Friday, 11 April 2008 12:33 pm
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deckardcanineI'm not sure how to review Mrs. Miniver. I liked aspects of it, but it's hard for me to evaluate the whole. Guess I'll just go with the points of personal interest:
1. Early on, I was actually in an MST3K-style razzy mood, tho it dissipated quickly. That's unusual for me, especially when I'm by myself and watching a classic. I blame the two uuuugly hats that Mrs. Miniver wore in the beginning. (BTW, when's the last time you could go into a bar and see everyone but the bartender wearing a hat?)
2. It's the first feature-length film I've seen that ends with the written instruction to buy war bonds. Even Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent declined to do that. Unsurprisingly, the main extras on the DVD are contemporary documentary shorts about the war. I watched several minutes of the first before giving up.
3. I'm getting tired of flicks that focus on aristocrats, even as I balance them with ones focused on poor people. But they do get more interesting as the aristocracy lessens. In this case, it's pretty intriguing to see the aftermath of an aerial attack. The house and church aren't exactly demolished, but they do present an odd juxtaposition of luxury and barely functional conditions. Too bad it's in B&W.
4. Some films seem highly predictable. Then the person I expected to die doesn't and someone I didn't expect does... despite the Netflix jacket's effort to spoil it for me.
5. Yay, a cat! Besides the obvious reasons, this pleases me because the cat has no apparent lines. He doesn't act. He's just catting around there. It increases the realism in a way that human actors usually don't get to do, except maybe babies.
6. Speaking of which, three- or four-year-old Toby's cute.
1. Early on, I was actually in an MST3K-style razzy mood, tho it dissipated quickly. That's unusual for me, especially when I'm by myself and watching a classic. I blame the two uuuugly hats that Mrs. Miniver wore in the beginning. (BTW, when's the last time you could go into a bar and see everyone but the bartender wearing a hat?)
2. It's the first feature-length film I've seen that ends with the written instruction to buy war bonds. Even Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent declined to do that. Unsurprisingly, the main extras on the DVD are contemporary documentary shorts about the war. I watched several minutes of the first before giving up.
3. I'm getting tired of flicks that focus on aristocrats, even as I balance them with ones focused on poor people. But they do get more interesting as the aristocracy lessens. In this case, it's pretty intriguing to see the aftermath of an aerial attack. The house and church aren't exactly demolished, but they do present an odd juxtaposition of luxury and barely functional conditions. Too bad it's in B&W.
4. Some films seem highly predictable. Then the person I expected to die doesn't and someone I didn't expect does... despite the Netflix jacket's effort to spoil it for me.
5. Yay, a cat! Besides the obvious reasons, this pleases me because the cat has no apparent lines. He doesn't act. He's just catting around there. It increases the realism in a way that human actors usually don't get to do, except maybe babies.
6. Speaking of which, three- or four-year-old Toby's cute.