What I watched this week...
Well I actually watched a whole lot more of than these two movies this week but very frustratingly my connection cut mid way through and for some reason it didn't save. I guess I must have been disconnected from the web and I just kept writing and writing without the knowledge that it would drift into the abyss of web.
Oh well, at least two reviews were saved. That of Blood Diamond and Little Children, both of which I enjoyed...
Blood Diamond
If there's one theme that runs through some of the best films of 2006, it's survival and the lengths we will go to save our own skin. The Departed, The Last King of Scotland, Apocalypto and now Blood Diamond are all essentially about one character and his desperate attempt to stay alive.
What director Edward Zwick is doing here, is that he is taking the conventional Hollywood plot (several characters are after an object... see Indy Jones and the ARC OF THE CONVENANT) but placing it in the backstory of a larger scope and political message. So what we end up with here is not only a movie that absolutely kicks ass as a Hollywood chase thriller but a movie that actually has something to say.
The movie is extremely brutal and it doesn't shy away from showing you the graphic violence of massacres. For example, I don't believe there are any cuts away from any gun shot from any character, you see the full result of what happens when you pull the trigger. You wouldn't think it but something as simple as that adds so much more tension and weight to the film.
Well acted, well directed and very well received by me. Blood Diamond might just make those people think again by buying those big diamonds for weddings.
Little Children
Another fine movie I missed out on in 2006 although at times the director's ambitions with the film nearly got the better of it. This superbly acted ensemble movie shifts from different narratives and perspectives as we see several different characters plunge to the bottom of their suburban life.
Kate Winslet plays a bored thirty something women who feels too young to play the "happy mum and wife", especially after she catches her husband masterbating over internet porn. Patrick Wilson (in the first performance I've ever seen of him and he was really great) plays the husband of a withdrawn wife who gives him no attention, in and out of the bedroom. Jackie Earle Haley is spectacular as the recently released from jail paedophile who lives with his mum and attempts to come back to society.
There's a couple more characters and a couple of more things going on here but that's pretty much the jist of it. All three characters are looking for an "alternative" in life with the hope that it will take them out of the frustration they currently feel.
By the third act, the movie falls into some realms of silliness but it's acting and well developed characters keep you interested all the way to the end. Not quite as coherent as something like American Beauty which deals with some similar themes but very much worth a watch.