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She's Out of My League (2010)
Surprisingly Hilarious, Uplifting, and Heartwarming
Just as I was getting pretty down with all the bad news recently, I found this gem of a movie. I laughed heartily every couple of minutes almost all the way through it. A slightly depressed younger man with a good job, but few upward mobility prospects, meets a beautiful, caring, funny, entrepreneurial young lady and helps her out of an embarrassing situation at an airport security check point. He's a TSA agent and his male co-workers are making fools of themselves over this beautiful young woman. She's also a beautiful human being. He helps with wit and a caring, considerate attitude. She's grateful, but forgets her cell phone in the bin where we have to leave electronics. He finds it and Molly ( the young lady) calls him.
They arrange to meet when she's back in town to get her phone. He's that same caring and witty person that sparked her interest back at the airport. From then on, despite funny, off-beat, hilarious setbacks they grow closer. The family introductions are just "fall down on the floor laughing funny". It's almost a "beauty and the beast" story. Really though, its brain, heart, sense of humor, and personalities meshing. I hear that there may well be a happy ending. I've not watched the last 25 minutes yet, but this movie reminds me quite a bit of John Candy's "Uncle Buck". I go back to that movie when I need a humorous lift every so often. I'll add this one to my list of very special "uplifters". It found me and I found it at just the perfect time. I really needed a lift tonight.
Stained Glass Windows (2010)
A young woman finds herself both bullied and almost friendless, but shows amazing strength and courage.
A young woman who's become a Goth (Cherry) finds herself both bullied and unpopular at her high school with few friends. Her father has just recently shot her mom seriously and killed himself as well. She's also facing escalating physical violence from her abusive boyfriend. Despite all this, she's found connections with a martial arts school because two of her friends have invited her on a Saturday. Gradually, she's found that she likes the school and the excellent instruction. She begins to excel and gains, strength, stamina, skill, and self-confidence. She also begins to build a better life and lose old destructive habits. As she learns to express herself and reach out to others including a wise neighbor, she's also beginning to engage with life rather than to run from it and hide. The movie is about a young woman meeting, physical, mental, and relationship challenges as well as starting to make good decisions and reaching out, asserting herself. We find her growing into a wise and strong young women beyond her years.
Although I can tell this was not an expensive movie to make, the main characters grabbed and held my attention. I got a sense of knowing Cherry's mom, her wise neighbor, and the owner of the martial arts school as well as a minister who is patient, understanding, and honest. There were also two special friends in Cherry's high-school who helped her, but had their own inner struggles and demons to shed. I thought the movie was well done, but a bit slow moving at times. It could have also used 15 or 20 minutes more time to show a little bit more of who her friends were and more on her mom too.
I found myself involved and engaged personally in the story. The story line was compelling. It reflects the difficulties that many of the people in my own family have faced growing up and catches their plight, their struggles, and their willingness to seek help and grow. They do not give up easily at all and gradually learn to cope with many societal pressures and the dysfunction in modern western society. Emelie O'Hara does a wonderful job in playing the role of Cherry, a struggling 16 year old.
The Ritchie Boys (2004)
The story of brave refugees who left Germany before the beginning of WWII and aided their new adopted country by gathering intelligence after the Normandy Invasion.
I watched this wonderful and illuminating documentary about hundreds and perhaps thousands of young refugees from Germany and France in the later 1930's. They returned in the Normandy invasion time period to aid the U.S Army by interrogating prisoners and working with civilians in the war shattered countries to get government and services up and going again. There is a great deal of documentary film here and the story is told by several young men who went. They became successful businessmen, judges, ambassadors. and professors and artists. The experience enriched all of their lives and many of them who trained at Camp Ritchie became lifelong friends. I watched the movie on Netflix and rated it a five because it seemed so well done and told the mens' stories with such emotional and sometimes wrenching truth, and even humor.