Not much showing at the movie theatre this weekend so time to hit Redbox. Hmmm. Heard some not bad things about An Education - wasn't the leading actress nominated for an Oscar? Good enough. Let's give it a go.
Except for subject matter giving parents a queasy feeling - a 16 year old girls falls for a man twice her age - not a bad movie. Written by Nick Hornby from Lynn Barber's memoir, he makes the plot easy to take and turns it into a gentler coming-of-age tale than I imagined it would be. Alfred Molina does a good job of playing the befuddled but loving father who's taken in, like his daughter, by the easy charm of Peter Sarsgaard. The supporting cast is equally fine as well and, of course, being a fan of Hornby, I liked how he handled the material. It all ends the way it should and in the meantime we catch a glimpse of London in the early 60s just before it started to swing.
Did Carey Mulligan deserve her Oscar nod? She's 25 playing a convincing 16 year old so I'd heartily say I suppose but I guess I'm used to actors being nominated for roles where they sport heavy accents or they're afflicted with some disease. But I liked her and I liked this movie so what more could you ask?
Monday, April 12, 2010
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If only it could have been about her pulling herself up by her boot straps instead of focusing on her "downfall". It seemed like a much more interesting story.
ReplyDeleteTrue. There's an all too-brief segment near the end where she realizes who's who and what's what and that the only way she's going to get into Oxford is to work for it and so she does. Not exactly a Rocky-esque sequence but one in which the character rises to the challenge. But that's not really what the movie's about, is it?
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