I Just Watched...

[txfilmfan]

The Blue Caftan (2022), a Moroccan Arabic-language film, released in most parts of the world in 2023. It's available in the US on The Criterion Channel.

A well-crafted comedy/drama about a master caftan maker, who hand sews intricately embroidered caftans. He runs his business, inherited from his father, with his wife, who seems to be the one running the show. Complications, large and small, arise when they hire a young apprentice to help with the business, while their business and personal lives begin to intertwine.

This is a script which could only be done as a film; there are no extensive monologues, no deep sharing of feelings verbally, but you still know exactly what each of the three are going through during the course of the film.

A somewhat brave film to make, given the subject matter and source country, it has been officially submitted as Morocco's film for the 2023 Best International Feature Film Oscar.

[Swithin]

A Christmas Carol (2019) BBC miniseries (3 episodes)

This is a very odd adaptation of the Dickens classic. It opens with a boy urinating on a tombstone. As the camera pans down on the stone, we see that it is Jacob Marley's grave. The camera pans farther down, right into the coffin. Marley, awakened by the urine dripping on his face, takes the coins from his eyes and shouts: "Can't you see it says rest in peace? I'm supposed to be resting in peace!" But now that he's awake, he is thrust out of his grave into a wilderness, where he ultimately meets a spirit. There is a lot of Marley in this version of the story.

Next, we meet Scrooge. He's younger than we usually see him, perhaps 50-ish, well played by Guy Pearce. He's philosophical and introspective. He's damaged goods: we see that immediately. He does seem to allow more communication with Bob Cratchit.

The spirits come. The Spirit of Christmas Past gets most of the screen time. At one point, he morphs into Scrooge's father, a nasty, stingy old b****** who is prone to bouts of violence. (So, we're getting really Freudian here.). Then the spirit morphs into Ali Baba, who arrives with a camel. He leads Scrooge to his school. As we all know from every version of the story, Scrooge has to stay behind at school during the holidays. But this version gives us a different take as to the reason. Scrooge's cheap father doesn't want to pay school fees, so he pimps young Ebenezer to the school master, who claims sexual favors from the boy! (So we're getting plenty of reasons as to why Scrooge grows up so nasty.)

In addition to money lending, Scrooge and Marley are asset strippers. Their economies cause a fire at a mill, and, even more tragically, the collapse of a mine in Wales. Both of those tragedies, which take place on Christmas, cause many deaths. We later learn that the boy urinating on the gravestone is a Welsh boy who lost his father and two brothers in the mine collapse, so every Christmas he travels down to London to pee on Marley's -- and later Scrooge's -- grave.

One morning, early, Mrs. Bob Cratchit visits Scrooge, begging for money so that her son, Tiny Tim, can have a life-saving operation. Scrooge tells her to come to his house, the implication being that he wants to have sex with her. When the desperate woman arrives, and begins to disrobe, Scrooge stops her. He doesn't really want to have sex with her, he simply wants to demonstrate that money can buy anything.

The final episode short changes the story. It turns out that Mrs. Cratchit summoned the spirits. That doesn't work, and the whole mildly interesting adaptation falls apart. Nice try, though. Scrooge eschews redemption at the end, because, in his contrition, he feels he just doesn't deserve it.

[Allhallowsday]

A Christmas Carol (2019) BBC miniseries (3 episodes)

This is a very odd adaptation of the Dickens classic. ...

I first saw this I guess the year it was new, and it was around one station this year numerous times. A deeply cynical interpretation, chock full of sleaze, I found it loathsome. Creepy Christmas I can dig, but crappy xmas...? A no thanks real downer.

[TikiSoo]

A deeply cynical interpretation, chock full of sleaze, I found it loathsome. Creepy Christmas I can dig, but crappy xmas...? A no thanks real downer.

Thanks for saying it, it's hard to "like" a post talking about such sleaze.

Modern movies seem to have the attitude that sordid details will attract & titillate an audience, maybe as a distraction from bad writing?
Really, the original story was written perfectly - the fleshing out of Scrooge's charactor through uncharitable stinginess, inability to empathize & aloneness was plenty.

Adding "sexual favors" to Scrooge's story reminds me of adding masturbation sound effects to the voyeurism scene in PSYCHO '98. Unnecessary & limiting.

[Swithin]

A deeply cynical interpretation, chock full of sleaze, I found it loathsome. Creepy Christmas I can dig, but crappy xmas...? A no thanks real downer.

Thanks for saying it, it's hard to "like" a post talking about such sleaze.

Modern movies seem to have the attitude that sordid details will attract & titillate an audience, maybe as a distraction from bad writing?
Really, the original story was written perfectly - the fleshing out of Scrooge's charactor through uncharitable stinginess, inability to empathize & aloneness was plenty.

Adding "sexual favors" to Scrooge's story reminds me of adding masturbation sound effects to the voyeurism scene in PSYCHO '98. Unnecessary & limiting.

Although not entirely successful, I did find the adaptation effective in parts. The film adaptations we love -- 1938 and 1951 -- changed many of the details of the story. The BBC's 2019 miniseries takes many more shocking liberties, some of which simply do not work, though some do. It's worth noting that the creators were involved in Peaky Blinders and Taboo.

The UK reviews were generally good. Here's a quote from a five-star review in The Guardian, with an excerpt from the review:

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radi ... -our-times

"Towards the end of the first episode, it is clear that there are deaths on Marley and Scrooge’s conscience, from a fire in one of their factories – the resonances with Grenfell surely deliberate – but in their other outposts, too, across the globe, all caused by their relentless attempts to keep costs down and profits up. “We vandalised the world for this,” says Marley, gesturing at Scrooge’s towering house, having found his way from purgatory. The system, says this rich, clever, funny and courageous adaptation, implicates us all. It’s not the kind we’re used to, but it’s as fine a distillation of the wider Christmas message – and the wider concerns that animated Dickens in his weightier tales – as you could hope to see."

[Lorna]

I think you did borrow the phrasing from Inside Oscar, but that's OK....

I only saw Shawshank once (in fact, much like Pauline Kael, many films I have only seen once). I remember it being good, with fine work from Freeman, Whitmore, and Tim Robbins, but it's not best movie of all time material. It's not even the best film of 1994, which was definitely not a favorite year of mine, so Shawshank would still be top 20 for the year...

I am kind of curious as to how it got to the top, given that it was a box office flop in the theatres. Was it all word of mouth and video rentals that caused it to go so high?.

For the record, personal top 30 of 1994 (full disclosure, I know I liked a film you despised.... And I apologize in advance).... And no, I didn't much warm to Forrest Gump, Pulp Fiction, or The Lion King...


1 Quiz Show
2 The Browning Version
3 That's Entertainment! III
4 Widows' Peak
5 Ed Wood
6 Little Women
7 Crooklyn
8 Second Best
9 I'll Do Anything
10 Immortal Beloved
11 Corrina, Corrina
12 Four Weddings and a Funeral
13 Don Juan DeMarco
14 Serial Mom
15 Tom and Viv
16 It Could Happen to You
17 Guarding Tess
18 Pret-a-Porter
19 The Shawshank Redemption

1. As I get older, I find myself genuinely unintentionally plagiarizing things I've read. same with the LG WEXNER quote in re: SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE CASE OF ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ......- WAS IT the one about surgery without anesthesia, genuinely, as the movie lulled me into a stupor, it's a genuine thought that came to me that i was actually loosing feeling in my body as I watched it.

2. omg, I am much the same with watching movies only once- except for some movies that I HAVE WATCHED OVER 50 TIMES- but they account for 2%
of whatall I have seen. Some movies deserve a second viewing though.

3. 1993 was, I think it is safe to say, one of (if not the?) LAST TRULY GREAT YEARS FOR FILM. 1994 had a hard act to follow- and I being older than you, RECALL BEING DISAPPOINTED A LOT IN 1994- by THE LION KING, by PULP FICTION (although I don't dislike it), and MOST ESPECIALLY by READY-TO-WEAR aka PRET-A-PORTER- a film I like to think of as the MARS ATTACKS! of 1994...(i see it is high on your list. i perhaps serve momentary eyebrow, but then I remember that JAWS 3-D is one of those films I have seen (well over) 50 times and I remember not to judge.

4. I am beguiled boggled and bewildered as to just what in the Holy Hell is going on with SHAWSHANK being imdb's number 1, but, at the risk of really derailing things, I see that THE DARK KNIGHT is #3 and, in my humble, basement-dwelling, but 100% honest opinion, THAT MOVIE SUCKS ON TOAST.

5. i love 1994 LITTLE WOMEN though, it'd maybe be #1 for me, but then again I'd have to see ED WOOD (which I also LOVED) and FOUR WEDDINGS again- although I did love it, even though if we're gonna mention SUCKING ON TOAST- I can't miss the chance to ask in a flat, inflectionless monotone: "is it raining? I hadn't noticed."

[Swithin]

About the updated Dickens, as described by Swithin and the review he cites, with the kindergarten Freud, the heavy-handed Marxism, the attempts to be DARING and EDGY: A friend taught me this quotation from Goethe, which certainly applies here: Man merkt die Absicht und man ist verstimmt. "One sees the intention and is sickened by it."

Golly, kingrat, that's a bit strong. You have to understand that, although we Americans are familiar with A Christmas Carol, the Brits have been fed versions and adaptations of it for yonks, from their earliest school days. Every Christmas season sees countless stage and television adaptations, including one every year at the Old Vic. Perhaps that's one of the reasons at least some of them may be more willing to accept adaptations, including those that take liberties. The version in question was indeed set in the time Dickens provided; but many of the other details were augmented. It doesn't entirely work, but it is a noble attempt to give us a different take. As Dickens' descendant wrote (see bottom link), "I took the decison to watch the three episodes not as a remake of A Christmas Carol but as a drama in its own right, in the way that ‘West Side Story’ is not a remake of ‘Romeo and Juliet’, ‘Return to Forbidden Planet’ is not a performance of ‘The Tempest’ and ‘Oh Brother, Where Art Thou’ is not a recital of Homer’s ‘The Odyssey’."

Here's a quote from the Radio Times:

"You might ask why all this is necessary, and this grisly, gritty take on such a well-loved seasonal staple will surely prove divisive. But then what would be the point of doing it at all, if it turned out to be just another cosy re-tread? In Steven Knight and Nick Murphy’s hands, this familiar story feels vivid and vital and new."

Here's the piece about the work by Dickens' great-great grandson, who is an actor:

https://geralddickens.wordpress.com/202 ... ay-or-nay/

[CinemaInternational]

A deeply cynical interpretation, chock full of sleaze, I found it loathsome. Creepy Christmas I can dig, but crappy xmas...? A no thanks real downer.

Thanks for saying it, it's hard to "like" a post talking about such sleaze.

Modern movies seem to have the attitude that sordid details will attract & titillate an audience, maybe as a distraction from bad writing?
Really, the original story was written perfectly - the fleshing out of Scrooge's charactor through uncharitable stinginess, inability to empathize & aloneness was plenty.

Adding "sexual favors" to Scrooge's story reminds me of adding masturbation sound effects to the voyeurism scene in PSYCHO '98. Unnecessary & limiting.

Modern films (and by this, I will go from about the time of Bonnie and Clyde onward) do indeed include language, violence, and nudity/sex that would have been unimaginable in the Hays code era. But, I generally think that the films of the 70s, 80s, and early 90s used such material in more deliberate amounts that was in keeping with the subjects of the films, whereas from the late 90s on, they layered it on more in the desire to shock or appear edgy. Films of the last 25 years have much more profane scripts than anything seen before that point, and much of the time, it is not necessary to the story....

[TikiSoo]

For the record, personal top 30 of 1994 (full disclosure, I know I liked a film you despised.... And I apologize in advance).... And no, I didn't much warm to Forrest Gump, Pulp Fiction, or The Lion King...


1 Quiz Show
2 The Browning Version
3 That's Entertainment! III
4 Widows' Peak
5 Ed Wood
6 Little Women
7 Crooklyn
8 Second Best
9 I'll Do Anything
10 Immortal Beloved
11 Corrina, Corrina
12 Four Weddings and a Funeral
13 Don Juan DeMarco
14 Serial Mom
15 Tom and Viv
16 , It Could Happen to You
17 Guarding Tess
18 Pret-a-Porter
19 The Shawshank Redemption

A.DISAPPOINTED A LOT IN 1994- by THE LION KING, by PULP FICTION (although I don't dislike it)

B. I am beguiled boggled and bewildered as to just what in the Holy Hell is going on with SHAWSHANK being imdb's number 1
JAWS 3-D is one of those films I have seen (well over) 50 times and I remember not to judge.

A. I've only seen 3 on your list: Immortal Beloved, It Could Happen to You & The Shawshank Redemption. Each once. Guess I need to get some movies out of the library.
I hated Forest Gump, bored by The Lion King and enjoyed Pulp Fiction once- but will never watch it again, too spastic & gory.

B. Shawshank is MrTiki's JAWS 3D, watched that one over 50 times. I liked it OK, but really loved visiting the prison where it was filmed & seeing the sets which are still up. Hope my li-berry has JAWS 3D, I certainly have several pair of 3D glasses.

[CinemaInternational]

I think you did borrow the phrasing from Inside Oscar, but that's OK....

I only saw Shawshank once (in fact, much like Pauline Kael, many films I have only seen once). I remember it being good, with fine work from Freeman, Whitmore, and Tim Robbins, but it's not best movie of all time material. It's not even the best film of 1994, which was definitely not a favorite year of mine, so Shawshank would still be top 20 for the year...

I am kind of curious as to how it got to the top, given that it was a box office flop in the theatres. Was it all word of mouth and video rentals that caused it to go so high?.

For the record, personal top 30 of 1994 (full disclosure, I know I liked a film you despised.... And I apologize in advance).... And no, I didn't much warm to Forrest Gump, Pulp Fiction, or The Lion King...


1 Quiz Show
2 The Browning Version
3 That's Entertainment! III
4 Widows' Peak
5 Ed Wood
6 Little Women
7 Crooklyn
8 Second Best
9 I'll Do Anything
10 Immortal Beloved
11 Corrina, Corrina
12 Four Weddings and a Funeral
13 Don Juan DeMarco
14 Serial Mom
15 Tom and Viv
16 It Could Happen to You
17 Guarding Tess
18 Pret-a-Porter
19 The Shawshank Redemption

1. As I get older, I find myself genuinely unintentionally plagiarizing things I've read. same with the LG WEXNER quote in re: SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE CASE OF ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ......- WAS IT the one about surgery without anesthesia, genuinely, as the movie lulled me into a stupor, it's a genuine thought that came to me that i was actually loosing feeling in my body as I watched it.

2. omg, I am much the same with watching movies only once- except for some movies that I HAVE WATCHED OVER 50 TIMES- but they account for 2%
of whatall I have seen. Some movies deserve a second viewing though.

3. 1993 was, I think it is safe to say, one of (if not the?) LAST TRULY GREAT YEARS FOR FILM. 1994 had a hard act to follow- and I being older than you, RECALL BEING DISAPPOINTED A LOT IN 1994- by THE LION KING, by PULP FICTION (although I don't dislike it), and MOST ESPECIALLY by READY-TO-WEAR aka PRET-A-PORTER- a film I like to think of as the MARS ATTACKS! of 1994...(i see it is high on your list. i perhaps serve momentary eyebrow, but then I remember that JAWS 3-D is one of those films I have seen (well over) 50 times and I remember not to judge.

4. I am beguiled boggled and bewildered as to just what in the Holy Hell is going on with SHAWSHANK being imdb's number 1, but, at the risk of really derailing things, I see that THE DARK KNIGHT is #3 and, in my humble, basement-dwelling, but 100% honest opinion, THAT MOVIE SUCKS ON TOAST.

5. i love 1994 LITTLE WOMEN though, it'd maybe be #1 for me, but then again I'd have to see ED WOOD (which I also LOVED) and FOUR WEDDINGS again- although I did love it, even though if we're gonna mention SUCKING ON TOAST- I can't miss the chance to ask in a flat, inflectionless monotone: "is it raining? I hadn't noticed."

1. I didn't detect any unintentional plagiarism in regards to the Libby quote and the Sherlock Holmes films, it just reminded me of it in a good way, with entirely different words.....

2. Most disliked Pret-a-Porter, so you are not alone on that, so my opinion is an outlier. I do think that the nudiry heavy/Emperor's New Clothes inspired ending is too much (although I love the reaction of the Kim Basinger character to the spectacle), but I found the rest to be an adept satire on the pretentious Parisian fashion industry, socked over by a great cast and confident direction. I know how much you disliked it though (as did Leonard Maltin and Janet Maslin), so maybe it really is a bad film. I don't know.

3. The Dark Knight really is a miserable experience. Nihilism would be an appropriate word for it. The performances are OK, but that's the biggest compliment I can give a film I otherwise despised.

4. Shawshank actually got to #1 on IMDb, because of The Dark Knight. Shawshank was #2 behind the Godfather for years, until the Batman fanboys started deliberately downvoting The Godfather to get their cinematic torture wheel in the spot of honor....

5. 1993 was the last great movie year, I agree. Some of the mid 90s years are still decent, but definitely not as spectacular. And the movies never recovered after 1997, although 2001 has some striking titles like Gosford Park. But 1993 was special, with so many wonderful films....

[CinemaInternational]

For the record, personal top 30 of 1994 (full disclosure, I know I liked a film you despised.... And I apologize in advance).... And no, I didn't much warm to Forrest Gump, Pulp Fiction, or The Lion King...


1 Quiz Show
2 The Browning Version
3 That's Entertainment! III
4 Widows' Peak
5 Ed Wood
6 Little Women
7 Crooklyn
8 Second Best
9 I'll Do Anything
10 Immortal Beloved
11 Corrina, Corrina
12 Four Weddings and a Funeral
13 Don Juan DeMarco
14 Serial Mom
15 Tom and Viv
16 , It Could Happen to You
17 Guarding Tess
18 Pret-a-Porter
19 The Shawshank Redemption

A.DISAPPOINTED A LOT IN 1994- by THE LION KING, by PULP FICTION (although I don't dislike it)

B. I am beguiled boggled and bewildered as to just what in the Holy Hell is going on with SHAWSHANK being imdb's number 1
JAWS 3-D is one of those films I have seen (well over) 50 times and I remember not to judge.

A. I've only seen 3 on your list: Immortal Beloved, It Could Happen to You & The Shawshank Redemption. Each once. Guess I need to get some movies out of the library.
I hated Forest Gump, bored by The Lion King and enjoyed Pulp Fiction once- but will never watch it again, too spastic & gory.

B. Shawshank is MrTiki's JAWS 3D, watched that one over 50 times. I liked it OK, but really loved visiting the prison where it was filmed & seeing the sets which are still up. Hope my li-berry has JAWS 3D, I certainly have several pair of 3D glasses.

That was my list of 1994 titles originally, not Lorna's (although Lorna quoted it) I'm sorry if there was any mixup on that. 1994 was hardly a favorite year but I mustered it up. This was my list in whole


1 Quiz Show
2 The Browning Version
3 That's Entertainment! III
4 Widows' Peak
5 Ed Wood
6 Little Women
7 Crooklyn
8 Second Best
9 I'll Do Anything
10 Immortal Beloved
11 Corrina, Corrina
12 Four Weddings and a Funeral
13 Don Juan DeMarco
14 Serial Mom
15 Tom and Viv
16 It Could Happen to You
17 Guarding Tess
18 Pret-a-Porter
19 The Shawshank Redemption
20 Black Beauty
21 The Ref
22 Vanya on 42nd Street
23 Three Colors: Red
24 Nobody's Fool
25 The Hudsucker Proxy
26 The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
27 The Swan Princess
28 The Paper
29 Love Affair
30 Death and the Maiden

I think, based on your past opinions of films, you would really like Little Women, The Browning Version, Guarding Tess, and Widows Peak, and you might like Second Best, Crooklyn, and maybe I'll Do Anything. Serial Mom is darkly humorous but extremely violent, so I think that it would be best for you to skip (Death and the Maiden was very violent also, and extremely dark).

(I could have sworn you saw Corrina Corrina though. I think I recall you really liking that on the old boards)

[Swithin]

In the "Your Favorite Films Of Years Ending In 4" thread, it was hard for me to think of a film I really liked from 1994. I finally picked Barcelona, which I like very much.

I do like Ed Wood and Quiz Show. I've never seen (and have no desire to see) The Shawshank Redemption, although I know someone who was very close to one of the main supporting actors, whom I heard was a pretty vile human being.

[CinemaInternational]

In the "Your Favorite Films Of Years Ending In 4" thread, it was hard for me to think of a film I really liked from 1994. I finally picked Barcelona, which I like very much.

I do like Ed Wood and Quiz Show. I've never seen (and have no desire to see) The Shawshank Redemption, although I know someone who was very close to one of the main supporting actors, whom I heard was a pretty vile human being.

I had a similar issue with listing one for 2004. I picked the Wes Anderson title, and there were only tree other viable options for that year (Closer, Being Julia, and Rory O'Shea was Here)