Recent Movie Round-Up
Nov. 21st, 2023 09:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI’ve been watching a lot of movies lately, so I thought I’d write up some quick reviews.
Steel Magnolias. Years ago I watched this on my own, and thought it was so-so. This time I watched it at the Artcraft Theater, where I discovered that this is perhaps the Legally Blonde of the Boomers, because the theater was packed with women of a certain age and their friends. The management clearly hadn’t expected this level of response, and the show started nearly an hour late because of a big back-up in the concession line, but everyone was so hyped to be there it didn’t matter much.
Naturally I enjoyed it a lot more this time around! I find that I usually do enjoy movies more when I see them with other people, whether in a theater or with a friend. And I think it also helped that I’m older now: having seen some of the shit life throws at people, I’m willing to accept a higher level of drama before I start to scoff, “Melodrama.”
I’ve heard the stage play takes place entirely in the beauty shop, and I’d love to see it sometime to see how that shapes the story.
Oh Brother Where Art Thou. My first Coen brothers film. Really enjoyed it! You know I love a Great Depression story, and young George Clooney is fantastic as a vain escaped convict (but can you blame him for vanity when he looks like that?) smooth-talking his way across the southern landscape.
Priscilla. Of course I had to see the latest Sofia Coppola film! (Still haven’t seen On the Rocks, though.) Difficult to review, as Coppola’s films tend to be: aimless, drifting, powered by aesthetics rather than plot (the one exception is The Beguiled, which is powered by both aesthetics and plot; it remains my favorite Coppola film), and yet so absorbing that it’s startling to realize you’ve arrived at the end.
My favorite Coppola aesthetic is “blonde girls in white dresses,” and this one is definitely more “celebrity glam” - of a different decade than The Bling Ring, but the same aesthetic of excess. But no matter which aesthetic she selects, Coppola always commits, and I love that about her. In fact, I’ve realized that commitment to an aesthetic is something I appreciate in film or TV in general, even if the aesthetic is not one that I particularly like (like the Barbie pink aesthetic in the recent Barbie movie): it takes a certain sincerity to commit so hard to anything.
Addams Family Values. Didn’t like this one, because I am an old fuddy-duddy who no longer enjoys murder jokes. Did the original show have this many murder jokes? (Did I ever actually watch the original show? I must have seen a few episodes, because I know the theme song.) I did like the scene where Morticia and Gomez tango their way around a restaurant in a cavern.
Rocky. Another classic that I’d never seen, although we did watch the famous scene where he runs up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art in my high school film lit class. (That was probably one of the most influential classes of my life. I’m still chasing down movies from it.)
Didn’t expect to enjoy this one, but actually I mostly did, although the scene where Rocky takes Adrian out on their first date is super uncomfortable. Have you heard of a boundary, Rocky! (It is 1975. He has not.) But actually they’re pretty cute once they’re together. And I really dug the grungy 1970s aesthetic - it’s so characteristic, and so different from movies in the decades before and after.
Steel Magnolias. Years ago I watched this on my own, and thought it was so-so. This time I watched it at the Artcraft Theater, where I discovered that this is perhaps the Legally Blonde of the Boomers, because the theater was packed with women of a certain age and their friends. The management clearly hadn’t expected this level of response, and the show started nearly an hour late because of a big back-up in the concession line, but everyone was so hyped to be there it didn’t matter much.
Naturally I enjoyed it a lot more this time around! I find that I usually do enjoy movies more when I see them with other people, whether in a theater or with a friend. And I think it also helped that I’m older now: having seen some of the shit life throws at people, I’m willing to accept a higher level of drama before I start to scoff, “Melodrama.”
I’ve heard the stage play takes place entirely in the beauty shop, and I’d love to see it sometime to see how that shapes the story.
Oh Brother Where Art Thou. My first Coen brothers film. Really enjoyed it! You know I love a Great Depression story, and young George Clooney is fantastic as a vain escaped convict (but can you blame him for vanity when he looks like that?) smooth-talking his way across the southern landscape.
Priscilla. Of course I had to see the latest Sofia Coppola film! (Still haven’t seen On the Rocks, though.) Difficult to review, as Coppola’s films tend to be: aimless, drifting, powered by aesthetics rather than plot (the one exception is The Beguiled, which is powered by both aesthetics and plot; it remains my favorite Coppola film), and yet so absorbing that it’s startling to realize you’ve arrived at the end.
My favorite Coppola aesthetic is “blonde girls in white dresses,” and this one is definitely more “celebrity glam” - of a different decade than The Bling Ring, but the same aesthetic of excess. But no matter which aesthetic she selects, Coppola always commits, and I love that about her. In fact, I’ve realized that commitment to an aesthetic is something I appreciate in film or TV in general, even if the aesthetic is not one that I particularly like (like the Barbie pink aesthetic in the recent Barbie movie): it takes a certain sincerity to commit so hard to anything.
Addams Family Values. Didn’t like this one, because I am an old fuddy-duddy who no longer enjoys murder jokes. Did the original show have this many murder jokes? (Did I ever actually watch the original show? I must have seen a few episodes, because I know the theme song.) I did like the scene where Morticia and Gomez tango their way around a restaurant in a cavern.
Rocky. Another classic that I’d never seen, although we did watch the famous scene where he runs up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art in my high school film lit class. (That was probably one of the most influential classes of my life. I’m still chasing down movies from it.)
Didn’t expect to enjoy this one, but actually I mostly did, although the scene where Rocky takes Adrian out on their first date is super uncomfortable. Have you heard of a boundary, Rocky! (It is 1975. He has not.) But actually they’re pretty cute once they’re together. And I really dug the grungy 1970s aesthetic - it’s so characteristic, and so different from movies in the decades before and after.
no subject
Date: 2023-11-21 04:01 pm (UTC)I wonder if enjoying murder jokes is a young person thing, because I tried to watch Wednesday on TV recently and found that it was just a little sad and in bad taste rather than funny. (I guess Wednesday may not have been intended to be funny, but I felt the same way about the Addams Family, even though I used to enjoy the Munsters when that was out.
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Date: 2023-11-21 07:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-11-22 08:53 pm (UTC)Yeah, exactly - I think I would have found it unpleasant even if I had been a lot younger. Although now that you remind me I think that it was the lack of murder jokes and general nastiness that made me like the Munsters more than the Addams Family in the first place.
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Date: 2023-11-21 08:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-11-22 08:55 pm (UTC)No, you're right! I had forgotten that possibly the lack of murder vibes was the reason I preferred the Munsters to the Addams Family in the first place, so probably I was never the target audience at all :)
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Date: 2023-11-24 04:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-11-24 11:13 am (UTC)Oh that's very true - it makes it very hard to keep up the suspension of disbelief when it's also continually undermining it itself.