Films - down to just the notes now

Okay, so my goal to post my thoughts on one film a day (as mentioned previously) didn't last at all...

so here are the rest of the notes I made back in January, in note form because otherwise they'll never end up here. I apologize in advance for any spoilers (not really any big ones I don't think).

Hable Con Ella (Talk To Her) 2002 - directed by
Pedro Almodóvar.
-Themes of love, loyalty, friendship (however atypical or unlikely the circumstances); emphasizing the borderline of what's considered "right" and "wrong"; amusing that Benigno gives advice because of his "experience with women" (his only experience really is with his mother previously who was ill, and Alicia who is in a coma) - yet he's likely right with a lot of what he said (you have to talk to them = women), but applying his advice to those who are comatose is a surreal.

Der Krieger und die Kaiserin (The Princess and the Warrior) 2000 - directed by Tom Tykwer (and he was involved with the music for the film as well, which I thought was interesting).
-points out how it is hard to leave what is familiar to do something for yourself - in this case for Sissi the familiar was caring for others (even if it was overattachment to the point of being somewhat bizarre)
-similarities to my own personal situation - letting patients get too attached/too dependent when I started off in practice and hard to change that later when I tried.
-Sissi quite naive to expect that something will happen just because you want it to (eg. not understanding Bodo's rejection of her initially)
-the tracheotomy reminded me of an episode of ER where George Clooney's character saved a kid's life in a drainpipe ... somewhat overdone (not sure which came first, the ER episode or the film ... now that I think of it, I wondered the same thing about another Tykwer film "Run Lola Run", whether it came before or after an X-Files episode it reminded me of).

Adaptation 2002 - directed by Spike Jonze
-I could relate somewhat to the anxieties of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman in the film
-liked the quote from Douglas Kaufman, "You are what you love, not what loves you"
-(spoiler) at the end, I thought all the sudden action was actually Charlie's brother's screenplay somehow rather than "real".

Diarios de motocicleta (The Motorcycle Diaries) 2004
-interesting to see the South American scenery
-also interesting having been to Cuba in 2004 (and wanting to go back to Havana for a longer visit someday) - learned Cuban history from a different viewpoint then including a better understanding then who Guevara was (the movie was about his earlier life).
-Guevara seemes so frail and slight in the movie, compared to the "larger than life" figure he seems to have become.
-interesting how he was trying to be like the common people, for example, at the leper colony, and giving money to the mining couple.
-his loyalty was prominent, such as to his girlfriend (until she dumped him via letter).
-on a side note, anything about Cuban history (eg. Bay of Pigs, Cuban Missile Crisis) was always portrayed in school as the "bad communists" taking over; whereas in Cuba it was more the long struggle for independence, first from the Spanish then from the American influence, and that Castro was the only one who allowed the Cubans to achieve independence. Not that I'm a Castro supporter, but interesting the different points of view there can be...

Pride and Prejudice 2005
-I had to go see this, because the novel is one of my all-time favourite books and Jane Austen one of my favourite authors (yeah, I was probably the only one in my high school and university English classes who actually enjoyed reading it).
-compared to the prior mini-series, this film version had good flow and good action - good editing/screenplay writing to cut out extraneous parts of the book
-the dancing/ballroom scenes were really neat IMO
-quite romantic overall - definitely "chick flick" category
-at a younger stage of my life I probably would have ended up like Jane - too quiet, not making my liking/affection well-known and having others misinterpret that I wasn't interested (but now I'm more assertive and open, not so introverted :-) - and married, so it doesn't really make a difference in the sense of Jane in the movie anyway).

Whew. I think I even missed a few that I didn't make notes on. Maybe I'll get around to them in the summer or something ...