All I Need to Know I Learned From Films

1. Mia the femme fatale, clearly after some kind of Daddy figure with her lines like ‘It’s all for you, sir’ and her attempts to lure the sweet but bored in his marriage, Harry (Alan Rickman) away from his wife of many years, played by Emma Thompson.

2. Emma Thompson’s character (Karen) is the doting wife who maybe has gone a little frumpy as she’s moving into her forties and on towards her fifties. Her children are young, still young enough to be in school nativity plays, which hints that she waited to have them. She has no job, no role outside of being somebody’s mother, wife or sister aside from her friendship with the widower Daniel (played by Liam Neeson - we get it Richard Curtis got a lot of big names to be in his movie!) Karen is so one-dimensional that it pains me to see such a great actress play her. My favourite Karen scene is the one in the bedroom when she is miserable because she’s realised her husband is a dick.

3. Juliet - who is the object of her husband’s best friend’s unrequieted love. Keira Knightly plays a part so marginal that really it could have been anyone capturing Andrew Lincoln’s affections. I almost wish it had been Chiwetel Ejiofor instead but nobody is gay in this Richard Curtis outing.

4. Natalie (Martine McCutcheon) is quite possibly the most believable of the female characters, but even her ‘romance’ is a stretch. She’s broken up with her boyfriend and is living with her parents again, but in a couple of weeks falls in love with her new boss who she rarely speaks to - and if the movie scenes with them both in are anything to go by all she does is bring him tea and biscuits.  Without a word he has her demoted and transferred to another workplace but she still is in love with him? Seriously?

5. Laura Linney plays Sarah, who has been in love with Carl for years but never had the courage to speak to him. So how does she know she is in love with him? Well, duh, he’s hot that’s how! When the two of them finally connect and look like they might seal the deal she runs away to go spend the night in a mental hospital with her brother. Clearly she either is not in love with hot-boy or she is so weak-willed she can’t stand up for herself. Given that she’s moved herself and her disabled brother half-way around the world in order to find work it comes off as far-fetched to say she’s weak. So what is she?

6. Aurelia is the Portuguese housekeeper that Colin Firth ends up with for a couple weeks while hiding away in France. Despite neither of them being able to talk to one another they fall in love. Plausible, if unlikely. He leaves, intent on never seeing her again but realises he loves her and takes Portuguese lessons while unbeknownst to him she is taking English lessons. Of all the stories in the film, this one which is the most far-fetched on the surface is also the most believable. And yet she isn’t the important character, the one we’ve followed through the film - he is.

7. Just Judy doesn’t even get a proper name. You see more of her than anyone else (literally, you see her all but naked) and yet her part is rather insignificant.

8. Assorted other women: the slutty American ones, Jamie’s ex (who doesn’t get her own identity at all in the credits), the mean secretary in 10 Downing Street and a host of others who are again just insignificant.

It would have been easy for the screenplay to be lazy given the stellar cast the film had, the late Robin Williams is rather comical in his brief appearance as a priest chastising the couple for not adhering to the tenants of Catholicism, Robert De Niro is a believable self-obsessed artist who can't quite get his own romantic life sorted out and so tries to meddle in that of his daughter, Diane Keaton plays a mother who refreshingly felt the best thing she ever did for her kids was divorce their father and move away, Susan Surrandon plays the woman who stepped in after her affair with the father and became their step-mother despite his never marrying her.

There are genuine moments of comedy - for that's what this film is - but interspersed amongst them are some decently played and well-written emotional scenes that make this a wedding movie which breaks the mould. Katherine Heigl is the older sister, Lyla,  who fears her own marriage has broken apart because after years of being unable to conceive she has and the scenes with her heart-break are wrenchingly honest and show how motherhood isn't always the blessing films try to tell us it is.

Ellie (Diane Keaton) is wonderfully acerbic in her treatment of Don (De Niro), but at the same time still in love with the memory of the family they created all those years ago when they were young and mad for one another.

You could almost easily be forgiven for reading this and thinking the main characters get little play, but that's not true. This film is a proper ensemble cast and it shows.

For once there are no bad life lessons here for women; the characters have depth and compassion. Does it pass the Bechdel test? In a sense, but beyond that it passes the test of showing how complex sexuality, relationships, adulthood, parenthood and marriage are.

I had been told by my friends that Rebel Wilson was a good actress and I have to say that this is the first film I have seen her in and she was good. Her comic timing was excellent as the bride, Becky, forced to relieve some of her high school problems - problems which really were caused by her so called besties.

Regan (Kirsten Dunst) is the maid of honour; a bitchy, self-centred, narcissist who is angry that her life isn't going to plan and she hasn't married first. You really dislike her and, the other two best friends Gena (Lizzy Caplan) and Katie (Isla Fisher) for the first half hour of the movie and then cleverly one by one you start to see their stories.

I even watched it with my husband and he laughed. There are some great lines in the film, like this one where Gena encounters Clyde, her high school boyfriend and the great love of her life:

Clyde: And you're wearing a dress?

Gena: No, actually it's a t-shirt.

Clyde: Well, it's good to see you're still fighting the good fight against the tyranny of pants.

Or this one when Becky realises her wedding dress is missing:

Becky: This is all fucked up. I'm gonna walk in wearing my pajamas like I'm fucking Michael Jackson.

The movie is an adaptation of a play by the screenwriter/director Lesley Headland and it was somewhat slated, but I can't see why. There are some good lessons in it.

1. Your friends in high school weren't always as nice as you thought they were.

2. The old adage is true: every friendship group as a fat one, a stupid, one a stuck-up bitch one and a slutty one.

3. Life never turns out the way anyone plans it, even the people with OCD.

4. Fat girls can get cute guys and are lovable while stuck-up skinny meanies can be lonely.

5. Your true friends are the ones who will break your heart and then mend it again.

Kelly (Essence Atkins)  is a dentist, it runs in her family. She's successful and has several practices that she owns. Her best friend is a lawyer (of the ambulance chaser variety). One night the pair of them meet two handsome men in a bar. It looks like it might go well when Chad (Christian Keyes) goes home with her only for Kelly to change her mind (as is anyone's right). He says hurtful things and leaves.

Then it's weeks later and her little sister is getting married and Kelly has to go back to her hometown for the wedding. Only she is terrified of going alone, so her bestie Tianna (Shari Headley) convinces Kelly that Chad is the answer to all her problems. Pay Chad to be her date.

Kelly is, if we're honest, a bitch. There is barely anything likable about her as a character for a good half of the film. She's a dentist and a positive role model for black women in that she is university educated - we get that. But she is also stuck up, rude, dismissive and classist. Chad teaches PE to poor inner city kids and instead of being impressed by that she acts as if his job is unimportant. HELLO! HE'S HAWT AND HE TEACHES PE TO POOR INNER CITY KIDS!

The film is full of ridiculous characters. There are HUGE continuity errors which are laughable. At one point Kelly and Chad are downstairs in her parents house - which by the way looks like it was some holiday rental because it's cold, cavernous and has appalling acoustics. They are dressed in Outfit A. The next scene has them in Kelly's childhood bedroom in Outfit B and Chad is reminded by Kelly to go bring up their luggage. If they didn't have their luggage how did they change clothes?

There are other errors - but none quite so sad as the script itself. You barely get to like Kelly, you feel sorry for Chad and secretly think he'd be better off dating a rock than her. Kelly's entire family is messed up - her cousin is an adult orphan and is shagging the soon-to-be-brother-in-law who is deep in debt due to a gambling addiction, the brother is banished for being a musician rather than a dentist, the mother is a closet drunk (seriously, nobody can smell all that booze on her all the time?) and the dad is clueless.

I love rom coms. I love films with ethnically diverse casts too. This is no Stella and there is no groove anywhere for anybody. 

And why does it take so long to figure out something’s not right with Justine? Because there are nearly 9 freakin’ minutes of artsy opening credits where you see a horse, a painting, Kirsten Dunst standing there while dead birds fall from the sky.  I mean, seriously it wasn’t as shite as the opening sequence of Birdemic but it lasted just as long and really provided not a single clue was to what was going to happen.

It felt like a really long slow ego stroke for the director more than anything.

Half of the film is devoted to telling you things from Justine’s perspective, this is largely her rather peculiar wedding to Michael. She is unhappy despite the beautiful setting, the husband who worships her, and her supportive sister and brother-in-law John (Kiefer Sutherland). You get the hint that she’s had these problems before – that she isn’t well. The parents are divorced and odd socks played by Charlotte Ramping and John Hurt who clearly contributed to their daughter’s mental health issues.

Dunst is superb at playing a depressive, though she is never labelled as such verbally just as “being ill” or “being unhappy.” You watch the train wreck that is her wedding night and feel gutted for her because she cannot stop herself, but also for the beautiful Michael and the sister Claire who has tried to put it all together.

The second half of the film focuses on Claire and her life as a wife and mother, but also as a sister to the very needy and very unwell Justine. She is like her sister’s carer and you sense that this happens a lot.

What is strange about this film is that beneath all of this it is a sci-fi film that focuses on a planet named Melancholia. For centuries Melancholia has hidden behind the sun only to emerge and start to move towards Earth. The two planets are set to pass very near one another and some, including Claire, begin to worry that they will collide and all life will end.

Justine is blasé about the entire thing. Life on earth is “evil” to her, the only thing she really cares about is her nephew, the talented Cameron Spurr (this kid has a future ahead of him). When it looks like the two planets won’t collide everything is fine, but then you realise as John does that the scientists had it wrong and they’re all going to die.

He takes the easy way out and kills himself, leaving Claire to handle her emotionally detached sister and her confused son. The end finds them inside a cover less tipi which Justine and Leo (the nephew) made.

The soundtrack is wonderful, the cinematography aside for those first eight minutes is great. The dialogue and script are good. Despite all of that you’re left with a feeling of…why? Why did I just spend two hours and fifteen minutes (TWO HOURS and FIFTEEN MINUTES) watching this film? There is no nice message in it, no soothing feeling that when we go because our planet collides with another it’s comforting to have family around – we see Claire balling her eyes out, rocking in despair as they die while Justine just calmly sits there offering her sister no comfort whatsoever.

The best way to describe this film…odd.

Top Gun is the story of Pete Mitchell (Tom Cruise) a hot shot Navy pilot whose father was also a Naval pilot before his mysterious disappearance in the 1960s. This has spurned on Maverick, as he is known, to be the best of the best.

To do this he must go to Top Gun school, the premier training facility for the top Navy pilots. While there he and his ROI Goose (Anthony Edwards of ER and other things but none as big as ER) encounter other hot shot pilots (Val Kilmer as Iceman and Rick Rossovich as Slider) as well as scenes of a very homoerotic nature.

There are lots of sweaty guys in locker rooms. Sweaty guys in towels. Sweaty guys in tighty whities. Sweaty guys playing beach volleyball.

You can all but smell the Brut aftershave. Phwoar!

Sadly while undergoing the training, despite the perk of shagging his civilian instructor Charlie, Maverick has to come face to face with his own hubris and the worry that his hot shot antics are what caused the death of his best friend Goose. Eventually he is cleared of any wrong doing, it was a malfunction he could not have forseen, but his heart is broken with grief and he walks away. Charlie, who is older and wiser and getting a bit of cougar action, brings him back from the brink and a local airport where he was drinking ice water.

Maverick goes on to graduate from Top Gun school and fly again, in fact he’s sent to a coincidentally just happening right as they graduate situation in the Indian Ocean. There he is reunited with his earlier commanding officer and gets a new ROI, the barely in it at all Merlin (Tim Robbins). They take down those pinko commie bastards and save the day and Iceman and Slider too in the process. Maverick is so awesome and amazing that he gets his choice of assignments after that and he chooses to go back to Top Gun and become an instructor.

There are also some great iconic lines:

Iceman: You can be my wingman anytime.

Goose’s wife Carole (Meg Ryan): Take me to bed or lose me forever.

Maverick: I feel the need…

Goose:…the need for speed.

  Slider: Goose, whose butt did you kiss to get in here anyway?

Goose: The list is long, but distinguished.

Slider: Yeah, well so is my Johnson.

  Charlie: Where did you see this?

Maverick: Uh, that's classified.

Charlie: It's what?

Maverick: It's classified. I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.

  And one of the most iconic 1980s scenes too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLzVbz2HHzo

It’s still possible despite all of this to find a bit of cheese however. There are also some noticeable continuity errors – like how Tom Cruise is sweatier in some shots in the lift scene with Kelly McGinnis (Charlie) than in others. Or how his hair is longer in the sex scene (this is because it was actually shot after the film finished).

What can we ultimately learn as girls from Top Gun?

All Navy pilots are hawt.

The married ones don’t cheat, but help their friends get girls by singing soulful classics.

It’s not at all wrong to enjoy the bent over the sink pose which Tom Cruise has during the entirety of his conversation with Tom Skerrit after Anthony Edwards’ character dies.

To win against the forces of evil (some people have said Krull is like the film version of the bastard child of Star Wars and Dungeons and Dragons, I say that contraception should have been offered and a lot of it) Colwyn must go and find a special mythical weapon known as the Glaive.

Ynyr: You will need more than men and swords. You will need the power of theGlaive. Colwyn: The Glaive is nothing but an ancient symbol. It doesn't really exist. Ynyr: It exists, up there. In a cave on the highest peak. Without the Glaive, you will never be able to reach Lyssa. Colwyn: I need weapons, not symbols. Ynyr: Once, the Glaive was a very powerful weapon. It can be so again. But only in the hands of the right man. For only the right man can retrieve the Glaive Colwyn: Am I that man? Ynyr: I wish I knew.

Is he that man? Of course he is!

It’s basically a golden starfish shape with pocket knife blades coming out of each point and a jewel in the centre. He has to climbs some rocks and…wait for it…stick his hand into molten lava (it looks a lot like strawberry gelatin) to pull out the mythical weapon which he is not allowed to use until he needs it.

Let’s stop to review our check list:

Pretty princess needs rescuing – to do

Get mythical weapon you don’t know how or when to use – check!

Get an army to fight with you – to do

 So now we move on to find people to follow our intrepid prince who’s stripped lycra trousers look like they came out of Steven Tyler’s wardrobe circa 1987, guess skin tight trousers seemed futuristic in 1983 and only hair metal four years later.

This film is a veritable treasure trove of then unknown but now fairly well known British actors. Colwyn recruits Ergo the Magnificent, the most likable character in the film. Ergo is played brilliantly by the late David Battley whom most people recognise as the teacher from Willy Wonka (1971). His introduction is quite funny given that he isn't any shorter than the main actor.

I am Ergo the Magnificent. Short in stature, tall in power narrow of purpose and wide of vision. 

Also recruited are a band of escaped prisoners, most of whom seem to be thieves. Among them are Hollywood A-listers Liam Neeson and Robbie Coltrane complete with 1980s footballer’s ‘tache. Also in the group are Mark from Eastenders (Todd Carty), and Alun Armstrong both regulars on British TV. There is also a Cyclops, a blind seer and his random boy child (it’s never explained how they’re related).

Being that this is an adventure film, they lose some people on the way: quicksand is a bitch, avoid it whenever possible. Finally to reach the Black Fortress (the entire TWO HOURS I was watching this film, see how I sacrifice myself for you people I kept thinking of black forest cake and wishing I had some) they must round up some fire mares – these are basically horses who run so fast that flames come out of their hooves, oh and…they can fly.

More people die once they get there and the Slayers, in their home uniform (they’re now all in white, it must be the thing to wear inside the Black Fortress, while they save their black armour for the away games as it goes better with murder and mayhem) open fire with their laser sword-gun-torches. The Cyclops dies holding open rocks for people to get through, but it’s okay as he was dying anyway – they have a short life expectancy and if they resist it they feel immeasurable pain (much like I did while watching this film). Next to bite it is Hagrid, sorry Robbie Coltrane. His final words are epic:

Rhun: The journey was worthwhile. Finish it...

I almost cried. Alas, Liam doesn’t last too much longer:

Kegan: My travelling days are over, my friend. 

Sadly for me there was another 15 minutes to go.

In the end Colwyn uses the Glaive to attack the Beast who while in his death throes spins around like he’s a little girl doing twirls. Seriously, his alien hair/tentacles even flare out behind him. But what is this? OH NO! The Glaive is stuck, Colwyn tries to summon it back to him. Here Ken Marshall uses his classical Shakespearean training, calling up all those days where he stood before the mirror practicing Hamlet’s soliloquy.

In the end the Glaive is stuck and Colwyn and Lyssa realise it is not the weapon…

Colwyn: The Glaive is gone. I have no way to fight him. Lyssa: Colwyn, it's not the Glaive, it's you. Colwyn: No, Lyssa, it's us. Lyssa: It's us he can't defeat.         Colwyn: It won't return to me except from the hand of the woman I choose as my wife. Lyssa: I give it only to the man whom I choose as my husband. Take the fire from my hand.

She opens her hand and that fire is still there, despite it having not been in her hand since, oh about 12 minutes into the film. Colwyn takes the fire and somehow now his hand can forever hurl fire at things – not like a fireball but more a stream of fire. It’s handy for say, defeating the nearly dead Beast, breaking open rock faces so he and his companions can escape the now crumbling Black Fortress and I imagine for lighting fires in draughty castles.

Did I learn any lessons from this film? No. But I have learned, with horror, since that there is a group of people out there who want to see a remake of this utterly dire film and that somehow it has a rating of SIX!!!!!! on IMDB!!!! How is that even freakin’ possible? There was nothing redeemable about the film, the only decent character was Ergo. This is like the fruitcake of films, show it to people you don’t like.

Sam cannot be placated with a normal woman. They require you to sign legal agreements to have any kind of bodily fluid contact with them. These agreements are sold in nightclubs by lawyers, including one played by Laurence Fishburne (no, seriously). Sam is a romantic, he doesn't want sex after a legal contract. He wants a sex bot, but not just any sex bot. He wants another Cherry 2000.

However, there is a problem. They aren't made anymore and haven't been since before the border wars, of which Sam it just so happens is a veteran pilot of a plane which looks like a crop duster (he flies one later). So onward Sam goes, not into the west but rather east with the help of a tracker named E. Johnson (Melanie Griffith). They meet near a hotel known as the Gloryhole Hotel, it's as you can imagine with that name a charming place.

On their journey into the forbidden Zone 7 where they combat all sorts of crazies and eat rattlesnake, Sam learns that real women are much more interesting than fake ones and also more interesting than his rather emotionally detached and possibly mentally ill ex-real-girlfriend who is living out in the wilderness with a man named Lester who has a Messiah complex and a whole lot of weapons, but strangely makes his followers do the Hokey Pokey.

In the end Sam makes the choice to ditch the new Cherry 2000 that he picked up and loaded the memory chip from the old one into and rescue Edith, E. Johnson. They fly off into the sunset together.

Things I learned while watching this film:

Sex robots are not as good as real women.

Real women drive supped up hi-tech Ford Mustangs (no really) that never run out of gas, shoot guns that never run out of bullets and get horny after having a minor head injury in a car accident.

You should listen to the woman with a cooler full of sandwiches when she says to you that going out into desert heat without eating is dangerous to your health. You will get shot. Stop and eat first. Die happier and fuller.

In 2017 we will all wear suits to do our recycling.

In 2017 people will still laugh at you if you're from Southern California and go into another part of the country dressing and behaving like you're from Southern California.

Sex in 2017 will involve people revolving around one another with vacuum hoses, but only after they have agreed to a legal contract on the exchange of bodily fluids first.

Young Guns is, as people probably can guess a western. It stars a multitude of film and TV legends, several of them when they were quite young. Keifer Sutherland, Charlie Sheen (before he was winning, he dies fairly early on in this film). His brother, Emilio Estevez. Louis Diamond Phillips, playing a Mexican-Navajo. Even the legendary Jack Palance is in this one. It's not his best 1980s role, for that see City Slickers.

Young Guns had the potential to be good, really good. It was about Billy the Kid. It was about guys fighting injustice and corporate greed in the Old West. It had a stellar cast. What it did not have was a decent script. I hadn't realised this, but it is a risk you take when you rewatch old films you used to like.

There are some really awful lines in this film, clearly the screenplay writer decided to opt for big summer blockbuster type film rather than a good western like Unforgiven or even, to be fair City Slickers.

Dirty Steve :"Damn good riding with you, Chavez."

Chavez: "Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're all right..."

The stereotypes are endless. The Mexican-Indian throws knives, comes from a reservation and eats peyote. There is a learned reader-poet Doc (Sutherland), the uptight religious one (Sheen, no seriously), the naive virgin who dies after his unconsummated wedding night, the tobacco spitting ignorant one (Dermot Mulroney). For a change Terence Stamp is a good guy, but he buys the farm early on.

Set in lovely Tuscon, Arizona where Ronald "Ronnie" also "Donald" Miller is the quite, weedy but still cute astronomy geek who has the stereotypical red-haired bestie (Kenneth played by Courtney Gains) who is also a nerd. In fact, Ronald is such a nerd that despite being a senior in high school he has never seen a "titty" which he gets plenty of opportunity to do once he becomes cool. And to make matters worse, his little brother (a very young Seth Green) is in seventh grade and cooler than he is.

Ronald has saved up money all summer, though really given the length of a summer and the rate of grass growing even with the required sprinkler systems in the Arizona desert, I cannot see how the economics of this work, by mowing lawns on what has to be his dad's riding lawn mower. Ronald now has....$1000! I know, amazing. Instead of buying himself a telescope so he can look at the moon he buys himself a pretend girlfriend.

It was okay to pimp yourself out socially for money in 1980s teen films, so long as you didn't do anything sexual. Cindy Mancini (Amanda Peterson) is the prettiest girl in school, captain of the cheerleaders and Ronald's (Patrick Dempsey) heart's desire.

There are some gems in this movie; like the scene where Ronald tells Cindy that in the future people will live on the moon. By the time he's in his 40s and his dad's age. So, you know, about now. How's that moon living going for you guys out there? Nothing like strolling by the Sea of Tranquility on your day off is there?

Or the exceptionally brilliant scene where Ronald, no longer cool, hip Ronnie, stands up to a guy who was his friend just weeks before and threatens to break the mean jock's arm for daring to rough up Kenneth. And gives a moving speech containing the line: "Nerds, jocks. My side, your side. It's all bullshit. Its hard enough just trying to be yourself." Afterwards the rest of the cafeteria (it's outdoors but they call it that in the film) all clap. It's almost enough to bring a tear to your eye.

Or the moving romantic moment where one of Cindy's best friends makes Ronald a real man:

[Patty seducing Ronald in the car]

Patty: Are you into long distance relationships?

Ronald: No.

Patty: Now, then why don't you reach out and touch someone?

[puts his hands on her bared, but not seen by the audience, breasts]

In the end Ronald realises being true to himself is being...himself and Cindy realises her friends are tools but then they're not tools because they clap and realise that it's better to all just get along. And she gives him his money back somehow - without a job or any real prospects of getting one since she seems to live off her mother's charge cards - just moments before they ride off into the sunset together on that lawn mower.