Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

We watched "World War Z" again last night.  We both find it gripping.  The pace is fast enough that niggling details escape your notice, and the plot has clean points to make that build to the solution to the problem.  It all has the illusion of realism and is over before you can worry over zombie physiology or likelihood.  The center of the story is Brad Pitt as a UN experienced navigator in the world's hot spots.  His lived in face, his gravitas even as he makes himself ordinary, like all great movie stars enforces our trust of his character.  There are twists and turns that surprise us, and a perfect balance between zombie chaos and intimate scenes.  This is a super well edited film, and the music enhances our dread and emotional involvement.  Each time I see nice details I missed the last time around.  One of the most powerful lines is about how we bury our heads in the sand until forced to look, and it has an obvious echo in climate change and the destruction of our environment.  This film is about something important without naming it:  it aims viserally.  Why not?  All the Al Gores in the world haven't awakened us.  Nor the hurricanes and storms.  Let's cut to the chase:  what if we ALL die?

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

We watched "Invisible Woman" last night, Ralph Fiennes' directorial debut.  The story is about Charles Dickens and Ellen Tiernan, who were lovers and for whom Dickens separated from his wife.  It's a fascinating story of what both risked, but of course the risk was far greater for Tiernan.  It exposes the codes of the time, the sexism, the entrapment of propriety.  Fiennes is perfect as Dickens.  Felicity Jones is Ellen, and I thought her fine, though my husband felt her acting was weak.  Kirsten Scott-Thomas is Ellen's mother, and the woman who plays Dickens' wife is superb.  Fiennes manages to convey the emotions and constrictions of that era succinctly, and also the all consuming passion of a writer.  The film made me want to read the book upon which it is based, and also a big biography of Dickens.  The fear of poverty is shown as a motivator of Dickens' actions and also his desire to escape the domesticity which he loved and was strangled by.  His many children, adored but ignored, and his 19th century lack of responsibility for their existence, are disturbing and familiar.

What one is left with is the plight of a woman who falls in love with an unavailable man, and how hers is the back that must bend to the crucible of passion, while he, ultimately, is free of constraint.  It's the tragedy of a woman's lot, though in this case she survived and went on to have her own family and memories.  And the books.  Which in this film are like the treasures of Aladdin.