Month: April 2023

Dramas

A Room With a View

LizLocke3 Comments
Image credit: A Room With a View, 1985

Spring has sprung, my orchid is blooming, and you know what that means—it’s time to watch a gorgeous movie about travel. I get the itch to watch beautiful people gallivant through Europe around the same time every year, and while this normally takes the form of yet another Talented Mr. Ripley viewing, this week I decided to abandon Mongibello to venture up the coast and inland to Firenze. A Room With a View (Disc/Download) is a Merchant Ivory masterpiece that will have you longing for sun-soaked days staring at the Duomo and passionate kisses among the flowers.

Like Helena Bonham Carter as Lucy Honeychurch, I was nineteen the summer I lived in Florence, Italy. I still remember laying on my lumpy twin bed in a tiny, rented flat, reading E.M. Forster’s classic novel, swatting mosquitos and waiting for my George to appear. My view was not of the Arno, but of terracotta rooftops and other peoples’ laundry. Still, at the time it felt romantic.  The thing I loved about the book then, and still love about the movie now, is how it portrays the emotions of frustration, desire, and indecision. Lucy wants to rebel against the life prescribed for her, but she doesn’t have the faintest idea how to do that, or what she wants as an alternative. Then somebody comes along to shake things up, providing the catalyst for the fire inside her. I love angsty stories about women in their late-teens/early-twenties because it’s such a fraught but important time. This is when the big decisions get made, when the forks in the road appear. I love the direction this story eventually takes because although Lucy does choose one of her suitors, she chooses herself first. Isn’t that how every great love story should begin?

If you’re looking for a cinema vacation, this film provides a perfect one. From crowded Florentine squares, to the rolling hills of Fiesole, to the bucolic villages of England, this whole movie is a sun-dappled work of art. However, my favorite scenes are the ones set in Florence, which is why I’m pouring a refreshing spritz cocktail, perfect for sipping on a balcony of the Pensione Bertolini. While watching A Room With a View, I recommend drinking this Elderflower Spritz.

Elderflower Spritz

½ oz St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur

Fresh Mint

4 oz Prosecco

2 oz Club Soda

Muddle mint with St. Germain in the bottom of a glass. Let it sit for a few minutes, then add ice. Top with Prosecco and club soda, stirring gently to combine.

Speaking of elder, Maggie Smith does a terrific job in this as Lucy’s spinster-cousin and chaperone Charlotte, and I adore Judi Dench as the saucy romance novelist they meet in Italy. A Room With a View is a movie world to get lost in, and that feels pretty good right now. Summer, and all its adventures, will be here before we know it. Cheers!

Action/Adventure/Heist · Comedies · Uncategorized

The Nice Guys

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Image credit: The Nice Guys, 2016

If you like the comedy of The Big Lebowski, the 1970s So-Cal production design of Inherent Vice, and the heat between Russell Crowe and Kim Basinger in L.A. Confidential, then you’ll adore The Nice Guys (Disc/Download) as much as I do. A movie that made it onto my Top 5 List several years ago, it’s only gotten funnier and better with age.

Starring Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe as private investigators in Los Angeles circa 1977, this Shane Black film is the neo-noir buddy cop movie I never knew I needed. Gosling and Crowe are hilarious together, and though the plot meanders (as it does in most noirs), the chemistry between these two makes you want to keep watching. March and Healy are on a quest to investigate the death of porn star activist Misty Mountains, which takes them from rollicking sex-fueled parties in the Hollywood Hills, to a fabulous airport hotel bar (sign me up for a drink at the Flight Deck!), to an auto show full of Detroit’s finest land sharks. The period details in this film are fantastic, and you can almost taste the smog and polyester through the screen. This isn’t Bogey’s LA, or even The Dude’s—this city belongs to a couple of guys just trying to do right by the little old ladies and teen girls who need their help.

There’s nothing like a car crash in the first five minutes to pull me into a story, and this one has a doozy. As Misty lays sprawled over the crash site, boobs akimbo, gasping, “How do you like my car, big boy?” the tone is officially set. Let’s celebrate this stellar opening with a Scotch Mist cocktail.

Scotch Mist

½ cup Crushed Ice

2 oz Scotch

Lemon twist

Pack the ice into a glass, and pour the scotch over the ice. Twist a lemon peel across the top, then drop in.

Classic film fans will probably recognize this as Lauren Bacall’s drink of choice in 1946’s The Big Sleep, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be enjoyed in the 1970s. After all, strong cocktails and private dicks are two things that’ll never go out of style on the big screen. Cheers!

P.S.- if you’re looking for more Film Noir cocktail pairings, be sure to order a copy of Eddie Muller’s fantastic book, Noir Bar!

Uncategorized

Calamity Jane

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Image credit: Calamity Jane, 1953

Historians may want to take a pass this week as we watch the rollicking Technicolor musical Calamity Jane (Disc/Download), which bears little resemblance to the actual life of Wild West legend Martha Jane Cannary. Nevertheless, what the movie lacks in accuracy, it makes up for in pure Doris Day charm. I don’t usually love Westerns, but when it’s Doris in a fringed suede jacket and a cute ponytail, how can I resist?

Starring Doris as Calamity Jane and baritone-voiced dreamboat Howard Keel as her friend-to-lover Wild Bill Hickok, this movie is one of the more unusual musicals I’ve seen. Somehow, it manages to be progressive and offensive at the same time, and I don’t know whether to sigh over the tired Native American stereotypes, or cheer over the delightful scene where Calamity moves in with her gal pal Katie and they fix up a cottage together. Then there’s the unexpectedly brilliant drag performance by Dick Wesson (the rural booking agent thought Francis Fryer was a woman’s name, and well, the show must go on…), plus Doris in pants, and damned if this movie doesn’t flip those gender stereotypes in the best way. As with most Doris Day movies, the thing I love is that she plays a confident, capable woman who doesn’t need a man to complete her life. She’d be fine without one, but it sure is nice when Wild Bill realizes what’s been right in front of him the whole time.

In crafting a cocktail for this film, I took inspiration from both the movie, and my local liquor store. Calamity Gin is a Texas spirit just begging to be sipped during this film, but one can’t discount the way Calamity rolls up to the bar to order a “Sarsaparill-ie”. It’s adorable. Let’s combine the two with this Calamity Collins.

Calamity Collins

1 ½ oz Calamity Gin

¾ oz Lemon Juice

¾ oz Sarsaparilla Syrup (simmer Sarsaparilla soda over heat until reduced by half)

6 oz Indian Tonic Water

Combine gin, lemon juice, and sarsaparilla syrup in a shaker with ice. Shake until chilled, then strain into a Collins glass filled with ice. Top with tonic water, and stir gently to combine.

One Life to Live fans will probably scream, as I did, over the appearance of a young Phil Carey (Asa Buchanan) as the Army lieutenant Calamity is crushing on at the start of the movie. He’s great, but he can’t hold a candle to Wild Bill. Eventually, Calamity realizes this, and the two trigger-happy legends ride off into the sunset together. Still, I can’t help but wish her “secret love” had been… someone else. Calam and Katie shacked up in their cute little cottage with their plaid shirts and wood pile? Now that’s the happy ending I want to see. Cheers!

Dramas

Apollo 13

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Image credit: Apollo 13, 1995

If you’ve been looking for an excuse to use up that jar of Tang you’ve had sitting in the back of your pantry, then today’s your lucky day because Cinema Sips is headed to the moon with Apollo 13 (Disc/Download)!  Part disaster flick, part character drama, part ode to late 1960s patterned wallpaper, this movie is about working the problem, one roll of duct tape at a time.

I remember watching this as a tween, right around the time that our school took a field trip to the National Air and Space Museum. Very quickly, I became obsessed with all things astronaut. The freeze-dried ice cream! The Corvette Stingrays! The crew cuts! The tape decks populated by Norman Greenbaum and Jefferson Airplane! What a time to be alive. Modern spaceflight feels almost dull; a status symbol for aging bald men and their billions of dollars. But back in the sixties, it was brave test pilots up above the atmosphere, trying to stay alive in broken down hunks of metal with heat shields held on by an old belt. The Apollo 13 disaster will always be a riveting story because it’s about humans trying to stay alive under impossible conditions. Everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong, but somehow, this ship made it home. We didn’t have the internet, we didn’t have fancy gadgets, and back then, computers took up an entire room. But we didn’t need any of that- all it took was good old engineering and a whole lot of courage.

Although it existed before the Gemini missions, Tang became popular after it was marketed as the astronaut’s drink-of-choice. A powdered mix, it gave a semblance of orange juice up in space where supplies (and fresh produce stands) were limited. I think it works quite well in a margarita, so while you’re watching Apollo 13, I recommend drinking a Moonshot Margarita.

Moonshot Margarita

2 oz Reposado Tequila

1 oz Cointreau

1 oz Lime Juice

1 Tsp Tang

Orange garnish

Combine all ingredients in a shaker with ice. Shake to chill, then strain into a glass filled with ice. Garnish with a dehydrated orange.

The cast of this movie is great, and it certainly cemented Tom Hanks as the actor you’d most like to have with you in a crisis. But for me, the unsung hero of Apollo 13 is Bill Paxton as Fred Haise. Suffering from a UTI, eating frozen hot dogs, listening to his Hank Williams tape slowly die—you really feel the misery of space travel through his performance. I shall think of him every time I gaze upon the constellation Urinus. Cheers!