Lovely, Still (2008)

Do you believe that magic goes away after you stop believing in the Tooth Fairy?  Do you cringe at the idea that your parents still feel the thrill run through their body when they kiss?  Don't watch this movie.

Martin Landau and Ellen Burstyn have not forgotten what it looks like to fall in love with someone for the first time and they do an excellent job of portraying the awkward, the nervous, and the falling into joy.  The story is portrayed with a minimal cast of a lonely old bachelor (without one picture hanging on his walls) drudging through his day until he comes home to find a lovely neighbor, Mary, inside his house.  Robert is a bit freaked out (who wouldn't  be) until Mary explains that the door was open and with the car crashed into the garage door, she thought she'd better check to see if he was all right.  After that, Robert melts.  He and Mary begin dating and he spends time researching the "right thing to do" by asking all of his coworkers at the grocery store for advice. 

The beginning is just the beginning of this movie.  It's hard not to get swept up in the joy of new love as portrayed by these two experienced actors.  It's also difficult to ignore the odd music choices.  But, these are only mildly distracting and, in retrospect, foreshadow the end of the tale very well. 

This movie will grab you by the heart.

Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959)

Although seeing a young, dark haired Sean Connery singing "My Pretty Irish Girl" while breaking a glow cutting down weeds with a scythe is good for any girl with a little Irish in her blood, his role as the handsome newcomer on the scene is hardly the reason to watch this film. It is the facial expressions of Irishman, Albert Sharpe that make this movie worth watching again and again. (Well, that and the sped-up dancing maneuvers of the leprechauns as the leap into the wine glass.)

Sharpe, who plays Darby O'Gill, is so expressive, that Disney was able to carry out an entire fight scene without showing more than a few seconds of the fight. This may have gone a long way with the ratings board and the "family friendly" G-rating at the time... or not. Perhaps, Director Robert Stevenson recognized an acting genius - a man who could tell the entire story in a twitch of his nose or a downturned brow - and wanted to document it for generations to come.

Tonight, I reintroduced my family to Darby. The youngest two of the clan had never seen it and thought King Bryan was a "silly" and the banshee absolutely petrifying. (Neither of them moved while the banshee cried.)

Oh, I wish all the movies could be a bit like Darby
they'd be a bit cheesy, but they'd entertain my army...

Okay. It was a half-drunken sounding rhyme. I know. But, I was really defeated before I began. After all, who could beat King Bryan's "McKluskey and Whuskey"?