MY Louisiana Sky (2001) Review

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(More customer reviews)I don't know where to begin but this movie is going to be a new classic for kids...move over Sounder, Anne of Green Gables, Treasure Island....I was entranced. The actors in the movie are fabulous... I found myself making comments aloud about their acting throughout the film. The themes are timeless and ones in which we can all relate. The costumes are wonderful...I was taken back in time and couldn't leave my TV to even get a drink and I studied every detail of the dresses, hair, shoes, and makeup. If you think history is boring, watch this movie...it all will change for you and you'll realize that we all aren't so different afterall.

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This provoking drama is set in rural Louisiana in the early 1950's. A 12-year-old girl(Kelsey Keel) has been forced to come to grips with the fact her parents are developmentally disabled. The family is held together by the girl's grandmother (Shirley Knight). Rich Aunt Dorie (Juliette Lewis)comes home to try and ease the family's woes.

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Surrender, Dorothy (2006) Review

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(More customer reviews)Charles McDougall's resume includes directing episodes on 'Sex and the City', 'Desperate Housewives', Queer as Folk', 'Big Love', 'The Office', etc. so he comes with all the credentials to make the TV film version of Meg Wolitzer's novel SURRENDER, DOROTHY a success. And for the most part he manages to keep this potentially sappy story about sudden death of a loved one and than manner in which the people in her life react afloat.
Sara (Alexa Davalos) a beautiful unmarried young woman is accompanying her best friends - gay playwright Adam (Tom Everett Scott), Adam's current squeeze Shawn (Chris Pine), and married couple Maddy (Lauren German) and Peter (Josh Hopkins) with their infant son - to a house in the Hamptons for a summer vacation. The group seems jolly until a trip to the local ice creamery by Adam and Sara) results in an auto accident which kills Sara. Meanwhile Sara's mother Natalie Swedlow (Diane Keaton) who has an active social life but intrusively calls here daughter constantly with the mutual greeting 'Surrender, Dorothy', is playing it up elsewhere: when she receives the phone call that Sara is dead she immediately comes to the Hamptons where her overbearing personality and grief create friction among Sara's friends. Slowly but surely Natalie uncovers secrets about each of them, thriving on talking about Sara as though doing so would bring her to life. Natalie's thirst for truth at any cost results in major changes among the group and it is only through the binding love of the departed Sara that they all eventually come together.
Diane Keaton is at her best in these roles that walk the thread between drama and comedy and her presence holds the story together. The screenplay has its moments for good lines, but it also has a lot of filler that becomes a bit heavy and morose making the actors obviously uncomfortable with the lines they are given. Yes, this story has been told many times - the impact of sudden death on the lives of those whose privacy is altered by disclosures - but the film moves along with a cast pace and has enough genuine entertainment to make it worth watching. Grady Harp, May 06

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Academy Award® Winner Diane Keaton delivers one of the most dynamic and astonishing performances of her career in this moving story about the bonds of friendships, the strength of a mother's love ... and the power of letting go.
With the simple phone greeting "Surrender, Dorothy," Natalie (Keaton) and her daughter Sara (Alexa Davalos) share the most intimate details of their lives. But when Sara's life is tragically cut short by a car accident, Natalie's grief is compounded by a shocking discovery: she may not have known her daughter after all. Determined to unlock the secrets of her daughter's heart, Natalie travels to the ramshackle beach house where Sara spent her summers and camps out with Sara's friends, including longtime childhood pal, Adam (Tom Everett Scott). But can she capture her daughter's essence and, more importantly, find a way to heal?

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Angels in America (2003) Review

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(More customer reviews)A jaw-dropping film adaptation of Tony Kushner's epic, 5-hour play, which was a defining artistic statement documenting the political and social upheaval that AIDS-HIV disease brought to America's gay community and to the wider America around it. Mixing agitprop and camp with magical realism and utter, heart-rending, pathos, Kushner and director Mike Nichols bring the story to the screen in a big, big way, with all-around amazing performances by a perfectly cast ensemble. Al Pacino gets to chew up yards of scenery in his portrayal of the sleazy, venal, far-rightwing attorney Roy Cohn (who acted as Joe McCarthy's point man in the infamous 1950s prosecution of "atom spies" Julius and Ethel Rosenberg) and for once, all of Pacino's high-decibel yelling pays off with some real dramatic ooompf.
There are a lot of things that you could comment on in this play -- the exploration of Jewish-American assimilation, the powerful reaffirmation of a supposedly marginalized leftist perspective, etc. -- but the most profound insight Kushner has to offer is about who the real redeeming angels will have to be in our nation's coming cultural reconciliation. The humanity that he is able to impart into the character of the middle-American Mormon, Mother Pitt (played faultlessly by Meryl Streep), is a marvel of modern political drama: and it rings undeniably true. Pushing past our narrowly defined social and political "roles," and into our shared humanity, is the only road open to folks who want to see America's moral and ethical core liberated from the ideological intrusions of the religious far-right, and the resulting frustrated anger of the disenfranchised middle-liberal-left. In a strictly us-vs-them world view, Mother Pitt would be derided by those on the we're-here-we're-queer Left... but as many people have learned, particularly amid the devastating upheavals of the HIV crisis, our real emotional lives are (ideally) not ruled by dogma. Mother Pitt isn't just a caring parent, she's also a kind, pragmatic person, and for her, the most pragmatic choice when confronted with an epidemic, is to simply offer sympathy and solace. What could be more natural? Let's hope her example prevails.

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Academy Award-winners Al Pacino, Meryl Streep and Emma Thompson lead an all-star cast in a 6-hour HBO Films Event. Directed by Mike Nichols and written by Tony Kushner based on his Pulitzer Prize-winning play: Angels in America.

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A Prairie Home Companion (2006) Review

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(More customer reviews)I wish I'd said this: A Prairie Home Companion is a lovely film about death, and with some great bad jokes. Death and how we deal with it drifts through the film like a dream, but it turns out to be real. Word has gotten around that the 30-year-old radio program is giving its last show. The theater where it has been broadcast from all these years has been sold and will be turned into a parking lot. A woman in a white trench coat moves dream-like through the place, searching for a person whose time has come, and then finds him. And then she finds another. Memories of past successes are talked about, but sometimes not. Reminiscences are wept over or laughed over. The backstage emergencies happen and are dealt with and the radio show goes on. It's just a marvelous movie. People who dislike the actual A Prairie Home Companion will probably not like this movie. Those who do like the radio show I'm sure are going to run out and buy the DVD of the movie as soon as it's available.
Garrison Keillor is not center stage so much as he's the imperturbable head guy who isn't always there, even when he's there. Most of the regular members of the radio show are present, as well as some new names. Lily Tomlin and Meryl Streep are incredibly authentic and incredibly funny/poignant as the two remaining members, Rhonda and Yolanda Johnson, of a country-music family singing group. Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly are great as the dim cowboys, Lefty and Dusty. Their bad-jokes song is one of the highlights. Guy Noir looking like Kevin Kline tries to keep a lid on the crises. Streep and Tomlin (and Harrelson and Reilly) sing their own stuff and they are first class. Tomlin, in particular, gives a terrific performance as Rhonda, tough, funny, a little bitter and a trooper.
After 105 minutes you may find death not too frightening, may find a kind of comforting acceptance of life, and may find funny some awful jokes...like the name of the country song Lefty sang on last week's show, "I'll Give You My Moonshine If You Show Me Your Jugs." Or a great new wheezer, "Did you hear about the crate of Viagra that was stolen?" "No! Who took it?" "The cops don't know but they're looking for hardened criminals."
I also wish I'd said this, from the New York Times: A Prairie Home Companion isn't great, it's wonderful.

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A LOOK AT WHAT GOES ON BACKSTAGE DURING THE LAS BROADCAST OF AMERICA'S MOST CELEBRATED RADIO SHOW, WHERE SINGING COWBOYS DUSTY & LEFTY, A COUNTRY MUSIC SIREN & A HOST OF OTHERS HOLD COURT.

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It's Complicated (2009) Review

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(More customer reviews)Romatic comedy--usually not my genre. This one's different. Very funny, and it's got just the right mix of elements. Number one -- should I say it again -- truly very funny. Everyone in the theatre I saw it with was laughing out loud and having a great time. Number Two -- intelligently written, no mediocrity here. Number Three -- it's about real people who are grown-ups (well, maybe Alex Baldwin's character has got a ways to go), people with lives, children, and friends. Number Four -- it has a good spirit. So many of what passes as comedy today is nothing but nasty or stupid. That's not what's happening here. It's Complicated manages to be generous and wise about human nature without being mushy. Number Five -- Meryl Streep, Steve Martin, and Alex Baldwin do a great job, and seem to be enjoying themselves. I give it a 5 for "totally entertaining".

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Two-time Academy Award winner Meryl Streep, Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin star in this hilarious look at marriage, divorce and everything in between. Jane (Streep) has three grown kids, a thriving Santa Barbara bakery and an amicable relationship with her ex-husband, Jake (Baldwin). Now, a decade after their divorce, an innocent dinner between Jane and Jake turns into the unimaginable - an affair. Caught in the middle of their rekindled romance are Jake\'s young wife and Adam (Martin), a recently divorced architect who starts to fall for Jane. Could love be sweeter the second time around? It\'s\' complicated! From writer/director Nancy Meyers comes the comedy that critics call "laugh-out-loud funny" (Rex Reed, The New York Observer).

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