see more art films

I would give this about 3 stars. James McAvoy is very good, but I still didn’t care about his character as much as I should have done. It’s good to see a film in which the main characters are severely disabled, with rounded characters and stories of their own. A bold movie.

I feel that this counts as art because it contains such a funny mixture of elements, the traditional and the wacky; and for my son it was a serious film, and for me it was funny and clever. So it works on at least 2 levels.

We all loved Paul Bettany as a gambling-mad stark-naked Geoff Chaucer. And we loved the football chants they made up about Sir Ulrich of Gelderland (not exactly Chauceresque).

This wasn’t a great movie.

Walk the Line

This was a great movie.

This is apparently based on Tristram Shandy, which has been on the Enormous Pile of Unread Books for many a long year. Having never read TS I can’t say whether they did justice or not to the text, but it was quite funny and very mad and anarchic, so on its own terms, it was very good.

Unlike many rather arty films, this was gripping. It is however, very English in its language and all its reference points, so I can’t see it would appeal to The World at all. It is rather unfortunate that we recognise all our favourite actors and start saying: is Ron Weasley’s Dad meant to be an actor, part of the crew, or himself? Or are these multi-level recognitions part of the whole experience of the intentional unreality of the thing??

In short, it is all jolly puzzling. So I want to watch it again.

from Film four. Lots of good stuff. I thought “The Green Mile” was very gripping. The others recommended “The Shawshank Redemption” which I didn’t feel like watching. My mum said it was very good.

We saw “Melvin and Howard” which was eccentric, sad and loveable. And it has a rather amazing post-script ending. The children thought it was too slow. It could have done with more cohesion.

We saw The Accidental Tourist last night, which is also slow, but more gripping than Melvin and Howard. The children stayed up and watched it too, so they found the story strong enough… it is long. It was better than I remembered, though I found Geena Davis’s voice very monotonous, and I feel sorry that the Leary family have no backstory in the film (they do in the novel) that expalins their eccentricity – e.g. why they get lost, why they stick together.

I think they count as art, so I’ll note that we watched the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which was rather confusing, but worth watching. Jim Carrey was a revelation! playing a shy, nerdy guy… very good. I wanted it for the Charlie Kaufman script, but I didn’t really like the way it was filmed.

I got a film for Stan by a director he’s studied at school and thinks is really good. It’s a famous film called The Sixth Sense. We thought it was a brilliant knockout movie, Stan said it was far better than Unbreakable, which was his previous favourite film.

Watching something with Stan brings us together: well worth doing.

and I really enjoyed it: I liked the sadness combined with the humour. And I felt I was really seeing California, maybe I’ll never get there but I have more idea what to go for if I do go.

was the DVD we got from Lovefilm, recommended by William and Dionne. It was definitely an art film, very slow… It was OK. It made you care about the characters. We wanted the girl to have a backstory. It seems sexist to have a guy with a background, and a girl who falls into his lap like a big dolly, no story attached to her at all.

which our friend William gave us a freebie to. We should have some interesting films to watch for 2 months. Of course, better to go to the cinema, but there aren’t many arty cinemas in the suburbs.