TristramShandy

My favorite time period for movies is the late 60s through the 70s. Films that are considered or are adjacent to the label New Hollywood are my favorites. Knowing that the supply of these is finite, I've held back on watching some, and The French Connection was one of those.

While the movie is good and recommended, I just don't get the Best Picture win. I have to believe that a lot of what seems to be fairly normal in the genre was brand new when Friedkin directed it. Maybe the film is extremely revolutionary, but so many films (and tv shows) afterwards copped the style, that it appears commonplace watching it today. Personally, I'd have chosen either A Clockwork Orange or The Last Picture Show over The French Connection for best picture.

At the two-thirds point in the film, I wondered to myself if the film was going to be able to stick the landing. It didn't, but I'm not sure if there would have been an ending that would have made me feel that way. The first two-thirds of the movie is excellent as you see how trauma reverberates through all of the victims (which, quite possibly, includes the perpetrator). But because of how many characters there are, it made the last third of the movie hard to tie up, not just in terms of plot but with theme as well.

With that being said, it's a film that seems destined to stick with me. As with other Todd Haynes films that I've seen, the style is engaging with slightly offbeat choices (sound, palette, fictive time). I saw a variety of connections to Far From Heaven in both style and theme, to be sure. That film is one that I've revisited periodically; I think this one will be no different.

The documentary fairly hammers the Duggar parents and this abominable ministry movement, but I wish TLC (which has as much to do with "learning" as MTV has to do with "music" in the 21st century) got ripped as much as well. Shame on them for looking the other way with the Duggar parents and eldest son until they couldn't anymore. I get that they aren't the focus of the documentary on the whole, but they are a morally liable entity in this sordid tale.

Meanwhile, those who are saying that this is anti-Christian . . . To think that any of the whistle blowers are "anti-Christian" is laughable. They are anti-cult, anti-predators. If you are equating Christianity to IBLP, I'm worried for you.