Triple Bill Mini Musings: Lovely, Majestic, Godly...

Lovely Molly:
What's it about?
From Eduardo 'The Blair Witch Project' Sanchez, this low-fi, slow-burn, chilling, skin-crawler of a haunted house flick centres on the titular newlywed (and ex-junkie) as she returns to the not-so-peaceful family home in rural Maryland and discovers that something's going bump in the night.
Who would I recognise in it?
Alexandra Holden.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
I'd heard good things about this, but didn't know an awful lot about the movie itself, and perhaps that helped. It's a gradually-paced flick that prefers a highly unsettling soundscape and carefully suggestive visuals, that hold back up-front horrors in favour of something altogether more effective at getting the shivers to bother your spine. It's worth sticking around as the gently ratcheted tension builds into a haunting finale. Good.

Click "READ MORE" below for Jim Carrey in the 1950s and Brazilian street kids...

The Majestic:
What's it about?
Directed by Frank Darabont, Jim Carrey's black-listed Hollywood screenwriter gets into an accident, loses his memory, and winds up in a small all-American, apple pie, white picket fence town where the town's people recognise him as a long-lost soldier.
Who would I recognise in it?
Jim Carrey, Laurie Holden, Martin Landau, Jeffrey DeMunn, Hal Holbrook.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
This one slipped under my radar - I was only vaguely aware of it - as it does kind of get buried away in the shadow of The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. There's a nostalgic love of cinema and a yearning for a simpler all-American existence at the heart of The Majestic, a film which is as much about the fragile notion of identity as it is about the rights and wrongs of an innocent world faced with less-than-innocent motivations to supposedly protect that world, while all-the-while slowly destroying it. It's a Frank Darabont picture, so you should know what to expect - there's a loving sense of grandeur coated in a warm veneer of truth and honesty. I wasn't expecting to get quite so wrapped up in it. Good.


City of God:
What's it about?
A much-lauded Brazilian film (based on a real story) about guns, drugs, and crime lords in the eponymous slum - all seen from the perspective of children and teenagers during the 1960s through 1980s.
Who would I recognise in it?
Erm...
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
It's a bit over-long (there's a chunk in the middle that's kind of flabby), and the frequent divergences into numerous back-stories does scatter the focus of the film, but fortunately by the end everything all ties back to the central character of Rocket, a kid from the slums who wants to grow up and become a photographer. Despite the uneven pace, there's a vibrancy to the presentation and a brutal honesty to the cut-throat gangland of the City of God itself, that leaves a positive impression when all is said and done. Good.