BEFORE SUNRISE/SUNSET

I loved the pondering quality of A WAKING LIFE and the layer of surrealism that the animation added to the proceedings, but sometimes it is nice to see well drawn characters leap out of the screen during some, albeit whimisical, more realistic proceedings.

Now, for some unknown reason, I managed to miss out on BEFORE SUNRISE for the last nine years. Checked it out via Netflix before going to see the daylight followup.

Adoring fiction about chance, both of the BEFORE movies stuck with me long after viewing them… I regret I couldn’t have seen the first one way back when to ride along with the gleeful attempts at recollection, but regardless, they blew me away.

More than recommended. If you hate the Hollywood ending, you too will love both of these movies.

21 GRAMS

Wow. Gut-wrenching movie, this.

AMERICAN / SECRETS

I had the pleasure of (by no conscious plan) of viewing Hope Davis playing the role of a pseudo-real life wife in American Splendour and then the role of a surreal based on a real life dentist’s wife who is also a dentist in The Secret Lives of Dentists. By chance, I managed to view each of these movies within a week of each other.

I remember Hope from About Schmidt and Arlington Road, but neither of those roles prepared me for her sublimely understated turns in these two movies. Lovely.

MONSTER

MONSTER is one of those movies that when you first hear about it, you say, sure, pretty actress transforms herself into something quite the opposite for a role. One thinks of Halle Berry in Monster’s Ball (the repetition of the word monster doesn’t really help here), but none of that prepares you for the transformation.

Almost total. Quite stunning. Charlize Theron is there allright, but she becomes her character with such totality as to transfix.

Christina Ricci plays the perfect foil. Both women come across as utterly real.

This film stayed with me. It stayed with me because of the way the story was told and at the metalevel of knowledge that Charlize Theron and crew took me for a brutal ride that was, if not completely unexpected, surprising in its depth and power. With a nod and a wink to those who want to ogle some Charlize and some Christina, whatever our feelings of them (surely lascivious) before seeing this movie, those very feelings were exploited to their full effect. Bravo.

DREAMCATCHER

Watched DREAMCATCHER on DVD last night. Quite surprising. If you are expecting a cheesy horror movie where aliens take over the bodies of us wee humans, it is that. However, some great actors got a chance to play in this movie, and the quite expected King moments shine in unexpected ways. Stephen King has a nice interview in the extras which goes a long way in explaining how this might have happened and the vignettes about the special effects were quite enlightening. No commentary track of any kind is included on this DVD, but I certainly still recommended it based on the strength of all of the above.

WHALE RIDER

I had not heard much about Whale Rider before going to see it (which is how I prefer my film viewing experiences to begin).

I could tell a bit from the title and I had vaguely heard that it was about a contemporary Maori settlement in New Zealand and their attempt to find a future for their people.

In hindsight, this would have been a classic film for me to see at the Seattle International Film Festival (where it made a major splash) earlier this year (which I unfortunately did not attend at all). I say this, because the description above does the film justice but nothing can communicate how well it was executed. It would have been one of those films where I would have read the blurb, thought undoubtedly “neat!” that it probably had whales in it that were not being hunted for blubber or being unnecessarily anthropomorphized, and might have seen it just because of my love for whales. There were whales in the movie of course, but the depths that this movie achieved and maintained has much more to do with the characters and the acting.

The themes of ancestry, parental expectation, abandonment, destiny, all explored and explored well by this film. Riveting cast of unknowns. Heartwrenching film in so many unexpected ways.

I deliberately try not to go into too much detail when I talk about films, beyond attempting to consider misconceptions I might have had going in. Much more interesting to me than potentially ruining the story for someone else. Reviews are easy enough to find, but the true thoughts of hopefully intelligent moviegoers, almost impossible.

THE HOURS ADAPTed

I went to see The Hours yesterday before coming home to not watch the Super Bowl. I have not read much, if any, Viriginia Woof. I have certainly not read Mrs. Dalloway or the source for The Hours, but I find myself wanting to do so. A suggestible response perhaps, but there have been recent adapted movies I have seen, which did not prompt me to explore their inspirations. The last two have done so, however…

My other recent movie outing would have been Adaptation. That one too has provoked a desire for me to seek out and read The Orchid Thief. Both of these movies gripped me from the first frame and held me through the musically enhanced credits. Their power to grip me might have something to do with this urge.

Mostly, though, I am fairly sure the provocation stems from how neither of these movies held my hand. Neither of them were spoon feeding me the ideas from their inspiration, but rather, they invited me inside their way of view the source works. I was hoodwinked (in a good way, of course) into forgetting that I had not read either of the books in question. I was allowed to glimpse the feelings I might have were I to read either of them. I was given a small gift.

Now, whether I will end up reading either of these texts is an unknown at the moment. I feel coaxed into doing so, but in such a wonderfully particapitory way that I would not feel cheated. I usually feel foolish when the urge strikes me to cater to the whims of Hollywood, but perhaps not this time.