Just to have some variation in the television shows, I though I might try this, a British adaptation of Dracula that was advertised as being made by the creators of Sherlock. The showrunners being of course Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, this uses the British format of only three episodes but each one being about an hour and half long. The first episode seemed promising, adhering to the source material quite closely with some important and interesting variations including making Van Helsing a nun named Agatha. However it goes off the rails very quickly after that with the intent obviously being to be as different as possible from its inspiration. This is to its detriment in my opinion.
This is billed as an epic fantasy film but if you’re expecting an action fantasy movie you would be sorely disappointed as I don’t believe there is a single swordfight in the entire film. It is rather an adaptation of the 14-century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Without prior knowledge of it, I fear that watching this would be quite a befuddling experience as this was the case for me. Still, the film evokes a feeling of old fantasy before it was completely colonized by games and paperback novels and as such there’s an undeniable lyrical power in it.
A discussion on the more notable Argentinean films of the recent past led us to Nine Queens, which we of course loved. The other film is this one which was considered good enough to merit being adapted by Hollywood. This one also stars Ricardo Darín as the lead but is otherwise a very different film. Though it seems at first to be a crime thriller, it is actually a very romantic film. This combination is strange enough to intrigue me and it is a very emotionally intense film. I think however that while this film does capture some of the political conflict in Argentina the earlier film still better represents it.
Some films aren’t so well received initially upon release and later grow to become cult classics or are revised to become great in the estimation of critics. This film however seems to have taken the opposite trajectory, being lauded early on but its reputation has suffered as time goes by. Partly this was because director Michael Cimino never made another good film after this and Heaven’s Gate in particular was one of the greatest flops of all time. After watching it, that seems about right to me as while the film is beautifully crafted, its core premise is fatally flawed and fundamentally stupid.
This is the shortest of Orson Welles’ feature film and in fact for originally meant to be shown on television in France. It is an adaptation of a short story by a Danish writer named Karen Blixen so this is a film that is small in scope and ambition as well as length. It’s also one of the rare examples of Welles working in color though he seems to have been forced to do so. I’m not too impressed with the story or the themes but I feel that it sets the mood rather well and that’s good enough for a short film like this.
Atom Egoyan is another director of some renown, a Canadian of Armenian extraction, and this is the first of his works I’ve seen. I’ve seen this described as a drama but it’s nothing of the sort. As my wife noticed very quickly, this is a surrealist film in the style of David Lynch, down to similar choices in music. Unfortunately unlike Lynch’s work this does not boast of high production standards and as I have a hard time connecting to what it wants to say, this is not something that I care for at all.
A documentary about the stray dogs of Istanbul is practically irresistible to us, as no doubt our cinephile friend knew when he recommended it to us. This film is quite short and has no narration at all so it really is all about experiencing the streets of this ancient city through the eyes of its dogs, focusing on three of them in particular. There are no great insights or even much information to be gained here but it does make for a fascinating and immersive sensory experience especially if you are a dog-person.
