Terms of Endearment

 And this week's Friday night movie has been... Terms of Endearment!

Original image located here. Accessed 4th November 2024

Best Picture Oscar winner no.: 56 (1983)

And now I face another case of a movie with a fearsome reputation: Seems this is one of the undisputed weepies ever made. And it came from one of the people who got the Simpsons made: James L Brooks. Still I am willing to give it a shot...

So what I found is that this is a movie about a mother/daughter relationship. Granted such a scenario is completely out of my field of expertise but I was still able connect with this movie. Certainly the humour works and the emotional parts of it hit like a truck, as befitting this movie's reputation, but for me this movie works as an example of a parent/child relationship (particularly as I limp through middle age). That this movie goes against various trends is better still. 

It's a movie with red, raw heart.

Local Hero

And this week's Friday night movie has been... Local Hero!

Original image located here. Accessed 8th April 2022

Sometimes you know a movie by - and only by - it's theme tune. And this is one such movie.
Growing up in the eighties I became very familiar with the tune Going Home. It was only much later when I found out it was written by Mark Knopfler (of Dire Straits fame) and was part of a soundtrack to a movie called Local Hero.
The latter, of course, is interesting to me. I just knew the song but knew next to nothing about the movie it was from. And that can hardly be called a positive sign: if the theme song is more important than the source material then that inspires a level of expectation that is near impossible to reach.

So what i got from this movie was the sense that this is a British comedy where a town is visited by an outsider and the outsider finds the people in the town are quite eccentric. Thing is, this formula has been replicated many times since to a point that going back to the movie which started it (or at least made it work) it seems rather flat in comparison. Yes this was a comedy and yes there were some funny moments but somehow coming to this movie at this point in time, I come away with the sense it doesn't have the impact it should've had. It would be easy to say this movie was dull but in doing so I can't help but admit I have missed something.
Still the soundtrack was great. And it's it fun to see a young Peter Capaldi.

A Christmas Story

And this week's Friday night movie has been.... A Christmas Story!

Original image located here. Accessed 20th December 2019

Apparently this is a beloved Christmas movie. And yet somehow, it;s one that has gone unseen by me. Maybe I was too busy watching Die Hard Joyeux Noel to notice? No matter, looks like 2019 is the year that situation is rectified.

At first I had no idea what to make of this movie. But, within time, it showed it's hand: It was really making a mockery of tropes associated with Christmas: A scary Santa, a kid who gets his dream present of a rifle, Christmas dinner at a Chinese restaurant among others.
Yet at the same time, this movie still has another trick up it;s sleeve: it is indeed a look at childhood and does so successfully. It indeed definitely resonates with sincerity, even for a grumpy curmudgeon like myself. And despite this movie taking a swing at Christmas tropes, it is still capable for some genuine heart (the final scene with Mr and Mrs Parker comes to mind).
It would appear that this is a beloved Christmas movie for a good reason.

The Big Chill

And this week's Friday night movie has been.....The Big Chill!

Original image located here. Accessed 29th March 2019

It has often been said that revivals happen in chunks of twenty years. And as Grease is the 70's tribute to the 50s, here we have the 80's tribute to the 60's.

That being said, i kind of get the feeling this movie was made for baby-boomers: The kind of people who grew up in the idealistic era of the 60s only to left in disappointment by being in a more materialistic era. But of course, both eras mean little to me (in the case of the 80s I was a little kid for most of it) so i was left alienated, let alone bored, by this movie.

I was indeed open to the possibility of this movie being a critique of revival movies in that showed the era of one's youth wasn't as good as people would like to think it was and/or the aforementioned disappointment with the difference of youth to adulthood but I never got that impression.
Still the soundtrack was pretty good