Movies, Drama
One reason why people see the same film in very different ways is that we filter it through our past experiences and hopes for the future. Grapes of Wrath, made in 1940, documents the hardship of one family that can no longer make a living on the depleted soil of Oklahoma and leaves the Dust Bowl for California. The family believes California to be the land of milk and honey. But during the Great Depression jobs are very hard to come by even in California. The family finds it very difficult to put enough food on the table. In this struggle for survival the family disintegrates in part because individual members think they can survive better individually. I once heard that President Roosevelt through his New Deal polices savedGrapes of Wrath
Movies, Comedy
Unlike his later masterpieces About Schmidt and Sideways, this film lacks existential gravity. Instead of directing it as a comedy, Payne should have cast it as a drama with comic scenes. This is the style he uses in his later movies. But you can see already here Payne’s immense ability to bring onto the screen the social psychology of contemporary America.Election
Movies, Drama
Kinsey is quilt-like, stringing together scenes that are crafted with brillance and others that are poorly conceived and enacted. I wish the writer-director had spent a little more time removing the occasional second rate material from the film. What makes the movie charming is our amazement about how far western society has travelled in only 60 years when it comes to talking and thinking about sex. Kinsey interviewed thousands of Americans of all races and classes in the 1940s and recorded their sexual biographies. The strongest scene in the entire film happens shortly after Kinsey’s mother passes away and when Kinsey asks his unappreciating, dictatorial father to sit for one these scientific interviews. To appreciate the situation, think about how you would react to finding out everything about your parent’s sexual history…Kinsey
Movies, Drama
This is one the best action based dramas I have seen in a long time. The sequel is dramatically better than the first film in the franchise, The Bourne Identity. Call it a James Bond movie for the adult mind. 007 is not a real human being and his employer, the British secret service, is not a real bureaucratic organization. Unlike real humans beings James Bond does not fall in love with any of the beautiful women he has “relations” with. One exception: Once Bond does fall in love with his female counterpart (Diana Riggs) and gets married. But conveniently his wife is killled on the way to the honeymoon so that James is “free” for another beautiful woman in the next movie. The British secret service similarly is a fictionalized organization in which every employee like a good soldier works toward a common goal. Jason Bourne, by contrast, fell in love in the Bourne Identity and he works for an fractionalized and infighting CIA.The Bourne Surpremacy
Movies, Drama
Some time ago I came to the conclusion that film is the highest art form for it can combine all means of communication: words, pictures and music. It comes closest to how we actually experience life and in the hands of a competent director movies can make you forget completely your own reality for two hours. Watching Alexander PayneSideways
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