JULIE & JULIA. It would be tempting to say that, in telling and connecting the stories of Julia Child (Meryl Streep), the towering, lovable culinary titan who made French cuisine accessible to the American masses, and Julie Powell (Amy Adams), the disillusioned cubicle drone who writes a blog about cooking all 524 recipes in Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year, that writer-director Nora Ephron has come up with her first non-romantic comedy. But that wouldn't be right. Julie & Julia is a tickling love letter to food and everything that makes life worth living: the iron will to be good at something, the generosity of spirit that makes us want to nourish ourselves, our loved ones, our world. And mark my words: For a performance that not only nails Child's goose-honk cadences but captures what a benevolent force of nature this remarkable woman was, Meryl will be walking down the red carpet for a mind-boggling 16th Oscar nomination.
ANG PANGGAGAHASA KAY FE. A woman is trapped between an abusive husband and an impotent former suitor. It's a dysfunctional love triangle that's been tackled many times before in many a Filipino melodrama. But thanks to a mysterious bowl of blackened fruit, the sure hand of writer-director Alvin Yapan, and actress Irma Adlawan–who has found a home for her prodigious talents in independent cinema–what could have been a tired conceit becomes subtle, lyrical, and wonderfully mystifying. This film's international title is The Rapture of Fe–rapturous, indeed.
But I can't see The Hangover so I think that was the one lacking here.