bjork-bjork

"Mostly Martha" has everything, including no violence, no car chases, and no explicit sex. (Tantalizingly implicit sex it does have, without teasing.) The filming is beautiful. It has humor, of a low-key kind, and that rare thing, subtlety, a good story and characters (all good people), and an exceptionally beautiful woman, lovingly and tastefully photographed. And finally, a generous director, who gives us a little dividend, like an encore, at the end. Though food and cooking are not really the point of the film, they are certainly the fascinating and luscious context. I will be seeing this movie again.

"Bread & Tulips" is a film you can really love. It has beautiful music, a beautiful main character, fun, interesting, and likable other characters, and a happy and funny story with depth. Mainly it has Rosalba, a lovely woman played by an excellent actress, who, incidentally, really does play the accordion.

The producers of The Perfect Storm make a big deal of the fact that the film is based on real events. Well, the real events were: 1. there was a big storm, and 2. the boat Andrea Gail sank in it, plus we know who was aboard and a little about them. We don't know anything else about how it happened, so the story is fiction. As fiction, the movie is OK, with a lot of far-fetched action and a whole lot of big waves crashing on the boat. One problem is that, try as the movie-makers might have, they didn't make us care about the crew. I was more disturbed by the waste of the fish in the hold than the loss of the boat or the crew. If the facts suggest that they thought they could weather that storm and make it home the short way, well..., they certainly didn't use good judgement, and, sure enough, down they went.