At The Movies

Last night I was watching a film on television called Naked, a 1993 film directed by Mike Leigh, about the uglier side of urban Britain in the 1990s. The film opens with Johnny (played by David Thewlis) fleeing Manchester to London, after comitting a violent crime. He heads off to hide out at the flat of his ex-girlfriend, Louise (Lesley Sharp), but wastes no time in seducing her flatmate Sophie (Katrin Cartlidge). Louise very quickly gets sick of him and throws him out, and so Johnny takes to wandering the London streets, encountering various other characters whom he regales with his witty, intelligent but bitterly cynical rants about life and philosophy. It's quite a long film, and very talky. The film was almost entirely improvised over an eleven week rehearsal period (the original script was just 25 pages long). The film is intelligent, very bleak, quite brutal and at times very funny and surprisingly compassionate. David Thewlis turns in a superb performance, making an utterly repulsive character weirdly sympathetic, if never actually likeable.

I got a letter today telling me that I do not have to appear as a witness in court later this month as the case has been adjourned. I don't know whether it has been cancelled outright or if it has just been delayed. I daresay I'll find out soon enough, though.When I got my groceries today I got a copy of The Independent newspaper because they are giving away a booklet every day for the next two weeks about The Great Poets. Today was Geoffrey Chaucer who wrote The Canterbury Tales.

This afternoon I went up to the Cineworld cinema and saw Diary of the Dead, directed by George A. Romero, the fifth in his series of zombie films which started with Night of the Living Dead in 1968. In this film a group of university film student are making a bad horror about a Mummy when they find themselves under attack when the bodies of the dead start coming back to life to kill and eat the living. The film itself purports to be a spur of the moment documentary they are shooting about what's happening around them, as they attempt to find help and safety. There is a lot of social commentary in the film which at times breaks up the momentum, but it was still good, being very suspenseful, gruesome and at times very funny.

After the film I went for a drink before going back in to see There Will Be Blood, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. The film is set in the early years of the 20th century and tells the story of Daniel Plainview (played by Daniel Day-Lewis), a silver miner who decides to seek his fortune in oil mining. After he manages to become fairly wealthy in oil, he finds out about a massive oil deposit underneath the small town of Little Boston in California. However he soon comes into conflict with the local preacher (Paul Dano). It's a truly epic film and has a great performance from Daniel Day-Lewis (who won the Best Actor Oscar for this film). I think it atually deserved to win more than it did, although i know that it was nominated for a lot of Oscars.

After that film I went back to the bar and had a burger with chips, onion rings and coleslaw and a pint of beer, so that was nice.