Sunday, March 12, 2017

Mike W: #96 Forrest Gump (Robert Zemeckis) ((placehold))

I will write more about these two selections this week. I was busy all weekend and a concert last night.

2 comments:

  1. Looking forward to reading what you have to say about this one, Mike. I hate this movie, haha. Well, to be nicer, I think it's overrated. Similarly, everyone seems to love Tom Hanks, and while he is a great actor, I've only enjoyed him in Spielberg movies over the past few decades. Everything else he's been in just doesn't appeal to me. I don't know what it is about the projects he selects, but they just feel too safe. I should really re-watch this to see if I still feel the same way about it.

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  2. I re-watched this today. I'll say, Chris, that yesterday I would have agreed with you that it's overrated. Today? Well, I think that this is a masterpiece of boomer mythologizing. It will be remembered long after many of the other films on our lists are forgotten. It works emotionally and it is parodied as much as it is (it has been absorbed into the cultural consciousness) because it goes all-out in its bare-naked sincerity. I may not love the film or even be sympathetic to every small detail of how it portrays America (though I'm impressed by how it draws the viewer in to feel true patriotic sentiment as one feels a sympathetic identification with the EveryAmerican role of exceptional idiot), but I can't help but be impressed by it.

    Mike, it's funny that you posted this pick while I had mentioned Troeller in my River's Edge post. Troeller liked the film, but hated the novel it was based on. I clearly remember him saying that this was one of the few instances of a film being much better than the novel it was adapted from.

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