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Irish Maids and the Modern Cyrano

Monday: The Player (1992)
          Griffin is an executive at a major Hollywood studio. He determines if a script is good or not. Griffin starts to receive postcards with death threats written on them. He isn't sure if he should take them seriously. But they continue and arrive in the most unlikely places. He figures out that they are from a writer that he turned down. Which writer is the question. After some investigating he thinks he  knows who it is. Griffin goes to confront the writer and ends up killing him. Now he has to do his best not to get caught. When he receives another postcard he knows it's not over. I thought this movie was interesting. It had this documentary/cult film feel to it. I'm not sure how to describe it. I don't think I would watch it again. Also it had a lot of cameos by different actors.

Tuesday: The Valley of Decision (1945)
         An Irish maid named Mary lives in a poor village near a steel mill. Her father blames the Scott family, who own the mill, for his accident that left him paralyzed. He is not too happy when Mary gets a job as a maid at the Scott house. She is wary at first of working with people who her father describes as monsters. Soon she realizes they are very kind people who care for their workers and mill. Mary gets along with all the members of the family. She forms a close relationship with one of the sons named Paul. They fall in love. But she knows it can never be because they come from two different worlds. Still they can't help how they feel. They face many obstacles that prevent them from being together. I liked this movie a lot. It is good. Greer Garson (Mary) and Gregory Peck (Paul) are so good in this movie.

Wednesday: Madam Bovary (1949)
        Emma is a romantic. She dreams of rich charming men, lavish houses, and grand parties. Emma was raised on a farm and spends some time at a nunnery. One day she meets a doctor, Charles Bovary. She thinks he is her ticket to bigger and better things. They soon get married. Emma comes to realize marrying a country doctor does not elevate her status to where she wants it to be. Charles does his best to impress his wife. They get an invitation to a ball. There she meets Rodolphe. He is all she ever dreamed of. He is rich, charming, and exciting. They have affair which doesn't end well. All the time she is spending money and going into debt. It all comes crashing down around her. I thought this movie was ok.

Saturday: The Half of It (2020)
         This is a modern take on the tale of Cyrano de Bergerac. Ellie is an Asian American senior in high school. She lives in a small town and helps her father run the train station. Ellie sells papers to her classmates to help pay the bills. A jock named Paul asks her to help him write a love letter to a fellow senior named Aster. Ellie refuses at first because she doesn't write love letters and she has a crush on Aster herself. But when Paul offers to pay more she reluctantly agrees. She writes letters for Paul. The more she gets to know Aster through their letters the more she likes her. Ellie tries to help Paul. He is horrible at having conversations and has nothing in common with Aster. With Ellie's help he gets better. In the end it doesn't work out for anyone, but they are happy all the same. I thought this movie was cute. It was well done and I enjoyed it.

Sunday: The Kitchen (2019)
          Kathy, Ruby, and Claire are wives of mobsters in Hell's Kitchen. Their husbands get caught by the FBI. They go away to prison. The wives are left with no income and the mob won't support them. They decide to pick up where their husbands left off. The wives end up doing a better job running the business than any of the men in charge. They gain respect and start making a lot of money. But when their husbands get out of prison early it changes everything. This movie is bad. I get what they were going for as far as a women led mob. Woman power and all that. But it just fell flat. It's like they could have taken it to the next level and just came up short. I was interested to see if Tiffany Haddish could do drama. She can't. She should stick to comedy, even then she's not that good. I know the other actors in this movie are good actors. It wasn't their fault. I think it was just the writing and the directing. I'm so glad I didn't pay to see this movie.

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