"You didn't miss much."

Absolutely. Can I say something slightly off topic? It's not that films can't be great, or at the very least, deeply moving in spots. I'm not a film buff. But in the last few years I've seen a French documentary about one year in the life of a rural schoolteacher that was moving without falling into sentimentality. That was several years back. Then, just two weeks ago, at the Film Forum, downtown Manhattan, I saw an English film, Of Time And The City, about the decay of the once vital if imperfect city of Liverpool. Absolutely heartrending and quite daring in its use of extended passages from enlish poetry and a music score mixing Handel and the Beatles to increase its impact.

Nothing remotely comparable comes out of Hollywood. All formulaic dreck. It's a tragic waste of the medium.

Posted by: ricpic on February 22, 2009 5:03 PM

I'd recommend the Best Picture Winner, Slumdog Millionaire. Not a great picture, but a good one, mainly for its gusto, almost greed, for life.

Love, love, luv Mickey Rourke. Too bad he didn't win. Sean Penn couldn't resist being his preachy, shaming self, but at least he gave Rourke some respect.

Posted by: Judith Sears on February 23, 2009 1:13 AM

I must confess I'm irritated that Rourke's "comeback" is held to have happened with The Wrestler. No knock on the film or his role, but Rourke's comeback was as a bruiser of a slightly different sort: the superhumanly tough monster man Marv in Sin City. From Marv to The Wrestler wasn't that much of a stretch. Mickey Rourke was the best thing by far in the rather odd movie that was Sin City, and his story (featuring an evil Frodo!) was the best story by far too.

Posted by: PatrickH on February 24, 2009 11:09 PM






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