Thursday night was a night of watching films it seems. Here is a brief run down on what I watched.
First of all, courtesy of the Directors’ Guild and The Factory I got to wander along to a preview of Lance Daly’s The Good Doctor, in which Orlando Bloom plays Dr. Martin Blake, a lonely doctor who forms a relationship with a patient.
I really don’t want to say much more about the plot, but it is a lot better than I am making it sound. Trust me and don’t look up much, since all the marketing material (trailers, synopses, etc) give away far more than they should. Which is a pity since the plot and its pacing work best when you don’t expect it all. Anyway, a good film with solid performances, a nice story and generally a nice looking flick.
The kind of film I would recommend seeing if you like going to the cinema but find you’ve seen all the films you wanted to see. Or just like to support Irish filmmakers.
After I got home from that I finally (as in I’ve had this staring at me for quite a while now) threw on Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi’s animated feature Persepolis. Adapted from Satrapi’s graphic novels that tells of her growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution.
Another lovely, though quiet sad, film. Interesting to see how Iran was during the 80s and how it was to be an Iranian woman through all those key events. The film also deals with a period of her life where she lived in Europe and it was equally interesting to see how she was perceived (or perceived she was perceived, at least) by the outside world at that time. A worth while watch. It was even nominated for an Oscar in 2008. Not that that is any real indication of quality, sadly…
Finally, to lighten the tone of my lonely filmic night, I turned to an old favourite of mine – Wes Anderson, this time trying out his stop-motion adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr Fox, wherein an urbane fox cannot resist returning to his farm raiding ways and then must help his community survive the farmers’ retaliation.
Classic Anderson. His style of camera work and humour translated perfectly to the medium. A lovely looking film with great performances and clever humour. I really enjoyed it. Having never read the book, I can’t say how faithful an adaptation it is, but I can say I don’t care about that sort of thing. Reading is for eggheads, who have a known fondness for booky-wooks. You should watch this.
That was my Thursday night. My Friday was writing this. I am crushing life.
