Thursday Movie Picks - Monologues

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!

This week, on Thursday Movie Picks, we're looking at speeches AKA soliloquies AKA monologues. AKA one character talking at length, just by themselves. In the spirit of that, I'm going to get out of their way and let these great monologues speak for themselves.

Also, I'm going a little overboard this week, because I just couldn't help myself.

THE ROMANTIC

Jerry Maguire (Cameron Crowe, 1996) It's become a cliché for a reason.

Chasing Amy (Kevin Smith, 1997) If you've ever fallen for a friend, you'll know how perfect this is. 

Romeo & Juliet (Franco Zeffirelli, 1968) Has any romance ever topped this scene?

THE POLITICAL

The American President (Rob Reiner, 1995) If only we had a real President who said these things. And a public who listened.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Frank Capra, 1939) The climax of this is a series of brilliant, impassioned monologues by Jimmy Stewart to an unfeeling political machine. Should be required viewing for every American of voting age... but long before they reach that age and become too cynical. The more things change, the more things stay the same.

To Kill a Mockingbird (Robert Mulligan, 1962) Another one that is sadly still relevant today, more than 50 years later.

THE ONE SCENE WONDERS

Network (Sidney Lumet, 1976) In which Beatrice Straight shows how to win an Academy Award in less than five minutes.

Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994) In which Christopher Walken delivers the best performance of his career.

Doubt (John Patrick Shanley, 2008) In which Viola Davis steals a whole damn movie from Meryl Freakin' Streep, and becomes a star in the process.

THE COMEDIC

Tootsie (Sydney Pollack, 1982) Every single goddamn second of this is perfection.

Animal Crackers (Victor Heerman, 1930) Everything that makes Groucho Marx great in one perfect monologue.

Addams Family Values (Barry Sonnenfeld, 1993) In which Joan Cusack puts all other monologuing villains to shame.

Thursday Movie Picks - Writing/Writers of Novels

Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join in the fun  - and it IS fun - by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and writing a bit about them!
AH writing. Sometimes the muse is with you. Sometimes it is not. Of course, there is more drama when the muse is NOT with you, so that explains why most of the movies about writers (both fictional and non-fictional, but for the rules of this week we're sticking to the fictional) are about writers dealing with writer's block.

Young Adult (Jason Reitman, 2011) One of the best movies of the '00s, Young Adult follows Mavis Gary, a writer of a once-popular series of young adult novels that is now being cancelled. Living a rather lonely existence in Minneapolis after a bad divorce, she goes back to her home town after receiving an invitation to the naming ceremony of her old high school boyfriend. And... well... things don't go so well. What's so amazing about Diablo Cody's script and Jason Reitman's direction is just how much of that story I just described is told in the background. But when you have Charlize Theron giving an unbelievable performance of one of the trickiest characters seen on screen in ages, you can afford to let the story simmer on the back burner. Theron gives an absolutely tremendous performance as the acidic Mavis, and she brings the best out of scene partner Patton Oswalt as a crippled former high school classmate.

The Ghost Writer (Roman Polanski, 2010) Perfectly cast and designed, and directed with Polanski's typical chilly precision. Only with this story, chilly precision is EXACTLY what's called for: A ghost writer (Ewan McGregor) is brought in to write the memoirs of a shady politician (Pierce Brosnan). Scandals start to swirl and before long, the ghost writer starts to think he may be marked for death because of what he knows and what he's seen. Perhaps not a brilliant thriller, but a really goddamned great one, with a flat-out brilliant, perfect ending.

Stranger Than Fiction (Marc Forster, 2006) Well, I mean, it's all right there in the trailer, isn't it? Emma Thompson is having a particularly nasty case of writer's block while writing her new novel. AND it turns out, through a metaphysical twist, that the character she's writing - IRS agent Will Ferrell - actually exists in the real world, and what she's writing is having a direct effect on his life. Perhaps a little too clever for its own good, Stranger Than Fiction is still enjoyable thanks to the sly performances of Emma Thompson and Dustin Hoffman, as a professor of literature whom Ferrell contacts to try to figure out what's going on, an the surprising chemistry between Ferrell and Maggie Gyllenhaal, as a baker he's auditing.