These are the movies I have watched in the last week, thanks to Netflix.com
Les Roseaux Sauvages (Wild Reeds) was like A Seperate Piece but in French and with some mutual jerking off between two of the main characters. It won four Cesar's in France (the equivalent of winning an Oscar) including the award for Best Picture in 1994.
"This resonant, engrossing 1994 film by André Téchiné (Thieves) is an unusual coming-of-age story set at a French boarding school in 1962, when news of France's
war in Algeria is still plentiful. Téchiné focuses on a handful of students, measuring their transition into adulthood against the reality of love, sex, and the
war's controversial cost. Strikingly sensitive and sophisticated, beautifully dramatized, and perfectly acted by a young cast, the film feels like one of those universal touchstones for the final days of childhood grace. Téchiné's typically blunt-but-gentle manner is perfectly suited for this tale of youthful gains and losses."
Requiem for a Dream is emotionally and hysterically disturbing but it is a great movie. The entire scene of the mother grinding her teeth as her son listens on is one of the best moments I have witnessed in an American movie in awhile. And Jared Leto is hot as fuck, even as a tweaker. More reviews:
WhatsIt concerns four addicts. Jared Leto and Jennifer Connelly play a young loving couple, Harry and Marion, who dabble in heroin and plan to make a big sale along with their friend Tyrone (Shawn Wayans) so they can be set for life and Marion can open up her own (legal) business. Unfortunately, their recreational drug use turns into day-to-day addiction, and things start to get ugly. REAL ugly. (Watching someone shoot up directly into a gangrene-infected, pus-filled crater in his arm kind of gave me a whole new definition of the word ugly.) Ellen Burstyn plays Harry's mother Sarah, a lonely widow who wants to lose weight to fit into a red dress so she can appear on her
favorite TV show. She starts out by being addicted to TV and candy, but has the bad luck to go to a doctor who-in what I thought was the only unrealistic part of the film- gives her an RX for 'diet pills', that turn out to actually be speed. I say unrealistic because, as anyone who has ever worked in the medical profession knows, very few doctors will NOT just write someone who goes to them for the first time to see them for weight loss a huge prescription for extremely powerful and addictive controlled substances without so much as an examination. In this day and age, if you went to 100 doctors and asked for Dexedrine or a similar narcotic diet pill, I doubt even one would prescribe it. If the movie took place any time before the early 80's, this would have been a little easier to swallow.
Anyway, I found her story thread the most memorable and heartbreaking. Sarah takes pills and starts losing weight, as well as suddenly becoming very energetic and chatty. Like any addictive drug, her happy blue pills stop working after prolonged use so she ups her dose more...and more...and things slowly start getting very weird and scary. In one of the best scenes midway through the film (one of the few that had a tiny bit of comic relief) Harry visits her --the only visit he makes during the movie where he doesn't openly steal her TV to pawn for dope money. He is briefly riding high (in more ways than one) and tells her he bought her a big screen TV-he wanted to do something nice for her and figured out that "TV is her fix". He looks like he's getting a bad feeling when she's babbling happily about how she has a reason to get up in the morning, and then he hears her grinding her teeth, and figures it out. This is the first time in the movie you see real fear in his eyes. Sarah soon starts having very scary strung-out hallucinations-starting out with subtle things like time woozily slowing down and speeding back up, and when her refrigerator suddenly starts moving on its own, the real nightmare begins. An agressive fridge with a mind of its own sounds Monty Python-esque when you first hear about it, but trust me, you won't be laughing by the end of the movie.
One review I read said that the movie not only pulls the rug out from under you, it drags you and the rug down a long flight of stairs into a very dark basement. Another reviewer compared the experience of watching the film to a drug, and that's not too far off the mark either. Whenever a character gets high, there's a slam-bang fast cut montage of the same images over and over; a sigh, a pupil dilating, cells changing color. The scenes where Sarah hallucinates are pretty close to the real thing. The description I probably agree with most came from Darren Aronofsky himself-he compared the film to a jump from a plane without a parachute, and the movie ends three minutes after you hit the ground. The last few minutes that show the gruesome, depressing, worst-case-scenario fates of all 4 characters are just as intense, hard to watch, and nightmarish as I heard they were. I don't think I will ever forget Harry's mother's transformation from a harmless, plump, friendly older woman to someone so frightening looking that people cringe away in fear and revulsion at the sight of her.
What's Up, Doc? is the second movie I have seen with Barbara Streisand in it. It is from 1972 and I will have to admit that it is pretty funny stuff. She is very cute in it. It is a definite good laugh yet it is mostly charming because it is a 1972 movie.
Two researchers have come to San Francisco to compete for a research grant in Music. One seems a bit distracted, and that was before he meets her. A strange woman seems to have devoted her life to confusing and embarassing him. At the same time a woman has her jewels stolen and a government whistle blower arrives with his stolen top secret papers. All, of course have the same style and color overnight bag.
Oooh, seems like a nice movie - Les Roseaux Sauvages that is. I have to get it. Meanwhile, I have the DVD for Requiem, so I didn't read your post on that. I didn't want to ruin it.
Posted by: Groove | March 03, 2005 at 01:25 PM
I love Les roseaux sauvages, it one of the most beautifull movies ever made. It's possible to relate to the "bete" n there is stephan redeaux who is so hot, u should check him now...delicieux:P
Posted by: jason | March 03, 2005 at 08:59 AM