Dear friend,
this was the week when my self-imposed Oscar duties ended, and the Academy made their choices known. Finally, they decided to grant 5 of my 11 wishes, so, it could have been worse. Now we can go back and forget all about it for ten months or so, except for the occasional pub quiz.
Romeo and Juliet, directed by Franco Zeffirelli, co-written with Franco Brusati and Masolino D’Amico, based on William Shakespeare’s play, Italy/United Kingdom, 1968 - ⭐⭐⭐⭐
‘Choose your own Romeo and Juliet’ was the theme of the month’s IndieWeb Movie Club, so the Zeffirelli version is the one I opted for, and I wrote about it here. Short version: the young (and the more experienced) actors make it worth watching an otherwise traditional and a bit too theatrical adaptation of the play. In that post, I couldn’t find the right place to mention the soundtrack by Nino Rota, which includes a couple of great segments.
The Monkey, written and directed by Osgood Perkins, based on the short story by Stephen King, Canada/US, 2025 - ⭐⭐⭐½
It will definitely not be for everybody’s taste, especially because of all the gory deaths, but I had a lot of fun (meaning: straight-out laughs) with this film. This is absolutely a comedy first, and a horror film second, which made the cinema experience poorer because the teenagers were not terrified enough to shut up and put away their phones. Apparently it’s a normal thing, now, to listen to vocal messages during a film projection.
But, going back to the movie: Theo James is good, the young protagonist Christian Convery is great, and I wish Tatiana Maslany was my best friend. Most of it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever, and the final resolution could have been refined a bit, but, again, it doesn’t matter.
After all, that is the point: death is both inevitable and unexpected, and worrying about it makes limited sense. So we might as well laugh about it.
Doctor Sleep, written and directed by Mike Flanagan, based on the novel by Stephen King, US, 2019 - ⭐⭐⭐⭐½
It’s been almost two years since I last watched Flanagan’s film masterpiece; I wasn’t specifically thinking about it until the lack of interesting options on Netflix brought me to start watching it for the sixth time. And then of course I couldn’t stop, because I love this movie so much. The part just right before the ending is always what prevents me from going full five stars, but the ending of the novel is so clunky that we should be grateful for this one.
So, two King adaptations in a row, and this one too, underneath all the shining vampirism, is about the acceptance of death.
I’m Still Here/Ainda Estou Aqui, directed by Walter Salles, written by Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega, based on the book by Marcelo Rubens Paiva, Brazil, 2024 - ⭐⭐⭐⭐
As I wrote in my Oscars Wishlist, this would have been my choice for the Best Picture award. A really powerful description of what happens under an authoritarian regime, no matter the year or the Country. The lead actress Fernanda Torres is magnificent, and the film does such a great job of describing a happy and caring family in the first half hour, that you feel for them as soon as things start to go south. The only small issue I have is about how the ending is put together, although I understand the choices made.
Cure/キュア, written and directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Japan, 1997 - ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (up from ⭐⭐⭐)
Watching Cure, two and a half years ago, was my introduction to Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Kōji Yakusho. I was underwhelmed because I was expecting a standard J-Horror film, equipped with long-haired ghosts and all the genre tropes. On this second viewing, thanks to a proper Blu-Ray definition and better context, I appreciated it much more. Especially, the terrifying perspective of having to deal with someone that doesn’t conform at all to social norms, and the possibility that any of us could be much happier if we did the same.
As Mike Flanagan wrote on Letterboxd, this is a film that flows by and, by the time it ends, it may be difficult to remember what happened.