Better late than never, here's my recommendations for May should you find yourself at a loose end for a couple of hours:
Again, I've sat through some schlock this past month which I shan't bore you with, but some surprises for me in this department were my rewatches of
M*A*S*H (1970)(7.6) and
Jacob's Ladder (1990) (7.5), neither of them interesting me as much as they did 20 years ago. For the first hour of Mash I was actually very bored, luckily the second hour is entertaining, but it's so dated now that a lot of the humour comes across as really quite alien with maybe only 5 or 6 scenes hitting home. It's pretty much a plotless movie of abstract sketches so as each sketch loses it's charm with time it impacts the bigger picture immensely. I'd rather watch the TV series any day of the week. Jacob's Ladder just doesn't feel as 'freaky' as it did back then and would be considered quite tame by today's standards, a good enjoyable movie but nothing so out of the ordinary. I'd give them 6.5 and 7/10 respectively.
Conversely, I rewatched
Fearless (2006) for the first time since its release and while I thought this movie was a bit average back then I found myself loving every minute of it this time. Perhaps I'm wiser with age? Maybe I just wasn't in the mood back when? But this time all the emotional punches hit me with equal velocity as Jet Li's physical punches. Primarily a moral piece, the movie is an unfaithful retelling of the story of real-life Chinese martial arts legend Huo Yuanjia during the early years of the 20th Century.
The atmosphere of the era is wonderful, the clothes, settings, dialogue, choreography et al is just pretty much perfect. It's barely factually truthful to the real history, it's more of a 'hollywood retelling' but I didn't mind in the slightest, even as pure fiction it's a joy to behold. I guess for the action fans the middle chapter is 'boring' and for 'charatcer' fans the beginning and end is 'boring' which wouldn't help with its overall score but today I'd give it an 8 or 9/10, IMDB has it at 7.7.
My other big recommendation is a movie I never did see at release and have only just got round to,
Joan of Arc (1999) (6.4) aka The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc. This was the tail-end of a run of movies that basically shat all over the English in the form of historical epics in the 90s, including such notables as Braveheart (1995), The Patriot (2000), Michael Collins (1996) to name but a few. So it's premise was tired by the time it arrived, particularly for English people
But watching it now I approach it refreshed. After the disappointment of Alexander (see April's recommendations) this movie appealed to me in every way Alexander failed to. I've no doubt many people will argue till the cows come home about the truth of the story and the intention of the director in his portrayal, but I was just watching it like I would Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings, and, in this regard, this movie is absofuckinglutely awesome. I loved almost every minute after the rather crappy and cliche rape-motivation intro scenes. It's action packed, bloody and gorey, funny and intelligent without losing its sense of importance and has some, again, wonderful atmosphere, from the sets to the music.
John Malkovich is perfect as a slightly effete and totally self-centered French king, Timothy West is the very embodiment of a medieval high clergyman and I found Milla Jovovich's Joan of Arc to be utterly enthralling. She is both beautiful and innocent and perfectly captures the youthful naivety combined with passionate virtual insanity that someone like Joan would have been. I guess many who watch the movie who don't like Milla or her performance will likely be soured to the whole movie as you have to understand how easily a man could fight for her in order to relate to many of the characters. And I think it's this last point which keeps the IMDB score so low. Some people will just see a woman screaming a lot, others will see the power of love etc.
8 or 8.5/10 for me.
