#Trent is asshole why charlie hate

[tilbageidanmark]

Movies I watched (and books I read) this week - 29

The Lighthouse, an ominous story about two lighthouse keepers who descend into madness as they are stranded on a remote island. New England horror gothic of the 1890s. Stunning acting and black & white cinematography. Dark and crusty as the soul.

Willem Dafoe’s crazed Hark Triton, Hark monologue.

✴️  2 animated shorts:

✳️✳️✳️ One Small Step, from Taiko Studios: My most favorite not-Pixar animated short about a little girl and her old dad. I watched it 20 times, and I’ll watch it 20 more. 

10/10 - Perfect eight minutes of heartbreak and love.

✳️✳️✳️ Nothing happens, a Danish short: on a snowy field on the outskirts of town, a mysterious group of people gather to watch a flock of ravens.

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Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Winter Sleep, an epic 2014 Turkish adaptation of Chekhov’s short story "The Wife".

3+ hours long, dialogue-rich and slow exploration of an ambiguous hotel owner in Cappadocia, who is challenged by all the people around him, including his unhappy young wife and frustrated sister. Lyrical, refined, and cerebral - I’ll check out Ceylan’s other films.

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I didn’t remember that Chekhov wrote many hundreds of stories before dying young at 44. In order to better understand the narrative in ‘Winter Sleep’, I read his story ‘The Wife’ (full text here).

And indeed, the opaque, meandering film left much to interpretation. This short story made much clearer that this was an unhappy marriage, a misunderstood couple who couldn’t communicate any more without both feeling slighted and hurt. I couldn’t see why was the husband so disagreeable to everybody around them. But it helped bringing this broken life into focus.

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The Lure, a weird Polish horror-musical, very loosely adapted from Hans Christian Andersen's ‘Little Mermaid’. Combining siren sisters, cannibalism, kitschy vampires, MTV and trashy nightclubs in 1980′s Warsaw. The opening scene was the most promising - and it went down from there.

2/10

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Charly, adapted from the sci-fi story ‘Flowers for Algernon’. A “retarded” Cliff Robertson is selected for a miraculous surgery that triples his IQ & makes him a genius. It starts innocently enough trying to address the plight of the mentally challenged, but once he falls in love with his teacher, it gets dated ridiculously fast.

The only lasting part of the movie is Ravi Shankar’s beautiful score.

Charly was the only movie my ‘teenager me’ saw together with my mother: I don’t remember how come we went to the theater and why she picked this one, but I was 15 then.

✴️   2 by Bob Nelson:

✳️✳️✳️ The confirmation: ‘The Bicycle Thieves’ in small town Washington. Clive Owen is a divorced, down-on-his-luck, loser father, who gets to spend a weekend from hell with his 8 year old son. The first half is gloomy and very hard to watch as all the daily things that can go wrong, do. But he gets to bond with his church-going son, and they both find redemption at the end.

This was directed by 60 year old first-time director Bob Nelson.

Best film of the week! 

✳️✳️✳️ Before Confirmation, Bob Nelson wrote the script for Alexander Payne’s Nebraska: another soft story about an estranged parent. This one has old, senile Bruce Dern and his son on a black and white road trip to claim an illusory million-dollar sweepstakes prize. Simple, austere, heart-breaking. 8/10.

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Ingmar Bergman’s 1975 stage production of Mozart’s masonic The Magic Flute.

First re-watch in 40+ years - what joy!

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Hilda af Klimt, The Life of an Artist, a short bio of the spiritualist and world’s first abstract painter. By educator Paul Priestley on his ‘Art History School’ YouTube channel.

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The Little World of Don Camillo, 1952, based on a book I loved as a kid. With toothy Fernandel as an activist priest in a power struggle with his frenemy the Bolshevik mayor. “In a small village in the Po valley”. Nostalgic throw-back to late 40′s Italy.

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The Insult, a 2017 Oscar-nominated Lebanese story about a cuss word that escalates until it engulfs the whole country. A Palestinian construction worker calls a hot-head Christian mechanic ‘A fucking prick (ARS)’ when he behaves like one, and - like the good middle-easterners they are - neither one can let it go until it nearly destroys both of them.

It would have been even better if it didn’t turn into a traditional courtroom drama in the second half, but still... 5/10

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David Fincher’s masterful The Social Network, about young hateful asshole Mark Zuckerberg stealing the concept of facebook from the Vinklevoss brothers. Terrific drama, crackling dialogue by Aaron Sorkin, and moody, tense score by Trent Reznor.

Not exactly sure how truthful the story is, but it helped establish the notion that he was always a despicable person, as confirmed in all his actions in the last 20 years,

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I can’t believe I just watched Long Shot AGAIN, a month or two after my last re-watch! Despite its cliched tropes, I can’t get enough of the romantic chemistry between drop-dead beautiful Charlize Theron & the schlubby guy she once babysat. (Photo Above).

And, O'Shea Jackson Jr. is a carbon copy of his dad, O'Shea Jackson Sr.

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Flesh Gordon, a cheesy “sex comedy” from 1974, cheap spoof of the 1930′s Flash Gordon serials. Gratuitous, unfunny soft-core stupidity.

The concept of ‘No Consent’ was central to many of the early sexploitation movies. Not camp!

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Sons of Denmark, a misfired political thriller, about a growing anti-emigrant, white power movement in Denmark and its effects on the local Muslim population. 3/10

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The HBO documentary Catch And Kill, Ronan Farrow’s new series, based on his podcast, which was based on his book which was based on his reportage (Talking about milking a story).

Farrow was a hero, Weinstein was a super-creep, and I must stop watching HBO-type documentaries.

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(My complete movie list is here)