A Face in the Crowd

When watching a movie someone suggests to me, I try not to read the synopsis of the film. Partly because sometimes those give away key parts to the plot, but mainly because I know there is a reason that this person wants me to watch it, and reading the synopsis won't help in my movie viewing. In fact, I love going into a movie as blindly as possible.

With A Face in the Crowd, I did just that. I read the netflix sleeve to the point where it says "...proves that celebrity isn't all it's cracked up to be," and stopped. I wanted it to be a surprise. So in my head I imagined a film noir, gritty drama type movie, because that is what Pablo had been picking and that is what Kazan's last film I saw was like. Imagine my surprise when I saw that it seemed like a light-hearted romcom with Andy Griffith.

Only, it wasn't a romantic comedy, and it certainly wasn't light-hearted. The movie reminded me of Network, in the sense that it concerned power and greed in the television (and radio) life. Andy Griffith had a side to him I had never seen, and personally, didn't want to see. He was terrifying and awful, and yet you sympathized for him because he obviously had had a hard life. 

By the end of the movie, though, Walter Matthau had come out of nowhere and suddenly there he was, with the climatic monologue telling Lonesome Rhodes about his future, and that it probably wouldn't be good. Part of me thought it would end in LR's suicide, and yet it left us hanging, as great movies sometimes need to do. Because, after all, aren't movies supposed to be just snippets of life? And doesn't life go on, long after the movie ends? Sometimes, we don't need to know how everyone's lives turned out. We were able to just view a small portion, when all three of those lives collided, and we are satisfied with the fact that after the movie ended, all three of the lives continued to go on living.

Hot Fuzz

I seldom laugh repeatedly through a movie, but Hot Fuzz reached me about half way through. The early chuckles stirred by interesting characters in a clever setting grew into full blown laughs when the action part of this action film began.

The juxtaposition of action and setting was brilliant. Those huge guns in such a quaint village being wielded by quaint village people was so absurd. But the action scenes were executed as good as any in a straightforward action film. No letting a cheap imitation pass for good action. This was gun’s a’ blazing first class action.

And while the Sandford villagers’ objective to remain the “model English village” seems a little over the top given the violence used to retain the title, it really isn’t when you realize that all conflicts, in one way or another, is about maintaining a way of life.

The team of Simon Pegg (writer, actor), Nick Frost (actor) and Edger Wright (writer, director) did what they did in Shaun of the Dead...remarkably entertaining story with a seemingly most incongruous plot, setting, action, characters.

Really made me laugh.