::Kit's Movie Reviews::

 

This Month's Kit Flick:

This is Spinal Tap

This is a family favorite.

Absolutely hilarious, especially if you grew up on rock and roll. The actors are unbelievably believable as British rockers whose band (“the world’s loudest band”) is falling apart and we follow them on this downward journey.

When Rob Reiner made this movie, half the audience believed it was a real documentary. You’ll recognize most of the actors too, despite the costumes and long hair. Christopher Guest and the group would go on to do other faves, Best in Show, Waiting for Guffman, etc. They’ve practically become a repertory company!

And, in the 90’s at the Warfield Theater in San Francisco, we actually saw Spinal Tap “on tour.” Yes, the actors would do the rock and roll circuit occasionally. They were great musicians, too. The whole show was falling down funny (and LOUD) and I still have my sacred Spinal Tap ballcap that someday I’ll offer up on Ebay...

I love movies.

Not all of them, of course, but the ones I love I treat the same way I treat my favorite books—I pick them up again, every year or so, and enjoy them once more. Movies have certainly influenced me. My protagonists, Margot and Max, are in the movie business. My real life daughter is an art director (as well as the cover artist for my stories). Her significant, Marc Greville, is a production director. I’ve had the thrill of being on location shoots, watching sets being created, taken inside tours of the studios, suffered with them when business is slow. And, most of all, listening, listening, to everything that is said around me. Gossip is great for the creative mind!

And movies are fascinating to watch being made. They are such complicated entities. All those people, hundreds of them, all working at their separate jobs, from writer to electrician, lighting director to editor to gaffer. Each group working toward one goal, a completed film.

When finally completed, I think there’s so much to look at while viewing a movie. I like to concentrate sometimes on just the actors, then there’s the production direction, or the music, or the editing or try not looking at the screen and just listen to the dialogue. Fascinating. A good movie is worth multiple viewings, just as a good book can be enjoyed over and over.

Each month I'll talk about some of my faves==all available on DVD. Enjoy!