Films

Another film review post.   I'm going to start off with The English Patient.   As previously mentioned, this is one I'd seen before.   I just wanted to rewatch it now that I'd read the book.   I have to say that being able to compare them now I like the changes the film makers made.   They gave the story a proper ending and took out some of the silly bits.   I love most of the casting as well!   Juliette Binoche was perfect for Hana, and Ralph Fiennes was perfect for the Count (though he ought to be careful; what with this part and Lord Voldemort he's getting to be quite type cast as people with no faces).   I loved Kristin Scott Thomas as Catherine Clifton too.   The only character I thought could have been cast better was Caravaggio.   Willem Dafoe was just a bit too sinister I thought.   But yes, I feel I can now definitively say that The English Patient is both a great film and a great adaptation.

Next, Lost in Tanslation.   One I'd never got round to watching before.   It's pretty good!   It's about an aging movie star, played by Bill Murray,who's in Japan filming adverts and lonely.   He's having problems with his wife and doesn't know anyone in Tokyo.   That's when he meets a lonely young wife (Scarlett Johansson) who's accompanying her husband on a business trip, but he's neglecting her and having fun with his friends.   The two of them strike up a friendship and go around Tokyo together.   It's quite an artsy film.   One you don't watch for the story or the dialogue, but for the shots.   A lot of the time it just seems to be show-casing Tokyo, especially Tokyo night life, and there are long periods with no dialogue at all.   It's very atmospheric and quite melancholy.   I imagine it to be a good film to stick on at the end of a night out, when there are lots of people crowded together in a dark room and it's very late and everyone is quite sleepy and perhaps a little intoxicated.   And they must have worked pretty hard to get Scarlett Johansson to look like a Plain Jane.

            





And finally, Ladies in Lavender.   This was an interesting one.   It's about two elderly sisters played by Maggie Smith and Judi Dench who find a shipwrecked boy washed up on the beach in the 1930s.   They don't have a language in common, but they take care of him and grow to love him.   In fact one of them actually falls in love with him, despite the massive age gap.   In the end he leaves for London without saying anything where he becomes a famous violinist.   This one was also pretty and atmospheric, showing off the English countryside, though I'm not sure about the colour palette they used.   It made the sea look quite odd and unnatural.   And Maggie Smith was brilliant, as always.