Okay the holidays approach and that means a lot of folks will be home yes including the kids, what to see that is not some syrupy ‘family’ fodder and not some silly cartoon, well let’s start our list!
Ratatouille is out on DVD and reallyreminds one how far computer animation has come. The scenes in the kitchen of the French Restaurant are as detailed as any Disney has ever done. The combination of the artwork and the creativity that moves the story keeps all entertained.
The Family Man is surely the updated replacement for Miracle on 34th Street. Nick Cage, successful NYC Investment Banker, lives an alternate life with an early love, how might it have turned out?
Guarding Tess is the amusing story of Cage as the no nonsense Secret Service Agent assigned to guard the wife of a now expired President. The scene in Denny’s where Cage is called to the phone to be told ‘how it really is’ by the existing President is hilarious, as Tess has remarked to Cage, you are way out of your league. Shirley McClaine comes to earth in real life long enough to do credit to the role as the aging ex First Lady.
Planes Trains and Automobiles , according to some of my friends, was actually made about my famous impatience with what seems the universal inability to get things done. Never mind the negative reviews on the link, read on down in the link. Steve Martin encounters hapless John Candy as he and then they attempt to get home to Chicago for the Holidays. This film made Candy a bankable star. For all of us not actually trying to get somewhere over the holidays, this is THE CLASSIC. Note the scene at the rent car counter does contain a foul word but it is at least in context.
Have you seen any of the films of Hepburn and Tracy? Kate Hepburn was playing an independent woman but one who cared for her man decades before the word feminist was coined. And no one ever wore a silk pants suit more beautifully. Check out Desk Set, Pat and Mike, Adam’s Rib, Woman of the Year, and for great screwball comedy, Bringing up Baby. Click on Kate for a list of her movies. Note, men and women had real relationships before technicolor.
Casablanca is in the top five of most lists of the best movies ever made. The dialog alone made it a classic. Personally my belief is that no one should received a college degree that has not seen and discussed the movie. Writer Dan Jenkins says he has seen it one hundred times, that may be overdill but the writers got this dialog right, see if you can improve on any scene.
Professor Elam 
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