Last week, I watched 6 movies:
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- Brigadoon is fine. The leads are good together, and I like the weirdly curmudgeonly turn by Van Johnson, but the whole thing does feel a little flat.
- Down with Love is fun enough. Roger Ebert said it was “no better or worse than the movies that inspired it, but that is a compliment, I think.” And I think he was probably right.
- Conclave is a lot of fun, with a collection of really strong performances.
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- The Notebook rests mostly on the shoulders of the performances, particularly from Rachel McAdams. The love story itself isn’t much to write home about, as much as the framing story and attempts at period details try to lend it some gravitas.
- We Live in Time is another example of how great performances can lend so much weight to an otherwise incredibly shallow story. I’m not sure the story here is all that compelling, and the decision to tell it nonlinearly often feels like just a gimmick, but Garfield and Pugh keep you engaged.
- 1931’s Cimarron is often cited on lists of the most undeserving Academy Award winners, and I Wish I could say that claim was untrue. But the movie is badly dated, full of offensive racist stereotypes, poorly straddling the silent and sound era, and moreover exceptionally boring.
I also rewatched Gladiator, which I enjoyed, but which I probably won’t feel a need to watch again for another twenty-five years.