white_hart (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
white_hart) wrote2016-04-30 04:45 pm
white_hart) wrote2016-04-30 04:45 pm
Entry tags:
Films
We went to the cinema twice this week, to see two very different but very good films.
Eye in the Sky is a film that I might not have gone to see if I hadn't known it was Alan Rickman's last film; I suspect I'd have thought that "thriller about drone warfare" didn't really sound like my kind of thing, but I'm glad I did go (though still sorry it was Rickman's last film). It's not actually an action film, however much the trailer may have tried to make it look like one (most of the action moments in the fim are in the trailer): it's a thoughtful, intelligent film about the way technology has changed combat, and about the extent to which it's possible to accept collateral damage in preventing greater loss of life.
The second film was The Brand New Testament, a Belgian comic fantasy that was very Terry Gilliam-esque in places. The premise is that God is an abusive arsehole who is only interested in ways to make people's lives miserable (an interpretation that reality does provide a certain amount of textual evidence for) and who controls the world from the apartment in Brussels where he lives with his downtrodden wife and rebellious ten-year-old daughter, until the day when the daughter, Ea, hacks her father's computer, sends everyone on earth a text message telling them how long they have left to live, and escapes to the world, to follow in her brother's footsteps by gathering six new apostles and writing a brand new testament. It's a film about love, and at heart the message is very simple: that only love makes life worth living. I found it very sweet, moving and uplifting.
Eye in the Sky is a film that I might not have gone to see if I hadn't known it was Alan Rickman's last film; I suspect I'd have thought that "thriller about drone warfare" didn't really sound like my kind of thing, but I'm glad I did go (though still sorry it was Rickman's last film). It's not actually an action film, however much the trailer may have tried to make it look like one (most of the action moments in the fim are in the trailer): it's a thoughtful, intelligent film about the way technology has changed combat, and about the extent to which it's possible to accept collateral damage in preventing greater loss of life.
The second film was The Brand New Testament, a Belgian comic fantasy that was very Terry Gilliam-esque in places. The premise is that God is an abusive arsehole who is only interested in ways to make people's lives miserable (an interpretation that reality does provide a certain amount of textual evidence for) and who controls the world from the apartment in Brussels where he lives with his downtrodden wife and rebellious ten-year-old daughter, until the day when the daughter, Ea, hacks her father's computer, sends everyone on earth a text message telling them how long they have left to live, and escapes to the world, to follow in her brother's footsteps by gathering six new apostles and writing a brand new testament. It's a film about love, and at heart the message is very simple: that only love makes life worth living. I found it very sweet, moving and uplifting.