PREFACE
This is the sporadically updated blog of reviews by Harriet, author of In the Aquarium: a londoner's life.
I have kept the reviews separate to enable them to be indexed and therefore more easily accessible (see listing below).
FAVE FILMS DEAD MAN What an idea, the man is dying for almost the entire length of the film, the music is fantastic, its black and white, ideology, mythology, funny, sad, Johnny Depp sex god...
THE DRAFTMAN'S CONTRACT The first Peter Greenaway film I saw and possibly the most accessible. Beautiful set, costumes, direction. Fantastic soundtrack.
MULHOLLAND DRIVE I knew exactly what was going on right up until the last 15 minutes and damn it but then I lost it.
NIGHT ON EARTH Jim Jarmusch made the only film with Winona Ryder worth watching and it had Beatrice Dalle (say no more)
O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU? Roar out loud with laughter and tunes that make you love country music. My sister had to sneak out of the cinema ahead of our dad and me cos she was so embarrassed at our laughing.
ORLANDO Quiet, passionate, time travel.
PITCH BLACK Bails and I watched this with its bleached scenery and its whoar factor star. We LOVED him, Mr Diesel take a bow.
RESERVOIR DOGS Tight Tarantino gang heist gone wrong. Great soundtrack. And there's something about Michael Madson, dancing just before cutting off the cop's ear...
ROMUALD ET JULIETTE Truely lovely romance comedy.
THREE COLOURS TRILOGY Blue, White and Red. I liked them all. Quiet stories, beautifully shot.
THE USUAL SUSPECTS Its a story told. And the first time I saw it I didn't get the twist until just before it happened.
French films seem to be steeped in characterisation in a way other ones aren't. I like that about them.
Underworld of Paris - a man works as an enforcer, life steeped in violence. Wired, all the time. Itchy kind of character who can't sit still and flares up in a hurry. Weird curling lip, darting eyes.
By chance passes an old familiar face, the manager of his dead mother who makes him promise to audition for him. So we discover this thug is a pianist. His re-interest in the piano leads him to find a mentor and slowly his character changes, finds more peace and looses the scratchy self. While still being involved in his work he spends his spare time practising.
Stuff happens - his dad is murdered, his audition is a disaster.
Its an intense film, focused on the foreground characters, Paris very much out of focus, background. Difficult relationships with father and others. But also slow but significant change in the main character.
Two years on, his life is totally different, to the extent that faced with the opportunity he is unable to kill his father's murderer.
