Look, I’m not one of those people who brags about their ignorance like it’s some badge of working class authenticity. I’m mostly a smart guy, and would love to be smarter. But I’m honestly admitting here that I’m not all that qualified for the works of William Shakespeare. I’ve enjoyed some of the adaptations, mostly the more stylistically adventurous ones like TITUS or ROMEO + JULIET or even THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH. But the language (beautiful as it may be) is a real obstacle for me. I always struggle with following what anyone is talking about, and you mostly gotta know what they’re talking about to know what’s happening.
Even the ones I can get a grip on I barely retain memory of afterwards. Sometimes I can’t even remember if it’s Macbeth or Hamlet that has the Ghost Dad. I really have to go into my brain and do the following math: oh yeah, in THE NORTHMAN his name is Amleth, so that’s inspired by the same story that Hamlet is inspired by, so Hamlet is the one where his uncle killed his dad. And that was also the one that STRANGE BREW was riffing on and that had the Ghost Dad. Okay, got it. I know all about Hamlet.
THE LEGEND OF OCHI is a beautiful and imaginative PG-rated fantasy from A24. Since the number of friends I recommended it to this week that had never heard of it is higher than the number of people at the Saturday matinee I went to, I’m thinking there are limits to that company’s marketing powers. But future adults who remember seeing it in a theater will know they had cool parents. This one is special.
Steven Spielberg’s WAR HORSE is the story of a horse named Joey. He is distinguishable because he is brown with a white mark on his head and above his hooves. Otherwise I’m not sure I could pick him out in a lineup. He’s just a horse. Doesn’t talk or do math problems or anything.
When this picture first showed up a ways back I wrote it off, just like any reasonable individual would. I wouldn’t give EQUILIBRIUM the time of day. Or watch it. I figured it was a poor man’s MATRIX. Nothing against the poor, we are good people. I’m just saying a poor man can’t make the real matrix, only a fake one starring Jim Belushi and Coolio. Admittedly, this one stars Christian Bale and Taye Diggs, so it’s not that poor. Still, I really wasn’t too curious to see the movie, the only thing I was curious about was how poor Christian American Psycho Bale wound up trading his unending integrity for a leather coat and a pair of pistols. But the picture has stuck around sort of, kept alive by a small but dedicated cult following. Which I guess is the definition of a cult following, small but dedicated. Man, let’s just move on to the next paragraph.
