“The real problem is that Kubrick set out to make a horror picture with no apparent understanding of the genre. Everything about it screams that from beginning to end, from plot decision to the final scene — which has been used before on The Twilight Zone.” Stephen King interviewed for Playboy Magazine, June 1983

The Shining (1980)
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Screenplay by Stanley Kubrick & Diane Johnson, based on the novel by Stephen King
Produced by Stanley Kubrick
146 minutes (original U.S. theatrical version)/ 144 minutes (U.S. theatrical version)/ 119 minutes (international version)

Debating whether or not Jack Nicholson’s fortissimo performance in The Shining — as a family man who slips into homicidal insanity during his season as caretaker of a haunted hotel — needed to be played at such a high volume is like debating whether Jimi Hendrix really needed to light a perfectly good electric guitar on fire at Monterey Pop. There may have been a perfectly good exercise in gothic terror and things that go bump in the night lurking within Stephen King‘s novel, but the film version was designed and constructed by Stanley Kubrick. Drawn up as a last will and testament to the horror genre as far as the high and mighty Kubrick was concerned, the film inflicts such psychic trauma on the viewer that it needs a joker like Jack in the deck to soften its wicked blow.

Striking ominous chords from the start, schoolteacher Jack Torrance (Nicholson) accepts a six month stint as caretaker of the Overlook Hotel, encouraged that winter’s isolation will give him time to outline a novel. The general manager feels obligated to mention a tragedy in which a previous caretaker killed his wife and two daughters with an axe before shooting himself. Jack responds that his wife — a fan of “ghost stories and horror films” — will be thrilled. The skittish Wendy Torrance (Shelley Duvall) finds the illustrious hotel spooky, while 7-year-old Danny (Danny Lloyd) receives visions of the future that are nothing short of terrifying. A departing cook (Scatman Crothers) confides to the boy that they share a special power his grandmother called ”shining”. Assured there’s nothing  to be scared of, Danny senses something bad lurking at the Overlook, particularly in Room 237.

Warner Bros. president John Calley knew that Stanley Kubrick had an interest in the paranormal and sent him a galleys copy of The Shining in 1977. Ignoring a first draft Stephen King had been contractually guaranteed to author, Kubrick adapted a script with novelist Diane Johnson, who was teaching a course on the gothic novel at UC Berkeley. Certain exterior shots of the Overlook Hotel would be filmed at the Timberline Lodge, on the slopes of Mount Hood in Oregon. The vast majority of the film — including the hedge maze — was manufactured at Elstree Studios outside London. Filming commenced in May 1978 and given Kubrick’s refusal to be hurried through a schedule, didn’t wrap until April 1979. Kubrick tinkered with his film even after it was in U.S. theaters for five days, cutting an epilogue in which the general manager visits Wendy in the hospital.

The film departed so radically from his book  that Stephen King authored the teleplay for a 4-hour mini-series version that aired on ABC in 1997. Kubrick ignored many of the elements King found eerie — an elevator, a firehose, animal shaped shrubs — to focus instead on a child’s subconscious dread of a parent turning into a monster. The magnificence of The Shining is how Kubrick exploits that fear viscerally. Snippets of a blood soaked future flash through Danny’s mind while the corridors of the hotel breathe with living images of the past. Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind provided electronic sound elements, which Kubrick sourced with music from classical composers György Ligeti and Krzysztof Penderecki to create one of the most unnerving film scores ever. Criticized at the time for not watching enough horror movies, the bottom line is that Kubrick’s vision is scary as hell.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 423,027 users: 91% for The Shining

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: N/A

What do you say? The fan trailer below was superior to any I could find from Warner Bros.

Whoever said that talking about politics, religion or sex on a blind date was a bad idea could just have easily applied that rule to movies. Or maybe like Peter Venkman said, it’s more of a guideline than a rule. I caught two movies recently that were the flip side of the same coin: independently financed romantic dramas ripe with political intrigue, both written and directed by women under the age of 40. Let’s see Blockbuster Video devote a shelf to that genre.

Cairo Time (2009)
Directed by Ruba Nadda
Written by Ruba Nadda
Produced by Daniel Iron, David Collins
90 minutes

Ruba Nadda was born in Montréal, Canada to a Syrian father and a Palestinian mother. She first visited the city known as “The Mother of the World” at the age of 16 with her family. After graduating Tisch School of the Arts in New York, Nadda went on to write and direct 16 short films and one feature, Sabah, in 2005. Also that year, the filmmaker arrived on the idea for a new script. Determined to capture life in Cairo as she’d experienced it over the years, Cairo Time focused on a 50-year-old American named Juliette who arrives to visit her diplomat husband, who she learns has been detained working in a refugee camp across the border in Gaza. Passing time in an exotic but bewildering city, Juliette forms a relationship with her husband’s former security officer, an Arab named Tareq.

Nadda got her script to producer Daniel Iron of Toronto-based Foundry Films. Equally enthused by what they read were Christine Vachon and Charles Pugilese of New York indie stalwart Killer Films, whose stamp on movies from Party Monster to Mildred Pierce usually indicates something different. The filmmaker shielded her producers from the logistical challenges that awaited in Cairo, but in a preview of coming attractions, the production was barred because Canada did not have a co-production treaty with Egypt. Ireland did, so Nadda put Iron in contact with producer David Collins, whose Dublin-based Samson Films had helped the Oscar winning Once reach the screen. Within two years, the Canadian/Irish co-production raised financing.

Before I express my ardor for Cairo Time, I’ll admit to hitting pause on my MacBook three times during the 90 minute running time. I wandered away to YouTube for some southern rock and videos of a skateboarding bulldog named Tillman. If I haven’t completely squandered my credibility here, I’ll add that I finished Cairo Time in one sitting, which is like professional critics saying they gave a movie an 8 out of 10. Collaborating with cinematographer Luc Montpellier — who shot most of Nadda’s short films — and editor Teresa Hannigan, the major reason to see Cairo Time is its luscious texture. Deliberate and sensual without having much to do with sex, the picture immerses us in the clamor, the color and the cadences of Cairo without feeling like tourist bureau propaganda.

Cairo Time conveys so much more about its world with silence — Patricia Clarkson closing her eyes in weariness, or Alexander Sidding, in a career making performance, politely directing Clarkson’s character through the city — than most romances are able or willing to with pages of dialogue. The film is like a splash of water in the heat; refreshing and vivid. I got a better sense of what life in Cairo was like than I could short of hopping a flight there, particularly how similar it was to any other metropolis. The events of the Arab spring only make the picture more relevant now than when it was released October 2009 in Canada and August of the following year in the States. Ruba Nadda has a passionate, self assured voice I’m looking forward to hearing again.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 3,832 users: 59% for Cairo Time

Metacritic “Metascore” average among 26 leading critics: 67 for Cairo Time

What do you say?

Promoting I’m Gonna Git You Sucka in 1988, Steve James, who appeared as “Kung Fu Joe” in the blaxploitation spoof, commented: “I always hated that label ‘blaxploitation.’ I wondered, why couldn’t there just be films with black stars? You know, you’d go around the corner from a theater showing one of them, and there’d be Dirty Harry. And nobody was calling it ‘whitesploitation.’” Right on, Steve! So in February, I’ll take a look at ten films featuring black stars from a certain era.

Detroit 9000 (1973)
Directed by Arthur Marks
Written by Orville H. Hampton
Produced by Arthur Marks
106 minutes

Despite using formulas from just about every cop thriller you’ve ever seen, Detroit 9000 has a refreshing taste that’s difficult to resist. The first black themed film shot in Motown, Detroit 9000 was financed and produced by General Film Corporation, a B-movie distributor co-founded by Arthur Marks, who’d segued from Perry Mason episodes in the ’60s to drive-in features in the ’70s. Marks would make three highly entertaining pictures dubbed “blaxploitation”  due to the racial complexion of their casts — Bucktown (1975), J.D.’s Revenge (1976) and Monkey Hustle (1976) — but Quentin Tarantino was so enamored by Detroit 9000 that he chose it for a theatrical and home video re-release in 1998 through his short lived retro distributor Rolling Thunder. Tarantino even devoted a track on the Jackie Brown CD soundtrack to a line of dialogue from the movie.

Ridiculously over the top — with a body count that keeps pace with the annual homicide figures for Detroit and cheeseball dialogue whenever men and women mix it up — Detroit 9000 has a pleasing familiarity more welcoming than worn out. A country cousin to Lethal Weapon, budget limitations reduce the pyrotechnics and give the audience room to chew over the racial complexities of a black cop struggling to identify with a white partner on a case where the racial profile of their suspects is political dynamite either way. The plot is both idiotic and irrelevant. What makes Detroit 9000 worth viewing are the performances, with Alex Rocco as an irascible Archie Bunker cop and a vivacious Vonetta McGee as the most wonderful archetype in the movies, the call girl with a conscience. Luchi De Jesus composed the pulse pounding music.

Trouble hits the Motor City when U.S. Congressman Aubrey Hale Clayton (Rudy Challenger) returns home to announce his candidacy for governor at the “Hail Our Heroes” ball for the black community. In a crackerjack robbery, four masked thieves make off with Hale’s war chest of $400,000 in jewelry and cash contributions. Detroit PD puts its best cop on the case: Lt. Danny Bassett (Alex Rocco), who makes up for what he lacks in racial sensitivity with street savvy. Meanwhile, pro footballer turned homicide cop Sgt. Jesse Williams (Hari Rhodes) investigates a dismembered body pulled out of the Detroit River. Running with a hunch that their cases are linked, Williams proposes they work together. Hesitant to the idea of a partner, Bassett is overruled by Captain Chalmers (Robert Phillips), an old friend Bassett accuses of taking his promotion.

Visiting his stressed out wife at Longview Sanitarium, Bassett is harangued for refusing to sacrifice his ethics to do a favor here or there for some cash. Unsure whether his enigmatic white partner is on the take or not, Williams works a tip that Congressman Hale’s right-hand man isn’t too thrilled about his pompous, self-serving boss running for governor and might have organized the robbery. Bassett has more luck with the manager of the brothel he frequents, who reveals that two out-of-town clients came in and aroused suspicion. Bassett & Williams suspect that the thieves must have had contact inside the cathouse and sure enough, professional lady of leisure Roby Harris (Vonetta McGee) warns her manager Ferdy (Herbert Jefferson Jr.) that the cops are on their trail. Shootouts, boat chases and double crosses ensue.

What do you say?

Promoting I’m Gonna Git You Sucka in 1988, Steve James, who appeared as “Kung Fu Joe” in the blaxploitation spoof, commented: “I always hated that label ‘blaxploitation.’ I wondered, why couldn’t there just be films with black stars? You know, you’d go around the corner from a theater showing one of them, and there’d be Dirty Harry. And nobody was calling it ‘whitesploitation.’” Right on, Steve! So in February, I’ll take a look at ten films featuring black stars from a certain era.

Across 110th Street (1972)
Directed by Barry Shear
Screenplay by Luther Davis, based on the novel Across 110th by Wally Ferris
Produced by Ralph Serpe, Fouad Said
102 minutes

Short on pimps, prostitutes or private dicks, long on urban decay as New York caught a peek at itself in the mirror, Across 110th Street is one of the few legitimate A-movies to emerge from the “blaxploitation” genre. Hitting bookshelves in 1970, Across 110th was the first and last published novel by Wally Ferris, a career television cameraman who worked at WNEW in Manhattan for many years. United Artists acquired film rights and Film Guarantors — a motion picture completion bond company — made what would be a brief splash into production. Producer Fouad Said hired veteran playwright/ screenwriter Luther Davis to adapt a script and Barry Shear, whose only notable feature was the ’60s cult movie Wild In The Streets, to direct; Shear did have hundreds of hours of TV credits on his resume, from Hawaii Five-O to Julia to The Streets of San Francisco.

Anthony Quinn came on board as executive producer, but when the role of Frank Matelli was apparently turned down by John Wayne and Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster, Quinn stepped in front of the camera. Across 110th Street barely qualifies as “blaxploitation”; the same production could have been staged a decade earlier (or later) and would be far better known as the morally complex, street smart film noir it actually is. The bleak but fast moving story examines how one robbery ripples across a community, from the cops struggling to keep the peace, to the perps looking to make a clean getaway, to the civilians trying to make it through the day. While Quinn doesn’t seem fully committed to his character of Archie Bunker cop, Yaphet Kotto and Paul Benjamin are electric. Bobby Womack wrote (with J.J. Johnson) and performed five smooth tunes.

Summer gets a whole lot hotter when three black men — epileptic ex-con Jim Harris (Paul Benjamin), dry cleaner Joe Logart (Ed Bernard) and driver Henry Jackson (Antonio Fargas) — rob a bank operated by the Italian mob in Harlem. The brazen heist ends with two blacks, two Italians and two New York City police officers dead and flips the neighborhood upside down. Don Gennarro (Frank Mascetta) dispatches his dilettante son-in-law Nick D’Salvio (Anthony Franciosa) to restore order by capturing the perpetrators and making an example of them. Meanwhile, Capt. Frank Matelli (Anthony Quinn), a veteran of enforcing his own style of law in Harlem, is disconcerted to learn that the investigation has been handed to Lt. William Pope (Yaphet Kotto), whose youth and ethnicity reflect the new NYPD.

Sent uptown to crack skulls, D’Salvio is greeted as little more than “a punk errand boy” by Doc Johnson (Richard Ward), the kingpin who runs Harlem on behalf of the Italians. Doc dispatches his fearsome right hand man Shevvy (Gilbert Lewis) to piece together information on the robbery, one $100 bill at a time. Shevvy approaches a dancer named Laurelene (Gloria Hendry) for help, unaware that her boyfriend Jim Harris is the man they’re after. Trying to stay one step ahead of the hoods, Matelli and Pope are slowed by contrasting methods in everything from how to question a suspect to how to do favors in Harlem. As the night drags on, the 55-year-old cop realizes that his era is over. Mobsters, police and thieves finally meet atop an abandoned tenement on Lenox Avenue & 142nd Street, where Harris is holed up and armed to the teeth.

What do you say?

This month’s theme was hatched after yet another person with better taste than me recommended that I add the 2005 romantic drama Shopgirl to my queue. Looking for nine more films with similar themes, “Cat Food”, “Rain” and “Corset” were all considered and rejected before I settled on “May December Romance”. So in the month of December, I’ll take a look at love separated by much more than just six months on the calendar.

Beautiful Girls (1996)
Directed by Ted Demme
Written by Scott Rosenberg
Produced by Cary Woods
112 minutes

Like a Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer for Generation X, Beautiful Girls has carved its niche as holiday comfort food that tastes great every year. Following his first produced screenplay Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead, Scott Rosenberg signed a deal with Touchstone Pictures. He submitted a treatment for his first assignment Con Air and waiting for word in Boston while snowplows dug through a blizzard, it occurred to Rosenberg that the real action was in his hometown, where friends were dealing with commitment as they hit their third decade. Rosenberg emerged from his room five days later with a script. Brian Grazer, Ridley Scott and Mace Neufeld were interested, but producer Cary Woods and Miramax Films won the bidding. Rosenberg worked on a dozen drafts with James L. Brooks before the director decided he didn’t relate much with blue collar 30-year-olds and dropped out.

Ted Demme wasn’t much older than the characters in the script and was ultimately hired to direct. His aesthetic influence was The Deer Hunter and preferring “Knight’s Ridge” to look as worn down and as frozen in time as possible, opted to shoot the film in Minnesota. With 17 characters packed into a 1 hour 50 minute movie, there are segments of Beautiful Girls that work much better than others: Michael Rapaport as a local yokel obsessed with fashion models, a Neil Diamond sing-along and (no joke) Rosie O’Donnell chart high, while the “romance” between Natalie Portman and Timothy Hutton remains the #1 reason to see the movie, an episodic comedy drama that never spells out its intentions or dumbs itself down. The script is a series of insights in search of a story, but after a few years, you not only feel you know these characters, but look forward to spending time with them.

Lounge playing piano man Willie Conway (Timothy Hutton) scrapes together enough cash for bus fare from New York City back home to the town of “Knight’s Ridge” for his 10-year high school reunion. Willie discovers that his friends never really left. Tommy (Matt Dillon) runs a plowing company and clings to his glory days by sleeping with ex-cheerleader Darian (Lauren Holly). Tommy’s loyal girlfriend Sharon (Mira Sorvino) copes with his behavior by focusing on her weight, which her brassy pal Gina (Rosie O’Donnell) sees as a perpetuation of male fantasy. Paul (Michael Rapaport) pushes away his girlfriend Jan (Martha Plimpton) by refusing to accept she isn’t cheating on him with the meat cutter. He buys her  a brown engagement ring and when she refuses to marry him, Paul buries Jan’s driveway in snow.

The quiet Kev (Max Perlich) also shovels snow for a living but aspires to do little more than work all day and drink all night. Husband and father Mo (Noah Emmerich) seems to be the only genuine grownup among the group. The weekend takes a detour with the entrance of Andrea (Uma Thurman), a beautiful and cool import from Chicago visiting Knight’s Ridge to see her cousin “Stinky” (Pruitt Taylor Vince), who runs the tavern the boys drink at. Each of the guys take turns trying to impress her, to little avail. Willie’s girlfriend and possible fiancée (Annabeth Gish) soon joins him, but the 29-year-old musician confides his commitment fears to a kindred spirit, the soulful 13-year-old who lives next door, Marty (Natalie Portman). She suggests Willie wait to get married until he meets someone who excites him. By Willie’s math, when Marty turns 23, he’ll only be 39.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 4,746 users: 79% for Beautiful Girls

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 64 for Beautiful Girls

What do you say?

This month’s theme was hatched after yet another person with better taste than me recommended that I add the 2005 romantic drama Shopgirl to my queue. Looking for nine more films with similar themes, “Laundromat”, “Love Triangle” and “Shaving Legs” were all considered and rejected before I settled on “May December Romance”. So in the month of December, I’ll take a look at love separated by much more than just six months on the calendar.

The Girl in the Café (2005)
Directed by David Yates
Written by Richard Curtis
Produced by Hilary Bevan Jones
93 minutes

Desaturated of artificial sweeteners and preservatives, The Girl in the Café is lean, thoughtful and a small work of beauty, another exhibit in the case that TV has overtaken feature films in terms of quality. A co-founder of the U.K.’s Comic Relief charity and supporter of Make Poverty History — which pushed for debt relief, aid and trade to the Third World — screenwriter Richard Curtis sought to marry the world of politics with his other passion: the romantic comedy. The creator of Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and Love Actually, Curtis had a mainstream Hollywood production in mind, with a star like Jack Nicholson falling in love with his political contrarian at the United Nations. But Curtis discovered the faster production schedule of television would get the film finished in time for the G8 summit in Scotland, where extreme poverty was to be the focus.

Opting to make The Girl in the Café the highlight of a broadcast season raising awareness for global poverty, BBC1 controller Lorraine Heggessey financed the picture for £2 million, roughly $3.8 million USD. Producer Hilary Bevan Jones sought out David Yates, director of British television’s State of Play and Sex Traffic. Jones’ production company Tightrope Pictures produced the film with BBC and HBO, which aired it June 2005. In contrast to Love Actually, which Richard Curtis tricked out with every bell and whistle in the North Pole, The Girl in the Café settles into an everyday grace that surpasses anything he’s written for the screen. With a smaller scale, the Hugh Grant & Julia Roberts parts are played instead by Bill Nighy & Kelly Macdonald. Much more subdued and far more believable than a couple of stars would have been, Nighy & Macdonald are blissful to watch flourish in leading roles.

A statistician named Lawrence (Bill Nighy) breaks for tea at a café in Piccadilly Square. The crowd forces him to share a table with Gina (Kelly Macdonald), a young woman also taking her tea alone. Lawrence offers that he’s employed at Downing Street in work that requires “a lot of paper, a lot of pens”. Gina reveals little more than she does nothing and is a student of sorts. The conversation flows well enough for the socially awkward Lawrence to ask Gina to dinner before returning to work, where his boss, Chancellor of the Exchequer (Ken Stott) and his staff prepare for an economic summit. As Lawrence and Gina get to know each other over inedible pea soup and other delights, Lawrence reveals that he’s headed to a shindig in Reykjavik, Iceland known as the G8 conference, where the leaders of the free world hammer out policy for the next year.

Offering that they could both learn some new facts about Iceland, Lawrence invites Gina to accompany him to the summit. He suffers the embarrassment of realizing the room they’ve been booked only has one bed, but Gina offers to sleep on the couch so the numbers cruncher can be refreshed for negotiations. The British push for an ambitious resolution on debt, aid and trade to Africa, but see that vision pared down due to resistance by the Americans. While Lawrence suffers impending defeat quietly, Gina implores those she meets not to shrink from their responsibility to save the lives of millions. Urged to send the troublemaker home, Lawrence finds he is unable to. He vouches for her behavior and invites the girl in the café to a reception for the British prime minister, where Gina’s inability to sit silent on the issues has major consequences for their relationship.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average: Not available

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

What do you say?

This month’s theme was hatched after yet another person with better taste than me recommended that I add the 2005 romantic drama Shopgirl to my queue. Looking for nine more films with similar themes, “Polaroid”, “Sushi” and “Loan Payment” were all considered and rejected before I settled on “May December Romance”. So in the month of December, I’ll take a look at love separated by much more than just six months on the calendar.

Elegy (2008)
Directed by Isabel Coixet
Screenplay by Nicholas Meyer, based on the novel The Dying Animal by Philip Roth
Produced by Gary Lucchesi, Tom Rosenberg, Andre Lamal
112 minutes

If Elegy wasn’t a movie, it would probably be a rug, the rugs that men of a certain age wear on their heads. Pulitzer Prize winning author Philip Roth had two of his novels adapted by the movies — Goodbye, Columbus (1969) and Portnoy’s Complaint (1974) — but it wasn’t until Nicholas Meyer adapted The Human Stain (2003) for Lakeshore Entertainment that the results were even somewhat well received. Lakeshore optioned the film rights to Roth’s 2001 novel The Dying Animal and founder Tom Rosenberg sent a copy to Penelope Cruz. The actress spent five years lobbying to get a film made. With Meyer tackling a script, the producers wooed Al Pacino for the role of professor David Kepesh. Cruz had more luck getting fellow Spaniard Isabel Coixet, director of My Life Without Me and The Secret Life of Words, behind the camera, with Ben Kingsley as Kepesh.

Under a title Nicholas Meyer coined, Elegy commenced shooting April 2007 in Vancouver. Though Lakeshore had a deal with MGM, the film was screened for the first time at the 2008 Berlin Film Festival without a distributor. Samuel Goldwyn Films agreed to release it in the U.S., with Netflix’s Red Envelope Entertainment promoting the DVD among its subscribers. Elegy is intimately crafted, with Isabel Coixet dialing down the melodrama and striking a rhythm that’s soulful and intimate. The dialogue is cut from equal fine quality, but the story of a student entering into an affair with her professor is older than dirt. If there was anywhere to go with this material, Elegy is unwilling or unable to. Ben Kingsley doesn’t exhibit the charm the role called for, though Penelope Cruz has never been more appealing in an English speaking role.

Appearing on The Charlie Rose Show to promote his book about hedonism in pre-colonial America, author David Kepesh (Ben Kingsley) hints at regret he’s experienced for a marriage in the 1960s that did not live up to its promise. Kepesh looks back on how passion recently entered and exited his life by recalling a student named Consuela Castillo (Penelope Cruz) in his practical criticism class at Columbia. Attracted to her beauty and sophistication, Kepesh waits until grades have been passed out and he throws a cocktail party for his students to make his move. She gives her professor permission to stop calling her “Miss Castillo”. He replies, “There’s something about you that invites a kind of formality.” Consuela accepts his invitation to see a play. Kepesh’s best friend poet George O’Hearn (Dennis Hopper) ridicules this, advising Kepesh not to mix conversation up with sex.

Wrapping up a round of “pure fucking” with his lover of 20 years, Caroline (Patricia Clarkson), Kepesh receives a call from his son (Peter Sarsgaard), a doctor still coming to terms with his father’ walking out on his mother. After their date, Kepesh lures Consuela to his apartment by agreeing to play the piano for her. They spend the night together. Though Kepesh maintains to George that Consuela likely thinks of him as a new experience and nothing more, the couple is unable to move on. A relationship blossoms, but Kepesh realizes he’ll never possess Consuela and obsesses over her. She reads him the riot act and allays the professor’s fears of their 30-year age difference, but his insecurity erodes the love affair, prompting Kepesh to return to the familiarity of Caroline. Two years later, out of the blue, Consuela returns to Kepesh with a revelation.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 10,718 users: 60% for Elegy

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 66 for Elegy

What do you say?

This month’s theme was hatched after yet another person with better taste than me recommended that I add the 2005 romantic drama Shopgirl to my queue. Looking for nine more films with similar themes, “Gloves”, “Art Gallery” and “Pilates” were all considered and rejected before I settled on “May December Romance”. So in the month of December, I’ll take a look at love separated by much more than just six months on the calendar.

The Good Girl (2002)
Directed by Miguel Arteta
Written by Mike White
Produced by Matthew Greenfield
93 minutes

Saying that The Good Girl is the best movie Jennifer Aniston has appeared in doesn’t give it nearly the credit it deserves. Pasadena native Mike White had pictured a career as a playwright in New York, but returning home, wrote two dark comedies — Chuck & Buck and The Good Girl — which helped land him a job on the writing staff of Dawson’s Creek in 1998. White showed his work to a college buddy named Miguel Arteta, who’d grown up in Puerto Rico and flunked out of the documentary program at Harvard before meeting White at Wesleyan University. A graduate of the AFI, Arteta was interested in The Good Girl, but White refused, hoping he could direct it himself. The pair tackled the controversial Chuck & Buck first and after several actresses got cold feet about playing Justine Fast, White suggested Jennifer Aniston for the part.

With Aniston on board, another Wesleyan alum named Matthew Greenfield secured roughly $7 million in financing from Myriad Pictures. To accommodate Aniston’s schedule taping Friends in Burbank, The Good Girl was filmed in Simi Valley, with the actress clocking seven-day work weeks for a chance to break out of rom-com jail. Screened for the first time at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival, The Good Girl posted strong reviews and turned a profit in limited release. With humor so dry it could keep paint from sticking, Mike White’s writing isn’t for everybody, injecting brutal honesty into the hijinks. But the quality of the material is evident by the talent of the cast assembled around Aniston, with John C. Reilly & Tim Blake Nelson shining in particular. Miguel Arteta captures the langour of Texas without making jokes out of the characters or their lives.

While not extraordinarily intelligent, 30-year-old Justine Last (Jennifer Aniston) realizes she’s wasting away as a clerk at the Retail Rodeo somewhere in Texas. Her co-workers pass the tedium of their day in a variety of ways. Gwen (Deborah Rush) keeps herself busy with work. Cheryl (Zooey Deschanel) slings subtle insults at customers over the p.a. system. Security guard Corny (Mike White) invites Justine to his Bible study group, which she declines by stating she prefers evenings to herself. Justine’s husband Phil (John C. Reilly) and his best friend Bubba (Tim Blake Nelson) are stoners who make a living as house painters. Justine is drawn to the new clerk, 22-year-old Holden Worther (Jake Gyllenhaal). Holden claims to be named after J.D. Salinger’s anti-hero and bonds with Justine over their shared hatred of the world.

Justine spurns Holden’s advances by reminding him that she’s married. He responds by quitting Retail Rodeo and writing Justine a lovesick note imploring her to meet him after work. When Gwen gets ill eating a batch of bad blackberries, Justine has to choose between accompanying her friend to the emergency room or meeting Holden at his designated rendezvous outside Chuck E. Cheese. Their intense affair is put on ice when Justine suspects that Bubba is onto them. Holden does not react well to the hiatus. Justine attempts to strengthen her marriage by taking Phil to Bible study, but changes her mind when she spots the motel manager among the saved. While Holden continues to fall apart and Bubba blackmails Justine with sex, the good girl clings to the hope that the baby she’s carrying will give her life some purpose.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 11,043 users: 54% for The Good Girl

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 71 for The Good Girl

What do you say?

This month’s theme was hatched after someone with better taste than me recommended that I add the 2005 romantic drama Shopgirl to my queue. Looking for films with similar themes, “Department Store”, “Medication” and “Love Triangle” were all considered and rejected before I settled on “May December Romance”. So in the month of December, I’ll take a look at love separated by much more than just six months on the calendar.

Being Julia (2004)
Directed by István Szabó
Screenplay by Ronald Harwood, based on the novella Theatre by W. Somerset Maugham
Produced by Robert Lantos
105 minutes

There’s an ingeniously wicked story about endurance and revenge wrapped inside the extravagant packaging of Being Julia, which boasts one of our Iron Chefs of acting — Annette Bening — slicing and sautéing her way to her much deserved third Oscar nomination. The project originated with W. Somerset Maugham’s 1947 novella Theatre and British producer Mark Milln, who acquired the screen rights and approached Ronald Harwood to write the adaptation. Harwood was not only familiar with the story, but had already considered adapting it into a film.The screenwriter sent his first draft to producer Robert Lantos of Toronto based Serendipity Point Films. Intending to provide Lantos with a writing sample for an open assignment, Harwood not only landed that gig (director Norman Jewison’s final film The Statement) but sold Being Julia as well.

Lantos shared the script with István Szabó, the Hungarian director whom the producer had worked with on the 1999 historical drama Sunshine. Roughly $18 million in financing was secured from investors in the U.S., the U.K., Canada and Hungary and a 54-day shooting schedule commenced in June 2003; the theatre was found in Kecskemet, south of Budapest, where most of the interiors were filmed. Distributed in the U.S. by Sony Pictures Classics, Being Julia has a bit of that artificial, retirement community splendor that practically every Oscar baiting movie from Miramax Films featured in the same period, but once the lavish production design by Luciana Arrighi is filed away, a fanciful and sophisticated comedy about the art of deception takes off. Annette Bening’s comedic gifts are expertly used here and the supporting roles are wound with equal precision.

With the wisdom of her mentor Jimmie Langton (Michael Gambon) in her head, diva of the London stage circa 1938 Julia Lambert (Annette Bening) thrills the audience of her latest play. Feeling exhausted, she musters the energy to waylay her husband, well-intentioned theater producer Michael Gosselyn (Jeremy Irons) into closing the show so she can let herself go over a holiday, eating potatoes and drinking beer. Julia’s vanity makes her oblivious to how this might impact her loyal assistant Evie (Juliet Stevenson) or devoted investor Dolly de Vries (Miriam Marygolyes). She begrudges her husband by accompanying him to lunch with a young American, the son of a friend of a friend looking to get into the accounting side of the theater business. To her amusement, the penniless Tom Fennel (Shaun Evans) exhibits a wanton lust for the actress despite the 20 years separating their ages.

When Julia’s friend Lord Charles (Bruce Greenwood) deflects her romantic overtures, the lonely diva agrees to meet Tom for tea at his flat. With Jimmie in her ear reminding her what a good fling might do for her stagecraft, Julia falls in love with Tom. Rejuvenated, she changes her mind about closing the play and briefly recaptures her shine onstage. The expensive gifts she showers on Tom push him away until he crushes Julia by admitting he’s fallen in love with another woman, a bland but beautiful young actress named Avice Crichton (Lucy Punch). Under the impression she’s still smitten, Tom manipulates Julia into awarding Avice an audition for her new play. During rehearsals, the cunning diva surprises everyone with her generosity toward the ingenue, but on opening night, reminds London who is truly the greatest actress in town with a different kind of performance.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 1,962 users: 71% for Being Julia

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 65 for Being Julia

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Logging in to Netflix Instant for a movie to watch is like being hungry and shown to a food replicator. It doesn’t solve my problem — it introduces one thousand new ones. Luckily, I can see which genres are rated higher in nutritional content, in this case, 4 or 4 ½ star ratings out of 5 stars. “Documentary” had a lot of those. So did “Anime & Animation”. In the month of November, I take another trip around the globe to sample recent animated feature films. Next stop: Melbourne, Australia.

Mary and Max (2009)
Directed by Adam Elliot
Written by Adam Elliot
Produced by Melanie Coombs
92 minutes

With its whimsical design and a sonorous screenplay, Mary and Max soars like a Dr. Seuss fable made for grownups. After winning an Academy Award for Best Animated Short with Harvie Krumpet in 2004, Adam Elliot made the rounds at Disney, Pixar and Fox with pitches that fell on deaf ears. Returning to Australia, he began rereading letters by a New York pen pal he’d been corresponding with since the age of 17. Elliot felt that his long distance friend of 20 years — Jewish, atheist, a sufferer of Aspberger’s Syndrome — had all the makings of a character for his next film. Elliot spent six months storyboarding Mary and Max and another year and a half writing a script while producer Melanie Coombs raised financing. Screen Australia, Adirondack Pictures (a New York based film finance company) and Film Victoria ended up bankrolling Elliot’s first feature film at roughly $8 million AUS.

Elliot served as his own art director and designed all the characters for what took 50 crew members 57 weeks to shoot inside a Melbourne warehouse. Mary and Max was screened for the first time when it was selected to open the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, a first for a claymation feature. Elliot’s characteristic clay figures border on the grotesque, but the strength of his writing suggests an award winning graphic novel more than a movie script. Mary and Max is the anti-Shrek, brandishing abundant wit and imagination to do more than entertain kids, exploring characters who struggle to get out the door each morning. The result pushes the boundaries of animation. Barry Humphries (aka Dame Edna) provides the Seussian narration, Philip Seymour Hoffman’s vocal transformation as Max is superlative and even the hilarious product labels in the picture are worth a rental.

In the Mount Waverly suburb of Melbourne in 1976, a Narrator (Barry Humphries) begins “Mary Dinkle’s eyes were the color of muddy puddles. Her birthmark, the color of poo.” A painfully awkward child, 8-year-old Mary Daisy Dinkle (Bethany Whitmore) counts a pet rooster named Ethel as her only friend. Her favorite activities include drinking condensed milk and watching a cartoon called The Noblets, diminutive creatures that appeal to Mary because they never lack friends. Her father Noel works in a factory attaching strings to tea bags. Her mother Vera Lorraine Dinkle consumes liberal amounts of the sherry she uses in her recipes. Meanwhile, in New York, 44-year-old Max Jerry Horovitz (Philip Seymour Hoffman) also watches The Noblets. A chronic overeater who worships chocolate, Max has trouble sleeping and keeping pet goldfish alive.

Mary chooses Max’s name at random from a New York City phone book and writes him, including a Cherry Rite chocolate bar. Max is “confuzzled” by human beings and reacts to Mary’s letter by having an anxiety attack. Calming down, he answers Mary’s questions — like where babies come from in America — with candor. He also details his abhorrence of crowds, bright lights, sudden noises and strong smells, admitting that New York has all of these. Basking in Max’s words, Mary adopts a pen pal. She sends him chocolate. He advises her how to handle being teased at school. Max’s tension is diagnosed as Aspberger’s Syndrome, which adult Mary (Toni Collette) hopes to eradicate by studying disorders of the mind. She falls in love with her neighbor Damien (Eric Bana) and marries, but struggles with self-worth while a continent away Max continues to fight his inner demons.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 4,594 users: 89% for Mary and Max

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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