Wuthering Heights

“Wuthering Heights”

When Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of “Wuthering Heights” was announced over a year ago, I wondered why she included the title in quotation marks.  Were they the equivalent of air quotes, implying that her take on the source material would be satirical or ironic?  Unfortunately, Fennel wasn’t telling.  Like everyone else, I would need to wait until the movie came out.  Before I provide my answer, I want to note how this was a genius stroke on Fennell’s behalf.  This minor but idiosyncratic alteration made us all curious about yet another adaptation of the well-known book.  If the mark of an effective director is grabbing our attention, Fennell aced that assignment.

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Train Dreams

Train Dreams (Netflix)

If you talk to anyone who’s eighty years-old or older, I bet they’d have an interesting story to tell.  That person would have met some interesting people, seen and done things that few others had, witnessed great change over time and experienced every emotion under the sun, only to admit they have more questions than answers.  That’s Train Dreams in a nutshell, a tale of an unremarkable man who built railroads and bridges to support his family, only to find everything that mattered to him gone in an instant.  While his story is uniquely his, he’s also an everyman who forces us to reckon with life as we know it.

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The Choral

The Choral

In The Choral, a small British town struggles to put on their annual choral program as WW1 steadily depletes their ranks.  The theme of an unlikely bunch of characters overcoming adversity to accomplish something amazing is both conventional and familiar, and given the context, you would expect this movie to be very respectful and sentimental.  Well, not entirely.  On the one hand, what the movie says about the importance of music during dark times is very thoughtful and touching.  On the other hand, the movie delivers that message in a very unexpected way.  While there is no doubt the British had sex during WW1, the movie goes out of its way to show that the British were quite randy back then.  In fact, the only time they’re not thinking about sex is when they’re singing.

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