The 1st Annual St. Patrick's Day Film Festival

Last evening I watched two films which had been on my DVR for quite some time. First up was a brilliantly subtle, dark comedy called "Eulogy" starring Zooey Deschanel, Hank Azaria, Piper Laurie, Famke Janssen, Kelly Preston, Ray Romano, Rip Torn and Debra Winger.

This movie is everything most films are not. It was funny, sad, well acted and had a point...that you don't always know the people you think you're the closest to, your immediate family.

When the patriarch of this family passes away, the dysfunctional amalgam of personalities convene for the funeral and find that after all the years, nothing has changed. When granddaughter Kate, played by Deschanel, is asked to do the eulogy, she looks within the family to try to find the proper words to describe the man who created this circus of compulsive misfits. In the end, they all find that "dad" wasn't everything they thought he was and begin to live, not up to what they "thought" they should be, but for whom they really are.

It's a beautiful movie with more character studies than a 4-year psychology program and moves at a pace that's not too slow, but not at all the break-neck, wandering camera fodder we see so much of these days that tends to ruin a films validity.

This movie comes highly recommended by yours truly but may be a little hard to find save a late night showing on IFC. Tomorrow, I'll review film number 2, the very grim, "Fast Food Nation" directed by Richard Linklater and starring an amazing all-star cast.

(((03)))