Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (Mary Stuart Masterson)

(Amazon UK link)

We wanted something reasonably light-weight to watch, and it had been nearly nine years since we saw ‘Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle-Stop Cafe’. We recalled liking it, but not much more, although I had, in the intervening years, read the book by Fannie Flagg on which the film was based.

It’s a dual-timeline story, set in Alabama in the Southern part of the United States. That meant that the accents were sometimes quite difficult to understand - but I got the general gist, and gradually attuned to the voices as the film progressed.

Evelyn Couch (Kathy Bates) is the character we meet first. She’s a middle-aged, overweight woman who eats compulsively. She is feeling rather unfulfilled in her marriage to the even more overweight Ed (Gailard Sartain). So she takes various classes in spicing up her marriage, or assertiveness - there’s some mild humour in these, but they’re not very successful.

Evelyn and Ed regularly visit one of his aunts at a nursing home, but the aunt is bad-tempered and doesn’t want to see Eveyln. So she sits in the waiting room, and is approached by the elderly Ninny Threadgoode (brilliantly played by Jessica Tandy). Ninny wants to talk, and Evelyn is an eager listener. So, over the course of several visits, the story is told.

It’s done with flashback scenes to the 1930s, and although we don’t see Ninny as a child - she married into the family - we meet Idgie (Mary Stuart Masterson), her youngest sister-in-law, who grew up as something of a rebel. She’s honest and likeable, but did everything to shock her parents and their pastor. She’s a strong character who carries a lot of anger, possibly due to a tragic accident which we see early in the film.

Ninny’s story starts by telling Evelyn that Idgie was arrested for the murder of Frank Bennett. But then she jumps back to Idgie’s childhood and teenage years, and how she and her friend Ruth started running a cafe which specialised in fried green tomatoes; apparently this is a traditional and much-loved Southern dish.

There are many important issues covered in this film, one of the significant ones being the treatment of black people in the 1930s. Idgie and her family are not at all racist, but they do have black workers and servants, though they treat them as friends, and Idgie stands up for them at risk to herself, at times. The attitudes of some other white people, including a sheriff from another county, are horrendous, however.

There are also insights into a a very abusive marriage, and hints of a lesbian relationship, although it’s so lightly touched upon that it would be easy to miss. And through it all, Idgie’s assertive, strong actions, as described by Ninny, are an inspiration to Evelyn.

The rating is 12 (PG-13 in the US), which I think is about right. It’s a good story, but there’s some bad language, and some violence, albeit mostly off-screen. There are some traumatic scenes, and some very unpleasant implications, too, which I’m trying not to think about even now. But there’s also some gentle humour, and a great deal of warmth in the characters, particularly in the growing friendship between the elderly Ninny and Evelyn.

All in all, we were quite engrossed for the two hours of this film, and liked it very much indeed. Definitely recommended.

Review copyright 2020 Sue's DVD Reviews

The Wife (Glenn Close)

(Amazon UK link)

I hadn’t heard of the film ‘The Wife’ until I spotted it on my husband’s wishlist earlier in the year. It looked good, so I ordered it for his recent birthday, and we watched it last night. I had no idea what to expect, but was quickly engrossed in the story.

Having said that, the opening scene almost put me off entirely. Joe Castleman (Jonathan Pryce) is a bearded writer, apparently in his 60s, though he looks older. He’s woken up in the night and is eating in the bedroom. He then gets into bed with his wife Joan (Glenn Close) and there’s an implied scene of intimacy. Nothing is shown explicitly, but plenty is implied. Not at all a good way to start a film, although it does set the scene and atmosphere pretty well. 

It quickly improves. The couple are awakened - probably in the same night, though that isn’t clear - by a phone call. It’s someone from Sweden, telling Joe that he has won the Nobel Prize for literature. He thinks it might be a scam at first, but it’s entirely real. Before long he, Joan and their adult son David are on their way to Stockholm for the ceremony.

It quickly becomes clear that Joe is not a likeable person. He’s a philanderer, and he shows little interest in his son, who is also a writer. The two keep clashing, while Joan attempts to keep the peace. To add to the impression of Joe as a rather selfish person, there are flashbacks to the late 1950s when he is a ‘professor’ (what we would call a lecturer in the UK) at an Ivy League university; the young, star-struck Joan (Annie Starke) is one of his students. Harry Lloyd, who plays the young Joe, comes across as egotistical and sexist. He’s married, and has a baby daughter; yet he encourages Joan as she falls in love with him, and the two start an affair.

The main part of the story is set in the 1990s when the couple have been married for thirty years and Joe has produced a vast number of novels. He appears to be unfailingly generous in the way he thanks his wife for looking after him, and insists that she is the love of his life. And yet this continual praise falls rather flat, partly due to his known infidelities over the years, and partly because it somehow doesn’t ring true. Joan evidently doesn’t like it, and it’s not that she’s a shy, retiring kind of person. She is elegant, supportive, and mostly very loving…

It’s a study in character, and also revealing about attitudes. I hadn’t realised that, even in the late 1950s, it was difficult for women to be published. Those early scenes are very well done, contrasting with the later ones. Of course even the modern ones seem a bit dated; the cars are old-fashioned, and people still used telephones with wires rather than mobile phones. But for those touches, however, the story could almost have been current.

And while Jonathan Pryce is good, and Max Irons as the moody, often angry David is also good, it’s Glenn Close, as the eponymous wife, who steals the show. She’s elegant, organised and a peacekeeper, staying with a rather unlikeable husband. At least, until things come to a head in Stockholm. I believed in her, totally. The actress was 70 when this film was made, but looks no more than about 50.

Christian Slater deserves a mention too, playing the rather sleazy Nathanial. He is a reporter who wants to write Joe’s biography, and who keeps trying to get snippets of juicy information. I didn’t trust him, but even he has a likeable side. And he’s the catalyst for some high drama and revelations towards the end.

There’s some mild humour in the film. We smiled a few times, and it was good to have a little light-heartedness in what was overall a surprisingly intense and moving story.

Brilliantly made, other than that rather trite opening scene. My only minor gripe is the immense amount of ‘strong’ language, which is what has raised the rating of this to 15 in the UK, R in the stricter ratings of the United States. An occasional instance in context is understandable, but it seems excessive in this film. The story is unlikely to be of interest to children or younger teens anyway.

Very highly recommended.

There's a 'making of...' extra on the DVD edition we have, with some short interviews and snippets with various actors and production staff. Reasonably interesting, but nothing special.

Review copyright 2020 Sue's DVD Reviews

Driving Aphrodite (Nia Vardalos)

(Amazon UK link)

It’s nearly nine years since we watched the light romantic comedy’ Driving Aphrodite’. I didn’t remember much about it, although it’s a somewhat predictable story. I did recall that there were some cultural references and jokes that we could appreciate after living in a Greek culture for many years.

Nia Vardalos stars as Georgia, a young Greek American woman who is a historian, specialising in Ancient Greece. She has applied for jobs lecturing in American universities, but so far has been unsuccessful. So she’s living in Greece for a while, to work as a tour guide. She finds it quite stressful, as she’s usually given a group with the difficult passengers, the old bus and fairly grim accommodation.

The bulk of the film is about her tour, which she expects to be her last. Her driver Poupi (Alexis Georgoulis) does not appear to speak any English, and her tour group consists of a diverse bunch of people. They include an elderly woman who steals from market stalls, some young women who have recently ended relationships and insist they have given up men; an uptight couple with a sulky teenage daughter; and a late middle-aged man, Irv (Richard Dreyfuss) who tells bad jokes…

Georgia believes that people come to Greece to learn about the culture, and the ancient monuments. So her tours are primarily educational. Her colleague Nico (Alistair McGowan) always gets nicer groups of people and a more modern bus and is popular with the tourists as he takes them for ice creams, shopping tours and to the beach. He gets good reviews while Georgia doesn’t, so she decides that this is going to be her last tour as she doesn’t want to compromise her principles.

However as she gets to know her group, she realises that they’re mostly likeable people with their own problems and griefs. She is persuaded, mainly by Irv, that she needs to lighten up a bit. She’s quite uptight and very keen to stick with her schedule - this contrasts well with Nico’s relaxed, materialistic outlook.

The pace is good, with plenty of low-key humour and a developing romance, even if Georgia gets the wrong idea for a while. There are some sad stories too, and a dramatic climax to the book just as she is beginning to realise that she should be more Greek in her outlook and stop worrying about time and appearances.

It’s not the greatest film, but Richard Dreyfuss as Irv - once I managed to stop thinking of him as Mr Holland - is superb, and Alexis Georgoulis as Poupi does a believable and smooth metamorphosis. Other characters are caricatured but that doesn’t matter at all. Digs are made at several cultures, including Australians whose speech is impossible to understand, and Canadians who really, really don’t want to be thought of as American.

We smiled in a few places, and it made a good film to watch when we were both tired and in need of relaxation.

The rating is 12 in the UK (PG-13 in the US) which seems about right. There’s nothing explicit, but plenty of innuendoes as well as an implied scene; and a great deal of discussion of sex (or the lack of it). No major bad language, and only minor violence, mostly intended humorously.

Recommended to anyone who likes this kind of lightweight romantic comedy with a Greek cultural twist.

Review copyright 2020 Sue's DVD Reviews

Driving Miss Daisy (Jessica Tandy, Morgan Freeman)

(Amazon UK link)

It’s nearly nine years since we saw the film ‘Driving Miss Daisy’. We vaguely remembered the storyline - that an elderly white woman in the United States, back in the 1950s, employs a black driver - but we had forgotten everything else about it. Well, almost everything. I had recalled that it took me a good five minutes to start understanding the very strong Southern American accents.  But I knew it would be worth watching anyway.

We tried - and failed - to switch on subtitles at the beginning of the film, since, once again, I found it very difficult to understand more than about one word in three in the first few minutes of re-watching this. But it didn’t matter too much.

The story itself is relatively straightforward. Miss Daisy - brilliantly portrayed by Jessica Tandy - is a Jewish widow, living in the state of Georgia. She is such a bad driver that insurance companies will no longer insure her. So her son Boolie (Dan Aykroyd) who is a businessman employs a man called Hoke (Morgan Freeman) who is clearly an expert with everything mechanical, as well as an excellent driver.

Miss Daisy doesn’t want a driver, and determines to walk everywhere at first. She insists that she is not prejudiced, and has, for the era, basically a good relationship with her housekeeper and cook Idella (Esther Rolle). But the class consciousness is as strong as that of the upper classes in 18th century Britain. Idella and Hoke can never eat with Miss Daisy, for instance.

Morgan Freeman, as ever, is superb in the role of Hoke. He’s good-natured, and determined to break through the initial hostility displayed. He has a sense of humour, and strong integrity; so there are some quite amusing scenes here and there. But we also see just how difficult it was for people with dark skin in this era; Hoke had never travelled, and had lacked even a basic education as a child.

The story covers a span of twenty-five years, and both the main characters age, Miss Daisy becoming more forgetful and Hoke remaining faithful and strong. There isn’t a great deal of action, although there are some very sad scenes as well as some that are quite uplifting. The point is made that even though Miss Daisy is white and wealthy, and thus privileged in many ways, being Jewish makes her a minority. Gradually she begins to understand some of what Hoke has to cope with daily.

Once my ears had attuned to the strong accents, I was completely immersed in this beautifully made film, which is thought-provoking, revealing, and ultimately - even if it’s a cliche - heartwarming. The rating is U, and I would recommend it to anyone wanting to see a little of what Southern US culture was like in the 1950s and subsequent decades.

Review copyright 2020 Sue's DVD Reviews

Little Women (Saoirse Ronan)

(Amazon UK link)

When the 2019 version of ‘Little Women’ was released, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to see it. I have loved the books on which it was based for many years, and thoroughly enjoyed an earlier film adaptation. However it’s many years since I last saw that. The new one, I was told, was updated for a modern audience, and had a somewhat confusing time switch, as well as some scenes that were not in Louisa May Alcott’s original.

However my son gave me the DVD of this film for my birthday a few months ago. It’s quite a long film - over two hours - so we had to find an evening when we had more than ninety minutes available. We finally sat down to watch it last night, and were hooked almost from the start.

Saoirse Ronan is excellent as Jo March. Having said that, it took me a couple of scenes to accept her as Jo. I had somehow always thought of her as having very dark hair. But she has just the right personality. The film starts with Jo nervously knocking on the door of an editor, submitting a short story for newspaper publication. She’s told to write something more gothic and dramatic, and returns to the boarding house where she’s living.

This part of the story is in the book ‘Good Wives’, the second volume of (or sequel to) ‘Little Women’, and as the film moves forward it is interspersed with flashback scenes from seven years earlier. In the earlier scenes, Jo is just fifteen. Her older sister Meg (Emma Watson) is sixteen; their younger sisters Beth (Eliza Scanlen) and Amy (Florence Pugh) respectively thirteen and twelve.

I was a tad confused at first about which scenes were which. Had I not been familiar with the story, I think I might have got lost. I realised quickly that the hairstyles changed between the two eras, and that some characters looked older. Jo succeeds, more-or-less, in demonstrating the difference between fifteen and twenty-two, although she doesn’t change all that much. That’s not a problem, as it fits with her character.

Emma Watson is, in our opinion, the most skilled at this.  She plays Meg as both a young married woman of twenty-three, alternated with a sixteen-year-old girl who dreamed of romance. Both are believable. We were less impressed with Amy who never looks twelve, although Florence Pugh plays the character of Amy well.

Meryl Streep has a lesser part as Aunt March, and does it brilliantly, as one would expect. She manages to look really very old in the later scenes. And we were extremely impressed, too, with Laura Dern, who plays ‘Marmee’. I had never had much of an image of this unusual American women; I think this portrayal is exactly right.

The story is of the girls’ growing up, of Meg’s falling in love; of Laurie - their neighbour - being their best friend and thinking himself in love with Jo. It’s also about Jo’s literary struggles and successes, and about general family life. There’s quite a bit of squabbling, and the rivalry between Jo and Amy more marked than I recall from the book. But it works extremely well.

My husband has not read the books and didn’t remember having seen an earlier version of the film, but he had no trouble understanding the story, and also liked it very much. The pace was good, the scenery and costumes excellent, and despite veering significantly from the books in places, I thought it an excellent adaptation.

There are some very interesting extras, too, including a ‘making of’ documentary, where we were surprised as just how many of the cast were not American.

Very highly recommended, so long as you don’t mind when a film version of a classic book takes several deviations from the original.

Review copyright 2020 Sue's DVD Reviews

Finding Neverland (Johnny Depp)

(Amazon UK link)

We wanted to watch something that was about an hour and a half long, which we hadn’t seen for a while. ‘Finding Neverland’ was in the to-watch drawer, where it’s been for a couple of years. We hadn’t seen it since 2008, and had almost entirely forgotten it. I knew it was about the writing of the classic ‘Peter Pan’, but didn’t recall anything about the story.

While there are, inevitably, some deviations from the true story, the gist of it is as it happened. JM Barrie (brilliantly portrayed by Johnny Depp, although apparently JM Barrie was considerably shorter) is not having much success with his plays. He goes for a walk in the park, and comes across a young family with their mother. Apparently in real life he met just the oldest two sons; in the film he meets all four sons, and their mother Sylvia (Kate Winslett).

Barrie had an emotionally stunted childhood, after his older brother was killed in an accident; this comes through in the film, as does his feeling of never having grown up. He likes to entertain the children, and becomes very fond of them in a paternal kind of way. In the actual story, Sylvia’s husband was still alive; in the film, she has recently been widowed and is struggling to cope with four very lively children.

I felt quite sorry for Barrie's wife Mary (Radha Mitchell) who wants him to spend more time with her. She supports him in his writing and looks after him, but he is rarely home, and doesn’t seem to have much in common with her. So it’s no surprise that she becomes friendly with another man, as her husband becomes friendlier (in an entirely innocent way) with Sylvia and her sons.

There’s a nice mix of reality and fantasy; the boys play all kinds of imaginary games, with pirates, native Americans, and sharks; as he watches - and often joins in - Barrie gets ideas for a new, different play featuring children and a boy who never grows up. He names him after one of the boys, Peter, but Peter Pan is really a mixture of all the boys.

Dustin Hoffman deserves an enthusiastic mention as Barrie’s sponsor and producer Charles. The two have a close friendship, and there’s some wry humour in their interchanges. Hoffman’s expressions and reactions are excellent; very realistic and with perfect timing. And while all four of the boys are good, Freddie Highmore as Peter is superb. Apparently he so impressed the cast, and Johnny Depp in particular, that Depp recommended him for ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ which was made a year later.

Johnny Depp is believable as Barry; both he and Kate Winslet show their versatility in this, a rather different kind of film for both of them. Their chemistry, in a mostly platonic way, is good, and the sad scenes towards the end brought a tear to my eye more than once.

With this all-star cast, and a great script, it’s not surprising that we were gripped from the start, and thoroughly enjoyed seeing this film again. Even knowing that Peter Pan would become a classic, it was tense waiting for the first night, not knowing how the audience would react.

The rating is PG, which reflects the lack of violence, intimacy and bad language; there are one or two minor words that are barely noticeable, and a broken arm is the worst of the violence. However, being PG rather than U acknowledges the sad, potentially traumatic scene towards the end. The film is unlikely to appeal to young children anyway; I’m not sure I would want to show it to a sensitive 12-year-old, although the subject matter would be of interest to anyone who has enjoyed the book or film of ‘Peter Pan’.

With that caveat, I would recommend this very highly.

Review copyright 2020 Sue's DVD Reviews

Jane Eyre (Sorcha Cusack)

(Amazon UK link)

Back when I was a teenager, my class at school studied the classic book ‘Jane Eyre' in English Literature. There was a new BBC mini-series broadcast at the same time, based on the book, starring Sorcha Cusack and Michael Jayston. I watched it avidly and developed quite a crush on Michael Jayston. I hoped, for years afterwards, that it would be repeated.

So I was extremely pleased when I discovered, back in 2006, that this series had been published on DVD. I watched it in 2007 with my husband and teenage son, one episode at a time, and we all liked it very much. My husband had not read the book, although he had at some point seen a different adaptation. My son, like me, had read and enjoyed the book, and we all thought this version excellent.

I don’t re-watch DVDs very often, preferring a gap of at least eight or nine years between viewings, and this is a long adaptation. There are five episodes of nearly an hour each. But after thirteen years it seemed like a good idea to see it again. So my husband and I re-watched it over four evenings in the past two weeks.

The first episode is a bit slow-moving. We meet Jane at the age of ten, excellently played by Juliet Waley. She lives with her cruel aunt and spiteful cousins, and is treated worse than a servant. She is constantly reminded of her aunt’s ‘charity’ in taking her in, and is struck and bullied badly by her cousins - who can do no wrong in their mother’s eyes.

Jane is not a docile child, and she fights against her tormentors, earning herself some quite cruel punishments. Eventually she’s sent away to school, where she even has to stay for holidays. And even though it’s an extremely unpleasant school for orphans, run by the selfish Mr Brocklehurst, where Jane is often hungry and cold, she prefers it to her previous life. It’s a sad and insightful picture of the horrors of some institutions in this era. But eventually it is given to kinder managers, and Jane grows up to become an assistant teacher, and then applies for - and gets - a job as governess to a young French girl.

The second and subsequent episodes are mainly based at Thornfield Hall, where Jane endears herself to the other household staff, and becomes very attached to the master of the house, Edward Rochester. He is unpredictable, often rude and abrupt, but there’s a chemistry between the two which works extremely well. There’s even some humour now and again, albeit quite low key.

Thornfield Hall has its dark secret, one that is quite well-known, but which was a huge shock to me the first time I read the book. Jane is convinced that one of the servants is rather dangerous and somewhat unhinged; there is a nasty scene when a visitor is attacked, and one in the fourth episode where, even knowing what was coming, I hid my hands.

We watched the fourth and fifth episodes together. The end of the fourth was quite a cliff-hanger, and even though I knew what was coming I wanted to see the end by that stage. And it’s all very well done. The BBC was always excellent at making period dramas. The costumes are authentic, the house realistic, and the conversation is mostly taken straight from the book.

There isn’t a huge cast, but they are all fully believable in their roles. To me, Sorcha Cusack is Jane Eyre. Michael Jayston in the role is exactly how Mr Rochester should look. And Megs Jenkins as Mrs Fairfax is delightful, with some wonderful facial expressions that communicate her thoughts perfectly.

There are other film adaptations of this classic novel, though as far as I know I’ve only seen one of them. It’s hard to imagine anything coming as close to the original as this mini-series, however. So much would have to be cut out for a two-hour film version.

Definitely recommended if you like films to stay close to the books from which they’re taken.

Review copyright 2020 Sue's DVD Reviews