Susan Granger’s VIDEO UPDATE for Friday, May 12:
Mother’s Day is this Sunday, so what better time to explore movie moms – good, bad and indifferent? If you’re feeling smothered, there’s Albert Brooks’ hilarious “Mother.” If you’re into sentiment, “I Remember Mama” is an old-fashioned tear-jerker. Plus there’s “Mildred Pierce,” “Murmur of the Heart,” and “Terms of Endearment.” More recently, try “Steel Magnolias,” “One True Thing,” “Stepmom,” “Mermaids” and “Baby Boom.” And, if you’ve ever thought of switching roles, try “Freaky Friday” with a very young Jodie Foster and Barbara Harris.
Richard Farnsworth copped an Oscar nomination as the elderly Midwesterner who drove his lawn-mower cross-country in “The Straight Story.” And “Gladiator” Russell Crowe, Oscar-nominated for “The Insider,” plays a small-town hockey star in “Mystery Alaska.”
Martin Scorsese is one of our most respect auteurs but “Bringing Out the Dead” resounds as a chaotic but ultimately hollow melodrama. Nicholas Cage is a tormented, sleep-deprived EMS worker in New York City. Subsisting on whiskey and cigarettes as he roams Hell’s Kitchen on the frenzied graveyard shift, he’s haunted by his rescues and failures.
“New Blood” is an action gangland drama in which Nick Moran, bleeding from a gunshot wound, turns up on the doorstep of his estranged father, played by John Hurt, who realizes his son might just be the heart donor who can save his ailing twin sister. But Nick’s not about to give up his heart for nothing – there’s a price to be paid and a deal to be struck between father and son.
PICK OF THE WEEK: Oscar winner “American Beauty” is a powerfully disturbing black comedy about dysfunctional families in American suburbia. Kevin Spacey won an Oscar as the burnt-out ad exec, while Annette Bening was Oscar-nominated as his high-strung, ambitious wife.