Monday 4 April 2011
Movies
I saw four movies on the plane today. For once they were all good:
- True Grit (the new one) ... really good genre piece. I love the crisp, precise, snappy dialogue, which you usually only see in pre-1970s films. Great characters. Well worth seeing.
- Black Swan Disturbing but intriguing. Worth seeing, unless you have kids doing ballet in which case, avoid.
- Winter's Bone Brilliant! At one level it's a noir-ish thriller, at another level it's just a young girl trying to keep her family together against the odds. It exudes gritty realism (the depressed and depressing countryside reminds me of some areas outside Pittsburgh), and has honest yet sympathetic characters played by astonishing actors. Riveting at every level. See it.
- The King's Speech Formula drama that follows a well-worn pattern: character with defect seeks professional help, gradually builds trust with professional, relationship punctuated by periodic crises staged for dramatic effect, character overcomes defect. Yawn ... no wonder it won the Oscar. The weakest of the four movies, but I'll still call it "good" because what it does, it does very well, and poking fun at class structures warms the heart even if it's obvious and crowd-pleasing.
None of these movies are better than Toy Story 3 though. Rusell Baillie agrees, and so does Christianity Today.
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