David Calhoun’s Time Out London review (which we published to announce this feature) started with this: “Feel your eyes widen and widen”, and indeed that eye-widening was evident in the MovieNight “theater” this week. Errol Morris’s Tabloid was a tremendously entertaining piece of film-making, and our lovely crowd lapped it up like hungry kittens. And how about that Booger just hittin’ his big-button phone and dialing 911? Incredible.
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There’s something magical about The Cranes are Flying. So romantic, so tragic, so visually rich, and yes… so melodramatic. Some of our Russian friends (this time there were more) who came somewhat reluctantly, anticipating the pain of being reminded of the bad old days, were instead observed smiling warmly at the screen. The subtitled translation to English was apparently very good… we all laughed at the funny lines in sync.
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The “curation” process for MovieNight has never been easy (so many things to take into account… sometimes even the weather), and Cammell and Roeg’s Performance had been lurking near the top of our list for several years. It was great to finally see it on our lovely big screen, and probably fitting that we left it until our sound system had become as good as it is today. The cast was pretty wonderful… lots of gratuitous nudity, comedic turns from Jagger, and btw, Mick delivered a great musical Performance!
More Roeg coming soon. Get ready.
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I’m not sure what happened here… I wanted to honor Holocaust Remembrance with a movie that would still make for an enjoyable MovieNight, and I recalled finding Life is Beautiful quite entertaining and sweet when I first saw it during its general theatrical release. This one didn’t age very well (maybe the sugar content increased with age?), at least not for me. Sure, there were some touching scenes (the little boy was adorable), but overall I found it cloying… everything was just a bit too cute, and the coincidences too plentiful. Benigni’s comedic acting, replete with rouge-y clown-like make-up, was reminiscent of an annoying relative who can’t stop making jokes when they come for a holiday dinner.
As for the portrayal of the Holocaust… it was pretty shallow, but ultimately I guess that Holocaust and MovieNight just don’t play well together. I guess I should respect that.
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This week’s feature left a number of folks scratching their heads. What happened? Why? Alps was certainly based on a bizarre concept, such as we expected from Mr. Lanthios. One of our regular MovieNight guests, in response to my question, “Well, what do you think?”, said that he’d need some time to think about it. In my book, that’s good… time to think about it. I expect that one doesn’t need much time to think about Wedding Crashers, for example. Not that I’ve seen it. Seriously, though, Norris made a great comment: Lanthios would be so good if he had a great writer. Hey, who wouldn’t?
Thanks to “Matterhorn” for being good company at the bar.
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This week, MovieNight took on yet another shape-shift. We had a healthy, pre-movie bar-hang scene, followed by our feel-good-about-feeling-bad feature, Beginners, followed by one tune by Corinne Bailey Rae, during which I playfully inserted the DVD of John Ford’s stunning classic, How Green Was My Valley. I had intended just to have it on for the visual stimulation (beautiful black and white footage!), but somehow (!) the Corrine faded out and the movie faded up. Almost everyone stayed until the end!
I had always wanted to show How Green Was My Valley, but thought it might be a hard sell. So that’s crossed off our to-do list now. With style.
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