The Writer's Poke

The movie is a little different: It has 5 strong female leads. Name another movie with 5 strong female leads. Katherine Ann (Julia Roberts) is the last-minute hire at a snobbish northeastern Women's College. She doesn't belong there, and the administration and students make sure she knows it. At the same time, Amanda (Juliet Stevenson) has somehow managed to be a lesbian and maintain her employment there for years... so if you don't quite fit in, you can stay. You just have to remain invisible and a non-problem. In Amanda's case, be a lesbian, but don't distribute birth control.  At first, it feels like Katerine Ann will likely try to "do things her way" while staying under the radar. She can teach to the syllabus AND add outside content. She can teach them what they need to know, as well as what she thinks they need to know. Basically, she can teach them how to think for themselves.  Throughout the movie, maybe she's still trying to figure out how to ...

If you watched Mary and Max and then watched Memoir of a Snail (2024), I wonder if you would know everything you need to know about the creative force behind these films, Adam Elliot. I like both films, and they're both quite similar -- the visual world, the characters, the humor. If Snail was a "brown" film, then so is this one. It's obviously a sad film. Mary and Max do have more people to call friends than just one another. They each have neighbors. Mary even marries her neighbor. Does he leave her? Sure, but he's not depicted as being a bad guy for it. Max's neighbor, too, comes off as a real friend, but if Max and Mary "dream" about each other and ignore other examples of human contact, maybe Elliot is commenting on the nature of distance, and how distance sometimes helps people open up in ways they don't to those around them.  What a fun experiment, to just pick a name at random and develop a friendship with a total stranger who lives thous...

What I liked about this one was the focus. Spike Lee is often somewhat unfocused in his films, and this film forced him to hone in. We are on a bus from Los Angeles to Washington D.C. The destination is the Million Man March. That's it. What can Lee show us within these limited parameters?  What sort of men are on the bus? Young, old. Rich, poor. Willing, unwilling. Gay, straight. Dark, light.  And with nothing but time, we get to hear them tell their stories. Mistakes they've made, lessons they've learned, what they hope to learn by going to the March, and so on.  Naturally, there's some conflict between the men -- their stories, backgrounds, beliefs. There's also some unexpected camaraderie. In fact, maybe they learn more about themselves and each other during that long bus ride than they would if they had even made it to the event.  They didn't make it to the event? Well, they came close, but Jeremiah (Ossie Davis) up and has a heart attack right as they ente...

It's 2026. Who actually reads blogs anymore? Take a blog like this. Are my readers humans or bots? Bots: Let me know you're out there. I want if I'm serving your needs.

The opening sequence is unintentionally funny and really takes me out of the rest of the movie: A woman is driving at night, probably faster than conditions call for. All of a sudden, a Detour sign pops up, and so she immediately freaks out and drives over a cliff. Miraculously, she doesn't die, but the only doctor in the entire world that can save her is Dr. Vollin (Bela Lugosi). At first, he refuses to help. Why? Is he retired? Just too evil to help? Did he get his feelings hurt by the other doctors? Whatever the case, when he learns that the other doctors say he's the only one good enough for the job, and he helps. From there, the movie seems to shift. Bateman (Karloff) enters Dr. Vollin's office, demanding at gunpoint that Vollin change his face. At this point, we don't know Vollin to be an evil man. But Bateman says something that attracts Vollin's attention: Ugly people may be more prone to acting in ugly ways. Vollin calls the idea "profound" and ag...

The film is beautifully shot in black and white. Just a pleasure to watch in that regard. In terms of the basic premise, you have a Polish married couple in a private vehicle. It's a nice car, but they're squished together on the car's front bench seat. Shoulder touching shoulder, without any extra room. It's not meant to be a small compact car, but you're definitely not going to fit a more than 4 people in this car. The hitchhiker is younger. Maybe he's supposed to be half the age of the couple. Why does he walk around and hitchhike? Boredom, perhaps, although maybe the couple is bored, too. If you're rich and bored, you go out boating. If you're poor and bored, you go out hitchhiking. For whatever reason, the man decides to let the younger man ride with them. Then, he invites him to join their one-day cruise. Why? Even his wife will eventually ask him why. Is the older man "showing off"? Does he want to make the young man jealous of his life ...

Briony (Saoirse Ronan) is a rather unlikable 13-year-old child. She's known Robbie (James McAvoy) her entire life. In fact, not that much earlier before the "events" of the film unfold, Robbie saved her life, and she told him that she would be "eternally grateful" to him. It seems she had a crush on him... but Robbie, of course didn't know that. She was too young, and he loved her older sister. Robbie was the family servant, but Briony's father liked him enough that he put him through Cambridge and was willing to continue putting him through medical school. Unfortunately, Briony walks in on Robbie and Ceilia (Keira Knightley) having sex in the library. Notice how the film repeats "shocking" events that Cecilia witnesses, at least between Robbie and Celicia. The first is when Cee strips to her underwear to jump into the fountain to retrieve a broken piece of porcelain. The second time is when she sees them in the library. Just prior to that mome...

"Perhaps he knew, as I did not, that the Earth was made round so that we could not see too far down the road." -- Karen, reflecting on what Denys had taught her. Karen (Meryl Streep) is a rich Danish woman. She wants to be married. She leaves Denmark and goes to Africa to get married and start a farm. The year is 1913, and European colonialization is a fact. If this is an autobiographical account of an upper-class Danish writer, then it should reflect her experiences and point of view. The beginning of the film suggests that Karen has had many lovers, and she's written about them all. Denys (Robert Redford), however, might be the most important one, and the one that's she's saved writing about for last. The setting, then, may be Africa, but this is not a story about Africans. It's about what she learned about herself, love and romance, and perhaps, life; and maybe she was only able to learn about it in Africa, because this is the only place that a man like D...