Yogi's Movie Consumption Blog

A death obsessed young man encounters a crazy, but spirited elderly lady and a most improbable love story unfolds. After "Being there", I felt pleasured recognize the director's trademark. Slow editing, a penchant for very long shots and an incredible attention to production design. The story is rarely cut for punch lines and once in a while I felt that he would linger around a bit too long after the point was made. (Most notably in the shot where the 'date' runs off after presumably having seen him burning himself in the garden) Although it is too early to derive anything from only having seen two of Ashby's films I had the impression that the films don't take place in the US, but they seemed to fit the general mental landscape of the quirky English upper class whose brains deteriorate in lavish mansions somewhere in the countryside as the growing grass on their perfect lawns watches them wither away morally. In any case, both films have an ...

The coming-of-age of a teenager stuck in a rutting Texan village in the 50s. The story in the movie revolves mostly about relations in the small town. Some of the relations are of a sexual nature, or about sexual discovery. The adultery committed by the wife of the school coach (who is secretly homosexual), all the women in the movie live in warped relationships - Jacy's mother has had different lovers, and Genevieve seems to be happy in her role as a cafe "mum", I'm not quite sure about her relationship with Sam. The other relations are forged to secure vertical social mobility - Jacy, who seems very unsure about her own sexuality is already deeply influenced by the pragmatic approach that her (unhappy) mother has had towards marriage and relationships in general. Duane, who is definitively on the lower end of the scale - the Jackson's house is more of a shack - cannot comprehend this, at least on an emotional level. There is one thing strangely lackin...

Two cops try to uncover a big heroin deal of which only they are convinced is taking place. It's the supposed realism that the film is shot in, that helps to bring the ruthless character of Hackman's character. On second thought, there are many surreal elements in there, that make the detective look more like a caricature. My favorite little piece was when he overtook a girl on a bike wearing red boots with his car. The next thing is we find him in bed with her. I do own a bike and I also have a drivers license which I have set to use in many countries around the world. I have to sadly admit that I seem to not to possess enough skills on either vehicle to pull off something to this effect. The chase sequence worked so well in my opinion, because the film managed to lock me in with Hackman's determination - the chase itself is not very high speed compared to the hackfests of nowaday with two to three edits per second. Another interesting little detail is that the f...