THREE FILMS - THE HUMAN RACE, OPEN GRAVE, ANCHORMAN II

THE HUMAN RACE

Sort of a combination of Stephen King’s THE LONG WALK and an episode of Outer Limits with some elements of SAW.  Good characters and is suspenseful but a small budget hinders the effect of the narrative.  A bigger budget would have helped.

OPEN GRAVE

A strong opening and an intelligent handling of the momentum horror/mystery unfortunately gives way to zombie movie clichés.  Well made but it gets trapped in genre.  I did like the ending.

ANCHORMAN II

Laughed hard at the first film which is chock full of wild hilarity but this is pretty awful.  The rule of thumb here seems to be if it was funny in the first film, do it again ad nauseum x100.  By the end, I just wanted it to finish- it feels very long.  Repeating a joke doesn’t make it funnier (unless you’re Rodney Dangerfield).

      

BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR

Lesbianism is hardly controversial these days and this overlong and melodramatic film pads the time between its raunchy and explicit sex scenes with lengthy periods of conversation which are meant to show through discussions of interests how its characters tick.

Adele Exarchopoulos who plays the feminine, sexually confused Adele is truly a beautiful young woman.  Lea Seydoux plays the older, more confident Emma who is comfortable with her lesbianism.

Re: Adele’s sexual confusion – One thing I did like about this movie is that it shows that sexuality is fluid, subject to change in some people (something I do believe).

Not a great film but okay, in the end more of a kitchen sink soap opera than a tale of sexual discovery.

PETER O'TOOLE RIP

LAWRENCE OF ARABIA is my second favourite film of all time (next to TAXI DRIVER).  It is perhaps the best made movie I have ever seen.  At its center, in order to deliver its epic story of colonial betrayal and universal loyalty, is the acting of Peter O’Toole.  He creates an icon, becomes an icon, and has the acting chops, the spoken gravitas, to back it up.

O’Toole was the greatest actor never to win an Oscar.  His eight losses are a record.  This was more bad luck than anything else.  In particular what made O’ Toole great was his pronunciation, his diction, his enunciation.  He had one of the greatest speaking voices of any actor.

He was also a larger than life character  The blurring of the actor with his real life, the role and the man, was a key component of his embrace by pop culture and he told a great drinking story http://uk.movies.yahoo.com/blogs/movie-editors/peter-o-toole-80-best-drinking-stories-132719697.html

And aside from LAWRENCE another great O’Toole performance is, his sixth best actor nomination, is THE STUNT MAN....Demonic, mysterious, he keeps the audience guessing, in the palm of his hand.