Let's begin...
In America
IMDb; official website; Rotten Tomatoes; Wikipedia
In terms of quality, the film certainly deserves to be on a higher tier. Anyway, it's about this Irish family that moves to America. There's Johnny, who's looking for work as an actor, and his wife Sarah, and their two adorable daughters, Christy (who narrates the film and often carries a camcorder), and her little sister Ariel. They haven't got much money, and more importantly, a sadness hangs over them all because of the death of Johnny and Sarah's son Frankie. Also, there's a neighbor in the building they move into in Manhattan, named Mateo. I'm not really sure what to say about him, except that he becomes close to the family, and eventually we find that he has a terminal illness (Wikipedia says it's AIDS, which makes sense to me, although I never heard any mention in the movie of what the illness actually was). And Sarah and Johnny conceive another child, though they haven't gotten over Frankie's death. I'm not sure what else to say, except I assume it's set in 1982, since at one point the family saw E.T. at the movies. Anyway, it was a pretty good movie, which I'm glad to have seen, though I'm not sure I feel the need to see it again. I'd certainly recommend it, though.
Matchstick Men
IMDb; official website; Rotten Tomatoes; Wikipedia
Well, this is a pretty good movie. An interesting story, a decent character study, with both drama and humor being nicely understated. Definitely one of the better films that I feel no particular need to see again. It's about a con artist named Ray, who has some problems like obsessive-compulsive disorder, and facial tics, and agoraphobia. Things are going well, though, until one day he accidentally knocks his pills down the sink, and can't reach his doctor, who had illegally supplied him with these pills. So he kinda loses it, and stays home cleaning and stuff... When he never answers his partner Frank's calls, Frank comes over, and recommends a new psychiatrist for him who may be able to help. Dr. Klein gives Ray a different kind of pills, and also therapy. He gets Ray thinking about his ex-wife, and also that she was pregnant the last time he saw her, like 15 years ago. Ray would like to make contact with her, but can't bring himself to do so, so he asks Dr. Klein to do it. He later reports to Ray that while his ex-wife doesn't want to talk to him, he has a 14-year-old daughter named Angela (who we like), who wants to meet him.
Well, so he meets her, and things start out shaky, but soon they bond. And um... well things are pretty much alternately good and bad throughout their relationship. And when she finds out he's a con artist, she wants him to teach her the tricks of the trade, and against his better judgement, he does so. Eventually she ends up helping with a scam Ray and Frank are running against some guy... who makes trouble for them later. Things get really bad. And then... a plot twist is revealed, consisting of several elements, most of which I pretty much saw coming. But it was still good. And I guess that's about all I want to say.
Mona Lisa Smile
DVD site; IMDb; Rotten Tomatoes; Wikipedia
Well, we've all seen plenty of movies where some teacher shows up and makes a big difference in the lives of his or her students. In this case, Julia Roberts (who we like) plays Katherine Watson, who starts teaching art history at Wellesley in Fall of 1953. She has a progressive attitude about women's place and potential, though many at the school considered her somewhat subversive. Of course she'd have some trouble from the school's administration, and even somewhat from her own students... on her first day, it turned out her entire class had already read the entire text for the lesson, and had pretty completely absorbed it, so... there was nothing left for her to teach them. She came, btw, from a not-so-pedigreed background, so they probably all thought they were better than her. And after that first class, I couldn't stand them.
However, from then on she began to deviate from the syllabus, and actually challenged them to think about art for themselves, rather than just accepting what the experts said in the texts they read. And after awhile, most of the students began to come around, and she became a rather popular teacher. She also got involved somewhat in the lives of some of her students. There were, as far as I could tell, four main students in the film: Betty Warren, Joan Brandwyn, Connie Baker, and Giselle Levy (all of whom we liked). Not quite sure what to say about Connie and Giselle, though they each had their own situations going on. And I wasn't disinterested in them, I... just don't know what to say about it. But the characters who mainly stood out were Betty and Joan.
Betty often said mean things to some of her friends, and even to Katherine, though I think she always felt sort of bad about it. Um... I also think she was like the editor of the school paper, or whatever, and so narrated the movie occasionally, via her columns. Anyway, she married a young man named Spencer, and she pretty much thought that marrying a man was the main thing a woman should aspire to. But eventually she became dissatisfied with her marriage, and wanted out, in spite of her mother's insistance on keeping up appearances. Joan, meanwhile, wanted to become a lawyer, and Katherine tried to convince her she didn't have to choose between marriage and law school, she could do both. But she ended up marrying a man named Tommy. And that was her choice... so, Katherine had a bit to learn, herself. At the start of the movie, Katherine had a boyfriend, but they eventually broke up, after he proposed. And later she started dating a professor named Bill Dunbar (who previously had relationships with students, including Giselle). Though that wouldn't really last, either. She seemed to think, despite always saying a woman could have both marriage and a career, that marriage was somehow, for her at least, an impediment to a career.
Well, I don't really know what else to say, except that I liked the movie more than I expected to. And it had some good music, a great cast, and interesting social themes, and... whatever. It was alright.
Uptown Girls
IMDb; official website; Rotten Tomatoes; Wikipedia
Well, I actually liked this more than I expected to. I mainly wanted to see it because I'm a fan of Dakota Fanning. And, as usual, she's pretty much the best thing in the movie. But everyone was rather good, I thought (or at least okay). It wasn't the greatest movie, and through most of it I thought I'd probably put it on tier 6, which was still higher than I would've expected before seeing it. But in the end, I couldn't help going with tier 5, and tier 4 even briefly entered my mind... but not really seriously. Anyway, it had its amusing moments, though perhaps not as many as intended. Even when I did find it amusing, it was generally rather mildly so. Mostly I enjoyed the film for its dramatic aspects.
It begins with Brittany Murphy (who we kinda like), playing Molly Gunn, the daughter of a rock star. Both her parents died when she was young, and that hurt her alot, of course. She's never entirely recovered from it. But for the most part, she's been rather happy. They left her with plenty of money, so she never really thought about such matters. She's always been rather a free spirit, even somewhat flaky. One apparent indication of this is her pet pig, Mu (the name is Thai for "pork"). Though she loves all her stuff, her most prized possession is a collection of her father's guitars. Anyway, the movie begins on her 22nd birthday, and she goes to a club, where a party is thrown for her by her friends Ingrid (who we like) and Huey. One of the guests is Huey's record executive boss, Roma Schleine (played by Heather Locklear, who of course we like). Her 8-year-old daughter Ray (Fanning) is also there, and Huey has to look after her, because the latest in a long line of nannies has just been fired. There's also a singer at the club, Neal, who Huey is trying to get Roma to sign. Molly immediately falls for him. They begin a somewhat odd romantic relationship which has its ups and downs in the course of the film.
Later, Molly finds that her accountant has embezzled millions of dollars from all his clients, and disappeared somewhere. So now she's broke. Ingrid gets her a job, though she's never had one before, and totally flakes and gets fired. Then Huey gets her a job as a nanny for Ray. She is totally different from Molly... Ray is more like an adult, while Molly is more like a kid. Ray's very serious, and somewhat germophobic, and her idea of fun is radically different from Molly's. She likes classical music, takes ballet but hates free form dance, etc. So, naturally, it takes time for the two to bond. However, Ray's father is in a coma, and her mother's never around, so she and Molly both have absent parent issues to deal with.
Anyway, after Molly gets evicted from her apartment, she stays with Ingrid for a while, though she's forced to sell alot of her beloved stuff, which there isn't room for. And eventually the two have a falling out, and Molly moves in with Huey. Though eventually she gets her own place. And... well, dunno what to say. Ups and downs with Neal, ups and downs with Ray, and with Ingrid, whatever. Um... I dunno, the movie's kinda quirky, but not enough to put it in that category. Welp, the whole thing has its ups and downs, but... it ends on quite a happy note, and it made me cry a bit. So there.