Monsoon Wedding (2001) and Vanity Fair (2004)

The previously mentioned Mira Nair double bill!

Plot 1: Big ol' wedding, monsoon season, lots of shit goes down. Alright, the bride-to-be is engaged in an affair with a married ex, acting out her cold feet in the face of her impending arranged nuptials. Her whole family descends upon the house preparing for this lavish wedding, and all sorts of antics and secrets come to a head, as they so often do in similar movie situations.

Plot 2: Becky Sharp's a social climbing, back-stabbing beyotch, letting no friend stand in her way of getting to the top of the heap.

Here's the problem with this double bill: I've been putting it off because I have nothing to say about either movie. The picture above, from which movie I'll let you guess, I picked for representing my two fav characters in the movie (the event planner and a housemaid, respectively) and for being pretty. I enjoyed the movie and laughed a fair bit, but I'm still convinced that a fair chunk of it went right over my head. At a certain point, given the consumption of marigolds, I became convinced that they were a lesser form of poppy/opiates, poised to overtake the world's heroin market with their readily available americanized form.

I know that's not true, but it's a funny lens with which to view the movie. (B+)

As for the second offering, one word: boring. Bored the hell out of me, really. As much as I like Reese Witherspoon, and as much as I think she works her little tushy off in every role, I again chose a picture that did not feature the main character.

Why, you might ask? You sure do ask a lot of questions. Because, for the life of me, even though that I knew full well that they softened her up for the film's sake, I didn't give a flying fig about Becky's plight. There were too many good looking men with mixed motivations to distract me. Because she screeched like a howler monkey.
Plus, and I don't know if I mentioned this, it was so very boring. Monstrously boring.

So, quite magically but predictably, the combination of a director I thought I liked based on previous work with a writer I knew I liked based on previous work (Julian Fellowes, he of Gosford Park fame) equaled crap. Too bad, so sad, quickly forgotten. C-