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.

---

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

---

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

---

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. 70 | April 8, 2010

Play Ball

Our theme this week
Baseball movies

Featured this week (theme introduction)
Monday         —   Documentaries:  The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg (1998)
Tuesday         —   Biopics:  The Pride of the Yankees (1942)
Wednesday    —   Kids at Play:  The Bad News Bears (1976)

Today’s feature
Baseball Comedies

Best in class
Bull Durham (1988)

Honorable mention
A League of Their Own (1992)— An enjoyable tale of women’s professional baseball during the war years, the film upsets some standard gender stereotypes and features performances from Geena Davis, Rosie O’Donnell, and Madonna, as players, and Tom Hanks as their alcoholic manager, back in the days when he was having fun.  Worth watching for the ”There’s no crying in baseball!” scene alone.
Damn Yankees! (1958) — Not just a comedy but a musical comedy!  The film adaptation of the stage adaptation of the Faust legend, starring Gwen Verdon, as Lola, doing numbers like these.

For the real fan
Major League (1989)— Another film where I part company with many fans.  I found this a lot less hilarious than advertised, though Bob Uecker is entertaining, as always.

Bull Durham

How good a movie is Bull Durham?  It’s debatable.  It may be the top sports movie of all-time, or just a chick flick that doesn’t deserve to be ranked with a movie like The Natural, for example.  It depends on what page at Page 2 you’re reading.

My take:  neither of the above.

Bull Durham is a good movie…for a baseball movie.  It gets a lot of things right that other baseball movies do not.  Director Ron Shelton played in the minor leagues and he drew from his experience to lend the film the veneer of authenticity.  That’s not to say it’s anything like a documentary.  The dialog is highly stylized and the characters are bigger and broader than in real life.  But it feels like a movie made by people who know something about the game.

The film stars Kevin Costner and Tim Robbins as two minor leaguers, one on the way up, one on the way out, both of them involved with the same woman, a local played by Susan Sarandon who is looking for a season-long fling.  “Fling” may not be the right word; it’s spiritual for her:  ”I believe in the Church of Baseball.”  Unusual for a romantic comedy, Bull Durham is set in a guy’s world, but unlike many other sports films, and to its credit, its men are capable of fleshed-out relationships with the opposite sex.

The film strikes a good balance with how it treats the game of baseball—seriously (Costner’s Crash Davis has a love for the sport that’s admirable), but not too seriously (the antics of Nuke LaLoosh, played by Robbins, get the appropriate send-up).

---

Bull Durham
Kevin Costner, Tim Robbins

---

Bull Durham
Kevin Costner, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon

“I believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.” 
An odd thing to say…but understandable since he hadn’t yet seen JFK.

---

Quote of Note
Will:  You missed Pudge Fisk’s home run?
Sean:  Oh, yeah.
Will:  To have a fuckin’ drink with some lady you never met?
Sean:  Yeah, but you shoulda seen her.  She was a stunner.
—Will Hunting (Matt Damon), Sean Maguire (Robin Williams), Good Will Hunting (1997)

…58…59…60.

Wednesday Minute
No. 64 | March 31, 2010

“City” Flickers

Our theme this week
Films named after U.S. cities

Featured this week (theme introduction)
Monday         —   San Francisco (1936)
Tuesday         —   Nashville (1975)

Atlantic City (1980)

The city
Incorporated:  1854
Claim to Fame:  Inspiration for the Monopoly board game; gambling Mecca of the East
Population:  36,000

The movie
Release Date:  1980
Director:  Louis Malle
Cast:  Burt Lancaster, Susan Sarandon, Kate Reid
Oscar Summary:  5 nominations, no wins

Atlantic City was going through a transformation around the time of this film.  A seaside resort town going back to the 19th century, it had suffered a major decline during the postwar years.  Gambling was legalized during the ’70s in an effort to attract new visitors, and many of the old buildings were being demolished as new casinos were starting up.

Sally and Lou are neighbors living in an apartment building that’s slated for the wrecking ball.  Sally’s a newcomer to town, from Canada, fleeing her drug dealer husband, with ambitions to start over.  Lou’s an old-timer, an aging numbers runner with connections to the mob from decades past, yet a very dignified man with a fondness for white suits.  The leads are Susan Sarandon (a revelation) and Burt Lancaster (one of a kind), perhaps an unlikely pair for two people so involved with each another and potentially lovers.  They may be from worlds apart but they need each other, and there’s great tenderness between them.  One memorable scene has Sally going through her nightly ritual at the kitchen sink, rubbing lemon juice over her arms, shoulders, and breasts.  She does it to remove the smell of fish from her work as a waitress, though there is another way to look at it too.  Lou is watching through the window.  Later he tells her about it.  It’s a revealing look into their characters.

Atlantic City was directed by Louis Malle, who made terrific films both in his native France (Lacombe Lucien, Au Revoir les Enfants) and in America (My Dinner with Andre).  Atlantic City is a special film and ranks among his best.

---

Atlantic City 
Trailer

---

Quote of Note
“I said that I would see you because I had heard that you were a serious man, to be treated with respect.  But I must say no to you and let me give you my reasons.  It’s true I have a lot of friends in politics, but they wouldn’t be so friendly if they knew my business was drugs instead of gambling which they consider a harmless vice.  But drugs, that’s a dirty business.”
—Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando), The Godfather (1972)

…58…59…60.