Can't see a thread on this..?
Saw it last night, hugely impressed despite pre-match nerves. (Why nervous? Let's just say Ms Bigelow and I have previous*)
I was well aware of the Algiers Motel Incident having read John Hersey's book of the same name a while back. I imagine people who aren't aware of it will be hit very hard by its impact, as the older couple behind me were last night.
I like the fact that it doesn't overplay the historical reconstruction element ('ooh look! Retro furnishings!') and it also stitches the archive footage into its own sequences in ways that CGI etc have no doubt made possible. The one aspect of 'It's the 60s' that did leap out, pleasurably for me, because I love it, is the orgy of great mens' knitwear. ("So what did you take away from the film, Dr Felicity? That black lives matter?" "No- that 60s knitwear was the best").
I gather there are some criticisms of it not being shot in Detroit; of bottling out on one or two issues (eg that the victims were robbed, too) but the only critical comment I made afterwards concerned the excessive focus on Star Wars-Boy(ega) but then that's what all feature films tend to do with historical material, and it was far less about his 'journey' than it might've been.
* I thought Hurt Locker was amazing film making, the tension in the bomb scenes, but also peddled lazy towelhead stereotypes and had the same token kid-foreigner-you-can-like as The Green fucking Berets. As for Zero Dark Thirty , scripted by the US state dept...
Saw it last night, hugely impressed despite pre-match nerves. (Why nervous? Let's just say Ms Bigelow and I have previous*)
I was well aware of the Algiers Motel Incident having read John Hersey's book of the same name a while back. I imagine people who aren't aware of it will be hit very hard by its impact, as the older couple behind me were last night.
I like the fact that it doesn't overplay the historical reconstruction element ('ooh look! Retro furnishings!') and it also stitches the archive footage into its own sequences in ways that CGI etc have no doubt made possible. The one aspect of 'It's the 60s' that did leap out, pleasurably for me, because I love it, is the orgy of great mens' knitwear. ("So what did you take away from the film, Dr Felicity? That black lives matter?" "No- that 60s knitwear was the best").
I gather there are some criticisms of it not being shot in Detroit; of bottling out on one or two issues (eg that the victims were robbed, too) but the only critical comment I made afterwards concerned the excessive focus on Star Wars-Boy(ega) but then that's what all feature films tend to do with historical material, and it was far less about his 'journey' than it might've been.
* I thought Hurt Locker was amazing film making, the tension in the bomb scenes, but also peddled lazy towelhead stereotypes and had the same token kid-foreigner-you-can-like as The Green fucking Berets. As for Zero Dark Thirty , scripted by the US state dept...
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