The More Things Change…

Original post date: 23 May 1987
Rating: ✭✭✰✰

No blood or violence or on-screen sex or car chases or anything like that. Just a warm-hearted Australian drama about a yuppie couple trying to cope with marriage, parenthood, and personal dreams in the you-can-have-it-all eighties. Connie and Lex buy their dream farm out in the beautiful countryside, but it is a two-hour commute to Connie’s publishing job in the city. They hire a babysitter to look after their little boy while Connie’s at work and Lex is tending the farm. And no, Lex doesn’t have an affair with the babysitter. Get your mind out of the gutter!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Avengers: Endgame

Original post date: 10 May 2019 Rating: ✭✭✭✭ It is strange to be giving my coveted (and relatively rare) top rating to a movie with such a generic title and premise as this one, but this achievement by the Russo brothers is extraordinary. This is not only an endgame between earth’s (and the universe’s) heroes and Thanos, but it is a literary endgame for one of the most complex and enduring entertainment undertakings ever. At three hours plus a minute, it is a bit long for a popcorn movie, but the extra running time is not merely for additional extended CGI battle scenes. There is actual deliberately-paced drama here. Comic book and franchise devotees might well have expected this sequel to kick off from where its predecessor ended with immediate action, but instead we get an unhurried meditation on life and loss. Surviving Avengers deal with the consequences of defeat. Those who did not participate confront the fallout from inaction. As one would expect, the solution to the universe...
Read more

A Simple Favor

Original post date: 11 March 2019 Rating: ✭✭✰✰ The very beginning of this flick promises a return to old-school entertainment. For one thing, they actually run a bunch of credits at the start of the movie. Also, the music is cool with a fair helping of classic French pop by the likes of Françoise Hardy, France Gall, Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot. It has that widescreen Technicolor feel like those elegant spy or mystery movies from the 1960s. Quickly enough though, we are into 21st-century territory where irony is squeezed out of how dark and perverted American suburbs can be, how sunlight, modern architecture and children’s playdates are only a mask over the soul’s darkness. Think Desperate Housewives meets the late Stanley Donen’s Charade. Anna Kendrick’s Stephanie is a familiar type—the overachieving (single) mom who annoys all the other moms by being too perfect and who also has a video blog about cooking and crafts. Blake Lively’s Emily is her unlikely new best friend, a ...
Read more

Amazing Grace and Chuck

Original post date: 19 May 1987 Rating: ✭✭ ✭ ✰   The events portrayed in this movie could never actually happen, but it’s nice to sit in a movie theater for a couple of hours and pretend that they could. Frank Capra could have made this movie, and he would have called it Mr. Smith Stops the Arms Race . This is your basic watering eyes, lump in the throat, feel good movie. But you don’t feel like a jerk for liking it because it doesn’t get excessively cute or sticky sweet. And it has a very definite point of view and doesn’t flinch, something you don’t see in many Hollywood movies. It’s about a kid named Chuck who is a star Little League pitcher in a small Montana town and an NBA star named Amazing Grace Smith who plays for the Celtics. They each decide to stop playing their respective sports until there are no more nuclear weapons. Gregory Peck plays the President of the United States and he is much better in the role than any other actor who has had the part in at ...
Read more