Tag: Romance

2021, Movies

Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash (2021, Edwin)

This film is many things all at once. It is, kind of incredibly, based on a novel, which made my confusion over what happens all the deeper, as the thing that I can’t resolve feels like its the kind of issue that wouldn’t exist in a book. So I’m wondering if something was lost in …

2006, Movies

Private Fears in Public Places aka Coeurs (2006, Alain Renais)

This is an incredibly stagey French adaptation of a British play. I’m not familiar with the playwright but I can’t imagine getting excited about seeing one of his plays, if this is faithful.

1995, TV

Pride and Prejudice (1995)

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Jane Austen adaption, except for Clueless when I was too young to appreciate it. But somewhere along the way the culture forgot to impress upon me that Jane Austen is funny. (Imdb lists this show as a “Drama” and a “Romance”.) I find myself kind of incredulous that …

1937, Movies

Un carnet de bal (1937, Julien Duvivier)

One of the things I love about watching European films from the 1930s and 1940s – particularly French films – is how much more sophisticated they are than most if not all Hollywood films from the same era. French films are often both technically superior – location shot, liberal use of advances in technology, liberal …

2005, Movies

Brokeback Mountain (2005, Ang Lee)

I think it’s probably hard to discuss Brokeback Mountain without talking about the hype: this film is considered by many to be a landmark either in Hollywood with regard to LGBTQ topics, or in LGBTQ cinema in general. Now, I don’t know much about the history of LGBTQ cinema – just what I got from a …

2017, Movies

TIFF 2017 Racer and the Jailbird (2017, Michaël R. Roskam)

This is an entertaining, albeit slight, amalgam of the bank heist genre with one of those romances where the two alpha leads, who do risky things in their professional lives, fall in love with each other, but which is pretty much entirely ruined by an absolutely bonkers left turn (well, a series of left turns) …

1915, Books, Fiction

The Good Soldier (1915) by Ford Madox Ford

Sometimes I can handle stories of the idle rich, sometimes I cannot. This is one of the latter, where I really struggled to care about any of the characters, their rich, bored lives and their endless emotional struggles with being rich and bored, and having to deal with each other.

1816, Books, Fiction

Adolphe (1816) by Benjamin Constant

Adolphe is an odd one: it’s a story of a romance with virtually no context. Sure, we get some idea of what Europe was like for a son of a wealthy family in the early 19th century. And, in one of the later chapters, Constant describes the physical geography of an area of Poland. But, …

1920, Books, Fiction

The Age of Innocence (1920) by Edith Wharton

Scorsese’s version of this book is, in my opinion, one of his very best films and on the short list of films I would recommend to anyone wanting to understand good direction. This despite Michelle Pfeiffer’s supposedly miscast as the female lead.

1957, Movies

An Affair to Remember (1957, Leo McCarey)

This is one of those “classic” bantery Hollywood romantic comedies with a Cary Grant-type – this time played by Cary Grant, here paired with one of his regular sparring partners, Deborah Kerr. It’s one of those movies where two unbelievably rich and self-assured people throw witticisms at each other – with a little tiny bit …

1983, Books, Fiction

1934 (1983, Farrar Straus Giroux) by Alberto Moravia

I have written before about my love-hate relationship with Italian movies. But I can’t say that I have had this same experience with Italian literature, at least until now. Until now, I have genuinely liked the few Italian novels and short stories I have gotten my hands on. It seemed to me that what I …

2012, Movies

Toronto International Film Festival 2012 Wrap Up

Here is my roundup for TIFF 2012. I managed to see 13 films this year, which is better than last year. Many of them managed to be documentaries, which Monique attributes to our constant attendance at the Bloor over the summer. (I guess, subconsciously, we have become documentary people.) I didn’t see a film that …

1987, Movies

Wings of Desire by Wim Wenders (1987)

I think that Wenders is perhaps the poor man’s Fassbinder. He clearly has many similar abilities: this film has some absolutely spectacular (and ballsy) shots in it, and has a pretty great sound design, both things Fassbinder was also extremely adept at. But where Fassbinder grabbed you with his very human dramas – despite his …