From criterion.com: A group of high-society friends are invited to a mansion for dinner and inexplicably find themselves unable to leave in Luis Buñuel’s daring masterpiece The Exterminating Angel (El ángel exterminador). Made just one year after his international sensation Viridiana, this film, full of eerie, comic absurdity, furthers Buñuel’s wicked takedown of the rituals and dependencies of the frivolous upper classes.
This is another instance of me regretting not having seen a film during its theatrical run but I am the better person now having seen it. Adjectives will run aplenty in my small review…
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways
With that line, Elizabeth Barrett Browning immortalized herself, ironically, with her anonymous musings to her lover Robert Browning.
God, I would love to create a surreal tale of their love affair. I would preface it with (don’t judge) the wonderful Jewel song “Near You Always” and drench it with a sentimental swagger that would seemingly match their own love-affair. When I read their poetry, I cannot help but feel their presence. Their ghosts haunt mine so I want to reward them by immortalizing them in celluloid.
Ideas and ideas, keep on coming.
I viewed the latest Paul Thomas Anderson film, There Will Be Blood, and it contained amazing performances, an amazing musical score, and an amazing villain/hero. Then why did I rate it* a score of 8.5 out of 10? I didn’t have a problem with anything in particular, it was a really good film but many critics have been praising it as the second coming of Citizen Kane (which IS truly amazing) and have called it the film of the year.
So I ask myself: was it a result of hype and critical overkill?
