HANDMAIDEN takes some patience at 2 1/2 hours but it pays off as director Park Chan-wook takes you through the same story from three POVS. It is at heart both a love story and a noir story. Maybe too much torture and it verged at times on soft porn but it is so artfully done and so fascinating in its unspooling that we gave it more leeway than usual. This is apparently based on FINGERSMITH, a Sarah Waters novel, which I now want to read.
MOONLIGHT looks at three periods in the life of a young black gay boy who suffers bullying in the early episodes. Another film that is put together well and will break your heart. Especially at the very end.
Would love to see the play this is based on IN MOONLIGHT BLACK BOYS LOOK BLUE. Although the three actors don't look alike at all, it works because of the similar feeling each one brings to the role.
And two I liked less but still worth your time for certain elements.
10 comments:
I haven't seen a good film in a while, Patti. Thanks for sharing these.
Of course, I saw the two movies that didn't thrill you: DOCTOR STRANGE and ARRIVAL. I liked them, but didn't love them. I'll check out the others when they come to Buffalo. Movie attendance was way up after the Election.
FINGERSMITH is a Victorian/Dickensian pastiche about a lesbian pickpocket. Reducing it to its bare essence it's like Oliver Twist but with Fagin's gang of boys recast as young women and girls. That was the basis for the Korean movie? It must be *very* different. I liked Waters novel a lot. There are some intense homoerotic scenes in the book so not really recommended for anti-gay readers of any sort who might be turned off by that kind of thing. You ought to like it, Patti. It hits all the marks of crime fiction you are attracted to in other writers and what you write about yourself.
It is very much that story and it does have intense homoerotica in it. As well as some torture altho artful torture. I am betting he remained fairly faithful to his source.
I am getting the original story for Arrival and hope that will make me appreciate it more. And I guess I will never really be a fan of superhero movies.
I liked The Handmaiden a lot. I'm a big fan of this director especially liking Oldboy. It did drag a little in the middle tho. Moonlight isn't the type of movie I enjoy. Would probably catch it on tv.
I liked both The Arrival and Dr Strange better than you. I'm burned out on superhero movies but thought Dr. Strange more interesting than most.
Movies I'm looking forward to are Manchester By the Sea, Elle and Live By Night.
Patti-I liked the stories in Ted Chiang's collection but I haven't read them for awhile. Tower of Babylon is another one I remember liking.
Really looking forward to Manchester and rest. Old Boy was sensational.
I liked FINGERSMITH, although--as with a lot of Sarah Walters's books--after an interesting premise and a surprising (to me, at least) twist, the story meandered to its conclusion. I have found this true of most of Walters's work: she writes 3/4 of a great novel and then can't figure out how to end things. I think her most successful book was THE NIGHT WATCH, perhaps because it is told in reverse chronology.
ARRIVAL is one of the few new movies that is beckoning me to the theater--as opposed to waiting for Netflix. George recommended reading the Ted Chiang short story upon which the movie is based, so I put it on hold at the library--but others must have the same idea because there were several holds ahead of me.
Deb
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