Movies, Drama
Boy, you have to be a true romantic to enjoy this film. A few weeks ago I wrote about John Keats in my diary. He is a magnificent poet. But this film about his love for Fanny Brawne is tough to sit through unless you are able to be deeply moved by true romance and require no drama: nothing much to happens except two people who are deeply in love with another. The Immortal Beloved film about Beethoven’s love interest is an cliffhanger compared to Bright Star. John Keats’s inner life and the poetry it allowed to emerge are much more rewarding than this film. If only Keats had not died at the tender age of 25.Bright Star
Movies, Drama
This film is a like a glass of wine that you first don’t like because the taste is so foreign (British dry humor). But after you continue to drink you warm up to the taste. And towards the end it becomes a quite magnificent comedy. Rock n’ Roll in the eyes of the autorities had the status of gangster rap. If you are into the history of rock n’ roll, even if it is fictional, Pirate Radio film has some funny moments.Pirate Radio
Movies, Drama
Think back to a past relationship. If you have kept a diary, read the entry for every day for as long as the relationship lasted. At the end of each day, decide whether you felt good or bad because of the person you were with. This will allow you to do a brutally honest accounting of how much happiness or suffering a relationship has brought you. Now imagine that you assign each day in the relationship a number from 1 to the last day. Let’s say it lasted 500 days. Now randomly pick out days, and reread your diary. This is exactly what 500 Days of Summer does, except in the medium of film. It is brilliant because it captures so well the ups and downs of every past relationship. After all, if it had not downs, it would not be past relationship! Don’t miss this wonderful film about the 500 day relationship between Tom (boy) and Summer (girl). It breaks new ground in how to tell a story.500 Days of Summer
Movies, Drama
The film takes a look behind the scenes of how Gore and Bush fought out their electoral battle for five weeks after the election. Even for someone who read the newspaper every day during this period, the writer and director manage put on a gripping drama. Clearly, the movie is written from the Democratic (loosing) perspective. But with the exception of how James Baker and Warren Christopher are portrayed (the come across differently when they are on TV), the film is splendid.Recount
Movies, Drama
The idea of making a film about sexual desires of seniors is brilliant. Such a film was overdue. But Andreas Dresen, the 46-year-old director of Cloud 9 constructed a film about his own desires rather than exploring how seniors cope with society’s predilection to see them as sexless creatures. Dresen’s drama is not about the psychological challenges of growing old: losing your partner, falling in love again, wanting physical intimacy with someone who perhaps no longer cares for it. Dresen wants to demonstrate how we can be spooked by breaking many taboos of contemporary sensibilities. Hollywood staffs sex scenes with young women; he opens the film with a long sex scene with a woman in her late sixties and a seventy-six year old man. Even more shockingly, he gives the lead female character Inge (very well-played by Ursula Werner) the psychology of a sixteen-year-old girl who is naive, emotional, reckless, and irrational.Cloud 9 (Wolke 9)
Movies, Drama
Clint Eastwood is now 78 years old. He has directed 29 movies. Some of them are very good (e.g. Letters from Iwo Jima) some of the very bad (e.g. Bridges of Madison County). He works quickly. Yet in contrast to Woody Allen who also makes one film a year, Eastwood is not repeating himself. The reason for this is simple: unlike Allen he does not write his own scripts. When Eastwood secures a good script as in the case of Gran Torino he makes great films. Gran Torino is takes place in a decaying working class neighborhood in Michigan. Whites are moving out and relatively poor immigrants move in. Putting it mildly, Walt Kowalski (played by Clint Eastwood) is not happy about this development. But after his wife dies, his anti-foreigner sentiments are challenged by the charms of the two teenage kids of the Vietnamese family that has moved in next door to him. Now you are treated to a wonderful story. I don’t want to give it away. Go see the film.Gran Torino
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