Friday Night at the Movies
This entry was posted on 12/10/2011 10:10 AM and is filed under Movies.
Last night I watched a double header because I could.
The first feature was the Adjustment Bureau, also known as Mad Men in Black Hats, which Jay and I watched last summer in Duluth. More accurately, Jay watched it while I passed out, having had about four gin and tonics at dinner.
I thought I had seen the first forty minutes or so but it turns out I was drunker than I remember because none of it looked familiar at all. I mean, I knew Matt Damon was in it and there was something about hats but that's really it.
What impressed me about the movie is that Jay watched the whole thing even after I passed out fell asleep. He hates movies, so that seemed significant. So, I put it on my list.
I thought it was delightful! It was romantic and sweet, unlike so much of the gross piggery that passes for 'romance' in Hollywood these days. Much time was actually spent on the development of the two main characters and why they liked each other. Too many movies these days just show you two physically beautiful specimens who take one look at each other and go at it like animals. That's not romance, that's a biology seminar.
The Adjustment Bureau is very silly and fanciful but it holds to it's own logic, so it makes sense. My only quibble with the movie is that the hero is a politician.
The second movie was A Star is Born. The original, 1937 version with Janet Gaynor and Frederick March. It too was delightful. The Norman Maine character is very charming and it was easy to see what Esther Blodgette saw in him. Their relationship evolves in a perfectly natural way, as does their career paths as hers sky rockets and his craters. I'm sure it was quite the tear jerker back in the day. I may have gotten choked up myself if I hadn't known the story going in. Or if I didn't have a heart of stone. Tomato, tomahto.
Wait, I don't have a heart of stone! I tear up when Kevin Costner says "Dad?" in Field of Dreams and the last scene in It's a Wonderful Life and I don't even have to be watching those movies! Just catching the last scene out of context while channel surfing reduces me to mush. So there.
I guess "I am Mrs. Norman Maine!" just doesn't pack the emotional wallop of "To my brother George; the richest man in town!"
I've got the Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand versions of A Star is Born on my list too, so by the end of the winter I'll be able to compare and contrast.
What I liked about these two movies is that the scripts bothered to write some likeable, credible personalities for us. Too often, a character (mostly the females, I'm sad to say) in a movie behaves in a manner that is better described as 'convenient' than realistic; their behavior complies with the plot rather than human nature. That's just bad writing.
"Well, the story demands that we break up now, so I guess I hate you today. Bye."
I also saw Red Riding Hood this week. It's an atmospheric, romantic/horror story retelling of the fairy tale. Or at least, it aspires to be. Apparently the entire budget went into getting Gary Oldman to play a werewolf hunter and enticing Julie Christie to come out of retirement to play Granny. There was enough left over to get some really spectacular, gorgeous location shots of mountains and forests but the rest of the movie looked like it was part of the local high school production. I'm guessing the script took about fifteen minutes to write and the two young men who make up the love triangle with Little Red herself acted as though they had just been pulled off the street because they fit into the costumes. No chemistry, no romance, no interest and not a memorable line in the whole thing. Oh yeah, and a really bad CGI werewolf. Peh.
At least Little Red didn't sleep with everyone in town although apparently her mother did.
As I said; Peh.
