I was somewhat interested in seeing Gran Torino after re-watching the excellent Unforgiven recently. I think elements of the film were interesting, but hose thing were mostly glossed over. It would have been more interesting if they had spent more time talking about the role of the Hmong in Vietnam and how they have or haven’t integrated into American society-instead it was colorful insults of bigoted working class Americans. I felt it was overrated but it’s the kind of thing that major wards academies like. Can Eastwood effectively play the tough guy anymore? Perhaps miscast.
Elegy is an adaptation of a Philip Roth novel, The Dying Animal. I haven’t read it but it seems that he has written his last 10 books on sex, old age, and death. So as Woody Allen makes the same film over and over again-Roth writes the same book over and over. Kinsley is great and Penelope Cruz pulls off the student look in a beautifully filmed movie laden with stereotypes. It is beautiful but depressing.
Tell No One is a French adaptation of an American crime
novel by Harlan Coben. It is a fascinating film directed by Guillaume Canet. It
calls to mind several great European thrillers-at first the inexplicable video
footage of his dead wife calls to mind Peter Handke’s brilliant Cache, and the bucolic European landscapes in contemporary
European films seem to suggest dread and certain death: the aerial shots of the
cars driving through the forests remind me of Handke’s Funny Games and the serial killer film The Vanishing. But it is a mystery film that keeps the viewer
guessing and watching. I also liked how the doctor played by the mesmerizing François
Cluzet turns to his gangster client Bruno to hide him and help him find out
who is trying to set him up. At this point we leave gentile civilized Paris of
elites and visit the ghetto of the marginalized former colonies of France-the
mean streets of Paris. I was engaged throughout the well-paced film. It is a first class
thriller.
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