My Life Without Me and Bunny Lake...
All I've been reading lately are the Robert Crais books (thankfully, he's just gotten better as the series has progressed) so there's nothing new on that front. I just started the first book of H. L. Mencken's memoirs and it's very funny, acerbic and intelligent-what else would you expect from him? I look forward to reading the next two books after this one.
I haven't gone to see any movies-there's NOTHING good out there right now. Halloween? Please. Rush Hour 3? I don't think so. But there are some good one opening soon, so I'll be going again, probably this weekend. However, my last two Netflix movies were pretty good. Not great, but pretty good. The first was My Life Without Me, with Sarah Polley as a young mother in a dead-end job, who soon finds out she has a tumor and will die fairly soon-what will she do before she dies?
I liked this movie because she makes something of her life-she tells her children she loves them, she sleeps with a guy not her husband (a very cute, kind of weird guy played by Mark Ruffalo) she tries to get along with her cranky, bitchy mom (Debbie Harry!) and goes to visit her father (Alfred Molina!) in prison. I liked all the people in smallish parts-they were all convincing, but none more so than Polley herself. She clearly loves all of them, and she wants to do something for herself AND for them. She sees that their lives will be okay without her-she's done the best she could for all of them and for herself as well.
The other movie I watched was Bunny Lake is Missing-and I still can't decide how I feel about it. The first 3/4 of it was really good-Carol Lynley as a young woman moving to London with her child and to live with her brother, takes her child to school-when she returns to pick her up, she's missing. No one at the school as seen her-did she make her up? Her brother (Keir Dullea) seems to be very helpful and caring-but he also tells the inspector investigating the case (Laurence Olivier!) that his sister had an imaginary playmate as a child-one she called Bunny. Does her daughter Bunny even exist? I give Keir Dullea credit-for the most of the movie, he's the sane, rational one, along with Olivier. They both seems to have their doubts about Ann Lakes' sanity, as does the audience. The big reveal with 1/4 of the movie to go was played very well-and from there it's bit of cat and mouse....until it just goes bonkers. I understood the game Ann Lake played with her brother, to keep his mind off killing her child-and I liked how Keir Dullea seemed perfectly sane until he just wasn't any more-their scenes together at the end were really good. But at the very end, he's pushing her on a swing, her daughter his hiding from him (near a pit he's has dug out to bury Bunny's clothes and toys and possibly her)-what was that? Had Ann become so wrapped up in the game that she forgot about her child until the police providentially appeared? What annoyed me about this scene was that it just seemed like a stupid 60's movie trick-over-acted and overly staged and also owed much to Psycho. All these things bothered me because up until then, it had been really good and the ending just let me down.
I haven't gone to see any movies-there's NOTHING good out there right now. Halloween? Please. Rush Hour 3? I don't think so. But there are some good one opening soon, so I'll be going again, probably this weekend. However, my last two Netflix movies were pretty good. Not great, but pretty good. The first was My Life Without Me, with Sarah Polley as a young mother in a dead-end job, who soon finds out she has a tumor and will die fairly soon-what will she do before she dies?
I liked this movie because she makes something of her life-she tells her children she loves them, she sleeps with a guy not her husband (a very cute, kind of weird guy played by Mark Ruffalo) she tries to get along with her cranky, bitchy mom (Debbie Harry!) and goes to visit her father (Alfred Molina!) in prison. I liked all the people in smallish parts-they were all convincing, but none more so than Polley herself. She clearly loves all of them, and she wants to do something for herself AND for them. She sees that their lives will be okay without her-she's done the best she could for all of them and for herself as well.
The other movie I watched was Bunny Lake is Missing-and I still can't decide how I feel about it. The first 3/4 of it was really good-Carol Lynley as a young woman moving to London with her child and to live with her brother, takes her child to school-when she returns to pick her up, she's missing. No one at the school as seen her-did she make her up? Her brother (Keir Dullea) seems to be very helpful and caring-but he also tells the inspector investigating the case (Laurence Olivier!) that his sister had an imaginary playmate as a child-one she called Bunny. Does her daughter Bunny even exist? I give Keir Dullea credit-for the most of the movie, he's the sane, rational one, along with Olivier. They both seems to have their doubts about Ann Lakes' sanity, as does the audience. The big reveal with 1/4 of the movie to go was played very well-and from there it's bit of cat and mouse....until it just goes bonkers. I understood the game Ann Lake played with her brother, to keep his mind off killing her child-and I liked how Keir Dullea seemed perfectly sane until he just wasn't any more-their scenes together at the end were really good. But at the very end, he's pushing her on a swing, her daughter his hiding from him (near a pit he's has dug out to bury Bunny's clothes and toys and possibly her)-what was that? Had Ann become so wrapped up in the game that she forgot about her child until the police providentially appeared? What annoyed me about this scene was that it just seemed like a stupid 60's movie trick-over-acted and overly staged and also owed much to Psycho. All these things bothered me because up until then, it had been really good and the ending just let me down.
posted by SHbookworm at 10:30 AM
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