Hello and welcome to Thursday Movie Picks! Before we start, for new people who may have just wandered here, the rules of this weekly series is simple: Each week there is a topic for you to create a list of three movies. Your picks can either be favourites/best, worst, hidden gems, or if you're up to it one of each. For more information and future topics please visit the Thursday Movie Picks page here.
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This week's Thursday Movie Picks is Movies Adapted from a Play (non-Shakespeare and non-musical)
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I've never actually watch a play before. Okay scratch that, I have watch a school play or two. Maybe they were bad productions but I don't think stage plays are for me. The setting is just too artificial and unnatural and to compensate this actors have a tendency to overact and so I just can just believe anything I'm seeing. But I have greatly enjoyed a couple of movies based on a play. I like dialogue heavy movies and often movies based on a play are that. So here are three of my favourites
The Tudor reign of England is full of drama that makes for interesting TV and Movies and this is one the best movies set in that period. In A Man for All Seasons, King Henry VIII is determined to break off from the Roman Catholic Church and divorce his then wife Catherine of Aragon in order to marry Anne Boleyn. Thomas More a lawyer and one of Henry's key counselors refuses to support the divorce and the break with Catholic Church and is charged with treason. As a lawyer More certainly has a way with words and fights the charges made against him all while balancing sticking by his principles and walking the line to ensure he does not offend the king. If you like courtroom dramas I definitely recommend this.
Proof (2005)
Closer features some of the most messiest relationships on screen...I mean these people are just awful towards one another. Now it kinda sounds bad to say that this makes for such a great watch, but it is especially because the performances here are just so wonderful and raw. And I love how the story is just contained. All we get is just the four actors and the relationships between them and that is how each is defined by.
Wow, it has been almost a decade since I saw this. Just a few years before, A Beautiful Mind which was the more popular movie that features a brilliant and mentally ill mathematician was released. Unfortunately I did not like A Beautiful Mind. I love Proof. Proof to me felt more modest and grounded. In Proof Catherine's father, Robert, a brilliant but mentally ill mathematician has just died. She struggles to cope with her grief, the arrival of her sister for the funeral and one Robert's former students who has come to rummage through his stuff in the hopes that Robert had made some mathematical breakthrough during periods of clarity, and the fact that she may also very well have inherited her father's insanity.
So that's it...my three picks. What three movies made your list today?
Check out my past Thursday Movie Picks
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Check out my past Thursday Movie Picks
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Today's topic was tricky for me, it would've been easier if we could choose musicals as those are the only plays I've really had the opportunity to see live. Regardless thanks to a simple keyword search I managed to come up with three I've seen
ReplyDeleteAs for your choices, I haven't a single one of those movies. Closer is the only title I've come across on DVD in my travels but for one reason or another the synopsis never appealed to me.
One of the reasons I specifically excluded Musicals (and Shakespeare) is because I am planning it as a topic next year. Also that they're a different class of stage production where music plays an important role in telling the story) agree sometimes we don't realise a movie is based on play. But there are quite a lot when you think about it...like 12 Angry Men, My Fair Lady, Doubt and wasn't Peter Pan a play first before J.M. Barrie made a novel out of it. I thought Closer is great but it isn't for everyone.
DeleteSad, but I haven't seen any of these. Been meaning to see Closer forever and I just never get around to it. Have to fix that. Nice picks.
ReplyDeleteWhen I made this list I figured that Closer would be the one that everyone would have seen since it is the most accessible I think out of the three. I do hope you check it out some day.
DeleteThis is such a cool idea. I'm in from here on out. Love your picks. Closer is a great movie that I need to revisit since Mike Nichols' passing. Have not seen Proof or A Man for All Seasons.
ReplyDeleteCool. Looking forward to your picks in the future.
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