Next:
12 Years a Slave.
By Steve McQueen. (Not that great Steve McQueen of Bullitt- and The Getaway-fame.) 12 Years, what a terrible bore. Always the same beat, meaning, the same kind of action:
wrongfully enslaved negro working as a slave, only each time under more cruel circumstances,
redundancy non stop, no plot. Instead of going to a new level, like
showing slow behavioural changes, e.g. accepting and even thinking
that he, once a free negro up north, is now another person, with another name, down south, working endless hours on a cotton field - these behavioral changes happen, especially when getting your daily dozens of lashes on the back -, we see even crueller scenes with sadistic overseers, with
the Fassbender-character, as plantation owner, being the most cruel man of all, rationalizing his barbarous
actions with verses of the bible. The only plot kicks in, when the
Pitt-character is introduced, who eventually gets the wrongly
enslaved guy free. Then, instead of giving the audience closure with long
scenes of family reunion, no matter how awkward or strange for all of them they might be - 12 years are changing lives -, a broken man is shown in a broken family,
a few minutes, then the movie ends. No closure for me, just a slap in the face. Then I am informed that the bad
guys who sold the free man as slave down south never got convicted. I felt
slapped and tortured like those slaves in the movie, and if that was director McQueen's intention, I should hate him for this. The screenplay got the Academy Award.
Next
I saw Spielberg's Lincoln.
I expected great pleasure, and what I saw was a filmed theatre-piece
of interesting history lessons, but not a movie. The battle scene at the beginning was so unreal (after having seen incredibly realistic battle scenes in the
tv series Spartacus,
or in the movies 300),
I got the feeling, that every small part of battle sequence started immediately after
Spielberg's shouting "Action!", a shaking camera making sure, that we get the real "touch". I always tend to look
behind the front action, wanting to see real action there, and in
Lincoln
there were these cheesy beginning fighting cycles of faked fighting.
I also got the impression, that there were no more than a mere 50 or
so stuntmen and extras "fighting", that behind them was
nothing – the
Making Of proved me right. Then two Negro Soldiers advance Lincoln
and one of them recites by heart one of his famous speeches.
Ridiculous. (Even if it was true.) Then the man Lincoln! That boring sap can't answer any
question spontaneously, he always pauses with a smile and then tells
some long story or anecdote. I had the impression, Solomon of the bible
was talking. But I must admit, Daniel Day Lewis is great as Lincoln, he made me forget sometimes, how boring the script was. Every time I thought, now plot kicks in, my
expectations were dashed, the subplot with Lincoln's wife was boring as hell; but then I got again interested, when all the scheming among the politicians sets in, to win votes, but this thread is also lost amidst other boring scenes. After an hour I ended this kind of
torture. That movie was honored with Academy Awards, of course for Day-Lewis. Thank god, not for the script.
When, I asked myself, when was the last time I saw a real good movie? Argo was one of them. Directed by Ben Affleck. Great movie. Got the Academy Award. Then The Town, again by Affleck, also written by him. What a masterpiece. Especially The Expanded Version with Alternate Ending on blu ray. What an experience! Captain Pillips was also quite absorbing, The Intouchables was very funny, as was years before The Hangover (the first one!)...
But:
The real movies are on TV: Like Breaking
Bad. The Sopranos. Six Feet Under. The Americans. Orphan Black. The Good Wife.
Boardwalk Empire.
House of Cards. Etc.
I finished my cup of Coffee with Latte.
I will now enjoy the second season of Hannibal. The first episode was already intriguing.
