Cinecultist comes to you ce soir from the scenic city of Montreal, where we've flown for the weekend avec our maman. Please excuse our incorrect French usage, our three years of high school francais is coming back in spurts and fits in this francophile town (also, we can't figure out any of the accent keys on this borrowed hotel PC, pardon!).
It's been raining all day here, and with the pervasive damp what else would there be to do but go to le cinema, bien sur? The concierge at our hotel, the Auberge de Vieux-Port (shout out for Rue la Commune!) recommended we go to the Pepsi Forum, a theater they converted from a hockey stadium into a movie cineplex. After a brief cab ride with our nice but mostly French speaking cab driver ("Forum? Rue St. Catherine? Le Cinema?" we tried to explain), we arrived at the converted mall. Everything in Montreal is mall-ish, what with the weather and all but as a New Yorker we're vaguely skeptical of anything so indoorsy. But the complex was fine, all in all. The movie tickets cost $10 Canadian and since we haven't really nailed down the conversion rate in our head, we're going to just say that's slightly less than in Manhattan. Though popcorn is still exorbident, regardless of the country, you'll be happy to know.
Seeing as our movie partner was our Mom, we picked a safe little chick flick to watch, In Her Shoes, the new Cameron Diaz/Toni Collette movie directed by Curtis Hanson. We can't recall if we ever read the Jennifer Weiner book the film is based on, though we think at some point we've read something of hers. Or maybe all of these plot lines about nice Jewish girls who are a little plain but love shoes and have complicated relationships with their family members all seem to blend together. Irregardless of the source material, this is a moderately amusing little picture. The performances by Diaz and Collette as well as the iconic Shirley MacLaine as their estranged grandmother in Florida, are all quite good. Hanson keeps the pacing relatively brisk and the final poetry reading voice over scene between the two sisters had us tearing up actually.
We think perhaps this is the only movie we've ever seen Diaz in where she actually appears to be acting, as opposed to just being cute or wiggling her butt around. She's not half bad at that, even in a movie that's really about girls who covet shoes and the boys who fall for them. Oh and self-esteem, the movie's also about that. So, we'll just throw in a "you go girl" for good measure and call it a night. That five course French dinner which ended in profiteroles and included the better part of a bottle of off-license red wine is beginning to corrode our critical thinking skills.
Bon soir, mes amis!
Au revoir, le Cinecultist.
Posted by karen at October 7, 2005 10:18 PM