Unhook the Stars (1996)

Best movie of this year hands down!

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

The film starts out very well with Mildred's daughter, a rebellious teenager, leaving her widowed mother's home. Mildred forms a bond with next door neighbor, played in a wonderful performance by Marisa Tomei, a crude low-life with an even lower-life husband. He walks out on her and Mildred agrees to watch their young child while Tomei works.This all sounds good. Mildred finds romance with Gerard Depardieu at a bar while with the Tomei character. Mildred's son and daughter-in-law want her to join them in San Francisco. Fine.Suddenly the writing goes awry. Tomei reconciles with her husband who comes back as a changed man. Mildred suddenly sells her house and by the picture's end, we don't know where she is going to. Also, since the Tomei and Mildred's daughter had so much in common, it would have been nice to see them in the same scenes together.

Marisa Tomei has always been one of my favorite actresses. She has a very individual, very strong, not to mention incredibly hot, presence and is one of the major scene thieves of our time. She is by far the best thing about My Cousin Vinny, which would hardly be even close to being as worthwhile without her. She is the only reason to watch Just A Kiss. She is wonderful in Happy Accidents and In the Bedroom. In Unhook the Stars, she is a joy to see, not just for her presence and ability to intrigue even inaminate objects but also for the freedom-emblazoned attitude she fleshes out in her character. She is not at all subtle, but she is a realistically subtle contrast to Gene Rowlands, who plays opposite her. However, in this film, Gena Rowlands serves to be the first person I've ever seen who's stolen any scene from the likes of Marisa Tomei. Tomei's earliest scenes are brilliantly fiery, both hilarious and alarming, one of these great instances involving dialogue with other characters while she is in another room cursing and raving into the phone incidentally during the natural pauses in between the other characters' exchanges. But gradually, Rowlands earns our focus a bit more, because I've hardly felt more deeply for many other characters in many other movies.Gena Rowlands plays a mother on the latter end of middle age whose daughter gives her great disrespect and constantly runs off, leaving her to do her paper route. She has a highly serious and successful son who lives for admiration and objectifies his wife. Rowlands is lonely, riding the gentle winds through the motions of life at home. When Tomei, grungy, aggressive young mother, asks her to babysit her young son while she's at work, a new and beautiful relationship emerges into Rowlands's life, giving her great happiness and fulfillment, but the natural interferences and oncoming decisions of life seem to taper it. The scenes with her and the young boy are so touching and full of emotion. I won't explain further into her character or the story that is driven by her, but I will say that what she is is a touching, very very deeply felt characterization of a common, lonely mother of great selflessness, surrounded by the self-absorption of the people she cares the most for. And you will be surprised at how much you care for such overlooked people, people who rarely come to be the lead character in a movie.Though Nick Cassavettes doesn't quite have the intensity or fluently original technique that his father, John Cassavettes, had, he does carry on in the Cassavettes tradition of plain and direct interpretations of reality. His film is about loneliness, and about the sort of person who takes so little from us in return for so much that she gives, and how she is prompted to live.

Two accomplished thespians (Gena and Marisa) team up to give us another unforgettable performance. Gena, as the giver who could not longer give, comes to the unavoidable conclusion that before it's all over, she had better take a little time out for herself.She finally stops helping the man-addicted neighbor. Nick Cassavetes does a help of a job directing.Victor Casals, SAG

Gena plays a suburban widow who comes at a crossroad in life. To help her along the journey is her two children who have their own problems to deal with. There is also the loud mouth mother and her little boy from across the road as well as the loving French truck driver who romances her. All of this brings a new meaning to her life and we the audience get to journey with her.