First things first. I have no brain. It was William Hurt in “Kiss of the Spider Woman”. “Cannery Row,” that’s where I first remember Nolte, that and “48 Hours” which came out the same year according to IMDB.com.
All these years I’ve been pressing my luck with Sundance and the U.S. Film and Video Festival before that. (Remember the Elk’s Theaters?) I don’t think I’ve seen half a dozen dogs.
And the lucky streak continued Monday.
I’m not a huge fan of Ashley Judd, but my respect for her work has gone up a notch or three after “Come Early Morning.”
She is lovely and very tired seeming as Lucy, a building contractor who drinks too much and ends up in the wrong bed with the wrong man far too many days. She also isn’t very good at sneaking out in the morning without waking them up. Even when she finds someone who may be right it’s difficult to break the habits of an adult life time.
It’s really not hard to understand why Lucy is how she is. She works full time, practically running the business, she takes one grandmother shopping and to her husband’s grave, she visits her other grandparents who have probably been fighting all of the 55 years they’ve been married, visits an uncle, is trying to reestablish relations with her alcoholic father by going to church with him, and hangs out with the old men at the bar until an interesting/interested young one comes along. She knows her life is a mess but is so stuck being dutiful, though I don’t think she resents her role, that she drinks. Strong people have been driven to drink by less.
There’s no magical Hollywood ending to “Come Early Morning,” but things are looking up as Lucy watches the sunset just before the credits roll.
“Eve and the Fire Horses” is beautiful. Set in about 1972, it is the story of Eve, a five or six-year-old Chinese-Canadian girl dealing with the death of her Grandmother, her slightly older sister’s fascination with Christianity (Catholicism specifically) and her mother’s debilitating depression after a miscarriage.
Being Buddhist, Eve’s father told the girls that their Grandmother would be reincarnated as a goldfish. The nun at Sunday School tells them that since she was a heathen she is in hell. Eve and her sister, Karena, decide that since their Grandmother was good, she must be in limbo and that if they do good deeds and pray she’ll go to heaven.
Karena dives headlong into Christianity with an interesting child’s interpretation of what things mean. Eve, again with the interpretation of an imaginative child, manages to reconcile Catholicism with her parent’s Buddhism. In grand moments of magic realism, Eve sees the Buddha and Jesus dancing in the living room and has conversations with her Grandmother’s Goddess statues come to life. Though the Goddess who gives her advice is a bit of a trouble maker.
I want to say so much about this movie, it’s one of those that I liked right away, but am liking even more twelve hours after watching it. This is one I would pay to see again without question.
Monday’s theme, as much as there was one, was daughters coming to terms with changes in their lives and families and the love of Grandmothers.
I haven’t had a grandmother since I was very young, but I’ve been lucky enough to have a great aunt who treats my mom like a daughter and me like a granddaughter and have had many wonderful older women in my life who have cared about me as if I were family.
So, with “Eve and the Fires Horses” I now have a top three with “No. 2” and “Off the Black” as the others.
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