5 movies

During the break at the end of 2021, I watched 5 movies on Netflix. There was no theme or special reason for those chosen. One, I had selected earlier, but got to it just now. The five are Gladiator, Midnight Run, The Nightingale, Skater Girl and The Next Life.

Gladiator is driven by the malevolence of the character played by Joaquin Phoenix, Commodus. This was a conspicuous movie when it came out; I had not explored it then and it had ebbed away in my consciousness. But I enjoyed the film because of the acting but also how human differences were portrayed in a historical context. It is also notable that it is until only relatively recently that the need to dispose of political enemies through killing was the norm.

Midnight Run was the only film of those I watched set in the United States. It had too much smoking and swearing, seeming gratuitous at times. But then, with smoking in public, at least, that's how things used to be. But the story was done well; it seemed to go on, but the pacing was good. This was the film requiring the least amount of brain power to process.

The Nightingale is an Australian movie set in the early days of imperial conquest of Tasmania. It has very brutal scenes of rape and murder. This is one of two films I watched that were directed by women. It portrays the absolute minimization of the value of human life in times of conflict and how it renders a human psyche as an object to torture. The complete lack of empathy or human consideration is portrayed. Given the different language and completely foreign cultural backgrounds this kind of behavior is not unexpected, but still completely shocking.

Skater Girl was set in a village in India; which actually had a skate park constructed as part of the movie. This is the other movie directed by a woman. I cried at times during this movie, out of both happiness and how traditions, so important to maintaining a culture, can impinge on the hopes and dreams of young people. There are a few unresolved threads in the movie, but it is saved by the child actors and the unlikely ending. This is the one I had selected a few months ago.

And The Next Life, despite the preview in Netflix done in English, is set in Italy and the characters speak in Italian. It portrays people at an edge of society, pushed away in some cases by their own choices and others, particularly the children, through no choice of their own. There is some sentimentality in the film, with some harshness avoided. But it does try to explore how these situations affect human lives.

Not sure if I will watch any movies for a while, but these are the ones I watched between Christmas and New Years Day.