This week's movie was the 1994 version of Little Women. I remember reading the book when I was a kid and liking it very much. The movie is a pretty good rendition of the book.
Here's just the beginning of Roger Ebert's review (three and a half stars) ...
This is a surprisingly sharp and intelligent telling of Louisa May Alcott's famous story, and not the soft-edged children's movie it might appear. There's a first-rate cast, with Susan Sarandon as the mother; Winona Ryder as the tomboy, Jo; Trini Alvarado as Meg; Kirsten Dunst and Samantha Mathis as Amy, younger and older; and Claire Danes as Beth. As the girls are courted by their neighbor (Christian Bale) and his tutor (Eric Stoltz), and as Jo comes under the influence of a German professor (Gabriel Byrne), the film is true to Alcott's story about how all of life seems to stretch ahead of us when we're young, and how, through a series of choices, we choose and narrow our destiny .... The story is set in Concord, Mass., and begins in 1862, in a winter when all news is dominated by the Civil War. The March family is on its own; their father has gone off to war .....
As Ebert mentions, the beginning of the movie is a little too sweet and the relative poeverty the family finds themselves in would be a move upwards for me :) but still the film brought back a lot that was familiar from being a kid with my sister - having cats, learning to sew, writing stories, sharing clothes, dealing with money problems, wondering about the future.
- the March family digs
- Meg and a kitty
- Joe and friend Lorrie
- Joe and love interest, a German philosophy professor
