I had great plans to see some movies at the end of last week and over the weekend...but then, we had that little weather issue, and I wasn't able to get out of the house.
I did watch a movie on Netflix that I don't think was for my demographic. Violet & Daisy is a dark comedy about two girls who hire themselves out for murder. They want to take a break after their most recent hit, until they see a dress they'd like to buy and realize they are going to need more money. Their next victim turns out to be a challenge in ways they didn't anticipate. Saoirse Ronan, Alexis Bledel and James Gandolfini star in the movie. It wasn't my cup of tea.
I had to watch The Hunger Games to get ready to see the second one when The Kid comes home for his semester break. The film is adapted from the first in a trilogy of novels about a dystopian society written by Suzanne Collins. I waited to see this first film until I had read the books, but since I have not yet done so, I scrapped that idea and jumped to the movie instead. The film is set in North America in the fictional nation of Panem, controlled politically by a wealthy and advanced central district called The Capitol. Once a year, one boy and one girl is selected to represent each of the districts surrounding The Capitol in a fight-to-the-death game. Jennifer Lawrence, Stanley Tucci, Elizabeth Banks (playing a very quirky and fairly disguised character), Josh Hutcherson, Woody Harrelson and Lenny Kravitz are among the many, many characters in this film. It was very good. I am looking forward to seeing The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.
Barbara is a German film with English subtitles. It is set in East Germany (aka the German Democratic Republic) in 1980 - before the wall came down. Barbara is a physician in an affluent hospital in East Berlin, who applied for an exit visa from the GDR. Such an act is highly frowned upon and her punishment was incarceration and then transfer to a small town pediatric hospital where the Stasi can keep an eye on her. Her desire to leave is not thwarted and she continues with plans to escape. It was good. I liked it...especially the fact that it was a German movie not about the Holocaust.
Through the last few years, I have caught up on the Up Series. I've written about this collection of documentaries in which Michael Apted interviews a group of British people every seven years, starting when they were seven years old to reveal their hopes and aspirations and examine how they measured against the realities of their lives. The original premise of the documentary was that people were born into their classes and rarely deviated from them. This class immobility hypothesis doesn't seem to hold up in all cases as the documentaries progress. I liked the latest installment, 56 Up, because I like to know the rest of the story. Since they have me hooked pretty well, I am looking forward to the next one.
MK out.
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