I’ve been thinking
about writing a blog to welcome the new year, and in the process, I realized
that I’ve been a bit whimpery and cranky of late (other than the post about the
glorious Sound Circle concert, that is!). Hardly the way to end a year or
welcome a new one! I have a friend who learned this lesson from her mom:
Whatever you do on the first day of the year, you’ll do all year. So, I’d thought
I’d start out on a good note here. I’d love to do a photo blog of beautiful or
interesting scenes from my recent walks, but since I’ve been hobbled for about
two months now (oops, whimpering again), instead, I’ll do a quick review of my
recent film itinerary. Just to prove that I haven't been sitting at home with my lip hanging down for weeks on end.
My partner and I
often have great intentions to go to a ton of movies over the holidays, since
that’s when some of the best ones come out. But we usually don’t get around to
it because the season is too wildly busy. But this year, we have managed to see
a bunch of them. Plenty has been written about all these films (and you
may have seen many/most/all of them yourselves), so I’ll dispense with my
incisive commentaries and just do a rundown with quick comments to give the flavor of how they struck me.
So here they are,
in no particular order:
Gone Girl – Really gripping, too imaginably possible, scary to imagine that folks may actually be like this with each
other.
Boyhood – So different, it was hard for me to get into it at
first. But imagining the reality of it (this kid is not a character; his life
is actually passing like this) made it very thought provoking
Foxcatcher – Ew! Excellent acting x 3, and creepy (not in the
monster sense, but in the sense of how strangely distorted human lives can
become).
Imitation
Game – Among the best, IMHO.
Really fine acting, important story with vast repercussions, awful how Turing struggled
under the homophobia of his day
Theory of
Everything – Mostly a nice love
story, remarkable portrayal of Hawking. Not enough about his astrophysics for my taste (but then I’m
weird in that way)
Into the
Woods – Eh (shrug). I’d go to see Meryl Streep
in anything, and some of the other characters were good … but I didn’t find
it really engrossing or as super-excellent as I’d hoped.
Fury – I generally hate war movies (especially of the John
Wayne sort from my childhood), but this is more of the “Saving Private Ryan”
sort. Excellent and awful.
Interstellar – Incredible visuals, interesting back story (or is it
the front story?) about the relativity of time, often very touching.
Night
Crawler – Ew (again)! Sociopathy on
display, really well (creepily) portrayed.
Unbroken – Great acting by hero and villain, fascinating
story, certainly engrossing, good.
Birdman – I know it’s supposed to be great. I thought it was
good enough, but weird. Maybe I missed something.
And, still to look
forward to, if our current pattern of movie-going persists:
Wild
Still Alice
Big Eyes
Cake
Selma
Woman in
Gold
We’ll be seeing one
or two flicks this next few days, then several more will come out in January
that will be on the list. If all goes well, the year will start with movie-going,
which means I’ll get to keep doing movies all year!
I’m not sure if
this is what my friend’s mom had in mind. I think she was referring more to
making your bed and being nice to your siblings. I also don’t know if she was
right about this January 1 thing, but it’s probably worth thinking about.
In fact, maybe I
should try to add something more substantive than movies to my plans for the
day. I’ll give that some thought.
© Janis
Bohan, 2010-2014. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to
the post.
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