Addiction on Film (Requiem for a Dream, Candy, Half Nelson, Four Good Days + The Long Walk Review)

This week on Two Girl Cinema Club, we watch films that focus on addiction. Before we jump into our recaps, we share our thoughts on The Long Walk. We watched this with a decent amount of other viewers in the theater with us, but we didn’t get the reactive crowd we were hoping for. If you’ve seen the movie, you know it takes a lot out of you emotionally, and it really felt like the breath was taken out of the theater. There were so many things that made this movie successful, but it certainly was the toughest watch of the year so far. Ailish watched the first part of aka Charlie Sheen, and Hannah also watched The Crush, Midsommar, and Elio.

We started with Half Nelson which we enjoyed overall, but felt the plot had some points that wouldn’t really make sense today. Ryan Gosling does do a good job here, but there was kind of a lot going on that didn’t really feel imperative to the overall story. We also thought Shareeka Epps and Anthony Mackie were strong in their portrayal of their characters. Speaking of a movie where too much was going on, we have Four Good Days. The only thing we could really agree was positive about this movie was Glenn Close. She really carried this movie along and we had to wonder how the movie would have been different if someone else other than Mila Kunis was cast as her daughter. Candy is an Australian film starring Health Ledger, and we really hadn’t heard of it before. This one really showed how people can be functional addicts, and how seemingly small decisions can potentially derail someone’s life. There was some comedy in this one, but it was mostly a heavy watch. Last but not least, we watched Requiem for a Dream. This is probably the most popular film of the four we watched this week, and it was the most emotional for both of us. While a lot of people focus on Jared Leto here, we thought the story around his mother, played by Ellen Burstyn, really drew us in. Her story was so sad and showed a different perspective on addiction. 

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