The weekend before before Xmas I watched some classic films I had seen many times before - Holiday Inn in black and white, White Christmas in color - but one morning TCM showed All Mine To Give, based on the true story of a Scots couple settling in Wisconsin in the 1850s. Played by Glynis Johns and Cameron Mitchell, the couple worked hard, raised a cabin with help from their neighbors, prospered and brought five or six children into the new country - the American dream. But first the father, and then the mother took sick and died while the children were still quite young, and the oldest son, all of thirteen, followed his mother's wish that he find families to adopt each child. It was heart-rending to see the boy pulling an empty sleigh at the end of the film, on his way to work in a lumber camp, but at least they had neighbors with compassion.

TCM also showed Good Sam, in which Gary Cooper plays a compassionate man who very nearly loses everything dear to him because he feels compelled to help anyone in need. Ayn Rand probably loved the film, but I was annoyed by the glib association of wanting to help others with having no common sense about one's own needs and the responsibility of others to help themselves. While Sam admirably lends a hand to, raises money for or takes in those in need, he also foolishly loans the family car to a neighbor that can barely see. And so on. He is saved from ruin in an ending that calls to mind George Bailey's rescue in It's A Wonderful Life, but I would have preferred that he learned to balance his compassion and self-interest - because that is the problem isn't it?

I also happened to finally catch The Front. I had read reviews when it came out in 1976, but I was in college, and missed the theatrical run. TCM periodically asks 'guest programmers' to choose films, and Winona Ryder chose this story of a cashier/bookie, played by Woody Allen, pretending to write scripts by his blacklisted friend, played by Michael Murphy. The subject matter is topical in light of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), but Allen's comic patter significantly lightens the, "dark and shameful time in our history." The credits - indicating the years that performers and crew, including Zero Mostel and Herschel Bernardi, had themselves been blacklisted - were a lot darker than the film.

I watched a few more of the usual classics, Miracle on 34th Street with Edmund Gwenn, A Christmas Carol with Alastair Sim, A Christmas Story and It's A Wonderful Life. I've gotten in the habit of watching Little Women, with Winona Ryder, at Xmas time, too.

After Xmas we moved on to rentals. Midnight in Paris was lightly entertaining, as Owen Wilson probably stands in for writer/director Woody Allen as a struggling writer that shares several late nights with literary and artistic heroes from the 1920s and 1890s. I had the hardest time with the portrayal of Ernest Hemingway. I suppose it is possible that Hemingway spoke in the same spare, manly prose that he wrote, but while the actor looked the part, he just didn't sound realistic.

Cowboys and Aliens was entertaining as an action flick, but didn't bear much examination. It could have been called Cowboys and Indians and Aliens,or something.

Margin Call was excellent, with Stanley Tucci, Zachary Quinto, Paul Bettany, Kevin Spacey, Simon Baker, Demi Moore, Jeremy Irons and even Aasif Mandvi portraying traders who convince themselves that betraying their customers is not so terribly bad in a free market, especially with the incentive of immediate large bonuses. More talk than action, but I recommend this for anyone that thinks that Fannie and Freddie caused the economic meltdown.

Water for Elephants was a good tale, well-acted by Robert Pattinson and Reese Witherspoon. I'm told the book is better, but both involve some blatant cruelty to animals. Thor was also an entertaining action flick, and even though directed by Kenneth Branagh, also doesn't bear much analysis. 

My wife chose Another Earth from the blurb on the back cover. I'd never heard of it, but it caught my interest right away. I love films with unknown actors. Instead of going through that period of forgetting that so-and-so is playing the character, I could just accept that Brit Marling was a bright young woman on her way to MIT to study astrophysics when she saw another Earth in the sky. I'm not going to spoil the plot, because I want people to see it, but I read a range of reviews afterwards, such as in The Guardian:

A strange, gloomy, moderately acted damp squib of a movie. ...
There is, sadly, no shortage of films of all sorts with great premises and nowhere to go, and this is one of them: an oddly parochial, earthbound film that doesn't quite know exactly how to develop its ideas. And Marling, to be frank, is not a natural screen performer.

Marling was low key in this part, but Roger Ebert saw a lot more in her:

What's impressive is how well this film joins its parts into a whole. The other Earth idea is left as a fantastical hook and wisely not considered scientifically, except of course in its role as the film's master image. The relationship between Rhoda and John is seen as fraught with danger. The actors occupy their characters convincingly. They make us care more than the plot really requires. Earth 2, always looming in the sky, encourages us to reflect on how arbitrary our destinies are. In one sense, nothing in our lives was necessary. In another sense, everything was inevitable.

There's a nice story behind this movie, involving the actress and co-writer Brit Marling. She worked in investment banking on Wall Street before becoming the writer and co-director of "Boxers and Ballerinas," a Cuban documentary that Mike Cahill made in 2004. They worked together on this film. It arrived unheralded at Sundance 2011 and won the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize as well as the Special Jury Prize.

"Another Earth" was made on a low budget, and Cahill shot and edited it himself. I think it would have benefitted from more tripod work and less hand-held; a more classical approach would have suited this thoughtful material. But it's strong as it is, and Marling emerges as a gifted new talent.

For her part, Marling, who turned down a job at Goldman Sachs, says:

... I think I'll never stop writing now because I'm wondering why there aren't more representatives of women that are like the women we know. Where's the film with the women who are complicated and strong and beautiful and sexy and interesting and of all body types? ... How terrifying to surrender your life to being chosen all the time. Having to be chosen and re-chosen. Writing so that I can act became a way of having not more control over my future but not having to wait for permission. You can choose yourself. Hmm, who should play this part? I nominate me!