It’s been a busy week for me personally as I have been doing what I can to get up at 5 every morning to go to the gym, which was then interrupted as I had to get up at one in the morning to cover the Cannes Film Festival announcement and at the end of the week I started the process of moving to a new house. So… my movie watching took a hit.
Yet, I did see Oblivion (read my review right here) on Tuesday and Mud on Thursday and also watched the latest episode of “Hannibal” on Saturday night before tapping this week’s “What I Watched” out.
When it comes to “Hannibal” I felt this week’s episode was the weakest of the first three, though it ended with an interesting bit of intrigue, though I seriously hope the writers don’t depend on Lecter having to deal with a damaged young girl as a source of “what’s going to happen next?” as that would only diminish the character. I like the way they are slow-playing things and would almost prefer to never see Lecter kill/eat anyone.
The show already comes with the fact the audience knows who Lecter is. It’s simply a fact of the matter and something impossible to avoid. Therefore, there is no reason to show him as a monster considering we already know he’s a monster. After all, what’s scarier, the monster lurking in the shadows or the one right in front of your face? You can contend with the one right in front of you, but the one in the shadows has you firmly in its grip considering you never know when he’ll strike.
That said, Mads Mikkelsen is fantastic on the show and the only major change I would ever have suggested was to be to cast Rachelle Lefevre instead of Lara Jean Chorostecki as tabloid blogger Freddie Lounds. Chorostecki is good enough, but she comes off as a Lefevre copycat, and in that case why not just get the real thing? As a matter of fact, I think I would have also considered Natasha Lyonne for the same role before going with Chorostecki. Just my two cents…
Finally, I’m trying to finish the 1945 French film Children of Paradise on Hulu and recently received the Pierre Etaix collection from Criterion for review and I can’t wait to dig into it.
Now what did you watch this week?
