Will you still love me tomorrow? (orig. Ming tian ji de ai shang wo) [2013]

MPAA (UR would be R)   Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
FilmBiz.asia (D. Elley) review

Will you still love me tomorrow? (orig. Ming tian ji de ai shang wo) [2013] (written and directed by Arven Chen) is an excellent gay-themed young adult/young family drama from Taiwan that played recently at the 49th Annual Chicago International Film Festival.

The title says it all: "Will you still love me tomorrow?"  Wei Chung (played by Richie Ren), recently promoted manager at a eye-wear store, married to a smart, lovely and caring wife Lan Feng (played by Mavis Fan) with whom he has a 9-year-old boy, has tried really hard _not to be gay_.   Yes, he's apparently had "a phase" for a few years in college but "that's long past."  By the time he was finishing his studies, he was serious, put his life in order, met this wonderful girl who would make his parents proud, got married, settled down, got a job, had a kid.  What more could one ask of him.  He was/became "a really good guy."

... cept.

Nine years after the birth of their son, things are starting to wear at the edges.  Lan Feng's friends/coworkers are starting to ask, "Why don't you have another kid?" (Remember this is TAIWAN, not China ... no one child policy.  If anything in tiny Taiwan, having children has been encouraged). "It's one thing if you two can't have kids, but it seems that you can.  Why NOT give your son a little brother or sister?"  Why not indeed? But whenever Lan Feng brings-up this up or even news/gossip from work of one or another of her coworker's recent romantic vacation or getaway, Wei Chung brings up ... well ... work.  And yet they have all the money they need.  They're not saving for anything.  They have no goals, no plans, no dreams.  They're just hovering.  It's not as if they're fighting.  They're not.  They just seem to be in suspended animation and the only one who's growing is their somewhat odd (but not maliciously so) "paste eating son." ;-)

Things crack though when Wei Chung's previously party-happy (and travel agent) little sister Mandy (played by Kimi Hsia) announces that she's (finally) getting married.  It's a surprise. Wei Chung, never thought that his wilder little sister was ever going to settle down and apparently had been dismissing her for years as someone who'll "never ever grow up."  Yet now apparently she is ...

An even bigger surprise comes at his sister's engagement party.  He runs into her photographer for the event.  Really, really _gay_, Wei knows the photographer (though apparently only as a friend) from his "back in the day gay phase."  The photographer's "cool" with who Wei's become, but ... that seems to be Wei's breaking point.

As nice as his life is, as wonderful as his wife and family are, he just can't go on being who, he's discovering, he's not.

Then a good looking airline pilot comes into his store asking to be fit for a pair of new glasses ...

What the heck to do?  And how to explain what's happening to him to his wife.  She's talking about having another baby and all he's got on his mind is "How do I get out?  How do I get out of this life?  AND HOW CAN I POSSIBLY DO THIS WITHOUT HURTING EVERYBODY AROUND ME?"

"Will you still love me tommorrow ...?" the song is actually sung later in the movie by Lan (Wei's wife) when she's out with her coworkers at a Kareoke bar celebrating some exciting event in one-or-another of her friend's/coworker's lives.  Lan's seen her husband with the airline pilot.  She's told him that she's seen him with the airline pilot.  Wei feels absolutely awful about it, and promises her that he'll "do the right thing."  But she, who as the song goes, had given herself _completely_ to her husband and her family, is now crushed.  Does she want to be with someone who's going to be with her _simply_ because "it's the right thing to do."  Will he, can he,  _still love her_ tomorrow?  The rest of the film proceeds from there ...  Great film!

For those with eyes and ears, this film is a reminder that Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinijad or Russia's Vladimir Putin notwithstanding, homosexuality is, indeed, not simply a "decadent western (or secular) phenomenon."  It's worldwide and while the percentages of homosexuals in society are small, pretty much EVERYONE knows (and generally likes) at least a couple of homosexuals.  This phenomenon isn't going to go away.

To the Catholic Church's credit actually, in the United States the question of whether one or the other partners of a couple preparing for Catholic Sacrament of marriage is concerned that their partner may have homosexual tendencies is asked fairly early-on in the process (in the FOCCUS inventory).  Marriage in the Catholic Church is for life and asking the question early-on in the marriage prep process CAN (as this film actually shows...) save a couple a lot of heartache.  Further, a couple pretty much ANYWHERE in the Catholic world facing the situation in which one or the other of the partners comes out as gay would have NO PROBLEM in getting an Annulment of their marriage.  Yes, the Catholic Church has chosen to call homosexuality as a "disordered condition."  On the other hand, the Catholic Church has not sought to ask homosexuals to "not be gay" but rather insisted simply that certain sexual acts (performed by anybody, homo-or-heterosexuals) are intrinsically sinful.  In any case, the Catholic Church would not insist on the validity of the Marriage Sacrament if one or the other has come out as being gay.  One does not have to be who one is not and one does not have to stay with someone who is not who they said (or even sincerely thought) they were.


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Wolfschildren (orig. Wolfskinder) [2013]

MPAA (UR would be PG-13)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing

Wolfschildren (orig. Wolfskinder) [2013] (written and directed by first-time director Rick Oestermann) is a German film which according to its official website is dedicated to the estimated 9 million children around the world who for any number of reasons find themselves fending for themselves and living on the run.

The film, fictionalized, which played recently at the 49th Chicago International Film Festival is based on the true stories of thousands of so-called ethnic German "wolf children" who found themselves orphaned, trapped, lost and/or otherwise abandoned in former German East Prussia at the end of World War II.  Many of the children were eventually taken-in/adopted by sympathetic rural Lithuanian families in neighboring Soviet-occupied Lithuania.

Specifically the film, which begins in June 1946 or a full year after the end of World War II, focuses on two young brothers Fritchen, 14 (played by Patrick Lorenczat) and Hans, 9 (played by Levin Liam).  Together with their mother they had survived the year and most importantly the winter hiding in the attic of an out-of the-way abandoned work-house of sorts somewhere in the forests of East Prussia, foraging as necessary the largely abandoned fields and villages for food.  But now Mutti (played by Jördis Triebel) had come down with a fever and was clearly dying.  As her dying wish she asks her two sons to stick together, "not forget" their beautiful names, and find their way to a family in Lithuania that had previously been kind to them.   The next morning Mutti is dead.  With a poor shovel, the boys try to dig a shallow grave, cover their mother with a blanket, lining it with stones, cry, say an Our Father, and set-off East toward Lithuania.

When they get to a river, they see a corpse of a middle-aged woman in a broken row boat without oars.  When bullets start flying by, they learn why the woman was dead: the river crossing was being patrolled by the Soviet Army.  In a panic they try to rip off a couple of boards from the unseaworthy boat and in the subsequent chaos they find a group of other small children running toward the boat as well (the soldiers were actually shooting at the other children).   Soon all the kids dive into the water, bullets whizzing by, swimming for their lives to the other side.

Fritchen makes it to the other side of the river along with a girl about his age named Christel (played by Helena Phil) who has two smaller children in her care.  But what happened to his little brother Hans?  The last we see of saw him, Hans, who could not swim, was holding on to a board trying to kick-paddle across the river and the girl who was holding onto the board next to him had been shot.  Fritchen tries to look for his little brother but as shots continue to whiz by him from the other side of the river, he soon gives up.  Christel tries to assure him that Hans probably "made it" (safely) to the other side.  But there's no evidence that he did.  And as time passes and the two brothers _don't_ find each other there's even less reason to believe this.  But ... he must believe this wishful lie.  Why?  Because Fritzchen, himself, must get-up and go on ...

And so he does with his new group of rag-tag companions.  And they continue for a while until, one or another gets too sick, injured or otherwise separated to continue.  But whenever somebody leaves (or dies...) another child or two appears (from the wilderness) to take his/her place.  Yes, the children really find themselves living like animals: sincerely caring for each other ... until ... it's no longer possible/practical to do so.  And then they go on ...

On their journey, the children also run into a band of Lithuanian nationalist partisans still holding out in some forest somewhere in the East-Prussian/Lithuanian borderlands.  But their days are clearly numbered too.  The Red Army is hunting them presumably even more than they are hunting these ethnic German kids.

Indeed, the story of the Lithuanian partisans and these ethnic German kids hiding out in the woods feels exactly like the reverse of the story of the Bielski Brothers and the Jewish partisans hiding-out in the woods of Byelorussia during Nazi occupation made famous a number of years back by the excellent American/Hollywood film Defiance [2008].

But this perhaps becomes part of the film's manifold point: How the tables had turned by the end of the War. The most vulnerable of the "Master Race" now had to hide in many of the same woods that their nation's victims had to hide in while the "Master Race" was on top.  And given the ferocious fanaticism of the older (though still teen) members of the Hitler Youth in the closing stages of the war, I have no doubt that members of the Red Army patrolling those woods at the time probably FEARED these kids to say nothing of the Lithuanian partisans (and scattered former SS members perhaps still leading some of those units).

BUT ... WE ALSO SEE THAT THESE "WOLFSCHILDREN" were INDEED CHILDREN who by this point were _utterly unarmed_ (many/most too young to have EVER BEEN ARMED), now utterly NON-THREATENING and DESPERATE.    And we're honestly asked to see these children's plights.

The film ends (OBVIOUSLY A BIG SPOILER ALERT...) with Fritchen making it to a Lithuanian village where to his surprise he finds his brother Hans.  'Cept Hans is wearing now a nice Lithuanian peasant shirt and tells Fritchen that his new Lithuanian family now calls him Jakob.  "But your name is Hans.  Don't you remember what Mutti told us when she was dying."  "Yes, but this (nice) family feeds me ..."

And there it is and one just wants to cry ... What an unbelievably awful things these children (and their families) suffered.  What unbelievebly awful things _all the victims_ of that horrible war suffered and really the victims of all wars suffer.

Again, this film is dedicated to all the children of the world who for any number of reasons find themselves needing to live "on the run."


ADDENDUM: An excellent recent book surveying the post-war chaos in Europe is Kevin Lowe's Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II (2013).


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Go Goa Gone [2013]

MPAA (UR would be R)  AccessBollywood (2 Stars)  Bollywood3 (3 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
AccessBollywood (K. Gibson) review
Bollywood3.com (N.P. Gupta) review

Go Goa Gone [2013] (directed and screenplay cowritten by Krishna D.K. and Raj Nidimoru along with Sita Menon additional help with dialogue by Kunal Knenu and Raja Sen) is an Indian (Hindi language/English subtitled) horror/comedy that played recently at the 49th Chicago International Film Festival.  American viewers will certainly find affinity to Hollywood's Harold and Kumar [1] [2] [3] films.

After Luv (played by Vir Das) gets dumped by his girlfriend, he and his stoner room-mate Hardik (played by Kunal Khemu) convince their geeky if also harder-working roommate Bunny (played by Anand Tiwari) to go on a road trip to Indian beach resort town of Goa.  To get him to drive them there, they convince Bunny that this is for a business meeting. 

Arriving, Luv and Hardik are told by an attractive young woman, Luna (played by Pudga Gupta) that the real party that night will be held on an island offshore (shades of Leonardo DiCaprio's The Beach [2000]).  Not easy to get to, they nevertheless arrive and find that the (rave) party swinging.  However, they (it turns out thankfully) pass-out before the real action begins.  Some new ecstasy-like drug is being passed around, and ... it turns people into zombies.

Waking-up, hung-over (aka The Hangover [2009]) the three, and Luna, find that much as changed ... and, of course, much ensues ... including much involving a gun-toting if still amiable Russian mafia type named Boris [played by Saif Ali Khan] who it turns-out is also appalled (a la The Big Lebowski [1998]?) that his really cool party got ruined by this drug that turns out to turn people into zombies.

The film seems to have a message of appreciating that "all people (even Russian mobster types...) genenally just want to have a good time" even if the drug trade can produce quite awful "unintended consequences" ... like turning previously happy and attractive people into dreadful flesh-craving zombies ;-)


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Stockholm Stories [2013]

MPAA (UR would be R)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
SFDb listing

Stockholm Stories (2013) [IMDb] [SFDb] (directed by Karin Fahlén [IMDb] [SFDb], screenplay by Erik Ahrnborn [IMDb] [SFDb] based on a novel Det Andra Målet by Jonas Karlsson [IMDb]) is a Swedish comedy that played recently at the 49th Chicago International Film Festival.

The film set in Sweden's capital Stockholm involving several interlocking stories that would remind American viewers of recent American films like Valentine's Day [2010] or New Year's Eve [2011] centering on a young poet, Johan, the son of a much more famous (and successful) Swedish writer out of whose shadow he seems unable to escape.  Throughout the film, he's trying to promote his own screenplays / poetry while all publishers, film-makers and journalists want to talk to Johan about is ... his far more famous father ;-).

Now much of this is Johan's own fault ;-).  Perhaps because he would have grown-up in a literary milieu (thanks to his famous father...), Johan's ridiculously avant-guard: He tells one potential publisher that he wants to explore _the ugliness_ of language with his poems (usually poetry seeks to explore language's _ beauty_  ;-) and that he hopes that the reader finishing his current collection of poems would feel "like waking-up hung-over after a party, remembering _exactly_ who had punched him as he was being thrown out and _why_.  YUP, THAT'S A "BOOK OF POETRY" THAT FOLKS WOULD REALLY WANT TO READ ;-) ;-)

He also tells a film-maker that people spend too much time "seeing things in artificial light," (What's cinema, especially in its black-and-white origins/past but a celebration of what one can "draw" using the interplay differing shades of light? ;-)  Instead, he tells the film-maker that "we have to turn-off the light and be willing to sit in utter darkness in order to see ourselves and the world for what it really is."

Now Johan is Swedish, living up there in Stockholm in the Northern Latitudes and it's pretty DARK there in the winter.  Further, Johan HAS been living IN HIS FATHER'S SHADOW FOR ALL HIS LIFE.  Still ... his is a really "dark vision" of reality.

Most amusingly, of course, is that despite Johan's incessant pretentions of darkness in his pitches to (eyes rolling) potential publishers/promoters of his work, HE'S ACTUALLY A RATHER CHEERFUL GUY ;-)   He's utterly unconvincingly "dark."

And so this actually quite normal and often quite cheerful story involving some quite well-drawn and amusing characters is being (amusingly) told through the words/imagery of a young author who's trying really, really hard to be dark (perhaps a la Igmar Bergman) while being an utter failure in doing so ;-).

So this is really a delightful film offering despite the pretentions of the principal character a lovely and surprisingly _bright/lively view_ of life in Stockholm (often colored in the bright blue and yellow of Sweden's flag) despite the snow, despite the cold and despite the darkness of its rather long winters.

What a joy of a film! ;-)


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Carrie [2013]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (L)  ChicagoTribune (2 1/2 Stars)  RE.com (3 Stars)  AVClub (C-)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (K. Jensen) review
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RogerEbert.com (M. Zoller-Seitz) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review

Carrie [2013] (directed by Kimberly Pierce, screenplay by Lawrence D. Cohen and Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa based on the novel by Stephen King [IMDb]) by all accounts has had some pretty large blood-stained galoshes to fill.  After all, Brian DePalma's Carrie [1976] starring Sissy Spacek (then already 28 but looking youngish enough to play the role of a naive/abused 18 year old high school senior) pretty much set the bar for a generation of creepy gross-out teenage slasher revenge flicks that followed.  In contrast, Pierce's version starring Chloë Grace Moretz an actual teenager (who consequently COULD NOT BE SHOWN NUDE) has a positively quaint even "comic book" quality to it.  To be sure, IMHO the R-rating is still justified as the mother-daughter relationship between Carrie and her mom (played excellently if also far more sympathetically by Jullianne Moore in this version than the "she's _just_ a religious-crackpot" style of the 1976 version) remains, well, disturbing.  (Can the reader guess that I've _never_ been much of a fan of the 1976 version? ;-).

So I actually LIKE this new version.  And to the question "was there really a need to remake this film?"  I would answer a manifold yes:

First, I do believe that the fundamental story line of Carrie - a picked-upon teenager at school who simultaneously has to deal with "issues at home" - has always been a valid one.  Indeed in recent years, bullying has (IMHO finally) gained appropriate attention as a national problem among our nation's youth and in our schools.

Second, while the general stylistic creepiness of DePalma's 1976 version was no doubt influenced in good part by the success of the similarly über-creepy Rosemary's Baby [1968], The Exorcist [1973] and the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre [1974] and 1976 was still less than a decade after the final collapse of the Production Code with a whole generation of new and since then legendary film-makers of the likes of Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather [1972], Apocalypse Now [1979]), Stanley Kubrick (The Clockwork Orange [1971], The Shining [1980]), Roman Polanski (Rosemary's Baby [1968], Chinatown [1974]) and Martin Scorsese (Taxi Driver [1976], Raging Bull [1980]) in addition to Brian DePalma (who also made  Scarface [1983]) each scrambling one over the other to "prove themselves" in good part by splashing previously unimaginably violent and/or sexual imagery on the screen, 2013 is NO LONGER 1976.  "The Thrill is Gone" as famed blues guitarist B.B. King would sing.  So while certainly there remain plenty of B-movies that continue to peddle in graphic sexual and violent imagery, for a film to be taken seriously by critics and audiences alike, such graphic imagery today has to seen as somehow furthering the story.  For instance, while the violence present in Quentin Tarentino's films (one thinks of Inglorious Basterds [2009] and Django Unchained [2012]) is generally grudgingly accepted as serving a purpose to his films' plots, the gratuitous violence of his many imitators is generally dismissed as stupid.  Similarly, second generation feminism has brought the era of gratuitous nudity in Hollywood's films largely to an end.  Today's young actors and actresses are largely demanding that if they are asked to take off their clothes for some part of a film, that their exposure serve an actual purpose in the plot.  So I found the relative "comic book hokeyness" of the new 2013 version of Carrie a breath of fresh-air that will should the film more accessible to young people than the older and now heavily dated 1976 version. 

Third, while some of the creepiness of the 1976 version may now seem rather dated, it must be said that social / religious extremism has certainly made a comeback in recent decades.  Who honestly would have imagined 10-20 years ago that a significant portion of the American population would stubbornly cling as virtual articles of faith to the beliefs that Obama, the nation's current President, was _not born_ in this country, that he "palled around with terrorists," was "secretly a Muslim," and was bent on "taking away our freedom?"  Even the offices of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops have organized now, two years running, a summer "Fortnight for Freedom" granting religious cover to kooks who seem to really believe that the Obama Administration is hellbent on instituting the worst excesses of the French, Russian and Mexican Revolutions (as if allowing women, Catholic and non, access to birth-control pills or granting equal rights to homosexuals is somehow equivalent to sending priests to the Gulag, blowing-up churches and shooting-up nuns.  My parents, Czech, lived under both actual Nazis and actual Communists and even I'm named after an uncle was jailed by actual said Communists in Czechoslovakia in the 1950s.  So I find the comparison of Obama to actual Communists unequivocally ridiculous).  All this is to say that IMHO it's NOT IN ANY WAY INAPPROPRIATE to revisit TODAY a story involving a deeply troubled mother who's come to hide a good deal of obvious inner turmoil behind a cover of tragically deranged theology that she tries to impose on her daughter Carrie that in the 2013 film even Carrie finds unconvincing: "But God is good mom," Carrie tries to tell her. 


Finally, there have also been social/technological developments since 1976 that incorporated into the 2013 version help make the new version feel fresher.  First, not only has bullying at school come to be seen in recent years as a national problem but even the idea that popular girls would sometimes choose to be purposefully "mean" to other girls to protect their privileged positions has been identified/popularized in recent years (Mean Girls [2004]).  Second in the new version of the film, when Carrie's classmates ridicule the naive/terrified Carrie having her first period by throwing tampons at her, Chris Hargenssen (played by Portia Doubleday) the film's chief "Mean Girl" captures the scene on her smart phone and later posts it online.  And when Carrie starts to realize that she may have telekinetic powers, she researches it, in part, on YouTube as well.  Finally, an effort is made to show in the 2013 film that not of Carrie's classmates were out to get her.  A fair number step-up at various times to defend her.  All this is to no avail as ... well if you know the story ... you know how it must ultimately end.  

The overall effect of the new version is to produce a far-less creepy "Carrie light" that while still appropriately R-rated (I do believe that parents ought to have a say in whether/how their teens see the film) is far less disturbing than the 1976 stylized/dated original.  And I do believe this to be a good thing.  As I noted at the beginning of my review here, I do believe that the fundamental story, that of a picked-upon teenager at school who also has had to deal with "significant issues at home," is a valid one.  And at the core, Carrie really deserves our sympathy.  So good job Ms Pierce and Ms Moretz, good job!


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Inequality for All [2013]

MPAA (PG)  RE.com (3 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (B-)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
RogerEbert.com (S. Wloszczyna) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review

Inequality for All [2013] (directed by Jacob Kornbluth) is a documentary showcasing the argument that author, professor, lecturer Robert Reich former Labor Secretary under President Clinton has made for much of his career: PROSPERITY REQUIRES A THRIVING MIDDLE CLASS and thus society is served best when its policies are geared toward strengthening the Middle Class.

Built around a class that Reich was teaching at ... UC Berkeley, Reich does argue that "job creation" is really driven by MIDDLE CLASS CONSUMER SPENDING.  To make the point, the documentary interviews a sympathetic Bay Area multimillionaire businessman who points that "rich people actually spend a relatively small amount of money."  For instance, he says: "As a multimillionaire, I really don't spend $500 a day on really expensive meals.  A lot of times, [Chinese] take-out suits me just fine... I also don't need 50 or a 100 pairs of jeans.  Three suit me just fine."  The point is that the economy is much better served if there'd be 40-50 middle class people with enough money to spend $10-15 several times a week on "Pizza" and "Chinese take out" or EACH being able to purchase 3 good pairs of jeans ... It's THAT KIND OF MIDDLE CLASS CONSUMER SPENDING THAT _CREATES AND SUSTAINS JOBS_.

Reich also argues that "globalization" does not necessarily make the destruction of the Middle Class inevitable.  Asking his class which country -- the U.S., France, Germany, Japan or China -- most benefits from the manufacture and sale of iPads, he surprises EVERYBODY (including me) that the country that BENEFITS THE MOST from the manufacture and sale of iPads is NOT China or even the U.S. but GERMANY.  This is because while iPads are famously ASSEMBLED in China where workers are paid dirt wages THE PARTS requiring a HIGHLY TRAINED WORKFORCE capable of MANUFACTURING HIGHLY PRECISE PARTS are MOSTLY MADE IN GERMANY and then (in descending order) in the U.S. and Japan.  So manufacturing does not MERELY depend on the cost of labor BUT ALSO ON ITS RELATIVE SKILL.  And it is true that GERMANY has historically SPENT ENORMOUS AMOUNTS OF ITS TAX DOLLARS ON EDUCATION/TRAINING ITS WORKFORCE.

It all makes for a very interesting (and positive) argument: It is possible to build / regulate our society in a way that SUPPORTS / PROMOTES THE INTERESTS OF THE MIDDLE CLASS.  And in doing so, Reich argues that EVERYONE BENEFITS including the Rich.  For when in the last century was the U.S. MOST PROSPEROUS?   In the 1950s-60s WHEN IT HAD THE STRONGEST MIDDLE CLASS. When was it in crisis?  In the 1930s (During the Great Depression) and NOW (During the Great Recession) when the Middle Class was/is on its knees and (consequently) economic disparity was the highest.

For even the Rich need a Middle Class capable of buying the stuff that their factories/shops make and sell. 


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Baggage Claim [2013]

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB (A-III)  RE.com (1 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (D)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. McAleer) review
RogerEbert.com (C. Lemire) review
AVClub (I. Vishnevetsky ) review

Baggage Claim [2013] (written and directed by African American writer, playwright and film-maker David E. Talbert) is an African-American oriented romantic comedy in which, in contrast to most Hollywood produced films, almost all of the characters and the actors/actresses playing them are African American.  The "niche" quality of the film would help explain why despite the luke-warm (to worse...) reception of the film by most mainstream movie critics, the film had a buzz in the African American press [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] and three weeks out it remained in the top ten at the American box office.  (Note that quite impressively the CNS/USCCB's own reviewer gave the film a basically positive review).

So what's the film about?  Montana Moore (played by Paula Patton) is a young/attractive Baltimore based African American flight attendant who doesn't have much of a care in the world until her mother (played by Jenifer Lewis) arrives with news that Montana's _younger sister_ Sheree (played by Lauren London) just got engaged to get married and then (Sheree's still in college) to a college Heisman Trophy contender (ie the guy's "a catch").  The news sends older sis Montana's inner life into a spin revealing resentments against mom ("she's been married FIVE TIMES...") and insecurities ("Why can't I seem to find a guy?").

Well it turns out that Montana's kinda got a guy, a Chicago businessman named Graham (played by Boris Kodjoe) who she's been dating for a while and who's invited her to Chicago for Thanksgiving (a few weeks away).  "He's invited me over for THANKSGIVING," Montana tells her fellow flight attendant BBFs Gail (played by Jill Scott) and Sam (played by Adam Brody), "And that can only mean one thing!"  Poor Montana thinks that one thing is AN ENGAGEMENT RING, but it turns out that Graham has quite another thing in mind:  After enjoying an afternoon with her on his yacht on Lake Michigan (as a Chicagoan, I found this one scene the most amusing of the film as ... NO ONE IN HIS/HER RIGHT MIND WOULD TAKE  A DATE ON A "ROMANTIC CRUISE" ON HIS/HER YACHT ON LAKE MICHIGAN IN LATE NOVEMBER as it would be either raining or practically SNOWING in Chicago at that time ;-) he delivers her to a posh hotel room in the city and tells her that he "has to fly to Washington for a meeting" (She just flew-in from the Baltimore-Washington DC area to be with him) but that "he'll be back" and he "got her the best hotel suite in the city."  Hmmm...

When Montana calls her friend Gail back home, Gail smell a rat ... and of course Gail's right.  Turns out Graham is married and wanted a girlfriend waiting for him "in the best hotel suite in the city" in case he got tired of spending Thanksgiving with his pregnant wife at home ... Men can be really slimy jerks...

So Montana returns home from Thanksgiving without a ring and in something of a panic as she thinks she's just gonna _die_ if she, as her little sister's "maid of honor," doesn't have a date for her littler sister's Engagement party sometime just after the New Year.  What to do?

That's when Sam, her other flight attendant BFF, comes up with a plan: As a flight attendant, Montana's gone out with all kinds of interesting, eligible men over the years.  Sure most of them turned out to be jerks BUT "that was then" maybe one or two of them "changed" since then.  And since she's a flight attendant with friends across the industry, it should not be hard for her friends (in reservations, at the check-in counters, heck even at the TSA check-points) to let her know when said past boyfriends would be traveling so that she could "just happen to run into them" again -- on a flight "between LA and Houston" or "Atlanta and New York", etc (Okay, IT'S KINDA CORNY ... BUT IT'S A ROM-COM.  ROM-COMS ARE GENERALLY KINDA CORNY ;-)

So during much of the rest of the movie, we get to see Montana "just happen to run into" one former schmuck after another and, surprise, surprise, most of the former schmucks turn out to continue to remain schmucks... BUT there's ALSO another guy, named William WRIGHT (played by Derek Luke) who doesn't travel at all, who's actually her neighbor back in Baltimore, who she actually knew all her life and went to school with, who's just RIGHT THERE, ALL THE TIME ... ;-).  Well you figure it out ;-) ;-)

Rom-coms have to END WELL.  So ... YES the I return to the obvious observation that the story's "kinda corny" ... BUT it's also kinda cute/endearing ;-).  And I do agree with the CNS/USCCB reviewer that while, yes, the film continues to suggest that extra-marital sex between SOs is "okay" (and we in the Church would, of course, "beg to differ") all things considered, this rom-com is actually quite good and has a nice modest message: You don't have to be a jet-setter (or rich or "important") to be happy ... Montana learns that and perhaps many viewers will appreciate that message as well ;-)


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