Thursday Movie Picks - A Fresh Start

Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join in the fun by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and writing a bit about them!

Look, we've all been there. Those days when everything is falling apart, or has grown stale beyond belief, or when a chapter of your life has just... ended. So you move on, you move out, and you hopefully move up in the world. It's not always easy, but sometimes you just have to do it. Just like characters do in these movies.

Mildred Pierce (Michael Curtiz, 1945) Mildred's husband is a louse - she provides more financial support for the family by baking pies and cakes, and he has a woman on the side. So she kicks him out, but has to find a way to support her two daughters on her own. In order to do that, she takes a job as a waitress, with the goal of one day opening up her own restaurant. Which she finally does... while failing to realize that she's unwittingly raised her daughter Veda into a snobbish bitch who doesn't appreciate any of her mother's hard work. One of the key works of the Old Hollywood Studio System, and the role that famously won Joan Crawford her Oscar.

Bridget Jones's Diary (Sharon Maguire, 2001) Bridget Jones is a 32 year-old "singleton" living and working in London, and has decided that she's heard one too many behind-her-back remarks about her appearance and personality. So she decides to make an active change in her life, and starts keeping a diary. She vows to quit smoking, lose weight... and stop fantasizing about her boss, the handsome womanizer Daniel Cleaver. Some of those things actually work out. This endearing adaptation of the popular novel earned Renée Zellweger a well-deserved Oscar nomination for her leading performance as the singularly British Bridget, and Hugh Grant and Colin Firth are well-matched as her love interests.

Wild (Jean-Marc Vallée, 2014) Cheryl Strayed has lost her mother and ended her marriage. She's lived recklessly and self-destructively for too long. Finally, she makes a somewhat rash decision: She's going to hike over a thousand miles on the Pacific Crest Trail. Alone. One of the most powerful films about spiritual reawakening and the power of memory I've ever seen, anchored by a never-better (and Oscar-nominated) Reese Witherspoon. All the better for the fact that it's based on a true story.

Thursday Movie Picks - All in the Family Edition: Mother-Daughter Relationships

Written for the blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. You can play, too: Just pick three films that match the week's theme!

This month's All in the Family Edition of Thursday Movie Picks focuses on that trickiest of familial relationships: Mothers and Daughters. These can be either the most loving or the most toxic relationships in a family. I've chosen to focus this week on the latter type, since they're usually more fun. I've included some spoilers for these films, and on the off-chance you haven't seen them (and really, you should, since these are all GREAT films), I've put them in white text. Just highlight and you'll be able to read.

Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky, 2010) Poor Erica Sayers. She got knocked up while in the corps of one of the most prestigious ballet companies in America, and it ended her career. Thankfully, she had a daughter that she could raise in her image. All she wanted for her daughter, Nina, was for her to grow up into the prima ballerina Erica herself never got the chance to be. But then her daughter went and got herself some psychological problems, and poor Erica had to work even harder to keep her daughter safe. And then, Nina finally gets noticed by the smarmy Artistic Director of the ballet company and gets the lead in Swan Lake, playing both Odile and Odette! Erica is so excited for her daughter, but this honor goes straight to Nina's head - she starts going out late at night, and locking herself in her bedroom, and stealing things from the company's former lead dancer. What happened to Erica's sweet little girl? And then Nina's crazy starts to manifest again, and despite all Erica does to keep her out of the spotlight that is clearly driving her insane, what does her ungrateful little daughter do? She FUCKING STABS HERSELF IN THE STOMACH WITH A PIECE OF BROKEN MIRROR AND DANCES UNTIL SHE FUCKING DIES. Poor Erica.

Imitation of Life (Douglas Sirk, 1959) Annie Johnson is a sweetheart, beloved by all who come into contact with her. Except, that is, for her daughter Sarah Jane. You see, it is the late 40s and early 50s, and Sarah Jane is light-skinned enough (thanks to her father) that she can pass for white. This is something Annie cannot do and is not interested in doing. But as girls grow up, parents have less and less control over them, and soon enough Sarah Jane has graduated from high school and is working at the local library and dating a nice boy from the church. Or so she told her mother. In reality, she was dating a white boy who beat her when he found out she was black, and working as a performer in a seedy nightclub. When Annie finds out about this job, she rushes off to save her daughter, as any mother would. But the girl won't leave, and the commotion causes her to get fired. So she runs away, breaking her poor mother's heart. And what happens next between them will break your heart, too, unless you're a robot, because the final scenes of this version of Imitation of Life make it the single most effective tear-jerker in Hollywood history.

Mildred Pierce (Michael Curtiz, 1945) Veda Pierce is the biggest little shit of them all. How exactly she got that way is admittedly a bit of a mystery, since her mother is a hard worker who had to scrape and save and work her ass off to get what little she has. But Veda is an aspiring classical musician, and only has eyes for the finer things in life, which her mother who loves her dearly continues to provide - despite it forcing her to live beyond her means. And how does Veda thank her mother for her wonderful life? She puts the moves on her mother's husband (in James M. Cain's novel and Todd Haynes's miniseries with Kate Winslet and Evan Rachel Wood, she has a full-blown affair with him), and after he rebuffs her, she FUCKING SHOOTS HIM. And what does our dear Mildred do? She LIES TO SAVE THE LITTLE SHIT. Or at least, she tries to, but can't quite bring herself to go through with it. Which is fine, because no one should be able to slap Joan Crawford and get away with it.