Elizabeth Taylor
If you been with me for a while then you know, last Thursday I listed TEN TOP Romantic movies of all times. And there are 20 more to come before we’re out of this American Heart Month filled with red hearts, chocolate and love.
However, there is a dark side to some love affairs and these 5 movies are some of the BEST in that category:
- Who’ Afraid of Virginia Woolfe? (1966) Starring Richard Burton and Liz Taylor whose off-screen romance had as many pitfalls as their portrayals of George and Martha. Boozy and bickering, George and Martha needle and humiliate each other in front of their guests, clearly seen as a sick yet symbiotic couple. Elizabeth Taylor won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role as the needy but castrating Martha.
- Closer (2004)Also directed Mike Nichols and adapted from a London stage production, it is filled with raw emotion and intense performances. Jude Law, Natalie Portman, Clive Owen and Julia Roberts are all beautiful people who do ugly things to one another and ultimately themselves. Not your romantic first date night flick.
- Blue Velvet (1986) David Lynch (you’re not surprised are you?) creates a sordid underworld of sexual slavery, addiction, depravity, voyeurism and crime beneath a typically suburban setting. Disturbing and twisted romance involves, Roy Orbison, Dennis Hopper, Kyle MacLachlan and beautiful Isabella Rossalini. Lynch darkly explores hidden fears and desires and adds unexpected satire along the way.
- Natural Born Killers(1994) Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis are lovers and killers who as they fall deeper in love, their thirst for killing intensifies. Oliver Stone utilizes a variety of cinematic ploys as he unfolds this story of undeserved fame and all that comes with it; frenetic camera angles, chopped up editing and the use of various film stocks. Blood thirsty and scandalous, the public loves them.
- Fatal Attraction (1987) Michael Douglas and Glenn Close filled the big screen with steamy, sexual scenes and equally scary suspenseful moments. Fatal Attraction quickly entered our lexicon as the universal term for a “crazy” stalker or ex-lover who just couldn’t take no for an answer. By the end of the movie, the one you are holding hands with will probably turn to you, shake their head and smile knowingly – clearly conveying the probable demise you can expect should you ever try…..
Bill Ding and his band of clowns are the security patrol for this blog site. He is a favorite toy from the 50*s. By the way sometimes a blog is just an ego-maniacal stream of conscience.
Pbenjay's Blog 
Pandemic Pandemonium – Get the Purell!
Posted in From My Point of View - Personal commentary on Movies and Books, tagged AIDS, Contagion, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Los Angeles, Matt Damon, Severe acute respiratory syndrome, Steven Soderbergh on October 26, 2011| 3 Comments »
Contagion is what happens when the wrong pig meets up with the wrong bat.
Sitting at a bar, you reach into the bowl of peanuts, a waiter picks up an empty glass, the school nurse takes a young boy’s temperature…all these and more seemingly innocent and every day occurrences are caught on camera and through the genius of editing, the lens lingers ever so slightly longer than normal. And there you have it; the path of a rapid, virulent, super bug virus as it swiftly travels along the road paved with human touch. We don’t realize how much of what we do, and what we touch affects other people until something like this heretofore undiscovered and unnamed virus begins its deadly trip around the world.
The movie moves forward while flashback snippets in the form of video surveillance camera footage step backward and show us just how Beth (Gwyneth Paltrow) became patient zero and set off an outbreak of MEV-1 and a pandemic nightmare. The portentous device of posting the day and date timeline on the screen brings the horror of how quickly a virus can multiply and spread exponentially, decimating the huge populations of such cities like, Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis, and more.
Director Steven Soderberg brings his genius of fast-moving, everything-happening-at-once style he used so effectively in Traffic to this his latest work. There’s no grandstanding, no spiritual or religious overtones to wring out your emotions. No, this film plays it straight and factual. We are terrified, horrified and shaken, but not because we’ve been exposed to (no pun intended) to half-dead zombies stumbling across the screen. Instead, the camera pans through a deserted airport, sweeps over trash littered streets and lines of desperate citizens standing in line for government hand-outs of food.
The real heroes in this movie are intelligent government employees and level-headed scientists. Matt Damon gives a fine performance as the cuckolded husband of Beth, his best moment is at the hospital when he fails to comprehend the fact that his wife is dead. Kate Winslet delivers a solid performance as the field agent who gets sent out to Minnesota to head up government disaster containment.
By far in my opinion, Jude Law was the outstanding star in the movie. It was hard to believe that the scuzzy guy with the bad complexion and rotten teeth was really Jude Law. Playing a disgruntled left winged blogger, he incites the masses with his inflammatory, accusatory diatribes against the CDC and the pharmaceutical companies. Conspiracy theories are full blown!
This movie is certainly worth the price of admission. It’s a brilliantly directed film dealing with a terrifyingly grim subject, and one that the audience quickly realizes is all to close to reality. With SARS, H1N1, AIDS and ebola and ecoli outbreaks in our recent past, this movie resurrects the fear of contagion and births new concerns about biological warfare…and well it should.
SARS Virus
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