ABCs at the Movies: The Doubles Round!

[memento]

Plot: Just north of London live Wendy, Andy, and their twenty-something twins, Natalie and Nicola. Wendy clerks in a shop, leads aerobics at a primary school, jokes like a vaudevillian, agrees to waitress at a friend's new restaurant and dotes on Andy, a cook who forever puts off home remodeling projects, and with a drunken friend, buys a broken down lunch wagon. Natalie, with short neat hair and a snappy, droll manner, is a plumber; she has a holiday planned in America, but little else. Last is Nicola, odd man out: a snarl, big glasses, cigarette, mussed hair, jittery fingers, bulimic, jobless, and unhappy. How they interact and play out family conflict and love is the film's subject.

[Fran]

From IMDb:  Construction worker Donald is having a hard time getting anything good to eat since his wife has decided to only cook gourmet foods. That and her constant harping cause him to snap, and he whacks her. Somewhere in the confusion he comes up with a new use for the microwave oven and begins to eat much better. Soon he's experimenting with different recipes and different meats.

[southendmd]

Plot:  A feisty young woman returns to Glasgow to run her deceased father's curry house.

[memento]

From IMDB: This was one of the two or three movies I really liked at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival (another being the very funny "The Tao of Steve").

I actually can't remember that much about the plot, etc, but there were a few extremely clever, fabulous things that I haven't forgotten.

I can't really describe them effectively, because they just have to be seen to have the right effect.

One example:

There's a scene in which Jeff (Rob Morrow) takes John (Campbell Scott) and out to lunch at the latest hot restaurant in New York.

This is no ordinary restaurant.


It is an outdoor restaurant located on the tiny sliver of land between 5th and 23rd in New York right in front of the great Flat Iron Building.

It's an incredibly busy intersection.

The restaurant is nothing more than white linen-covered tables and velvet ropes which make up the "walls."

While diners eat gourmet food and try to have intimate conversations, they have to scream at each other because their voices are constantly drowned out by passing loud cars and buses.

When one of the characters decides to leave, he just raises his hand while sitting at the table and flags down a cab.

This is such an outlandish, wonderful concept, and the scene really encapsulates the New York mindset (at least before September 11, 2001).

New York is (maybe still) so consumed with the newest and the hippest and everyone wants to jump on the latest thing before anyone else, leading to more and more outlandish "it" places and things...

[Fran]

From IMDb:  In post-war Sweden, dairy-farmer Anders Svensson spends his time strumming his guitar and neglecting his chores. When he hears that his nephew, Ville Lundgren, is being detained in a port city controlled by the U.S.S.R. because of a lack of the proper papers, he is urged to do something about it. With his guitar in hand, he signs on a Swedish freighter as a temporary chef. When the ship ties up at the Balkan port, Anders attempts to get past the guards, but is apprehended and brought to General Badajsky as a suspected spy. His songs and knowledge of Russian drinking songs and good nature catches the fancy of the general, and they become good friends. He goes to see his nephew, giving him instructions on the planned escape. Anders, Badajsky and his aide, loaded down with bottles and somewhat drunk plan to finish their celebrating on the Swedish freighter before it sails out of port. When his nephew approaches him, as planned, Anders gives him the bottles to carry on the ship and, because of the general's presence, the guards pass him through. Anders and the maybe/maybe-not deceived Badajsky part as friends, and Anders and his nephew head back to Sweden for a family reunion.

[oilgun]

Plot:  A group of men hire some prostitutes and go to a villa in the countryside. There, they engage in group sex and resolve to eat themselves to death.

[memento]

From IMDB: RESTAURANT (2000) *** Adrien Brody, Elise Neal, David Moscow,Simon Baker-Denny, Catherine Kellner, Malcom Jamal Warner, John Carroll Lynch, Jesse L. Martin, Sybil Temchen, Vonte Sweet, Lauryn Hill. Brody gives a great performance as a struggling playwright who works in a trendy Hoboken eatery as a bartender and is trying to juggle a new promising relationship with waitress/singer wanna be Neal (equally good) while coming to terms with his ex (pop superstar Hill) as well as living his life with his co-workers, each with their own charming eccentricities.

[Lynne]

Summary from an IMDb user:

At a farmhouse, a large family cooks mountains of food for the next day's engagement party for Silvia and her city fiancé, Angelo. Her parents feud about infidelity; an aging salesman who rents a cottage from them arrives with a young French woman; in Bologna, Angelo's mother frets that her son is marrying beneath him; his sisters are less critical. Early the next morning, the four of them go by train to the farmhouse, joined by Angelo's married, unpregnant sister. The day-long dinner is riotous, couples display affection and impatience, children chase angels. Angelo's family stays the night, and his sister Linda has a visitor. A silver elephant makes the perfect gift. 

[oilgun]

Plot:  Gyorgy Palfi's grotesque tale of three generations of men, including an obese speed eater, an embalmer of gigantic cats, and a man who shoots fire out of his penis.

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7bqyh4u4xM[/youtube]

==COMMENT==
I've been dying to see this Hungarian film but it's still not available in North America.  HUKKLE, by the same director, is delightfully bizarre.

[memento]

Plot: When Katherine and Spencer are on there way to their fathers house, a blizzard hits delaying all plane flights at Hoover International. Zach Van Bourke (Wilmer Valderrama) takes Katherine and Spencer to the UM room (Unaccompanied Minors Room) In the huge concrete room there are lots of crazy kids in there. That is where Spencer meets Donna (Quinn Shephard), Charlie (Tyler James Williams), Grace (Gena Mantegna) and Beef (Brett Kelly).

The five kids decide to escape the UM room and try to find something to do. Spencer grabs a bite to eat, Grace goes to the high flyers room, Donna steals a golf cart type vehicle inside the airport, Beef goes into the safety equipment room and plays around in there and Charlie sings at Sharper Image. They are eventually caught and brought back to the UM room where they discover no one else is there. They also get a lecture from Oliver (Lewis Black), the head of the airport.

=aside= players