Post by london777 on Apr 14, 2017 4:36:19 GMT
A few weeks ago, someone asked on this board why on earth people want to watch "depressing" pictures. I did not stick my oar in, as others handled her quite well, but I thought about her post the last two nights.
Some time ago I was fortunate enough to acquire hundreds of (mostly) my kind of movies on DVD and I have been binge-watching ever since. Just lately I have been very tired and depressed and I was horrified to realize that the unwatched remainder of these DVDs were all of a very serious nature, just when I needed cheering up before bedtime. I had already cherry-picked all the more light-hearted films. Last night, for the first time in months, I went to bed without watching anything. I just could not face another drama about the crushing of peasant revolt in Latin America, an East European girl desperate for an abortion, or an unemployed and crippled old Brit let down by social services. You can only watch "Out of the Past" as a pick-me-up so many times in a month.
Tonight I steeled myself to watch The Experiment (2001). I expected a worthy semi-documentary (it is loosely based on real events) that would be a bit of a slog to get through. I even forgot why I had bought it, until the credits reminded me that it was directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel of Downfall (2004) fame.
What a pleasant surprise! I have rated it 7.5 which puts it in my (Modern) Classics category. (I await some flack from PreachCaleb). It was thoroughly entertaining and seemed shorter than its 114 minutes. The camerawork is outstanding, and what I expected to be all in gloomy shades of grey is flooded with rich colors.
For the first two-thirds it sticks to documentary style, except for some relief showing a little of the protagonist's life outside and his budding love affair. His girlfriend looked like a real person, attractive, but not a pin-up.
But the experiment gets increasingly out of hand, and the last third is a wild ride in thriller style. At one stage it is almost black comedy when the girlfriend joins the fun, thinking it is all a staged simulation while various groups and individuals criss-cross each other in the building in mental disarray, as in a French farce. In a sense this is a typical Hollywood ending, with a (sort of) prolonged "shoot-out" and happy conclusion, but I liked it fine. The only let-down was a brief newscast summing up the events which I thought was banal.
Some of the behavioral changes seemed exaggerated or too abrupt, and the Director's strategy and tactics were unclear, but I had no trouble accepting the main premise. The Nazis were still wreaking havoc when I was very young, and I have recently watched the Brexit poll and the US election of 2016.
In 2010 came an American remake. Make sure you watch the right one!
Some time ago I was fortunate enough to acquire hundreds of (mostly) my kind of movies on DVD and I have been binge-watching ever since. Just lately I have been very tired and depressed and I was horrified to realize that the unwatched remainder of these DVDs were all of a very serious nature, just when I needed cheering up before bedtime. I had already cherry-picked all the more light-hearted films. Last night, for the first time in months, I went to bed without watching anything. I just could not face another drama about the crushing of peasant revolt in Latin America, an East European girl desperate for an abortion, or an unemployed and crippled old Brit let down by social services. You can only watch "Out of the Past" as a pick-me-up so many times in a month.
Tonight I steeled myself to watch The Experiment (2001). I expected a worthy semi-documentary (it is loosely based on real events) that would be a bit of a slog to get through. I even forgot why I had bought it, until the credits reminded me that it was directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel of Downfall (2004) fame.
What a pleasant surprise! I have rated it 7.5 which puts it in my (Modern) Classics category. (I await some flack from PreachCaleb). It was thoroughly entertaining and seemed shorter than its 114 minutes. The camerawork is outstanding, and what I expected to be all in gloomy shades of grey is flooded with rich colors.
For the first two-thirds it sticks to documentary style, except for some relief showing a little of the protagonist's life outside and his budding love affair. His girlfriend looked like a real person, attractive, but not a pin-up.
But the experiment gets increasingly out of hand, and the last third is a wild ride in thriller style. At one stage it is almost black comedy when the girlfriend joins the fun, thinking it is all a staged simulation while various groups and individuals criss-cross each other in the building in mental disarray, as in a French farce. In a sense this is a typical Hollywood ending, with a (sort of) prolonged "shoot-out" and happy conclusion, but I liked it fine. The only let-down was a brief newscast summing up the events which I thought was banal.
Some of the behavioral changes seemed exaggerated or too abrupt, and the Director's strategy and tactics were unclear, but I had no trouble accepting the main premise. The Nazis were still wreaking havoc when I was very young, and I have recently watched the Brexit poll and the US election of 2016.
In 2010 came an American remake. Make sure you watch the right one!