Brooklyn's Completely Necessary Meryl Streep Post
Music of the Heart
EPIC CAST OF NECESSARY. Cloris Leachman is a paranoid grandmother who feels the need to feed everyone. Gloria Estefan randomly teaches and gets people all excited about things. LETS TALK ABOUT MERYL STREEP NOW. Girl plays a musician mother person who gets dumped by her husband and does everything but slit her wrists in the bathroom so he’ll come back, and there’s a dog in this movie? An adorable dog. And so she makes her sons play instruments until they basically are all “eff you mom, we’ll play different instruments than you” and walk away from the crazy. So then she’s all “LET US CHANGE MAH LYFE” and shacks up with some random old friend dude and moves to Harlem to teach in inner-city schools. BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT THE NORMAL PEOPLE DO? And yada yada yada she teaches childrenssss the violinsss school funding gets cut because there is clearly no respect for the arts in this country and America’s youth pays the price. AND She puts on a benefit concert in Carnegie Hall and makes an ass out of the people who cut her funding BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT ART BITCHES DO, PEEPS. They take havoc and CREATE OUT OF THAT SHIT. Total Brill=right there.
Anyway Meryl kicks conservative ass in this movie. I adore it, you should too. GIRL IS FANTASTIC. Oh, and she’s a complete bitch to children, which is..you know, ALWAYS fun to watch.
****************************************
Out of Africa
Necessary Robert Redford hotness. That’s the basic plot of this movie. I adore Meryl with all of my heart and soul, but I hate her accent in this movie. I LOVE the fact that she can DO that accent, and think she executes it better than is humanly possible, (girl’s talent is other-worldy. She’s an alien. Or a cylon. I’m calling it.) but I hate it. ALSO: I find this movie way too self-serving and boring. EXCEPT for when Redford shows up. Because hot man makes movie worth it. I actually made one of my friends in high school have a Meryl Streep Movie Marathon and neither of us had seen this movie? So we watched it. I believe it took us seven hours to watch. We would stop it every half hour and I would explain to her what was going on and it was just SO BORING. I haven’t watched it all the way through since. Just redford’s parts. Because the man invented sex appeal. Serious.
****************************************
The River Wild
David Strathairn, why don’t you stay out of my life? This is seriously like..the fifteenth movie I’ve written about that he is in. OY. But anyway- he is totally fiercetastic in this movie. I’m not going to go into crazy details about the plot, because it’s very involved but basically he and Meryl are the good guys, and Kevin Bacon and John C Reilly are the bad guys and there’s a little boy and a dog. OH and sign language runs amuck, as does smoke signals. BECAUSE WHEN DO THEY NOT? In all seriousness- Meryl almost died during the filming of this movie and that would have been the most tragic thing of my life. Now: The Gauntlet, THE GAUNTLET. It just sounds scary, doesn’t it? It’s this horrible river thingy and Meryl kicks it’s nature-y ass. Seeing this movie as a child gave me a horribly deep-rooted fear of all things Kevin Bacon..which I think is a legit fear everyone should have. Even Kyra Sedgwick. NOW: John C Reilly is adorbs and frightening in this movie. BUT MERYL is epic fierce and basically pwns everyone and everything. And it’s necessary because it shows that girls kick major ass while boys just play with guns and smoke signals.
****************************************
Postcards from the Edge
Too much love to possibly explain. REMEMBER THAT TIME I WAS OBSESSED WITH EVERYONE INVOLVED WITH THIS MOVIE? Oh ya..that was now, and every other day of my life. Let’s talk about the writing first off- Carrie Fisher is a Post- Crazy- Coke- Addict version of a Goddess. AND girl can write better than anyone else in the world. If you don’t believe me, you haven’t read Surrender The Pink. NOW: Postcards From The Edge is pretty much the best title EVAR. The script basically speaks for itself in the department of awesomesauce.:
FOR EXAMPLE:
Suzanne Vale: Do you always talk in bumper stickers?
****
Doris: I was such an awful mother... what if you had a mother like Joan Crawford or Lana Turner?
Suzanne: These are the options? You, Joan or Lana?
****
Suzanne: Can I ask you something personal?
Evelyn Ames: You mean asking me who I have sex with isn't personal anymore? What do you want to know, if I smoke?
****
Suzanne Vale: Instant gratification takes too long.
****
Suzanne: That's right, I don't want life to imitate art, I want life to be art
So basically Carrie Fisher wrote the tagline TO MY LIFE. “I don’t want life to imitate art, I want life to be art.” WAY TO BE, PRINCESS LEIA.
Now we will move on to the gloriousness that IS the director of this movie. MIKE NICHOLS. Clearly my favorite director for no other reason than HE IS EPIC AMAZING AND MADE OF WIN.
Now, the cast: THE CAST. THIS CAST. This cast. Shirley MacLaine…what are you doing with your incrediblesauce life? BECAUSE I LOVE IT. There is so much amazingness when ShirlMac plays alcoholics. REALLY? CAN’T GO WRONG.
Meryl Streep pretty much aces this movie in every sense of the word aces. Her comedic timing is completely brill and she deserves every accolade she will get for it.
Annette Bening is also in this movie for about 2.5 seconds, BECAUSE MIKE NICHOLS IS MADE OF BRILLIANCE. She smokes and doesn’t use proper grammar, but we give her the benefit of the doubt BECAUSE SHE’S ANNETTE BENING.
I need to stop talking about this coked up movie. I JUST LOVE IT SO MUCH.
****************************************
Doubt
Hello my fear of all things Catholic, NICE TO SEE YOU FOR TWO HOURS STRAIGHT. Side note: I totally snuck delicious Taco Bell into this movie because I was epic hungry. You needed to know that. Now: The movie. Amy Adams, what is your life? Amy Adams playing someone naïve and innocent… just like every other movie she’s in ever. BUT I LOVE HER HAIR SO IT’S ALL GOOD. Every time I think of this movie I start singing BLAME IT ON THE BOSSA NOVA: which is ALWAYS a good thing. Doesn’t matter where or when or how or why, that song is ALWAYS a good thing. NOW: Phillip Seymour Hoffman kills me in my soul with this movie. And I think the symbolism was a bit much- okay..we get it- the light bulb goes out….DOES IT HAVE TO HAPPEN ALL THE TIME? Oh..the weather changes…because audiences in America have to be hit over the head with a point because we are all rednecks who won’t understand complexities of plot. WHAT? Nevermind. The old woman in this movie breaks my heart from adorableness. Viola Davis deserved an oscar. Oscar voters probably just didn’t want to give the oscar to someone who doesn’t know how to wipe their nose. BUT HERE’S THE THING FOOLS: She does. SHE DOES. She was ACTING. It’s kind of a new thing and Hollywood should try it. I do love this movie because it is complex and it’s Catholic, which you know? SCARES ME. In a good way. But the ending: I can’t decide about it. Because it’s like…”okay…about what?” It makes you walk away going “Um…what just happened? What WAS that?” And it makes you think and I DO like that aspect of it. What I don’t like is that it’s so abrupt. And it kind of annoys me because I feel as though it’s obscenely pretentious, which is just kind of like “okay…we know that Meryl wanted an oscar…we get it.”
****************************************
Defending Your Life
This movie is the most ridiculously true thing that has ever not happened to me in my life. That’s really the only way to describe it. It’s all about Albert Brooks. Pretty much, it’s his love letter to the anti-life. He wrote it, directed it, starred in it and basically kicked purgatory’s drone-like life in the ass with it. SO THERE’S THIS GUY, RIGHT? And it’s totally his birthday? And he gets a CD player, because this is 1991 and way before things like the ipod existed (HOW DID PEOPLE LIVE WITH THEIR SAD LIVES?) SO he gets some CDs, and guess what, folks? GUESS WHAT? The Broadway Album is in this stack. CLEARLY THE ONLY BROADWAY ALBUM IN EXISTANCE THAT ANYONE CARES ABOUT, Barbra’s The Broadway Album. SO what does he do? He listens to it in his new convertible. Just like every gay boy and musical-theatre enthused girl has dreamt of doing since the dawn of Funny Girl, or…you know, when time really started mattering. OKAY so the guy obviously gets into a terrible car accident because he’s belting Putting It Together out of key, and dies. HE DIES LISTENING TO STREISAND. Way I want to go, right there. So then he goes to Judgment City. Which is a place where people judge people. FOR THEIR LIVES. ALSO: Everyone in Judgment City wears moo-moos. It’s a legitimate thing. MOO-MOOS. It’s a beautiful existence. And you find out humans only use 3% of their brains..which actually makes sense. So then Meryl shows up and Albert Brooks is all “I LOVES YOU.” And Meryl’s all “I LOVES YOU TOO.” And JUST when you think this movie won’t get any apeshit crazier they go to this place called “The Past Lives Pavilion.” WHO SHOWS UP TO NARRATE? Why, yes, it IS Shirley MacLaine. OF COURSE SHIRLMAC SHOWS UP. THANKS FOR THAT, LIFE. Seriously? Meryl, Moo-Moos, Streisand and ShirlMac. NOTHING BETTER.
Julia(Meryl Streep): [explaining how she died] We went to visit some friends for the weekend. Everybody wanted to go into town, but I wanted to stay at the house and go swimming. So I went outside, tripped over the chaise lounge, hit my head on the cement and rolled into the pool.
Daniel Miller(Albert Brooks): What did the East German judge give you?
****************************************
The Bridges of Madison County
BRIDGES. My favorite Meryl Movie Ever. This movie makes me want to be a housewife in a foreign land who tells people she makes iced tea and splits the atom in her spare time. FRANCESCA JOHNSON, YOU ARE MAH SOUL. There is so much love for this movie I can’t even take it. I could watch it everyday of my entire life and never get sick of a minute of it. It breaks my soul in half and stomps on it and I cry EVERY TIME. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Clint Eastwood… way to be a complete pimp in this movie. I can’t even understand how this movie isn’t in everyone’s life. I still think the ending will change, no matter how many times I watch it. It’s really just cinema in it’s purest and truest and greatest form. Which obviously takes place in rural Iowa in the 60s…because you know? What good cinema doesn’t? Part of the reason I love this movie so much is because I know that it was one of my mom's favorite movies and I know virtually nothing about my mother- but I digress. Even without the whole mother-connection thing it's a COMPLETELY FANTASTICALLY GREAT MOVIE.
THE END.
.
