I've been so turned off by the big movies playing at the cineplexes that I've been seeking out indie films, trying to get ahold of Sundance and Cannes winners, or even winners at lesser festivals.
Recently, I watched Two Family House written and directed by Raymond DeFelitta. It won the Audience Award at Sundance in 2000, and richly deserved it. The characters are so real, you want to reach out and slap one, or pinch the cheek of another.
The tale itself is relevant to most people. It's about conforming to your family's expectations which are strangling you. In this film, we see how Buddy breaks away, and with whom, and how. We also see the narrow bigotry of "respectable" people. And, there's a tender love story here, two actually. Buddy's loves, both of them. I can't reveal them because it would be a plot giveaway.
Films about family are important vehicles for drama. Family is essential. Most people have one--or had one. Families are also laden with drama between their members. I think the most difficult relationships we have to forge in our lives, besides spouses, are those with our parents, grandparents, siblings, and even cousins. (I have a large family.)
DeFelitta has also done City Island, which is also good, and also about family, but one with very different dynamics than Buddy's in Two Family House.
In contrast to those films, I couldn't relate to any of the nonsense in Inception, The Tourist, or Salt and other such movie fare which are all about running around breathlessly for some ultimately meaningless ends, but with plenty of macho displays or super-conniving characters motivated by greed and nothing else. They have no dimension, no innerness.
Romantic comedies, which I used to like, have become predictable and absurd. In Management, Jennifer Anniston chooses a guy who wants to open a soup kitchen with her? Give me a break. She wants to spend the rest of her life washing dishes and ladling soup? She who was willing to marry a sadistic idiot because he was so rich? You don't get from there to a soup kitchen.
It seems that every film Jennifer Anniston is in is a romantic comedy, or is it that every romantic comedy has her in it? She's in her forties already. How much longer can she play 20 something, single and fending off a would-be lover--whom she eventually marries? She has no depth, no range of acting, and uses the same cute facial expressions in every movie she's in. Boring.
Right now, for someone who watches a movie almost every evening, the blockbusters and the sequels and prequels that are playing, just don't satisfy. Good indie films that portray ordinary humans facing the exceptional and dealing with it, or ordinary humans who have to deal with tragedy, or believable human beings facing whatever.
I know I must be missing plenty of good indies, but I rely on you guys to clue me in. Until then, I'll search Netflix for titles--or when I'm feeling flush, Amazon.
Speaking of Amazon, Miller's Crossing is finally coming out on blu ray and can be pre-ordered for $16 and change. That's a film I can't get enough of. Oddly, for a Coen Brothers movie, and a gangster film to boot, it is ultimately about family. But then, so are the great gangster films like The Godfather
Recently, I watched Two Family House written and directed by Raymond DeFelitta. It won the Audience Award at Sundance in 2000, and richly deserved it. The characters are so real, you want to reach out and slap one, or pinch the cheek of another.
The tale itself is relevant to most people. It's about conforming to your family's expectations which are strangling you. In this film, we see how Buddy breaks away, and with whom, and how. We also see the narrow bigotry of "respectable" people. And, there's a tender love story here, two actually. Buddy's loves, both of them. I can't reveal them because it would be a plot giveaway.
Films about family are important vehicles for drama. Family is essential. Most people have one--or had one. Families are also laden with drama between their members. I think the most difficult relationships we have to forge in our lives, besides spouses, are those with our parents, grandparents, siblings, and even cousins. (I have a large family.)
DeFelitta has also done City Island, which is also good, and also about family, but one with very different dynamics than Buddy's in Two Family House.
In contrast to those films, I couldn't relate to any of the nonsense in Inception, The Tourist, or Salt and other such movie fare which are all about running around breathlessly for some ultimately meaningless ends, but with plenty of macho displays or super-conniving characters motivated by greed and nothing else. They have no dimension, no innerness.
Romantic comedies, which I used to like, have become predictable and absurd. In Management, Jennifer Anniston chooses a guy who wants to open a soup kitchen with her? Give me a break. She wants to spend the rest of her life washing dishes and ladling soup? She who was willing to marry a sadistic idiot because he was so rich? You don't get from there to a soup kitchen.
It seems that every film Jennifer Anniston is in is a romantic comedy, or is it that every romantic comedy has her in it? She's in her forties already. How much longer can she play 20 something, single and fending off a would-be lover--whom she eventually marries? She has no depth, no range of acting, and uses the same cute facial expressions in every movie she's in. Boring.
Right now, for someone who watches a movie almost every evening, the blockbusters and the sequels and prequels that are playing, just don't satisfy. Good indie films that portray ordinary humans facing the exceptional and dealing with it, or ordinary humans who have to deal with tragedy, or believable human beings facing whatever.
I know I must be missing plenty of good indies, but I rely on you guys to clue me in. Until then, I'll search Netflix for titles--or when I'm feeling flush, Amazon.
Speaking of Amazon, Miller's Crossing is finally coming out on blu ray and can be pre-ordered for $16 and change. That's a film I can't get enough of. Oddly, for a Coen Brothers movie, and a gangster film to boot, it is ultimately about family. But then, so are the great gangster films like The Godfather