Night Train (5 Stars)

I spent this evening with a small group of film fans in Korntal. Once a month one of us presents two films to the others. Today it was my turn, so we watched two films starring my favourite (ex-)actress, Leelee Sobieski. The first film was "My First Mister". The second was "Night Train", one of my favourite films. When I say "one of my favourite films", I mean that it's in my top 100 films list. Last year I did a countdown of my top 100 films and published a list, but it's impossible for me to have a rigidly fixed list. I now update my list monthly, based on my whims. "Night Train" was in 49th place in my original list, but it's moved up a few places since then.

The response from my friends was the opposite of what I expected. I thought they would find "My First Mister" lightweight and Lifetime-ish, but they liked it, despite some criticism of the last half hour. Everyone I know who's seen "Night Train" likes it, but today I stood alone in praising it. I could tell by the reactions of the man next to me that he wasn't enjoying the film, so I was keen to hear his opinion afterwards. Mostly he criticised the poor special effects in the murder scenes, something I've always accepted as part and parcel of a low budget film. In the following discussion Leelee Sobieski's lack of emotions, compared to the first film, was criticised. I agree that she shows less emotion. It's a different role, and she played it the way it was meant to be played. In "Night Train" she's an ice cold killer.

I did my best to defend the film, but I was standing alone, and I didn't manage to persuade anyone to change his mind. I was accused of only liking the film because it features my favourite actress. That would be sad if it were true. My regular readers know that I didn't hesitate to call the film "Lying" awful, despite Leelee's participation in the film. 

Curiously, my review of "Lying" is one of the most read posts on my blog, even though neither the film nor the quality of my review are outstanding. I don't understand that. I often don't understand my readers. Posts which I personally consider well written are ignored, while posts that I consider below par have thousands of hits. Sometimes the summary of Google's search terms gives me clues, but not always.

Out of curiosity, I checked online reviews of "Night Train", both by film critics and normal film fans. The critics have mixed opinions, as evidenced by the 60% score on Rotten Tomatoes. They praise the similarity with Alfred Hitchcock's films while criticising the predictability. The fan reviews are mostly positive. Opinions vary. It just seems like I was alone with my opinion tonight.

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