Tag Archives: Julie Kavner

Cleaning Out The DVR: This Is My Life (dir by Nora Ephron)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

(Lisa is currently in the process of trying to clean out her DVR.  She has over 170 movies recorded and she’s trying to get them all watched before the beginning of the new year!  Will she make it?  Keep checking the Shattered Lens to find out!  She recorded the 1992 dramedy This Is My Life off of Indieplex on March 20th.)

This Is My Life tells the story of Dottie Ingels (Julie Kavner).  Dottie may be stuck working in a dead end job at a cosmetics counter but she dreams of becoming a successful comedienne.  She even entertains her customers, who all seem to be delighted to put off making their purchases so that they can listen to an aspiring star tell corny jokes that were probably considered to be dated even at the height of vaudeville.  Most of Dottie’s jokes deal with raising her daughters — Erica (Samantha Mathis) and Opal (Gabby Hoffman) — on her own.  Times may not be easy but … well, actually, as portrayed in this movie, times are remarkably easy for a single mom with a job in retail.  It’s certainly easier for Dottie than it ever was for my mom.

Anyway, Dottie’s aunt dies and leaves her some money, so Dottie moves herself and her daughters to New York City so that she can pursue her comedy career.  With the help of an eccentric agent (Dan Aykroyd) and his assistant (Carrie Fisher), Dottie starts to find success as a performer but her daughters also start to resent the fact that their mother is no longer around as much as she used to be.  While Dottie is getting invitations to appear on late night talk shows, Erica and Opal are feeling neglected.  Finally, they decide to run away from home and head upstate to see their father, little realizing that he may not have room for them in his new life.

This Is My Life is one of those films that could only have been made by someone totally in love with the concept (as opposed to the reality) of show business.  While Dottie does have to sacrifice to find success, the film has no doubt that the sacrifices are worth it.  As played by Dan Aykroyd, Dottie’s agent is a big lovable eccentric who just wants the best for all of his clients.  In fact, everyone in this movie just wants the best for Dottie.  As a result, the film is so good-natured that you kind of feel guilty if you don’t force yourself to love it.  At the same time, it’s such an unabashedly sentimental movie that it’s difficult to take any of its conflicts seriously.  It’s like a fantasy of what it’s like to be an aspiring star in New York.  Making her directorial debut, the famous writer Nora Ephron laid on the schmaltz so thick that, for the majority of the film, there’s not even a hint of a rough edge or a ragged corner.  This is a film that really could have used a little more profanity.  And while Julie Kavner is undoubtedly a funny actress, she’s never believable as a stand-up comedienne.  (At least not a successful one…)

That said, there were a few things that I did like about This Is My Life.  Mathis and Hoffman are believable as sisters and there’s a natural poignancy to the scenes where they manage to track down their father.  I related to those scenes and they brought tears to my mismatched eyes, not that it’s particularly hard to do that.  Otherwise, This Is My Life felt like a typical directorial debut: heartfelt, uneven, well-intentioned, and just a little too heavy-handed.

In Memory of Robin Williams #3: Awakenings (dir by Penny Marshall)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Awakenings

The 1990 Best Picture nominee Awakenings is exactly the type of film that seems to have been designed to make me cry.

Taking place in 1969 and based (very loosely, I assume) on a true story, Awakenings features Robin Williams as Dr. Malcolm Sayer.  Dr. Sayer is a dedicated and caring physician but he also suffers from an almost crippling shyness.  He’s at his most comfortable when he’s dealing with a group of patients who have spent the last 40 years in a catatonic state, suffering from a tragic disease known as encephalitis lethargica.  (One thing that I learned from watching this film was that, from 1917 to 1928, there was an epidemic of this disease, with millions either dying or being left catatonic.)  While the rest of the medical establishment (led by John Heard, who always seems to be the embodiment of the establishment in films made in the 90s) assumes that the patients are destined to spend the rest of their lives in a vegetative state, Dr. Sayer is convinced that the patients can be awakened.  He soon discovers that, even in their catatonic state, the patients will react to certain stimulii.  One woman can catch a baseball.  Another appears to react well to music.  And finally, Leonard Lowe (Robert De Niro) — who fell ill with this disease when he was a child — tries to communicate with a Ouija board.

Over the objections of his supervisors, Dr. Sayer treats the patients with an experimental drug.  Leonard is the first one to get the drug and is also the first one to wake up.  While the rest of the patients wake up, Dr. Sayer tries to help Leonard adjust to the 1960s.  At first, everything seems to be going perfectly.  Leonard even manages to strike up a sweet romance with a woman named Paula (Penelope Ann Miller).  However, it soon becomes obvious that the awakening is only going to be a temporary one as Leonard and all the other patients start to descend back into their catatonic states…

It’s easy to criticize a film like Awakenings for being manipulative and sentimental.  And the fact of the matter is that the film is manipulative and it is sentimental and undoubtedly, it probably is a massive simplification of the true story.  (The character played by John Heard is such an obvious villain that he might as well have a mustache to twirl.)  And yes, you know even before it happens that there’s eventually going to be a montage of an amazed Leonard staring at a girl in a miniskirt while Time of the Season plays on the soundtrack.

But, no matter!  It’s a tremendously effective film and it earned the tears that I shed while watching it.  Both De Niro and Williams give excellent performances which add a good deal of depth to scenes that could otherwise come across as being overly sappy.  De Niro has the more showy role but it really but it’s the performance of Robin Williams that really carries the film.  As played by Williams, Dr. Sayer is a fragile soul who hides from the world behind his beard and his professional determination.  When he finally asks a nurse (Julie Kavner) out to dinner, it’s impossible not to cheer for him.

It’s also impossible not to cheer a little for Awakenings.

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An Obscure Film Review: Katherine (dir by Jeremy Kagan)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

One of the great things about being an online film critic is that you occasionally come across a good but obscure film that you can then let the rest of the world know about as well.  Katherine is one such film.

I came across Katherine as part of a 3-film compilation DVD called Classic Films Of The 70s.  The other two films on the DVD were The Harrad Experiment and Born To Win and both of those films were so bad that I nearly tossed the DVD to the side without watching Katherine.  I’m glad I changed my mind because, while it may not have truly lived up to the promise of being a classic film of the 70s, Katherine was still a thousand times better than The Harrad Experiment.

Beginning with the idealism and hope of the early 60s and ending with a literal bang in the 70s, Katherine tells the story of how one woman is transformed from being a sheltered, upper class liberal to being a political revolutionary who is proud to embrace violence in order to bring about change.  Katherine ( Sissy Spacek, before she was Carrie) starts out as a teacher before falling in love with a civil rights activist (played, in a nicely smarmy performance, by Henry Winkler).  Against the backdrop of the Viet Nam War and the violence of the late 60s, Spacek and Winkler gradually become more and more radicalized until they eventually go underground and turn violent.  The film is made up of interviews with people who knew Katherine and Katherine herself even pops up and tells us her own version of her story.  Despite being forced to wear a horrid wig in the latter half of the film, Sissy Spacek gives a wonderfully empathetic and multi-layered performance as Katherine.  Even if you don’t always like the self-righteous stridency of the character, you never doubt her sincerity.

After I watched Katherine, I did a little research on the IMDb and I discovered that Katherine was a made-for-TV movie that was originally broadcast in 1975.  This did not surprise me because,  even as I was watching it, it was very easy to imagine a remake of Katherine (starring, I decided after much debate, Leighton Meester) being broadcast on the Lifetime Movie Network.  However, if Katherine felt like a Lifetime movie  with a political subtext, that’s only because I happen to love Lifetime movies.  Katherine is both an intelligent and interesting look at a very specific period of American history and a portrait of youthful idealism, disillusionment, and wanderlust.  We have all had to deal with that moment when our beliefs run into the wall of reality and Katherine captures that experience perfectly.

I found myself thinking about Katherine earlier today as I watched the presidential inauguration in Washington D.C.  Though the film might be close to 40 years old, its portrait of naive idealism, political stridency, and destructive activism still feels relevant.  Katherine is a film that most people have never heard of but it’s also one that is worth tracking down.