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19 July 2013
Just watched the Joe Wright adaptation of Anna Karenina. Didn't care for it at all. What movies have you seen recently? Old or new, rewatches, whatever.
I saw Frances Ha on Tuesday evening with a girlfriend, and we both loved it. I'd recently seen Lola Versus on TV, and although I didn't love that film, I did like Greta Gerwig.
So, Sky TV has this rewards programme where it offers free pre-release screenings to the customers who subscribe to its movie package. Most of the recent free offers have been for blockbusters that don't interest me, but Frances Ha appealed to me.
Anyway, the movie was great. It's in black & white, which was a surprise. But Greta Gerwig was wonderful, and my friend and I groaned at every unwise choice she made, hoping it'd all come good in the end for her. Plus it had the wonderful, sexy Adam Driver in it, who for me can do no wrong.
Last night I saw this, on a big screen in an old opera house. Beautifully photographed, gorgeous scenery, over-the-top melodrama, and the stupidest courtroom scene ever.
I watched Symbol (IMDB page) the other night, and I'm still giggling.
I saw the honest-to-goodness hard sci-fi flick Europa Report and thought it was great.
I don't usually go in for movies like Speed Scandal, but I thoroughly enjoyed it despite the soundtrack.
Gérard Depardieu is a bit like Mel Gibson: he turned out to be rather loathsome personally but his on-screen magnétisme remains unabated. My Afternoons with Margueritte is further proof, charm without treacle (okay, the voiceover intro/outro is a bit much, but it was a book first and I guess the narrator was deemed necessary).
Continuing on the iconic Frenchman tip, I enjoyed Jean Reno's accomplished turn as a retiring Marseillaise mafia don in 22 Bullets. By the way, have you seen those two heavyweights together in Ruby & Quentin? It's stupid fun.
Handsome man George Clooney runs around the Italian countryside with a gun in the beautifully shot and mysteriously paced The American. I enjoyed this much more than I expected.
I may have mentioned this before, but I loved Meek's Cutoff. Michelle Williams is fantastic in this utterly believable and claustrophobic anti-western about hardship and mistrust on the Oregon Trail.
I also really liked Vertical Ray of the Sun, a family story about three Vietnamese sisters which demands your attention and rewards your patience.
JanetLand, Gene Tierney is an amazing on-screen presence (her personal life, however, was all trouble and heartbreak). She's in one of my favorite noirs, Otto Preminger's Where the Sidewalk Ends. When I sorted through my mom's things after she died, I found a stack of drawings she'd done as a girl of women in fashionable outfits. Their faces all look just like Gene Tierney.
I saw the 2004 BBC mini-series North & South (which of course is based on the Elizabeth Gaskell novel of the same name) these past two evenings and really enjoyed it. Richard Armitage makes me all swoony.
Huh, I really liked the new AK adaptation, if only for all the insane High Imperial Design and kinda of contexuizaing the tragedy of an alien time and place and mindset.
I recently rewatched Chinatown and was totally struck how Jack Nicholson's character is Sam Space, eyebrows and white suit and all,
Also, I recently watched The Last Samurai. Though the historically acccurate mise-en-scène, casting, and action was breathtaking, I had real problems with its pernicious white-man-encounters-foreign-culture-then-shows-natives-how-to-be-even-better-natives-than-they-were-before narrative.
I mention it here not because I recommend it but because several times they showed close ups of Tom Cruise's face and I thought, Damn, that guy looks like The Whelk. I hope you don't take that the wrong way, something in the eyes, the hair, and the general mien. Handsome devil.
Museum Hours, Fill the Void, and for those following Greta, Damsels in Distress is great, (though she seemed to dismiss it when I recently met her--perhaps to defend Frances Ha)