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The movies from the previous post:
- Ever After (98)
- The Hunt for Red October (90)
- Nightcrawler (14)
- Noah (14)
- Cinderella (14)
A few weeks ago I found out that my kid sister (who is 19, and not really a kid) had never seen Ever After and do you know what that is? A crying shame. So naturally I immediately texted some friends of mine who were equally appalled and we arranged a movie night, which quickly expanded to include eight people. I have a deep-seated love for this movie, and I barely know why. I'd like to tell myself that it presents a more nuanced and agency-granting version of the Cinderella myth than other versions, but it is so hard for me to look at it objectively that I just can't tell. What I can tell is that the characters have interesting and convincing arcs, the characters who are meant to grow experience growth, the characters who are there just to be bad are so delightfully bad, and wow there are so many placement-in-history mistakes that the whole thing turns into a great joke, with the part where Leonardo da Vinci pulls the Mona Lisa out of a tube and unfurls it being the punchline (it's funny because the Mona Lisa is definitely painted on a plank). Also, come on: "there was a bee"? So good.
Speaking of people who haven't seen movies, it came to light that the single solitary Sean Connery movie that I'd seen in my entire life was The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (DO NOT WATCH, it's soooo bad) and when my friend found out he was shocked, and started naming Sean Connery movies until we'd established that, a) yes, I knew what movies I'd seen, b) Casino Royale is the extent of my Bond-watching, and c) we needed to have a movie night soon. Well, now I've seen The Hunt for Red October and it was great in the way that I am sure most Sean Connery movies are. Also: baby Alec Baldwin.
HOOOOO BOOOOOY Nightcrawler. Okay. What do I say about Nightcrawler? For starters, it completely blew my idea of Jake Gyllenhaal as an only-okay actor completely out of the water: the man is a triumph. Secondly: this movie is completely insane and I watched the last twenty minutes of it with my hand over my mouth in shock. I'm trying to find words here, and it's hard. I watched Nightcrawler so that I would have a second modern movie to talk about in my film noir paper, and the paper ended up being mostly about Nightcrawler. Nightcrawler picks up where The Sweet Smell of Success and Ace in the Hole left off, and just runs and runs. Lou Bloom is a stringer who films accidents and crime scenes and sells the footage to a news channel, and the story follows him as he, essentially, ruins the lives of everyone around him. When I watched it I had just finished a course in criminal psychology, and everything Lou Bloom did brought me right back to the unit on psychopathy. ALSO he is one of those characters that is the furthest thing from psychically intimidating, but it somehow makes him all the more sinister.
When Noah came out there was such a flurry of think-piece-ing and arguing that I was overwhelmed and refused to say anything about it beyond "Darren Aronofsky is an artist, you can't deny that this film is beautifully made." BUT NOW, we're a year removed and I have more things to say, but I have SO MANY things to say now that I think I will write Noah it's own post. Basically, Noah makes me think about two things: apostasy and sign-seeking. FUN.
Sometimes you watch two versions of Cinderella in quick succession and it's a bit odd. This movie was good, but oh my WORD the colours were so saturated that I was distracted from what was happening. Seriously, I missed a good deal of the dialogue due to my brain trying to filter through the in-your-face colours. I get that it is supposed to be magical and other-worldly but wow. Cool it, tiger. My four-year-old nieces came to see this movie and while taking small children to the movie theatre is always a risk they were delightfully cute and attentive even though they were more invested in the Frozen short than in the actual movie. Side note: omgosh I am so over Frozen. TANGLED IS BETTER THAN FROZEN DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED.
ALSO: three movies from 2014 and two versions of Cinderella? What's happening?
I too love Ever After, but God the prince in that movie is just the worst human. He's so much worse than he needed to be, and I think Drew Barrymore should have dumped him at the end because he is the WORST, and I say that with a lot of love because I seriously cherish that film.
ReplyDeleteI 100% concur with your prince assessment. He's awwwwfuuull. At least he has some character development though.
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