White Oleander
starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Alison Lohman. This story is about a young teenagers journey through a series of foster homes after her mother (Michelle Pfeiffer) is sentenced to 30 years to life in prison for killing her boyfriend.The teenager, Astrid (Alison Lohman), has to basically grow up on her own and comes of age while dealing with a "me against the world Mom," from prison, and being shipped from one dysfunctional foster home to another. The movie depicts a very poignant dramatization of what many kids in foster homes have to deal with.
While having to navigate through the harsh reality that her mother may never come home, Astrid is forced to grow up very quickly. Her mother's advice to her from behind bars in confusing but has a ring of truth that the daughter just can't quite get a handle on.
What Dreams May Come
Starring Robin Williams, Cuba Gooding Jr., and Annabella Sciorra. This is a difficult movie to analyze and really falls under the category of, "you just have to see it" more than anything else. In a nutshell, Chris Neilson (Robin Williams) dies and finds himself in a heavenly place surrounded by beauty that is essentially created from his own imagination. He later finds out that his wife has passed because of the grief surrounding the death of their son. Charlie's dilemma is, he's in a heavenly place, or realm, he learns of his wife's demise, so where is she? Why isn't she here? And the story takes off from there.
Love Field
featuring Michelle Pfeiffer and Dennis Haysbert, set in 1963, and released in 1992, is really the type of movie that's difficult for me to watch, being African American. I continued watching this particular movie because of the powerful performance of one of my favorite actresses, Michelle Pfeiffer. But any movie that features the bitter racial hatred that once existed in the United States is a bit hard to swallow. I'm always amazed at the audacity of one group of people actually believing they are superior to another simply because of the color of the skin. That's always been somewhat mind boggling for me, even as a kid who grew up in the South, in the 60's and 70's. Although blatant racism no longer exist in major cities in the U.S. (but still thrives in the smaller cities and pockets of rural America) the Spirit of Superiority (in many Caucasian people) and the Spirit of Inferiority (in many Black people) is alive and well. You can clearly see this Spirit with events such as the OJ murders (men unfortunately kill their wives almost daily in America and no one really cares, but not in the OJ case) and our first Black president. If Mr. Obama sneezes wrong, he is highly criticized. And as a nation, we simply do not realize that we are in this mess together, and we will only survive together.
Anyway, I digress. "Love Field" is about a Dallas housewife, Lurene Hallett (Michelle Pfeiffer) whose life revolves around the doings of Jacqueline Kennedy. She is devastated when President Kennedy is shot a few hours after she sees him arrive in Dallas. Despite her husband Ray's prohibition, she decides to attend the funeral in Washington, D.C. Forced to travel by bus, she befriends Jonell, the young black daughter of Paul Couter (Dennis Haysbert). Sensing something wrong, her good intentioned interference leads the mixed race threesome on an increasingly difficult journey to Washington with both the police and Ray looking for them.
Stir Crazy
"That's right, we Bad!" and "My brother was real short we couldn't even see him." Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder are at their best in this classic comedy. The scene when they first entered the prison is hilarious. Pryor and Wilder made a phenomenal comedy team, it's a shame they didn't do more movies together.
I actually had the privilege of seeing Richard Pryor live in concert in Dallas, Texas some 20 years ago and he did not disappoint. Richard Pryor is the Michael Jackson, the Michael Jordan, and the Babe Ruth of comedy; there will never be another.
Pay It Forward
Here's a movie that I would see on the cable guide for some years and I would always skip over it. So one day, I say, why not, there's nothing else on, I may as well check this out. The first 30 minutes or so, I wasn't quite getting what the writer was trying to do. However, as the plot came together, aided by one of the greatest child actors of all time (in my opinion); best known for his "I see dead people" line in "The Sixth Sense," Haley Joel Osment, I began to see this was a rare, and significant movie. The tagline reads like this:
"Like some other kids, 12-year-old Trevor McKinney believed in the goodness of human nature. Like many other kids, he was determined to change the world for the better. Unlike most other kids, he succeeded."
Pay It Forward is a poignant and moving tribute about the potential of the human spirit, and why we are here on this earth, all displayed in an adolescent.
The movie also features Kevin Spacey and Helen Hunt (I'm a huge Helen Hunt fan).
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