Book adaptations – Yesterday's Movies

Schindler’s List

November 29, 2024November 30, 2024temporalparadoxLeave a comment

Before watching the movie:

There are probably other films that I’ll remember later that are at least comparable as movies I’ve felt like I had to review at some point, but this one has always been basically the most “must-review” movie since the beginning.

I understand that this is a dramatization of a real story of a factory owner using his privilege to get Jews out of the Holocaust. It is also definitely going to be a Hollywood “The Holocaust was Bad” movie. Every movie condemning the Holocaust is to its own degree earnest and moving, but the lesson has been taught over and over and at this point it’s become a “Best Picture Oscar please” button while the West is becoming more enamored with racism and fascism anyway.

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V For Vendetta

November 15, 2024November 15, 2024temporalparadoxLeave a comment

Before watching the movie:

When I planned this month of the greats that I kept considering and putting off, I wasn’t thinking of the timing, I just happened to have multiple films that I kept considering as springboards to political thoughts at various times of political import. But I completely failed to consider that this November could turn out to be a month of much political spilling of ink of its own accord. That said, this specific one was not in the plan, I just remembered it when I realized there were themes among some of the selections.

I suppose I know more than for a lot of movies going in. There’s a terrorist revolutionary in a mask instigating a revolution against a tyrannical government, there’s a woman brought into his world as a viewpoint character, a lot of people end up putting on the mask. And it’s based on a graphic novel.

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No Country For Old Men

November 8, 2024November 8, 2024temporalparadox1 Comment

Before watching the movie:

As I announced last week at the end of the post, there’s only one more full month before I conclude this blog. I had this exit planned for months and in that time I’ve been trying to cover a lot of movies that I had always meant to get to, maybe for the entire fifteen year run. This month is for the most highly acclaimed films that I’ve come close to reviewing many times, only to decide they were too heavy to get into.

I never really absorbed much about the plot of this movie. I know Javier Bardem’s character is a monstrously cold blooded, unstoppable killer whose weapon of choice is a pneumatic cattle bolt, and I get a sense of a “dark Western” atmosphere. I suppose the title is something about how this isn’t a hospitable place for the sensibilities of the aging.

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Casper

October 24, 2024October 24, 2024temporalparadoxLeave a comment

Before watching the movie:

To be completely transparent, I do recall wanting to watch this movie and being in the room trying to watch it shortly after it came out. But it was a very large room with a lot of other things to do and I was very young and had a short attention span, and I don’t remember much beyond the fact that it was on the screen. I have much clearer, more recent memories, of a tie-in Pepsi commercial than I do of the movie itself. So I consider it more fair to review this as a “first time” watch than as a rewatch.

That said, this was probably my introduction to the world of Casper, though I may have seen some of the tie-in TV series. It looked so current and yet I’m sure I was also aware it was a property that had already been around.

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Psycho

October 17, 2024October 17, 2024temporalparadoxLeave a comment

Before watching the movie:

I recently saw it argued that it’s impossible to see this movie the way it was intended, and that’s a pretty easy argument to make. All the big twists are pretty much the only aspects that survive in the public consciousness. The big star lead dies graphically early on and it becomes a different movie entirely. We all know the scene, and maybe we know about the casting making it more unexpected, and we know who did it and some amount of why.

I’m actually worried that with all that foreknowledge, maybe it won’t hold up. If it completely changes gear partway through, does it still all gel? Or is the purported greatness all in the shock and the music?

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Nosferatu

October 10, 2024October 10, 2024temporalparadoxLeave a comment

Before watching the movie:

I’ve long known that this was the Dracula movie before Dracula, and managed to get some acclaim here even if it was in German (although or perhaps because it’s silent and therefore easier to translate). I don’t know offhand how much the extreme looseness of the adaptation was for copyright reasons (which, internationally, was still extremely loose at the time anyway) and how much was localization and the contemporary constraints of how stories were told on the silent screen.

What I do know is how silly Count Orlock looks.

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The Bride of Frankenstein

October 2, 2024October 2, 2024temporalparadoxLeave a comment

Before watching the movie:

I was never that interested in the Universal Monster Movie Universe until the last few years. They just always existed and I didn’t even learn until recently that basically every “canon” classic monster was owned by the same studio. I was particularly disinterested in the sequels and crossovers that were obviously naked cash grabs.

But much like slasher movies, I’ve come to recognize the cultural importance of these movies and feel like I have a gap without them. And not only does this one seem to have almost as much of a long shadow as the original Frankenstein movie, I’ve heard it described as when Universal’s monster movies reached a level of technical and artistic sophistication that can be said to be coming into their own. I still have a lot of gap, but I can see where the earliest movies are not quite what I think the platonic ideal of a Universal Monster Movie is.

I know there’s a new doctor making the Bride in this one. I think I read that the Monster forces him to make a partner for him, so I guess this new character is more reluctant than arrogant and maniacal.

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Brokeback Mountain

September 12, 2024September 12, 2024temporalparadox1 Comment

Before watching the movie:

Among this month’s selections I guess this isn’t the most widely watched. But I still consider it formative to my cohort. Everybody knew about the Gay Cowboy Movie. Many were not kind. But I think the fact that it existed, that it challenged masculine images, and came from a major studio with big name actors, affected our perspective, even if not all at once. The world was changing, and this was part of the background radiation in the course of that change. Almost two decades later, I don’t think anything about this premise seems nearly as controversial as it did back then. Is that representation in action? Is it the confirmation of culture warriors’ fears? Maybe it’s both, or maybe neither.

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Battlefield Earth

August 28, 2024August 28, 2024temporalparadoxLeave a comment

Before watching the movie:

Among the cinematic debacles, this is one of the most infamous failures. I recall it’s supposed to be ridiculous, and maybe with a heavy handed Scientologist message? All I know for sure is John Travolta hasn’t worked much since.

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Mame

July 31, 2024temporalparadoxLeave a comment

Before Watching the Movie:

I really have no concept of what this movie is about. I think Mame is an outrageous character and I think this has the reputation of being an overblown production heralding the collapse of the musical bubble like Hello Dolly was.

I don’t know if I’m more surprised to learn this is starring Lucille Ball (not someone I think of as a singer) or that there was a nonmusical stage play and nonmusical film before this show. Or that this version is just “Mame”, not “Auntie Mame”.

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