Written as part of the blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. If you'd like to join (and you should), just pick three films that fit the week's them and post to your blog!
This month's "All in the Family Edition" of Thursday Movie Picks is focused on Father-Daughter Relationships. Being neither a father nor a daughter I have nothing to say in general about these kind of relationships, except that they're not always centered around a protective papa and a pony-wanting little girl. Here are my three picks for this week.
In A World... (Lake Bell, 2013) The story of a vocal coach and her famous voice-over actor father, actress Lake Bell's debut as a writer-director was one of the most pleasant surprises in recent years. As Bell's Carol tries to come into her own as a woman and as a professional, she inadvertently lands a trailer voice-over gig, earning the ire of her father (Fred Melamed, perfectly cast) and his protegé (the ever-reliable Ken Marino). Indignant that such a prominent gig would go to a woman, Daddy vows to come out of retirement to do the voice-over himself, and does just that when he finds out it's his own daughter who is the mysterious woman in question. Funny, smart, and cynical all in just the right amount,
In A World... (yes, it's named after the immortal trailer line made famous by the late Don LaFontaine) has a lot to say about Hollywood and its attitudes toward women, in addition to the loving, contentious relationship between family members in the same professional arena.
Beasts of the Southern Wild (Benh Zeitlin, 2012) Probably my favorite film of this decade, Benh Zeitlin's first full-length feature is a miracle. Adapted by Lucy Alibar from her play
Juicy and Delicious, this lovely, lyrical film takes place in a Louisiana bayou in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. Wink and his daughter Hushpuppy (played by revelatory first-time actors Dwight Henry and Quvenzhané Wallis, who won a deserved Oscar nomination for her stunning work) love their life in The Bathtub, primitive though we may find it. And when government-type outsiders try to take them away, they fight to stay. This film is unspeakably gorgeous on every level, and the incredibly lived-in performances make this thorny, touching father-daughter relationship one of the all-time greats.
To Kill A Mockingbird (Robert Mulligan, 1962) Perhaps the greatest page-to-screen adaptation of all time, this adaptation of Harper Lee's novel is pitch perfect, and nowhere morseso than in Gregory Peck's wonderful performance as Southern lawyer and all-around good man Atticus Finch. Though the story is told from his young daughter Scout's point of view, so it could just as easily be a brother-sister movie, the heart of the film is in the relationship between father and daughter. And a more honest encapsulation of the perfect parent-child relationship you won't find in any film before or since.
