Cool Movies I Watched Over the Weekend

     I took a break from the dramatic and dark to the funny and innocent.  It's all about a balance.

1. North
     While this is a film Roger Ebert claimed to have "hated, hated, hated", I found it to be pretty quirky, well cast, and cute.  Elijah Wood stars as North, a talented young kid feeling a bit neglected by his parental units at home, played cleverly by George and Elaine  Jason Alexander and Julia Louis-Dreyfus.  He thinks he is a pretty good kid - smart, athletic, nice, organized - a child any parent would be proud to call their own.  After hiring a lawyer (John Lovitz is brilliant) at the behest of his best friend (Matthew McCurley), North is successfully separated from his parents in a court of law and ordered to find new parents by noon on Labor Day.  

Thus he sets off across the globe, from the frozen plains of Alaska to the frontiers of Texas to the beaches of Hawaii, interviewing and "testing out" seemingly perfect families.  That's when he realizes he misses his own.  Bruce Willis as the ever-present "guide" to North is an especially nice touch. He really works that pink bunny suit.  A lot of critics gave this movie some lashings, pointing out how unrealistic the plot was, and how it's only for kids who hate their parents.  That's moronic bullshit.  It was a satire that apparently Americans are too sensitive to handle.  Another score for Rob Reiner in my book.

2. The Kid

      This sweet little piece of cinema is one of the better Charlie Chaplin films, in my opinion.  More endearing and emotional than Modern Times, this film was one of Chaplin's later works in 1921.  It follows the story of The Tramp (Chaplin's lovable and laughable character) who finds an abandoned child and takes him in.  Five years later events unfold that threaten their relationship, especially when the child's original mother comes looking for him.  At 50 minutes in length, it's under an hour long of much needed film culture I'm sure you could use.  The score and acting are all beautiful.  The dynamic between the Tramp and the Kid is hard to mimic even today; they are poor but happy, down-trodden but faithful to one another.  This silent film almost a century old screams more plot and character development without uttering a single word than most blockbuster summer flicks today.  The humor is very subtle, but blatantly funny if you recognize Chaplin for who he was - a genius.

(img sources = mamapop.com / brightlightsfilm.com)