Send us your Movie Memories
Has there been a film in 2000-09 that made a significant impact on you? Something that has made you laugh, cry, or spurred you into action? Or was it the time and context, rather than the film, that was memorable: in a certain country, with (or without) a special someone, at a particular stage in your life?
This is a space for films that may not have helped redefine cinema – it is much more personal: it’s about films that have, in some small way, helped define you.
Profound or random, funny or serious, we want to know. Share your memory with us below and we’ll enter it into our monthly draw to win a clutch of special Decalogue prizes. Good luck!
—
The opening of the movie when the main teenage protagonist walks out of her mum’s council flat. She engages with some other dancing contemporaries on the tarmac of the searing heat of an Essex urban summer.
—
Be With Me, by Eric Khoo was the first time I can remember text messages and emails being taken seriously as a form of communication in cinema. The film; part fiction, part documentary, deals with the importance of communication or the lack of ability to communicate, and the -often very lonely- characters in this film use various forms of communication to try and reach out to others, but usually end up alone anyway.
We get a real sense in this film of the ‘politics’ involved with, say, not responding to a text or an email, and we see that even with increased connectivity and shared online ‘experiences’, loneliness still has a very real place for many in this brave new world, perhaps more so than ever.
I think this is expressed brilliantly through the use of modern forms of communication. The message seems to be that even as we improve or alter the means by which we communicate and express ourselves, such changes can do very little to alter the human condition.
—
Watching the film in a rain-lashed local cinema in Bundoran Co. Sligo, Ireland. Disgruntled, wet tourists hoping to see ? were dazzled into silence by the dynamism of the cinematography and brutal power of gang warfare on sun bleached streets.
—
‘Did you know that Whitney Houston’s debut Album called simply ‘Whitney Houston’, had 4 no. 1 singles on it? Did you know that Christie?’
Patrick Bateman gives an old drunken friend a mini-review of Whitney Houston’s debut album, in all complete seriousness. He is answered with a giggle and an answer through drunken laughter,as she stretches herself drunkenly up on the couch, champagne flute in hand, ‘You actually listen to Whitney Houston?[laughs] You owna Whitney Houston CD [uncontrolable laughter] …more than one?’
It was a great departure into the New Milenium, witty cinema dialogue, that was reminiscent of the 90, but far enough from the 80’s that it used the setting as a landscape of a period piece for the first time. A brilliant movie from a female director, and a turning point in Bale’s career. It’s ability to laugh at the commencement of a society obsessed with pop culture and vanity. A triumph for a great adaptation, and a movie from any gendered director.
—
Tom Cruise being “assailed” by the interactive advertising hoardings in the shopping mall – the shape of things to come??