14 Comments
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Richbee's avatar

Seal of approval. Lasting movies, spilled popcorn coughed up kernels to salt the students who preserve the memory endured.

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man of aran's avatar

Thanks, Richard. My Dinner with Andre lasts. Not sure about Mr. Goodbar!

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Richbee's avatar

Last is exercise opening a yellow wrapper candy bar with a flavor filled treat reward for each day remembered.

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Nathan Keller's avatar

Thanks for this. Encouraging me to dream of hitting a streak of four weeks of watching all movies that pace like French movies. It just is what it takes to suspend disbelief for me. Highly recommended is Three Women by Altman ( "3" women in the title as spelled)

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man of aran's avatar

Happy to encourage, Nathan. '3 Women' looks like something, and it's got Shelly Duvall!

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Ann Collins's avatar

I read that Diane Keaton was listening to Bach while acting the scenes where she felt uncomfortable. Such a sweetness underlies the sorrow.

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man of aran's avatar

Yes. I wish I had a bit of Bach myself when I saw it! And I'm sure it didn't help that the director was known to be very temperamental and demanding!

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Andrew Jazprose Hill's avatar

There’s no accounting for taste, is there? To get a poem from one’s reaction to a couple of movies—well, that’s what I call art. Well done, as always.

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man of aran's avatar

Thanks, Andrew! It was definitely tricky. Glad it worked for you.

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David Angel's avatar

Roger Ebert didn’t like my dinner with Andre either that’s why God killed him

It’s one of my favorites

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man of aran's avatar

Mine, too, actually. Didn't like Goodbar. Poor Roger, though, to me he was the best. Thanks for the restack!

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Weston Parker's avatar

Both powerful movies in their way. I walked out of Pulp Fiction. Tarantino is just too heavy handed for me.

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man of aran's avatar

Ah, watch out, Wes, you’re giving me more material! ;-)

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LaMonica Curator's avatar

When it comes to Dinner With Andre, there is a difference between self indulgence on the part of a director, and Existentialism, which is often lost on audiences. This one falls somewhere between.

There is also a difference in the objectivity available to men v women in experiencing a movie like Mr, Goodbar. This one, in particular, becomes hard to sit through based upon one’s moral compass. Yet looked at through the lens of feminism, it shows how the sexual revolution ultimately failed women and that women will never be able to experience “free love” until it’s divorced from male violence while demonstrating second wave feminism’s largest obstacles. Similarly, 9 1/2 Weeks is also difficult.

Your poem? Easy.

Thanks for dusting these off. The movies of this period will be, and should be, remembered and defended—even protected— because they stretched and used the medium for what it was meant for. As we go backwards in popular cinema, movies like this will no longer even make it to the mainstream to have these conversations.

I’ll not be walking out of the next Captain America movie—because I won’t be going.

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