1. Philomena (B+)
2. Blue Is The Warmest Colour (A)
3. Her (A+)
4. Bicycle Thieves (B)
5. Frances Ha (B+)
6. Inside Llewyn Davis (A)
7. American Hustle (B+)
2. Blue Is The Warmest Colour (A)
3. Her (A+)
4. Bicycle Thieves (B)
5. Frances Ha (B+)
6. Inside Llewyn Davis (A)
7. American Hustle (B+)
John Steinbeck's best novel, shorn out about 80% of its pages and most of its weight. Some of the changes are pretty obvious concessions to the Hays Code (Kate's establishment, especially), but others just represent serious soft-pedaling of the material, which has also lost most its dense spiritual and philosophical meaning. The full novel would have been pretty damn difficult to make into one movie, let alone one under two hours as Elia Kazan has done here, so in that sense focusing on one part of it might have seemed logical, but most of the story is about the adult characters, not the kids. Also, they cut Lee, who was my favourite character.
On the acting front, it's mostly unremarkable. This is one of the Holy Trinity of James Dean films, and the only one that he actually lived to see in its entirety, but the only time I thought his performance really worked was in the climactic moment where he reveals Kate to Aron (Aron, incidentally, barely feels like a character). Raymond Massey doesn't really capture Adam to me, either. Jo Van Fleet is a pretty good Kate, but the cuts have done away with virtually all of the character's best scenes (even the ones the do occur at the story's end) -- apparently it was still judged enough to win the Best Supporting Actress Oscar. I really hope the Gary Ross/Jennifer Lawrence adaptation happens, because she'll blow the doors off that part. The best part of the movie is the recently-deceased Julie Harris as Abra (not a character I thought much of either way in the book).
Cinema: 5
DVD: 1 (+1)
Computer: 2
