Lately I've been grazing my way through a bunch of VHS tapes of older movies which the library discarded.
The Philadelphia Story was good, but not great.
On the other hand, The Ice Storm was simply a waste of time -- mine, the actors, the directors, and everybody else's who was involved with it. Who knew that sex and death could be so boring? Perhaps Ang Lee was making some kind of subtle point about sleepwalking suburbanites. You could appreciate the point just about as well by watching two hours of daytime television, except that it would be more exciting and better acted.
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Carlos @ 12:13AM | 2006-01-06| permalink
Philadelphia Story is one of my top 100 movies, so I'd be curious to know if there was anything in particular about it which prevented it from attaining greatness in your view.
Ice Storm is the only Ang Lee I haven't seen, except for Brokeback Mountain currently in theaters. He's inconsistent, but I thought Eat Drink Man Woman was very entertaining.
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Felix @ 1:24AM | 2006-01-11| permalink
My views of these movies may be jaundiced because I watched them in the early hours of the morning.
The Philadelphia Story wasn't bad. I enjoyed it, but not as much as I've enjoyed other romantic comedies of the era like It Happened One Night.
I guess if Ang Lee and the performers in The Ice Storm were striving for a feeling of emotional flatness, they achieved it. I nearly fell asleep during the supposedly-kinky key party scene, and the daughter's adolescent explorations of sex were simply too weirdly surreal to be plausible or interesting. Come on... making out while wearing a Richard Nixon mask? Ugh.
Note: It's possible that I was biased against the movie from the beginning scene. The train depicted is a rather unconvincing miniature,, and the clumpy, paste-like "snow" is even worse. Campy bad special effects are fun on Doctor Who or Blakes 7, but distracting in anything that purports to be a modern-day realistic film. And laughably unrealistic depictions of trains particularly annoy me.
If you're interested in Ang Lee's movies, you'll probably want to see it for the sake of completism, especially if you can get it for minimal cost through Netflix or a library. I haven't seen Brokeback Mountain yet, thanks to the frenzied fans who sold out the theater in Toronto the last time I visited up there. Fiend & Limes went to see it later; Limes posted a commentary on her blog which contains a few spoilers. I'll probably see it if and when it's convenient for me to do so. Are you planning to see it? Or boycott it? Or do the commercial realities of movie theaters in West Texas make your preferences a moot point?
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Carlos @ 8:27PM | 2006-01-11| permalink
It's playing in Lubbock--it's not high on my list but I will at least see it when it comes out on DVD.
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