Cinematic Holiday Treats

IT'S COMPLICATED is the perfect holiday bubble of a film--delightful to watch, providing many laughs, but when it's over it nearly evaporates. It is not a perfect film, in fact rather predictable, except that Meryl Streep (see also The Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Julie and Julia) is on hand to distract us from the sketchy and illogical plot. I couldn't take my eyes off her. She has no obvious accent this time, but just jitters and flutters and giggles in a cloying manner, and as she proved in Momma Mia, she knows how to have a good time on screen and has chemistry to spare with her co-stars. Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin are very likable, and John Krasinski manages to steal his few scenes as well. Like a chocolate covered cherry, it's lovely to look at, sweet and gooey to eat, then you feel slightly guilty for enjoying it, and realize there's not much nutritional value afterwards.
A big noisy likable film, the new SHERLOCK HOLMES is very entertaining, in spite of some lapses. The film makers want to have it both ways, trying to be faithful to the original text, and yet including state-of-the-arts technology with big special effects and chases and explosions. By the end they do come back to earth to explain everything in logical and time-appropriate measures. It's a bit messy and bombastic at times, but I enjoyed the chemistry of Robert Downey Jr. as Holmes, and Jude Law as Dr. Watson, and the music by Hans Zimmer is very unusual and distinctive, and the sets and costumes are a knock-out. My nearly 80 year old parents seemed to really enjoy the cleverness of the script and direction, but were complaining of being rather exhausted by the end. I know how they felt.
The Masterpiece Theatre-like production of YOUNG VICTORIA is a pleasant blend of good actors (Emily Blunt, Rupert Friend, Miranda Richardson et.al), strong production values, sumptuous costumes and sets, lush music and cinematography. What it doesn't have is a punch of an ending. It really just sort of stops, which is a disappointing way to end a perfectly acceptable version of Queen Victoria's early years.
A dvd choice this week was ELF (2003) with Will Farrell, because it was a Christmas themed film, and we were desperate, although ELF does have many fans. I want to like it more than I do. It's heart is in the right place, and there are many enjoyable and amusing scenes (it's your basic fish out of water story, where Santa's overgrown -and very human- elf spends a week before Christmas in New York City disrupting the lives of his long lost father and the Santa room at Gimbals department store). The film seems rather lame and lazy to me at other times--but go ahead and see it with low expectations.
The TCM (Turner Classic Movies) choices this week included back to back screenings of two Humphrey Bogart / Lauren Bacall movies, THE BIG SLEEP and DARK PASSAGE. (TCM has NO commercial breaks.) I've seen THE BIG SLEEP(1946) several times, and always enjoy the complicated maneuverings of a detective being deceived on nearly all sides while the body count climbs and the bullets fly. Every time I see it I think I'm going to follow it so closely that I will be able to make sense of the complex plot, but always to no avail. It's all clever lines and moody,smoking chemistry. A pleasant surprise is DARK PASSAGE(1947) where Bogart hides out in Bacall's apartment during recovery of a face change operation--he's an escaped con trying to prove his innocence and she's an old friend who always believed he was innocent. The plot is a bit awkward in the set-up--you don't see Bogart's face for the first half until the bandages come off--and some of the action is arbitrary, but there is that tension that is developed by the personal interactions of the stars (and a delicious bit by Agnes Moorehead), and that, along with the ubiquitous Meryl Streep, accounts for a lot these days.