If you are sympathetic with characters like Vivian in Pretty Woman and Holly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, you’ll love Audrey Tautou as Irene in the 2006 French Comedy, Priceless. More like Holly than Vivian, Irene isn’t an obvious prostitute. But she is a loose woman, looking for a sugar daddy to pay her bills, so that she can live the rest of her life in comfort and ease, using her youth, beauty, and sexuality as weapons in the war of the sexes. She’s snagged a wealthy, wealthy man, who is ready to propose and keep her in the manner to which she has become accustomed. Enter Gad Elmaleh as Jean,…

Celeste and Jesse are best friends, and have been for decades. They adore each other, and want to spend every waking moment in each other’s company. Their time is full of inside jokes and laughter. They took the advice to marry your best friend, which it turns out, isn’t always the best idea. So now, they’re getting a divorce. But they’re clinging mightily to their friendship, unwilling to spend time apart or admit to anyone that they shouldn’t be together every minute of every day. Of course, they need to figure some things out. They need to figure out how to be friends and not be married anymore. Or actually,…

We went to see 2 Days in New York in Berkeley on Saturday, on our way home from Santa Cruz (which was lovely, by the way). If you’re a fan of Julie Delpy, then you should see (first) 2 Days in Paris, and (now) 2 Days in New York. I adore Delpy in the “Before Sunrise” and “Before Sunset” films, where she talks talks talks and is charming and French and lovely. In “2 Days in Paris” and “2 Days in New York”, she is more wacky and insane…or, more accurately, somewhat, almost sane, in a family of insanity. In “2 Days in Paris”, she is a Parisian (Marion) living…

Sam Shakusky (Jared Gilman) and Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward), are in love, and will move heaven and earth to be together.  The fact that they’re only 12 makes the logistics a little difficult, but not horribly.  Suzy lives on a fictional New England island, with her parents (Frances McDormand and Bill Murray) and siblings.  Sam comes to the island every summer with his scout troop.  They fell in love at first sight, and planned a getaway via mail, so they could get to know each other better. I don’t want to tell you more than that about the plot of the film, because I really liked not knowing anything going…

The fictional Seven Oaks University has only recently gone co-ed, and the male students are still a bit unclear on the concepts of civility, bathing, and any slightest degree of self awareness. Enter the floral-named trio of Violet, Rose, and Heather, whose stated goal is to improve humanity, one dufus at a time. Rather than wasting their time on the cool, good looking, smart guys, they prefer to find a fixer-upper and strive to bring him somehow up to their almost ivy-league standards. To this mix, we add a new transfer student, Lily. The girls work at the campus Suicide Prevention Center, working to cure depression and suicidal tendencies one…

When I first saw the previews for ‘Young Adult’, I thought it looked like crap. Like another ‘Hangover’ or ‘Bridesmaids’ type film, but without much actual humor, and with a mean spirited protagonist. Then I heard that the people who made it also made two other films that I really liked, ‘Up In the Air’, and ‘Juno’, and I decided that I’d wait and see if the reviews were good. And they were, very good. Charlize Theron is Mavis Gary, a semi-successful writer of young adult books who lives in Minneapolis. We are shown a glimpse of her life, which seems to consist mainly of writer’s-block, drinking, trolling for men,…

We’re a movie going family.  Ted was a film major, once upon a time, and loved seeing any film, even if just to see what was wrong with it.  I’m not quite (or nearly) so forgiving, but I do enjoy plopping down and enjoying a story, seeing what they might have to tell me, figuring out if it worked, all of that.  So this last week, on our Thanksgiving break, in addition to seeing ‘Like Crazy‘, we saw three other new films, and one old one. First, on Wednesday, we went to see ‘The Descendants‘.  I’ll admit that when I first saw the previews a few months ago, I was…

Jacob and Anna are a young couple who meet in college.  They fall in love and spend a wonderful year together, before they graduate and it’s time for her to go home to England.  She’s too much in love, though, and decides to stay through the summer before going home.  Mistake.  She’s violated her visa, and now she can’t get back into the country.  So now what.  He’s in Los Angeles, trying to start a business making furniture.  She’s in England, trying to start a business doing some kind of writing.  She can’t come to him, which she’s willing and eager to do.  He could go to her, but he’s…

One thing we did on our little ‘staycation’ was to go to movies.  Our first pick was Another Earth, which wasn’t playing out in our neighborhood (though it is now), so we went into the city and stopped and had a drink and an appetizer beforehand.  Nice way to start a movie, no?  Especially on a weekday, when your coworkers are covering for you because you’re on vacation. I didn’t know what to expect with this film.  I thought it was going to be a big sci-fi film, with mysterious aliens maybe and certainly some shoot-em-up violence.  Instead, it’s a film about very human trauma.  Rhoda  (Brit Marling, who co-wrote…

In the first moments of Terrance Malick’s new film, The Tree of Life, we are presented with two competing and supposedly alternate approaches to facing life and its beauties and hardships.  There is nature, and there is grace.  Nature is difficult and tries to find the worst in the world, Grace is generous and tries to find the best.  I think this is disingenuous, and that the truth lies in the middle.  Nature gives and takes, it doesn’t try to find the worst, but it doesn’t look for the best either.  Rather, it is indifferent.  Grace wishes to find the best and forgive the worst, but sometimes ignores the reality.…

Dean and Cindy are a husband and wife, far beyond the first blushes of love. It’s more like the first blushes of disgust, actually. They’ve been married now for 6 years, and their marriage is falling apart. Blue Valentine travels back and forth, from the early days of discovering each other and rushing into marriage, to a day 6 years later, when we see that Dean hasn’t changed at all, and Cindy wishes very much that he had.  Dean is a man without ambition, who considers himself to be living the good life because he has a job where he can have a beer when he gets up in the…

That picture says it all, doesn’t it? Secretariat was the great race horse who won the Belmont Stakes in 1973 by 31 lengths, thus winning the triple crown after a 25 year drought. It’s not an easy feat for any horse…you have to be fast, especially for the Preakness, the shortest of the races, which at 1 1/16 miles, favors horses with early speed. You have to have staying power, endurance, especially for the Belmont Stakes, which at 1 1/2 miles, favors horses with lasting speed. So a horse that can manage all three races, in 5 or 6 short weeks, is a rare bird indeed. Looked kind of common…

We saw two films last weekend, The Kids Are All Right and Salt.  Both were good, but I would say that I really, really enjoyed Kids, while Salt was more one of those movies where you come out saying, “OK, totally unbelievable in every conceivable way, but fun”. The Kids Are All Right is the story of Nic and Jules (Annette Bening and Julianne Moore), a long term lesbian couple who had two children, who are now coming of age.  They each carried one child, and both used the same sperm-doner, Paul (Mark Ruffalo).  Their daughter, Joni (Mia Wasikowska) has recently turned 18, and their 15 year old son Laser…