23. Persepolis (2007), dir. Vincent Paronnaud & Marjane Satrapi
★★★★☆
Can we just talk about how great this film is? So great. So, so great.
20. The Big Lebowski (1998), dir. Ethan & Joel Coen
★★★★☆
See below comments on A Serious Man. I know this is a classic which I’m supposed to love, and again I really appreciated the humour but I just didn’t love it? Perhaps the Coen bros’ particular brand of black comedy is one that just doesn’t do it for me.
Ugh I feel like I just blasphemed.
16. Jane Eyre (2011), dir. Cary Fukunaga
★★★★☆
Such a beautiful adaptation. Mia Wasikowska was perfection and the casting in general was spot on - although I do think Jamie Bell was a little too boyish and warm for St. John, who’s supposed to resemble a marble Grecian bust if I remember rightly. And although Fassy wasn’t quite as swarthy and fierce as Rochester always seemed to me, he was still excellent.
And I loved that Fukunaga played up the gothic side of the story, because the novel itself is a classic gothic horror in structure and style. Although why on earth he chose to cut the scene where Bertha Mason appears in Jane’s room and puts on her wedding dress the night before she’s due to marry Rochester is totally beyond me, its one of the best scenes in the whole book and so fucking creepy. But overall it was really good, I guess the main issue I had was with how Jane’s relationships with Rochester and St. John were portrayed. I felt that with the former, there wasn’t enough of a sense of exactly why they were so drawn to each other? In the book it becomes quite clear that they are, for lack of a better phrase, totally meant for each other. Their temperaments are matched perfectly, although you get the feeling that if they had married initially it wouldn’t have ended as well (given that Mr. Rochester relies on her for his redemption rather than redeeming himself as he later does but blah blah blah I’m not reviewing the book here). I think more was needed to show this? And with St. John his backstory was totally eliminated, and it came across as though he was kind of in love with Jane? Which is not the case AT ALL. But I suppose some cuts have to be made in adaptations I guess.
Anyway overall it was great (oh and I really loved how they changed the sequence of events so she started off with St. John and his sisters that was quite inspired) and it’s beautifully done and tasteful and quite, quite lovely.
13. Bridesmaids (2011), dir. Paul Feig
★★★★★
HOW HAD I NOT SEEN THIS FILM BEFORE??? Literally in hysterics for the entire film, love these ladies so much. I’m so glad to see a film like this get made.
11. The Philadelphia Story (1940), dir. George Cukor*
★★★★★
SO MANY FEELINGS ABOUT THIS FILM. I first watched this when I was about 11 or 12 with my mum, and it’s probably the one that first got me interested in films from this era. It’s probably also why Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant are two of my absolute favourite actors ever. The writing is just SO fantastic, everything in this film rests on the script and the actors delivering the lines, and the dialogue is so witty and sharp and it’s just delightful. And it even has some biting social commentary along with the obligatory romance! Parfait.
You know what
the more I think about The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
the more uncomfortable I am with it
I gave it a pretty decent review but I said there that it didn’t quite sit right with me and I’m starting to understand why
and I think I might go revise my review of it because that rape scene bothers me the more and more I think about it. ESPECIALLY the revenge rape. it’s so fucking inaccurate as well. Lisbeth goes and gets her revenge and then yay closure! Isn’t she a badass! let’s get on with the rest of the movie now. Nice try, but that’s not how it works for, you know, actual rape victims. It delegitimises the response and recovery of rape victims. Lisbeth goes and kicks her rapist’s ass and then gets on with life as if it never even happened. There’s no indication that she suffered any mental trauma because no she’s already a tough badass you guys! But real people suffer trauma from these kind of events and you can’t just expect them to toughen up and ‘get on with it’ because IT IS ONE OF THE MOST TRAUMATIC THINGS A PERSON CAN EXPERIENCE. So you can’t hold Lisbeth up as this sort of saviour for rape victims because her response is so atypical. So sorry, dudes who wrote/directed this, you’re wayyy off. Not only is your scenario totally off the mark, it’s pretty voyeuristic as well. And that is not ok.
I’m shifting film commentary from tags to the main text post. no1 curr.
