Convalescing with Movies

I managed to get sick this weekend, meaning I watched entirely too many movies… including some lousy movies. First, the good, though:

Welcome to Sajjanpur

I’m not at all sure why they bothered with the frame story of Mahadev being a novelist–it weakened the message of the story, especially given the true fates of some of the characters. That said, some supplementary research taught me about hijra in India–called eunuchs on IMDB, but not specifically labeled in the movie.

The movie was much less musical than, say, Mohabbatein, and far more deliberately comedic. Aside from the disappointing frame story, it was a great convalescing movie.

Sleepers

Greg summed this up well (if grumpily) in the first five minutes as a movie obviously striving for an Academy Award movie, sharing much of the same slow pans, photography, and voice-over styles as Malcolm X. I’d seen this as a kid and was fascinated by it, and wanted Greg to see it.

Regrettably, it shared the same longer-is-better philosophy as Malcolm X: it was well over 2 hours long. Too long for a convalescing movie.

Too long regardless.

Worse yet, in all that time, it lacked a real message. Revenge is satisfying? Apparently not, since it didn’t save two of the four guys from their own sickness. People can change, be rehabilitated? Nope, nobody really improved themselves over the years.

Now moving to the bad:

Shank

Um… wow. I managed about twenty minutes of this, and it couldn’t rise above furtive sexual urges/acts and lots of cocaine.

Lots of cocaine. On dashboards, desks, and photos of babies.

So… that was awkward. Pass.

Saving God

Sigh. Another god-will-save-black-culture film. Ving Rhames stomping around being sanctimonious and righteous. Young thug turning into a do-gooder. Young pregnant woman hoping for the best.

Rhames’ voice is too deep to enunciate well, and NetFlix didn’t offer subtitles for this, making it a poor movie for convalescing.

Watch Save the Last Dance instead.

The Producers

This was Greg’s pick, and may be the worst movie I’ve seen in a hot minute. Five minutes in–before the credits were even finished–I wanted to switch back to Shank. So much screaming, so much whining.

Given my atrocious sinus headache at the time, this wasn’t a good movie pick.

I’m still not a Mel Brooks fan in general, although watching Greg laugh helplessly at the Swedish secretary’s dancing was worth about the two minutes surrounding each of those two scenes.