One of the weeks I tend to look forward to each year is Christmas week when it comes to new movies. There’s always a mix of films vying for awards season that land, though some are more limited than others. Sadly, most of those that I wanted to see in the theater aren’t actually out in my area, so I was only able to cross one off my list with Uncut Gems (review). I’ve been tempted to see Little Women considering all the production aspects of it but at the same time I’ve seen and read the story so many times I’m not actually enthused to do so again.
One film I grabbed on iTunes recently because it looked interesting and was on sale for $2.99 was The Obscure Spring. It’s a more recent addition but actually came out back in 2014. I like watching a lot of international film to get a feel for locations, how people live, and so forth while at the same time getting the understanding that people are the same no matter where you go. A tale about lust, infidelity, the harshness of living poor, all of it comes together well here but has a roughness to it that you don’t usually get with American films. Mix in the infidelity aspect and how long it takes to get to a certain point and it all builds well while the two main leads keep looking for a way to connect and feel something in their lives while the third is simply scrimping by and working while not living at all. It’s not a great film or anything but it was a quiet little look into an area I don’t see too often as Mexican films generally aren’t on my radar.
One film I had picked up some time ago I decided to settle in and watch was Men, Women, and Children. I had actually seen it years ago and I kind of regret re-watching it because of its take on cheating that goes on. The film is more interesting for being mildly on the edge of what it was doing when in production in 2013; it worked the whole visual landscape of bringing texts and screen identities to the big screen when it wasn’t as common and it leaned hard into the whole small screen capture of our eyes. While you do see this in reality often enough, you also see lots of people not doing it so I dislike that it makes it seem like it’s the only way. But watching the way the film navigates the issues of the kids at the time with social pressures, parents freaking out and being overprotective, those who can’t understand the whole thing itself and making bad choices, is a good counterbalance to the usual parents doing it right thing when viewed as an end-game approach. There’s a great cast here from top to bottom and some of the kids are continuing to make a name for themselves, such as Ansel Elgort and Kaitlyn Dever. It manages the balance of stories between kids and adults well while at the same time blending them together as needed.
