Cheryl and I watched two movies last weekend: Jesus is Magic and Munich.First, Sarah Silverman's Jesus is Magic (which we watched first). This film is essentially a stand-up routine, with some skits around it. Parts were laugh-out-loud funny, but parts were not. Overall, it was not what I was expecting (I guess I was expecting either all stand-up, all skits, or some-type of film with a plot). I think the comedy / humor was uneven, and relied a little too much on shock value when a woman cursing and being crude is quite frankly not that much of a shock these days.
Cheryl watched it also and I am pretty sure she felt the same way, but we didn't discuss her actual rating for it. I give it a thumb-sideways. I probably laughed more than most people, but it is because I really want to enjoy comedy.
The next film we saw was Munich. This film is based on a book about the actions that Israel took after the assassinations of its Olympic athletes back in the 70s.
I did find the film to be balanced, which was one of the director's intentions, although at the very end there was a shot of the two towers that I felt was a bit pugilistic. They didn't edit out a building that went up in the past 6 years (since we moved to NYC), but they intentionally put back in the two towers and ended the movie with that shot as the credits rolled. I felt like it was a not-so-subtle reminder of the terrorist attack here, and was perhaps saying that the Palestinians are "our" common enemy. It just took away from the balanced nature of the film to have that as the final scene. Additionally, I felt like some of the characters were a bit one-dimensional and it was very hard to understand motivations near the end for some of them. I know putting a book into a 2-hour movie is tough, but I just felt like it was rushed in terms of character development at the end.Again, Cheryl saw most of this one, but was falling asleep near the end. I think she would agree with my thumb-sideways rating.
NYC
2 comments:
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I think Munich happened in 1972. It's been a while since seeing the movie, but I know a good amount of time(at least a year) passes between the Olympics and the end of the movie. Both towers were standing by 1973.
I don't know how recognizable the new building you speak of is to those of us outside of NYC, but not showing the towers at the end, would have been an accuracy mistake by the filmmakers.
It wasn't a great film, but I found it tried not to take sides, and show how there really isn't a good guy at the end of the day. How the tit for tat is a never-ending trial of grief. In some ways, all out war is a better, or at least more honest and final, answer for two conflicting parties.
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A Fellow Wingman
I'm not arguing that the towers shouldn't have been in a shot of lower Manhattan in 1972, I'm arguing about whether a shot of lower Manhattan was necessary at all. And if you are going to go to the trouble to digitally add the towers, why not digitally erase the obviously post 70s building that was actually built in the last 6 years?
I know that having the towers in the shot was historically accurate, but I'm saying having a shot of lower Manhattan was not necessary at all. It had no bearing on the plot, and seemed gratuitous.
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