From Dictionary.com:

Narcissist:
1. A person who is overly self-involved, and often vain and selfish.
2. Psychoanalysis. a person who suffers from narcissism, deriving erotic gratification from admiration of his or her own physical or mental attributes.

Control Freak:
A person having a strong need for control over people or situations.

The two words above describe specific types of mental afflictions that unfortunately many people suffer from. As the new movie “The Last Word” points out very well, people who have these mental problems are hard to live with, work with and especially ever like.  The lead character in this film, Harriet, played by Shirley Maclaine, has both of these afflictions and even more that make her a very unlikeable person.  In an ultimate example of being a control freak, she even tries to control what is written in her own obituary even before she dies. Harriet’s obituary author, who Harriet also chooses herself works for a local paper and is played by Amanda Seyfried. What follows is the discovery that writing an obituary for a woman like this is close to impossible because just about everybody hates her, including even her own priest and her own daughter, played by Anne Heche. What this movie makes very obvious is that there is practically nothing more annoying than dealing with a person who is constantly condescending and never giving anyone any respect. A great example of this happens at the beginning of this film, as Harriet doesn’t even think that her own gardener can cut her hedges correctly or that her own maid can even cut a lemon correctly. This is bad enough when the person is perhaps some kind of a genius, but when this is a mental affliction, dealing with someone like this can be unbearable.

For this movie, I thought that the opportunity that was lost was not devoting enough of this film to explaining why Harriet is such a condescending and annoying control freak, but instead the story goes into different and sometimes strange twist and turns that are meant to be surprising or different but ultimately, for the most part, do not work. One example of this is when Harriet suddenly decides she wants to be a DJ for a location radio station or when she befriends a poor black child who is very outspoken at her school. Some of these story lines work for a while, but not for very long. One would think that these sub stories are Harriets attempts to perhaps build herself a better final obituary, but for the most part, none of this really works. At the explanation, there is a big attempt to explain why Harriet was the way she is, but that explanation also does not work, based on we have seen up to that point.

Trying to surprise the audience or going into unusual directions is ok sometimes but for this movie, it seemed too obvious that the writer and director were all about being different, rather than coming up with a good story that works for the whole two hours.

For these reasons, I cannot give a positive recommendation to The Last Word.

For those who never have seen the 3 Golden Globe’s that Tina Fey and Amy Poehler have hosted starting in 2013 through 2015 I have included them here. In terms of great stand up comedy, it doesnt get much better than this.

The translation of the Turkish word Kedi to English is Cat. And that is as simple as this movie is, because it is only about stray Cats in Istambul Turkey. This movie seems to focus on all the positive aspects while following a number of very healthy looking well-fed cats that are taken care of by the people who live in Istanbul. All of these cats seem to not only survive while living on the streets but actually thrive. The missing ingredient with this story is not covering the negative aspects of having so many cats crowded into one city. This includes the fact that the Turkish Government has obviously done a very bad job controlling the cat population in Istambul. The problems with a massive failure in controlling a cat population would include starvation and diseases caused by sanitation and many other issues. There is some mention of the problems with having so many cats in this film, including some cats that have understandably been killed by city traffic, but the central part of this story is all about how good a life for a cat seems to be in Istanbul Turkey and glossing over the big picture that you knew has to be there. I would have liked to have known why or how the cat population became so prolific? How does Istanbul rank in terms of all the cities in the world as far as having so many cats? What does the Turkish government do to take care of and protect all of these cats and are they trying to control the cat population? None of this is really talked about during this film.

On the positive side, the cats in this movie are all outstanding and most of them are extremely attractive and very healthy looking. One that stood out the most for me was a male gray cat (see video below) who was described as a cat that had some manners. This cat was always alone, and never was rude or harassed restaurant customers for food. He would stand up against the window and rub the glass so he would be noticed and then given food. Some other cats were more aggressive and one seemed to only like to be petted aggressively, rather than gently. As the subtitles in this movie said many times over, cats have as many diversified personalities as humans do and throughout this movie, many philosophies about life, the love of animals and specifically cats are talked about, most of which I strongly agreed with. After watching this movie, it is hard to understand why anyone does not love cats. Obviously, this is a great movie for all animal and cat lovers.

I highly recommend the movie Kedi.