Emma Stone and Jennifer Lawrence as estranged sisters who return home after their father’s passing to help their mother, Diane Keaton, get things settled. Both sisters have had different successes and failures in their own messed up lives and attribute them to one parent or the other and old baggage is brought up and argued about.
The move takes a turn when mom reveals out of guilt that their father died not from natural causes at home but that she had slowly poisoned him. He had become insufferable to live with, she was tired of being his caretaker, and she did not want to spend the rest of her life being miserable. Feeling guilty about it she now wants to do the right thing and spend her remaining days in prison.
The rest of the movie plays out like a 12 Angry Men but with 3 women arguing and changing sides several times about wether she should admit to authorities about what she did or if they can all keep a secret going forward as estranged family members.
I’m belong to our local Civil War roundtable, and recently gave a talk about the Lincoln funeral train. A special rail car was ready for the President to use as the Civil War ended, but then Lincoln was assassinated. The only official use of the car was to transport Lincoln’s coffin (and his son Willie’s coffin) on a ten day trip across the country from Washington DC to Springfield Illinois. Along the way it was met by bigger and bigger crowds and hastedly constructed civic displays of mourning that grew more and more elaborate. The coffins were continuously attended by a special honor guard of enlisted wounded soldiers, and a group of dignitaries rode that train the entire length. It only went 20 MPH so even people in small towns along the route could pay their respects.
I’d expect a Spielberg/Tom Hanks style of production, focusing on the honor guard riding the train, enduring ten days of mourning, not to mention the sleepless nights and discomfort of continuously hearing funeral dirges and church bells and cannons all night long, along the entire path. Then I’d show one of those wounded honor guard soldiers passing through his small rural home town where his young wife and parents see him, alive, for the first time since learning he had been wounded on the battlefield. I’d expect tears to flow.
We adopted a cat, and the bank statement revealed auto-deductions on $20/mo for pet insurance.
So I imagined plots where people insure pets then put hits on them. I don’t know if that’s already a trope, although I’m sure the disgruntled nephew trying to kill the cat who inherited the millions, but ends up dead himself has been done to death.
I think the main problem with this movie (although it sounds like a great historical one) is that it does not have much plot. A train with Lincoln’s coffin goes on a ten-day trip…..and then it would be people paying respects and more respects, but - it doesn’t have much story going on; people might feel it is more of a documentary feeling than a movie. But history buffs would absolutely love the realistic details on a high budget.
I’m not a screenwriter, but perhaps the story is the soldier thinks he’s been forgotten by his family ever since he was wounded, maybe they don’t know where he is recuperating. Then he gets selected to serve on the funeral train, which remains only as a framing device, just like the Titanic was only part of a certain film’s love story. The soldier sees all the grief as he travels, only to discover his family sees him at his home town when they reconnect, their relief and joy contrasting with the grief about Lincoln. He eventually returns home as a hero, becoming the town’s leading citizen.
I generally don’t care for sequels and prequels in all their various forms, but I think Princess Leia deserves a movie about her backstory. We know she’s Luke’s twin and was raised in relative anonymity, only coming to the fore in “A New Hope”. What about her childhood? Are there any depictions of her in the SW canon or fanfic?
Thanks! I’d love to read it, but I’m by no means qualified to review it If I were able to offer any feedback at all, it’d only be as an average Joe who rarely ever reads anything at all… aside from the Dope.
I figured there was some kind of timeline for her, but not being a SW Fanboy, I didn’t know. Why doesn’t she get her own movie? Just ‘cause she’s a gurl? As is well established from her cinematic introduction, she’s a badass, through and through.
“Stuntmen On Vacation”. My original idea goes back several decades with the idea of reuniting the cast of The Three Amigos. As the name suggests, Martin, Short and Chase would star as Hollywood stuntmen on a cross-country RV trip, with hilarity ensuing.
Taking Chance was a 2009 HBO film about a Marine Corp officer who volunteered to accompany the body of an Iraq War soldier from Dover, Delaware to his hometown in Wyoming. It was based on an article written by the real-life Marine Corp officer. So something similar about a nineteenth century soldier on Lincoln’s funeral train might work.
Ooooh! Yes it does. Here’s the movie trailer on YouTube ➜ https://youtu.be/mMRJonfmQY0 ■ . I haven’t seen (or even heard of) this movie. I’m going to have to check this one out. Although per its reception in wiki it doesn’t sound great — “It’s good, but from this director we have come to expect great”, and, “(Director Peter) Weir has put together a good film – oddly, though, considering its scale, it feels like a rather small one” — when I think of my Russian grandfather’s story I envision an epic such as Doctor Zhivago (1965). Thanks for this, @Horatius, and I’ve added it to my watch list.
If I were able to offer any feedback at all, it’d only be as an average Joe who rarely ever reads anything at all… aside from the Dope.