I'm not certain what they did on Halloween night 1000 years ago, but I don't think it involved children going from home to home asking for candy. But, I think modern trick-or-treating on Halloween is far better than...well whatever they did a thousand years ago. So have fun, stay safe, and apparently watch out for crazy people dressed as clowns. For some odd reason I have been selecting a lot of boring films lately, and I think I could translate that into them being quite dreadful as well. Last night I watched Carol a drama film that takes place back in the 1950's in New York City about two women who fall in love with each other, and how they navigate their lives with this relationship during that time period. Cate Blanchett plays the title character Carol Aird, who is a divorced woman with a young daughter and an angry, possessive, brooding ex-husband. She is relatively high society, or at least wealthy, but comes across as gentle, kind and compassionate. Ms. Blanchett gave a fine performance, although I don't think it was worthy of the Oscar nomination she received; and I have to say that I didn't care for her character, which I also thought of as quite boring and flat throughout most of the entire film. It was only at the end that there was some energy put into the performance. Rooney Mara plays the young lover, Therese Belivet; and wow what a dull character, and what a dull performance. Throughout the entire film she bored me constantly, and her character was flat; there was nothing even remotely good about this character, yet somehow she too received an Oscar nomination somehow.
The film was primarily these two the entire time. Kyle Chandler played the obnoxious, jealous and possessive ex-husband, Harge, but his character was static the entire time save for a brief ten seconds or so. The rest of the cast was unremarkable. In short the film was beyond dreadful, and beyond boring; two hours of nothing really going on, and the irritating thing was none of the performances were even interesting let alone good. Even more astounding was that the screenplay, written by Phyllis Nagy, received an Oscar nomination which boggles my mind, because the writing was boring, flat, predictable, and there was no life in the characters or the dialog. Carter Burwell somehow received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Score for his film score, which it wasn't dreadful, but....it wasn't anything even remotely good. Sounded like he borrowed his musical notes from Alexandre Desplat and just re-orchestrated them for this film. Perhaps the only place where the film shined was in the cinematography by Edward Lachman (which was nominated for an Oscar) and costume design by Sandy Powell (also nominated for an Oscar), but other than that, I can't recall anything pleasant or good about this film, even the ending was quite dreadful. I do not recommend this film whatsoever, unless you want something to put you to sleep or out of your misery. There is nothing compelling in this story, and honestly there was so much they could have done with this film, but it was so sedate and....well, simply put it will bore you to death. For good Halloween viewing watch the classic Hollywood horror films like The Mummy from 1932 with Boris Karloff, The Invisible Man from 1933 with Claude Rains, or Dracula from 1931 with Bela Lugosi, and The Horror of Dracula from 1958 with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.Carol clip
Cate Blanchett interview
Gilmore Girls Netflix trailer
