Summer Movies 5

After a slow start, there are some better summer movies to see. It is so nice to have the shoot-‘em-up movies out of the way. There are domestic and foreign movies worth your time.

• The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2. Yes, this is a sequel, which usually means a warmed over version of the original. However, I found this film charming and engrossing. The theatre was full of mothers and teen-age daughters, enjoying it enormously, and again, I was sorry that boys don’t have this chance. The films designed for them are so violent, as if they don’t have the same personal relationship issues that girls do.

The four teenage friends of Traveling Pants 1 are seen this time as college students who have just finished their first year and have travel and work plans for the summer. The magical thrift-store dungarees that fit them all, regardless of size and shape, gave them luck in the first film, as they sent them to each other as needed. In this film, the pants are now more of an afterthought as these young women encounter coming-of-age issues, often painful, that they do not share with each other until they remember how important their friendships still are.

In this film, you can enjoy a similar Greek island that was in Mama Mia, with much less silliness. And these young women are better role models than those in Mama Mia.

• Swing Vote. In an election year, there has to be at least one film that will address the national passion; Swing Vote pleased me far more than Wag the Dog, a cynical film of a past election. Kevin Costner plays one of the best character roles in his career: an absolutely worthless oaf who can scarcely find a reason to get out of bed in the morning, particularly because of the inevitable beer hangover.

He is a single father of a very bright, very earnest young daughter (my favorite age of 10) who is compelled to be the grownup in that family because neither her father nor her abandoning mother could be. She is earnest about school, about what she learns from her dedicated teacher, and about the civic duty of voting. Her doltish father, who was too drunk and indifferent to vote, did not know that his little girl had voted for him. An electronic glitch invalidates that vote—and now the entire presidential election hangs upon finding the one person who, when voting again, will break the dead heat.

It is fascinating to watch this unfold—with neither the incumbent president nor his rival being particularly admirable. But it is wonderful—and hopeful—to see all these losers rise to the challenge.

• Brideshead Revisited. How well I remember the 11-hour TV movie of many years ago as one of the most delicious that PBS produced. But it has been long ago enough that this new two-hour film does service to the story. It is an epic, infinitely romantic, and provides us with a glimpse of the very insular British Catholic aristocracy. Catholic families of wealth and power who resisted the Queen Elizabeth I pressure for adherence to the Protestant Church of England had to have very strong faith indeed. It was not easy to be a Catholic in England after 1600.

The story follows a young Oxford student, Charles Rider, from a middle class background (and a convinced Atheist) who is befriended by a fellow student who is a Catholic aristocrat and an obvious—although charming—alcoholic. Charles, who has no family other than a very distant father, falls in love with his schoolmate, his schoolmate’s sister, and the entire eccentric family—as well as their beautiful, ancient country home. The love comes at a price as he learns just how enmeshed these people are in their Catholicism—with love, hate, and ultimate surrender to their religion. Have some tea and crumpets and enjoy this film.

• Tell No One. This is the best French film I have seen in years, and as gratifying and engrossing as a Hitchcock film. Based on a mystery novel by an American, Harlan Coben, the story is about a young French pediatrician whose wife was murdered eight years before. Although originally suspected and then cleared, the discovery of two new bodies at the crime scene reopens the case. To make things worse, the doctor has been receiving e-mails that appear to be from his lost wife. Paris and the countryside are as always beautiful, and particularly interesting is a glimpse of the banlieus, where Algerians and African migrants live. Policework is shown as it often is—a mixed bag of intuition and corruption among its agents—which plays a role in the plot.

This independent film is being publicized largely by word of mouth. I recommend it. You will be reminded how good this type of thriller can be.

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Laina Farhat-Holzman is a historian, lecturer, and author. You may contact her at Lfarhat102@aol.com or www.globalthink.net.