Film & BooksIssue: Sagittarius 08 & Honest Self Expression
Rachel Getting Married
Like real life-families who have a member struggling with drug or alcohol addiction, the focus of “Rachel Getting Married” isn’t on Rachel, even though it should be. It is on her narcissistic sister, Kym, who is out of rehab for the weekend to attend Rachel’s wedding.
Played by Anne Hathaway, Kym is a rollercoaster of guilt, anger, and vicious behavior. Her scornful wit and shameless self absorption suck everyone into her vortex for better or worse. It is hard to feel empathy for Kym until the film reveals the tragedy that lies beneath her madness.
Even though there are some similarities to “Ordinary People,” in “Rachel Getting Married,” Kym and Rachel don’t need therapists to help them express exactly what’s on their minds. They have no problem laying it all out there in front of anybody and everybody. My sense, however, is that such direct bouts of cathartic venting is much less likely to occur in real life. But the film’s painfully honest verbal sparring quickly gets to the heart of the matter as well as the scarred soul of a family struggling to heal from the disease of addiction.
The only cold fish in this film is the mother, played flawlessly by Debra Winger. She seems perfectly happy to remain on the sidelines of her family’s drama and her absence says much more about her coping skills than do her brief appearances. But her plan to keep her emotional distance disintegrates as Kym provokes her into a shocking moment of anger that is then quickly morphed by festivities.
All this angst is strangely yet effectively juxtaposed against the joy of a wedding that is so full of diversity and creativity and friendship and love that the viewer is still happy to attend. Using a hand-held camera and a very Altman-esque style, director Jonathan Demme moves through Rachel’s wedding weekend with a gripping sense of reality, yet he brings his characters only a few inches closer to resolution.
Such is life. 
Film & Books Archives (total entries: 29)
Capricorn 08 - The Career Issue
Scorpio 08 - The Money Issue
At a time when our nation’s security is in question and our economy is in shambles “The Good Society: The Humane Agenda” by John Kenneth Galbraith has much to teach the abiding liberal as well as the dutiful conservative.
Honestly, I have never been one for self-help books, but what I liked most about "How We Choose to Be Happy" is that it celebrates the wisdom of a variety of literary greats balanced by the stories of ordinary people.
This book won the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction for good reason. I started the “The Great Man” on Saturday morning and had to finish it by lunch the next day. When it started to rain I traded my lawn chair for the couch and kept on reading. This novel is fabulously funny, mischievous, and easy to read.
A quirky look at boyhood and film-making in the 1980s, “Son of Rambow” is a welcome diversion from the current deluge of blockbuster remakes and super hero epics in theaters this summer. Written and directed by Garth Jennings and produced by Nick Goldsmith, I like the way this film spins a standard, winning movie formula at a slightly awkward angle.
Although “The Maytrees” by Annie Dillard is marketed as a novel, it reads from beginning to end as a poem. Like body surfing, the poetry will move emotions in directions that the mind may not understand. When this wave brought me to shore, I needed air and I wasn’t quite certain where I had been or where I had landed, but I was, in the truest sense of the word, in awe of the experience I just had.
April and May are notoriously bad months to go to the movies. The Academy Award hopefuls of 2008 won't be released until the fall, and the summer blockbusters won't be out for a few months. So what is a film reviewer to do when all the movies in the theaters are lame? This reviewer is going to suggest that you catch up on the best movies of 2007!
After an unsuccessful attempt to climb K2, Greg Mortenson stumbled into the village of Korphe in Pakistan’s Karakoram Himalaya region. The generosity and hospitality of the Korphe villagers inspired Mortenson to establish the Central Asia Institute (CAI). Since the establishment of CAI ten years ago, the organization has built 55 schools serving Pakistan and Afghanistan’s poorest children, especially girls.
Based on Marjane Satrapi's books, the film “Persepolis” tells the poignant story of a young girl coming of age in Iran in the midst of revolution and war.
