Dear Diary

Film: Notes on a Scandal
Format: DVD from NetFlix on rockin’ flatscreen.

I’ve been focusing heavily on Best Actress performances for some time because switching from movies on the 1001 Movies list to Oscars left me vastly behind in that category. I’ve been catching up slowly but surely, but it’s still the category where I have the furthest to go. So, because that’s where I’m trying to catch up, my NetFlix queue is currently heavily skewed toward that award. Thus we have Notes on a Scandal, since I’m also a little behind in that decade compared with the others.

This is a film I knew nothing about other than that it starred Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett, both of whom I love. It’s always fun to go into an acclaimed film with great actors and little to no background, and in this case, it was absolutely worth it. Notes on a Scandal is a movie with a simple premise and excellent execution. For something this simple, it’s surprisingly tense.

It's Better to Burn Out than to Fade Away

Film: Iris
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on laptop.

A film like Iris is one where I understand all of the nominations, wonder why there weren’t more nominations, and even understand the importance of the film. What I don’t understand is why someone would see a film like this in the theater. Iris is an astonishingly intimate film; I can’t imagine that it would be better seeing these characters blown up to gigantic proportions on the screen. Admittedly, when I pay for a movie, I want to see explosions and special effects, so I may be biased. There is a part of me that thinks a film like Iris only improves the smaller the screen gets.

This is the story of Iris Murdoch (played in the present by Judi Dench and in flashback by Kate Winslet). Iris is a renowned novelist, speaker, and philosopher who, as the film begins in the present, is succumbing to the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease. Yes, this is going to be that kind of movie. We spend time equally in Iris’s increasingly murky and muddy present and her vibrant and exotic past. In both places, much of the story revolves around her romance with John Bayley (Jim Broadbent and Hugh Bonneville) and the contrast between those two different times in Iris’s life.