The Postman
Movie: The Postman (1997--year of Contact and Gattaca and Starship Troopers!)
Watched with: Nobody
Yesterday I was at my friend Erika's house and when I got there she wasn't ready and I ended up watching like 15 minutes of The Royal Tenenbaums with her mom and her sister.
It's a movie I feel pretty ambivalent about, because it's very nicely made and it's funny and well-acted and artistically interesting and everything, but it's also kind of stiff and pretentious.
The Postman is basically the exactly the opposite movie.
It's tacky and obvious and incredibly long and largely artless, but it's also ambling and lovable.
I'm not going to tell you that 3 hours of Kevin Costner wearing a postal outfit and dirty rags in the Pacific Northwest makes for a good movie, because it absolutely doesn't. It lost a bunch of money, and it's hard to imagine how it could have done otherwise.
But it just seems so...genuine. Kevin Costner and friends decided to make the best darn 3-hour post-apocalyptic heartwarming movie they could and while the result is barely watchable, you can't help but love it a little bit.
In an essay I had inexplicably already read and just found again, the author of the book upon which it was based described the movie like so--
My best analogy is this: watching Kevin Costner's three hour epic is a bit like having a great big Golden Retriever jump on your lap and lick your face, while waving a flag tied to its tail. It's big, floppy, uncoordinated, overeager, sometimes gorgeous -- occasionally a bit goofy -- and so big-hearted that something inside of you has to give... that is, if you like that sort of thing.
I'd say it's more like having that golden retriever sit on your lap for a three hour car ride with the windows up, but that's alright.
They could have easily cut out half of this movie without it affecting anything majorly, but I guess that'd be like cutting a golden retriever in half, and we don't do that shit here in America.
This isn't really a movie I'd recommend to anyone (or buy and loan out, as my boss did to me!) but I kind of enjoyed it. And unlike a big smelly dog, the end is probably the coolest part.
Watched with: Nobody
Yesterday I was at my friend Erika's house and when I got there she wasn't ready and I ended up watching like 15 minutes of The Royal Tenenbaums with her mom and her sister.
It's a movie I feel pretty ambivalent about, because it's very nicely made and it's funny and well-acted and artistically interesting and everything, but it's also kind of stiff and pretentious.
The Postman is basically the exactly the opposite movie.
It's tacky and obvious and incredibly long and largely artless, but it's also ambling and lovable.
I'm not going to tell you that 3 hours of Kevin Costner wearing a postal outfit and dirty rags in the Pacific Northwest makes for a good movie, because it absolutely doesn't. It lost a bunch of money, and it's hard to imagine how it could have done otherwise.
But it just seems so...genuine. Kevin Costner and friends decided to make the best darn 3-hour post-apocalyptic heartwarming movie they could and while the result is barely watchable, you can't help but love it a little bit.
In an essay I had inexplicably already read and just found again, the author of the book upon which it was based described the movie like so--
My best analogy is this: watching Kevin Costner's three hour epic is a bit like having a great big Golden Retriever jump on your lap and lick your face, while waving a flag tied to its tail. It's big, floppy, uncoordinated, overeager, sometimes gorgeous -- occasionally a bit goofy -- and so big-hearted that something inside of you has to give... that is, if you like that sort of thing.
I'd say it's more like having that golden retriever sit on your lap for a three hour car ride with the windows up, but that's alright.
They could have easily cut out half of this movie without it affecting anything majorly, but I guess that'd be like cutting a golden retriever in half, and we don't do that shit here in America.
This isn't really a movie I'd recommend to anyone (or buy and loan out, as my boss did to me!) but I kind of enjoyed it. And unlike a big smelly dog, the end is probably the coolest part.
posted by Kane Lynch at
3:30 AM
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