MERRY CHRSTSMAKAH.- AND OVERLOOKED MASTERPIECES

Two items: forgotten films and invented greetings. Thanks to my granddaughter (she who visited Paris with us this past summer) there is a new greeting in the family. In fact, our holiday dinner yesterday started with lunch and by request - matzoh ball soup, and by tradition – potato latkes. It is a tradition because they are fried in oil, and it was the miracle of the oil that burned for eight days that underlies a lot of the Chanukah celebration, and is expressed by the eight candelabra Menorah. Evening meal was turkey with cranberry sauce, dressing, pumpkin pie and wine. So much for the amalgamation of Christmas and Chanukah.

Now to the entertainment portion of this epistle The afternoon was passed combing through our son’s prodigious collection (two walls!) of DVDs. Watched one of the most beautiful movies no one ever seems to have heard of. Maybe I missed the fuss over it when it opened nearly ten years ago, if indeed there was any “fuss,” but I had never heard of “Tortilla Soup” before Christmas Day. It is a sweet and startling, sometimes sad, sometimes funny examination of the relationships in a Mexican-American family living in L.A. Three different and delightful daughters, and a superb performance by their father, a master chef played by Hector Elizando. The critics didn’t rave about it when it came out in 2001 and the audiences apparently stayed away. (Not that critical acclaim makes a movie work. Some of every weekend’s top grossing movies get one star panning.)

If you are the father of daughters, you will be delighted.

Almost upstaging the actors is the food presentation. It is a must movie for “foodies.” The dishes are astonishing and the photography is perfect, done by, I am sure, the best food stylists in the business.


What occurred to me more though, was that some movies simply are avoided or ignored. “Tortilla Soup” did not deserve to be. But there are dozens of stories like this. I remember having a conversation with Jeff Daniels about “The Butcher’s Wife.” It was a weird story and co-starred Demi Moore as the clairvoyant daughter of an elderly butcher. I told him I had so enjoyed the movie but asked why did it get so little play? He told me that there was a big management shuffle at Paramount just as the movie was to open and it was “orphaned.” It got no big advertising. No big promotion.

There are other “relationship” movies that seem not to have prospered. By the way, I have no problem with films that are labeled “chick flicks.” Like “Beaches” which was, at least for me, a startling examination of the relationship between women who are best friends. In the film they are Barbara Hershey and Bette Midler. Maybe it did better than I suspected having a “gross” of more than $50 million.

I remember “Where’s Poppa” a very funny, very dark comedy with Ruth Gordon, George Segal, Ron Liebman, and Trish Vandervere (who was then married to George C. Scott.) I laughed so hard I went back two days later and laughed even harder – in anticipation of what was to come. At week’s end it disappeared. Gone. Forgotten.

A few years later I interviewed its author and director, the incomparable Carl Reiner. I asked him why the movie disappeared. He told me it was coming back as a cult movie.

Maybe it did. But it’s another one that if you have never seen is worth visiting. There is a peculiar change in the editing between the theatrical version and the one released on videotape. I presume the first was the studio edit and the other was the director’s edit. The one which I suspect was the director’s edit, had an extra scene that turns the entire story around. It is better ending but the studio honchos must have considered it too daring,

Maybe I should put some of this on Facebook so my “friends” and curious trouble-seekers can tell me what movies they loved that the public ignored. Maybe some of you blog readers will join the quest for more of "the best movies people never saw."

Meanwhile - Happy Christmakah.