Tina's August 2016 Movies

The fact that I saw even 10 movies in a month when I watched the Olympics nearly non-stop is a miracle, but here they are.  Numbering picks up from previous months.  Movies I had not seen previously are marked with an asterisk and the rating scale is 1-5 cans of tuna, with 5 the top score.
89.  Talullah* (2016) – This made-for-Netflix movie stars Ellen Page as Lou, a grifter living in her van with her soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend.  When Lu is caught scrounging for food in a posh hotel, the woman she meets assumes she works there and dumps her baby girl on “Lou.”  Lou sees an opportunity to steal credit cards and take the obviously neglected baby for herself.  Penniless and with nowhere to go, she ends up on the doorstep of her ex’s mother (Allison Janney), a bitter woman whose divorce from her gay husband has yet to be finalized.  Lou tells her that the baby is her granddaughter, and the three women develop a strange bond, until the child’s actual mother (Tammy Blanchard) and the authorities come after her.  This is an odd little story and it ends in a metaphysical way that I didn’t quite get.  The acting is first-rate even if the story was a little off-kilter.  3½ cans.
90.  Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorfs* – If you know me at all, my lack of fashion style and knowledge is readily apparent.  So why would I watch a movie about the iconic NYC department store?  I love nearly any behind-the-scenes looks, and this documentary opens the doors of Bergdorf’s and shows you the designers, the fashion director, the personal shoppers and all kinds of people who have made this store THE place for important people to shop and for important designers to show.  From tales of John and Yoko’s buying 72 furs one holiday eve to the whirlwind that is fashion director Linda Fargo, it is clear that this is NOT Macy’s.  Designers would give their right arms to have their lines shown in the famous Bergdorf’s windows (and an amazing account of the holiday windows is included here).  For designer Michael Kors, serendipity led to his selection, when then boss-woman Polly Mellon saw his stuff and told him she wanted Bergdorf’s to sell his line – which he didn’t have at the time.  This is how legends are born!  The truth is, if you can make it to Bergdorf’s as a designer, you needn’t go anywhere else.  As for me, I fear going into a store where the sales people will look at me with the same disdain shown Julia Roberts on her Rodeo Drive shopping trip in “Pretty Woman” (until they found out paramour Richard Gere was footing the bill).  So I’ll stick to the movie, which I recommend to my shopping, fashionista friends.  4 cans.
91.  Bad Moms* (2016) – Lest you think my taste runs only to independent or documentary films, here is something considerably less esoteric – and way more fun!  Mila Kunis plays hyperactive, overachieving Mom Amy.  She brings home the bacon in the family – not that she would ever actually serve bacon -- makes the nutritious lunches, drives the kids to school and a myriad of activities -- and drives herself crazy.  She is married to a slacker dad whose Internet hobbies are merely self-satisfying, and any work-life balance doesn’t include an actual life for her.  One day she just loses it, teams up with a slacker Mom Carla (Kathyrn Hahn, playing the role Melissa McCarthy would have played if she hadn’t moved beyond second-banana status and into superstardom), and Kiki (Kristen Bell), the do-gooder Mom with 4 little ones and a thoughtless, demanding spouse.  They take on the PTA president and all-powerful, perfect supermom Christina Applegate, who is so important that she throws a campaign party that Martha Stewart herself shows up to cater.  This romp is just good, mostly-clean fun (with more than a few sexual references thrown in) and laugh-out-loud funny.  Sure, I wondered who was watching all those kids when the Moms were out gallivanting, but you can’t look at a movie like this with logic.  It is about Mom-power, girl-power, friendship among women and how nobody is perfect.  Best movie laughs I have had in a long time.  4 cans.
92.  The Only Thrill* (2005) – Actually, this movie was not much of a thrill.  The action takes place over decades, and sometimes it seemed like time was passing that slowly just watching it.  The always taciturn Sam Shepard is Wiley, proprietor of a clothing store in Texas.  He is married to a woman in a coma, and, while he doesn’t mind cheating on her with other women once in a while, he won’t dump her and marry someone else, like Carol (Diane Keaton, turning down the comedy here), the seamstress he hires who alters his life.  They spend every Wednesday together at the local movie theater and are clearly in love, but Wiley refuses to take the next step.  Meanwhile, her daughter (Diane Lane) and his son (Robert Patrick) also start seeing each other and, like his father, the son refuses to take the next logical step.  So what we have here is lifelong happiness unachieved.  The bonds of love are strong, despite the circumstances and trials, but will they ever be in the right place at the right time?  I’m not sure you’d want to stick around to see for yourself, although I did.  3 cans. 
93.  Florence Foster Jenkins* (2016) – In the “Meryl never disappoints” category, this latest effort has her playing real-life society matron Florence, whose largess supports the arts and allows her to gain a following for her singing. You and I – and anyone with functioning ears – would hear her caterwauling and immediately recognize a total dearth of musical talent, but Florence only hears herself as a mellifluous doyenne of the stage.  Her husband (Hugh Grant) supports her singing habit.  Theirs is a strange relationship.  He adores and coddles her, but sneaks out at night for romantic trysts with his girlfriend, which is generally OK with Florence.  The whole plot leads up to Florence’s Carnegie Hall debut performance, which actually did take place.  She is remarkably bad, bad beyond description, really, with truly awful costumes to match her dowager body.  Her loyal and somewhat frenzied accompanist is played by Simon Helberg, better known as Wolowitz from the TV sitcom “Big Bang Theory,” and he can really tickle the old ivories.  It’s hard to be this good at being this bad, but the wide-eyed innocence Streep brings to the role is full of poignancy.  There’s the old saying, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?  Practice!” but no amount of practice would make Florence a nightingale.  4 cans.
94.  Dance With Me* (1996) – If the hunky co-star of this movie, Chayanne, asked me to dance, I’d definitely drag my two left feet out there on the dance floor.  He plays a handyman who works for a dance studio that is owned by a man (Kris Kristofferson) who may or may not be his father.  One of the instructors, played by Vanessa Williams, is also a ballroom dance competitor, and the climactic scene shows her competing with her partner.  It sounds strange to say that one of my objections to this movie is that there was too much dancing.  Williams is excellent on the dance floor, and she and Chayanne spend much of the movie exchanging smoldering looks, but this movie made Dancing With the Stars seem like high drama (which it kind of is…).  Not much plot, but it had a nice beat.  2 cans and a pair of dancing shoes.
95.  The Danish Girl* (2015) – I somehow missed this highly-praised movie last year.  It is the story of Dutch artists Einar Wegener (Eddie Redmayne) and his wife Gerda (Alicia Vikander), who are young and very much in love.  And then Gerda encourages Einar to pose for her dressed as a woman, which forces him to reconcile feelings that he has repressed about actually being a woman.  The story is based on the real artists and what happens when Einar starts to live as Lily.  Vikander won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, and her character is very supportive of her husband despite everyone’s changing roles.  Redmayne gives a strong performance as he subtly shifts his voice, his body language and his persona to become the woman who is trapped inside a male body.  If it weren’t for Leonardo DiCaprio’s star turn in “The Revenant,” Redmayne would probably have grabbed his second Oscar.  4 cans.
96.  An Officer and a Gentleman (1986) – Zack Mayo (Richard Gere) is neither of those two things for much of this movie, the tale of a young man who bucks authority even as her strives to become a naval aviator.  His unyielding drill instructor, Sgt. Foley (Louis Gossett Jr., who deservedly won an Oscar for his breakout performance) doesn’t think much of him at first and tries not only to break him and the others in his class, but he singles Mayo out for especially brutal treatment to get him to DOR (Dropped on Request).  Mayo manages to get through the brutal treatment with the support of Paula (Debra Winger, in one of the two best movies of her career – the other is one of my Top 5: “Terms of Endearment”), a local blue-collar woman who, with her friend, is seeking a good officer candidate of her own.  But Mayo, who was brought up by a reprobate Navy father and whose mother killed herself, has commitment issues.  Will he stick it out and get to flight school?  Can he commit to Paula, to whom he is immediately attracted?  If you have experienced this movie, you know that the last scene is one of the best last scenes EVER in a movie.  And if you haven’t, please go and watch this movie.  It is more than a love story, more than a story of surviving in a tough world.  It is about friendship and love and achieving goals.  4 cans and a jar of mayonnaise.
97.  About a Boy (2002) – Hugh Grant is at his handsomest and most charming as a career bachelor who firmly believes he is an island, a man in need of no one beyond women to “shag” once in a while.  Independently wealthy due to the wide exposure of a Christmas song written by his father, Will takes great pride in his ability to do absolutely nothing all day.  But when he decides to look for single moms to date, 12-year old Marcus (Nicholas Hoult) comes into his life along with his suicidal mother.  The kid keeps coming around, and eventually Will forms an attachment to the bullied pre-teen, and they each have something to teach each other.  Toni Collette plays the troubled mother in this heartwarming comedy.  And Will comes through just when you were ready to write him off.  “About a Boy” is about a man.  4 cans.
98.  The Big Chill (1983) – Before there was “Friends” on TV, these 30-somethings gather in the home of the only married couple among them for the funeral of one of their own.  Take a talented cast (Kevin Kline, Glenn Close, William Hurt, JoBeth Williams, Mary Kay Place, Tom Berenger and Jeff Goldblum), a wonderful script, a great soundtrack and you get the seminal 80s film about friendship and idealism gone astray amid the realities of life.  The once engaged social activists are now actors, doctors, pop culture journalists, lawyers, entrepreneurs and burnouts.  Missing from the old U of Michigan gang is Alex, the one with the promise, the one they come to celebrate, the one who committed suicide.  They lick their wounds, renew their friendships, express their shortcomings and regrets and vow to be ever more faithful to the people they loved so long ago.  I hadn’t seen this movie in a long time and I forgot how much I love it.  The soundtrack is one of my favorites, and I can never listen to “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” without picturing the dancing scene in the kitchen.  4½ cans.