Okay lots of stuff to get through so I'll get straight to it. With all the foreign stuff I've been watching in the cinema it seems rather quaint to say that I caught No Reservations when it was shown on Sky. I've not seen the German original (I believe it was on Film Four ages ago at 2 in the morning or something similarly stupid) so nothing to say on that front. It's a decent film that I liked more than I thought I would. Catherine Zeta Jones is sufficiently gorgeous and Aaron Eckhart amusing enough to ensure it's successful but Abigail Breslin puts on an acting clinic and shows up her elders. It's quite funny throughout and while nothing revelatory a harmless enough watch.
Over the space of a couple of weeks I saw the documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired. Now I'm about as big a fan of Polanski the director as there is but I've always had a fascination with this case as I cannot really see any excuse for a grown man having sex with a 13-year old girl either consensually (as he claims) or via rape (as the victim claims). I caught the final 30 minutes first then saw the whole thing a few weeks later and in the final third it's a very clinical examination of the abuse of the political system by the judge in charge of the case. What I was left with having seen the end was "how on earth could Polanski only have been given 90 days for his crime in the first place?" and the problem is there isn't enough here for a feature documentary (the family simply didn't want the circus and Polanski was only willing to plead to unlawful sex with a minor). Sadly a lot of time is spent on Polanski's tragic past which only attempts for you to sympathise with him and neither explains or justifies his actions. This would have been a far better short focusing solely on the case, but it's an interesting way to spend 90 minutes.
Next up was the inadvertant Mary-Louise Parker double-bill I saw when up in Leeds for the film festival. Firstly I saw Mr. Wonderful (which means I've now seen all of Anthony Minghella's films), which is a decent, but cheesy film about a man (Matt Dillon) trying to find his ex-wife (Annabella Sciorra) a new husband so he doesn't have to pay alimony any more (VERY cute set up). Lots of familiar faces (including a younger, thinner James Gandolfini and of course, Mary-Louise as Dillon's girlfriend) and a decent cast, but the 80s cheese-fest music really strain an already cutesy plot to breaking point. The other was Boys on the Side, which I always thought of as a Drew Barrymore film but the main people in it are Mary-Louise and Whoopi Goldberg. It's a strange film about 3 women who go on the run after killing Barrymore's abusive boyfriend. It's very well acted in the main (except for Matthew McConaughey who is mind-blowingly atrocious, he's so bad it's almost impressive) and is consistently amusing, plus hits the right dramatic notes when it has to.
I also finally saw The Divorcee, which I've wanted to see for years and I'm extremely glad I did because I've finally seen a film I really rate Norma Shearer in. I'd always been a touch unimpressed with her as while routinely decent I'd never seen anything from her (other than the fact she was shagging the head of the studio) to merit cherry-picking the top roles of the day. Here though she is truly excellent. The film is a rather lightweight examination of the beginnings to and failings of a marriage. The opening 20 minutes is too twee for my liking but once the marital problems come up Shearer goes into overdrive and gives an exceptional performance which was way ahead of its time. Soulful, emotional, technically impressive, it's more than I could have hoped for. The film is good (even though it does get a little cheesy at the end) but thoroughly worth checking out solely for Shearer.