I watched an assortment of five movies last week:
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- There’s a lot going on in American Fiction, sometimes almost too much, and certainly a lot more than just the satire of publishing and race that the trailers suggest. That’s in there, and it’s a smart and biting satire, but there’s also a very touching character study and family drama rattling around inside too.
- Paul Winfield really is exceptionally good in Sounder.
- I’m not even that big a Taylor Swift fan—I mean, I like her and several of her songs well enough, but I come to even that still scattershot appreciation fairly late. And yet, it’s hard to watch the three-hour, terrifically staged concert footage of Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour and not walk away genuinely impressed and wanting more.
- What Wings manages to do, entirely without any special effects beyond its own invented camera trickery, is even now, almost a century later, nothing short of astounding. That this silent film also manages to tell such an engaging story is remarkable as well.
- It’s easy to see how Warrior wouldn’t be half as effective if it wasn’t as well put together, or if the performances in it weren’t so strong. It’s not a terrifically surprising story, but often powerfully engaging.
I also re-watched The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Maggie Smith is still fantastic in it, but I think I forgot how very much this is Pamela Franklin’s movie. Hers is the character with an actual arc—defined against Jean Brodie’s inability or unwillingness to grow, despite her constant admonishments to her girls to the contrary. I was struck, on this re-watch, how unlikable and yet tragic Brodie is as a character.