FILM DIARIES: OCTOBER 2019

BRIEF ENCOUNTER (1945)

Directed by David Lean

Romantic melodrama and trains, oh my! This film was a great introduction into David Lean’s work. I particularly liked the narrative structure, setting up Laura’s exiting of the café during the beginning and revealing what actually went down at the end.

EYES WIDE SHUT (1999)

Directed by Stanley Kubrick

Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, and cults. It’s hard to go wrong. Definitely not what I expected, however, probably because of the film’s somewhat false reputation as After Hours meets Fifty Shades of Grey. I thought this was a great movie, truly, and was thoroughly impressed by Nicole Kidman’s performance (who I usually am not the biggest fan of).

SUMMERTIME (1955)

Directed by David Lean

This was received harshly by my class; however, I enjoyed a lot of its elements – namely, Katharine Hepburn, the costumes, and the title cards. It went to a strangely cheesy place in the last third, but I thought it was an interesting watch. And I thought it was really cool to see a middle-aged woman at the center of a romantic comedy. That’s rare now and even rarer in 1955.

NANOOK OF THE NORTH (1922)

Directed by Robert J. Flaherty

I had never seen this seminal piece of ~documentary film,~ and enjoyed it – if more for the images of the arctic than anything else.