Four Romance Movies With Very Different Plots

Title: The Enchanted Cottage (1945)
Director: John Cromwell
Language: English
Rating: Not Rated

Oliver Bradford (Robert Young) is a WWII vet who suffered disfiguring injuries. Laura Pennington (Dorothy McGuire) works as a maid (and also has a strong talent for wood-carving art). Pretty much everyone dismisses her as plain. Oliver and Laura become friends and marry for companionship, but some time after their wedding they begin to perceive each other as beautiful, as if a transformation has come over their physical appearance.

There are a few things I like about this movie:

- Generally good acting, especially a touching performance from McGuire, showing Laura's kindness and profound sadness and loneliness, a burning desire to be loved combined with the torment of knowing that it's highly unlikely. Herbert Marshall also puts in a lovely appearance as a blind pianist (who lost his sight in the First World War), and Mildred Natwick is surprising as a housekeeper who could have been a creepy Mrs. Danvers type of figure, but instead is supportive of other people's love even though her own prospects for happiness were bitterly thwarted.

- The movie shows the perniciousness of pity – not just self-pity, but also treating another person as pitiable rather than helping them see what's good, blessed, and possible in their lives, and doing so in a way that isn't condescending.

- I also liked how the movie depicted the uneasiness around "ugly people." This uneasiness exists in the filmmakers themselves and in the audience. The two main characters are what can be called "Hollywood ugly." Oliver hardly looks like the Phantom of the Opera, and while Laura does look remarkably more plain in comparison to her physically transformed self, she still has a facial structure and figure for conventional beauty. In the romantic moments between the couple, we see them as they see each other – the loved one rendered physically beautiful. Would the audience have enjoyed watching them kiss passionately if they were both still shown in their plainer state?

Two Movies to Watch With Your Kids

More people are staying home these days, and some family-friendly entertainment may be what you're looking for. (Or maybe these movies will drive you nuts, and you'll let your kids watch them if they want while you hole up in another room to get some work done.)

Title: Annie (2014)
Director: Will Gluck
Language: English
Rating: PG

You would think by reading some of the reviews for this film that it's a horror show, that it will make you want to claw your eyes out and stuff your ears with cotton balls, but what I found was something different.

- The lead actress, Quvenzhané Wallis, approaches her role in a lovely way. She plays a quick-thinking sweetheart of a girl who powers through life with optimism and charm, and her performance doesn't feel forced.

- Jamie Foxx's performance is pretty funny and, at times, genuinely moving. He plays an out-of-touch billionaire running for NYC mayor who tries to boost his performance in the polls by throwing money at everything – sound familiar? – and he does it well.

- There are tongue-in-cheek moments and self-awareness in the film. Even though some scenes are played in earnest, other times the movie nods to its own ridiculousness and lets in some sly humor. There's a scene poking fun at Twilight types of movies, an acknowledgement of how little privacy people have in the age of smart technologies and social media, a look at the corrupt strategies a political campaign will resort to, and some fun with the conventions of a filmed musical (how can someone succeed at being mayor if they're dancing and singing so much?). As an adult, you can watch this movie with kids and still find enough humor in it yourself. It doesn't take itself so seriously, though it does touch on some serious issues (like, it's all well and good to sing about how everyone has a shot at success, but what do you do about poor education or parental neglect?).

- The movie is sentimental, but I didn't find it so cloying – first off because of its self-awareness, and secondly, because I accepted the rules of this fictional universe, where a poor kid will get adopted by a billionaire whose basic decency has been buried under money and workaholic habits. The performances from the main actors and supporting cast work pretty well too, balancing earnestness with an awareness that this is a fun bit of entertainment. (Among the supporting actors, Rose Byrne plays an especially sweet character.)

- Are the musical numbers powerful? I don't think they're breathtaking, but they're still engaging, and the actors hit some of the right acting notes during each (even if the singing isn't mind-blowing).

- I enjoyed some of the footage from around NYC (shout out to the 125th street stop of the 1 train!)

I think some of the people who gave it awful reviews loved the 1980s Annie, which I might have watched as a kid but don't remember. If you're a fan of that one, you may approach this one with mistrust and distaste, and you maybe won't allow yourself to enjoy any of it. I can't help that. All I can do is recommend 2014 Annie for people in search of a reliably entertaining family-friendly musical.

Title: Kit Kittredge: An American Girl (2008)
Director: Patricia Rozema
Language: English
Rating: G

A movie based on an American Girl doll? Yes, and it's entertaining, with enough to enjoy even if you're an adult. Set in Cincinnati during the Great Depression, the movie features Kit (Abigail Breslin), who dreams of becoming a reporter. When her dad loses his job and heads to Chicago to find work, her mom turns their home into a boarding house and takes in lodgers for money.

Kit winds up experiencing some of the struggles of the Depression, writes about what she sees, and identifies the real criminals behind a series of thefts while preventing someone innocent from being arrested. Along with its clever and cute scenes, the movie shows some of the harsh realities of poverty as well as efforts people made to get by and help each other.

The villains wind up being a bit Scooby Doo-ish in their final act, where they're thwarted by those meddling kids. And there's a schmaltz overload at the end. But it's still a decent movie with good work from the child actors and an array of well-cast actors among the adults. The standouts are Julia Ormond, who gives an affecting performance as Kit's mom, and Wallace Shawn, who plays a cantankerous newspaper editor. Also, Colin Mochrie from Whose Line Is It Anyway has a small role as a hobo.

Additional suggestions:
Check out the movies I've been recommending on this blog, including other family-friendly ones like Mary Poppins, The Wizard of Oz, The Secret Garden, Anne of Green Gables, and Lilo & Stitch.

Six Fun Movies to Watch During the Holiday Season

A few years ago, I made a similar post, which will give you several more recommendations. These movies aren't themed for the winter holidays, but they're fun to watch on a cold night with a warm drink, like hot apple cider with rum, and they're (mostly) family-friendly. (Yes, even The Maltese Falcon can be fun for the whole family... why not.)

Title: Cinderella (1997)
Director: Robert Iscove
Language: English
Rating: G

This is a Rodgers & Hammerstein musical adaptation of Cinderella, set in a pretty Disney version of a European town. The stepmother's house looks like it's made of stained glass and melted crayons. I like how vivid all the colors are in this one, including the lush blues and purples of the ballroom scene.

The cast is vibrant. Whitney Houston plays the fairy godmother, Bernadette Peters is the stepmother, Whoopi Goldberg is the queen (an opinionated lady who makes squeaking noises of dismay), and Jason Alexander (best known as George Costanza on Seinfeld) is a royal servant with an Italian-ish accent and a song-and-dance number about the upcoming ball.

Paolo Montalban is cute as the prince, and Brandy Norwood plays a lovely, fragile-looking, and sometimes vacant-looking Cinderella. I like how, even before the prince finds her at the end, she decides to leave home, knowing that she deserves a better life than the one she has with her stepmother and stepsisters.

Title: How to Steal a Million (1966)
Director: William Wyler
Language: English and some French
Rating: Not rated

This movie has the absurdity of a screwball comedy. The leads, Audrey Hepburn and Peter O'Toole, associate under highly improbable circumstances and look beautiful while doing so. (O'Toole is so damn charming here. Reminds me a little of Peter Wimsey - intelligent, doesn't appear to take much seriously, but is more serious than he appears.)

Anyway, Hepburn plays Nicole, the daughter of an art forger who passes himself off as an art collector. He's a Wizard of Oz type of scoundrel. One thing leads to another, and Nicole realizes that to keep her father's crimes from being discovered, she'll have to steal a statue he loaned to a museum. Simon (Peter O'Toole's character) arrives on the scene as a burglar who may be able to help her. Or so she thinks.

Week in Seven Words #402

combing
During dinner on a second-story terrace, the wind sighs at us through the crown of a tree.

delicately
At first it looks like a piece of stained glass, catching at the corner of my eye. It's a monarch butterfly poised on a leaf and opening its wings.

management
She left work a few months ago to become a stay-at-home mom. Within a few days, she began reorganizing a communal playroom in her apartment building and looking for other projects to sign up for. I'm guessing she will soon return to the corporate workforce.

musically
It seems like overnight she's become a major Hamilton fan. She's memorized all the lyrics, even the complicated rap battles stuffed with historical references. Today, she greets me at the door with "Washington on Your Side."

pity
Pity is uncomfortable and distasteful, regardless of whether it's felt about one's self or other people. This thought comes to me in the middle of a conversation with someone I'd rather not be talking to. I don't want to pity this other person or have that be the motive for the conversation.

relaying
The library has multiple floors, cozy and compact. A spacious staircase links them together. Footsteps echo in it, and whispers and laughter.

sidelines
We spend an afternoon at the fringes of a park, with traffic at our backs and terraced greenery before us. There isn't much hospitality indoors. One place is cliquish and for another we lack the required ID. So we're outdoors, waiting for the afternoon to fall away into evening.

Two Very Different Movies That Both Show a Room Full of Mannequins

Title: The Band Wagon (1953)
Director: Vincente Minnelli
Language: English
Rating: Not rated

The Band Wagon is a musical about people making a musical, and the leads - Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse - are amazing dancers. They aren't strong actors, so when they have to convince the audience their characters are falling in love, they can't do it through dialogue. There's one dance - filmed in the park and called 'Dancing in the Dark' - that does it, because of how they flow together, with Charisse's balletic grace and strength mesmerizing.

Another dance number, 'The Girl Hunt,' is a musical parody of film noir and hard-boiled detective stories. Astaire plays the tough detective (which is funny in and of itself), and Charisse plays both a helpless-seeming blonde and a dangerous brunette. There's some amazing dancing in this number, and a room full of mannequins at one point. 'The Girl Hunt' is both ridiculous and riveting. (If you're a fan of Michael Jackson's music, you might like to know that his music video for "Smooth Criminal" took inspiration from Astaire's suit and the scene at the nightclub from 'The Girl Hunt.')

Another notable musical number - 'The Triplets' - features Astaire, Nanette Fabray, and Jack Buchanan as triplet babies. They wear baby gowns and dance on their knees. (I'm not making this up.) The lyrics are also funny. These are violent babies who rhyme cleverly.

Fabray, who has great presence and sings wonderfully, should have been in more musical scenes. At least she's part of the group singing 'That's Entertainment,' the most famous of the songs from the movie. This isn't a movie that takes itself seriously. It's silly and full of music and dance talent (ballet, jazz dance, a tap routine in top hat and tails). A really enjoyable movie.

Five Older Movies to Watch on Valentine's Day

Or on other days. I watched these in the last year and a half, and have been meaning to write about them. This list is an excuse to. They're all quite different from each other, and make an interesting mix.

Title: The African Queen (1951)
Director: John Huston
Language: English (and a little German and Swahili)
Rating: PG

This is a fun, uncomplicated movie set in German East Africa during the start of World War I. Charlie Allnut (Humphrey Bogart) is a grungy, adorably monkey-faced Canadian steamboat captain who delivers mail and other supplies in the area. Rose Sayer (Katharine Hepburn) is a stern and decorous British missionary who needs to get out of German territory.

In Charlie, there are echoes of previous characters Bogart has played - men who want to sit out a war and stay neutral. Rose, on the other hand, is determined to use Charlie's steamboat to make an unexpected strike at the Germans. Hepburn combines in her the spirit of a warrior with the demeanor of a prim spinster. She and Allnut fall in love, and their wedding ceremony is funny (and brief). Along with Hepburn and Bogart's performances, another reason to watch the movie is that it was filmed mostly in Africa, with great difficulty.

Title: Design for Living (1933)
Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Language: English (and some French)
Rating: Unrated

A good Lubitsch movie is like champagne. In this one, Gilda Farrell (Miriam Hopkins) illustrates ads for a living and meets two impoverished artists on a train: a painter, George Curtis (Gary Cooper), and a playwright, Tom Chambers (Frederic March), who is quick to tell her, "I write unproduced plays. I'm very good at that kind." She becomes their critic, driving them towards commercial success. She's also deeply attracted to them, finding it difficult to choose one over the other, and who can blame her. As the movie progresses, the question changes from which one of them she should choose to why can't she have them both.

Design for Living is good-natured, witty, risqué, and really funny. Gilda has one other suitor in the movie, Max Plunkett (Edward Everett Horton), who presents a safe, respectable and also soul-killing choice, as they have no compatibility. Should someone settle for safety as a mere escape from difficult decisions and intriguing, unconventional possibilities?

The dancing isn't the best thing about Dancing Lady (1933) and Dance, Girl, Dance (1940)

Older Hollywood movies often called on actors to display singing and dancing talent (and the movie industry actively recruited people from musical theater and vaudeville). Many of these movies are set in Hollywood's conception of a Broadway theater. And they can be pretty uneven, with weak plots strung around musical numbers that vary in quality.

The following two movies are uneven, but I still liked them for various reasons, including the fact that they're sometimes ridiculous. They're both theater stories, specifically stories of women trying to make it big in musical shows. Neither of them has amazing dance scenes.

(A movie I highly recommend, better than either of these and more witty, is Stage Door, which I wrote about here. It's also a much better choice if you want a non-musical drama and comedy; there are some brief scenes of dancing, but no musical numbers.)

Brassy voices and mass tap-dancing

If I need a five minute break from work, one thing I'll do is watch one of the many Youtube clips showing musical numbers from older movies or shows. But sometimes I also watch more recent performances.

This is a 2011 Tony Award show clip highlighting the final song-and-tapdance number in Anything Goes (Sutton Foster, the lead singer in the show, did win a Tony that evening.)

Anyway, I loved the group tapdance, and the note Foster belts out at the end.