Movie Monday - 12/2/2013

There are so many good movies out there.  I've been trying to see as many as I can, but life at Chez Merry Karma has been hectic.  My list just seems to keep getting longer and not shorter.

I did manage to see a recently released movie.  Philomena is based on a true story - also chronicled in a book - The Lost Child of Philomena Lee, by Martin Sixsmith.  The movie begins when Philomena decides to find the son she was forced to give away after fifty years of thinking about him.  Her daughter puts her in touch with Sixsmith, who at first feels the story is not worthy of his time.  He soon changes his mind, and the unlikely pair are off on the adventure. Judy Dench plays Philomena, and Steve Coogan plays Martin Sixsmith.  It was very good.

I generally like Woody Allen films, but I have to say To Rome with Love is not one of my favorites. There were some witty and funny moments, but something that bugged me right off the bat was it seemed to me that almost all of the characters had adopted Allen's neurotic way of delivering their dialogue. Another annoying thing was that a person really had to pay attention to follow the four vignettes.  Besides writing and directing this movie, Woody Allen also starred in it. The ensemble cast also included Judy Davis, Alec Baldwin, Penelope Cruz, Roberto Benigni, Jesse Eisenberg, Greta Gerwig, Alessandra Mastronardi, Ellen Page and Allison Pill. It was alright.

The Real Housewives of Aggieland, aka the friends from college with whom I get together every couple of years, chose to read The Elegance of the Hedgehog for our book selection at one of our reunions a few years ago.  It was made into a movie - The Hedgehog.  The movie is in French with English subtitles.  It opens with Paloma, an 11-year-old girl who lives in a luxury apartment with her family in Paris, deciding that adulthood isn't all that it is cracked up to be.  She declares she is planning her suicide by her 12th birthday.  She starts filming the last 165 days of her life, during which she gets to know the building superintendent and the new resident - a very elegant Japanese gentleman.  Soon, she starts to see that grown up life doesn't have to be all bad.  It was a poignant and elegant story.  I liked it as much as I liked the book - which was quite a lot.

I went to PA school at UT Southwestern in Dallas.  Parkland is the hospital affiliated with the medical school.  I watched the movie Parkland with great anticipation because of my connection.  I was rewarded with scenes of what appears to be actual hallways downstairs in the hospital.  The movie deals with the minutes and hours following President Kennedy's assassination in 1963.  My pathology professor shared with us that he was a resident when JFK was shot. I didn't know, until I saw the movie, that the chief of surgery  when I was in school - James Carrico, MD - was the resident who received the injured president in Trauma 1 those fifty years ago.  The subject never came up in surgery rounds, or ever, while I was in school. Zac Efron played Dr. Carrico.  Also starring were Billy Bob Thornton, Paul Giamatti, Colin Hanks, Marcia Gay Harden, Jacki Weaver, Jackie Earle Haley and Ron Livingston.  It was very good.

MK out.