1. Despite the media controversy over #EmiliaPerez, it’s a great film, so original in its conception. I watched it again recently when, as we all do, I began to doubt my choices, and I was again amazed by #JacquesAudiard’s originality in staging a fascinating, always-evolving story of three hugely different women, using opera and dance to advance his complex plot – which circles back to each one of us with a mixed past. Emilia can never outrun her old self.
#KarlaGascón is mesmerizing to my eye, going from one extreme to the other. #ZoeSaldaña is a real movie star, so graceful in song and emotion. And #SelenaGomez is the late twist in the film as the dumb gangster moll from so many crime films, except here, the twist for her is beyond anything I’ve ever seen. No one in this film can avoid her past.
But the film, to my mind, has been diminished by the attack on Karla Gascón for her unfortunate comments made on old social media posts, outed by a Canadian journalist living up to the nastiness we’ve been seeing more and more of in the last years. This hurts us all. Can we grow up? Who hasn’t said something stupid at moments?
2. Speaking of #DemiMoore, whose recognition is returning for #TheSubstance, I looked at #Disclosure (1994) again, which I enjoyed at the time, but remember it was buried in a sense by feminist controversy at the idea that a woman boss (Demi) could be the abuser of a male employee (Michael Douglas). Author Michael Crichton adapted his own novel, and I found a very interesting, well-done legal battle going on here, with Douglas excellent and Demi bringing her best Betty Davis/Sharon Stone side as the bad girl. Barry Levinson, as always, is excellent with the actors and technically in every other way.
3. In the same vein, because #RobertZemeckis’s film #Here didn’t have any impact on me, I watched #ForrestGump (1994) again after 30 years -- and I’m still in awe of this film. A classic story from Winston Groom’s 1986 novel. Zemeckis and Eric Roth, both brilliant creators, hit the jackpot here with a Capra-esque touch to our history from, let’s say, a #TomHanks perspective. It’s not the history I know, but in Capra fashion, it takes our bad experiences, such as Vietnam, as a test of learning. Each character is beautifully delineated, especially Robin Wright and Gary Sinise.
I can’t call “Gump” a love story, because she settled for him after her own encounters with the pain of life, but in the end, he was an intellectually disabled man, dancing to another beat. I found myself pitying him as a man, who found a life of honor, heroism, and other virtues – and yet, he never really tasted deeply of love, sex, war, money, or fame. Running 10,000 miles is a form of fame that comes to him through his masochism, but he doesn’t really touch the pain. He avoids it. He's immune, in certain ways, to life.