Movies

Sydney Morning Herald

Monday December 22, 2008

Doug Anderson

My Big Fat Greek Wedding

(2002) 8.30pm, Nine

Toula is a generously proportioned Chicago woman whose status as a spinster, at 30, concerns her Greek family. She decides to go for it - leaving the family restaurant, undertaking a computer course and securing a job in her aunt's travel agency. In walks Ian - John Corbett (Chris from Northern Exposure) - and the rapport is instant. Against type, convention and tradition, their love flourishes. The result is a feel-good film with big hair, big boobs a big heart and a squirt of Windex. A very agreeable movie despite its obviousness.

God's Little Acre

(1958) ABC1, 1.10am

Celebrating its half-century, Erskine Caldwell's rehash of Tobacco Road is filmed by Anthony Mann with an obvious determination to accentuate depravity and sensationalism. A poor white-trash farmer neglects his fields in a fruitless search for gold - make that a tedious and fruitless search for gold. Robert Ryan is the monomaniacal patriarch who has harnessed the energy of his squabbling brood during a 15-year search for grandpappy's buried loot. Aldo Ray is the son-in-law with dreams of reviving the homestead, the valley and the old mill, with former Playboy cutie Tina Louise, the allsort among the liquorice. Buddy Hackett and Jack Lord also feature. Dull.

The Go-Between

(1970) ABC1, 11.20pm

A collaboration between Harold Pinter and Joseph Losey doesn't bode well for L. P. Hartley's novel in its progress from page to screen. The story concerns the reminiscences of a man recalling when, as a 12-year-old boy, he spent a summer at the stately home of a school friend and became an illicit messenger conveying furtive letters between his friend's beautiful sister and a man below her station - farmer Ted Burgess (Alan Bates). The much-courted object of Burgess's desire is Marian Maudsley (Julie Christie), who has to maintain a facade with her insistent fiance, Hugh Trimington (Edward Fox). Dominic Guard is the child, Leo Colston, who falls in love with Marian himself and never marries. While the film is a masterpiece of period settings, manners and style, the story it relates is nowhere near as well wrought. Still, anything with Julie Christie will do.

Stranger Than Paradise

(1984) 11.35pm, SBS

Willie is a cross between a hipster and what these days is called a slacker. When his 16-year-old cousin, Eva, unexpectedly visits New York from Hungary, he's not really ready to go with the flow. But she's an exile like him and they have a kind of boredom in common. She tools off to Cleveland to meet a distant relative, Aunt Lotte. A year later, Willie and his mate Eddie pay Eva and Lotte a visit. The expedition continues to Florida where they do their dough but find a fortune. This is a slow and not terribly lively film from Jim Jarmusch, nicely shot but requiring patience for its sense of emptiness to be absorbed properly.

© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald

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