Film Summary

Some of the films I’ve seen lately. They’re roughly ranked by how much I enjoyed them. If I don’t get around to writing more, here’s a little.

The General (1926 – Buster Keaton)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0017925
Superbly-shot silent film. Funny. Art. Keaton broke his neck doing one of the stunts and didn’t realise it until years later. There are different soundtracks played over this. One I heard on the flight I saw it on was great, some of the others are a bit dull.

Back to the Future (All of them! Saw them all before but I think they really stand up. Second one is set in 2015.)

Bringing Up Baby (1938 – Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029947
All three of these Grant – Hepburn films are unmissable. There’s another that isn’t as highly-rated and I haven’t watched it yet.

Trouble in Paradise (1932)

In Trouble in Paradise Herbert Marshall entertains and impresses as the impossibly suave gentleman thief, Gaston Monescu, a man who can act, bluff and charm his way into and out of almost any situation. He is aided and abetted by his lady friend Lily (Miriam Hopkins), also an accomplished confidence trickster and acquirer-of-valuables. Their target: the wealthy owner of a perfume company, Mariette Colet (Kay Francis). What they don’t count on is just how triangular a relationship can be when two become three… and Mme Colet has everything a thief and a man could want (money; astounding beauty, wit & charm).

Unrequited Love

One-sided love can be difficult to deal with, whether you’re the one who’s in love or not. The latter is often under-represented, especially in poetry where strong romantic feelings win out over their absence. Where you don’t have feelings for someone and rarely see them it probably isn’t a problem at all… but it can be if the one who wants you is a friend you care about. You don’t want to hurt them, but at the same time want to be clear where the friendship begins and ends. From being on both sides of the fence, I think I can see where problems can needlessly arise.

So Blonde (2008)

So Blonde is a graphic adventure written by Steve Ince, who previously worked on the Broken Sword games. I bought it off the back of a four star Adventure Gamers review as well as the fact that Ince was nominated for a writing award from the Writer’s Guild of Great Britain for his work on it. I didn’t pay a whole lot for the physical copy I got online. A good thing, because the game itself isn’t very good and I can’t recommend it.

The Book of Unwritten Tales (2009)

The Book of Unwritten Tales is a graphic adventure game in the traditional LucasArts style. It has been favourably received pretty much everywhere. Unfortunately, it doesn’t successfully emulate much of anything the Lucas games did and it’s a largely charmless, witless pixel hunt from beginning to end.