Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and telling us about them!
Is it really Thursday again already? It feels like just yesterday that we were talking about movies on trains. And this week, the theme is journalists/reporters. Ah, the intrepid reporter bungling their way to a career-making story with nothing but pluck, gumption, and a notepad - one of my favorite movie plots! I could have gone classic this week (if you haven't seen His Girl Friday, DO IT. Rosalind Russell is tremendous in it), but I did that last week, so contemporary films were in order. Here we have, for your viewing enjoyment, two fictional journalists who got more than what they bargained for, and one real-life newsman who was much more than his opponents bargained for.
Never Been Kissed (Raja Gosnell, 1999) Josie Geller, played by a radiant Drew Barrymore, starts out as a copy editor, but then one day the Editor-in-Chief of the paper she works for gives her a "real" assignment: go undercover in a high school to report on what teenagers' lives are really like. Of course, Josie had a terrible time when she was in high school (she was nicknamed "Josie Grossy") and wants to succeed this time around. Except that she still has the same temperament she had in high school, and teens haven't changed that much in the intervening years. So then her popular younger brother (David Arquette) goes back to school too, and everyone learns that high school - even one attended by 30 year-olds - is hell, and outer appearances don't always match the inner person. It's all cliché, yes, but Barrymore is impossibly winning, and the ensemble cast (including Michael Vartan, Jessica Alba, Leelee Sobieski, Molly Shannon, John C. Reilly, James Franco, and Garry Marshall in a great cameo as the Editor-in-Chief) is very fun.
The Ring (Gore Verbinski, 2002) Intrepid journalist Rachel Keller is concerned about her son, who has apparently been drawing morbid pictures of his cousin Katie's death.... even before it happened. Being an intrepid journalist, she naturally decides to investigate the mysterious death of her niece. Which of course includes watching this weird-ass videotape she watched in a cabin with friends. A videotape straight out of urban legend. One that causes you to die seven days after you watch it. But Rachel finds out that the legend is all too real. And of course she bumbles her way around trying to get to the bottom of how such a tape came into existence. Both The Ring and the original Japanese film Ringu, on which it is based, have a concept that has horror built right in; the plot itself suggests that the very act of watching the film will kill you. It doesn't get much scarier than that. But Verbinski's film has a sturdier sense of mood than Hideo Nakata's original, and a great performance from Naomi Watts at its center.
Good Night, and Good Luck (George Clooney, 2005) Nightly News anchorman Edward R. Murrow and his team go to battle with Senator Joseph McCarthy, who is on a Communist witch hunt in 1950s America. Clooney's film so ably and completely captures not just the look but the feel of the 50s in every aspect of the production. And while the entire ensemble cast deserves praise, it's character actor David Strathairn, as Murrow, who has the biggest part, and boy does he run with the opportunity, giving a performance that transcends mere mimicry to stand on its own as a performance of solid, deep power. Clooney (whose passion project this was; his father was a TV newsman) couldn't have asked for a better actor to carry this exciting, well-made, important film.
Written as part of the blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. To participate, just pick three movies related to the week's theme. It's easy and fun!
This week's Thursday Movie Picks theme is Teen Comedies. So many and yet so few to choose from!
Mean Girls (Mark Waters, 2004) This Tina Fey-scripted, Lindsay Lohan-starring film is now a bona fide classic, and thank God for that. It's one of the funniest, smartest, most rewatchable films of the '00s. The quotable lines are endless, the comic performances are iconic (Amy Poehler and Rachel McAdams - funniest mother-daughter pair ever?), and the visual gags are untoppable (THE BUS)! And it's also surprisingly resonant - check out what I wrote about it for The Film Experience's Hit Me With Your Best Shot series a while back. In a perfect world, this would have gotten Oscar noms for Fey's script as well as the performances of Rachel McAdams and/or Amanda Seyfried.
Dick (Andrew Fleming, 1999) If you haven't seen this, man are you in for a treat. The title refers, of course, to Richard "Tricky Dick" Nixon, 37th President of the United States. Betsy and Arlene (Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams, at their teenage best) are just two regular teenage girls in the 1970s, trying to win a date with Tad Hamilton heartthrob singer Bobby Sherman. But instead, they witness part of the Watergate scandal. In order to buy their silence, Nixon makes them the Official Presidential Dog Walkers. But then they discover the President's not-so-nice side, and decide to get revenge as only teenage girls can. Dick is hilarious and surprisingly sweet, with killer performances from Williams and Dunst, a very funny cameo from Will Ferrell, and a great, atypical Nixon in Dan Hedaya. And also: AMAZING costumes.
Whip It (Drew Barrymore, 2009) Okay this MIGHT be stretching it a bit, but Whip It is so good that I don't really care. Ellen Page is typically wonderful as the directionless teen Bliss, whose mother (Marcia Gay Harden) makes her compete in beauty pageants... because that's what you do in Texas when your mother is a former beauty queen. But one day, she and her best friend Pash go to check out this thing called Roller Derby, and Bliss is so excited by it that she tries out for a team - and makes it. And, as is typical in both teen flicks and sports flicks, she learns more about Who She Is and Becomes A Better Person in the process. Drew Barrymore directed this, and also features as Smashley Simpson, a member of Bliss's roller derby team, the Hurl Scouts - along with Kristen Wiig (Maggie Mayhem), Zoe Bell (Bloody Holly), Juliette Lewis (Iron Maven), and Ari Graynor (Eva Destruction). The film is alternately tough and sweet, just like its heroine, and it's good enough that it makes you wish Barrymore would hop back into the director's chair sometime soon.
For the blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves, just pick three movies for the week's theme. That's it. Join us! It's fun!
This week's movie picks are Live Action Fairy Tale Adaptations, which is apropos since Disney's Ever After remake live-action Cinderella opens this weekend. But I have to say, this one threw me a bit. Where do you draw the line between a "fairy tale" and a children's fantasy? Or a folktale? For example, is Alice in Wonderland a fairy tale? Is The Wizard of Oz? The Emperor's New Clothes? I'm really not sure. The first two involve a "magical" trip to a strange land, but only Oz actually involves magic, which for me is a key ingredient for a fairy tale. The third involves no actual magic, but was published in Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales Told for Children, and a version was filmed for Shelley Duvall's Fairie Tale Theatre. I decided that, for me, a fairy tale is a story that involves both magic (in some form) and a royal family (usually in the form of a princess). From there, these three basically picked themselves.
La Belle et la Bête (Jean Cocteau, 1946) The Big Kahuna of live-action fairy tale adaptations, and with good reason. This is one of the most stunningly gorgeous films ever made. Jean Cocteau's near-surrealist version of the French fairy tale is so influential that every subsequent fairy tale film owes a debt to it - not just versions of this tale. How Jean Marais is able to emote through his Beast makeup I will never know, but he does, and Josette Day overcomes her resting bitchface to be a Beauty for the ages. But make no mistake, this is Cocteau's show, and even now, over 70 years later, the images he created still retain their ability to inspire wonder and awe.
Ever After (Andy Tennant, 1998) When I first saw the trailer for the new Cinderella, my immediate response was "So... they're just remaking Ever After?" Drew Barrymore makes for a lovely, proto-feminist Cinderella (née Danielle), and Anjelica Huston slyly spins gold from the stock role of the wicked stepmother. Yes, the script contains that heinous line about a bird loving a fish, but in Barrymore's hands, it doesn't feel nearly as cringe-worthy as it should. This is a fairy tale firmly grounded in reality (the role of the fairy godmother, we have.... Leonardo da Vinci?!?) that is all the better for it, reminding us that all stories we tell, however fantastical, have some basis in reality.
Snow White & the Huntsman (Rupert Sanders, 2012) Charlize Theron is God. Make no mistake, Snow White & the Huntsman is... not a good movie, but it is a fantastic-looking one, one of the most striking films in recent years, fairy tale or otherwise. And the centerpiece of the whole enterprise isn't either of the title characters, it's Theron's tremendous performance as the evil Queen Ravenna. Aided by some imaginative, truly special visual effects (the mirror! the soldiers that shatter like glass! the ravens!) and stunning costumes - both deservedly Oscar-nominated - Theron tears into the part like a hungry lioness, a vengeful wraith in medieval rock star couture descending on the land to avenge the pain brought upon her (and all women) by the men who had ruled it.
Oh yeah, and Kirsten Stewart isn't terrible in it, either, so...
BONUS PICK
Enchanted (Kevin Lima, 2007) Look, I know it isn't actually based off a pre-existing fairy tale (existing on its own as a send-up of Disney's animated fairy tales), but this is by far the best live-action fairy tale of the past twenty years. Clever Alan Menken-Stephen Schwartz songs, a fun, funny script, and flat-out brilliant performances from James Marsden (as the fairy-tale Prince Charming) and Amy Adams (who should have gotten an Oscar nomination for her bonkers princess Giselle) make this one a film I will probably never stop enjoying, no matter how many times I see it. The "That's How You Know" scene still makes me shake with uncontrollable laughter (actually, Patrick Dempsey is really underrated in this - watch him in this scene again and tell me he doesn't make you laugh). Pity about Susan Sarandon's Evil Queen, but you can't have everything!
