Mid-August Lunch (Pranzo di ferragosto - 2008)

This sweet Italian comedy about a middle-aged devoted son is quite amusing and won a bunch of awards, mostly in its native Italy. Directed (his debut) and written by and starring Gianni Di Gregorio (who co-wrote the award-winning and intense drama Gomorrah (2008) and more) it takes place over the holiday known as Ferragosto, so the English translation is misleading, as though someone translated "Labor Day" to "Early September." We missed a couple of minutes by waiting in the wrong theatre (hey, we all have our off days) but we still enjoyed it a lot. Apparently Di Gregorio shot the interiors in his own apartment and based the script on an incident from his own life. There are plenty of simple location shots around Rome, including one of the Colosseum, and much cooking, so I'll add this to my list of food movies, bringing the total to 14.

Get Low (2009)

Sublime. Jack and I had eagerly anticipated this yarn about an eccentric old man (Robert Duvall) planning his funeral party that he will attend, alive, and we saw it on its opening day last Friday. Co-starring Sissy Spacek as Duvall's old friend and Bill Murray as the funeral director, it's a treat from start to finish. Aaron Schneider makes a confident feature directing debut (after winning an Oscar for his live-action short Two Soldiers (2004) and an Emmy plus two awards from his cinematography peers for shooting the excellent 1995 series Murder One) and also edits. Producer Dean Zanuck (son of Richard, grandson of Darryl) worked on the movie, based on a true story about 1930s Tennessee hermit Felix Bush, for 8 years before it found its way to the screen. Here's a fascinating, albeit long, interview with Zanuck and Schneider about how the movie came to be (to avoid spoilers, stop after Schneider's answer to the question that ends "Did you just let them do their thing?"). Some of my favorites of Duvall's 134 credits are MASH (1970) in which he played Major Burns, Network (1976), The Great Santini (1979), Tender Mercies (1983) which won him his Oscar, Something to Talk About (1995), Sling Blade (1996), The Apostle (1997) which he directed and wrote as well as starred, Thank You for Smoking (2005), and Crazy Heart. He was born to play Felix. Sissy Spacek (I loved her in Alan Rudolph's Welcome to L.A. (1976), Robert Altman's 3 Women (1977), Coal Miner's Daughter (1980) which won her her Oscar, 'night Mother and Crimes of the Heart (both 1986), If These Walls Could Talk (1996), In the Bedroom (2001), and North Country (2005)) conveys every emotion necessary to give Mattie her needed depth, and Bill Murray (I listed my faves in Fantastic Mr. Fox) is hilarious even when he's serious as Frank. Lucas Black (who played the little kid in Sling Blade before going on to other projects, including Jarhead (2005)) is also great as Frank's assistant Buddy. Duvall and Spacek played two of the four parents in the fluffy Four Christmases.

The music is fabulous: bluegrass by Jerry Douglas and by The Steel Drivers; old 1930s hits by The Inkspots, Bix Beiderbecke, and more; and a beautiful Alison Krauss tune crooned over the end credits. The playlist blog lists the tunes (with no mention of the score by Jan Kaczmarek) and has two of the old songs streaming on the page. Here's a review of the CD.

And we have a new winner in the Producers Plethora Prize, unseating Battle in Seattle and Grace is Gone. This one has, count 'em, twenty-three producers, including Duvall, Dean Zanuck's brother Harrison, and co-writers Chris Provenzano (2 episodes of Mad Men, which won him an Emmy in 2007, among others) and C. Gaby Mitchell.

The Girl Who Played with Fire (2009 - Flickan som lekte med elden)

We (Jack & I) suspect that critics have been unfairly cool to this second part of the Millennium trilogy because it's so much like the first. In this one, Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) and journalist Mikael Blomqvist (Michael Nyqvist) are working on a story about sex trafficking. We found it strong and nasty, just like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. There are lots of great Swedish location shots, and a sequence where our heroine wears Yankee gear as a disguise (that made me like her more and Jack like her less).

Pay no attention to the reviewers (66% on rottentomatoes) and trundle on down to your local art theatre. If you're an adult who can handle watching violence against women and men, then definitely see The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo first, and then this one, so you'll be ready for the final part of the trilogy, probably later this year. My local art theatre is showing both of them right now. Yes, Daniel Craig has been cast as Blomqvist for the American re-make of the trilogy, though that may change (and though the girl cast as the American Lisbeth looks sweet in the photo, look at the links to photos of Rapace in my Dragon Tattoo post - she can look sweet or scary). But do yourself a favor and see the originals first. Subtitles won't kill you!

When You're Strange (2009)

This documentary about The Doors, nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, is pure heaven for any Doors fan. Narrated by Johnny Depp and directed by Tom DiCillo, it details the history of each member of the quartet with lots of archival footage, laced with what looks like new film of a bearded Jim Morrison look-alike in the California desert. Except that it's really Morrison, in clips from a movie called HWY: An American Pastoral (1969), which was cleaned up and shown on PBS in HD (thank you imdb message boards). DiCillo directed one of my all-time favorite movies, Living in Oblivion. I liked it so much that I wrote about it 13 years after seeing it, because after starting this blog I thought that I would write about every movie I had ever seen (ha! I have rated over 2,260 DVDs on netflix and left out lots. Feel free to befriend me on that site. My netflix name is, you guessed it, babetteflix. But, because I spend so much time in theatres, I don't watch DVDs very often and so am netflix's favorite customer, keeping my discs a long time before returning them, but paying the monthly fee). DiCillo was cinematographer (and had a cameo) on Jim Jarmusch's iconic Stranger Than Paradise (1984), among his other credits. He says in an interview that Paul Ferrara, who shot HWY, also shot most of the archival footage used in When You're Strange and that one sequence patched stills from one concert against music from another, among other things. But those facts should not lessen your enjoyment of this outstanding documentary. I particularly liked the discussions of the musical influences of the instrumentalists, John Densmore, Robby Krieger, and Ray Manzarek, all of whom survived after Morrison's untimely death in 1971 at age 27.

Anyway, listening to The Doors took me right back to Jim's living room in early 1967, listening to the first album with Steve, Connie, and him. We were sheltered midwestern teenagers, but we liked the music then, and I still love it now. I forgot to see the Val Kilmer-starring, Oliver Stone-directed The Doors (1991) on the big screen, but saw it a few years later, probably on a VHS videocassette. I didn't love it, but I imagine I would have in a dark theatre. It has a 57% on rottentomatoes while this one has 62%. Jack and I thought this was a great follow-up to Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Both feature alternative music for the times in which they are set, and both are terrific.

You can buy the DVD of When You're Strange for immediate download on The Doors website or watch it streaming on netflix right now. It's rated R for sexual content, nudity, drug material, and bad language. Ya think?

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)

Jack and I are not the target demographic for this zany video-gaming cartoony action love story based on a series of graphic novels, but we loved it all the same. Probably aimed at 15 to 35 year old males who are gamers, it has kick-ass alternative rock, plenty of violence but no blood ("defeated" characters tend to explode into coins), Michael Cera as adorable man-child Scott and a host of terrific supporting actors. Cera (after I wrote about him in Paper Heart he starred in Youth in Revolt, among others) does the Peter Pan thing to the max, avoiding responsibility whenever possible, with at least as many exes as his lady love Ramona Flowers, but then morphs into a fighting machine in the action sequences where Scott has to defeat Ramona's seven evil exes. Mary Elizabeth Winstead (the only one of her 23 credits I've seen is Bobby (2006), an ensemble piece) plays Ramona as mysterious and appealing with really great hair--color and cut. Also with really great hair color and cut is Alison Pill (I wrote about her in Milk) as Kim Pine, the drummer who pines for Scott. Watch this animated clip which illustrates a flashback about their relationship from the graphic novel: a scene which is not in the movie. In fact, hair is a repeating theme here: most everyone's coif is significant and/or noteworthy. Kieran Culkin (my regular readers may remember that I loved Igby Goes Down and The Dangerous Life of Altar Boys, both in 2002, and both starring Kieran; he was also The Cider House Rules (1999) and Lymelife), Macaulay's little brother (there are five Culkin siblings), is great as Wallace, Scott's "sarcastic gay roommate," a quote from wikipedia. Aubrey Plaza (disaffected April on Parks and Recreation (NBC-TV)) is very funny as bespectacled Julie Powers, another of Scott's exes. Anna Kendrick (so good in Rocket Science (2007) and Up in the Air) is Scott's no-nonsense sister Stacey. Then there's Envy, the rock starlet, played to trashy perfection by Brie Larson (daughter Kate Gregson on United States of Tara and a cameo in Greenberg). Further support comes from Chris Evans (Johnny Storm/Human Torch in several Fantastic Four movies and more), Mae Whitman (I remember her as a little kid in One Fine Day (1996), Hope Floats (1998), American Rhapsody (2001); then she played opposite Cera in 13 episodes of Arrested Development, and now she's on NBC's fabulous Parenthood), Jason Schwartzman (I wrote about him in Fantastic Mr. Fox and Funny People), and many many more. Uncredited cameos by Thomas Jane (currently the star of HBO's Hung) and Clifton Collins Jr. (some of his best work is in Capote (2005) as killer Perry Smith, Sunshine Cleaning, Extract, and Brothers) as a pair of a particular kind of hunky police officer will have you laughing out loud.

Edgar Wright (I haven't seen any of his directing or writing work, including Shaun of the Dead (2004), Hot Fuzz (2007), and one segment of Grindhouse) directed and co-adapted the screenplay with Michael Bacall (more acting than writing in his credits), and the movie is fast, smart, and, as I've said, very funny, with more jokes than you can count. One of Scott's band mates is named Stephen Stills and their groupie is Young Neil (I combed the cast list for occurrences of the names Graham, Nash, David, and Crosby, but came up empty. However, CSNY are apparently a recurring theme in the graphic novels). They will probably be fun to read.

Now, about the music. There are two albums available for purchase or download: one (blue cover) of mostly the original score by Nigel Godrich and one (red) of singles by various artists, produced by Godrich. Youtube has lots of of tracks from the blue one (it has 38 tracks--start with this one and work your way down the blue list on the right). The Playlist blog, which has become more of a hip, all-about-movies blog with many authors, returned to its soundtrack roots and covered the red one in detail. Here's a pre-release post with one music clip and a video produced by Wright, a later one with 10 clips, and one more with 3 clips of remixes from the movie.

An epic of epic epicness, says the subtitle of the movie. It so is. Stay til the very end, for an animated bonus.

Eat Pray Love (2010)

When given the choice I tend to see the movie before reading the book. This time I had already read and loved Elizabeth Gilbert's memoir of psychic healing through world travel. The movie is fine, but it's tough to live up to a good read. The cast, locations, cinematography, costumes, set design, and music are first rate. Ann, who says she goes to two movies a year, was suddenly available last Saturday. She had listened to the audiobook and enjoyed it, but found the movie disappointing. Nichole and some of her facebook friends had weighed in between August 11-13: 9 loved the book, 5 liked it some, 10 hated it; 12 couldn't wait to see the movie, 6 had reservations based on casting or their feelings about the book, and 3 wouldn't dream of seeing it. Jack was busy that day, and, though I'm sure he would've been a good sport, probably is okay about missing it (he did read the book, on my enthusiastic recommendation. He didn't hate it).

If you are among the millions who have read the book and seen the movie, you may be interested in this good analysis from NPR of what went wrong in the conversion from page to screen. Not that it is lacking for talent. Ryan Murphy (director/co-writer/co-producer of Nip/Tuck (FX-TV 2003-10), Glee (ABC-TV), and the wonderful movie Running with Scissors (2006)) performed the same duties here. He and Jennifer Salt (she played Eunice Tate on the TV series Soap (1977-81) and co-wrote 19 episodes of Nip/Tuck) co-wrote the script, using some of Gilbert's humor along the way (anything that makes you laugh, such as Richard from Texas' nickname for Gilbert, is straight from the book). Julia Roberts (I named my favorites in Duplicity) does the best she can as Liz with the tools she's been given. Billy Crudup (see my post on Public Enemies) thoroughly convinced me that Liz was right to divorce his character. Viola Davis (Doubt, a cameo in State of Play, and delightful as an eccentric artist in United States of Tara) gives her character of Liz's agent and friend Delia warmth and professionalism, but, why, as the NPR blog above asks, did the movie leave out the advance payment for the book that financed the journey? James Franco (see Milk, plus he had a funny small part in Date Night, and I'm eagerly anticipating his Allen Ginsberg in Howl--I saw the trailer online the other night). Richard Jenkins (Burn After Reading and especially The Visitor) brings his considerable talents to Richard from Texas. Comedian Lewis Black did a hilarious segment on The Daily Show complaining about the casting of Javier Bardem as the love interest, "the creepy villain from No Country for Old Men," for which Bardem won an Oscar in 2008. I guess Black didn't see Bardem in his other award-winning work as nice guys: Before Night Falls (2000--Oscar nominated), The Dancer Upstairs (2002), The Sea Inside (2004), and Vicky Cristina Barcelona. I also liked Mike O'Malley (Leatherheads (2008), a regular on Glee and the now-cancelled My Name is Earl, more) as Delia's husband, Hadi Subiyanto in his first role as Ketut Liyer (the real Ketut, a very old man in India, is apparently ailing now), and Gilbert's gal-pals in the three foreign countries, Tuva Novotny (voted Sweden's most beautiful woman in several magazine polls in 1998 and 2000) in Italy, Russhita Singh in India, and Christine Hakim in Bali.

As my fellow blogger at reelsoundtrack put it, the songs included in the movie are a far better mix than we would have expected. He has posted them all, including 7 videos for your listening pleasure, and imdb has come through again with a complete list, including composers. The rest of the music is composed by the prolific Dario Marianelli (after The Soloist, I wrote about him in Everybody's Fine). It's worth mentioning that Samba Da Bencao by Bebel Gilberto, featured during the Bali sequence of the film and linked in the reelsoundtrack post, also appeared in Closer, which also starred Julia Roberts and had great songs.

The critics have not been kind to Eat Pray Love. Its imdb rating is 4.7 out of 10 and its Rottentomatoes score is a scathing 38%. Yet it was #2 at the box office last week and #3 this week (the numbers in this link will vary, depending on when you click through). I've heard that Gilbert's follow-up memoir, Committed, is even better. We'll see if that one makes it to the silver screen as well. This is going into my list of food movies.

The Other Guys (2010)

Jack & I were pleasantly surprised that we had a good laugh about every 5 minutes throughout in this cop comedy where disgraced NY detective Mark Wahlberg tries to redeem himself while partnered with pencil-pusher Will Ferrell. The opening sequence is a very funny car chase with a ton of property damage, and not a glimpse of the stars, but you won't be sorry, because it's got Samuel Jackson and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson playing it for laughs. Wahlberg (I listed my faves in the second paragraph of The Lovely Bones) has said on talk shows that in his native Boston he would be lauded for the act that disgraced him in New York. I'm not saying more, even though many writers have. I've missed a lot of Ferrell's movies (including two out of the three other collaborations with The Other Guys' director/co-writer/co-producer Adam McKay (didn't see Step Brothers (2008) nor Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006) but did see Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004)) -- my favorites would have to be Stranger Than Fiction (2006); The Producers (2005); and three in which he had supporting parts: Dick (1999), which was the brilliant and hilarious reimagining of events leading up to Watergate in which Ferrell played Bob Woodward, Dan Hedaya played Nixon, and Michelle Williams and Kirsten Dunst played the two teenage girls who supposedly were Woodward and Bernstein's "Deep Throat"; Zoolander (2001); and Woody Allen's Melinda and Melinda (2004).

McKay, who has a cameo in his movie as Dirty Mike the homeless guy, wrote for SNL and directed a few episodes. His little daughter Pearl was featured in the short film The Landlord and he joined her in Good Cop Baby Cop with Ferrell.

There are many more funny people contributing to this movie: I always like Steve Coogan (see In the Loop), who plays the main financier. Damon Wayans makes an appearance as another cop, and The Daily Show's Rob Riggle is Wayans' partner. Brooke Shields, Tracy Morgan, and Rosie Perez are onscreen for a fraction of a second, and the narrator, uncredited, so don't bother trying to read his name as the credits roll, is Ice-T. A number of other cameos are uncredited, including Josef Sommer as the D.A., Anne Heche as the other financier, and Morgan (Perez & Shields get credit). There are lots of songs, some written just for the movie, and, for a change, they are all listed, with composers, on imdb. If you want to listen to some of them, see the reelsoundtrack blog.

There is a bonus after the credits, so stick around. And, during much of the credits, there's a fairly serious slide show about corporate greed that fits with the plot of the movie but not the mood. To bring you back to laughing, read this (with the spoilers clearly marked and avoidable at the end) and this (with spoilers right in your face), preferably after viewing the movie.

Salt (2010)

Drawn in by the news that the lead role of the CIA operative accused of counter-spying was re-written for Angelina Jolie to take over for Tom Cruise (and that filmmaker friend Julie thought it was good), Jack, Lisal, and I enjoyed this spy/action flick with lots of chases and impossible escapes. More than once I asked, "How is she gonna get out of this one?" New Yorker writer David Denby thinks we won't care, and reveals almost all (as usual) in his spoiler-ridden review. Hollywood.com says (and I paraphrase the first paragraph, which is not a spoiler): this movie has been called "Bourne with boobs," but she keeps them holstered.

Jolie (Oscar-winner for Girl, Interrupted (1999) and nominated for Changeling, some of my other faves were Pushing Tin (1999), A Mighty Heart (2007), and Wanted (2008), which I saw specifically because of the action-dense trailer--I haven't seen her Lara Croft work) apparently did some of her own stunts, and is easy to look at as Evelyn Salt, especially after she colors her hair back to brown in the obligatory makeover (at least that's what Lisal and I thought). Co-stars Liev Schreiber (I wrote a little about him in Taking Woodstock) and Chiwetel Ejiofor (see my post on 2012) aren't bad-looking either. The stunts and effects are spectacular, and I laughed when Salt says "Ow" once early in the movie. Like the heroes in so many action movies, she gets totally battered and bruised but continues fighting and running, with only the single "Ow."

There is a high body count and a ton of violence, but much of the gore is just outside the on-screen frame, perhaps to achieve the PG-13 rating (I can only hope). Prolific composer James Newton Howard (Oscar nominated 8 times, winner of 29 ASCAP awards in 15 years, he has been working since the early 1980's on comedies, dramas, blockbusters, and indies--some of my favorites are Nobody's Fool (1986), Grand Canyon (1991), Dave (1993), Runaway Bride (1999), Mumford (1999), Peter Pan (2003), Batman Begins (2005), and The Dark Knight) brings us great big music to underscore the chases. Here's a clip. I remember being scared by director Philip Noyce's boat-thriller Dead Calm (1989), starring fellow Aussies Nicole Kidman and Sam Neill; his Patriot Games (1992) was great; and I loved his Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002), about three little aboriginal girls in 1931. Salt is full of small errors (see this imdb list if you don't care about spoilers) but it's really not supposed to be a documentary. Oh, and Jack would have liked to see Ms. Salt solve the math homework before running back out, but nobody on the production team asked his opinion.

58% average on rottentomatoes is hardly a ringing endorsement, but the box office numbers (this chart will change each week) say it all: in three weeks it's brought in $92 million. It's been a while since Jack and I have seen as many as three of the top five (and five out of ten) box office hits, but as of Sunday that's what we've done.

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (2010)

Again, expected to love it. Loved it. I had heard clips on NPR and seen some video, and Jack & I enjoyed every minute of this documentary on the hard-working, precedent-setting, potty-mouthed, feminist septuagenarian. Rivers, who, apparently, has never turned down a job, agreed to let filmmakers Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg follow her (and occasionally daughter Melissa) around for a year, beginning with Joan's 75th birthday (she's now 77). This is not for everyone: Rivers' humor is crude and her language is profane. She annoys some people no end, which has biased their reviews of the movie. We think she's brave, smart (Phi Beta Kappa from Barnard College), and f^@%ing funny, and so do the reviewers in rottentomatoes, which gives the movie a 91% average. You will learn that Joan's skin (insert plastic surgery joke here) is thinner than you might expect: she's pretty insecure for a broad who will skewer anyone and anything. And that she really does have a heart of gold. I don't need to say much more. If you like Joan Rivers, you will love this movie. Go see it.

Dinner for Schmucks (2010)

A farce about a guy who, in order to save his job, has to find someone his boss and friends can ridicule has a lot of laughs--more than we expected. It's based on The Dinner Game (Le dîner de cons - 1998), a wonderful, slightly meaner movie with a fabulous soundtrack, which won a bunch of awards in its native France, including two for best original screenplay. I highly recommend you see it before, after, even instead of this one--not that we hated the remake. We didn't. Paul Rudd, who plays the guy, Tim, more often plays the nerd or outcast (especially in the brilliant The Shape of Things (2003), as well as The Oh in Ohio (2006), Knocked Up (2007), Role Models, and I Love You, Man) than Steve Carell (I wrote about him in Date Night), who has made an art of it. Director/producer Jay Roach (directed Meet the Parents (2000), Meet the Fockers (2004), all three Austin Powers movies (1997, 99, 2002), and produced Borat (2006) and Brüno, among others) certainly knows comedy, and cringe comedy more than most. Relative unknowns David Guion and Michael Handelman adapted the screenplay from writer/director Francis Weber's for The Dinner Game and the critics have not been kind (only 50% on rottentomatoes). Watch for the bottle of wine near the end with F. Weber written on the label.

Not sure why they used the Yiddish word schmucks in the title. I don't remember any cast member uttering the word. Idiots or fools would have been more to the point. Or just stick to the original title, The Dinner Game. Perhaps it was an homage to Sacha Baron Cohen (title character in Borat and Brüno and producer of this one) who was originally slated to play Carell's part of Barry, and who would have been comfortable saying it.

There are plenty of things to enjoy here, however. As I write this, the movie is second (to Inception) in box office receipts for the week. Carell is funny, as always. Rudd is frustrated. Jemaine Clement (Flight of the Conchords) is truly hilarious. Kristen Schaal, one of Clement's co-stars on Conchords, has a good small part. Lucy Punch (wonderful in Being Julia (2004)) is perfect as the deranged blonde. Larry Wilmore (always had a good line or two on episodes of the series Accidentally on Purpose, was a writer/producer for The Bernie Mac Show, writer for In Living Color, and a consulting producer on many episodes of The Office, among many other credits) has a small part. Ron Livingston (best known as the lead in Office Space (1999), to which there is a stapler reference in an early scene, and as Berger, who broke up with Carrie on a post-it on the Sex and the City series) has his moments. Zach Galifianakis (Bored to Death, The Hangover, Up in the Air) will amuse many with his over-the-top character (can't say I loved it). Bruce Greenwood (who always spices up an ensemble, such as Capote (2005), I'm Not There (2007), and Star Trek, among many, and he won an award for best supporting actor in Being Julia) does his smug thing well, as usual. And the other "idiots" at the dinner are mostly recognizable character actors with long resumés (including Rick Overton as the guy with the big beard). Plus the stuffed mice settings are quite clever.

Low-brow and full of cringes, this is pretty funny, and if you go to lots of movies, you might as well see it. Or wait for the DVD. However you see it, wait for the bonus at the end.

Inception (2010)

For my fans and critics who say I like everything, I wasn't crazy about this over-long mind-bending fantasy about people joining each others' dreams and dreams-within-dreams. It's making huge piles of money in most every cineplex in the country, including lots of repeat viewers, so my panning it will not hurt it nor its exhibitors in the slightest (it has a high rating of 87% on rottentomatoes). I was with some of my favorite people: Jack, Amy, Sally, and Mike, so you can't blame this on a bad mood. Amy, the youngest of us, perhaps liked it the best, but she didn't love it either. This afternoon Jon gave me two links to include here: the spoiler-filled "Inception explainer" from salon.com (I care so little, I haven't even read it all the way through--skip to the section starting with What?) and an "infographic" (likewise full of spoilers) he got from his son Jake.

This just in: more spoilers, so don't read them if you're among the 50 people who haven't seen it yet, one about the end, and another about the characters.

I'm a fan of director/writer Christopher Nolan's previous work: Following (1998), Insomnia (2002), Batman Begins (2005), The Prestige (2006), and The Dark Knight. After seeing Memento (2001) on the big screen I made a note to rent it (as we did in those days) and watch it with the scenes in reverse order, but never got around to it. Now salon.com has an explainer for that as well. Some of the special effects are fun: I liked when Paris folds over onto itself. Nolan picked a great cast for this one, with plenty of references to their earlier work (for example, Marion Cotillard won an Oscar for playing Edith Piaf, who sang Je ne regrette rien, which is featured). That's Lukas Haas, who was 7 years old when Testament (1983) was released and 9 in Witness (1985), in some early scenes. Always great to see Joseph Gordon-Levitt (I wrote about him in (500) Days of Summer) and all the rest. I don't need to list them. You've probably seen it already.

The Kids Are All Right (2010)

Self-fulfilling prophecy: I expected to love this. I did, and Jack liked it, too. The story of a long-married lesbian couple whose two kids seek out their (common) sperm donor has a little something for all preferences. Most anyone can relate to the bickering between two people who have been together a long time, teenagers who roll their eyes and try to become independent, and then there's some other stuff I won't divulge. We did have a couple of warnings. Mary & Bob were put off by graphic sex scenes and Christiana told Amy it's great but DO NOT see it with your parents. And then there are the imdb discussion boards, one in particular, bemoaning which sex scenes are graphic, which are not, and page after page about lesbians' getting no respect despite being leads in the movie. Those discussions contain spoilers but are food for conversation after you have seen the movie.

I was already a fan of director/writer Lisa Cholodenko (both High Art (1998), which won best screenplay at Sundance, and Laurel Canyon (2002) are very good), and in this she shared writing duties with Stuart Blumberg (close friend of Edward Norton, Blumberg wrote the script for Norton's directorial debut Keeping the Faith (2002), and co-wrote the teenage-boy-fantasy movie The Girl Next Door (2004)). Someone wrote recently that Annette Bening was brave to have played this role (her character's name is Nic). After seeing Mother and Child (in which I covered Bening's accomplishments) I commented that I doubted if more bravery was needed for this movie than that one (in that one, she is mean, unattractive, and completely shut down) and my opinion still stands. In this one she plays a fully realized wife and mother with a full range of emotions. Wonderful, but (picture me shrugging) not all that brave. Julianne Moore (I wrote about her in Chloe and A Single Man) also does a wonderful job as Jules and they both had me believing they were gay (though perhaps I don't have the best gay-dar; I'll ask around and see what some more qualified people think in that regard). Mark Ruffalo (since I wrote about him in The Brothers Bloom he was in Where the Wild Things Are, Shutter Island, and Date Night) played opposite Moore in Blindness, and this time he's great as the sort of Peter Pan character needed for the role. Mia Wasikowska (I wrote about her in Alice in Wonderland), once again ditches her native English accent to play American college-bound teenager Joni and she is terrific, as is Josh Hutcherson (he's been working since he was 10 in 2002, but I haven't seen any of it) as her brother Laser.

Three children of celebrities are in this movie: Eric Eisner (son of Disney exec Michael Eisner) and his wife Lisa are, I think, the other grown-up couple out to dinner with Nic and Jules late in the movie; Sasha Spielberg (20 year old daughter of Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw) has a couple of lines in a party scene (look for the girl in profile); and, most importantly, Zosia Mamet (22 year old daughter of David Mamet and Lindsay Crouse, Zosia had a wonderful series arc in United States of Tara as well as a teensy part in Greenberg) is Joni's randy friend Sasha.

This movie has 18 producers, including co's and exec's, but it does not win my Producers' Plethora Prize. That title is still held by Battle in Seattle with 19, and Grace is Gone, with 17, moves to third place.