Movies

I'm trying to watch some of the Oscar movies for no particular reason except that I feel as though 2009 passed me by cinematically, so I'm making up for some lost time. Last weekend, I watched "A Single Man" with my siblings.
I liked the movie. Actually, it reminded me of one of my favourite movies, The Hours, which I really enjoyed. As you know, I'm not good with avoiding spoilers, so if you want to watch the movie and you're worried I'm going to give something away, well, your worry is warranted. Anyway, as I was saying, I liked the movie not so much for the ploot or the content but for the mood that it created. And perhaps that is the point of "time-sensitive" movies like The Hours, which takes place over the course of hours, or A Single Man, which takes place over the course of a day. And, of course, The Hours was based on Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, which likewise took place over the course of a day. In each of these movies, special things happen on that day (various things in The Hours, some of which I recall not now, oh old age, A Single Man is about a gay man reminiscing over the death of his partner, and his anticipation of what he thinks the rest of his life will be like, and Mrs Dalloway is centered around Mrs Dalloway planning for a party that she is having).
I think Colin Firth and Julianne Moore did excellent jobs. I've heard criticisms in reviews that this movie is too "picture perfect," the criticisms being leveled at the director Tom Ford, who I believe was the creative director/ photographer or something for Gucci. And it's true - the scenes of the movie are set beautifully, with the characters perfectly dressed for whatever role they're playing at the time (Colin Firth is a handsome, middle-aged professor who always dresses professorially, Julianne Moore is a lonely socialite who dresses up for dinner, hair and everything, young male prostitutes wear James Dean types of clothes, and smoke cigarettes, and lean against cars, and have the sunlight shine in their faces, etc and etc). But that's OK because I think part of the purpose of the book is to notice the details around you, and to enjoy those details.
I also like the line where Colin Firth says that life never goes exactly as planned. Which I know is not a big revelation, and actually is quite along the lines of many cliches (such as, Life is what happened to you while you were busy making other plans) but there's that element of truth to it that I enjoyed.
I very much enjoyed the soundtrack to A Single Man - a lot of instrumental music that helps create a mood. Actually, much -- to my ears, at least -- like the soundtrack to The Hours by Philip Glass. Definitely worth a listen.