Post Spam 2: Movies and TV Part 1
Sep. 7th, 2006 11:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
talktoolooseHere are capsule reviews of recently viewed DVDs:
Munich
Typically unfocussed Spielberg. The unifying thread is supposed to be Eric Bana's unravelling and it sort of works, but it is not really the metaphor it needs to be.
Best scene is the one where Tony Kushner's hand is really felt—the midnight discussion between Bana and a PLO operative at a safehouse where we come to understand just how far a gulf exists between the historical understanding of the two sides. Best performace, Ciarin Hinds as one of the Israeli agents. He also astounded me as Caesar in HBO's Rome.
The film also has one of these descriptive soundtracks that the blind can turn on to "watch" the film. It is especially hilarious in the early scene where Bana and his wife are doing it. A nasally woman with a New York accent intones in a totally flat voice: "He lifts the edge of her bathrobe. She pushes a leg between his legs."
Heights
(MILD SPOILERS) I was totally surprised to love this movie. I didn't even tell Snake that part of the reason I wanted to see it was to see James Marsden as I was looking for more notes on Cyclops for my fic novel. But it turns out to be complex, subtly acted and dense. Glenn Close, playing Broadway's biggest dramatic actress, opens the film on a high note giving a master class at Juliard and cutting a strip off two young actors playing the Macbeths. She is bitchy, powerful, mesmerizing.
The film also has a great post-gay ending where the revelation of a character's secret same-sex love affair is totally not the point nor the cause of the breakup.
The Beat My Heart Skipped and Arsène Lupin
These are grouped because they both star Romain Duris though they're utterly different and both good.
The Beat... sort of reminds me of Clifford Odet's play from the 40s, Golden Boy, where the violin prodigy ends up going into boxing to support his family and ruining his hands. In this movie, Duris plays a thug who helps clean homeless people out of commercial real estate properties before his partners sell them for big bucks. But he has secret hopes of rekindling his dream of being a concert pianist. Duris holds the movie together with his charm and I just love the loose French feel of the shots and editing and the sex. Ah, the French.
Arsène is the latest film version of a series of 19th century books which were as popular as Sherlock Holmes in the French-speaking world. This incarnation is part of a recent trend in French action towards a polished, Matrix-like world of stylized action with dramatic, artistic visuals. This genre includes the excellent Vidoq and the moronic Brotherhood of the Wolf. The movie is a mutant cross of Indiana Jones, Matrix, James Bond and the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (comic book version, not movie version). Also starring Kristen Scott-Thomas and sly, sexy Pascal Greggory.
Munich
Typically unfocussed Spielberg. The unifying thread is supposed to be Eric Bana's unravelling and it sort of works, but it is not really the metaphor it needs to be.
Best scene is the one where Tony Kushner's hand is really felt—the midnight discussion between Bana and a PLO operative at a safehouse where we come to understand just how far a gulf exists between the historical understanding of the two sides. Best performace, Ciarin Hinds as one of the Israeli agents. He also astounded me as Caesar in HBO's Rome.
The film also has one of these descriptive soundtracks that the blind can turn on to "watch" the film. It is especially hilarious in the early scene where Bana and his wife are doing it. A nasally woman with a New York accent intones in a totally flat voice: "He lifts the edge of her bathrobe. She pushes a leg between his legs."
Heights
(MILD SPOILERS) I was totally surprised to love this movie. I didn't even tell Snake that part of the reason I wanted to see it was to see James Marsden as I was looking for more notes on Cyclops for my fic novel. But it turns out to be complex, subtly acted and dense. Glenn Close, playing Broadway's biggest dramatic actress, opens the film on a high note giving a master class at Juliard and cutting a strip off two young actors playing the Macbeths. She is bitchy, powerful, mesmerizing.
The film also has a great post-gay ending where the revelation of a character's secret same-sex love affair is totally not the point nor the cause of the breakup.
The Beat My Heart Skipped and Arsène Lupin
These are grouped because they both star Romain Duris though they're utterly different and both good.
The Beat... sort of reminds me of Clifford Odet's play from the 40s, Golden Boy, where the violin prodigy ends up going into boxing to support his family and ruining his hands. In this movie, Duris plays a thug who helps clean homeless people out of commercial real estate properties before his partners sell them for big bucks. But he has secret hopes of rekindling his dream of being a concert pianist. Duris holds the movie together with his charm and I just love the loose French feel of the shots and editing and the sex. Ah, the French.
Arsène is the latest film version of a series of 19th century books which were as popular as Sherlock Holmes in the French-speaking world. This incarnation is part of a recent trend in French action towards a polished, Matrix-like world of stylized action with dramatic, artistic visuals. This genre includes the excellent Vidoq and the moronic Brotherhood of the Wolf. The movie is a mutant cross of Indiana Jones, Matrix, James Bond and the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (comic book version, not movie version). Also starring Kristen Scott-Thomas and sly, sexy Pascal Greggory.
