Review Movies - The Savages & Grace Is Gone

Saw a couple of movies last night: The Savages and Grace Is Gone. I think they may be the most depressing movies out in Blockbuster, so if you want an evening looking at what surviving families do after their mom is killed in Iraq or when their father has dementia - go right ahead and rent them.

Grace Is Gone is a character-driven film. It presents a character under stress and follows the actions of that character. I generally like character-driven films, as opposed to plot-driven films, but this one left me somewhat irritated. The dad, Stanley, is just doing impractical, whacky things after he is informed of his wife's death in Iraq. I know people wig out when they lose someone they love, but it's fantastic to me for a father to suddenly suggest to his daughters a trip to Enchanted Gardens, a several-day trip it seems, and without packing, without informing school and work, without securing the house (mail, newspaper, plants, etc.) the father and two daughters drive off to Florida.

This one reminds me of a movie we had seen in Princess Theater about a second wife whose husband dies and she brings his ashes to the daughter in Santa Barbara. At least that one was funny.

The second film we saw was The Savages. I swear the shorts of this one made the film sound funny, but the actual film isn't. A middle-aged daughter and son make arrangements for the care of their father after his old girlfried dies and he himself has dementia. This film shows you the last depressing scenes of some people's lives - Sun City, old people driving golf carts, women doing exercise, convalescent homes, and oh, listen to the middle-class whining of these two kids whose lives have been rudely disrupted by all this.

Character - character- character, my teachers in film school and writing often said - so maybe it just boiled down to my not feeling sympathetic enough with the protagonists.