At the movies

In the past few months, I've been to see more movies than I probably have seen in the past five or so years alone. The reason for this is that my mom can no longer drive and it means that if she wants to go see movies, I have to take her, if I am available to do so. But that's OK, because I've seen some outstanding movies in the past few months, probably because, as the end of the year approached, producers were trotting out their offerings to be considered for an Oscar nomination. Not every movie I've seen had "Oscar" written all over it, but I sure have seen some incredibly good films, so here is what I have seen in the past few months. Starting in October, I saw a French movie in Cleveland called "Mozart's Sister" that was subtitled, but still a pretty good movie. I had read a book of this same title by a French author, Rita Charbonnier, so I assumed that the film was going to be based on the book, but alas, it was not. That's not to say that it wasn't a good movie, it was. The story revolved around "Nannerl" Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus's very talented sister, who was not permitted to show her skill at composing, because women just didn't do that back then. She was constrained to live in her famous brother's shadow and was never given the recognition she was due. In the movie, she falls in love with the "Dauphin" of France, who ultimately rejects her and leaves her broken hearted. The music and scenery in the film were glorious and I thoroughly enjoyed it, even if the actress playing "Nannerl" was a bit wooden in her performance. My mom and I saw an interesting movie called "Anonymous", that speculates whether William Shakespeare really did write all those plays. In that movie, the Earl of Oxford supposedly writes them and entrusts author Ben Jonson to put his name to them so as to keep the Earl anonymous, but alas, Shakespeare ends up taking credit at the end of one of the plays, and thus the plot turns! Interesting movie, to say the least. Then my mom and I saw a little heralded movie called "The Way", starring our fave actor Martin Sheen, about a man who's son dies on his first day of a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Sheen's character flies to France to reclaim his son's body but decides to complete the pilgrimage himself in order to honor his late son, and in so doing, has a life altering experience that brings him closer to his son, with whom he never had a great relationship.

When my family was here for Thanksgiving, we saw a lovely George Clooney movie called "The Descendents", about a man whose family owns some prime real estate in Hawaii that they are considering selling to a developer. Clooney's character has a troubled marriage and his wife is badly injured in a boating accident at the beginning of the movie and is basically brain dead and he has to work on relationships with both his relatives and his daughters as they wrestle with whether or not to sell their land. Excellent movie. Loved it. Another George Clooney movie we saw - my, the man's been busy this past year!- was a political thriller called "The Ides of March" about an idealistic young man played by Ryan Gosling who is campaigning for a candidate, played by Clooney, and who ends up in a relationship with a troubled intern. The twists and turns this movie takes makes it very suspenseful and a great story. We also saw a movie, "Hugo" based on the Caldecott medal winning book, "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" by Brian Selznick. What a charming movie, and it can rightfully be called Martin Scorsese's love letter to the movies. It's about an orphan in 1931 Paris who lives in the Gare Montparnasse railway station and who is trying to restore a mysterious automaton left to him by his late father, who dies in a fire in the beginning of the movie. This brings him into contact with a bitter old man who works in a toy store in the train station, who, you will find out later in the movie, is the legendary early filmmaker Georges Méliès, who made, among other early movies, "La Voyage Dans La Lune". "Hugo" is a celebration of early movies, and none better to direct than legendary director himself Martin Scorsese. It's a magical, marvelous and downright amazing movie that is a must-see, and the book is a must-read, too! Finally, we saw the highly anticipated movie "War Horse", that is from the book of the same name by award winning author Michael Morpurgo. While it had some weak spots, all in all it was a very good movie that I hope to see again before it disappears to be released on DVD sometime later this year. It's best seen on a large screen, in my opinion, as is "Hugo". So I've seen lots of very good movies in recent months and there are more to come, too. I'm grateful that so many good movies are being made right now. Maybe Hollywood has awoken to the fact that nobody reads books anymore and people want their stories told to them visually through the medium of film, so perhaps that is where things are headed now in our visual/electronic age where paper and hardback books are soon to be obsolete quaint museum items that kids will look at in the future and wonder why anybody would use them. Alas, I hope I'm wrong, but I see books heading the way of the dodo, unfortunately........but at least good movies are coming out of Hollywood to compensate for the lack of books and bookstores anymore. Thank goodness for some kind of decent entertainment!