No Doubt About It: A Great Movie

Doubt is not your standard Hollywood movie. No chase scenes; no sex; no satisfying resolution at the end. In fact, were it not for its two big stars, Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman, it's hard to imagine this movie even getting distributed.

But not because of a lack of quality. The movie is like life -- complex; without easy answers. It is set in 1964. A Roman Catholic parochial school in New York has its first black student. The principal of the school (Streep) thinks the priest (Hoffman)is paying special attention to the black kid. There is no question that he is; the question is his motivation. The principal is convinced he is a sexual predator; the priest denies it. Both have mortal sins in their past. In the middle are the student and an idealistic young nun, played by Amy Adams. Although the priest is nominally the principal's superior, she is determined to run him out of the parish, and she uses some underhanded tactics to accomplish her goal. But is her motivation only her concern for the student, or is it that the priest doesn't measure up to her strict conservative standards of religiosity? And is she helping or hurting the student? The student's mother is willing to overlook the allegations because of the alternatives for the student.

The movie was written and directed by John Patrick Shanley (who wrote and directed Moonstruck and Joe Versus the Volcano 20 years ago. Shanley also wrote the play version, which in 2005 won a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award for its Broadway production. He dedicates the movie to his own first grade teacher on whom the Amy Adams character is modeled.

I hope I am not getting too generous in my old age, but I have to give this movie five stars, the second movie in two weeks to get my highest rating. Shanley, Streep and Hoffman all deserve Oscars for it, but I doubt that they will get them because this just isn't the type of movie that Hollywood likes. Gran Torino is more likely to win Academy Awards, in my opinion, because it has a Hollywood ending. Doubt has more nuance; maybe too much nuance for some tastes. Maybe the Academy will surprise me. I have been surprised before.

Movie Report: Not My Mamma's Mia!

I'm afraid someone is going to call me an old sourpuss for being grumpy about Mamma Mia! The movie is a musical, set to the songs of the Swedish pop group, ABBA (interestingly enough, the name is formed from the acronym made by the first letter of each group member's given name. Let's see, what other musical groups do I know who named themselves that way? Oh, yes.) The songs are very melodic and have a catchy beat, if you like the over-produced market-driven sounds of ABBA. The story, if you can call it that, is about a 20-year-old young woman about to be married, who discovers in her mother's diary that her father could be any one of three men, so she invites all three to her wedding on a remote Greek island and they all show up. The young woman has two female friends who show up to be bridesmaids and the mother (Meryl Streep) has two of her friends show up, so there are lots of photo and singing opportunities as the friends and ex-boyfriends go cavorting around the picturesque island singing at the top of their lungs, without getting breathless.

Speaking of picturesque, the only thing beautiful in the movie is the mountain scenery. A 20-year-old young woman on her wedding day should look pretty, but this one, Amanda Seyfried, looks odd. (She does not look as good in the movie as the poster above depicts her.) Her husband-to-be, a Greek islander one takes it, looks positively developmentally-disabled.

I realize that musicals require more of a suspension of disbelief than I like to give anything, but this one makes even less sense. Why is a movie set on a Greek island, about an American woman with English speaking boyfriends called "Mamma Mia!" for example? "Mamma Mia" is Italian for "my mother." No one is Italian or speaks Italian in the movie. The songs were popular ABBA songs before anyone thought about making a musical, so, even though there is an attempt to concoct a story around the songs, there is even more disconnection with the so-called story than is typical in musicals. Across the Universe did the same thing with Beatles songs and did a much better job of crafting a coherent story around the lyrics.

Yes, I agree, Meryl Streep is a wonderfully-talented actress -- or used to be. It has been 25 years since she made such classic films as The French Lieutenant's Woman, Sophie's Choice, and Silkwood. Unfortunately, Mamma Mia! is more in keeping with the recent clunkers like A Prairie Home Companion, The Devil Wears Prada, and Lions for Lambs. In all of those movies, as well as in Mamma Mia!, my criticism is not so much of Streep's performance as that she is in them in the first place. Surely, she doesn't need the work that badly.

The Wife did not want to take me to this movie; she said she knew I wouldn't like it. A friend has seen the movie several times and would like to see it again. I thought if the friend liked it that much, it couldn't be all that bad. And it wasn't all that bad; it just wasn't very good. I gave it two stars