Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Bloody (non) good movie

How many more times will you have to watch a movie in which the male and female leads must run toward the camera and away from a huge explosion, heroically silhouetted by the flames? Well, maybe a million or so, each one as ultimately boring as the last.

Well, today, courtesy of Netflix (which is getting pretty darn good at anticipating my likes), I watched an excellent movie which lacked a single violent act, explosion, or flash of nudity, yet was permeated by that most interesting kind of sex - that of the mind.

"Enchanted April," a 1991 BBC TV movie that was released in the United States in theaters, was perfectly cast. (Albeit with British actors, which meant my poor ears needed captions to get it all.) This isn't a review; suffice to say it is a tale of 1920s British manners which is as true to, and as smart about, humanity in 2009 as it was to folks back then. A great movie you should look for.

And while I'm plugging a product, thanks also to "caller ID." The damn phone rang about four times during the movie, each time showing on my little phone screen that it was from a mysterious but, after years of such calls, an all-too recognizable anonymous source. (Yes, I need a cell phone.) Still, there is something satisfying about refusing to pick up another telemarketing rant ... an emotion that Elizabeth von Arnim, the author of the 1921 novel upon which the movie is based, would no doubt have understood among so many others

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