A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Search This Blog

Saturday, November 22, 2025

Pieces of April (Peter Hedges, 2003)

Katie Holmes in Pieces of April

Cast: Katie Holmes, Derek Luke, Patricia Clarkson, Oliver Platt, Alison Pill, John Gallagher Jr., Alice Drummond, Sean Hayes, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Lillias White, Leila Danette, Sisqó, Adrian Martinez, Armando Riesco. Screenplay: Peter Hedges. Cinematography: Tami Reiker. Production design: Rick Butler. Film editing: Mark Livolsi. Music: Stephin Merritt. 

April (Katie Holmes) is the black sheep of the Burns family, so when she decides to make amends with them, she invites them for Thanksgiving dinner in the grungy apartment that she shares with her boyfriend, Bobby (Derek Luke), in a dicey New York neighborhood. It's a formulaic setup for all sorts of formulaic mishaps, starting with April's discovery that her oven doesn't work, yet somehow Peter Hedges manages to transcend formulas and a collection of characters just shy of caricature to create a warm-hearted feel-good movie. Much of the burden of transcendence falls on the shoulders of the actors, particularly Patricia Clarkson as April's mother, Joy, who is dying of breast cancer. Clarkson earned an Oscar nomination for the role. It's part road movie, as the Burnses journey from the suburbs to the inner city, and part sitcom farce, but it has considerable charm. I couldn't help comparing Pieces of April, however, to a better suburbanites-in-the-city comedy, The Daytrippers (Greg Mottola, 1996).  

Posted by
Links: , ,