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Published: January 10, 2003
May
29
2010
29
2010
The Banger Sisters review
May
27
2010
27
2010
Loggerheads (2005)
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May
26
2010
26
2010
Martian Child review
Genus:
Comedy, Acting
Rating:
an eye to thematic elements and mild language
John Cusack plays a science fiction writer who adopts a 6-year-disused boy after the death of his fiance…except he's a bit ill at ease by the act that this boy claims he's from Mars.
May
23
2010
23
2010
Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont (2005)
Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont: Drama. Starring Joan Plowright and
Rupert Friend. Directed by Dan Ireland. (Not rated. 108 minutes. At Bay Area
theaters.)
From early shots of a manual
typewriter and rotary phone, “Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont” appears to be set
decades ago. This impression is solidified when the title character moves into
the Claremont — a somewhat seedy London residential hotel catering to
seniors — and unpacks a vintage wardrobe of the sort carried exclusively
nowadays by thrift shops. So it’s startling when a longtime resident invites
Mrs. Palfry (the incomparable Joan Plowright) to the TV room to watch “Sex and
the City.”
Even though events turn out to be unfolding in the 21st century, this
sweetly improbable British film seems awfully old-fashioned and is unlikely to
be everyone’s cup of tea. For one thing, it focuses on a time of life (the time
immediately before reaching our final-final destination) most people would
rather not have to think about. The pace is slow, and there’s no real action to
speak of, just a lot of talk and one song, “For All We Know,” crooned to Mrs.
Palfrey by a man a third her age.
But when this haunting ballad is reprised over the closing credits, don’t
be surprised to find yourself bawling. Like the woman herself, “Mrs. Palfry”
gets to you.
Sarah Palfry has left behind in Scotland a stalwart daughter who’s done
her duty watching out for Mum, and has struck out on her own in London. The
Claremont is a lot stodgier than she’d envisioned from the brochure. Seeing the
guests dine alone at the same tables night after night brings to mind “Separate
Tables” long before Mrs. Palfrey’s young man joins her for supper and comments
that he feels stuck in a Terence Rattigan play.
Bearing in mind that the movie invokes Terence, not Tennessee, nothing
untoward happens between Sarah and a 26-year-old improbably named Ludovic
(Rupert Friend). They meet when she takes a spill in front of his apartment
building, her copy of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” dropping to the sidewalk.
But Ludo doesn’t play gatekeeper to her lady or even Harold to her Maude.
An impoverished writer who feels misplaced in time, he laps up Mrs. Palfrey’s
stories about her late husband and their apparently ideal marriage. Transfixed,
Ludo listens to her expound on her philosophy of life (enjoy every moment is
about as deep as it gets). He also masquerades as her errant grandson, a
researcher in the archives of the British Museum who’s too busy to return her
calls. Mrs. Palfrey has bragged about her grandson to the Claremont gang, and
they’re naturally curious to see him in the flesh. So she produces the dashing
and charming Ludo in his place.
For “Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont” to work, you have to believe that a
relationship like Sarah and Ludo’s is possible and that he’s not setting her up
to sign her entire bank account over to him. Director Dan Ireland
(”Passionada”) has made what may be the first fairy tale for the geriatric
set. Ireland doesn’t exhibit much cinematic flair, and his plodding approach
adds to making the film seem dated.
The casting, at least, is magical. Plowright shows both her character’s
strength and her heartbreaking vulnerability, sometimes at once. Opening her
suitcase at the beginning, Mrs. Palfrey stares at a photo of her husband
looking impossibly young. Plowright visibly straightens up, giving a sense of
the fortitude it takes for this inwardly grieving widow to pull herself away
and get on with the business of living. The actress positively glows in her
scenes with Friend. The attention of the opposite sex appears to take years off
Mrs. Palfrey.
Friend gives an exuberant performance. This was his first movie — it
was made before his appearances in “Pride and Prejudice” and “The Libertine”
– and he’s clearly a natural.
“Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont” is adapted from a novel by Elizabeth
Taylor. I was so taken by her originality that I tried to find more of her work
on Amazon, but was barraged with books about the lost loves and lost weight of
that other Miss Taylor.
E-mail Ruthe Stein at rstein@sfchronicle.com.
May
22
2010
22
2010
Eddie Cantor ’s talent is for…
Eddie Cantor’s endowment is an eye to those of an antique taste, but this extravagant Goldwyn production has a two other things succeeding for it, most notably a couple of bellowing routines choreographed for the Goldwyn Girls by Busby Berkeley (the chorus type is said to list Lucille Ball, Jane Wyman, Betty Grable and Paulette Goddard, but you’ll need pungent eyes to taint them). The compute has Cantor and his college buddy Childish innocently caught up in a bank robbery and hiding out in Mexico, where Cantor is mistaken for the treatment of a famous matador. No prizes allowing for regarding guessing where he ends up.
May
20
2010
20
2010
At the beginning of “Pastime,”…
At the beginning of “Pastime,” when gray-haired baseball player William Russ jogs past bucolic cornfields, a baseball in his leathery hands, you can almost informed entertain someone undertone, “Build it and he will come.”
Every character, situation and line of dialogue, every Beechnut-
brown spit projectile, follows the preordained rules of the sentimental baseball movie. You just met Russ (as “Roy Dean Bream”), a salt-of-the-mound pitcher still dreaming of his brief moment in the majors (for the White Sox, of course). Now languishing with the Steamers, a second-rate team in the minor leagues, he’s looking at retirement.
There’s hotdog, starting pitcher Scott Plank, with more backstabbing deviousness than skill. There’s quiet, intense rookie Glenn Plummer, whose smoldering pitch only Russ seems to recognize. Look for down-to-earth bartender Deirdre O’Connell, who could give Russ a little nurturing, if he’d just get up the courage to ask her out. Check out aging team manager Noble Willingham, his arms constantly folded, a Quaker Oats commercial contract just a year or two down the road. He’s watched the Steamers over the years. He appreciates heart over youth and he’s ready to grind bellies with those damn umpires any time.
Even though “Pastime” follows every rule in the book, the movie’s a charming, satisfying experience. Its unerring, down-home simplicity makes everything feel like the first time again. It’s as if this is the movie that started all the cliches in the first place. The people in “Pastime” are all familiar archetypes, but they have a naive charm. None of them has seen “Field of Dreams” or “The Natural.” They’re going to make the same mistakes, stumble into the same cliches and still scratch their heads afterwards and say, “Wasn’t that the darndest thing?”
Set in central California in the late 1950s, “Pastime” follows yet another lackluster Steamers season. This year, however, owner Jeffrey Tambor is pushing manager Willingham to get rid of the “deadwood.” That would be Russ, who’s been warming the bench a lot lately. Willfully unaware of his potential final days, seasoned Russ keeps doing what he does best. Along the way, he befriends black team newcomer Plummer, whose pre-Civil Rights eyes are perpetually downcast, but who’s got smoke to his throw.
What follows is an old-gunfighter-and-the-kid fable, as Russ shows Plummer his secret pitch (”The Bream Dream”) and sets up the 17-year-old for greatness. Russ also has to contend with troublemaker Plank, who wants to stay first pitcher at any cost.
Russ makes this movie his. An aging, babyfaced mensch, he tries to nice-guy two people out of a bar fight and gets a bruised face in the process. He also comes up with some memorable moments with Plummer. In his ’50s clumsy-liberal way, he tells the kid it’s his pitching that matters, not his color. He also educates him about larger issues.
“You got a bad habit of looking down at the ground all the time,” he tells him. “Gotta look at a man in the eye.”
On another occasion, he offers Plummer some gum. The kid declines. “Ah, go on, don’t be shy,” says Russ gently. “It’s Juicy Fruit.”
There are some rare moments when the script loses track. When a player passes away unexpectedly, the team plays a game on the day of the funeral, as if nothing had happened. No one, not even nasty old Plank, is that callous.
Aliens in the Attic movie download hd
But for the most part, debuting director Robin B. Armstrong and scriptwriter D. M. Eyre Jr. (who wrote the charming “Cattle Annie and Little Britches”) have created a diamond in the rough here. Cinematographer Tom Richmond adds to the mood with a lovely, late-afternoon, distant-memory glow. Even though you can see exactly what kind of hoky pitch the filmmakers are throwing at you, it gets you all the same.
May
19
2010
19
2010
Dracula’s Daughter (1936)
A genuine consequence to Tod Browning’s Dracula (based on Bram Stoker’s story Dracula’s Guest), Universal’s infirm-budget shocker finds Van Helsing placed at the beck arrest fitted the murder of the Count, only for a unclear lassie (Holden) to offend up and take away Dracula’s fraternity for ritual consignment to a entombment pyre. Though she has inherited the vampic move from her father, this princess of darkness desperately seeks release from her condition result of an understanding psychologist (Kruger). Not including from its haunting, smaller low-cut-tenor mood, the film is also notable for its artful suggestion (hardly expected from a ancient director of B Westerns) of the lesbian nature of the female vampire.
May
17
2010
17
2010
When new student Owen Matthews…
When untrodden student Owen Matthews (Julian Morris) arrives on campus at Westlake Prep after being expelled at his previous school, he knows he has been accepted because his away-connected father (Kevin Bacon) has pulled some strings. Owen immediately makes friends with provocative redhead Dodger (Lindy Booth) and roommate Tom (Jared Padalecki), who introduce him to the ‘liar’s club’, where a small circle of students meet and vocation their skills at lying. When the association of a mademoiselle is found nearby murdered, Owen suggests they take their willing to altered heights by spreading online rumours about the murder. But he regrets sending the manufactured email to the unexceptional school when journalism teacher Rich Walker (Jon Bon Jovi) warns about the predators lurking on the internet. Suddenly the tourney becomes material, and the terror spreads as the players become hunted themselves.
May
15
2010
15
2010
The Specialist review
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