Tag Archives: Samantha Morton

Control

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I was always fascinated with the story of Joy Division, and specifically Ian Curtis – their singer who hung himself the night before they were set to go on their first US tour… just as the band was set to make a big splash. If you listen to Joy Division’s music, and then hear what happened, it’s not terribly shocking. Many of their best songs are just what you might imagine listening to as you sunk into bottomless despair. That emotion had to come from somewhere.

I can’t imagine this movie could have been done much better. It’s in black and white, which fits perfectly. It’s well directed, well written, and well acted. Ian is presented not as some kind of larger-than-life genius, but simply troubled and young; which I imagine was close to reality. Perhaps my only gripe with the movie, is that for all his troubles, he (the character in the movie) seemed rather happy-go-lucky, and somewhat together. The movie didn’t give me a sense that things were spinning out of control… then, they did.  But, maybe that’s how these things go… and I can’t complain much about it.

Sweet and Lowdown

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Thoroughly entertaining. This is the story of Emmet Ray, a jazz guitar virtuoso from the early part of the 1900’s. To be honest, I don’t even know if there actually was an actual person, or whether it was all an elaborate “made-up documentary” by Woody Allen (I’d find that amusing if true). Well, I suppose I could figure it out with a little investigation next time I go on-line. Anyway, it’s a good fun character-study movie, Sean Penn did a great job. Anyone wanna go shoot rats at the dump and look at trains?

 

Minority Report

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For some reason, this movie reminded me of L.A. Confidential. That’s a good thing though, because both were excellent cop-conspiricy dramas. The concept of this movie was really neat. Although, I considered it more fantasy than sci-fi. I really liked the rich, detailed futuristic cinemetography / set design / environment stuff. It made the movie feel very authentic. It’s really interesting to see how Spielberg’s directorial style has changed with time. It’s still really good, but very different than his earlier style. Nice to see that he doesn’t just repeat his old tricks.