#165 - Man Bites Dog

 

Next we have this dark French movie from a trio of Film Students.  (Actually I think they're French Speaking Belgians.

When this started I freely admit I was kind of "what the hell is this and how did it end up in the collection" but as it went along I started to get it a little bit.   The film is about a "documentary" film crew who is following a serial killer, and documenting his exploits.   

Where the interest for many, and the lesson starts, is that they start out as onlookers but end up becoming basically accomplices.   It's one of those things we didn't think about in '92 when the film was made, but of course now, reality tv is everywhere, and you do wonder about how thin some of the lines for these guys.   

It's pretty graphic in a few spots and got an NC-17 rating so don't watch it with the kids, but it was more interesting than I gave it credit for in the long run.

#164 - Solaris

 

Wow....been almost a year - those 3 hr movies just sorta intimidate me and I need to accept and deal with it and break it up into two or three components.   As a result I got horribly derailed, but I probably watched 10 other movies in the collection that I'll end up rewatching at some point.

Ok, so we have Tarkovsky's Solaris, a pretty good if somewhat long sci-fi epic from Russia - we saw him back in Andrei Rublev, so it's been a while.   In fact, this was the move he did right after Andrei and it hadn't been released, so he needed money and this was a popular novel in Russia by a Polish author and so you have some very different genres at work here.   I saw the remake 20 years ago and honestly didn't remember really any of it, (I smoked a lot of weed back then - LOL) - so I was going into it a little cold.

I can see why many consider it one of the best sci-fi stories of all time.   The actress in particular who dominates the story (in the photo above) has an almost ethereal quality about her and Tarkovsky seems to think she outshined everyone else in the story but I would prefer to leave most plot points out of future reviews so I won't tell you yet who she is :)   I caught a bit of the commentary and I got the impression from it that the movie diverges a bit from the source book, but I was inspired enough to consider looking for the book in the future.

Anyways, I guess the question comes down for me to Did I enjoy it?   Yes.   Will I be able to get back on the wagon and knock more of these out?   I hope so.   We'll see