real life story of a famous English brothel owner, here played by Julie Walters, but not a biopic. (She is the only actor I really know in this one.)

At first we see Christine works as a waitress but also tries to make some money on the side by renting out several of her apartments to prostitutes. This is not working so well as since the working women are not paying her, she is herself owing money to her landlords. Christine’s apartments run from the seedy to the glamorous. She also at times will give sex to pay a debt. She does all this to be able to afford a good school for her son, being a single parent, as well as trying to live up to her family's expectations, who have always thought less of her. (One would consider her low class or common.)

When Christine's money troubles become too much, she kicks out her prostitutes and goes into business for herself, making a niche business by catering to the slightly kinky tastes of middle-aged husbands and businessmen. Although Christine is open to sex with strangers for money, she is a bit of a novice, not knowing for instance some slang terms for certain sex acts. She and a couple of middle-aged waitress friends continue to do this until she becomes so successful as to afford to buy her own house where she continues to serve these sorts of men, until the law catches up with her.

The Book Thief

The new film The Book Thief doesn't focus too much on the war and Nazi stuff, although World War 2 is its setting.  Instead the main character is a young girl whose life is disrupted by the war, bringing her to a new community where she finds acceptance.  

In 1938, Liesel (Sophie Nelisse) is adopted out to a couple, Hans and Rosa (Geoffrey Rush, Emily Watson).  It seems that her mother cannot afford to take care of her and her brother anymore.  During the train ride to her new home, her brother dies, which perturbs Rosa as she doesn't consider Liesel very valuable on her own (that is my impression although the film doesn't really say).  The couple are poor--Rosa takes in washing and Hans does sign painting when there is some.

Liesel, who is illiterate, is picked on at her new school but befriended by her schoolmate/neighbor Rudy.  He instantly falls for her.  Liesel insists that being illiterate does not mean she is dumb and we can see she is canny about what she says and observes a lot.  Rosa is a bit prickly with Liesel at first, but as the film goes on, warms up to her as the girl lives with them for several years, calling them mama and papa.  Hans is more nurturing and gentle, and sees that Liesel cannot read, so takes a roundabout approach to help her without making her feel embarrassed.  This awakens in Liesel a desire to read as much as she can.

Elsewhere, a young Jewish man Max (Ben Schnetzer) escapes being rounded up by German soldiers, as his mother sacrifices so he can escape.  Because Hans owes Max's family a great moral debt, he hides Max in Liesel's room, then in the basement, where Hans has painted alphabets on the walls to encourage Liesel's education.  She and Max share an affinity for the poetry of words.

A local politician's wife sees Liesel steal a book and when Rosa sends some laundry via Liesel to this customer, instead of being outed by her as a book thief, the woman invites Liesel to read in her private library whenever she likes.

Past seven days

Busy with other things this week so not a lot of movie watching...did manage to catch a few new ones though.

About Time
Hello, Herman
Nebraska
Philomena

Past seven days

Catching up mostly on Sunday made for a decent one-movie-per-one-day week

Charlie Countryman
Evidence
Fred Won't Move Out
Hunky Dory
In the Light of Reverence
Patton Oswalt: Finest Hour
The Search (Father's Chair)

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.

Past seven days

The Chicago International Children's Film Festival has ended.  I was able to catch a bunch of short films and I think just one feature, an animated movie.  There were some pretty good short documentaries with many issues facing kids of all cultures and economic status.

All Passion Spent
The Book Thief
Children Who Chase Lost Voices
The Day That Lasted 21 Years
Dog Soldiers
Family 4 Ever short film program
Green Butchers
Jolene
My Life as McDull
Outlook: Asia short film program
Shape Shifters short film program
Walachai
What's Cookin' short film program

Management

A long time ago there was an afterschool special-type movie on TV about the dangers of hitchhiking. A teen girl hitchhiking alone was raped, and subsequently the guy got off because she was dressed "provacatively."

This movie begins with a similar concept although the outcome is definitely different, as it is a romantic comedy. Jennifer Aniston is a traveling saleslady Sue, selling cheesy corporate/hotel art, and stays at Mike's (Steve Zahn) motel. He finds her attractive, but doesn't really know how to approach her so pretends to give her a motel welcome gift of wine which for some reason she shares with him. This happens again the next night, and after Mike expresses how attractive her behind is, Sue allows him to cop a feel. Ugh!

So based on this vaguely creepy meet-cute, Sue returns home and Mike has misguided feelings so that he pursues her several times, despite her returning to her ex-punk rocker boyfriend Jango (Woody Harrelson). Jango's rich but I don't see what else she sees in him. It boils down to Sue wanting the safe life over apparently true love.

Mike then goes on a spiritual quest to forget Sue but there is little doubt how this story is going to end.