lester_hunt Reviews

The Christmas Card (2006 TV Movie)

One of My Favorite Movies

[10/10 · 23 October 2009]

I admit that I am biased: Nevada City California is one of my favorite places on Earth, and this charming, unassuming little film captures the feel of NC very well indeed. So for me it is a little like home movies from a place I miss very much. Plus, it was the last movie made by Lois Nettleton, one of my favorite actresses.

Still, I think it is, for a quickly-shot TV movie, very good indeed. This is partly because the cast is mostly excellent, but even more because of Joany Kane's solid screenplay. I am looking forward to seeing more by her.

The screenplay and the film are about values: Faith's two competing love interests represent sharply contrasting sets of values. Since this is Hallmark, there is no great mystery about which will triumph in the end, but the film gets there with insight and genuine feeling.

Yi ge mo sheng nu ren de lai xin (2004)

A Worthy Remake

[9/10 · 25 May 2009]

I am a huge fan of the American film Letter from an Unknown Woman (Ophuls/Koch, 1948), so I was ready to be sort of defensive about this one. But I must admit it is really very very good. One reason I don't mind having another version is that this one is so different. While the 1948 version is squarely in the romantic tradition, this film is very realistic. It is also much closer to the Stefan Zweig short story that both films are based on. The best thing about it I think is the amazingly convincing portrayal of a character who ages from her early teens to her early thirties. I have never seen that sort of thing done so well. The one flaw, I think, is the casting of Wen Jiang as the man who is the object of the woman's erotic obsession. He just doesn't have the magnetism to get us to sympathize with her fixation on him. But then, maybe we aren't supposed to.