Aaron Wong (aaroniemcwonley)

2012 = Armageddon + Deep Impact + The Day After Tomorrow
Not necessarily a bad thing.

The DVD is out: That Was It.

Remember how Sideways was the sleeper hit of 2004 (I think)? Well you're looking at Oscar material again in 2006. For eccentric characters, you don;t get much weirder than this: A struggling motivational speaker whose family are sick of his speeches; his capable wife, who is about the only sane person in the movie; her gay, pre-eminent Proust scholar brother (a hilarious Steve Carell), who tried to commit suicide when his boyfriend left him for his rival; the son who made a vow of Nietzsche-inspired silence and writing on notepads until he realises his dream of being a pilot; his expletive-spewing grandfather who spends half the movie telling him to "F*** lots of women!", and finally the flower of the family, the adorable Olive, who they are all trying to get to California on time to take part in some Barbie Doll-lookalike contest masquerading as a junior beauty pageant. A heartwarming road trip coming-of-age story that doesn't try too hard, with the lovable Olive the honey-coated heart of the whole story. Alternative title: How to drive from 700 miles without a clutch and stuck horn. I put next month's salary on the fact that you're gonna love this one.

What touched me most about this movie is when the mother of the nun, Rosa (Penelope Cruz), who got pregnant and subsequently HIV-infected, asked herself what she'd done wrong with her daughter. She said that Rosa had been like an alien to her since her teenage years. That really struck a chord with me. Parenthood is all about learning as we go along. No one really created a fail-safe guide to parenthood. A parent may do everything right but still have a failure of a child, or vice versa. Look at Manuela (Cecilia Roth). She raised her son as a single mother, juggling that with her job as a nurse (just like my mum), and yet she lost a aspiring writer son to a freak motor accident. Parents have to do the best they can for their children, and the rest are in God's hands. I loved this movie because it spoke of a mother's love and the disappointments she faces. This was true for both Manuela and Rosa's mum. They rose above their circumstances: Manuela's husband became a transvestite and left her and her son died. Rosa's mum saw her daughter get pregnant and HIV-positive, and had to bury her. Yet, a mother's love carries on. It truly is the greatest love in the world.