Far From Heaven

In Far From Heaven, Todd Haynes pays loving homage to sumptuous 1950's Douglas Sirk melodramas. This movie is actually more ambitious than anything Sirk ever did though. Haynes tackles multiple controversies in his "Issues Film", including closeted homosexuality and romance between a black man & a white woman. The actors---especially Julianne Moore---are excellent. Moore, Dennis Quaid and Dennis Haysbert play it very close to the chest and they make their director's deliberately phony-sounding dialogue come across as true and accurate. These characters have three-dimensions and many shades of grey and they all get hurt by the way society was back then...and in some ways still is. Incidentally, we neglected to mention that Haynes himself is gay. We also skated over the horrible act of conversion therapy, which no one should have ever had to go through. And we didn't make the connection that Moore played ANOTHER desperately suppressed '50s housewife in her other 2002 Oscar nomination (The Hours). So don't ask who on Earth is politely knocking at your door, by golly. Just download the 453rd Ellises' Analysis, Pop, but also buy a bunch of Sparkplug Coffee. You can nab a 20% discount by using our "top100project" promo code. Also, shoot us some tweets (@moviefiend51 and @bevellisellis) and perhaps try gazing at the offerings on Ryan's sports movie podcast ("Scoring At The Movies").