I went to the cinema today to see Children of the Silk Road which was not bad but at the same time not quite the epic saga I was expecting. I think the film attempts to be a sort of Schindler’s List type film but set in Japan occupied China c1930s but I’m not sure it really hits the mark. The main character George Hogg (played by Johnny Rhys Meyers) British journalist who naively gets himself into the wrong place at the wrong time and ends up seeing things he wasn’t prepared for and then he kinda floats along on the fringes of the unrest being equally effected yet somehow distant to the Japanese occupation that was going on around him. He seemed a bit one dimensional to me perhaps because the screenplay has come about by interviewing people who idolized him – I’m not sure. The film is well worth seeing for some of it’s rather impressive dramatic action sequences but it was also a little disappointing … I think I was expecting something better given that Michelle Yeoh and Chow Yun-Fat were in the cast. Nevermind – they can’t all be winners.
My Mum who came to the cinema with me asked me today what my favourite movie was and I replied with a blank stare and asked her what sort of question is that? It’s like asking what your favourite music is? It depends so much on what sort of mood you’re in, what you’ve been exposed to lately, what is speaking to you at the time. I could no sooner answer her with definitive answer to my favourite film than I could answer definitively to my favourite food. I could tell you today that Grosse Point Blank is my absolute favourite film, but then I might remember how much I loved Amelie. It’s an impossible question.
Today some of my favourite films are –
Grosse Point Blank
Dazed and Confused
Threesome
Ideal Husband
Queen Margot
Mallrats
Hero
Office Space
Artemisia
Empire Records
The Last Supper
Eurotrip
Before
House of Flying Daggers
Much
Monsoon Wedding
Heathers
Curse of the Golden Flower
Pushing Tin
Amelie
Romeo and Juliet (Baz Luhrmann)
Reality Bites
Matilda
Pump Up the Volume
The Importance of Being Ernest
8 Femmes
Ask me again tomorrow and I’d probably have a totally different list.
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