daoldiges

Three Secrets is waited down by the heavy morals of its time but manages to still be a fairly entertaining affair. Parker and Neal turn in solid performances while Roman's is just a bit over done. The story itself, however unlikely is engaging. The final plot twist does elevate the film and does justify the viewers time commitment to this project. The one thing I found particularly odd is the very casual way these three women, who've gone through a lot together in a very short amount of time, so casually bid each other goodbye at the end, no hugs, no thanks you's to the Neal character for being their for them all, it kind of made the ending feel incomplete for me.

I'm confident that I saw The Last Picture Show back in the 90's Blockbuster days but couldn't remember anything about. When it was recently playing at MoMA I decided I needed to give it proper move theater viewing and I am extremely happy I did. I suspect this most recent viewing will stay with me forever. There's a lot going on here and I'm not going to detail it all but having grown up in a small town myself I felt like I knew and 'got' a lot of these characters, both the good and not so good. The cast is uniformly excellent. The cinematography is beautiful and the story highly effective, and if The Last Picture Show doesn't hit upon your first viewing be sure to give it another chance.

Bertolucci's 1900 is a grand, epic film that takes on a lot of material and handles some of it extremely and interestingly well. In part due to its length there is some unevenness throughout. The main theme is a classic one but layered on are familial, societal, and political stories as well. Sometimes it can feel like a lot to keep track of but it's still manageable. All of the performances are solid and both the cinematography and musical score are assets to the final product. Despite unevenness 1900 has enough good things going for it to make it both highly memorable and one worth seeing, and in the theatre if the opportunity presents itself.