Blue Is the Warmest Color (2013)
I put this off for a long time considering its infamous reputation (every review talks about that "too long" seven minutes) and long running time (3 hrs). Though the entertaining "Handmaiden" deals with a similar subject, I prefer the slow, realistic treatment of 'Blue...', which covers a far better range of emotions. I didn't feel the length of the film. But, given the 'slice of life' nature of the work, this would not appeal to everybody.
The camera spends a long time on Adle Exarchopoulos, who is in every scene, but it does not always show her in a beautiful light - the way she eats, the way she cries (I have never seen crying through eyes and nose like that in a film
) to shots that were taken without the actress' knowledge (sleeping on the train, to which the closest example I remember is Liv Tyler's drooling sleep in the opening scenes of 'Stealing Beauty'). Much of the dialogue was improvised and repeated until it was realistic enough (800 hours of material edited down to 3 hours), which works in some scenes (like the ones with kids in the nursery or the one in which Adele feels completely lost among Emma's friends) and some of it doesn't. The passage of time between scenes is also a bit jarring at times.
Primer (2004) (Re-watch) and
Upstream Color (2013)
Over Confidence is one of the worst ways we fool ourselves. Just because I have watched 'Primer' once before and I have watched a whole range of movies since made me think that I will "get all of it" this time around. Maybe because I don't have the brightest bulb up there or it is just the way it is, I once again 'got' a gist of how things transpired, but was far, far from getting 'everything'. I had to read
this afterwards.
Not satisfied with one Shane Carruth movie, I had to have a double bill and follow it up with 'Upstream color'. I admit that I watched it half asleep, but it had a much simpler narrative compared to 'Primer' and the flow was good enough to keep me interested. This time, I got most of it, but certainly not all of it;
this filled in the holes very well.
The Lobster (2015)
I can only describe this as an absurd deadpan dark comedy. If you have not watched Yorgos Lanthimos' Dogtooth, you should. You can draw a lot of parallels between the two films. It immediately reminded me of Wes Anderson, whose colorful, quirky films seem to happen in a special 'Wes Anderson universe'. You can tell it is a Wes' film just by looking at the composition of a shot. I can't say Yorgos fits into the same mold given that I have watched only two of his films and the rest don't seem to be in the same mold going by IMDB comments. But, Dogtooth and this make a very good combination. I liked Dogtooth better because it increased in absurdity and weirdness quotient throughout its running time. Lobster is a more restrained effort while retaining the deadpan, quirks and social satire. I quite liked Colin Farrell's toned down, pot bellied performance here.
