kmk-3

After some recent disappointments in food film -- especially "Big Night" -- it's wonderful to find a film like "Mostly Martha" that hits on all burners. This is what kitchens are like and this is how food is prepared...it's a beautiful work that reaches to the most intimate part of the consumer, just as good food does. The story is not complicated: a tightly wrapped woman chef has to explore her life and motivations when her young niece comes into her home and her kitchen. A slightly shabby-looking but wonderfully warm Italian cook is another key ingredient in the preparation of this not entirely predictable recipe. Don't bother with popcorn when you see this one; just make a reservation at the best restaurant you can afford for afters...you'll be very hungry. It's fun to see a film about people who are professionals that has no hookers, cops, lawyers, doctors or hair stylists...actors and direction combine to make this an excellent little movie.

As Katherine Hepburn is said to have said of Astaire and Rogers as a team: "She gives him sex appeal and he gives her class." The terminally annoying Gwyneth Paltrow fakes another English accent-pastiche (is she Sloane Square, or is she Oxbridge...or Shoreditch...or all?) that would have driven Prof Higgins mad is there for the SA, along with the ultimately attractive but unwashed/unshaven Aaron Eckardt (sp?) who can't wait to unpin her chignon and reveal the beauty he's sure she must be... And meanwhile, in the background, the class is provided in heaping bucketsful by the ineffable Jeremy Northam and Jennifer Ehle, struggling to get our attention with the real drama, the real story. It's just not fair. Headliner Paltrow guaranteed the movie would be made, but it's Northam and Ehle who make it worth seeing. It's fun to see Tobey Stephens, handsome son of his handsome late father Sir Robert and mother Dame Maggie Smith as a creepy academic. And Anna Massey simply glows in a small role. But rather than see this film, go to any of Northam's and Ehle's previous excellent outings...

Was there ever a more relaxed, charming rogue than Frederic March? He would have been a perfect James Bond, had the role been available to him in the '30s. As it is, he made do spectacularly with this one: he's Sam Wye, a former SFPD detective, hired to find and bring back the luminous Joan Bennett, who's suspected of murdering Sidney Blackmer... When her car goes into the Bay, she swims ashore and goes on the run... The action roves as the trade winds of the title, straying from the piers of the city by the Bay to Honolulu, Singapore, Tokyo, Hanoi, and Colombo, Ceylon. Ralph Bellamy,side-hick to March, sez: "Colombo? I thought that was in Ohio..." Ann Sothern is glamorous, and Joan Bennett sizzles. This is the movie in which she dyed her hair black -- and then kept it dark for the next 50 years...leaving the blonde Bennett roles to sister Constance. As a glimpse of pre-War Asia, and an insight into the world before terrorism, this is a charming and lovely memory. You'll yearn for the time when cruise attire was more than sweatsuits and sneakers...and all this with dialog by Dorothy Parker!