email: latenightpickwick@gmail.com
From a certain perspective, some holidays just hit differently, because it’s always about context.
For me, Halloween has always been the best night of the year. It’s the day after my birthday, and as I grew up, I felt like Hollywood was especially making movies for me to watch after I blew out my candles, unwrapped my gifts, and ate a large wedge of cake. As an 11-year-old child trick-or-treating from door to door, it was as if the entire neighborhood wanted to help me celebrate my birth, even if they couldn’t recognize me behind my Ghostface mask.
For some, Fathers’ Day may be a significant holiday, especially if you see Dad as the greatest man in the world. Or perhaps because you’ve lost your beloved father. Perhaps because you never knew him. The relationship that people have with their father has a significant correlation to their recognition of that holiday.
Or — like me — you were raised by a single mother.
Never one to undermine those who were raised by the best mom or those who were raised by the worst mom or those who lost a mom or those who never knew their mom or those who were raised by a single mom, I’ve always had a special place in my heart for Mothers’ Day: the closest thing to a nationally-recognized holiday for superheroes, in my opinion.
This Mothers’ Day, the Pickwick Drive-In examines eight movies: heartbreaking, hilarious, horrifying, and otherwise. These films run the gamut of motion picture genres & their best characteristics: funny, frightening, and from out of this world. Use this watchlist to discover some mama-friendly films or revisit some classics that may have slipped your mind with time, whether in one grand bingefest or over the course of eight days & nights that conclude with Sunday’s Mothers’ Day itself.
Simply remove your shoes at the door, keep your elbows off the dinner table, and remember that your favorite dishes were the ones that Mom made. May any one of these pictures provide a portrait that will remind you why moms are so important to life …
… And cinema.
It’s all about context.
Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair
A C T I O N
2004 | NOT RATED | 275 minutes | d. Quentin Tarantino | dp. Robert Richardson | s. Quentin Tarantino
* * * *
You will enjoy this movie if you love kung fu, revenge, samurai, spaghetti westerns, and swordplay.
* * * *
When the entire party of a wedding rehearsal in Texas is violently murdered, the Bride (Uma Thurman) – left for dead – awakens from a four-year coma to discover the life of her unborn child was also lost in the attack. Now, hell-bent on revenge, the Bride — a highly-trained former assassin — embarks on a circuitous journey to kill the assassins (Vivica A. Fox, Daryl Hannah, Lucy Liu, and Michael Madsen) & their leader (David Carradine) responsible for the carnage.
For a number of years, watching both volumes of writer-director Quentin Tarantino’s epic revenge flick Kill Bill was an emotional, physical, and psychological undertaking. If I pressed PLAY on Volume 1 (2003) – the kung fu-infused stir fry of samurai – I would have to press PLAY immediately on Volume 2 (2004) – the weather-worn western of blood & bullets.
Like a true act of revenge, you shouldn’t get to catch your breath with Kill Bill. You don’t get a day off. You stay the course. Because you are – as Bill tells the Bride – a natural born killer.
And yet – as Hatorri Hanso (Sonny Chiba) tells the audience – “Revenge is never a straight line,” so perhaps it’s all about timing.
For me, I fell in love with Volume 2 first. I love the simplistic justice of westerns, and I’d just discovered the Man With No Name. Volume 2 was a perfect fit, for me. Over time, I fell more in love with Volume 1, because I’d discovered Bruce Lee & the true nature of honor. So while I was torn between the ritualistic duty of Volume 1 & the lawlessness of Volume 2, The Whole Bloody Affair – the marriage of both films together, adding new scenes & deleting other scenes, an altogether different Kill Bill experience – is as close to Tarantino’s most perfect film as he will likely get.
In my mind, it surpasses even the fresh, youthful greatness of Reservoir Dogs (1992) and overshadows the critically-acclaimed Pulp Fiction (1994), which would promise Tarantino could make any film that he wanted, for the rest of time. Even Inglourious Basterds (2009) – despite being called Tarantino’s masterpiece by one of its own characters – somehow fails to do for me what Kill Bill does, in telling the story of a mother seeking to somehow reclaim the life of her daughter, at any cost, even if revenge is a like a forest. As Hanso says – “And, like a forest, it’s easy to lose your way.”
But – in reality, bringing the best of gunslinger & samurai together – however we got here, The Whole Bloody Affair was always the only way.
* * * *
* * * *
Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair is streaming on Fandango.
The Secret of NIMH
A N I M A T E D
1982 | G | 85 minutes | d. Don Bluth | ed. Jeffrey Patch | s. Don Bluth & John Pomeroy, et al.
* * * *
You will enjoy this movie if you love magic, rural life, sparkling objects, and talking animals. You will also enjoy this film if you hate animal experimentation.
* * * *
A widowed, single mother mouse (voiced by Elizabeth Hartman) knows that she must move her family in order to avoid the annual plowing of the farm tractor, but the health of one of her children makes the move life-threatening. Enlisting the help of a small army of highly-intelligent rats encamped nearby, she learns that her late husband has a deep connection to them – even as peril persists within the ranks of the rats themselves.
At under 90 minutes, The Secret of NIMH is an absolute snack of a film and possesses much of the dark dread that early Disney films embraced. Don Bluth – an animator who broke away from Disney in order to maintain his own artistic vision – would go on to head films like An American Tail (1986), The Land Before Time (1988), and All Dogs Go To Heaven (1989). But The Secret of NIMH is bleak, confronting as it does animal experimentation in a way that Disney never would.
In the end, Mrs. Brisby’s mission to save her children from the annual tractor plow speaks to something organic & nurturing & human in our need to protect our young ones …
… Even if our young ones are mice.
* * * *
* * * *
The Secret of NIMH is streaming on Amazon Prime.
Mr. Mom
C O M E D Y
1983 | PG | 91 minutes | d. Stan Dragoti | dp. Victor J. Kemper | s. John Hughes
***
You will enjoy this movie if you love company picnics, coupons, household chores, poker, and tuna fish.
* * * *
Jack Butler (Michael Keaton) has built a career out of automotive engineering, but when he’s furloughed from his job, he has to learn a new trade as a stay-at-home dad while his wife (Teri Garr) returns to her career in the advertising industry.
And building an automobile from the ground up is easier than being the head of a household that includes three children.
There is something of a gender bender with Mr. Mom here, asking audiences to reconsider the traditional role of the homemaker — just as Tootsie (1982) and Baby Boom (1987) asked audiences to re-examine gender roles in other industries as well.
While this particular film isn’t strictly a Mothers’ Day motion picture, it at least recognizes those male homemakers who might be fighting to be seen as the backbone of the contemporary household — meanwhile, the motion picture features a strong female protagonist as the breadwinner of the family.
* * * *
* * * *
Mr. Mom is streaming on Amazon Prime.
Room
D R A M A
2015 | R | 118 minutes | d. Lenny Abrahamson | dp. Danny Cohen | s. Emma Donoghue
* * * *
You will enjoy this movie if you love daring escapes, dogs (plush or real), make-believe, Rug, and the world.
* * * *
The only world Joy (Brie Larson) has known for years has been Room, a backyard storage shed where she was imprisoned after her abduction at the age of 17. And the only world her five-year-old son Jack (Jacob Tremblay) has known has been Room as well — the son of his mother & the son of their mysterious captor. But when Joy & Jack concoct a plan to finally escape, they’ll not only have to contend with the danger of doing so but also have to contend with acclimating to an intimidating world — one of which Joy hasn’t known for years, one of which Jack has never experienced in his life.
Knowing nothing of Emma Donoghue’s novel, I had no idea that Joy & Jack’s escape from Room was only the beginning of their journey. What these two will endure outside the prison-like walls of Room is just as frustrating, emotionally-draining, and life-changing as anything that happened within Room’s walls.
I also had no idea that I would openly weep when I did during this movie, when half of the movie still remains. But what director Lenny Abrahamson taps into with half of the motion picture’s run-time is a certain kind of magical reality that Room asks Joy & Jack to create & believe …
… And with the rest of it, a certain kind of magical reality that the real world asks Joy & Jack to simply accept, measured as it is with the passage of days once glimpsed through the skylight of a backyard storage shed.
* * * *
Room is streaming on Hulu.
Psycho II
H O R R O R
1983 | R | 113 minutes | d. Richard Franklin | dp. Dean Cundey | s. Tom Holland
* * * *
You will enjoy this movie if you love creepy childhood homes, diner food, opportunities for criminal rehabilitation, properly tipping your waitstaff, and roadside motels.
* * * *
In a sequel more than 20 years removed from Alfred Hitchcock’s original Psycho (1960), Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) has been released from a mental institution — 22 years after he committed the crimes outlined in the first motion picture — and returns to his family & Bates Motel home where he intends to live a quiet life. But despite new, gainful employment & an intriguing love interest (Meg Tilly), suspicious murders close to Norman suggest that he may be regressing into the psychotic personality of “Mother” that once prompted him to take innocent lives more than 20 years ago.
When it comes to horror movies — especially slashers — sequels are rather baked in, expected, sometimes unnecessary, frequently more ludicrous with each passing film. But with screenwriter Tom Holland’s sequel to the Master of Suspense’s original Psycho, horror film fans have in Psycho II one of the genuinely better sequels in horror film franchise history.
A commercial success, Psycho II was met with mixed acclaim. Some saw the film as a worthy follow-up to a classic released more than 20 years before; others saw the film as too violent, compared to the source material, or otherwise unfaithful to the suspense of the original movie. Perhaps comparing director Richard Franklin’s sequel to Hitchcock’s original is unfair if refusing to consider the plethora of horror movie sequels that never lived up to the original.
Perhaps one should watch Psycho II as a standalone film — not as a sequel — as a film about a man struggling to overcome the mental illness with which he fought for so long, but that would require separating a sequel from a legitimate film.
And perhaps — to most moviegoers — that’s just psycho.
* * * *
* * * *
Psycho II is streaming on Plex.
Enough Said
R O M A N T I C C O M E D Y
2013 | PG-13 | 93 minutes | d. Nicole Holofcener | dp. Xavier Pérez Grobet | s. Nicole Holofcener
* * * *
You will enjoy this movie if you love guacamole, pajama pants, professional body massages, and those yogurt places where you can purchase additional toppings to your heart’s content.
* * * *
Divorced mom Eva (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) meets her share of unique people working as an at-home masseuse, and she’s therefore heard her share of relationship issues. But when Eva meets funny, kindred spirit divorcee Albert (James Gandolfini), Eva may have met the love of her life. But as Eva befriends one of her clients (Catherine Keener) — also divorced — and hears story after story about Marianne’s ex, the very specific complaints begin to sound more & more like Albert. Now, Eva wonders if her romance with Albert could be the real thing or just another failed relationship that she will consciously sabotage.
Nicole Holofcener’s offbeat rom-com is a rather perfect film that explores so many complex aspects of human relationships: hilarious, heartwarming, and harrowing — all at once. While confronting the difficult space of dating, the motion picture also addresses the empty nest syndrome that awaits so many parents, awaits both Eva & Albert as they prepare to send their daughters off to college. The confluence of both situations — romantic partners & college preparation — becomes a perfect storm for Eva, who will have to consciously determine if she’s willing to give up her relationship with Albert and ultimately determine if she’ll ever be ready to let her daughter go.
Heartwarming. And harrowing. And hilarious.
And yet heartbreaking as well, a bit like the heartbreak that will come from letting one’s child chase their future. But as one of Gandolfini’s last films, Enough Said is a true testament to the talent possessed by this creative talent. Examine the man’s final performances, and you’ll catch a glimpse of varied abilities. See Welcome to the Rileys (2010), Killing Them Softly (2012), Not Fade Away (2012), and The Drop (2014), and you’ll see Gandolfini at different stages of his late career — playing a father grieving his daughter’s death & afforded a chance for reconciliation with a young prostitute; a once-formidable hitman reluctant to perform another hit; the father of a young man hoping to start a rock band during the Vietnam conflict; and the conflicted manager of a Mafia-run bar. Gandolfini was an artist with range, not confined to the sociopathic family man he played in HBO’s The Sopranos (1999-2007), and his films — like Holofcener’s — remind audience not only what Gandolfini had produced but also what Gandolfini had left to give, which included more gifts than his character Albert was judged by his flaws.
Enough said.
* * * *
* * * *
Enough Said is available to rent on a number of streaming services.
Aliens
S C I E N C E F I C T I O N
1986 | R | 137 minutes | d. James Cameron | dp. Adrian Biddle | s. James Cameron
* * * *
You will enjoy this movie if you love artificial persons, cornbread, hot chocolate, and weaponized alien species.
* * * *
After the events of director Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979), Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is discovered in stasis in her escape shuttle from the Nostromo, as dramatized in the original film. Fifty-seven years after those events, Ripley is charged with serving as a consultant as Colonial Marines descend upon a moon-based terraforming colony, where Ripley has been assured that the military will exterminate upon sight. But when Ripley begins to suspect that the mission involves turning the deadly Xenomorph life form into a biological weapon to be returned to Earth, Ripley changes the mission plan in order to protect the life of a young girl named “Newt” (Rebecca Henn) — one of the colony’s sole survivors — in an effort to also eradicate the Xenomorph once & for all.
The mother-daughter dynamic is only suggested in director James Cameron’s theatrical release — never mind the maternal ferocity that compels Ripley to take on the Xenomorph Queen in the film’s third act. But in the director’s cut of the film, the audience learns that the young Ellen Ripley left a child on Earth when she embarked on the doomed mission of the Nostromo. And — while Ripley drifted aimlessly in space for 57 years — her Earthbound daughter passed away from natural causes, rendering Ripley childless.
Within the limited narrative of the motion picture’s theatrical release, Ripley’s connection to young Newt doesn’t appear so abbreviated. Charged with not only destroying the alien Xenomorph but also protecting the life of a young child, Aliens remains one of the most notable science fiction films of all time, as well as one of the best inclusions on a Mothers’ Day watchlist.
* * * *
* * * *
Aliens is streaming on HBO Max.
Panic Room
T H R I L L E R
2002 | R | 113 minutes | d. David Fincher | dp. Conrad W. Hall & Darius Khondji | s. David Koepp
* * * *
You will enjoy this movie if you love claustrophobia, home security, the occasional ski mask, and pizza.
* * * *
Mother Meg Altman (Jodie Foster) & her daughter Sarah (Kristen Stewart) have enough to worry about as they search NYC for a new home, but when their newly-purchased home is invaded by criminals (Forest Whitaker, Jared Leto, and Dwight Yoakam) seeking a fortune allegedly hidden within the very panic room that Mom & Daughter now occupy, the night becomes an intense standoff of will.
“It’s disgusting how much I love you,” mother Meg tells her daughter Sarah, tucking her in for the night, moments before home invaders would enter their new home.
And what a joy it is to love Panic Room. Never mind the fact that the motion picture is helmed by David Fincher as director — on his 4th film, off the heels of Se7en (1995) & Fight Club (1999), among others. But add to this tight-spaced thriller screenwriter David Koepp, who had already cut his teeth on Carlito’s Way (1993), Mission: Impossible (1996), Jurassic Park (1997), and more, and you have all the ingredients for a perfect crime.
But recognize that the movie is about a single mother who, feeling helpless in the face of divorce & raising a daughter on her own in NYC, must now defend her smaller family in a foreign home …
… And you have no need to panic.
This is a movie that you want to see, whether with friends or secluded from all others, as if taking shelter in a panic room.
* * * *
* * * *
Panic Room is available to rent on a number of streaming services.
Chris Kaine is the most amateur film essayist whom you may ever imagine. He earnestly contends that he was named after the actor Chris Sarandon, because he was either conceived while his parents watched Fright Night (1985) in his paternal grandparents’ basement, or because of their love for The Princess Bride (1987), which stars a character by the name of “Humperdink,” which is pretty funny, if you think about it.
Late-Night at the Pickwick Drive-In 
Leave a comment