I was just watching Life of Pi, and during the scene where Pi and the animals are escaping the shipwreck, I started thinking “I think I’ve seen this movie before.” But then I remembered having seen The Black Stallion, about a boy who’s rescued from a shipwreck by a horse.
If you haven’t seen them, both are truly amazing movies.
The introduction to prison by the warden in Shawshank Redemption reminded me of the boot camp sequence in Full Metal Jacket.
Mine’s a little more abstruse. Back when I was in grade school, our teacher, for reasons I’ll probably never be able to explain, showed us the 1964 film The Pumpkin Eater. I recall nothing about the plot of the movie, or any scenes in the film, EXCEPT ONE, and of that, only a striking visual. James Mason (bespectacled, mustachioed, and altogether looking more like a well-dressed weasel than like Captain Nemo) and Anne Bancroft are sitting in her parlor, and Mason is telling Bancroft something that she clearly doesn’t want to listen to. The camera cuts back and forth between Bancroft’s dispirited, defeated, almost trapped expression, and Mason’s mouth, as he relentlessly recounts unthinkable truths to Bancroft. That’s it; just a close-up on his mouth as he speaks, lips, teeth, and mustache; and the director keeps returning to it.
Some twenty-three years later, kaylasmom and I decided to take in a flick at an actual movie theater. Our selection was Enchanted April. Early on, there’s a scene between Miranda Richardson and Jim Broadbent that quite effectively establishes that their marriage is not a happy one, and that Miranda, at least, could really use Ann April in Italy. It’s dinner time in the Arbuthnot digs, and Rose and Frederick are sitting at opposite ends of the dining table. Rose has just been chewed out by Frederick for wasting money on flowers, and doesn’t seem to have much of an appetite. She’s just watching Frederick as he eats his meal. And we’re watching him too - - that is, we’re watching his mouth: lips, teeth and mustache on loving display as he works away at his roast beef.
For a while there, I was transported back to Sister Rita Marie’s classroom.