Darkest Hour 2018
Larry and Harry, as we (have been for over ten years and) always do, pursue the quest to have seen all the best films nominated in the Oscars before the ceremony. We’re in a rush to see Darkest Hour (2017), Molly’s Game (2017), I Tonya (2017), The Shape of Things (2017), Lady Bird (2017), Three Billboards (2017), Phantom Thread (2017), etc.
I’m behind as always. It’s the first Oscars I’ve had the time to see a lot of films since 2008 when I was working for myself with a small business called 1M1 Records. It was six months before I started to work for the SSO.
Darkest Hour is a film which if it subsequently reveals itself to be honest in its depiction of major moments is excellent in all regards.
If the scene in the underground is some creative fantasy then the film loses all my respect other than in its technical aspects.
In fact, to have seen it in the same year as Dunkirk (2017) has been a most fortuitous thing because they are two vastly different sides of the same coin. One with a political distance from the events taking place on the beaches of Dunkirk and the other from a handful of characters’ intimate perspective on the beaches of Dunkirk.
Berlin Alexanderplatz 1980
I’ve decided. I’m going to do it. I’m facing a long, uphill, battle to finish this project with only 19 weeks to go. And, I didn’t factor in a 15h 30m film which I had taken on face-value as a regular 120 or 134-minute film, not a mini-series of 13-episodes with an additional, almost 2-hour, epilogue.
I’m starting Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980) tonight: Episodes 1 and 2.
