You Think This Movie Is About Saving Mr. Banks? Oh Dear…

SAVING MR. BANKS — Saving Mr. Banks takes many of us back to delicious childhood memories of Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke singing “Jolly Holiday”, “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”, “Let’s Go Fly a Kite”, and “A Spoonful of Sugar Makes The Medicine Go Down”. What we couldn’t know as children is the heartbreaking story behind PL Travers’ Mary Poppins; a trauma so deep a spoonful of kindness would never be enough to turn it around.

HEARTBURN - A Novel by Nora Ephron

HEARTBURN — “’Tis the season to be jolly.” It’s also the season to miss people. Nora Ephron is someone to be missed. She could make us laugh at our necks, and at almost anything. Her novel, Heartburn (a barely fictionalized account of the end of her own marriage), even manages to make us laugh at divorce. Why she turns a sad, disturbing, and even enraging reality funny is an interesting question.

Divorce isn’t a laughing matter. For Rachel Samstat, Heartburn’s betrayed wife, it’s certainly not funny that her husband’s having an affair with a woman who just came to dinner and asked for her carrot cake recipe. Especially when, not suspecting anything remotely of the kind, she willingly gives it to her. A laugh can be a good thing. Laughter is also a way of avoiding tears. Rachel cries, but fights it. As her therapist says: “She makes jokes even when she feels terrible.”

How Unreal Can A Character Get?

BLUE JASMINE — What happened to Woody Allen? This prolific filmmaker is well known for creating quirkily neurotic yet lovable characters—even characters with depth.  However Jasmine French, the lead character in Allen’s latest film Blue Jasmine, unfortunately, isn’t one of them.

Can Ruthlessness and Empathy Coexist?

CAPTAIN PHILLIPS — I grip my armrests. The theater becomes the USS Maersk Alabama. We, the audience, are the crew, stormed by Somali pirates bent on winning their power battle no matter what. It’s terrifying, and Paul Greengrass’ riveting documentary-style film makes that terror almost unbearable. But there’s more to the film than real-life trauma: for this psychoanalyst, there’s Muse, the pirate captain, and his relationship to Captain Phillips.

When Eva Meets Albert…A Relationship After Divorce?

ENOUGH SAID — If you’re a divorced or divorcing woman, you can probably relate to Eva’s struggle to open her heart to Albert in Enough Said. Readiness for a relationship after a divorce is not easy for many reasons. But, what undermines a post-divorce relationship faster than anything else is fear. Especially fear that comes with an underlying certainty you will be hurt again.