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Midweek Movie Free Talk
Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.
Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.
The Pelican Brief
Director: Alan J. Pakula | Year: 1993
Actors: Julia Roberts, Denzel Washington, Sam Shepard
Rating: ★★★★★★★☆☆☆
Links: IMDb
Following a similar vein, I highly recommend Erin Brockovich!
In the last week I decided to watch the original Sabrina and during one of the opening scenes, I got a vivid recollection of having seen it before, but in color and with Harrison Ford. Turns out I was remembering the 1995 remake. Naturally I had to rewatch it and compare the two with fresh eyes.
There's a certain charm to Billy Wilder's film even if Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart are wildly mismatched casting choices. It mostly comes off as lighthearted and endearing. A lot of that charm was washed away in the remake, however the individual characters felt a bit more flushed out. Both films are perfectly reasonable rom coms. My preference is still towards the original because how can you not love Audrey Hepburn.
Plenty of interesting film experiences this week for me.
First of The Intouchables from 2011 which had a difficult time to connect with. It is one of the best selling French movies in many years and I could see why this "feel good"-type of movie resonates with many people, but I found it to have a very artificial feeling (even though it is based on a true story) and have all downsides of the clichés from feel good movies. I found it really off-putting how extremely rude and insensitive behavior is portrayed as quirky and charming.
I had more fun with Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves which is basically everything a fun campy D&D movie should be. A bit uneven in places, with some jokes falling flat and others being really funny. Great cast, clever use of magic and I hope we can get sequels because I think it can be even better.
Had a very emotional experience with the Japanese anime Perfect Blue. I love movies about various kinds of identity crisis and this one delivers with a very tragic story of a popsinger wanting to become an actress and finds herself exploited and her sense of self ruined by the industry. Also the 90s internet feel was spot on, and very relevant today with how online harassment can lead to serious consequences for real people.
I also gave up on a movie halfway through which I don't do often. It was The Sacrifice by Tarkovsky and I think it just wasn't for me. At least not now. Pondering philosophical, religious and spiritual questions is clearly the core theme of Tarkovsky's work, but not something I can connect with in movies. Instead I watched David Lynch's The Straight Story which is a feel good movie done right. Well, not exactly feel good since at its core it is about an old man at the end of his life and he just needs to do this one last thing in his own way, but it is told with a lot of heart and compassion, a bit sentimental in places but overly so.