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I like to watch


As seems to be the fashion these days I've signed up for online dvd rental. The first couple of films turned up on Thursday and they've already been watched and posted back. I think I'm going to enjoy this. I like films and wish I watched more but it's as though I need some kind of impetus to actually sit and devote the time to watching them. These films are costing me money and I have to watch four a month to get my money's worth so that is motivation enough for me to sit down and watch whatever they send me.

First up was 'Being There' starring Peter Sellers and released in 1979. This is a lovely film and I would suggest checking it out. Sellers performance as Chance the gardener is beautifully still and not the sort of acting you would normally associate him with. Chance has been brought up by television never having stepped outside his front door apart from to tend to his masters garden. With the death of his master the outside world is suddenly unleashed on him. Chance is an innocent and everyone he comes across projects on to him what they want him to be without taking what he says at face value and realising he's actually quite simple minded. Chance is talking about gardening or watching TV but what he says is taken as metaphor or it's meaning corrupted and he is hailed as a great thinker and businessman, ultimately being mentioned in a speech by the president and at the end even being considered as a presidential candidate. It's an interesting satire on the effect of television and the world's self absorption.

There are a few laugh out loud moments especially when Chance's comment that he 'likes to watch' leads to Shirley MacLaine's character pleasuring herself on a rug on the floor whilst an oblivious Chance sits on the bed copying yoga positions from the TV but on the whole this is a gentle and fascinating film and with it's final scene (which I won't spoil) leaves you thinking about it long after it's finished.

If Sellers performance were a tree: bonsai

Punch-Drunk Love is an Adam Sandler film which normally would be no recommendation and indeed I might usually have actively avoided it. This, however, was directed by Paul Thomas Anderson who directed both Boogie Nights and Magnolia and as such I was curious to see it. Both of those films were long and at an hour and a half Punch-Drunk Love was, well... a lot shorter. It feels it too, it really feels like a short film rather than a full length. The sort of quirky thing that he might have put together as a film student. None of the characters seem fully fleshed out, there are a lot of unanswered questions, but this doesn't stop it being a mostly enjoyable experience with Sandler being watchable without really blowing me away and Emily Watson being fine as his love interest. Kudos have to go to Jon Brion's score which, with his usual array of vintage keyboards manages to perfectly mirror those scenes where Anderson decides to step up the oddness.

A snack rather than a full meal though.

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