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Peanut Butter Falcon rescued me somehow.

It’s a Huck Finn story about two runaway renegades with a plan and their unlikely friendship.
Zack Gottsagen, Shia LaBeouf, and Dakota Johnson star.
Endearing and hopeful, this story will pick up up out of any desperate spot, baptize you on the southeastern shores, and walk you homeward toward new hope. That’s a lot to say for a little oddly named indie film about friends being family, but it’s true. This film is precious to me.
This is it. If I have to choose a favorite film. I think this is it. Top 5 at least.
Audrey’s first starring role as the illustrious Princess Ann proved her perfect for the post in posture, eloquence, and manners. She was born to play a princess.
In this story, her life takes a drastic turn the night her daunting schedule full of royal duties becomes too much for her and she decides to run away. Her rescuer is the soak-em-for-a-buck fast-talking journalist Gregory Peck. He knows who she is and decides to take advantage of the opportunity for an inside scoop. Their adventure around the city of Rome tours the best of all sites: the Trevi Fountain, gelato on the Spanish Steps,
scootering past the Coliseum and Vatican City, a walk through the forum, a ride past the wall of memories, a boat dance in the evening, and best of all a trip to the “Mouth of Truth.” Watch for Audrey’s real reaction to Peck’s joke there.
I’ve been to Rome, and other than the newer scooters and larger crowds it is all the same. Go. Visit Rome today via this film. Ride along with Joe and Anna, the one they call Smitty. Get to know the city with their good pal Irving the photographer.
It is well worth the few hours away and the lessons you’ll learn about love and duty will always haunt you.
Audrey Hepburn wears the crown as golden age actress of class from her era. In every role, she carries herself with the ethereal grace of a princess. Even in her quintessential black leggings and flats, she remains the icon of fashion, elegance, and simplicity.
In Sabrina, she plays the innocent chauffeur’s daughter in love with the son of the rich family for whom her father works. What begins as a rags to riches tale becomes more cat and mouse as the older brother seeks to dissuade the girls affections for the younger to maintain a business relationship.
Playful and fun seeming on the outset, this story bridges more moral conundrums than seem common in a rom com, even one in black and white. You can always trust a Billy Wilder film to tell a simple seeming story with heart and complexity. Genius. Humphrey Bogart, of course, plays the much-too-old-for-her love interest who saves a young Sabrina from attempting to take her own life.
Such tragedies pursue the hopeless romantics cursed with unrequited love. We weep. We waiver. We wander. And she wanders all the way to Paris, to a cooking school, where an odd friendship helps her see her own value before she returns home as an independent woman. Or does she?
Will she allow her heart to swell as it once did for the fabulous playboy brother David, played by William Holden? Or will she fall for the one person in the world who listens as she speaks her mind and is surprisingly teachable, despite his foreboding manner. Bogart proves as lovable in Sabrina as in Casablanca, despite the less believable winter/spring fling potential.
He is charming and she is mature. He is lonely and she is in the way of his big business merger. He has to risk something, even his own heart. It becomes less a question of how than why ever not?
It’s a lovely princess story and a nice follow up to her treasured Roman Holiday performance.
The 1995 remake with Harrison Ford, Julia Ormond, and Greg Kinnear proves equally as endearing, if justly a bit more aware of the darker tones and painstakingly fearful endeavor that those first steps into love truly are. Harrison and Humphrey, two charming loves who will always have my heart.
Here is the original trailer: Sabrina (1954)
And Sabrina (1995)
Finding Your Feet tells the story of Lady Sandra Abbott (Imelda Staunton), a posh housewife who discovers her husband is having an affair and is forced to seek refuge with her eccentric older sister, Biff (Celia Imrie). Biff takes Sandra under her colorful wing and introduces her to the close-knit group of pals that take dance classes at the local community center.
At first, Sandra is stiff and inconsiderate. She struggles in Biff’s hoarder-style apartment in a dodgy part of London, where door locks remain broken and Biff routinely leaves her cell phone in the dryer.
But after a stern talking to from her older sis, a surprise night in jail, and a flirtation with the truly adorable Timothy Spall, Sandra begins to accept her fate as her sister’s helpless charge by making herself useful around the house and dancing every Thursday evening.
This isn’t Sandra’s first time on the dance floor, however. She was a competitive ballroom dancer as a child, and Biff has home movies to prove it.
Of course, that was “a lifetime ago.”
When fellow community center dancer (Joanna Lumley) suggests an outdoor dance fundraiser in downtown London, everyone volunteers except Sandra, who is still working on sloughing off her hardened exterior. Give her a few minutes…
Time to suspend your disbelief: a video of the dance immediately goes viral and the troupe is flown to Rome to perform in variety show with stunningly high production values. If you weren’t already experiencing wanderlust from the beautiful sequences of Big Ben, you will be now.
The body count is high in this “comedy,” and deaths run the gamut: from a jovial side character conking out during a striptease to a more intense Stage 4 storyline—the filmmakers don’t spare us. Having made us fall in love with this ragtag group of seniors and then slowly ripping our hearts out, it would seem rude if it weren’t so downright charming.
This film will make you fall in love, strike a pose, and say goodbye. A big melting pot of joy and heartache. But isn’t that life?
(Now streaming on Hulu)
~~~~
Gwen Hughes is a seasoned writer and the Editor-in-Chief at Madison Park Living magazine. When she is not working, she enjoys reading short stories, quoting John Mulaney Netflix specials, and eating family-size boxes of Mott’s Fruit Snacks.
It seems Genius steals
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loves unconditionally,
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Two fanatic until the
live show popped on Prime
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THE FAVOURITE (2018) movie review
Director Yorgos Lanthimos created the most uncomfortable, modern, mean, and sexually charged period palace story you’ve likely ever seen. This throws layers and layers of proper Elizabethan costuming over a simple survival of the fittest – all competing for the favor of one crazed Queen.
The country at war and in uproar, yet she needs constant affirmation about her looks and attention to her needs.
Emma Stone finds herself face down in the mud and must find ways to enter the palace and stay in the good graces of those in power or station above her. Rachel Weisz basically runs the country as confidante to the Queen, played perfectly by Olivia Colman.
Two women play the same game with very different motives, forcing a modern audience into the most modern of period pieces to ask what they would do in dire circumstances like those – save your country or save yourself?
REVIEW in HAIKU:
ladies in waiting
Victorian bourgeoisie
use sex to control