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jennyrock-70509
Reviews
Candy (2022)
Insightful portrayal and superb acting by lead characters
Had watched the other series on the same topic Love and Death, and thought, because of that, I was going to find this series tedious. It's testimony to its quality that I didn't.
There was much that was similar, and this alone was informative ....the 2 series, in fact, complement each other well, the whole creating a more comprehensive picture than the parts.
What I increasingly came to appreciate with Candy, as each episode unfolded, was how the portrayals in it really made psychological sense of what took place. I think a major part of why we might wish to watch accounts of in your face crimes, is to try to understand and I felt by the end of this series, that I really did understand.
Betty Gore was quite sensitively & skilfully & compassionately portrayed ....more so than in Love and Death. I could identify with both the main characters and the painful factors that drove them.
Very well done and worthwhile.
The Last Movie Stars (2022)
Informative, insightful, thorough, authentic, ultimately inspiring
I knew of Paul Newman from some of his iconic movies and I knew the name Joanne Woodward but couldn't place her even though it turns out I have seen her in some films. I'd just not registered who she was and didn't know she was married to Paul Newman.
I thought there was so much hard work and thoughtfulness that went into reconstructing a presentation of Paul's and Joanne's lives and careers and marriage. What I felt was done particularly well, was the the psychological portrait of their evolution as human beings....how they matured & endured.
It was interesting to get a gradual unpacking of all the films they've been a part of and to see how Joanne in particular seemed to have mostly only been in things that have weight and depth. It was insightful because the words were largely coming from them but also from an impressive pantheon of people who were very involved with them or family. And not from a sensationalist angle...the people commenting seemed very sincere. What must have been painstaking effort but was done particularly well, was the way the excerpts fro their films illustrated or echoed so much of what was going unfolding in their lives. The music at the end of each episode was wonderful. And it added another interesting layer for me, to have actors commenting on other actors ....through Ethan & co's eyes, I got so much more of a sense of what what it takes to act in general and therefore a finer appreciation of Paul & Joanne's accomplishments. I barely know who Ethan is and did not at all register or notice what so many others have complained of. It took me a few episodes to settle into the structure of things, but because acting seems so easy to me, it was great to get some insights into what it throws up. And the summarising concluding quote by Rilke in ten final episode I found poignant & catalysing. I need to look it up to remember it as well as the music. Thank you to all who worked so hard on this. The series is such a gem and highly worthwhile. I binge watched it.
The Parting Glass (2018)
3 stars was for the music
I'm wondering who it is would find this family interesting? A lot of scenes where the family en route & then on arrival, comes across as loud, brash, ego-centric, stereotypical, not super differentiated from each other, all talking cacophonously & stridently over the top of each other about little of interest ....the deceased sister never really 'comes alive' in any meaningful way.....the supposed grief the family are experiencing never feels palpable or believable .....when the husband of the deceased complains about the family being such a tight closed unit, with all of their in house jokes, does he not know how lucky he is? To be an in-house member of such a family is to be condemned to superficial mediocrity but who knows, perhaps there are many Americans who can identify with this family.....I certainly cannot...but I'm not American and have always felt alienated by the oft portrayed assumption in film....although not overtly in this film, of the USA as the greatest nation on earth .....it is only covertly present in this film, if the people who made it anticipated a more global audience. Grief is universal but the discordant, self-absorbed, almost self congratulatory dynamic at work in this family with its inane humour, alienate the viewer from whatever grief the family is supposed to be processing ....I would go out of my way to avoid people for whom it is habitual to interact in the somewhat mindless manner portrayed here and sorry to the people behind this film, but this one was the straw that broke the camel's back.....the one where I thought, 'I can't watch another set of brash egocentric humans all talking over the top of each other and assuming what they have to say is interesting'....,note it's taken 6 decades to get here!
I kept going bc of 1) the music ....thoughtfully chosen & appropriate & in its thoughtfulness leading me to think there could be something worthwhile about to unfold & 2) a scene where the youngest sibling hides something in the deceased's bedroom.... I naively thought it was pointing to a murdered cover up & was waiting for this to unfold ...in a word, the family was too shallow for me to relate to & their grief, when it arose, not convincing & not moving.
42 Días en la Oscuridad (2022)
Surprisingly & refreshingly good
There's no sensationalism in this series. It feels very plausible & believable & therefore quietly compelling & insightful & also beautifully filmed..and what really elevated it was the music....subtle ...not that most viewers would necessarily notice ....but eclectic & diverse and always amplifying whatever scene it accompanies because it's been so carefully chosen....the person or people behind the selection of music have done an exceptional job and I would want to watch anything else they've or he or she have been involved with.
The Go-Between (2015)
Much more moving than the 1971 version...a worthy adaptation
I watched this a day after watching the 1971 version with Julie Christie & Alan Bates...I was out to be very objective with no agenda other than my true response...The novel on which the film is based, ranks among my favourites of all time. So I know the story quite intimately. This version was quite moving where the 1971 didn't touch me in any way.... I don't know enough about film-making to identify why this is so technically....but one thing I would say is casting ....especially Leo, the boy for whom future emotional development ceases with the events that take place in this film...re Jack Hollingtons Leo, he is sweet, endearing, innocent & likeable....you can feel his vulnerability & therefore it's realistic for things to impact on him in the shattering way that they do.....in the 1971 version, I don't like or feel for, or connect with, any of the characters...they are all wooden ....
And the story telling is way superior in this later film....much more rounded & it's fuller....the key riveting moments seem fleeting in the earlier film....the later film joins all the dots really clearly & effectively....& mostly, impactfully....the viewer can really get the significance of the cricket match, the significance of the concert, why people were surprised & moved by Leo's singing, the tensions between Marion's mother, & her suitor & her secret lover....and the older Leo also, is a character that is loveable & really plausible as an older version of the younger boy..still showing the same sensitivities & tenderness of heart....and I think it's only in this version of the film, that it becomes clear why the summer of 1900 which was shaping up to be the glorious beginning of a glorious new century, could have such a long-lasting damaging impact on Leo...not an easy story to adapt to screen, bc so much of its drama hinges on the inner subjective world of a boy at the beginning of burgeoning adolescence as he finds himself thrust into a social class beyond his station and this as it's seen through the eyes of his older self looking back for the first time, and for the first time seeing the huge fallout....this later film did a worthy job....as someone already commented, it was much more appropriate to have a Lord Trimington that wasn't attractive....confusing in the earlier film to have the opposite....perhaps the only weakness was Marion.....at least the younger Marion....she didn't, for me, manage the balance of being odious in her exploiting of Leo while remaining likeable....but Ted Burgess actor did manage this well....and don't believe anyone who dismisses the book as drivel....the book excels in explaining how knottedness & desiccation can enter people's emotional life and is exquisitely written (from someone who is very fussy)....if you're cut off from that subjective world of feeling or in denial of it, it would explain why you could dismiss such an outstanding book.
Clickbait (2021)
Better than Mare Of East Town...way less cliched.....
This series has a great structure with the way each new episode's focuses on the viewpoint of one particular character in a way which unfolds more of what has actually happened in gradual layers ....it is really well done with the one oddity in that the 'bad guys' are much more likeable than the victims who are seeking answers & justice.....if there was a drawback, something that at times almost, but not quite, kept me from binge watching, was that I didn't feel anything for the family who were the main protagonists ....the sister Pia came across as selfish, domineering & narcissistic & therefore quite tiresome because there wasn't anything to balance this , the widow just felt unlikable....sort of cold & clinical & unfeeling....& neither did the bereaved sons or the mother evoke my sympathies ....so it's a lot harder to watch when the main characters are not engaging....but even so there were strengths in the drama to sustain my interest despite this....and where I was really moved was in the 2 episodes that centred on the perpetrators ..... I guess that is one of the great strengths of this series ......that it could enable you to feel for & even identify with what was supposed to be the 'evil' characters....it allowed you to understand them....and the 2 actors here were hugely likeable....so much of American drama polarises between victims & monsters where this was about humans ...that was very refreshing ....but what motivated me to write this review was reading comments about the implausible weak ending. I found the ending to be quite believable....in fact I thought it must be based on an actual true story that I saw an excellent high quality documentary about ....I've seen several documentaries of similar 'far fetched' incidents with equally dramatic outcomes so this part of the drama was very plausible to me..... There were some stock standard weaknesses but these were only minor....these, for me, were when a character put themselves in a situation where they were likely to come to great harm....this happened at least twice that I noticed & on both occasions felt utterly implausible ....but otherwise a really solid engaging series that I didn't fall asleep to unlike Mare Of Easttown....but want to see something with a similar structure that's even better than this & scintillatingly original? ....the Russian series 6 Empty Seats.
Ladies in Black (2018)
Rates higher than Three Summers? Can't believe it - much worse in comparison ...
While this film attempted interesting themes, and was interesting to me in terms of it being a rendition of the culture I grew up in, I couldn't get past the appalling acting....I guess most noticeably most, if not all, of the characters not born in Australia had such unconvincing & therefore jarring accents...and I'm not super fussy....it added to the stiltedness of this film...the people who were supposed to be 'reffos' did not seem like reffos to me for even a moment....so many of the scenes felt really implausible as in the mother & daughter celebratory dances while singing....they were really grating....watching the film, I was rarely in a space other than watching people trying to act...so more like I was watching people auditioning ...I'm not thinking it's necessarily the actors' fault...and some did do a good job especially the husband who vanishes....Three Summers is a 2017 Aussie film and I watched the 2 films a day apart....this one has such good reviews & that one such bad ones yet it seemed a a way more successful & compelling film & the actors were really plausible
Little Fires Everywhere (2020)
Intriguing musically intelligent infinitely worthwhile & original
Quite shocked by the negative reviews. Is it that when one person says something, others just want to jump on the bandwagon? I was riveted by this series the whole way through. I had heard nothing about it beforehand nor read the book, so I could receive it on its own merits.
I felt it was like a great extension & further dimensionalisation of Rheese's controlling ever upwardly mobile character of Big Little Lies however with the development of her veneer finally being forced to crack open in the riveting conclusion.
I felt this drama was compelling & complex & very thought provoking & fairly non cliched. The trajectory of each character was interesting along with their interactions. While the artist/mother who has been slammed for her acting in most of the previous reviews certainly had an in-your- face -edge to her, I agree with an earlier comment that it was every bit part & parcel of how she was meant to be. She's sustained great loss & great rejection & exclusion. She's a beyond talented artist. She's battled on her own as a single mum living the life of an itinerant on the run with an assumed identity & she's also got the same heritage of all the other millions of black Americans who've sustained & are still sustaining potentially soul destroying discrimination & violence on an extensive scale. So her stony cycnical stoical edginess was completely plausible to me - there were some scenes in the early episodes where her unresponsive rudeness to the Rheese character was a bit shocking & alienating, but as her backstory was revealed in subsequent episodes, it became all the more clear & understandable.
This series was a great dramatisation & exposure of the inevitable crumbling that occurs when characters attempt to live up to some cardboardy artificial ideal of the 'perfect life' at the expense of being real & being true to themselves & it had a multi-faceted depiction of this in a 'grass is greener' 'one man's drink is another man's poison' type of way as well as illuminating the challenges of motherhood.
What I loved most was the musical intelligence of this series - a diversity of songs/music always uniquely appropriate to what was unfolding - succeeding very well as a medium to communicate what was unfolding & I felt there was a great dramatic tension maintained throughout sufficient to have me binge watching. So there is the device of a dramatic opening & a gradual retrospective revealing of all that led up to it.
When you consider all the really crappy banal stuff that is out there, this did not deserve the low ratings!
Novitiate (2017)
Poignant depiction of encounter between calcification & progress...Outstanding acting Melissa Leo
Contrary to previous reviews: a person who has 'happily' been a Dominican nun for 40 years finds the film garbage & writes that it failed to convey a sense of the excitement in becoming a bride of Christ & the sense of community. Not viewing the film through the lens of having been a nun myself, I perceived a strong sense from the film of the excitement, passion & expectation in the prospective nuns on entering the convent. I thought this was amply & adequately conveyed.
I felt the film gave an insightful account of a few universally recurring themes:
1) the dilemma & vulnerability of all those who are inwardly summoned by something, who perhaps innately have a mystical & idealistic nature & a deep inner resonance with values like love & the perhaps inevitable skewing or disappointment or disillusionment as, not fitting in in the mainstream world, they seek alternate avenues of expression & unfoldment for this unignorable inner drive. For Cathleen, she finds the church as a vehicle to pursue her inner yearning & the film wonderfully portrays how on this path, she steadily fails to find the fulfilment/outlet of her 'love of Jesus', despite her most earnest efforts. Her lack of fulfilment causes her to feel increasingly unworthy & in need of self- punishment & self-denial & the film further shows how, when we are in denial & repression of ourselves, or subscribing to a daily regime that is also repressive, those unmet needs inevitably burst out 'inappropriately'. One of the reviewers describes the scene where this occurs as ridiculous & implausible & another dismisses it as the 'stereotypical lesbian scene' but to me it seems quite natural & inevitable given the lack of fulfilment of such arduous efforts. And I certainly didn't read it to mean Cathleen was actually a lesbian, although would it matter if she were? I felt it was beautifully done & conveyed more a sense of the long denied need to experience love & warm human connection.
I personally could identify with the earlier Cathleen (& we're the exception rather than the norm, I believe, hence her isolation at school) & found a non-religious avenue for my idealistic nature, & likewise experienced acutely all the difficulties of believing in & identifying with an institution & it's precepts that also led to the denial/repression of my inner nature, taking on some practises & beliefs that were likewise too narrow for it, in fact. So the film was very compelling for me, personally, in its depiction of this.
2) the film also portrays the universally occurring dilemma of disillusionment & having to leave something you might even love, because the person in the leadership position has lost the plot
3) the difficulty, the perils & pitfalls of a) operating in too confined a setting for too long (the Mother Superior hasn't been outside the walls of the convent for 40 years!) especially when the 'winds of change' or 'progress' (Vatican II) start to attempt to blow through b) having exclusive power (a problem anywhere), within a confined setting. The most compelling part of this film, for me, was the consummate acting of Melissa Leo as the Mother Superior. Unlike other reviewers who have expressed that her character was just polarised as the evil villain, I felt it was way more multi-dimensional. There was a clear sense of how her vitriolic spleen & venom & megalomania was linked firstly to her personal doubts re the reality of God, a factor being either exacerbated and/or intensified by Vatican II's relegation of nuns to the level of 'ordinary Catholics', thus bringing into question the validity & importance of all that she had built her life and identity around -huge! Who wouldn't struggle with spleen & venom?, as well that Vat II was now also, appropriately banning the punitive practises she, in turn, had been trained in & had been heavily trading on. To adopt the recommendations of Vatican II, would be to admit her own previous way of operating as fraudulent, non-Christian & unacceptable - perhaps even .
Along with this was a very palpably conveyed level of rage & pain re her not having been at all consulted re the formulation of these new plans, further reinforcing that nuns/women, don't count.
So while it only gradually is revealed, there unfolds a clear link between the degree of her viciousness & riveting outbursts, and this dilemma she is being faced with re Vatican II. This makes her very human & not just the cardboard evil villain. But what also comes across is the sense of her being withered & of having a thwarted & therefore distorted nature (& there are likewise many background shots of several of the long term nuns sort of just zombie like going through the motions or perhaps covertly sleeping during the mass in contrast to the fervour & earnestness of the probationers ), perhaps because she has identified with the very evils Vatican II, is seeking to address. But to me, Maggie Bett's (director/writer) handling of this is very humane in depicting what can go wrong in this setting & what has gone wrong for so many. (note: not WHAT HAS TO go wrong to all of you who have found a fulfilling creative path in being a nun & I do sympathise with you re the film does implicitly support a perhaps erroneous assumption that Christian devotion inevitably leads to distortion & that love of Jesus is only ever unfulfilling ).
But for me, watching the impact of Vatican II play out on the Mother Superior & having it humanised, actually gave me suffucient insight to be a little more forgiving to the attempted Mother Superior influences in my life. What was translatable was: you can be leading an institution with the highest & best intent, & with this, you have absolute power. The Mother Superior tells the probationers that her words will stand in for God's. Because you are thus isolated & have absolute power, you fail to self-monitor & self-question & your role as the authority goes to your head. But the nature of life is things evolve. However you fail to because unquestioned power in the absence of a modicum of self-doubt, corrupts. So therefore, even perhaps unwittingly, before too long, you are becoming calcified & inappropriate in your 'ministering' to others. You are misapplying your position of authority & power & therefore feeling inwardly more & more out of step & unfulfilled. This has a further distorting effect & it becomes a vicious & imploding dynamic. Thank you Maggie Betts & Melissa Leo! For me your artistry & acting have powerfully informed me, providing fresh insight & enabling me to humanely process a little more, a dynamic that has been a huge stumbling block in my life. What more could one wish out of film-making & acting?
Last Chance Harvey (2008)
Mesmerising & sweetly compelling....
We often see films with great complex & original plots fall completely flat where this 'modest' film enacting the age old archetype of 2 people finding love, to me, totally 100% reaches the mark, in the absence of any 'bells & whustles'. Movies are like our modern way of sitting around a camp fire to share our stories or retell our myths & legends. It's important to keep engaging with the particular ones that summon you & feel relevant & strengthen that within which seeks fulfilment or expression or awakening. I loved that this film could ride almost completely on the strength of Dustin's & Emma's acting capacity. When you've got that, the predictability people refer to barely matters. The connection & chemistry was so tangible - I did indeed find myself feeling what each was feeling, especially the earlier scenes of rejection & exclusion - a bit of a forte for Dustin Hoffman. Both he & Emma were utterly convincing.
I think it's a testimony to the director, as well, that the film didn't require any sex scenes & barely even any kissing, to communicate it's convincing sense of 2 people finding redemption (especially Dustin's character, Harvey) in each other.
I was truly captivated by Dustin Hoffman's to communicate so much through saying so little. He variously conveyed to Emma's character 'Kate', intensity, intelligence, pathos, compassion, humanity etc without saying anything at all. I was so baffled by an earlier reviewer who couldn't see anything in his character at all. There were lots of long spaces where he was saying nothing but conveying everything & it was such a pleasure to experience such consummate ability. (& a relief after his role in Choir
Boy where he's a long way from humane)
It was really delightful & heart-warming & a reminder how there are so often these little moments in life where a poor choice shuts down all positive possibilities & a better one makes all the difference in the world but in isolation we can tend to towards the poor ones where just a little encouragement can tip us towards the better ones!