Jason and I had a DVD and pizza party tonight. Actually we started around 10:00 pm last night and ended at 5:45 this morning. We usually only have time for about three movies, sometimes less as one of us, usually my brother falls asleep somewhere between the beginning of the second movie or the end of the third. I usually try to have a theme, (e. g. for Halloween we watch horror flicks, Christmas, we watch movies with a Christmas theme) or an actor that connects all three movies. Tonight’s connector was Uma Thurman.
We started the night off with Where the Heart Is (new), a charmingly sweet, European style film about a rich man in the demolition business (Dabney Coleman) who kicks his three grown children (1 boy and 2 girls (Uma Thurman and Suzy Amis) out of the house and sets them up in a condemned building on property he owns, but which he cannot tear down because some activists talked the city into making the building into a landmark because it’s so old. Most of the film is about how the three siblings survive on their own and attempt to make money by taking in boarders, only two of whom have any money to pay rent. The film ends with their father loosing his business and all of his money and assets, forcing him and his wife to move in with their three abandoned children. Everything works out however when they find a loophole that allows them to blow up the building under cover of a thunderstorm and Mr McBain gets all of his assets and most of his money back, minus what he had to use to pay off his debts. The storyline and acting are often melodramatic, but it works in this film. The epilogue of the film seems contrived; the filmmakers wrap everything up to neatly so that all but one of the main and supporting characters paired off with one another. The standout performance goes to Captain Von Trapp himself, Christopher Plummer, as Shitty the homeless magician which Uma Thurman’s character takes into the apartment building. He brings vitality to every scene he’s in and always has a laugh. Uma Thurman is also very funny, too bad she doesn’t get a chance to be funny more often. And I’m going to take this moment to be a guy and say that Uma Thurman has the nicest legs I have ever seen. And I ask, why couldn’t I have been born about ten years earlier and crossed paths with this beautiful woman?
Next up was Beautiful Girls, a film with much promise, which it fails to deliver. I did not care about most of the characters until about 37 minutes into the movie, when they all started acting like the buddies that they are supposed to be while serenading Uma Thurman’s character. That spirit of camaraderie is quickly lost though and I was bored again until the scenes between Timothy Hutton and Uma Thurman, and the scenes between Timothy Hutton and Natalie Portman. It’s sort of like the writer couldn’t figure out whose story he wanted to tell. It’s obvious that Timothy Hutton’s character is the main character, but an abundance of screen time is given to the lives of minor and supporting characters, which in most cases are not acted or written well enough for me to care about them. There is an entire scene that does not fit into the movie and makes absolutely no sense in the frame of the film. It seems that it was created entirely to give Rosie O’Donnell, who is more obnoxious than ever, more screen time than her character would have otherwise. And I still can’t figure out what Uma Thurman’s character is in the movie for. She’s in the film a total of fifteen minutes if that much, and is mainly there for a few of the main characters to open up to. Then she disappears, with just as little explanation for her parting as for her being there in the first place. The best plot line of the movie and disturbingly so is the romance between the 30 something Hutton and the 13 year old Natalie Portman character, Marty, named for a grandfather she never knew. Both actors play their scenes together wonderfully; Hutton truly captures the adolescent awkwardness of romance. While thankfully nothing comes of their mutual attraction, it is one of the purest relationships in cinematic history. And I could not help wishing that Hutton would leave his stuffy big city girlfriend (Anabeth Gish) and runaway with Marty like the star-crossed lovers they appear to be. Portman definitely steals this film, with her talent and deft blending of innocence and awakening sexuality. I can’t help but wonder where this talent went when it came time to make Star Wars Episode I, perhaps Portman’s worst and most wooden performance. I mean, it makes sense for the Jedi’s not to show emotion cause they’re not supposed to, and that kid Lucas cast as Anakin is awful; leaving it up to Portman to show some emotion.
Finishing off the night was Henry & June (new). Truth be told, the main reason I bought this movie was because I had some inside information that Uma Thurman gets naked in it and has sex with another chick, which we all know is every straight guys fantasy. Maybe not Uma Thurman, but ya know what I’m talking about. The film is just an average biopic about Henry Miller, his wife June, and some French broad they meet up with while Miller, who wrote Tropic of Cancer, is in France trying to write his novel. How much of this flick can be believed is another matter. First of all, it’s based on the journal of the French chick Miller has an affair with, Anaise Nin, so whatever happens is colored by her own perspective and feelings. Then that’s adapted by a writer who undoubtedly took his or her own liberties with the diary Henry & June is also the first film ever to receive an NC-17 rating for all of you movie trivia hounds out there. Which I think is an unfair rating. First of all, the sex isn’t very graphic, and no full frontal. I’ve seen more nudity and more graphic sex in R movies like The Piano. I guess there is more of it in Henry & June. Maybe that’s why. The sex is actually what saves this movie from being average. The sex is more about passion and love than just getting off, or the mad animal like sex that is the cornerstone of XXX flicks. The sex is very sensual and erotic, something one doesn’t see often in movies, which is nice. The acting is good as well, though I wouldn’t go so far as to call it stellar. The lead, Maria de Medeiros, does well as Anaise Nin, although her large doe-eyes give the character a belying innocence. Uma Thurman is terrific as the sultry and sexy June Miller. She really captures all dimensions of this complex character and adds a stable, although not quite natural Brooklyn accent. It’s difficult to believe that this film and Where the Heart Is came out the same year, because of the polar opposites of her characters. Richard E. Grant, turns in a good but average performance as Anaise’s husband, Hugo. An old favorite of mine, Fred Ward, from Remo Williams and Tremors, plays the novelist Henry Miller. It was difficult for me to get used to Ward in a serious dramatic role after seeing him dozens of times in the above films and other oddball comedies. But once he removed his hat to reveal a badly shaven head that was supposed to indicate the real Miller’s baldness (you can see stubble in all but a few scenes, the hair he does have is too neat to be naturally bordering a bald spot) I was able to get into it more. And once the introduction was over and Ward was given room to act, I totally forgot I was watching Fred Ward. After waking Jason up, we closed the night out by watching and 16 shot to 31, and episode from the 21 Jump Street Season 1 DVD. And I didn’t get to sleep until about 6 pm at night. Mostly worried about the contact lens stuck in my eye, and after I got it out, what damage may have been done to the contact looking membrane on my eyeball.
Just minutes before the end of Henry and June, I wiped a little too hard at my eye, which was irritated by my contact lens, and the lens is now traveling somewhere around my eye socket.
