Folly Avenue Film Club

My last food simile is - Bah Humbug ! We're cancelling "Cloudy..."

Sorry folks. Not for the first time, the ambitiousness of extending our program to late September has been thwarted by the New Jersey weather. With rain falling constantly thru Friday, and the chance of precipitation not falling below 50% all day Saturday, we've decided to cancel. The yard is already waterlogged, and it's only going to get worse. Can't think of a food analogy for missing out on the last course due to inclement conditions...

Anyway, let's take any opportunity we can to debate choices for next summer - otherwise you might just be presented with a fait accompli next May. If you haven't already, feel free to friend us on Facebook, where the debate might be easier to follow.

Chris on Facebook        Linda on Facebook

I leave you with a little remembrance of a fine summer season. Thanks for taking part.

 

CHRIS & LINDA

The Last Supper. The outlook is Cloudy, with a Chance of Meatballs this Saturday...

And so we reach the final course of our sumptuous summer banquet. This Saturday, 24th September,  Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs will be the last movie of our most successful season to date. I've seen this movie twice, shamefully falling asleep the first time (my bad) and it is an enjoyable romp with a slightly adult taste to the snappy, humorous dialogue. Not Pixar, though...

If you didn't know, the story revolves around a hapless inventor who finally appears to have invented something that works - a food replicator that showers his home town with a variety of food - only for this to ultimately go wrong and start burying the town in giant hotdogs, corn cobs, and pancakes, and threaten a hurricane of spaghetti and meatballs. Given the central plot point of the movie - what Mayor Shelbourne describes as "a Vegas-style all you can eat buffet" - it's only natural that the food theme should be - anything you like, or indeed, anything goes. 

Kid appropriate review at Commonsensemedia.org           

Kid appropriate review at Christiananswers.net

Please come early, maybe around 6.00-6.30pm. There should be lots of food to eat, and one other important task to handle...the discussion of next year's theme. Without regurgitating the often-debated contention between populism and education (that is, films you say you like as opposed to films I think you will like) we do want to have a lively discussion about next year. In order to do that, please come prepared with ideas for a theme, and at least three movies you would like to see that meet that theme. Whether its movies or theme that come to your mind first, the fun part of the evening is for others to come up with movie ideas that fit your theme.

To get you started, here are some themes and movies which have already been discussed...

TRAVEL
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
The Terminal
Up in the Air

COLORS
The Green Mile
Moulin Rouge
Black Swan

BIOGRAPHIES
The Aviator
The Kings Speech
Walk The Line
Young Victoria

See you Saturday !

Cliche Pie - Very familiar sweet cream filling, with a sprinkling of dark chocolate chips - Waitress, Sat 10th September

It is said that fortune favours the brave, and true enough - our decision to push on with Saturday night's showing of Waitress, despite the doom-laden weather forecast, paid off in spades. We had a fantastic pie competition - plaudits, congratulations and winners pie plates for Gennifer and Roe - and the movie was - by the barest measure - another tasty delight. See below for photos.

With only the merest inkling of the plotline, I was hoping it would be more than 'just another chickflick'. And for the first 45 minutes, it showed some good signs. Some nice offbeat humour, an interesting construct of moving the plot along with Jenna's wildly named pie creations (for example, "Pregnant Miserable Self Pitying Loser Pie - Lumpy oatmeal with fruitcake mashed in. Flambe, of course…”)

However, after a while the cliches started to show. The crotchety old regular customer with his home-spun philosophy - underneath it all, he's a really perceptive guy. The sassy waitress friend who is obviously having an affair. The incredibly one-dimensional, cartoon-like 'bad husband'. And of course the ugly duckling waitress friend who gets a miraculous makeover, and is really pretty after all. (Yea right, it's the stunning Keri Russell who performs the makeover who is really the drudge...) And altogether too much tonsil hockey between Jenna and her befuddled, spellbound doctor.

But the biggest cliche is Keri Russell's pie-making waitress. Any movie watcher can see she is talented, attractive, perceptive, strong, witty and caring. So why is she the one who has a loser husband, a dead-end job, and cannot summon the willpower to do anything about her situation ? Why, so there will be a storyline for us to be engrossed in, of course.

When putting so many obvious cliches up on the screen, you better entertain me, you better take my mind off the shallowness of these characterisations by giving me an interesting story and a few good emotional flips. Waitress just about manages this, but it's a close run thing. The denoument is entirely predictable - crotchety old guy dies, but leaves a fortune to Jenna for her fresh start - but I have to admit, we got there in a reasonably entertaining way, with a few smirks thrown in.

And I'm noticing a trend in our movies, where I'm discovering that previously unnoticed leading ladies are, well, gorgeous. Last week, Juliette Binoche, this week Keri Russell. Where have you lovely ladies been all my movie-going life ?

 

 

Chocolate Pies, Anyone ? Waitress, Sat 10th September

Unfazed by Irene, Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp finally go to do their chocolate stuff on screen Saturday. Another movie I hadn't seen previously, and a marvellous confection.

The plot is as old as time. An unconventional newcomer arrives as an outsider to an insular community, but gradually turns the people around with some magical gift or talent. In Vianne's case, that gift was the creation of seductive chocolate treats, some of which seemed to be if not actually aphrodisiac in nature, then at least possessing the intoxicating and liberating qualities of hard liquor. Why, it seems enough to make the strait-laced catholic mayor of the small french town indulge in a orgiastic indulgence in a chocolate shop window.

Whilst the plot seemed a little hoaky, the magical part of this movie was the perfomances. Johnny Depp played the gypsy troubadour with a gentle Irish lilt and an unusual but welcome restraint. Alfred Molina - who is a fine and vastly underrated actor - was appropriately driven by his catholic puritanism yet still ingratiating enough with his townsfolk. And Juliette Binoche was warm, wordly and - I have to say - as seductive as her chocolate creations. I never previously notice how atractive she is...

I was also pleased that the inclusion of 'Chocolat' in a food themed season did not just hinge on the title of the movie, but included a pivotal feast-creation scene, not unlike those in Big Night and Ratatouille. Top, top marks.

And so to Saturday coming, and Waitress. A bit of a grown up movie, and another new one for me, so I'm hoping it's not too much of a chick-flick. If it is, then I will just have to console myself with the judging of our pie competition. Linda has already determined that pies must be home-made, and there will be two categories - best tasting pie, and most original name. So far, we have a judging panel of one - me. Bring your pies around 7pm, so we can do tasting and judging and start the movie by 8pm.

Kid appropriate review at Commonsensemedia.org

Kid approprate review at christiananswers.net

Dinner for Schmucks was Finger' Lickin' Good !

I admit it - I like KFC. I know it's not good for me - too often, unidentifiable chicken parts, deep-fried in goodness-knows-what oil, it often disappoints. But the taste of that secret blend of 11 preservatives and additives sometimes just, well, hits the spot, and is exactly what I crave.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the movie equivalent of KFC, Dinner for Schmucks. 

It's never going to win an Oscar, there's no high-falutin' artistic themes or symbolilsm to speak of, other than a cliched, schmaltzy Hollywood happy ending. But on Saturday night, the dozen or so of us who braved the pending storms simply laughed all the way through this movie. 

It was, indeed, very funny. Not clever funny, just laugh a minute, like the old Airplane movies. Steve Carrell is naturally funny, but sometimes you feel he is doomed to repeat the role of an artless, innocent clown (The Office, Anchorman, 40 Year Old Virgin) and will always need the right kind of vehicle to perform his schtick, like Jim Carrey or Robin Williams. However, Steve Carrell has been in enough 'good' movies doing 'proper' acting (Little Miss Sunshine, Dan in Real Life, Crazy Stupid Love) to show he is better than that, and has real acting chops -  a bit like, err, Jim Carrey and, umm, Robin Williams...

I think the best part of this movie is that the actual driver of the plot is not really the well-intentioned but hopeless mis-steps of Barry the Schmuck. These are incidental to the efforts of Tim (Paul Rudd) to reconcile with the girl he truly loves in spite of Barry's disastrous interventions which in fact make Tim's problems escalate. The inevitable happy ending is less corny, because by the end we understand that Tim really does love his girlfriend more than his  'something in stockbroking' career, and he is convincingly a decent sort - still sticking by Barry even after the rest of us would have succumbed, and gladly have wrapped a 4x2 around his head.

Next up, Sat Aug 28th - Chocolat. Preview to follow...

Acting Without Talking

So, in my review of Big Night I included a clip of the silent omelette scene (or more accurately I guess, fritatta) and mentioned my list of 'truly great moments of acting without speaking'.

Here are the two that stand out for me. Comment below if you have others

Bob Hoskins in The Long Good Friday - In the best British gangster movie ever, Bob Hoskins plays Harold Shand, an East End crime lord who has spent the whole movie sorting out 'an eruption' of violence in his manor. Believing he has single-handedly defeated the IRA (who are causing his problems) he dispatches his prospective American partners who have been scared off by the chaos ("The Mafia ? I've shit'em !") then cllimbs into the back of his car - only to realise that he has lost the game, and is about to lose everything. Words not necessary. And yes, that is a very young Pierce Brosnan...

 

Emma Thompson in Love Actually - Emma Thompson knows that her husband has bought a spectacular gold necklace while out Christmas shopping, but when she receives not said necklace but a Joni Mitchell CD as her present she realises the awful truth about her husband's affair, and has to retreat to their bedroom in a herculean effort to keep herself together and raise a British stiff upper lip, despite the tears pouring down her face. (Apologies - the only clip on Youtube has italian dialogue, but since the lack of dialogue is the point, then no harm done...)

Can't embed this video - you have to watch it on Youtube.

 

Dinner for Schmucks, Redux - Sat 13th Aug.

I'm running the risk of criticism for artistic cowardice in light of the blog heading above. We will not be showing the highly regarded arthouse movie that is Eat Drink Man Woman on Saturday. After a period of consultation and an executive committee meeting, Linda told me to change it. Basically, Tom's teenage cousins will be visting from England, and the aforementioned movie may not be, err, so well received.

So instead, we are going to make another attempt at showing Dinner for Schmucks, which you may remember was aborted halfway through due to a Netflix malfunction back in mid-June. We will have spare copies, digital back-ups, emergency power supplies and AAA on call in order to complete the showing.

Hopefully for some, it will be another chance to see the whole movie. For those who saw the first 45 minutes last time, hopefully you saw enough there to want to come for the rest. I hope it wasn't enough to put you off...

Previous (completed) preview and kids ratings are here.

Mea Culpa - Diner and Big Night

July was a very busy month for us on many fronts, which is a poor excuse for me not writing about our movies. I missed one preview and two reviews, but hopefully this was offset a little by the enhanced food service from our new kitchen...

Catching up only too briefly, my feelings about Diner were mixed. I enjoyed it, but it felt so much like a period piece, and - unlike other similar 'historical' movies - to me it seemed dated, not in it's 1950's setting, but in the look, feel and style of the movie-making. I think audiences have become a bit more sophisticated these days. Despite its 'breakthrough' credentials, I was a little disappointed overall.

Compare and contrast with Big Night. Now there is another 'historical' movie, but it's sense of time and place was well anchored - you felt more for the period of the setting, and less the period of the film-making. However, I fell into my usual trap of high but unrealised expectations. Several people had told me it was one of their all-time favourites, so I expected amazing, fantastic, great things, only to be disappointed with only really, really good things... I've got to break myself of this habit.

Stanley Tucci is very quickly becoming one of my favourite actors, with his Streep-like chameleon qualities, and his knack of consistently being in really good films (Burlesque being a notable exception). And he also goes on my list of "truly great moments of acting without speaking" for the final scene, where in a single uncut take, he takes three eggs, and makes - from scratch - a classic omelette breakfast consumed by Tony Shalhoub and Marc Anthony in  contemplative and conciliatory silence. Marvellous.

Note : Change of program for August 13th, more to follow.