The MacGuffin

Sound of My Voice opens with a young couple preparing to meet a woman named Maggie (Brit Marling) for the first time. They enter an unfamiliar house, where they are asked to shower and change into white hospital gowns. They are then blindfolded and driven to another house, where they are escorted downstairs to the basement. We learn their names are Peter (Christopher Denham) and Lorna (Nicole Vicius), and they aren’t just there to meet Maggie, they are there to investigate her claim that she is from the future. Bad times are on their way, and Maggie has chosen a select few to guide through the darkness. They believe, as many rational people might, that Maggie is pulling a con on her followers, and they want to make an unauthorized documentary about her “cult.” They’ve been preparing for this face-to-face meeting for a while, and have developed their cover so well that they are welcomed into the fold with open arms. There are tests they will have to pass before they can be fully trusted with Maggie’s knowledge, and as they pass them, they learn more about what she really wants and how they fit into that picture.

If Edgar Allan Poe joined the X-Men, his mutant name would be “The Raven” and his talent would be the ability to quip while drunk. He would have some anger control issues (just like Wolverine), but Professor Xavier would still send him out on his first mission: hunting down the serial killer from Se7en. Sounds like a great movie pitch, right? No? Okay, how about this one. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow—long angered by Edgar Allan Poe’s disdain—suffers a mental breakdown and goes on a killing spree in Baltimore, threatening to destroy all Poe holds dear. In order to save his true love, Poe must write a positive critique of Longfellow’s latest poem, and make the readers believe he means it. Interested yet? No, really? Okay fine. Poe is desperate for cash, since his ability to write macabre stories has dried up and no one will publish his criticism pieces. The father of his newest love interest hates him, but his lady wants to get married anyway, even though Poe is a huge drunk and cannot support her. A series of murders is also taking place in Baltimore, and it soon becomes clear that they are modeled on the plots of Poe’s stories. At first a suspect, he is brought in to answer for his actions, but when it is realized that he cannot be the culprit, he is asked for his help to solve the clues the murderer has left behind. Matters become personal when his fiancée is kidnapped by the killer, and he must race against time to save her life.

Howard Hawks was never shy about exploring similar ideas in multiple films—Rio Bravo and El Dorado being the best example—but in one instance, he remade a film almost word for word only seven years after the original was released. Ball of Fire versus its musical remake A Song is Born: which film is better? Read on to find out; it’s time for another Double Feature Showdown!

Loosely based on the book Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality by Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz, directed by Steve Taylor, tells the story of a fictional Donald Miller (Marshall Allman), a good Texan Southern Baptist boy about to leave home for a writing program at a nearby religious college. While preparing to leave town, he stops by to see his father—a liberal, jazz-listening, morning-beer-drinking professor type—who informs Donald that he has enrolled him in Reed College in Portland, Oregon. (Referred to in the film as “the most Godless campus in America.”) Dad would like to see his son escape from the religious brainwashing he believes Donald has undergone. Son has no intention of expanding his mind in the Pacific Northwest—until he makes the rather distasteful discovery that his mother is having an affair with the somewhat racially clueless and sexist youth pastor at their church. His anger is targeted at his mother, but also at the hypocrisy of his church leaders. In a fit of rage, he takes off for Portland to explore a more secular existence.

With the passing of Whitney Houston, I thought we could journey back to 1995 and discuss a more modern women’s film, Waiting to Exhale. I tend to focus on women’s pictures of earlier decades simply because the films marketed towards women during the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s were generally more interesting and complex than the tepid romantic comedies that are made now. Released almost twenty years ago, Waiting to Exhale is notable not only for being about women, but for its mostly black cast, including a pre-trainwreck Houston. For our younger readers, there was a time when Whitney was not a reality television joke; she used to be considered a pretty classy lady. I was too punk rock at the time to listen to her music, but I could respect the artist. I could respect the DIVA.

Getting old is hard. Not just because things stop working right or looking as good, but because our lives appear to be set in stone. We are who we are by middle age, and changing that takes a tremendous effort. We start to feel invisible to those around us; people either take us for granted or dismiss us because we don’t show any obvious value. Why fight to be relevant when it is so much easier to get old without staying engaged in the world?

The press materials for I Kissed a Vampire, directed by Chris Nolan (not that Chris Nolan), want you to know that it is a perfect mixture of Twilight and Glee/High School Musical. I am not a big fan of the “Movie C = a perfect combination of Movie A + Movie B” equation, but it kind of works here, if only to show you what they were aiming for. (But not where they actually landed.) If you have an unsophisticated young person in your life between the ages of seven and twelve who loves Justin Bieber and doesn’t know what Auto-Tune is, he or she might really enjoy this movie. (And, if my daughter’s high school had put this on as a musical, it would have been AWESOME. For reals.) But, for anyone over twelve, this movie is going to be hard to sell; which is fine, not every movie needs to be for everybody.

Some movies beg to be compared; others demand to go mano-a-mano. Who am I to resist this challenge? It turns out Bette Davis made not one, but two, movies where she plays twins: A Stolen Life and Dead Ringer. In both movies, one twin dies and the other takes over her life. Each movie is great, but which one is better? Read on and see!

If you are my age (43) or younger, you probably know Carol Channing from her appearance on The Muppet Show and maybe her role in Thoroughly Modern Millie, which is a really weird movie that traumatized me as a child. If you are a theater nerd, you will also know that she is the creator of two legendary stage roles: Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Dolly Levi in Hello, Dolly! That’s about all I knew before I watched Carol Channing: Larger Than Life, a documentary about her career and romance with her last husband. This film is more of an appreciation piece than a documentary, but it works—it’s fun, and I came away knowing a lot more about why Carol Channing is as beloved as she is.

I don’t know why it is so hard to make a good romantic comedy anymore. I want to laugh. I want to watch nice, funny people fall in love. Instead, I get unfunny, stupid crap that hurts me. For every one Easy A, I get twenty The Bounty Hunter. I don’t want Valentine’s Day. I want The Philadelphia Story. I want Say Anything, dang it! But instead—somewhere between crap and awesome—I get Friends with Kids. It has a great cast and a decent writer/director behind it, but it’s not nearly as good as it should be. It doesn’t suck, but it doesn’t have any magic. (Did I forget to say I want magic?)