Aw shucks.

He just can’t stay mad!

I’m pensing! I’m pensing!

All work and no play.

OK, I can’t watch this.

Or… OK… I’ll give it ten more minutes.

OK, I gave it ten more minutes but it didn’t help.

Even Money. Mark Rydell. 2006.

This is the night of DVDs which I have no idea why I possess: So here’s the most befuddling one. I have two copies of this DVD. But why! Do I have even one?

This has like all my least favourite actors, like Kelsey Grammer and Forest Whitaker. And, OK, Kim Basinger.

And it has Tim Roth, who I like quite a lot.

And by a director I’ve never heard of but who namechecked himself like a dozen times before the movie started.

Hm… Oh, he did On Olden Pond. That wasn’t very good.

OK… perhaps… I received these DVDs as packaging? Did I mean to buy something called something vaguely like “Even Money”?

Oh god. This is about sports.

I watched the first fifteen minutes, but this is the worst thing ever, so I’m bailing.

I’m going with the “packing material” hypothesis.

Sunday Bloody Sunday. John Schlesinger. 1971.

There’s a few movies I have that I have no idea why I’ve bought. Some of these may just be things I’ve picked up at random at sales, but not this one, I think.

From the name of the movie, I’m assuming it has something to do with the Irish Problem.

John Schlesinger… the name sounds familiar, but I can’t quite place it.

Ah! Midnight Cowboy and Marathon Man. I’ve seen those. Otherwise not a lot from his career…

Oh! It’s not about the IRA at all.

This is intensely late-60s British: All muted browns and greens and beige. Everything’s so outrageous: Older women (and men) having affairs with young hunks; children smoking pot; rubbing cigarette ashes into carpets.

The woman looks awfully familiar. Glenda Jackson. I feel like I must her a gazillion times, but looking at her imdb, I’m getting nothing. Perhaps The Music Lovers? Or perhaps a TV series of some kind?

So now that I know what the genre is (at 20 minutes in), I’m making this prediction: The gayest one will die, and the two other ones will have learned something deep about their own lives.

OK, enough with the cynicism: Even if the script feels like a random walk of Pressing Issues, it’s difficult not to be entranced by some of these scenes. The performances are marvellous. The cinematography is… er… clear: We’re being shown things in a most didactic manner. And the phone service thing to tie everything together is quite clever.

And spoiler: my prediction was totally off the mark. This is a really good movie.

L’une chante, l’autre pas. Agnès Varda. 1977.

I think… that means… The singer, otherwise not?

I don’t know from French.

*bing*

Oh, right. “One Sings, the Other Doesn’t”.

That makes more sense.

ANYWAY.

This has been beautifully restored for 2K blu-ray. The colours are trés 70s. But it’s a bit difficult to get a handle on this movie.

The previous Varda movie I saw was completely unpredictable, and which made it riveting and fascinating. So I’m not sure why this is isn’t as gripping. It’s like what worked in that movie is working against it in this movie.

I mean, that’s just from my point of view: Those two movies were made a decade apart and have nothing to do with each other.

I haven’t seen many Varda film, but as usual, this one looks fantastic. The cinematography is enchanting, the colours are popping and the actors are so believable.

But I feel that the lack of? unusual? structure here is somewhat alienating. I mean, for the audience. But then it turns into a musical halfway through and everything’s awesome for a bit and then things flounder a bit again.

I don’t know… I just feel it lacks something. There are great scenes in here, but it just doesn’t fascinate.

I wonder if Varda was just improvising scenes until she had a sufficient amount of footage.