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Garden State – nf – Kind of a slacker movie, “days in the life…” of some offbeat, but affecting young people having trouble growing up. 2004

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Easy Virtue – sp- Noel Coward was obviously a genius and this movie is based on a play that he wrote when he was 25 years old. It is a period piece set in England where a young man (Ben Barnes) comes back to the family manor with a new glamorous American wife (Jessica Biel) who just came in first at the Grand Prix auto race in Monte Carlo. Most of the stuffy British family especially the mother (Kristin Scott Thomas) can’t handle her and her modern ways. Colin Firth does an excellent job portraying the father who has his own history. The plot has depth to it and the screenplay is true to the Coward genre, which includes many witty lines from him as well as from writers Stephen Elliot and Sheridan Jobbins (the latter was a guest at our course). Although it is not a musical, there is a most enjoyable musical background with many pieces by Coward. 2008

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Baby It’s You – nf – This movie was made 26 years ago in 1983 and it is about growing up in the mid 1960s. Those of us who were around at that time should be able to attest that it depicted this era quite well. The setting is senior year of high school in New Jersey where a college bound upper middle class Jewish girl played by Rosanna Arquette has a romance with blue collar Italian boy played by Vincent Spano. She goes away to Sara Lawrence and he follows his not so obtainable dream working in Florida. The trials and tribulations of a young woman in her first year at an all girl’s school with dorm life, alcohol, marijuana, and visits from the guys from Princeton etc are nicely captured by Director /Writer John Sayles with the help of an appropriate sound track. Some resolution of the unfinished high school romance has to be played out as is often the case in all generations. We thought this movie can be evocative for those who lived through those years or thereabouts and yet could also find meaning to today’s youth who would be using their cell phones or texting rather than the dormitory hallway telephone. That almost make this a classic. 1983