Mrs. Miniver (1942) The peerlessly lovely Greer Garson is unjustly notorious as merely the prototype of genteel, stiff-upper-lip British resolve in wartime. That’s may be why she won an Oscar for this homefront melodrama, but today her character is a revelation – a wife and mother of three radiating lusty playfulness, real-woman warmth and pre-feminist strength. Luminous, almond-eyed and honey-voiced, Garson never sounded the acting trumpets like Katherine Hepburn or Bette Davis did; she just was, and here she’s the ultimate Mom, confident and unruffled by chaos and yet still stirringly sexy and sweet. William Wyler’s movie is, otherwise, laced with propaganda and hokum, but between Garson’s maternal light and Teresa Wright (another Oscar) as her grown daughter, the movie veritably glows.

I Remember Mama (1948) The story of a dead-poor Norwegian immigrant clan living in San Francisco circa 1910, whose matriarch is wise, firm, funny, loving and, of course, self-sacrificing. The family could just as well have been Scottish or Asian or shtetl-Jewish – mothers want more for their children the world over and why should they have a new coat when the children need books? Irene Dunne, in her last significant role, flashes that ironic smile as she bustles about with her brood, but she’s fully committed to the woman’s limitations and the feeling of family intimacy. There’s no defense from tearjerking once she sneaks into a hospital children’s ward pretending to be a nurse, just so she can to croon to her sick daughter, and, helplessly, the other sickbed kids as well.

Italianamerican (1974) Early in his career as New York’s signature movie voice, Little Italy-bred Martin Scorsese shot this 49-minute beauty featuring little more than a plastic-wrapped-couch interview with his aging parents in their apartment on Elizabeth Street, in which they detail their lives as second-gen Sicilian-Italians, and life in the lower neighborhoods during the first decades of the century. The movie, like the Scorsese family itself, defers to gregarious, no-nonsense Mama Catherine on most counts, and that includes the credits, which feature her recipe for spaghetti sauce. Mrs. Scorsese appeared in several of her son’s films, but this document is as thorough and priceless as portrait of mother-son love as any ever made.

The Joy Luck Club (1993) Amy Tan’s multi-generational saga about Chinese mothers, Chinese daughters, and Chinese-American daughters gets a compressed-shorthand Hollywood treatment, but the actresses are all dynamite, and the dramatic circumstances of their travails – feudal-era oppression, betrayal, infanticide, abuse, you name it – is a tell-your-Mom-you-love-her emotional bludgeon in any package.

Rugrats ("Mother’s Day," 1997) Chuckie, you will recall if you were lucky enough to have children when this brilliantly inventive and eloquent cartoon series first ran, is the lisping, bespectacled scaredy-cat whose mother died – and in this episode, which can hit you like a truck if you let it, the toddlers try to find, amid the Mother’s Day gift-giving, a mom for Chuckie, until it is realized that she is all around them already, in the garden she planted before she got sick. Whew.

Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002) As European settlers took to slowly decimating Aboriginal society in Australia, what began as just one manner of oppression – kidnapping Aboriginal children from their families "for their own good" and training them as servants – became, in the case of "half-caste" children, official state policy. This program persisted, astonishingly, into the 1970s, but Philip Noyce’s film, based on a true story, is set in 1932, when three girls, aged 14, 10 and eight, were snatched from their family and sent to a slave camp 1200 miles away. Indignantly, they escaped, hellbent on returning to their mothers, walking for months back north along the continent-dividing fence, one step ahead of the law. Based on a memoir by a grown daughter of the eldest girl and rarely digressing from the journey itself, the movie is a primal trial, visually arresting and sociopolitically devastating.

Lovely and Amazing (2002) A caustic film about a family of insecure women plagued with the same flaws and body-image hang-ups nearly every woman has. The mother (Brenda Blethyn) subjects herself to liposuction while fantasizing about the dishy doctor, while each of the daughters flounders in their own lives: the eldest (Catherine Keener) has a disastrous with a teenager, the middle child (Emily Mortimer) is helplessly vulnerable to anorexia and male criticism, and the youngest daugher, an adopted African-American (the painfully genuine Raven Goodwin), overeats to assuage her confusion with life. The film is aptly titled, because it boils down to the mother-daughter bonds keeping everyone’s head happily above water.

Since Otar Left... (2003) A Georgian film, shot in Tbilisi (apparently, the Frenchest city in the ex-Soviet regions), and a vivid portrait of a cultured, all-woman family (cranky, reactionary grandmother; bitter, pragmatic mother; rebellious teen daughter) struggling to survive in the new nation after the clan’s son/brother/uncle hightailed it to Paris. Between the three women (in masterful performances across the board), every love-hate tangle we’ve ever had with our mothers is hashed over and healed.

From Randy M.:
I love FLICKIPEDIA! And sure, my family is always looking for new movies to watch that go with the season, like a good wine. Your "Opening Day" section is terrific, but here's a few you missed, recently on TCM: the Ring Lardner baseball comedies starring Joe E. Brown, Alibi Ike and Elmer the Great. Both use the Chicago Cubs of the day!
    
    Us: Good catch! The real players in those movies aren't just Cubs, but Browns, Dodgers, etc.; the cast list on IMDB includes Jim Thorpe, Bob Meusel and Cedric Durst! And they're funny.

From Gina Esposito:
this winter my family and i went to Paris for spring break, and of all the movies we watched to get psyched up, we picked Ratatouille! it was perfect, a vacation all by itself.

       Us: Certainly a good prime for dining out... But more "French" than French, right? 

From Daniella:
Love the gray British movies from the 60s in the fall -- The Pumpkin Eater is a great one. And Room at the Top.

From F.P.A.:
A terrific baseball movie Flickipedia has overlooked: A League of Her Own! Or is it left out for reasons of your own?

    Us: It's a salient point -- we did leave out A League of Her Own for our own, largely critical reasons. Our book could only touch on what we saw as the imperative choices for each occasion. But in the dialogue here, anything can happen, and any devotion can be exhalted. If only we could be sold on the notion that A League of Her Own deserves a reevaluation...

The Ten Commandments (1923) Cecil B. DeMille’s career-making silent epic, quite stodgy and unimpressive today, but worthy a day in court if you’re sick of the colorful, bombastic 1956 version.

The Ten Commandments (1956) Over-the-top Bible epics used to be so much campy fun before Mel Gibson came along and got all preachy; we bet Easter dinner at the DeMille household was a lot more fun than at the Gibson ranch. Would Passover have been so entertaining over the years without televised visions of Charlton Heston’s chin, John Derek’s pecs, Anne Baxter’s pouty kitten lips, or Yvonne DeCarlo’s heaving cleavage? Even if you haven’t always been at shul, you know the deal – Moses, Pharaoh, Red Sea, Edward G. Robinson growling, "Where’s your messiah now?" – and know too that it’s a long enough movie to stretch over at least a few of the nights, if not all eight. "So it shall be written, so it shall be done."

Exodus (1960) Leon Uris’ bestselling magnum opus covered much more history than simply the struggle in the late ‘40s to establish a Jewish state, but you gotta give director Otto Preminger and long-blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo a hand for trying to winnow it down to a dramatic throughline. As Passover viewing, this long (3½+ hours), rhapsodic, muddling tapestry is sure to strike an emotional chord, even if you remain troubled by the way the Mid-East has turned out since. Filmed on location in Cyprus and Israel, and starring Paul Newman as the perpetually pissed-off hero, Ari Ben Canaan.

Wholly Moses! (1980) As with Monty Python’s Life of Brian, this Mel Brooks-ish Old Testament parody trails after a schmuck (Dudley Moore) who was almost Moses. Low schtick, with Madeline Kahn, Jack Gilford, James Coco, and Richard Pryor as the Pharaoh. Director Gary Weis began doing hilarious shorts for Saturday Night Live in its infancy.

A Rugrats Passover (1994) As with A Rugrats Chanukah, this special episode celebrated American secular Jewishness in the wisest and most entertaining fashion, structured this time around Grandpa Boris regaling the kids with an epic, Pickles-style Exodus story.

The Prince of Egypt (1998) The kinderlach, their knowledge of Passover limited to macaroons and matzoh balls, are falling asleep waiting for Grandpa to get on with the plagues already – it was probably just such confusion at the Spielberg, Geffen and Katzenberg Seders that led to the creation of this cartoon Haggadah from DreamWorks. It’s quite dramatic and stirring and certainly a cut above many of the animated features that wind up being merchandised into our consciousness. Our kids were completely engrossed and acted as if they’d never heard the story before. The five-year-old said it best during the parting of the Red Sea: "Oh yeah! I want to be on Moses’s team!"

Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport (2000) A conventional but heart-wrenching documentary about the shipment of some 10,000 European Jewish children from their families to England in the year prior to the invasion of Poland, where they waited out the war with foster families and then, afterwards, tried to return home. Other chest-swelling non-fiction portraits of life and survival in the Holocaust era – a fairly recent breed of documentary – include Fighter (2000), Shanghai Ghetto (2002), and The Danish Solution: The Rescue of the Jews in Denmark (2003).

                                                     

Spring cometh -- from FLICKIPEDIA, some rentable suggestions to augment and/or echo the breathe-easy, birds-singing seasonal moment:

Various early-talkie Our Gang/Little Rascals shorts, particularly School’s Out (1930), Bear Shooters (1930) and Teacher’s Pet (1930) Sometimes the less polished the movie, the more it captures its time and place. Hal Roach’s first sound Our Gang shorts (the ones with Jackie, Wheezer, Farina, Stymie, Mrs. Crabtree, Mary Ann, etc.) were shot fast and sloppily on the low-rent side streets and farm lots of Los Angeles County, and their portrait of sun-dappled haze, bug-thick humidity, mud-puddle whimsicality and near-rural indolence is unsurpassed. And they’re funny, too, in a way kids still respond to, given half a chance.

A Nous la Liberté (1931) There’s no repressing the happy grins emerging from Rene Clair’s classic early talkie, an anti-industrialization parable (largely ripped off by Charles Chaplin years later in Modern Times) that follows two escaped convicts who confront modern factory life. Spring is the season for wishing for irresponsible alternatives to maturity and duty, and this sunny, flowery, goofy film is a wish come true.

The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) Errol Flynn, in color, in all of his boy-god splendor, as the famous fairy-tale bandit, bounding through green and shadowy California forests and being electrically fabulous. It’s a fun romp in general, but Flynn makes it a vitamin shot.

Elvira Madigan (1967) The first international Swedish hit film that wasn’t about sex or directed by Ingmar Bergman, Bo Widerberg’s rendition of the famous (in northern Europe) Tristan-and-Isolde-ish true story – a tragic romance between an AWOL soldier and a young tightrope walker – looks like it was shot entirely on warm May mornings. It may be the greenest film ever made, awash with sun-dappled glades and verdant glens. (There’s also this unsung ‘60s innovation: the realistic portrayal of young love, with all of its silly goofing, frolicking in wild fields, and swatches of time doing very little at all besides kanoodling. Movies just didn’t do this before the era’s New Wave revolution.) Routinely labeled at the time the most beautifully photographed film of all time, leavened with Mozart, and a seasonal blessing.

The Razor’s Edge (1984) One of the strangest films of the '80s, and yet one lit up with a nutty, irrational warmth. Bill Murray, able to write his ticket after Ghostbusters, co-wrote this Maugham adaptation, and by most accounts it’s a ridiculous freak, an off-balance, confusing, half-serious mess. But not so fast: filmed like a nostalgic feverdream, the path of Larry Darrell from common American jerk to WWI vet to expatriate wandering shaman is a promise of tedium (Tyrone Power kept him dull in the 1946 version), except that Murray’s shrugging innocence and guileless irony make the arc feel powerfully human. This might be the best Larry Darrell we'll ever have, a lonely, unsettled man defending himself from the world through reclusiveness and childish humor, and yet nearing the springtime of his own existence by way of spiritual satisfaction. (Little did we know how Murray would fulfill that promise years later, in Rushmore, Lost in Translation and Broken Flowers.) Director John Byrum, abetted by Jack Nitzsche’s lush score, manages a powerful sense of elegy, from the pre-fireworks evening montage to Murray’s Darrell pressing his cheek against the dead Sophie's lips, that could only exist in a film this unsure of itself.

                                                                               ***

And tomorrow's opening day!  Whether or not you live in Cincinnati and are counting on taking the day off, here's some FLICKIPEDIA movie recommendations for the diamond-season ardent:

Bang the Drum Slowly (1973) The saddest baseball movie? Coming from a 1955 novel, this subdued, grown-up drama simply waits out the last season of a low-IQ MLB catcher (Robert De Niro), who learns at the outset that he has a fatal disease. Emphasis is placed less on mortality or the game, and more on the day-to-day traveling life of pro players in the days before bazillion-dollar contracts and steroids. Viewers who were moved when this movie came out – and it’s tough not to be, when De Niro in his last game looks for a fly ball that’s no longer there – keep it close to their hearts.

The Bad News Bears (1976) Besides being possibly the least condescending Hollywood film ever made about kids, and a scabrous mockery of American suburbia and so many of the life principles our middle class hold dear, this Little League satire, deplorably remade in 2006, remains paradigmatic ‘70s realism – the dusty fields, arid sprawl, parking lots, beer in the dugout, and glaring noon light will reignite anyone’s memories of small-town ball, organized by annoying adults but played in the heat by kids.

Eight Men Out (1988) The story of the Black Sox scandal, when the 1919 Chicago White Sox conspired with gamblers to throw the game, brought to you in historical broad strokes by staunch unionist writer/director John Sayles. So, here the players (John Cusack, Charlie Sheen, David Straithairn, D.B. Sweeney as the famous "Shoeless" Joe Jackson) are driven to cheat by the stinginess of owner Charlie "Commie" Comiskey (Clifton James), who routinely reneged on promises and bonuses alike. Sayles’s take is hoary baseball-fan optimism: we all want to believe the best of our heroes, that Pete Rose didn’t gamble, that Barry Bonds never took ‘roids, that the illiterate Jackson didn’t understand what he was doing or even the import of the confession that he signed. No one can say for sure – but as long as the stats are accurate, we’re willing to think it might’ve gone down this way.

Bull Durham (1988) There’s no other sport that inspires more emotion, rumination and heartfelt worship than baseball, and Ron Shelton’s signature movie embodies all of these in one perfect, life-loving swoop. A slice of minor league life remains lovable because there are no big-headed major league egos around, just the fervent hoping to get there. No underdog triumphs, no sentimental formulas, no baloney, from Tim Robbins’ talented jerk to Susan Sarandon’s small-town groupie dizzy with big-city ideas, to Kevin Costner’s career-anchoring perf as the aging catcher who shoulders the responsibility of molding the uncontrollable pitcher into a star even as his own dreams of the majors sail further out of reach. The script crackles with educated wit, the minor characters are just as funny and original as the main players, and the homage to baseball is everything it should be: heartbreaking in some ways but crazy for the game, for summer evenings, and for retaining a fiery sliver of youth deep into the middle years.

The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg (1999) A simple and affectionate tribute to the first Jew ever to play major league baseball, Aviva Kempner’s utterly conventional documentary plays like a chapter from the Baseball mini-series that Ken Burns had to cut. A strapping, good-natured, Bronx-born lad of 6' 4", Greenberg was one of the league’s best hitters, becoming a local Detroit monument and a national symbol for Jews all over the country. (For interviewee Walter Matthau, it meant the possibility of "not having to be a cutter or salesman in the garment business," while Alan Dershowitz entertained fantasies of Greenberg being the first Jewish President.) The details are winning, including how the Tigers would lose crucial games on Yom Kippur because Greenberg wasn’t playing.

Now, more than ever, movies are a way of life. In previous eras, whatever movies were released to theaters on any given week dictated what you could see. You could catch old films on television, but which old films you could see and when they could be seen were variables the viewer couldn’t control.

Today, it’s a different game: we are in control. Home video, cable TV, pay-per-view, mail-order renting, overlapping multiplex screenings – movies as culture now conform to us. We now often choose movies like we choose music: to accent and heighten the flow, peaks, traumas and doldrums of our daily existence. Certain films must be watched at Christmas, Halloween, on the brink of baseball’s Opening Day, before a wedding, and after a graduation. Times arise for each of us when we absolutely need to watch Duck Soup or Casablanca or The Dirty Dozen. Wherever we are in life, there are films to answer our needs.

But where do we go to hunt down those movies? That’s Flickipedia: Perfect Films for Every Occasion, Holiday, Mood, Ordeal and Whim. Our book is structured by everyday stuff. Every major landmark event, social mood and annual occurrence is represented with recommendations. The book’s broad categories cover holidays; seasonal passages (including the arrival and climactic rites of sports); life phases from birthdays to marriage, childbirth and retirement; common emotional trials, including illness, dating, heartbreak, and mid-life crisis; travel preparation; and nostalgia, whether for your own school-days or for an entire bygone era.

It’s easy to use: live first, and then pick a movie. Movies with which readers may not be familiar stand shoulder to shoulder with tried-and-true standbys, the popular classics. Need a fresh-yet-nostalgic Hollywood classic to watch during the Christmas season? Try the hilarious but moving Preston Sturges-written screwball Remember the Night (1940). Opening Day coming? Take a chance on Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949), with the young Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly as pro teammates pitching woo at franchise owner Esther Williams. For those enduring post-op recovery, the norm-blasting ribaldry of There’s Something About Mary (1998) could be balm for the soul, just as anyone preparing for an exotic vacation could prime their engines with the authentic tropical vibes of Black Orpheus (1959) and Blissfully Yours (2002).

With over 100 categories and more than 1,300 movie suggestions – we've watched nearly evertything so you don’t have to – FLICKIPEDIA is an indispensable field guide to life and movies in the new century.