Entries in the Category "thrillers"
Movie Reviews: Stuff I've Seen Lately
This movie was a real strut for Warren Beatty—throughout he’s the smartest, craftiest, stealthiest, studliest guy around. When his character—a journalist—literally won a barfight, I gave up expecting anything else. That made the movie sort of silly, in addition to the narrative, which was quite obscure and impenetrable for an action-thriller. Also, the last section went on for ages. There are some really great suspense movies from the 70s, but this isn’t one of them.
I saw the remake, with Jude Law, way back when, and thought at the time that it felt old-fashioned. The refrain of, “What does it all mean?” was, I think, by 2004, a question that people born in the era of self-help were a little more used to asking themselves. I was interested, then, in seeing the original, with a youthful Michael Caine, to see if it made more sense in a historical context. The answer is, yes, it does. The incredibly shallow journey to selfhood really should belong to a guy with sideburns, who calls women “birds.” I could quibble with the sexism in the movie, but it was positively quaint, with Alfie having a moment of realization that his victimized girlfriend “has feelings! Just like me!” As a period piece, it was fun. (It seemed weird, though, to have Shelley Winters in a glamorous role—could Roseanne’s Nana Mary really ever have been a sex symbol?)
Click ahead for five more films (but only two produced in my lifetime!)
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Movie Reviews: Men versus Women edition
Well, is the movie good? The performances are good. The film itself is memorable to the point of being iconic—it has incredible cultural value, providing a snapshot of male-female relations during this screwed-up period in the 70s and 80s when women were making these huge strides towards independence and equality amidst a really severe backlash. I think the movie accurately presents the fear men must have felt about the way women were usurping their cultural roles.
But it’s a man’s fear, not a cultural fear, and that fear was/is irrational, and the movie doesn’t make that point; instead it uses the filmic conventions of a horror film where the “monster” is a needy, aggressive woman, and then it destroys her, because that’s what you do with the monster at the end.
More about Fatal Attraction, plus Harry Meets Sally and I hate the world, after the jump.