The Big Wedding (2013)
Alejandro convinces his divorced, adoptive parents Don (Robert Deniro) and Ellie (Diane Keaton) to pretend they’re still married to appease his birth mother’s Catholic faith when she comes to his wedding.
During their pretend reunion, Don and Ellie rekindle their relationship with a sexual liaison which forces long-buried family secrets into the open.
This movie is obsessed with sex and begins with Ellie walking in on her ex-husband performing oral sex on her former best friend and his current girlfriend, Bebe (Susan Sarandon).
Their daughter, Lyla (Katherine Heigl) is struggling to get pregnant and having marital problems.
Heigl was deservedly nominated for a Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actress, but she’s not even the worst performer in the film. Topher Grace holds this dubious distinction as Don and Ellie’s other son, Jared. His subplot glorifies sex as the most important experience life has to offer. In an early conversation with his sister, he seems comfortable with his decision to remain virginal until marriage despite obvious flirting from numerous attractive colleagues, but after one day with a Columbian beauty, his awakened sex drive has to be quenched.
Diane Keaton and Susan Sarandon have reached the point in their careers where they’re simply collecting pay checks. If they’re in a half-decent film, it’s an accidental bonus.
It disheartening to see De Niro, who once played a young Vito Corleone and Jake LaMotta, wasting his considerable talent as Don Griffin and Billy “The Kid” McDonnen .
Don’t be fooled by the seemingly all-star cast, this is not a very good movie. The bride and groom are relegated to background status, so we can be treated to the sexual exploits of AARP members De Niro, Sarandon, and Keaton.
The Farmer’s Wife (1928)
When a farmer’s wife dies, he recruits various women in the city to be his next wife with hilarious results.
This silent, romantic comedy by Alfred Hitchcock is not what you’d expect from the master of suspense. It’s like an earlier version of Downton Abbey, and provides insight into the lives of the British during the years between the Great Wars.
There are a few very funny scenes involving the old, communist butler, Churdles Ash, but like all romantic comedies the resolution is painfully obvious.
Hitchcock’s popular reputation is built almost entirely on his later films, Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959), and Psycho (1960). His earlier films have failed to capture the popular imagination in the same way, but this shows a softer more romantic side to the great director, which makes it worth watching.
Eye Myth (1967)
Like Jackson Pollock with a movie camera, Stan Brakhage scratches, overexposes, and warps his film.
This nine second long film is Brakhage’s attempt to prove a myth can be visual as well as verbal.
While I find his work to be a little pretentious, this is easily his most accessible film.