Thursday, October 21, 2004
Fine Line!
Well, I just got home from an employee screening of Vera Drake. That's Mike Leigh's new movie, about to get a wider release from Fine Line. It gets a moderate thumbs-up from me--it's good, and not particularly preachy. I thought it was going to be a "message movie" but it's not. The first half is actually more of a case study in cognitive dissonance than anything else--Vera just sort of bustles through everything with the same good cheer. The production design & art direction are great--they made me understand why Kingsley Amis was so pissed off. I would have been, too. I think there's a certain residual coolness to a lot of that early fifties stuff, though--everything looks oily, from food to nylons. The acting is incredible, but I didn't like Andrew Dickson's score a bit. Very weepy. Script is all right, nothing too special. Let's call it a mild consider.
Other recent movies; I saw I Heart Huckabees at the Arclight on Sunday. It's kind of a train wreck of a movie, to be honest. Not a fan at all--some of it made me laugh, but not nearly enough. It's not that it doesn't make sense, it's that it does make sense, it's pretty banal, but it thinks it's very, very smart. Like spending the weekend with your stoner friend from college. It's too bad--Three Kings has long been a personal favorite, so my hopes were pretty high. David O. Russell and Jeff Baena did a Q & A after the movie, and that was also a train wreck. DOR got volunteers from the audience to debate various points of view from the movie, until the people from the Arclight told him he had to go so the next showing could start. Also, the theater only provided one microphone, so Russell & Baena had to pass it back and forth, and while DOR was moderating this "debate" he'd set up, he had to walk person to person like Jerry Springer. It was pretty incredible.
I was still kind of shaking my head over Russell's debate stuff on the way out, when I noticed Parminder Nagra talking to a friend by the popcorn counter--some days I love this city, and some days I really love this city.
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Other recent movies; I saw I Heart Huckabees at the Arclight on Sunday. It's kind of a train wreck of a movie, to be honest. Not a fan at all--some of it made me laugh, but not nearly enough. It's not that it doesn't make sense, it's that it does make sense, it's pretty banal, but it thinks it's very, very smart. Like spending the weekend with your stoner friend from college. It's too bad--Three Kings has long been a personal favorite, so my hopes were pretty high. David O. Russell and Jeff Baena did a Q & A after the movie, and that was also a train wreck. DOR got volunteers from the audience to debate various points of view from the movie, until the people from the Arclight told him he had to go so the next showing could start. Also, the theater only provided one microphone, so Russell & Baena had to pass it back and forth, and while DOR was moderating this "debate" he'd set up, he had to walk person to person like Jerry Springer. It was pretty incredible.
I was still kind of shaking my head over Russell's debate stuff on the way out, when I noticed Parminder Nagra talking to a friend by the popcorn counter--some days I love this city, and some days I really love this city.
Comments(0) |
