Joanie asks if I ever review contemporary releases and of course the answer is "yes", but only occasionally. It takes something really special to make me drag myself to the cinema to watch a new movie -- it could be that I really, really can't wait to see it or that I think it demands to be seen on the big screen or I have tickets for a preview or it is included in one of several film festivals that I attend religiously. But the truth is that most of my cinema visits are for art house flicks or for classics which I have previously missed. "Brokeback Mountain" which she asked about in particular falls into the category of 'Yes, I would like to see it, but I am in no rush'. Therefore it and so many others will not be reviewed in this blog until I have seen the DVD or digital showing, long after the movie has left the cinema.
Of course I travel to and from the States a lot and cover the newish movies which I see as in-flight entertainment, but that viewing experience as I have previously written is far from ideal. For example I had "seen" the above film some time ago, but took little away from that particular encounter. Watching it again yesterday I was pleasantly surprised by how "nice" a picture it was. The gist of the tale is that family man Dennis Quaid's company is taken over by a faceless conglomerate and he finds himself demoted with a hotshot boss roughly half his age. Said hotshot played by Topher Grace did in fact look about fourteen years old despite purportedly being 26. Grace then finds himself falling for Quaid's just-off-to-university daughter, played by the lovely Scarlet Johannson, and Quaid does his pieces when he discovers this. In the end age and experience does win out over soulless commerce and even Grace is finally a better man. I say that this makes the film nice, but in fact it's all probably horribly unrealistic and an outcome that panders to my wishful thinking. But why not enjoy this while one can?
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