Though billed as a documentary, Leviathan is really a work of pure visual artistry. Made by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel who are both anthropologists at Harvard University, it is best described as an attempt to capture what it feels like to be aboard a commercial fishing trawler as it works the seas around North America. With no narration and no dialogue beyond the rare incidental remark by the crew which are almost always completely unintelligible, it is up to the audience to glean whatever meaning that they can from the myriad images and sounds.
Skipping over the next film in the Marriage in the Movies course because I can’t for the life of me find The Marrying Kind, we come to Adam’s Rib. This one stars Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, another phenomenally successful and famous Hollywood duo. In this case, they actually were a couple in real life and remained so until Tracy’s death though the relationship was kept a secret.
Jake Gyllenhaal is one of the most interesting Hollywood performers to me. Aside from some exceptions like Prince of Persia and The Day After Tomorrow, his career is devoid of the stereotypical big but dumb blockbusters. His own acting acumen of course is not in doubt ever since Brokeback Mountain. Nightcrawler is therefore only the latest feather in his cap, being not only an excellent film but also one that brilliantly showcases his diverse skills.
As with many of the animated films we watch, this one was added to our watch list by my wife. It’s a French-Scottish production directed by Slyvain Chomet who is best known for Les Triplettes de Belleville. It’s also worth noting from the onset it’s based on a script by French comedian and film maker Jacques Tati from the 1950s about his relationship with his daughter, but it was never actually made into a film.
As you might expect, this one was included as the next entry in the list for the upcoming Marriage and the Movies course. The leads are Carole Lombard, who was a huge star in the late 1930s but this is I believe I’ve seen a movie of hers, and interestingly a much younger James Stewart, who was so impressive in Vertigo. In fact, I didn’t realize that it was the same actor but did have niggling feeling that I should know him from somewhere.
I knew going in that despite its title this film had nothing to do with Brazil and that it was a science-fiction movie with a good dose of director Terry Gilliam’s unique brand of fantasy. What I didn’t know was that it is basically a re-imagining of 1984. You can’t fail to notice what’s going on when the perfect on-screen version of jack booted thugs, down to the square jaws and British accents, show up, and that’s when I started to really have fun with this movie.
It is said that sometimes a new idea takes Hollywood by storm and so you see a whole bunch of movies sharing similar themes being released at around the same time. Enemy isn’t a Hollywood film since it’s a Canadian-Spanish production. But it is still hard to otherwise explain why The Double and Enemy, two very similar films, were both released in 2013.
