Some comments on Molly’s Game (2017)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

14 January

Some comments on Molly’s Game (2017) (watched at The Light Cinema, Cambridge, on Wednesday 10 January 2018)

Most likely since - in adapting Molly Bloom's original book for cinema - the screenwriter (Aaron Sorkin) is also directing his first film, he often doesn't seem to temper himself his script :

The prime asset of film is visual, yet he uses it too little, not to narrate, but show.

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 15, 2018

As usual, all being compiled into some sort of #UCFF response, located at :https://t.co/8epwdEwM4O pic.twitter.com/UXz0ZEu7gp

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 15, 2018

In @Mollys_Game (2017), is the scene with Molly Bloom’s (Jessica Chastain's) father (Kevin Costner), after the dangerous escapade of ice-skating in Central Park, meant to be fantasy ?

At any rate, it plays like a version of Good Will Hunting (1997) - unrelatedly and on speed ! pic.twitter.com/0wjzZ0Dte7

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 11, 2018

When not supposedly being both therapist and self-critical father, Larry Bloom is otherwise shown as a beastly father, ignoring his wife’s pleas for Molly, and invoking the word weak as an alleged synonym for tired : perfectly psychologically reasonable, then, that both Player X (Michael Cera) and, before him, Dean Keith (Jeremy Strong), prove dangerously attractive as the types of character who like to crush others (even if it can also be personally costly to know them).


[...]


Post-script :

In @tnyshouts: "Sometimes I can see Jessica (Chastain) calmly and silently counting to ten and trying not to roll her eyes, as she waits for the mostly male imbeciles nearby to catch up." https://t.co/HToGGw0F57 pic.twitter.com/bEn2uZx8kR

— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) January 30, 2018

Delightfully seductive though it is to make inferences about a film-star from his or her roles (not knowing the ones that were turned down, or the ones wanted, but not secured), a generalization about the parts played needs to fit... Stretching to fit them in doesn't help. -> https://t.co/oRlJhdN7Kq

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 30, 2018

As long as she has a career, Molly does what she does very well, but keeps having to be told that *she* funds her operation by uncalled-in debts, etc., and is shown crashed, and narrated to be depressed and abusing substances to stay awake for long times, not sipping white wine ?

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 30, 2018

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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Crowds outside Houston's hotel (according to AOL®) (1)

More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

13 February

So why does Whitney Houston become known by her surname when she's dead? I don't mean it irreverently, but I am inescapably reminded of the Apollo missions:

Do you read me, Houston?


And what makes for 'crowds', distinct from a 'crowd', in this case? Does it just sound better, does it fit the space where 'Huge crowd' might not (actually, there is room)?

And these people - are they being mournful or macabre, wanting to be the first to book into the room where she was found dead? (And I'm sure that there were those who did the same with Sid Vicious - or who want to stay in Hemingway's suite at the Danieli.)

Perhaps they are respectful, perhaps they will endow a fund so that the room can be permanently be set up as a shrine and reverentially visited by bona fide fans...

In any case, who can forget the singer looking so in need of being rescued in Costner's arms*?


End-notes

* By the looks of it, Kevin has had a pretty hard time of it: poor lad had the misfortune to cohabit with Elle MacPherson for a while, and his fraternity, of all things, was Delta Chi! Still, at least his wife designs handbags, for which I'm sure that we're all grateful, and he apparently took her for a ride in a canoe after their wedding ceremony - no doubt inspiration for a whole range of bags...


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