Wow, I sure am late to this party. Partly becuase I knew how dark and icky this movie was supposed to be, so I kept pushing it down the Netflix queue. :-)
Great post! High degree of difficulty. :-) And I love the polls.
I found that the only way I could actually enjoy this movie, at all, was to watch Callum perform. Whereas I'm normally totally watching the guy that he has become, here I found myself wanting to watch him act -- watch Callum do the scene, not watch Norman do what he does.
This is a hard movie to love and I don't. Around the time of the woman with the airplane for her son, I started to feel sorta sick.
I did find three bits delightful (I know!) in a weird way.
- The first is his very first scene, in the AA meeting, before he's ever on screen. The camera pans around the group of others and we hear Callum's voice before we see him. Whenever this happens and I recognize his voice, I'm always like, "Aww...hi!" The sound is now so familiar.
- When he encounters one of the women (I now forget which "color" she was) in an alley, by a dumpster. She's clearly a prostitute, beckoning him to her. He walks up to her and doesn't stop --- puts his left shoulder against her left shoulder and (without touching her with his hands) he sort of walks her around in a little pirouette, puts his head close to hers and, without stopping, they walk back toward the camera. So graceful and unexpected. His physical performances always kill me.
- Talking with Rebecca, in their last scene. He excuses himself to freshen up. He says something like, "I don't like feeling uncomfortable in the company of a beautiful woman." And during that sentence, three distinct things cross his face. Grave intent, rage, and then charm to cover it all up. He nearly bares his teeth in the middle of the sentence and then by the time he gets to "beautiful", he's smiling. Chilling and magnificent. And it reminded me of his brilliant performance in Picture Claire --- the hatred for women that kept leaking out between the words.
no subject
Great post! High degree of difficulty. :-) And I love the polls.
I found that the only way I could actually enjoy this movie, at all, was to watch Callum perform. Whereas I'm normally totally watching the guy that he has become, here I found myself wanting to watch him act -- watch Callum do the scene, not watch Norman do what he does.
This is a hard movie to love and I don't. Around the time of the woman with the airplane for her son, I started to feel sorta sick.
I did find three bits delightful (I know!) in a weird way.
- The first is his very first scene, in the AA meeting, before he's ever on screen. The camera pans around the group of others and we hear Callum's voice before we see him. Whenever this happens and I recognize his voice, I'm always like, "Aww...hi!" The sound is now so familiar.
- When he encounters one of the women (I now forget which "color" she was) in an alley, by a dumpster. She's clearly a prostitute, beckoning him to her. He walks up to her and doesn't stop --- puts his left shoulder against her left shoulder and (without touching her with his hands) he sort of walks her around in a little pirouette, puts his head close to hers and, without stopping, they walk back toward the camera. So graceful and unexpected. His physical performances always kill me.
- Talking with Rebecca, in their last scene. He excuses himself to freshen up. He says something like, "I don't like feeling uncomfortable in the company of a beautiful woman." And during that sentence, three distinct things cross his face. Grave intent, rage, and then charm to cover it all up. He nearly bares his teeth in the middle of the sentence and then by the time he gets to "beautiful", he's smiling. Chilling and magnificent. And it reminded me of his brilliant performance in Picture Claire --- the hatred for women that kept leaking out between the words.
Thanks for this great post!