The Week in Reviews

2 Movie Reviews:  The Good, and the Ugly.   A Late Quartet, and Les Miserables

First the good…. A Late Quartet has a lot going for it from the outstart:  great actors (Kathleen Keener, Christopher Walken, Philip Seymour Hoffman, to name a few ), great soundtrack (the Beethoven late quartets and a gorgeous piece by Korngold),  the city of New York (always a perfect character in any movie) and a compelling, believable storyline. It tells the story of a string quartet who has been together 25 years, and is now tested by an event that threatens them all and forces many below-the-surface emotions to boil over big time.  There were a couple of plot twists which S. and I didn’t find very believable, but all I had to do was to hum the hilarious line from Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George “Artists are so crazy, artists are so peculiar.” and I could swallow about anything.  Besides the swoon-inducing music, the cinematographer begins many of the scenes with an almost still-photo tableau in various spots around Manhattan.  There’s high drama and lots of turns of events, but it was also thought provoking and the 3 actors I mentioned above all gave excellent performances.  Not an upper, however soul-washing the music can be.

Les Miserables:  It was quite miserable.  From the opening scene, which onstage is a loud, avalanche of Brechtian-like bite, we knew we were in for trouble.  Hugh Jackman made me convinced to watch the film, but he was kept on a leash of half-singing for the entire first half.  Anne Hathaway, stick to Get Smart and Devil Wears Prada. I can’t even address the fact that she got an Oscar for that performance.  Maybe it was based on # of tears shed in close-up shots?  The only saving grace of this experience was asking one of our progeny if she’d seen it.  She set off on a tangent of vitriol second to none.  It’s so good to know you’ve raised your children to have standards, and opinions, although I wasn’t really worried about either from either child. For further rantings on this ill-considered exercise in torture, please see S.’s blog at http://sngthoughts.blogspot.in/2013/03/les-miserables-movie-review.html