The Golden Compass

Bears wearing armor, talking cats, tawny weapon-wielding witches...this movie is DELICIOUS. If I was a child, my pretend name would be Lyra and I would ask for a compass for Christmas which, upon receiving, would accompany me wherever I went and be referred to at key moments such as when informing my parents that the truth of the situation is that my room is not meant to be clean and, also, it is my destiny to have a pet cougar stat because that is my daemon and I feel like I'm living without my SOUL until I get him. (Forget childhood, I'm starting a new service reading truth-telling compasses right now. Please send $20 via Paypal to receive your truth as determined by Sara's Serendipitous Compass. As a free preview: "Avoid yeast infections" and "Your drinking water is not yet pure enough." Go ahead and TRY to prove these truths don't apply to you! Act now and get a 2nd truth reading for 1/2 price.)

I just wish Nicole Kidman would kindly stop showing up in movies where the only word to describe her hairstyle is "coiffed."

Ana y Los Otros

If you’re looking for a movie about a confused 20-something Argentinean girl who spends a good 89% of the movie walking around looking for someone named Mariano…look no further. It’s kind of like a short film whose cameraman accidentally left the camera rolling while he went for a siesta.

Ira and Abby

All I need to know about New York Jewish people I learned from films like this one:
1. They like to talk. A lot. Mostly rant, really.
2. There is always a Dr. in the family.
3. Neurosis runs rampant.
Racist judgements aside, it made for a semi-entertaining 90 minutes and did its part to reinforce the notion that we all know marriage is wrong until it's just so RIGHT!

Martian Child

I love the Cusacks. I want to be one of them. Although, if I was one of them, I might not see the novelty in being them. So I'll settle for just staying myself but being among them. I guess it would be weird at first since they wouldn't know anything about me and I would know everything there is to know about them based entirely on film characters they've played but, whatever, they just seem like good people with whom to have a seaside barbecue. Despite it's predictably high climax and huggy ending, I liked the idea that a single man could successfully raise a child who is pasty and wears an anti-gravity belt. I could do without John's black trench coats, though.

The Jane Austen Book Club

I actually really enjoyed this. Everyone is pleasant to look at and all conflicts very unrealistically work out in the end. It's movies like this, however, that convince us real world people that it's OK to forgive when our husband cheats on us after 3 kids and 20 years together, stating that giving up the other woman "is not an option." It's movies like this that make us believe our unromantic, sports addict spouse will completely change his ways if only we can convince him to read aloud just one page of Jane Austen. Just. One. Page. Aloud. This is dangerous filmmaking because it shows only the happy endings and not the 3 years after the happy ending when the wandering husband is up to his wily ways again and the sports addict turns out to be gay. In the French version of this movie, all characters would live for us to see the day that things once again go wrong and, just as we're feeling that nobody can be trusted and there is no MEANING LEFT TO LIFE...fade to black. End of story. Leaving us hollow shells of the optimistically deluded Americans we came in as.
I did, however, deduce from this movie that there would be less unpleasantness in the world if only we were all constantly backlit by California sunsets.

Malena

In Malena, Monica Bellucci makes a very convincing case against the hardships of being a goddess. I personally can identify with the stress she surely feels as she walks precariously on heels down sandy, Sicilian streets in a tight skirt while the male population pays microscopic attention. The good lord Himself knows how much concentration it takes to a) not fall on your collarbone b) tighten your cheeks so as to discourage your ass from wiggling independently from the rest of your body and/or c) pretend not to care that you may or may not have forgotten to wear low-cut panties with your low-cut pants. And never has a prostitute looked so looked sexy after being dragged out of her incorrigible Brothel of Dirty Goings On onto the street to be savagely beat down by frumpy Sicilian housewives who all shop at the same dress store. Cheers to you Ms. Bellucci for tittering the twinkling of lesbianality within me!

National Lampoon's European Vacation

Oh young, crazy Chevy Chase, I want you and your kooky antics back. Our politically correct society today is in dire need of you, Pano Amo, Princess Diana, the second Audrey and the pre-Americanization of Europe to all come back and rescue us from proper length shorts and the disillusion of cultural stereotypes. The French DO wear berets! The Germans eat ONLY sausage and own lederhosen!! The Italians dress in wild fashions that look ALIEN to the rest of us!!! If only the Griswolds had vacayed in Saudi Arabia - I imagine Ellen would have been lured away by the wealth and average IQ of a sheikh only to choke on a fig sometime mid-hammam and have Sparky slip and slide through the steam to accidentally perform the Heimlich on someone else before he thwarts both the fig from the esophagus and the sheikh from using Ellen's large handbag as a bomb to explode the cafe where Audrey is flirting with a young A-rab and Rusty is smoking a bubble gum-flavored shisha.

Scotland, PA

This Shakespearean tragamedy focuses mostly on Maura Tierney making out with her husband whose shady actions are inspired by a Grecian chorus of which Andy Dick is a very gay member. Most importantly, however, Christopher Walken is there too, rendering the whole "storyline" bit completely irrelevant by sheer force of his hypnotizing CHARISMA. I wholeheartedly feel Lord Walken could single-handedly bring the variety show back with nay a cast member but himself, some tap shoes and a cowbell so mesmerizing is his subtle, yet pure genius, manner of illuminating the screen. Get this man a national holiday!

Phantasm

Creepy with a capital H-e to the eby Jeeby. It plays on the theme that both abnormally tall and short people are scary, which they are, especially when working in cohorts at a mausoleum. The last time I saw this movie was probably when I was 10ish so the details are a bit vague although I seem to remember the typecast teenage boys doing their best to piss me off and continuously go places where I was clearly shouting at the screen for them not to go. I tried recently to rent the sequel but it seems to have disappeared from the face of the universe which makes the movie THAT MUCH SCARIER.

The Orphanage/El Orfanato

Hands down, I would have to say this is one of the best cinematic works using DOORS CLOSING BY THEMSELVES (shiver!), HEAVY BREATHING (ahh!) and CONFUSED OLD PEOPLE (run!!!) as tactics to make us explore the boundaries of fear that lie within us. I saw it in the theater but, had I been watching it from my living room futon, this would have been the perfect movie to sit in front of while I pass my time doing other things, like staring at the wall trying to remember if I had used a primer before my base coat.

Crazy Love

This is a documentary that literally left me open-mouthed in shock and helped to support my unfortunate conclusion that liars and cheaters do not change. They just grow older and continue to lie and cheat, regardless of how hot and loyal and loving and hot and witty and flexible and hot their girlfriend is. It's the timeless love story of a girl falling for an ugly boy with money and a boy perpetuating his hatred for women by obsessing over an idolized, uneducated beauty who he haunts and manipulates in subconscious retaliation for being physically abused by his mother as a child. It's a shame they didn't have offspring - these are the parents great writers are made of. Great writers or successful serial killers. Either way, both are interesting things that can be adapted to film.

2 Days in Paris

It was easy to watch. Julie Delpy played the role well which I have a feeling is because it's based on several personal experiences and she was really just playing herself. It's interesting to watch her on screen. Although she was voted one of the world's most beautiful people back in the 90s sometime, I find her to be more "jolie laide", the French term for an ugly beauty. I think it's the rosacea. On the other hand, Adam Goldberg is just unpleasant to look at from the neck up but the scenes wherein he wore short-sleeved shirts and/or no shirt at all were not entirely without value. Typical to Delpy's films, it's packed with lots to say. She reminds me of Woody Allen in that they both vomit out all their philosophies in a playable format on screen but would probably just give me a headache and make me want to walk away from them in person. The views of Paris up the visual enjoyment but there are a few scenes that might be hard for animal lovers to watch - most notably when the father is cooking a skinned rabbit and, later on, thinks it's hilarious to watch a dead pig get sliced down the middle. Ha ha ha!! Oh you French...you're f'ing out of your minds.