"Philomena" - Even if it's not on your radar....

...you ought to see it. If, for no other reason, to surprise yourself. It wasn't high on my list of Oscar-Bait-Season films, but I think I may have just seen my favorite film of the year.

I expected a story about a sweet little old woman poking around looking for the child she gave up for adoption - you know, light entertainment about plucky brits in dire circumstances, and all that...what I wasn't expecting was just how emotionally involved the film got me. I was "in it" from the moment the opening flashback connects us to our leading lady. Story and pacing were amazingly involving. And of course, every single revelation and the emotions you might feel from them, are right up there on Judi Dench's face, waiting for you to feel it. Nope - not light entertainment.

Philomena (Dench) is scratching a decades-old itch, and is by chance hooked up with Martin, ex-BBC reporter recently canned from his high-profile government post. Taking on writing assignments, he's not too keen on taking on Philomena's little human-interest trifle, but work is work. This job however, just gets bigger and more tantalizing the deeper they get.

Spoiler alert (okay, not really, but hey, I didn't know) - this comes from a real-life event, and the male lead (as well as co-writer from the journalists' own book) is Steve Coogan (-uh, wha...?), downplaying his usual ability to make me laugh my a** off. Also, for all the hell the Church catches in this, there's still a good pitch made here about the power of forgiveness.

It's a damn shame Dench won't win the Oscar this year. She should have campaigned harder for that spacesuit gig, I guess...but, we wouldn't have this then, would we...?




Now playing on Ariel Stream: Kate Bush - Somewhere In Between

 

We have to see Hobbitt, and the wife is hell bent on seeing the Disney Poppins thing, but this would be a solid third place if it's still around after she gets her Poppins jones fed.

 

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this one. I expected mediocrity; I instead ended up putting it in my top ten for the year...

Shalom, y'all!

L. Bangs

 

Dench was full of surprises in this one...

Well done job by Steve Coogan..

 

Great movie with excellent acting from both Coogan and Dench!

 

My wife really wants to see this, but there's such a backlog of films for me right now, that I don't know if we'll actually catch it before it's gone.

 

That seems a bit unfair.

 

I didn't mean it that way at all. I want to see it too. The problem is that it's been showing here for a few weeks already, and I was unable to go see it any of the previous weekends because of my schoolwork and finals. Now that school is done for me we plan on catching up on our backlog of movies. The Hobbit is the priority for me, so we'll see that tomorrow. My wife wants to see it as well, and there are a ton of other films we want to see, but I'm afraid that since Philomena is one of those movies that typically doesn't play too long in theaters that it'll be gone before we get to the theater.

Fortunately, with me being done for the semester, and my wife taking lots of time off from work over the next two weeks, we'll have enough time to catch plenty of films.

 

Oh. I was afraid I misinterpreted. I should've .

 

No, no, you didn't say anything wrong. In fact I found your post quite funny, and even told my wife about it. She had a laugh and actually said you were absolutely right!

 

Another film knocked out of the park by Stephen Frears.

Great story, direction, acting, photography, dialogue.

Judi Dench is outstanding.

And it manages to shine an important light on another dark corner of the Catholic church while honouring faith and forgiveness at the same time.

Worth seeing.

 

I've seen a bunch of high-profile films in the last couple weeks (Coens, Scorsese, American Hustle, Hobbit, Hunger Games), and this was by far my favorite of the bunch.

 

Same here. This is exactly the sort of film that people claim that "they don't make anymore", an intelligent film about an important topic for grown-ups.

The truth is, they do, but people don't go see them!

 

Not helped by the fact that films like these generally only play in the major cities but almost never get distributed to the rest of the multi-plex wasteland.

 

I'm continually baffled by the fact that even here in Chicago, virtually all the multiplexes (what's the plural, multiplexi?) play the same films as all the other ones. Seriously! The AMC River East 21 and the AMC Loews 600 North Michigan 9 are less than 1/2 mile from each other, and each is showing exactly the same films!

Lowes 600 9

• Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues
• The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
• ‎Grudge Match
• ‎American Hustle
• ‎The Wolf of Wall Street
• ‎The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
• ‎Saving Mr. Banks
• ‎The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
• ‎47 Ronin
• Philomena

River East 21

• Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues
  
• The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
• Grudge Match
• American Hustle
• ‎Frozen
• ‎The Wolf of Wall Street
• ‎The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
• ‎Walking With Dinosaurs
• ‎Saving Mr. Banks
• Tyler Perry's A Madea Christmas
• ‎The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
• ‎47 Ronin
• ‎Justin Bieber's Believe
• ‎Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom
• ‎Nebraska
• ‎Inside Llewyn Davis
• ‎The Book Thief
• ‎Dhoom 3 (Hindi)
• ‎Her

‎Every single film that is at the smaller theater is at the bigger one owned by the same company a five minute walk away! This makes no sense at all from a business perspective.

 

Except Philomena.

 

see: "Rite-Aid right across the street from a Walgreen's"
also see: "Starbucks in Manhattan"





Now playing on Ariel Stream: Howard Jones - Hide And Seek

 

Actually, that was an editing error. I saw Philomena at River East 21.

 

Saw this tonight and I would lay down money it's going to go four for four with wins on its Oscar Nominations.

 

How much money?

L. Bangs

 

Fantastic!

 

Since it went 0 for 4 at the Oscars, he might be too broke to respond!

 

I've been a Coogan fan forever so we grabbed this at Redbox last night and found the movie to be fantastic and very much Oscar worthy.

 

Is it funny at all? I am not sure how I feel about seeing this if it's just Coogan in a dramatic role.

 

There are some funny moments most of them provided by Judi Dench, but no, it's not a funny movie, but very good. Coogan pretty well plays it straight.