Friday Minute
No. 136 | July 23, 2010

Chick Flicks Not Just for Chicks

Our theme this week
Chick flicks—one guy’s take

Featured this week (theme introduction)
Monday         —   When Harry Met Sally… (1989)
Tuesday         —   The Bridges of Madison County (1995)
Wednesday    —   Terms of Endearment (1983)
Thursday        —   Erin Brockovich (2000)

Thelma & Louise (1991)

 

If you think that chick flicks too often are about women just looking for guys, then Thelma & Louise is the film for you.  (If you think chick flicks ought to be about women looking for guys, perhaps you should reconsider.)

Thelma (Geena Davis) doesn’t need a guy—she’s got a husband.  She needs him like a hole in the head—he’s a Neanderthal the way he treats women—mostly she needs to get away.  The plan is for Thelma and her friend, Louise (Susan Sarandon), to spend the weekend in the mountains, fishing.  On the way up they stop at a dance hall, and that’s where their fun-filled getaway turns into an entirely different kind of trip.  Thelma is looking to party, has too much to drink, and dances with a guy named Harlan.  He’s trouble.  Louise finds them in the parking lot, where Harlan about to rape Thelma.  Louise pulls out a gun.  ”When a woman is crying like that,” Louise tells him, “she isn’t having any fun.”  Next thing, Harlan has a bullet in him and the two women speed away in Louise’s car, fugitives from the law.

The two of them head toward Mexico—the long way.  Louise has some history with Texas and won’t ever step foot in it again.  They meet a hitchhiking cowboy named J.D. (Brad Pitt, in a small but star-making role), who teaches Thelma a few tricks of the criminal trade, then beds her, before taking off with their cash.  Their funds low, police on their tail, the two women get back on the highway, the odds stacked against them.  It’s just Thelma and Louise and their dirty old T-Bird, speeding to the end of their fateful journey.

Thelma & Louise is not a typical film about women.  It offers a better look at female friendship than many pictures out of Hollywood, and it doesn’t offer a whitewashed view of how women are sometimes treated in our society.  The movie offers no easy answers, and it doesn’t pull its punches.  It’s one of those rare films that gets everything just right.  Its two lead characters seem destined to live on in our collective imaginations long after our time.

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Thelma & Louise (1991)
Ridley Scott, director
Callie Khouri, writer
Trailer
 

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Thelma & Louise (1991)
Geena Davis, Brad Pitt, Susan Sarandon, Michael Madsen

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Quote of Note
“You finally got laid properly.  I’m so proud.”
—Louise Sawyer (Susan Sarandon), Thelma & Louise (1991)

…58…59…60.

Thursday Minute
No. 135 | July 22, 2010

Chick Flicks Not Just for Chicks

Our theme this week
Chick flicks—one guy’s take

Featured this week (theme introduction)
Monday         —   When Harry Met Sally… (1989)
Tuesday         —   The Bridges of Madison County (1995)
Wednesday    —   Terms of Endearment (1983)

Erin Brockovich (2000)

I decided the week needed Julia Roberts, the world’s preeminent female star over the past two decades.  Then the choice was, Which film?  Steel Magnolias (1988), with its cross-generational female ensemble?  Pretty Woman (1990), with the hooker role that made her a star?  One of her countless romantic comedies?  I don’t think so.  Let’s go with her Oscar-winning role as the single mom who takes on a big corporation and wins a legal settlement of more than $300 million.

Erin Brockovich is a populist hero for our times.  She’s street smart, a former beauty queen who can use her good looks to get what she needs, except to be taken seriously.  With no husband and three kids to feed, she finds work as a file clerk at her lawyer’s office.  She gets curious about a real estate case involving California utility PG&E, then starts digging.  She has no legal training but a sense of decency that won’t tolerate injustice, and eventually she uncovers evidence that the company contaminated the water supply of a small town, hid knowledge of the danger from residents, who suffered severe health problems.  It’s a story of an average citizen who takes on big money interests and wins—an improbable tale but true, based on the real-life experience of the woman who helped bring the corporation to justice in 1996.

Roberts has one of her juiciest roles and gives one of her best performances.  Albert Finney and Aaron Eckhart do good work in supporting roles.  In a more perfect world, Roberts would have as many parts in films like this as she does in romantic comedies.  Erin Brockovich has a serious side, but director Steven Soderbergh plays up the entertainment value too.  The film offers audiences a good time, and without much ado, something substantial too.

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Erin Brockovich (2000)
Steven Soderbergh, director
Susannah Grant, writer
Trailer
 

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Erin Brockovich (2000)
Julia Roberts

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Quote of Note
“For the first time in my life, I got people respecting me.  Please, don’t ask me to give it up.”
—Erin Brockovich (Julia Roberts), Erin Brockovich (2000)

…58…59…60.

Wesnesday Minute
No. 134 | July 21, 2010

Chick Flicks Not Just for Chicks

Our theme this week
Chick flicks—one guy’s take

Featured this week (theme introduction)
Monday         —   When Harry Met Sally… (1989)
Tuesday         —   The Bridges of Madison County (1995)

Terms of Endearment (1983)

Monday I had noted that the term ”click flick” was coined in 1988, so apparently no one was calling Terms of Endearment a chick flick when it was released, though it’s sometimes labeled as one now.  I’m not concerned with the label.  It’s arguable if any of this week’s films are really chick flicks.  The term is too loose a designation to be very useful, and it carries some baggage anyway.  Not too many filmmakers set out to make chick flicks.  They make comedies, dramas, romances, etc., and the chick flick label is usually applied after the fact, fairly or not.  The point of the week’s theme isn’t to define a genre, but to highlight some quality films about women.

The central drama in Terms of Endearment is the loving but rocky relationship of a mother and daughter, spanning literally from cradle to grave.  Aurora is the meddling mother, played by Shirley MacLaine, and Emma the stubborn daughter, played by Debra Winger.  Against her mother’s advice, Emma marries a literature student, Flap (Jeff Daniels).  She struggles with raising the kids while he, now a professor, has an affair with a grad student.  Emma has a fling in return, finding a shy bank officer (John Lithgow) who’ll give her some attention.  Meanwhile, the prim and proper Aurora, now 50 and alone, gets involved with her boozy neighbor, an over-the-hill onetime astronaut, Garrett Breedlove, played by Jack Nicholson.  It’s fun to watch the two of them, as she tries to tame his wilder ways while he tries to loosen her up.  Then, Emma is diagnosed with cancer, mother and daughter reconcile, and the tears flow.

The movie is a mix of comedy, drama, and melodrama, and in lesser hands it could have been a sappy soap opera, but James L. Brooks did a great job balancing the film’s tone and multiple storylines.  It’s entertaining, hilarious at times, and tragic too.  The cast was first-rate.  Winger, too little seen in recent years, was in her prime.  MacLaine had one of her better roles.  Nicholson, older and fatter than we’d seen him before, put in one of his more memorable performances, which is saying a lot.  Oscars went to MacLaine and Nicholson for acting, and three times to Brooks, for writing, directing, and producing the film, 1983′s Best Picture.

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Terms of Endearment (1983)
James L. Brooks, director
James L. Brooks (screenplay), Larry McMurtry (novel), writers
Trailer

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Terms of Endearment (1983)
Debra Winger

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Quote of Note
Aurora Greenway:  Do you have any reaction at all to my telling you I love you?
Garrett Breedlove:  I was just inches from a clean getaway.
—Aurora Greenway (Shirley MacLaine), Garrett Breedlove (Jack Nicholson), Terms of Endearment (1983)

…58…59…60.

Tuesday Minute
No. 133 | July 20, 2010

Chick Flicks Not Just for Chicks

Our theme this week
Chick flicks—one guy’s take

Featured this week (theme introduction)
Monday         —   When Harry Met Sally… (1989)

The Bridges of Madison County (1995)

The Bridges of Madison County was adapted from the 1992 novel by Robert James Waller.  The book had generated a wide range of reaction from critics, much of it not very complimentary.  The story, though, captivated the country.  The novel was wildly popular, among the best selling books of the decade.  A movie version was inevitable.  Despite any faults found on the page, the story worked especially well on the big screen.

Clint Eastwood, who made some of his best films during the ’90s, directed and co-starred.  For the female lead the studio wanted a young actress, but Eastwood preferred someone older.  He prevailed, casting the actress he called “the greatest…in the world,” Meryl Streep.  He was in his sixties, she in mid-forties—hardly the typical pairing for a Hollywood love story.  Based on the result, there may be a lesson there.

Eastwood played Robert Kincaid, a National Geographic photographer visiting Iowa on assignment.  Looking for directions one day, he stops by a farm and meets Francesca Johnson (Streep), an Italian-born housewife whose husband and children are off at the state fair.  For four days, Robert and Francesca have a passionate, “once in a lifetime” affair.  With her family due to return, Francesca must decide whether to leave with the stranger she just met or continue her mundane and lonely life on the farm.

It’s a beautiful film, heartbreaking at times.  The performances are richly textured.  Eastwood is sometimes underrated as an actor, and his subtle, quiet style is perfectly suited for the material.  Streep gives one of her best performances.  The real story is Francesca’s inner life, her longing, temptation, and torment, and watching Streep you can’t help but feel every joy and ache she experiences along the way.

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The Bridges of Madison County (1995)
Clint Eastwood, director
Richard LaGravenese (screenplay), Robert James Waller (novel), writers
Trailer

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The Bridges of Madison County (1995)
Meryl Streep, Clint Eastwood, Jim Haynie

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Quote of Note
“This kind of certainty comes but once in a lifetime.”
—Robert Kincaid (Clint Eastwood), The Bridges of Madison Country (1995)

…58…59…60.

Monday Minute
No. 132 | July 19, 2010

Chick Flicks Not Just for Chicks

Perhaps you saw the news this past week that scientists in Britain have solved the age-old question, Which came first, the chicken or the egg?  The answer:  the chicken.  Now we know.  No word from them, however, on another pressing question, Are chick flicks just for chicks?  (You’re right.  We don’t need scientists to answer that one.)

The dictionary says the term “chick flick” dates to 1988.  That’s not so long ago.  Certainly films for women were made in earlier times.  Look at the films of Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, and Barbara Stanwyck, to name a few, and you’ll find many movies, some of them classics, about women and for women.  Somewhere along the way, though, movies trended more male (and more young).  Whatever the reasons (television was one factor among many), the movies came to neglect the female audience.  Despite the emergence of chick flicks, that’s a condition that for the most part continues today (though women shouldn’t feel too left out since Hollywood ignores the entire adult audience, regardless of sex).

Beaches came out in 1988 (was that the one that started it?).  The chick flick was born, and Hollywood can now say it makes an occasional movie for women, though it’s a far cry from the women’s film of years ago.  Top-quality fare with intelligent stories and A-list talent are rare to see today in films targeted for women.  Does Hollywood aim to serve the female audience, or just exploit it?  (That’s not an entirely rhetorical question, but a subject of some debate.  Critics Andrew Sarris and Manohla Dargis, have called the genre a “ghetto.”  Producer Lynda Obst puts in a defense.  And while you’re at it, read Molly Haskell.)

I am not among the target audience for chick flicks, which by definition (I’ve been told) are not supposed to appeal to guys.  I have a problem with that definition.  I’m a moviegoer with broad tastes.  I like a ton of movies that aren’t “targeted” to me.  So if I find a movie doesn’t have any appeal, I think the fault lies with the movie, not my Y chromosome.

This week you’ll get my take on a few chick flicks that did appeal to me.  It’s a highly unscientific survey, just my point of view.  I should probably add that I ran my list past the resident chick flick expert in our house, my wife, and let’s just say her list would be different.  So it goes.

Our theme this week
Chick flicks—one guy’s take

When Harry Met Sally… (1989)

Over the years I’ve heard many women say When Harry Met Sally… is among their favorite “chick flicks” (or “date movies,” or “romantic comedies”; the terms are sometimes used interchangeably, sometimes not).  I understand why the movie appeals to me.  It’s not so simple to understand why it appeals to them.

The movie has several things going for it.  First of all, it’s funny.  It’s funny because Billy Crystal is a gifted comedian and here, as Harry, he gives one of the top comic performances of the past few decades.  He doesn’t have all the jokes, but he doesn’t even need jokes to be funny.  “I would be proud to partake of your pecan pie” is hardly much of punchline, but when Crystal says it, just try not to laugh.  He’s the kind of guy who doesn’t try to be funny.  He just is.  The only times he’s not believable is when he’s playing the stereotypical male jerk.  He’s too smart for some of the things he has to say, but he’s funny enough we give him a pass.  Aside from the humor, Crystal accounts for much of the film’s warmth, and it’s hard to imagine the film existing without him as the male lead.

The other lead, Meg Ryan, has a more difficult task as Sally.  Prim and “high maintenance,” in Harry’s words, Sally is his opposite in many ways.  That works for dramatic purposes, but she comes off as icy while he is likable, not easy work for an actress in a romance.  Through the movie, we do warm up to Sally.  Part of it is that we like Harry so much, and if he can fall in love with her, so can we.  But Ryan deserves a lot of credit for her portrayal of a character who learns the limits of her ways, and changes.  She gives a beating heart to a role that at first seemed to be missing one.  Ryan has us liking Sally more than the part really deserves.

The performances, especially the interplay between Crystal and Ryan, put the movie over the top.  Nora Ephron’s script is an observant look at the modern dating world, fresh then though a little cliched now.  Rob Reiner was in top form in the director’s chair, and his mother, Estelle, got the film’s signature line, the last word in the Katz’s Deli scene, in the clip below.

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When Harry Met Sally… (1989)
Rob Reiner, director
Nora Ephron, writer
Trailer

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When Harry Met Sally… (1989)
Meg Ryan, Billy Crystal
At Katz’s Delicatessen

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Quote of Note
“Had my dream again where I’m making love, and the Olympic judges are watching.  I’d nailed the compulsories, so this is it, the finals.  I got a 9.8 from the Canadians, a perfect 10 from the Americans, and my mother, disguised as an East German judge, gave me a 5.6.  Must have been the dismount.”
—Harry Burns (Billy Crystal), When Harry Met Sally… (1989)

…58…59…60.