Review: Mama Mia! Here We Go Again (2018)

* * *
Director: Ol Parker
Starring: Amanda Seyfried, Lily James, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgard, Christine Baranski, Julie Walters

The Mama Mia movies are the sort of works that force you to examine your own taste in art. In a purely objective sense, you're aware that they're not "good" and that, in fact, they don't even really come close to the normal standard of what makes a movie good. They are, if you are being brutally honest with yourself, barely movies at all in any traditional sense. Their narratives are thin as air, existing merely to connect a series of songs to each other, not always accomplishing that in the most elegant of ways. And yet. Isn't the aim of art to stir something in the audience, to touch some emotion and heighten it through the experience of consuming it? If the goal of the work is to bring the audience joy and it succeeds in doing so then isn't it, by definition, a "success" even if it does so in a fashion that might generously be described as "clumsy." This is all a round about way of saying that Mama Mia! Here We Go Again is as terrible and wonderful as the first film and I loved every minute of it.

Review: The Post (2017)

* * * 1/2
Director: Steven Spielberg
Starring: Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks

The Post is not a movie that will surprise you, but there's pleasure to be had in a classic tale told in a classic fashion. Is it accurate to the way things actually happened? I'm sure the New York Times would have something to say about that, and in the end I'm not sure that it matters, unless you want to split hairs over whether plot or theme represent what a film is truly about. What it tells is a well crafted story, one which is engrossing and often rousing, and which has been fashioned in a way to make it as relevant to the moment that we're currently living in as possible, even as it hits all of the expected beats. It leads with its talent - which is, of course, considerable both off screen and on, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks - and lets that do most of the work. After all, how wrong could a movie with that triumvirate go? I'd say it doesn't really go wrong at all.

Review: Florence Foster Jenkins (2016)

* * *
Director: Stephen Frears
Starring: Meryl Streep, Hugh Grant

There's something to be said for the no stakes drama. Like anything else, when done right, it offers its own particular pleasures, even if those pleasures are short-term and the film itself is destined to fade away from your consciousness rather than stick. Florence Foster Jenkins is pretty much exactly the movie you expect it to be: a handsomely assembled period piece, anchored by a typically effortless seeming performance from Meryl Streep (the kind that makes it so easy to take her for granted as an actress), that goes down easy and doesn't present much in the way of a challenge. If you were to describe it as a simple movie about a nice lady who thinks she can sing but actually can't, you wouldn't be wrong. But I would be remiss if I didn't mention how charming it is, how funny, and how sweet. It's not groundbreaking, but it's genuinely entertaining.

Review: Ricki and the Flash (2015)

* * *
Director: Jonathan Demme
Starring: Meryl Streep

To rate a movie like Ricki and the Flash is to consider it on a special scale. Fact is, you don't really see a movie like this for the story, which you can safely assume will follow a fairly familiar trajectory (and in the very particular case of this film, the trailer pretty guaranteed that it would do just that), and which promises you nothing more than that. You see a movie like Ricki and the Flash to see Meryl Streep as a rock singer. The story around that is basically secondary, especially if it's going to be a perfunctory family drama. As written by Diablo Cody and directed by Jonathan Demme, Ricki and the Flash does offer a couple of minor surprises, but ultimately the film is exactly what you expect it to be. And that's okay.

Review: Into the Woods (2014)

* *
Director: Rob Marshall
Starring: James Corden, Emily Blunt, Meryl Streep, Anna Kendrick

Once upon a time, there was a giant who lived in the sky with his wife, minding their own business, causing no harm to anyone. Then one day a boy climbed up a beanstalk and began regularly committing home invasions and absconding with their belongings. When the giant attempted to take back what belonged to him, he was killed. When his wife attempted get justice for her husband, she was swarmed and beaten, and her killers lived happily ever after on the proceeds of her stolen goods. The end. It's a bad sign when you end a film in sympathy with the characters you're told are the villains and somewhat bored with the ones who are supposed to be the heroes. Yet that's how I felt by the time the final curtain dropped in Into the Woods, a two hour and four minute film that manages to feel about twice as long as it is, and like its story both drags and is too abrupt all at the same time.

Review: Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)

* * * *
Director: Wes Anderson
Starring: George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman

Fantastic Mr. Fox so perfectly exemplifies Wes Anderson's storytelling and visual style that it's amazing that it took him 5 films to get there. Adapted from the children's book by Roald Dahl, the film allows Anderson to indulge in both the homemade aesthetic that typically informs his work as well as the thematic concern over relationships between sons and father (or father figures) which comes up time and again in his films. Funny, charming, and beautifully rendered, Fantastic Mr. Fox is easily one of Anderson's best films - and I say that as someone whose feelings about pretty much all of his films are positive.

Review: August: Osage County (2013)

* * *
Director: John Wells
Starring: Julia Roberts, Meryl Streep, Ewan McGregor, Chris Cooper, Margo Martindale, Julianne Nicholson, Juliette Lewis, Dermot Mulroney, Abigail Breslin, Benedict Cumberbatch, Misty Upham

As Tolstoy said, happy families are all alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Few have been as intensely and vocally unhappy as the Weston clan, forced together against their will and then stuck in the claustrophobic atmosphere of the family home. With its heavy subject matter, a cast stacked with familiar names (and a few Oscar wins between them), and a theatrical release date that was smack in the middle of prestige season, August: Osage County is a film that has a lot of built in expectations, perhaps too many not to sink at least a little bit. I skipped this one when it was in theaters, as mixed reviews made it seem non-essential, and end of the year movie fatigue started to set in, but had I seen it in the theater I expect I wouldn't have liked it as much as I did seeing it now, without having to look through the "Oscar lens" that gets applied to almost every film released towards the end of any given year. Don't get me wrong: August: Osage County is not a great movie. But it's a solid, good movie.

Netflix Recommends... Rendition (2007)

* 1/2
Director: Gavin Hood
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Reese Witherspoon, Meryl Streep

This time my Top 10 recommendations included the following movies: Get the Gringo, Listen to Your Heart, Rendition, Retreat and Down Periscope. I went with Rendition, a film featuring a trio of talented actors, and which I vaguely remembered as one of several "war on terror" themed prestige films to come out in 2007 without making much in the way of a lasting impact (the other films were Lions for Lambs, In the Valley of Elah, and Charlie Wilson's War). Having now seen it, I understand why it didn't make much of an impact. This is a film that presents as a work of political import which aims to hold the US government accountable for dangerous and ugly policies, but which, on close inspection, does quite a bit to uphold the values which it supposedly abhors.

Review: Hope Springs (2012)

* * *
Director: David Frankel
Starring: Meryl Streep, Tommy Lee Jones, Steve Carell

There are a few things which, as a rule, Hollywood movies don't do. One is to centre a narrative on older characters and another is to deal frankly with issues of sex. Hope Springs does both and, while it isn't in any way a "risky" or groundbreaking movie, there is a kind of unflinching honesty to it that is rarely found in mainstream fare. It's far from perfect (and maybe wraps things up just a touch too easily) but there is a lot of value to the piece, including but not limited to the great performances by its two leads.

Review: The Iron Lady (2011)

* 1/2
Director: Phyllida Lloyd
Starring: Meryl Streep

I'll get it out of the way right off the top: Meryl Streep is fantastic playing Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady. Unfortunately, revelatory as the performance may be, it is the only reason the film exists. Written by Abi Morgan and directed by Phyllida Lloyd, The Iron Lady is a frustratingly shapeless film that tries to disguise the fact that it has nothing to say by telling its story in an elliptical way and leaving it to Streep to do all the heavy lifting - well, her and the makeup crew. At least they received Oscar nominations for their trouble.

The Best Picture Countdown #58: Out of Africa (1985)

Note: this post has been modified from a previously published post

Director: Sydney Pollack
Starring: Meryl Streep, Robert Redford

Out of Africa is the kind of sweeping epic that doesn’t get made much anymore (at least not well). It has prestige and – dare I say it? – class written all over it and manages somehow to overcome the burdens of a problematic genre to live up to its initial promise. There are reasons why I feel that I shouldn’t like this movie: the “other” culture seen through the eyes of a white protagonist, the white protagonist coded as good by being the sole champion of non-white peoples, and the trope “noble savage,” just to name a few. However, despite those elements, the movie really works for me and I adore it unabashedly.

The film is based on the life of Karen Blixen (Meryl Streep), who wrote under the pen name Isak Dinesen and was a member of the Danish aristocracy. After losing out on marrying the man that she really wanted, she settles for his brother, Bror (Klaus Maria Brandauer) and together they move to Kenya where they are set to run a plantation. The marriage is rocky from the beginning: Karen grows increasingly irritated as she watches her spendthrift husband blow through her money, make bad business decisions which leave the plantation haemorrhaging more money, and making little secret of the fact that he’s seeing other women behind her back. Karen makes the best of it, taking control of the management of the plantation and trying to salvage something from it, and making a real effort to make her marriage work. When it becomes clear that even the fact that he’s given her syphilis (which in turn renders her unable to bear children) won’t make Bror think twice about cheating, she finally calls an end to the marriage.

There are two other men who play important roles in Karen’s life: Farah (Malick Bowens), her servant and friend, and Denys, a British big game hunter who becomes Karen’s lover and is played by Robert Redford with absolutely no attempt at an accent (and, really, why would he? At that point in Redford’s career it would have been distracting to see him attempting an accent). Denys and Karen have an intense attraction to each other both physically and intellectually, but the relationship ultimately leaves both wanting. Karen wants some kind of commitment from Denys, wants, at least in this one way, to be like every other woman around her. Denys wants the freedom to come and go as he pleases, to be alone when he wants to be alone. Karen is more hurt by Denys’ desire to be alone than she ever was by Bror’s infidelities, and this incompatibility eventually drives them apart.

As played by Streep, Karen is a woman of considerable spirit, one who endures much but never succumbs to self-pity. She likes having a man around – first Bror, then Denys – but she shows time and again that she doesn’t need one because she’s more than capable of taking care of herself. She’s independent and able to pursue what she wants with an aggression that’s foreign to the women around her, which some find admirable and others find frustrating and, we can assume, unladylike; yet, at the same time, she longs to fit in through a traditional relationship. Redford is a good foil for her, playing a man who is only willing, or perhaps only capable, of giving so much of himself and their romantic chemistry is off the charts (if there was ever a sexier hair washing scene captured on film, I haven’t seen it).

Much of the film was shot on location in Kenya and director Sydney Pollack makes the most of the natural landscape. The film is beautifully photographed by David Watkin, who won the Oscar for Best Cinematography for his efforts, one of the seven that the film would ultimately take home. The production values of the film are top notch and it’s difficult to argue against the worthiness of those seven wins, even though that’s a sore spot for some because the year Out of Africa won is also the year that The Color Purple lost out in 11 categories. This fact has made Out of Africa’s Best Picture win somewhat controversial, which I think is unfair because it’s a really great and moving film. As far as I’m concerned, it’s one of the best Best Picture winners there is.

The Best Picture Countdown #52: Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)

Director: Robert Benton
Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Justin Henry, Meryl Streep

You probably couldn’t make a movie about divorce and custody issues today that is as straight forward as Robert Benton’s Kramer vs. Kramer. This very well-crafted story, adapted from a novel by Avery Corman, never descends to the level of melodrama but instead survives on the pure drama of an ordinary situation. It’s a family drama that is never schmaltzy, a character-driven film anchored by terrific performances from Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep.

Kramer vs. Kramer is the story of a failed marriage and its fallout. The husband is Ted Kramer (Hoffman), an ad exec whose life is all work until his wife Joanna (Streep) leaves him. Joanna goes away to find herself, leaving Ted to take care of their son, Billy (Justin Henry), by himself in a household that is at first chaotic, but eventually settles into a new routine. Though there is much anger in the house at first stemming from the fact that Ted’s work is suffering as a result of his increased responsibilities at home and from Billy missing his mother, father and son come to form a bond that allows them to create a new life together in Joanna’s absence.

Ted also forms a bond with Margaret (Jane Alexander), a neighbour who is also a single parent and who had encouraged Joanna to leave Ted if she wasn’t happy. As things begin to level out, Margaret sees the change in Ted and the way that he parents, but her attempt to express that falls on deaf ears when Joanna returns and fights Ted for custody of Billy. The battle quickly gets nasty as each gets torn to shreds by the other’s lawyer, eventually ending with Joanna being awarded custody. Since he doesn’t want Billy to have to testify, Ted decides not to appeal the decision and puts on a brave face for his son’s sake. However, when the day comes for Joanna to take Billy, she has a change of heart, realizing that he’s already where he belongs.

Kramer vs. Kramer proceeds in a very intelligent way and is incredibly in tune with its characters. There are moments of high drama – such as the fight between Ted and Billy over ice cream when Billy tells Ted that he hates him and a frustrated Ted replies, “I hate you back, you little shit!”; or the scene in which Billy falls off the jungle gym and Ted runs through traffic carrying him to get him to the hospital – but these moments are carefully calibrated so that they don’t reach the exaggerated level of melodrama. These scenes have such great impact because they feel so authentic and because the actors give such naturalistic performances. Hoffman won the first of his two Best Actor Oscars for this film and though Ted Kramer may not be as memorable a character as Ratso Rizzo, Dorothy Michaels, or Raymond Babbitt, it’s a testament to Hoffman’s skill as an actor that he can make this totally average guy dealing with average problems so compelling. Similarly, though Streep’s screen time is minimal, the impression she makes in this film is lasting. That final scene between their characters, when both have reached a point where they can and do put Billy first, is really extraordinary.

Kramer vs. Kramer is an interesting film not only for the strength of its performances, but also because it was made at a time when cultural notions about gender and parenting were shifting. The film reflects both the traditional line of thinking about the mother as the natural nurturer by having Joanna win the custody battle, but it also very effectively challenges the idea that the father can’t be the nurturer through its exploration of Ted and Billy's relationship. It takes this subject very seriously and it explores it in a full and ultimately very balanced way. If you’ve never seen Kramer vs. Kramer, I highly recommend it because it still holds up really well.

The Best Picture Countdown #51: The Deer Hunter (1978)

This post was contributed by Larry Taylor of The Movie Snob. Be sure to head over to his blog and enter his Oscar contest!

Director: Michael Cimino
Starring: Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, John Cazale, Meryl Streep

1978 was one of the more controversial years for the Academy Awards, thanks in most part to Jane Fonda. Fonda, one of the stars of Coming Home, an anti-Vietnam picture that brought Jon Voight an Oscar for Best Actor, was adamant in her support for the film winning Best Picture. But Coming Home would not win the biggest award; that would go to The Deer Hunter, Michael Cimino’s controversial, elaborate war drama that was criticized for its depiction of the Viet Cong. Fonda, or “Hanoi Jane” as she was called in those days, was a known sympathizer of the Vietnamese at the time, and was quite upset at what she felt was overt racism in the film. It is well documented now that the events depicted in The Deer Hunter, in the prisoner scenes specifically, were fictionalized. But why were they? We will get into that later.

Michael Cimino’s picture is a most unconventional war film for a number of reasons. Shot in a documentary style, it focuses on a tight-knit group of steel mill workers in Pennsylvania. As we open, there is a wedding on the horizon. It is merely days before some of this group of friends go to Vietnam to fight. Some will not be going. The group of friends includes Michael (Robert DeNiro) the stoic, defacto leader of the group, Stan (John Cazale), Steven (John Savage), Nick (Christopher Walken), and John (George Dzundza). Michael, Nick, and Steven are going to basic training in a few days, then off to Vietnam, but Steven is marrying Angela (Rutanya Alda) before they leave.

The wedding scene is famous in that it runs nearly the entire first hour. The first act revolves around these men, their brotherhood, and the looming discontent of the war and Steven leaving Angela to fight, all the while celebrating a marriage. Michael promises Linda (Meryl Streep) he will watch over Nick, and it is clear that Michael and Linda share a bond that transcends even her romance with Nick. After the wedding and the subsequent party, the group of friends travels to the mountains just out of town for one last hunt before they split. When they arrive, a dynamic to the group is set in stone. Michael will not let Stan – the least responsible of the bunch – borrow his extra boots on principle. Michael is a stern man, a good friend but not one who will let Stan get away with irresponsibility no matter how sympathetic Nick and the others may get. From the hunt we transition directly into a firefight in the jungles of Vietnam.

The opening war scene finds Michael, Nick, and Steven rejoining each other after a fight. The three men are then captured and taken to a prison camp along a river, where the most infamous moments of the picture take place. The prison camp is led by a ragtag group of Vietnamese mercenaries who spend their days betting on games of Russian roulette between the prisoners. While the men are held captive below the hut in waist-deep water, two men are pulled up at a time and forced into a game of roulette. If they refuse, they are sent into a cage almost completely immersed in river water, full of river rats and god knows what else, left to die. Michael knows the game, knows what is inevitable, and takes on his leadership role. This is the moment in the film where Nick, who had been a peripheral figure up until now, becomes more pivotal to the story.

Michael and Nick are pitted against each other in the game. The scene is horrific, tense, mentally crippling for both men. Michael appears to be losing his sanity, requesting not one but two bullets in the gun. Nick is wilting under the psychological torture. But it turns out that Michael has a plan with the two bullets and after some agonizingly tense moments of the game Michael fires on the soldiers, eventually killing them all. He picks up Nick, rescues Steven from the pit in the river, and the three men make their escape. The result of the events leave Steven paralyzed and Nick emotionally scarred beyond repair. But what about the controversy and this most pivotal scene in the entire picture?

The Viet Cong are clearly demonized in this scene. The leader, a shrill screaming man who slaps and intimidates the captive soldiers is a wicked villain, and the torturous psychological nature of the sequence is one of the most unsettling moments in film. But it is all done for a reason. Regardless of the argument that these roulette games never went on in the prison camps in Vietnam, Cimino directs this scene for very cinematic reasons. The emotional and psychological damage these soldiers inflict on the three men will forever change their lives, and the extremity of the situation only amplifies the rest of the film. It may not be fact, but cinema is a world for fiction, not fact. The Deer Hunter was never intended to be a factual retelling of an event in the war. It was intended to show the damage such hell can do to three men with three very different psyches.

Once the men return, they are forever changed. Michael is the first to arrive back home in Pennsylvania, but he decides against showing up for his welcome home party. He stays in a motel instead the first night, opting to come home early in the morning once the welcoming committee has diminished. He comes home to Linda, the only one around at the time, and the two share some touching moments. Michael is overwhelmed with guilt and consumed by the killing, and does not feel deserving of the party. He is also worried about Nick, who has not return from overseas. Nobody knows where he is. Steven, on the other hand, has sustained injuries that have confined him to a wheelchair. He is ashamed and living in a VA hospital, and does not want Angela to see him that way.

The rest of the film involves Michael’s re-acclimation into his life at home – he can no longer hunt deer the way he once could – and his search for Nick. He finds Nick in an underground roulette circuit. Nick has grown cold, distant. The life that was once behind his eyes has died. He plays roulette and wins money to send to Steven, but of course this cannot go on forever. Once Michael finds Nick, it is perhaps too late to save him. Christopher Walken won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor as Nick, and Walken – always an actor who utilizes the uniqueness of his face and his reactions – becomes the emotional center of the story, and the most damaged of the three men.

The Deer Hunter is an excellent Vietnam picture, regardless of the controversy surrounding the elements. Despite the ire of Fonda, The Deer Hunter won Best Picture and Best Director for Cimino, who would never reach the heights of this film again. The Deer Hunter is about the levels of damage that war can inflict on different people. It never mattered when these men left Vietnam, when they ended their service, the war would forever stay with them, unless they made their own choices to end the suffering. The emotional weight and scope of the picture is its most powerful element, and without the controversial scenes at the heart, there would be no resonance in Cimino’s vision.

Oscarstravaganza: Sophie's Choice

* * * *

Winner: Best Actress, 1982
Director: Alan J. Pakula
Starring: Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Peter MacNicol

Meryl Streep. The name just exudes excellence, doesn’t it? She now has 16 Oscar nominations under her belt, though it’s been 27 years since she actually won. That win came for Sophie’s Choice and however you feel about some of the performances for which she’s been nominated, you’d have a hard time making a case against that one. It’s a great performance and a great film.

Adapted from the novel by William Styron, Sophie’s Choice is constructed to tell its story via two narrators. The first is Stingo (Peter MacNicol), the exterior narrator who many years after the fact relates to us the story of how he came to know Sophie (Meryl Streep) and Nathan (Kevin Kline). The interior narrator is Sophie, who tells Stingo about her complicated and horrific past. They meet a few years after the close of World War II, when Stingo comes to New York in order to write his novel and moves into a rooming house where Sophie and Nathan occupy the upstairs rooms. He is immediately fascinated by them, by their obvious dysfunction (the first time he encounters them they’re having a knockdown, drag out fight) and their sad, peculiar glamour. Nathan in particular is like a character from an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, armed with a terrible, cutting wit, a keen intelligence and demons hidden close to the surface. Sometimes he is friendliness personified, other times he is a loose cannon who fires at will on both Sophie and Stingo.

In the midst of Nathan’s tumultuous moods Sophie and Stingo grow closer. He falls deeply in love with her but her ties to Nathan are too tight and her history is far too complicated for Stingo to ever be able to handle. He knows from the start that she spent time in a concentration camp, not for being Jewish but for being Polish and, he’s told, because her father and husband vocally opposed the Nazis. He learns later that this is a lie, that her father was actually a proud anti-Semite and supporter of the Nazis who was killed despite his views for being a member of the Polish intelligentsia. He also learns the story’s most famous plot point, that on her arrival at the camp Sophie was forced to choose between her son and daughter, condemning one immediately to death.

The title is something of a misnomer in that it is not just one choice that defines Sophie but many. Obviously there is the choice between her children from which psychologically and emotionally she never recovers. There is also the choice she makes in how she deals with her father’s legacy during and after the war. After Stingo discovers the truth Sophie admits to him that far from admiring her father, she despised him and his ideas. Nevertheless, once she is in the camp she attempts to use his legacy as leverage to get released, pleading her case to the Commandant and claiming to agree with Nazi policies towards the Jews. She chooses to set aside her morality in a desperate attempt at self-preservation, just as before going to the camp she chooses not to help the resistance fighters who ask for her help, just as she chooses to attempt to smuggle food to her sick mother – the crime that results in her and her children being sent to the camp in the first place. Finally, there is also the choice she makes to stay with Nathan despite the fact that he is on an obvious and quick path to destruction.

Streep’s performance as Sophie is a thing of carefully crafted and executed beauty. She is someone who has endured much and, in certain ways, is very detached. The person she is in New York is a creation, a person she has invented in order to distance herself from the pain of her past – it’s an understandable impulse but it also makes her hard to pin down. Our ideas about her change with each revelation and her story changes so much we have to wonder how much is true and what elements have been tweaked to preserve some shred of the image she wants to project. There is a sense about her that she has emotionally checked out of life and is just waiting for her body to follow suit, which can’t happen as long as Nathan is there and needs her. He is such a fragile character but also so vibrant, the sun around which the other characters orbit. Kline plays the role perfectly, giving Nathan enough humanity and charm that you can understand why it is that the people in his life continue to come back even after he blows up at them, picking away at them as brutally as he can. As the wide-eyed but quickly maturing Stingo, MacNicol also turns in a strong performance that helps keep the story grounded and on track. The film is really an actors’ showcase and the three main actors complement each other well. The other elements of the film are also strong, allowing it to maintain the narrative power that it would have had when it was first released and remain an excellent piece of work.

Review: It's Complicated (2009)

* * *
Director: Nancy Meyers
Starring: Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, Steve Martin

I went into It's Complicated knowing that it wasn't going to be "great cinema." I knew this because I'm familiar with some of Nancy Meyers' previous work and because the trailers made it pretty clear that it wasn't really aspiring to be "great," as such. I went to it anyway, though, because it looked harmless enough and it fits neatly into a category of films I liked to call "movies I can see with my mom." Tarantino and Scorsese? No. Fluffy romcoms and ornate period pieces? Yes. While the story is as predictable as I thought it would be, I enjoyed this one a lot more than I was expecting to.

So here's the deal: Jane (Meryl Streep) and Jake (Alec Baldwin) have been divorced for ten years. They have three grown children, one of whom is about to graduate from college, and Jake is remarried to Agnes (Lake Bell), a much younger woman with a precocious five-year old son. In New York for the graduation, Jane and Jake have a little too much to drink and sleep together. It's a revelation for him, the best thing that's happened to him in years, but her take on it is much different. For one thing, she's now in the position of being "the other woman," which sort of turns her world on its head, and she's also in the very uncomfortable position of leaving herself open to having her heart broken once more by Jake.

Back in California, she and Jake continue their affair but she also starts taking tentative steps towards a relationship with Adam (Steve Martin), the architect working on the addition to her house. Adam and Jake are polar opposites and it's clear to anyone with a lick of common sense that Adam is the guy she should go for but, of course, the heart is rarely so sensible. To make things even more complicated, Jane and Jake's future son-in-law, Harley (John Krasinski) has discovered their affair and takes great pains to help keep it hidden.

The lion's share of the story is devoted to Jane's affair with Jake which, while it provides a great deal of the comedy in the film (Baldwin is seriously on fire in this role), also kind of holds the film back. When Jane and Adam share scenes and discuss the pain of their respective divorces, the difficulty of moving on, and the shock at finding that you're still capable of finding that you like someone, you realize what this movie could have been. It could have been about adults behaving and talking like adults, about two people still smarting from the pain and disappointment of their divorces taking a second chance with each other. It could have had depth, it could have been a contender, but it settles for being a lighthearted, Sunday afternoon diversion kind of film. As films like that go, this one's pretty good, but you can't help but wonder what it might have achieved if penned by a better writer.

I have kind of a love-hate relationship with Meyers in that for everything about her films that I like, there's something that I dislike just as much. For example, I like that she makes films in which the protagonists are older women who are still seen as sexually viable (Streep here, Diane Keaton in Something's Gotta Give), but I dislike that she always seems to go for the easiest possible joke and that often it's at the expense of the same protagonist that the film claims to be celebrating (in fairness, I found this considerably more glaring in Something's Gotta Give than I do here). I also dislike that the films are marketed as being about ordinary women with ordinary problems when in fact those women are living lives that are economically unrelatable to most people. I don't want to get into a big rant about that though, so moving on...

Although the story doesn't run particularly deep, Streep does manage to wring a few moments of poignancy out of her role. When the last of her children moves out of the house at the beginning of the film, or when she walks through her house turning out the lights after being stood up by Jake, you can sense her loneliness and her need to simply be acknowledged by someone in her life, which makes it all the more insane when she declines a date with dependable, thoughtful Adam so that she can have a clandestine meeting with Jake. On the other hand, you can sort of understand why she does this since Baldwin is at the top of his game as Jake and Martin isn't really given enough to do as Adam to make him anything more than "the nice guy." Honestly, the movie is so completely for Jake that I'm kind of surprised that his last scene wasn't where it ended (and slightly disappointed since the shot of him and Jane sitting together on a bench would have made for an excellent callback to the final scene of The Graduate, which Jake and Jane watch with their kids earlier in the film).

For all its flaws, It's Complicated is the kind of film you can enjoy if you go into it in the right spirit. It isn't high art but it definitely has its moments and now that we're entering the January dumping ground for new releases, it's a pretty good choice at the multiplex.

Review: Julie & Julia (2009)

* * *
Director: Nora Ephron
Starring: Meryl Streep, Amy Adams

Coming a little late to this particular party, but better late than never. Judging from other people’s reactions to this film, I liked it a little more than most, perhaps because I’ve read the book (half of it, at any rate) and am therefore familiar with how irritating Julie Powell comes across in print. Seriously y’all, the Julie Powell character as played by Amy Adams is a breath of fresh air in comparison. It’s not enough to make the film more than a middling entertainment, but it’s something, right?

Julie and Julia is based on two true stories, only one of which most people would be remotely interested in hearing. In the present day we have Julie Powell (Adams), secretary turned blogger turned published writer, and in the not so distant past we have Julia Child (Meryl Streep, looking like she’s having an absolute blast) in the years before she becomes the famous Julia Child. Julie is in the midst of what I suppose you could call a mid-mid life crisis, approaching 30 and deeply dissatisfied with her professional life. She meets friends (not real friends, really, and we never see any of them again after this one scene) for lunch and finds herself reduced as they ask her about her job with barely concealed pity and then move on to discuss their own important jobs and big promotions. Feeling increasingly left behind, Julie decides to try to make some room for herself in the zeitgeist by starting a blog (“I have thoughts!” she declares as she launches into her plan) which will chart her progress through Julia Child’s cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

Meanwhile, in France several decades earlier, Julia finds her calling as a chef after first giving hat making and bridge a try. All she’s really looking for is a hobby to occupy her time while her husband, Paul (Stanley Tucci) is at work, but when she secures a place at La Cordon Blue school, she falls in love with her new hobby. Teaming up with Simone Beck (Linda Emond) and Louisette Bertholle (Helen Carey), she sets out to write a cook book for American women about French cuisine. The trio (well, mostly Julia and Simone) spend years working on their book, enduring numerous rejections while certain that their creation is a winner. The parallels drawn between Julia’s struggle with her cook book and Julie’s struggle gaining recognition from her blog are numerous, which helps in terms of flow but does grow a bit tiresome as the film approaches its end. The two halves of the story, one rather banal, the other brimming with life, cannot be made equal no matter how many times the film underscores Julie's scenes with a "see, she's just like Julia!" attitude.

Adams is an actress I've liked ever since her scene stealing turn in Drop Dead Gorgeous ("They won't let you perform naked. I asked.") and I think she does a decent job with what she has to work with. The film never seems very interested in developing Julie as a character, which of course begs the questions of why they included the character at all. Why not just make a movie about Julia Child starring Meryl Streep if that's what you really wanted to do? I don't object to Julie as a character, though I never felt invested in her, but I do object to the film's half-hearted treatment of that segment of the story.

As for the Julia half, it's pretty wonderful and it's fairly obvious that this is the half that writer/director Nora Ephron was really passionate about. The scenes between Julia and Paul are sweet, particularly the one in which they learn that Julia's sister (played all too briefly by the always fantastic Jane Lynch) is pregnant. When Julia breaks down in tears, saying, "I'm so happy," you can really get a sense of the variety of emotions she feels at that moment, from sadness and frustration at her own childlessness, jealousy, and of course genuine happiness for her sister. It's a great moment from both Streep and Tucci, whose performances perfectly complement each other throughout the film. In the end, Julie & Julia may be wildly uneven, but the Julia half makes it worth seeing as a whole.

Countdown To Oscar: Out of Africa

* * * *
Best Picture, 1985
Director: Sydney Pollack
Starring: Meryl Streep, Robert Redford

Out of Africa is the kind of sweeping epic that doesn’t get made much anymore (at least not well). It has prestige and – dare I say it? – class written all over it and manages somehow to overcome the burdens of a problematic genre to live up to its initial promise. There are reasons why I feel that I shouldn’t like this movie: the “other” culture seen through the eyes of a white protagonist, the white protagonist coded as good by being the sole champion of non-white peoples, and the trope “noble savage,” just to name a few. However, despite those elements, the movie really works for me and I adore it unabashedly.

The film is based on the life of Karen Blixen (Meryl Streep), who wrote under the pen name Isak Dinesen and was a member of the Danish aristocracy. After losing out on marrying the man that she really wanted, she settles for his brother, Bror (Klaus Maria Brandauer) and together they move to Kenya where they are set to run a plantation. The marriage is rocky from the beginning: Karen grows increasingly irritated as she watches her spendthrift husband blow through her money, make bad business decisions which leave the plantation haemorrhaging more money, and making little secret of the fact that he’s seeing other women behind her back. Karen makes the best of it, taking control of the management of the plantation and trying to salvage something from it, and making a real effort to make her marriage work. When it becomes clear that even the fact that he’s given her syphilis (which in turn renders her unable to bear children) won’t make Bror think twice about cheating, she finally calls an end to the marriage.

There are two other men who play important roles in Karen’s life: Farah (Malick Bowens), her servant and friend, and Denys, a British big game hunter who becomes Karen’s lover and is played by Robert Redford with absolutely no attempt at an accent (and, really, why would he? At that point in Redford’s career it would have been distracting to see him attempting an accent). Denys and Karen have an intense attraction to each other both physically and intellectually, but the relationship ultimately leaves both wanting. Karen wants some kind of commitment from Denys, wants, at least in this one way, to be like every other woman around her. Denys wants the freedom to come and go as he pleases, to be alone when he wants to be alone. Karen is more hurt by Denys’ desire to be alone than she ever was by Bror’s infidelities, and this incompatibility eventually drives them apart.

As played by Streep, Karen is a woman of considerable spirit, one who endures much but never succumbs to self-pity. She likes having a man around – first Bror, then Denys – but she shows time and again that she doesn’t need one because she’s more than capable of taking care of herself. She’s independent and able to pursue what she wants with an aggression that’s foreign to the women around her, which some find admirable and others find frustrating and, we can assume, unladylike; yet, at the same time, she longs to fit in through a traditional relationship. Redford is a good foil for her, playing a man who is only willing, or perhaps only capable, of giving so much of himself and their romantic chemistry is off the charts (if there was ever a sexier hair washing scene captured on film, I haven’t seen it).

Much of the film was shot on location in Kenya and director Sydney Pollack makes the most of the natural landscape. The film is beautifully photographed by David Watkin, who won the Oscar for Best Cinematography for his efforts, one of the seven that the film would ultimately take home. The production values of the film are top notch and it’s difficult to argue against the worthiness of those seven wins, even though that’s a sore spot for some because the year Out of Africa won is also the year that The Color Purple lost out in 11 categories. This fact has made Out of Africa’s Best Picture win somewhat controversial, which I think is unfair because it’s a really great and moving film. As far as I’m concerned, it’s one of the best Picture winners there is.

Review: Doubt (2008)

* * * 1/2
Director: John Patrick Shanley
Starring: Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Viola Davis

John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt is a morality play about the nature and power of suspicion. It’s an effectively ambiguous bit of storytelling but, from a technical perspective, the film is ultimately rather uneven. The performances, however, are uniformly engrossing and the film’s take on gender politics is utterly fascinating.

It's 1964 and at St. Nicholas school Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep) rules with an iron fist, striking fear into the hearts of the students and the other nuns alike, particularly young Sister James (Amy Adams). When Donald Miller (Joseph Foster) – one of her students and the only African-American student at the school – is called from her class for a private conference with Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and returns behaving strangely and with the faint smell of alcohol on his breath, Sister James’ suspicions are aroused and she feels compelled to share them with Sister Aloysius.

What follows is a battle of wills between Flynn and Aloysius which is as much about Donald Miller as it is their differing views on the church – Flynn is progressive, Aloysius staunchly conservative – and a general battle of the sexes. While Sister James begins to change her mind regarding whether she thinks anything untoward actually did take place, Aloysius charges forward in her crusade, determined to force Flynn out one way or another, even attempting to rally Donald’s mother (Viola Davis in a small but unforgettable performance) to the cause. The question of Flynn’s guilt or innocence, however, is not the central concern of the story; it’s what Aloysius is willing to sacrifice in her relentless pursuit.

The relationship between Flynn and Aloysius – indeed, between men and women in the story – is interesting. As principal, Aloysius is a figure of authority, but as a woman within the Catholic hierarchy, she also has little to no power in the grand scheme of things. When Flynn comes to her office for a meeting, he takes her seat behind her desk and waits to be served tea by her and Sister James. He must be deferred to just as, if Aloysius wishes to do anything about her suspicions, she must defer to the judgement of the bishop and if she wants to know about Flynn’s experiences in previous parishes, she’s expected to speak to the priest there rather than a nun. Flynn is infuriated by the suggestion of impropriety not just because it’s an ugly thing to be accused of but because, as far as he’s concerned, Aloysius has no right to question him because there are no circumstances under which he’s answerable to her. He makes her out to be the villain for even daring to question him and in her solo crusade the film seems to take his side, though I disagree. When it comes to the suggestion that a child might be being abused, I think it’s fair to err on the side of caution and investigate. Aloysius asks him to explain two facts which he confirms as true: he had a private conference with the boy in the rectory and the boy had consumed some alcohol. Her questions are relevant and it would irresponsible not to ask them regardless of Flynn’s view of their power relationship.

Flynn is a man of contradictions. He believes that the church needs to be more open, that its members need to become like family to the parishioners because, as he sees it, there is no difference between them and the people. This concept of sameness, that no one is elevated above another by virtue of being a member of the church, does not extend to his relationships with the nuns. He and Aloysius are not the same; he is above her because he’s a priest and she’s a nun. “You have no right to act on your own,” he tells her upon learning that she’s spoken to a nun at his previous parish. “You have taken vows, obedience being one! You answer to us!” Not “God” but “us,” meaning the priests. Furthermore, while he sets himself apart by being a progressive Catholic, he nonetheless falls back on traditional ideas about the balance of power between the genders in his efforts to put Aloysius in her place. He doesn’t know how to deal with an assertive woman like Aloysius; he prefers women of the more meek and submissive variety like Sister James who, though she brings the initial questions to light also eagerly accepts his explanation as the gospel and is willing to drop the matter immediately.

The performances are all good but the direction by Shanley is lacking. There’s always an issue when a play makes the transition to the screen because what seems alive on the stage can seem static and limp on the screen. In his efforts to keep the film moving the way that a film should, Shanley makes some strange choices and is a little too liberal with heavy handed symbolism and because of this the performances aren’t really allowed to just be performances, they’re also being relied upon to buoy up the story, which is a heavy burden.

Review: Mama Mia! (2008)

* * *
Director: Phyllida Lloyd
Starring: Meryl Streep, Amanda Seyfried

Objectively speaking, I know that Mama Mia! isn’t a good movie by any normal measure of what makes a movie good. However, I’d be lying if I said that it wasn’t the most fun I’ve had at the movies all year. If I saw it on DVD, I’m sure I’d be more keenly aware of all its flaws, but there’s something about seeing it in a theatre full of people who are really into it that I liken to the experience of seeing The Rocky Horror Picture Show, in that it isn’t really the movie itself, but the experience of seeing it with a whole bunch of other people, that makes it so special.

The action takes place on a small Greek island where Donna (Meryl Streep) has raised her daughter, Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) and runs an inn. Sophie, who has never known the identity of her father, discovers Donna’s diary and learns that there are three possible candidates: Sam (Pierce Brosnan), Bill (Stellan Skarsgard) and Harry (Colin Firth). Convinced that she’ll know her father at first sight, she invites all three to her impending wedding, which causes a variety of problems.

I’m sure you won’t be shocked if I tell you that the plot has very little bearing on the film beyond simply connecting the songs. In that regard, it does a serviceable job, though you really have to suspend your disbelief when it takes Donna the entire film to realize that it’s not just a coincidence that these three particular men have all shown up on the eve of Sophie’s wedding. And it’s also kind of unfair to build an entire plot around the question of paternity and then never actually resolve it. Personally, I suggest that if Sophie really wants to know she should just take all three men on Maury, because he does like four paternity shows a week (not that I have ever, during brief periods of unemployment, watched that show).

As far as the music goes, you’re either going to love it or hate it, but since most people already know whether they like Abba or find the music a particular form of torture, I doubt that many people have or will walk into this movie unaware. With that in mind, I have to say that I was a little put off by how aggressive the first half of this movie is - everyone is trying so hard to prove how much fun they’re having that it looks a lot more like work than fun. Meryl Streep is one of my favourite actresses, but it must be said that of the entire cast, she’s the most guilty of this “look how much fun this is” preening. I think it’s fair to say that anyone who walks into this movie is already pretty much sold on it, so the filmmakers and the cast could have pulled back a bit. By the second half everything feels more relaxed and the film hits its stride, but you have to get through that first half first.

I enjoyed Mama Mia! a lot, but I won’t argue with anyone that it’s a cheesy movie because it is. Oh, how it is. I mean, the "Voulez-Vous" number resembles a particularly overblown Duran Duran video from the 80s, but so what? It’s good cheese and it left me with a smile on my face.