I Wish, I Wish...
Apr. 11th, 2022 08:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloI wish my mother wouldn't call me in the middle of the night to help her use the commode and I wish I didn't sound so angry when I'm dealing with her at such times.
But perhaps I am genuinely angry and not just sounding angry. Oh dear; That's not the image I want to project at all.
I watched Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Lost Daughter last night. I wanted to like it but didn't. I thought it overlong and tedious. Also, even though they'd obviously worked carefully at getting their voices and accents in synch, I couldn't ever accept that Jessie Buckley as young Leda was going to turn into Olivia Colman as middle-aged Leda. Marvellous actors both of them, but so very different. For one thing Colman has teeth...
Netflix is helping catch up with movies I was sorry to miss when they first came out. They've been a mixed bag. Thus far the score sheet looks like this.
1. The Other Side of the Wind. Just marvellous. I'm dissatisfied with my review of it (a few posts back) because Welles is one of the 20th century's greatest artists- and you can't sum up his last- and one of his greatest- movies in half a page.
2. The Lighthouse. I hated this one.
3. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. But this one I loved. The Coens are coming towards the end of their joint career- and now that Joel is off filming Shakespeare this could even turn out to be their last film together. It's a collection of short pieces, all set in the Wild West- ranging in tone from the utterly daft (Tim Blake Nelson as a psychopathic, fancy-shootin' singin' cowboy) to the heartfelt (The Gal who got Rattled- a perfect little essay in irony a la Maupassant or Maugham which has enough heft to it to have been stretched into a feature) There's even a ghost story. The Coens are generous to their actors and give them wonderful things to say and do. Also, even at their grimmest, they're playful- as Welles was too- and playfuness is a quality I value highly.
(And I wish I had more of it- especially when dealing with my mother in the middle of the night)
4. Uncut Gems. I'd never seen Adam Sandler in anything before but he won me over in this only tangentially comic role as a complete and utter sleazebag who spends the length of the movie trying to extricate himself from a cat's cradle of career and life threatening complications that are entirely his own fault. He won me over because his character has such bounce- knock him down and he always comes back grinning- and takes such pleasure in his tricky, loud, chaotic existence. In short he's playful- and there's that word again.
5. The Lost Daughter. We'll, I've already dealt with this. Lets just add that a little playfulness wouldn't have come amiss.
But perhaps I am genuinely angry and not just sounding angry. Oh dear; That's not the image I want to project at all.
I watched Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Lost Daughter last night. I wanted to like it but didn't. I thought it overlong and tedious. Also, even though they'd obviously worked carefully at getting their voices and accents in synch, I couldn't ever accept that Jessie Buckley as young Leda was going to turn into Olivia Colman as middle-aged Leda. Marvellous actors both of them, but so very different. For one thing Colman has teeth...
Netflix is helping catch up with movies I was sorry to miss when they first came out. They've been a mixed bag. Thus far the score sheet looks like this.
1. The Other Side of the Wind. Just marvellous. I'm dissatisfied with my review of it (a few posts back) because Welles is one of the 20th century's greatest artists- and you can't sum up his last- and one of his greatest- movies in half a page.
2. The Lighthouse. I hated this one.
3. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. But this one I loved. The Coens are coming towards the end of their joint career- and now that Joel is off filming Shakespeare this could even turn out to be their last film together. It's a collection of short pieces, all set in the Wild West- ranging in tone from the utterly daft (Tim Blake Nelson as a psychopathic, fancy-shootin' singin' cowboy) to the heartfelt (The Gal who got Rattled- a perfect little essay in irony a la Maupassant or Maugham which has enough heft to it to have been stretched into a feature) There's even a ghost story. The Coens are generous to their actors and give them wonderful things to say and do. Also, even at their grimmest, they're playful- as Welles was too- and playfuness is a quality I value highly.
(And I wish I had more of it- especially when dealing with my mother in the middle of the night)
4. Uncut Gems. I'd never seen Adam Sandler in anything before but he won me over in this only tangentially comic role as a complete and utter sleazebag who spends the length of the movie trying to extricate himself from a cat's cradle of career and life threatening complications that are entirely his own fault. He won me over because his character has such bounce- knock him down and he always comes back grinning- and takes such pleasure in his tricky, loud, chaotic existence. In short he's playful- and there's that word again.
5. The Lost Daughter. We'll, I've already dealt with this. Lets just add that a little playfulness wouldn't have come amiss.
no subject
Date: 2022-04-12 06:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-04-12 11:05 am (UTC)