The First Annual Amy Adams Film Festival

October 30, 2014October 31, 2014 | Paul Wake Baker

When I finished the fifth draft of my novel Walk Against Time, I was suffering a bit of post-partum depression and decided to fill the void with Amy Adams movies, so I decided to create the First Annual Amy Adams Film Festival. Okay, it was a low-key affair, just me and a bowl of popcorn, but it was great fun.

I must confess right from the beginning that I love Amy Adams unconditionally.

There, it’s out in the open. A friend recently asked me what I love about Amy and I’ve got to confess that it’s pretty much the whole package. Red hair, green eyes, a cute little pixie nose. What’s not to love? She’s not emaciated, but not overweight, either (okay, maybe just a tiny hint of baby fat). Inside that perfect shell, there is a personality that just radiates optimism. Don’t blame her, she can’t help it. It’s how she is. She’s like the Tom Hanks of female actors. There’s just something that will never, ever give up on humanity and our potential. Finally, you crinkle in a moderate dash of vulnerability that brings tears to my eyes. Please, Amy, DON’T CRY! I admit it freely. I am besotted.

The film list below contains links to my reviews for each of the movies. Just click on the name or photo to read the full review.

The First Annual Amy Adams Film Festival

Day 1

Leap Year

Amy plays an Irish-American girl who travels to the auld country to propose to her sweetie on February 29th, when she believes he can’t refuse. Along the way, she meets an Irish pub owner that just might change her mind. This is easily the worst of all the films in the festival. It is a romantic comedy that is not entirely successful. Read the review to find out why. It’s a good film to begin the festival with because every movie will get better from now on.

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

One of Amy’s most adorable roles as nightclub singer Delysia Lafosse, a flibbertygibbet who is bouncing between three men. It takes a wonderful performance by Frances McDormand to help her realize her true love and find happiness. A wonderful comedy!

American Hustle

Amy does some real acting in this hilarious comedy about two con artists in the 1970’s who get into something over their heads. Christian Bale is unbelievably good in this movie and frankly he steals the show, but Amy is great, too. In fact, everyone is good.

Enchanted

This is an amazing Disney film containing both animation and live action with great music and some incredible songs. Yes, Amy sings again! She is at her delightful best as Princess Giselle who is thrown out of her cartoon kingdom into downtown Manhattan by the evil queen Narissa, played by Susan Sarandon. It’s joyful and funny and one of the best Amy Adams films ever. A personal favorite.

Day 2

Sunshine Cleaning

This is kind of a dark comedy about two down and out Albuquerque sisters, played by Amy and Emily Blunt, who start a business cleaning up crime scenes. It is both funny and touching and features a great performance by Blunt. Alan Arkin appears as their father.

The Fighter

A great film on so many levels! Again, Christian Bale is over the top good and won a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his role as Dicky Eckland, the older brother of Amy’s love interest, Micky Ward, played by Mark Wahberg. Amy plays a smart bartender who helps Micky to escape his family’s bungling of his boxing career. She’s really good in this movie and creates a real regular girl-type character (except that she’s like totally gorgeous, as usual). This is a must-see movie!

Trouble with the Curve

What more could one possibly ask than to have Clint Eastwood as Amy’s crusty old baseball scout father? She’s at her most vulnerable here in a movie that combines some subtle comedy with a deep hurt that she suffered in her childhood. She and Clint are dynamite together and when you add in Justin Timberlake as her love interest, you have a wonderful, feel-good movie that just can’t be resisted. Wonderful!

Julie and Julia

The festival ends, appropriately enough, with Julie and Julia. The first time I actually remember seeing Amy Adams in anything, it was this and I fell for her really hard as Julie Powell, a talented wannabe writer in a post 9/11 world who decides to cook her way through Julia Child’s legendary cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Although they have no scenes together, Meryl Streep’s endearing performance as Julia Child is a perfect counterpoint to Amy’s vulnerable, lovable Julie. This is a film that I can literally watch over and over and love more each time. As a writer, two scenes touch me the most. First, when Julia receives the first printed copy of her book, and second, when Julie gets a call that a publisher is interested in publishing her blog. I’m still waiting for the magical moment in my own life, but these two women are wonderful in their own joy of publication. LOVE—LOVE—LOVE this movie!

And so the festival ends. An empty bowl of popcorn. A little wetness about my eyes. And a hope that the Second Annual Amy Adams Film Festival will be just as enjoyable as the first.

I hope you all like my reviews, please feel free to subscribe to my web site to enjoy all of the reviews I write in the future.

Until then, as Julia Child would say, Bon Appetit!

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

October 30, 2014 | Paul Wake Baker

London in 1939 was a hodgepodge of pre-war jitters. Depression era soup kitchens operated down the block from posh nightclubs for the rich and the middle class worked to scratch out a decent living.

Miss Guinevere Pettigrew (Frances McDormand), a middle-aged spinsterish daughter of a vicar gets fired from her job as a governess. Rushing up the street with her suitcase, she bumps into a man just getting out of prison, Michael Pardue (Lee Pace). Frightened, she runs away, leaving her suitcase in the street. Standing in a soup kitchen that night, she sees fashion mogul Edythe Dubarry (Shirley Henderson) kissing someone in an alley. When Edythe sees she’s being watched, she takes her lover and leaves.

The next morning, Miss Pettigrew goes to her employment agency, but they turn her away because she’s lost every job they sent her on. She steals the business card of American nightclub singer Delysia Lafosse (Amy Adams) from her agent’s desk, hoping she can arrive first and steal the job. Delysia is in a state. It’s nearly ten o’clock in the morning and she must get a producer’s son, Phil Goldman (Tom Payne) from her bed before her sugar daddy, Nick Calderelli (Mark Strong) arrives. She hopes that bedding Phil will get her the lead role in his new West End musical. She’s using him, just as she’s using nightclub owner Nick for her wardrobe and apartment.

Jumping into action as Delysia’s new social secretary, Miss Pettigrew manages to gently evict Phil and stall Nick because Delysia must attend a fashionable lingerie show. At the show, Delysia introduces her to Edythe, who doesn’t recognize her right away. She also meets lingerie designer Joe Blomfield (Ciarán Hinds) who has been engaged to Edythe. Delysia and Edythe give Miss Pettigrew a complete make-over. Recognizing her at last, Edythe blackmails Miss Pettigrew into smoothing things over with Joe, even though she had been unfaithful to him, threatening to reveal that she knows Guinevere is actually penniless.

When they get back to the apartment, Michael is there. It turns out that he is the pianist that accompanies Delysia in her nightclub act. They are in love, but Delysia persists in using the other men to further his career. Michael gives her one last chance. He has tickets on a boat to America and is leaving the next morning. He begs her to join him and take their act to Manhattan.

This is just the beginning of a rip-roaring comedy filled with delightful performances. Directed by Bharat Nalluri, the film was adapted by David Magee and Simon Beaufoy from the 1938 novel by treasured British novelist Winifred Watson. Scandalous when it was first released, the movie is quite tame by today’s standards, but still very amusing. Nalluri shows a very deft touch in the directing, mixing tracking shots with steady cam to create a beautiful and tight movie. In addition, the music is truly special, capturing the feeling of the time perfectly. The art direction is fantastic, using upscale art deco side by side with the bleak depression era streets.

Frances McDormand, is, as usual, brilliant. She remains one of our finest actresses and infuses Miss Pettigrew with both restrained priggishness and down-to-earth humanity. In spite of her upbringing, she is open to the friendship that Delysia gives to her. Amy Adams is wonderful as the flibbertygibbet Delysia and she bonds with McDormand very well. They make an amazing comedy team and yet both display great emotion with a restrained script. The two of them make the movie, but all of the male co-stars are also terrific.

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is a truly entertaining movie that fans of McDormand and Adams will be proud to own. It can be watched over and over with a deepening level of enjoyment. I highly recommend the film!

M

September 15, 2014February 25, 2015 | Paul Wake Baker

The Man Who Knew Too Much

Never endanger an American’s children. That is the advice given by a foreign minister to his English lackey when it is already too late for the villains in this remake of a film that Alfred Hitchcock originally directed in England before he crossed the pond. Wishing to enlarge and improve on his earlier film, he teamed up with his signature actor and composer to produce this widescreen thriller in 1956.

Marnie

Marnie is undoubtedly Alfred Hitchcock’s most unusual film. There’s no murder, no spies, no sabotage, and practically no suspense. It is a straight up psychological drama. This might have been a great film, with sufficient editing, perhaps with a different leading actress as Marnie and maybe an American actor as Mark, with some of the action sequences done more realistically. As it is, the movie looks like an overblown Hollywood version of what should be a compelling drama.

Midnight Cowboy

This classic 1969 John Schlesinger film, adapted by Waldo Salt, from the novel by James Leo Herlihy, won three Academy Awards, for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. It is the only X-Rated film to ever win Best Picture. Starring Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman, in what many consider his signature role, the film is about what happens to our dreams when they are tested against harsh reality.

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

London in 1939 was a hodgepodge of pre-war jitters. Depression era soup kitchens operated down the block from posh nightclubs for the rich and the middle class worked to scratch out a decent living. This is a rip-roaring comedy filled with delightful performances by Frances McDormand and Amy Adams.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith

This 1941 “screwball comedy” was the first of two comedies that Alfred Hitchcock directed during his long and distinguished career, the other being the black comedy, “The Trouble with Harry.” The script, by Academy Award winning screenwriter Norman Krasna, found its way to Carole Lombard, the actress who actually gave the name “screwball” to this kind of comedy, and she backed the project.

Much Ado About Nothing

If you buy the cliché that young people who argue and harp at each other are actually flirting, then William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing might have been the first great play to use it. In Joss Whedon’s modern dress adaptation, he has whittled the play to under two hours and presented it in a witty original format.

Mystic River

Mystic River is a hard-hitting blue collar crime movie by the amazing Clint Eastwood. Released in 2003, it tells the story of three boyhood friends forever changed by an incident in 1975. Eastwood makes a point of the fact that things do not add up–it is part of the appeal of the movie. And it is usually a fact of life that most filmmakers do not worry themselves over. For Clint Eastwood, however, the fact that life doesn’t add up is the very point of the movie.