Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Open Your Eyes to The Hearts of Darkness, Jeremaiah Johnson!

Open Your Eyes by Alejandro Amenabar. I've seen parts of the Tom Cruise version on tv so I knew some of the story. The mystery in the beginning is intriguing, but as usual the solution at the end is disappointing. Also, a rich, goodlooking guy who gets all the girls he wants is hard to empathize with, even if he gets disfigured. It's more like, Hey, that's karma, buddy!

Hearts of Darkness. It's the first time I see this documentary. Having read about Apocalypse Now I knew most of the anecdotes, but it's still interesting to watch - showing the short period in Hollywood when the director was king. Unfortunately, my version of AN is the extended version, with the French plantation scenes, and I find it to be less interesting. The same with the extended versions of Stripes and There's Something About Mary. There's a reason why that stuff was taken out!

Jeremiah Johnson. Is it the best of the Sydney Pollack / Robert Redford films? It might be, and is perhaps even more relevant now. It's kind of a slow film, but that's actually part of the appeal - that it takes its time. It's only 110 minutes, but there's an intermission in the film! So obviously, people in the 1970s were just throwing away their valuable time, they had nothing better to do! Luckily, I could just fast forward that part...

4 comments:

  1. Haven't seen Open your eyes, but I vaguely remember Vanilla Sky as being absolutely horrible.
    I must see Heart of darkness again, I saw it almost 20 years ago and thought it was even more scary than AN itself (because it was true!)
    Haven't seen Jeremiah Johnson either, but the subject of Pollack/Redford: I just saw "Three Days of the Condor" for the first time in many years. There's something about these american '70s movies (The Conversations comes to mind), all interiors just looks cool, and the dialogues are so much different than in todays movies! The Redford-Dunaway relation didn't seem too convincing, but otherwise it's a great picture, a beautiful thriller!

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  2. I should re-watch that film. And All The President's Men, by Pakula!

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  3. You should; Max von Sydow creates a haunting character as the hitman in the "Psychopath-killers-listen-to-classical-music-(whilst-painting-toy-soldiers!)"-category.
    All the presidents men is another great '70s movie! And you're right about the tempo, they really take their sweet time.

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  4. They actually made movies for adults in the 70s. I think that's the big difference, compared to now.

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