About Schmidt (2002)
After Warren Schmidt (Jack Nicholson) retires, he misses the routine and purpose of work, but his successor makes it clear he doesn’t need him or his advice.
When Warren’s wife of almost fifty years dies, he discovers she had a brief affair with one of their best friends. They had grown apart, but he’s hurt by her infidelity and, desperate for companionship, goes on a rambling cross-country trip to revisit scenes from his past before arriving at his daughter’s wedding. He disapproves of her future husband, but, after attempting to dissuade her from the union, chooses to hide his disapproval.
Full of self-pity, he returns home to finds numerous letters from Ndugu, the child he sponsored in Tanzania. Schmidt had previously written several confessional letters to Ndugu detailing his various frustrations and disappointments and the letters from his sponsored child convince Schmidt his life has made a difference.
In Alexander Payne’s early films, the pro-abortion comedy Citizen Ruth (1996) and the political satire Election (1999) he was still discovering his voice.. Beginning with and continuing with Sideways (2004), The Descendants (2011), and Nebraska (2013), his films explore mankind’s desperate search for meaning.
I love this movie and it’s one of my favorite Jack Nicholson films.
Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001)
Single and in her early thirties, Bridget Jones (Renee Zellwegger) is afraid she’ll spend the rest of her life alone. She begins a relationship with her womanizing boss, Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant), but finds herself falling for her pedantic childhood friend Mark Darcy (Colin Firth).
This loose adaptation of Pride and Prejudice improves on Austen’s novel in a significant way, I cared about the protagonist. Renee Zellwegger is charming and funny, which is more than Austen could ever manage in her novels.
Colin Firth is perfectly cast as a slightly awkward, romantic underdog.
No one is better at being a charming asshole than Hugh Grant; there was a solid decade when he was a ubiquitous presence in romantic comedies.
You know how the movie ends after ten minutes, but it’s so funny and charming, I didn’t care.
Posterized (2014)
A part of ESPN’s 30 for 30 shorts, this film chronicles the post-NBA life of Shawn Bradley.
Drafted by the Philadelphia 76ers with the second pick in the 1993 draft, the seven-foot six-inch Bradley never lived up to his potential and is best remembered as the victim of several spectacular dunks immortalized in posters.
Memories of these posters led filmmaker Andrew Jenks to track down Bradley in this “where are they now” short film.
Avanti! (1972)
When Wendell Armbruster Jr. (Jack Lemmon) goes to Italy to retrieve the body of his deceased father, he learns his father was killed in an automobile accident with his Italian mistress.
The daughter of this mistress, Pamela Piggott, is there to recover her mother’s body.
When the bodies are kidnapped for a ransom, the younger Armbruster and Piggot work together to recover them and fall in love, continuing their parents’ illicit love affair into a second generation.
His father’s infidelity devastates Armbruster, yet he inexplicably begins a romantic romp of his own days later, in spite of his wife and children back home.
Billy Wilder directs Jack Lemmon in a screenplay by I.A.L. Diamond. These ingredients produced the superb films Some Like it Hot (1959) and The Apartment (1960), but, despite flashes of brilliance, this attempt to recapture their earlier magic doesn’t work. It’s too cynical, and features such a dark view of humanity it left a bad taste in my mouth.