Three More Movies
Oct. 24th, 2003 03:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stdesjardinsI watched Another Thin Man on TCM a few days ago. Nick and Nora Charles have one of the great movie marriages, and the banter between them is great fun. The direction keeps this at the level of a frivolous potboiler (and I hasten to add there's nothing wrong with that); even when guns are pointed and shots are fired there's never any sense of real danger. (I noted that when a female character was exposed as a criminal, her diction suddenly became much worse. Apparently something about being evil makes you talk like a gun moll.) It's an enjoyable film to watch when you're in the mood for nothing deep.
Stranger Than Paradise is apparently the film that made Jim Jarmusch's reputation. I'm glad I didn't watch it before Ghost Dog, Dead Man, or Down By Law, because I love those other movies and found Stranger Than Paradise to be dull, dull, dull. It's about a 16-year-old Hungarian girl who comes to America, stays with her cousin in New York for a week, and later takes a road trip to Florida with him and a friend. I think it's supposed to be a character study, which is the film-school way of saying that nothing interesting happens. The dialogue isn't even very interesting. The pacing isn't interesting. Nothing is interesting. According to the promotional copy on the DVD, the three of them "find themselves" in Florida, but I didn't get that. I suppose I'm exaggerating how bad it is, because I didn't actually hate it while I was watching it, I just wasn't very interested. Some of the pictures were kind of pretty.
Touchez Pas Au Grisbi ("Don't Touch the Loot") is an influential 1954 French gangster movie. The subtitles were often unreadable, but the story wasn't hard to follow. It's your basic tale of honor among thieves, with friendship more important than making a big score. It bills itself as being tough and realistic (for some reason they showed the trailer for the movie immediately before the movie itself), but really it's just as fake as the Thin Man films, only in a slightly more profound way. I liked it.
I picked up next month's catalog while I was at the AFI, and found out they're showing Lord of the Rings: Return of the King on December 4th, three days after the opening in New Zealand and two weeks before it opens in the U.S. Tickets are members only (which I am), $35 each. I'm tempted. For one thing, I'll be able to drive all of my friends who are still waiting nuts, and for another, an enthusiastic sold-out audience in the main AFI Theater has got to be the best possible way to see this movie.
Stranger Than Paradise is apparently the film that made Jim Jarmusch's reputation. I'm glad I didn't watch it before Ghost Dog, Dead Man, or Down By Law, because I love those other movies and found Stranger Than Paradise to be dull, dull, dull. It's about a 16-year-old Hungarian girl who comes to America, stays with her cousin in New York for a week, and later takes a road trip to Florida with him and a friend. I think it's supposed to be a character study, which is the film-school way of saying that nothing interesting happens. The dialogue isn't even very interesting. The pacing isn't interesting. Nothing is interesting. According to the promotional copy on the DVD, the three of them "find themselves" in Florida, but I didn't get that. I suppose I'm exaggerating how bad it is, because I didn't actually hate it while I was watching it, I just wasn't very interested. Some of the pictures were kind of pretty.
Touchez Pas Au Grisbi ("Don't Touch the Loot") is an influential 1954 French gangster movie. The subtitles were often unreadable, but the story wasn't hard to follow. It's your basic tale of honor among thieves, with friendship more important than making a big score. It bills itself as being tough and realistic (for some reason they showed the trailer for the movie immediately before the movie itself), but really it's just as fake as the Thin Man films, only in a slightly more profound way. I liked it.
I picked up next month's catalog while I was at the AFI, and found out they're showing Lord of the Rings: Return of the King on December 4th, three days after the opening in New Zealand and two weeks before it opens in the U.S. Tickets are members only (which I am), $35 each. I'm tempted. For one thing, I'll be able to drive all of my friends who are still waiting nuts, and for another, an enthusiastic sold-out audience in the main AFI Theater has got to be the best possible way to see this movie.
