Bellerophon symbol, variation 7 jonath.co.uk
Saturday 23rd August 2008

Adaptation
I remember when I started doing my driving lessons, with none other than John G. Wilde (where are you now, John?), I was really into stuff like Yes, Queen, Pink Floyd, stuff like that. But, and here's the important thing, I had recently 'discovered' 'The Yes Album' (that might not have been its name . . . I mean, was 'The White Album' actually called the 'The White Album'?!) by the band, Yes. Then John lent me, amongst other things, 'The Faust Tapes' by . . . yep, Faust. And suddenly, I grew out of Yes. I say all this because, when I first watched 'Being John Malkovich', I thought this was a really, really good film. I'm stuggling now to remember what would have been the comparable film to the music version of 'The Faust Tapes' . . . where do I start? I'm kinda thinking 'The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind', but even 'The Truman Show' would do. That is, we grow out of certain films, but then there are other films we would watch again and again and again. And so, on Friday night I found myself watching Adaptation. It stank of 'Spike Jonze' (not least because of the opening credits), but I was prepared to give it a chance, not least (again) because it featured Nicholas Cage (hey, we loved you in 'Leaving Las Vegas'). I was loving the thing about orchids, the characters played by Meryl Streep and Chris Cooper . . . and here's where M**** and I agreed . . . they could have done so much with those two characters and the orchids, but no . . . they didn't. Instead we get a typically quirky, self-indulgent, self-referential . . . mess, really. Half-way through the film, I was like, "Well, I've invested this much time into this film, I might as well see how it ends," not that I was too much bothered by that point (SPOILER ABOUT TO OCCUR) as I had already assumed that John was gonna get monged up by a crocodile/alligator/thing . . . it was kind of inevitable, really. So I give this film a five out of ten. If you loved 'Being John Malkovich', you'll probably love this too, but then you'll probably also be bored senseless by something like 'There Will be Blood' and get heavily frustrated by the ending to 'No Country for Old Men' but, hey . . . what do they know?
Entry made by jonath at 23:54:15 | leave a comment (8 made, 8 approved) | go to latest entries

09:06:54 up 51 days, 23:25, 3 users, load average: 0.37, 0.32, 0.31