50 Romantic Movies You Could Watch Instead of 50 Shades of Grey

A Room With a View (1985)

Despite the fact that it has been panned by nearly all critical (or moral) sources, Facebook has still informed me that there are people planning to see 50 Shades of Grey. To misquote the one Grey I care about: "You shall not (buy) pass(es)" if I have anything to do with it.

Instead, how about these classics? I've placed links on some of them - some to free Youtube versions of the movies themselves, some to my reviews.

Let's start out with an array:

1. Pride and Prejudice (there's also the 2005 movie version)
2. The Importance of Being Earnest
3. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
4. Emma (1996)
5. Raising Arizona

12 Years a Slave - How Long Until the Reckoning?

It’s the curse of almost any American movie about race relations to instantly become a political football. I usually ignore the outrage, because in general, these are message movies exploiting furor to distract from dearth of artistry—but 12 Years a Slave is a startling exception.

For one thing, it isn’t a message movie. Well, it kind of is, but it’s not the expected message. This movie isn’t about skin-color, or even prejudice—it’s about slavery. And it’s really about slavery. Easily earning its R-rating, much of the film’s length is spent portraying brutal violence—psychological, physical, and sexual, all this amidst the poverty and privation, hopelessness, nakedness, and cruelty that was the slavery of the American south. It’s graphic, but (except in, perhaps, a few instances) never gratuitously so, never sensationalist, never Tarantino. Indeed, my overall impression was one of restraint, with many long shots, silent but for the sounds of crickets.

And it’s a true story.

Endeavour Season 2 - Sway - Episode Review

My review of last week's episode: Nocturne

Endeavour is certainly hitting all the common detective series Trope episodes early on. Usually, it takes a few seasons before we have the Serial-Killer-With-A-Vendetta-For-Our-Hero episode, or the Meet-The-Family episode, or the Old Flame episode. Endeavour used all three in the first season. I initially thought this week's installment was a repeat of Fugue - a Serial Killer thriller, but it turns out the mystery itself is secondary to the emotional drama of an Old Flame.

Here's the thing though: for once, it's not Morse's old flame, it's Thursday's. This gives quite an unusual texture to the story, and once again focuses more on Morse's boss than the protagonist himself (I'm not complaining). Like Home, another Thursday-central episode, a pivotal theme is family. Sway focuses on marriage, love, and fidelity. (Spoilers ahead.)

The story itself comes second to the character drama. A serial killer is on the loose in Oxford (once again), strangling married women with a pair of fancy silk stockings. Morse tracks the stockings to a department store called Burridge’s, where a number of highly suspicious men stalk the stocking aisles. In the course of these investigations Morse meets an Italian woman named Luisa, who, the instant Thursday enters the room, collapses in a dead faint. This scene was probably a lot funnier than it should have been.