LimeGreenLegend 4,175 Posted May 9, 2022 Share Posted May 9, 2022 (edited) What I Watched This Week #18 (Apr 30 – May 6) The Housemaid dir. Kim Ki-young/1960/1h48m Music teacher Kim d*ng-sik (Kim Jin-kyu) moves with his family into a bigger home, so hires a housemaid, Oh Myeong-sook (Lee Eun-shim) to help ease the burden on his wife (Ju Jeung-nyeo). However, she soon seduces him and begins to exert a sinister control over the whole family. This is a brilliantly tense domestic thriller with an unnerving performance by Lee Eun-shim as the psychotic maid. She does some truly shocking things in this film, stuff I didn't see coming at all, This is also very well directed, most of the film is set in the family home, and Kim really made it feel like a character of its own. The use of verticality and balconies and the seemingly many ways to move throughout the house reminded me of the rich family's home in Parasite, another South Korean domestic thriller. I have some mixed feelings about the fourth-wall breaking ending; the film opens with Mr. Kim reading an article about a man who fell in love with his housemaid, the film then happens, then it returns to him reading the article before turning to the camera and saying that that sort of thing could happen to anyone. While I like the fourth-wall breaking stuff, the whole “it was all a dream” ending feels kind of cheap, despite how good that dream was. It kind of negates all of the excellently built up tension of the film. However, this is still a great film and well worth watching. 8/10 Paths of Glory dir. Stanley Kubrick/1957/1h28m After being ordered on a suicidal attack on a German position during WWI by the reckless General Mireau (George Macready), a whole French troop is held scapegoat, with three men sentenced to death. Their commander, Colonel Dax (Kirk Douglas), a lawyer in civilian life, defends them at their trial. Kubrick's first great war film is perhaps even bleaker and more cynical than his Vietnam film Full Metal Jacket. The incredible tracking shots through no man's land as they launch their doomed attack is both breathless and brutal, bodies falling left and right as they struggle through the mud and the barbed wire, facing the relentless German guns. The ensuing trial is just as brutal, the condemned men not having a chance, the whole thing a farce. Despite that, Col. Dax gives it his all, his sincerity seeming almost out of place in this mad war where Generals order artillery fire on their own troops if they refuse to march out to their deaths. I don't need to say how good a filmmaker Kubrick is, and even at this young age he was showing signs of genius. This may not be as well known as The Shining or A Clockwork Orange, but it should be. 9/10 The Long Goodbye dir. Robert Altman/1973/1h52m Robert Altman updates Raymond Chandler's classic private eye character Philip Marlowe (Elliott Gould) from the 40's to the 70's. In the middle of the night Marlowe is visited by his friend Terry Lennox (Jim Bouton) who asks for a ride to Mexico. He later finds out that Lennox is wanted for murdering his wife. Marlowe is then hired by Eileen Wade (Nina van Pallandt) to find her missing husband, the Hemingway-like author Roger Wade (Sterling Hayden), and he soon starts thinking that the two cases may be connected. My favourite thing about this film is the interpretation of the Marlowe character. This is a far cry from Humphrey Bogart's cool PI who can talk himself out of any situation and is a hit with the dames. Gould's Marlowe is a schlub. He looks perpetually hungover, lives next door to a half-dozen beautiful young women who walk around in front of him topless because they don't see him as a s*xual being, instead of the classic film noir voice-over he just mumbles incoherently to himself, and even his cat doesn't respect him. This Marlowe is also more passive; sure, he does some investigating, but for the most part the case happens to him. That is until the finale, with a burst of violence that is shocking after the almost casual events of the previous hour and forty-five. There is also a great use of the theme. The title song weaves its way through the film in several forms, both diegetic and non-diegetic. A great deconstruction of the genre and the best Gould performance that I've seen. There's even a small appearance by Arnie as a beefy henchman! 9/10 Lime's Film of the Week! Casino Royale dir. John Huston, Robert Parrish, Val Guest, Joseph McGrath, Ken Hughes, Richard Talmadge/1967/2h11m Bond is back, and this time it's a spoof! Released the same year as You Only Live Twice, this is very, very loosely based on the first Bond book. David Niven plays Sir James Bond, the original, now retired. This Bond is sophisticated, upper-class and celibate, and abhors violence and s*x. He is recruited to be the new head of British Intelligence. I lost the plot here, this thing is a mess. Peter Sellers plays another Bond, Woody Allen plays Jimmy Bond, the nephew of Niven's Bond, and Orson Welles plays Le Chiffre, performing magic tricks at the baccarat table (the best thing about this film). There are some things to like about this, Welles for starters. One of the six directors (too many cooks etc, etc) John Huston plays M, I like the tacky, chintzy production design, almost a parody of the 60's itself, and the Burt Bacharach score is a real breezy, poppy treat. He also wrote the Oscar nominated song The Look of Love for this film! In a lot of ways this feels like the first draft of an Austin Powers film. Not a total trainwreck, but this is really just worth watching as a curio rather than a piece of entertainment. 5/10 The Library Suicides dir. Euros Lyn/2016/1h27m Directed by Euros Lyn, who I know only from his directing several Doctor Who episodes in the David Tennant era, The Library Suicides is a Welsh language thriller set mostly in the National Library. Catrin Stewart plays dual roles of Ana and Nan, twin sisters who work at the library. Their mother, famed author Elena (Sharon Morgan), commits suicide at the start of the film and the twins set out to take revenge on the person they feel is responsible. This is a taut little thriller, set mainly in the library at night with a small cast, that really excels in the second act, where the twins have their prey captured in the archives of the library, and while the third act is good, it does seem to rely on twist upon twist. The biggest twist is totally told through exposition, and that feels a bit lazy. Aside from those plotting issues I really liked this. I've never seen a Welsh language film before and after seeing this I want to watch more. There's a great article about Celtic language films in the latest issues of Sight and Sound and there are a few I've put on my watchlist, the coming-of-age Irish film The Quiet Girl and especially Enys Men, a Cornish language folk horror film from Mark Jenkin, whose debut film Bait I gave a 10/10. Back to The Library Suicides, I strongly recommend it. The dual performances by Stewart are brilliant, both Ana and Nan have distinctive personalities and even ways of moving, and the way they start the film as being identical but slowly start to move away from each other is wonderfully done. 8.5/10 Operation Kid Brother dir. Alberto De Martino/1967/1h44m Bond is back, and this...wait...what the f*ck is this? Operation Kid Brother (a.k.a. OK Connery) is an Italian spoof of the James Bond series released in the same year as the official spoof, Casino Royale, and the mainline Bond film You Only Live Twice. It stars Sean Connery's younger brother Neil Connery (really) as Dr. Neil Connery, plastic surgeon, expert lip reader and master of hypnosis (really). He is coerced to become a secret agent by the head of British Intelligence (Bernard Lee, who plays M in the main Bond films) after his superspy older brother is killed. As well as Lee, Lois Maxwell, who playes Moneypenny in the main Bond films, appears as Miss Maxwell, fellow agent, and Adolfo Celi and Daniela Bianchi, the baddie from Thunderball and the Bond girl from From Russia With Love, play the baddie and Bond girl in this film. And I thought Casino Royale was a mess! While that has some fun stuff in it, and some actually good actors, this is just an awful slog. Connery has none of the charisma or screen presence of his older brother, and they dubbed his voice with a generic American accent, a huge mistake. I remember nothing of the actual plot because it was just plain boring. This is only worth watching if you don't actually believe it's a real film, and you want to confirm or disprove that theory. This is getting a 2 instead of a 1 just because it's so f*cking weird that this exists. This makes Casino Royale look like Casino Royale. 2/10 Star Wars (Original 1977 Theatrical Cut) dir. George Lucas/1977/2h1m For this years May the Fourth I wanted to watch something Star Wars related, but I've seen all the films. Or had I? My first experience of the original trilogy was when they were first released on DVD in 2003, and of course those were the “special” editions, full of extra CGI and Greedo shoots first and all of the stuff Star Wars fans really love. But you can watch the original theatrical cut from 1977 online, so I did just that. Right from the off it felt different, there was no “Episode IV: A New Hope” before the opening scroll, this was when it was just “Star Wars”. The Mos Eisley scene felt much more real because there weren't any out of place CGI elephants walking through every shot. And as for Greedo, that f*cker never stood a chance. It's not even a case of Han shoots first, it's Han shoots period. And that suits his character so much more, making his return during the final assault on the Death Star that much more satisfying when it comes to his character arc. I do have some problems with this, especially the pacing. During the first half of the film, every time we cut away from Luke and his adventure to check in on the Death Star the film becomes so much slower. Also, the final act where we arrive at the rebel base to the destruction of the Death Star happens in about 15 minutes, feeling rushed. Those are minor quibbles though because this is a pure romp. This is my favourite of the series because of how self contained it is. We get a full story, with a few sprinkles of lore like the force, which here is a mystery, but it turns out it's just midichlorians in your blood or something as the universe expanded. Everything they've added to Star Wars over the decades, to me, has taken away from this first film, and that's a shame. It's also a shame that Lucas never set foot outside of this universe for the rest of his career. His previous two films, the dystopian sci-fi THX-1138, which is a world away from the fun and exciting world of Star Wars, and the picture perfect snapshot of the late 50's for teenagers in American Graffiti, showed how good he was at world-building and story-telling, and I would love to see a world where he directed some more films. For example, he was the first choice to direct Apocalypse, Now! when Coppola was still just a producer on that film. Anyway, this original cut is fantastic, and a much more cohesive experience that the “special” editions. I just can't believe that Disney hasn't yet milked that cash cow by releasing them on Blu Ray (but if I was a betting man I'd put money on them doing just that for the 50th anniversary in a few years time). 9/10 On Her Majesty's Secret Service dir. Peter R. Hunt/1969/2h22m Bond is back, and this time it's not a spoof, but he does look a little different. Sean Connery's first stint as 007 is over, and in his place is Australian model George Lazenby. In this film Bond is asked by Italian crime lord Draco (Gabriele Ferzetti) to romance his daughter, who he believes needs more control in her life. Bond agrees because Draco also knows the location of Blofeld (Telly Savalas). However, Bond and Tracy Di Vicenzo (Diana Rigg) actually fall in love. Bond then assaults Blofeld's mountain top lair in the Swiss Alps, where he faces his all female group of unknowing assassins. This film is overlong, but still a great entry in the series. It's the best directed so far, with Hunt having a very mobile camera that adds energy to the film. Lazenby is solid as Bond, clearly not as experienced as Connery, but he gives it his all. Rigg is brilliant, and the ending where she is gunned down on their wedding day, and Bond's breakdown, “we have all the time in the world”, is genuinely heartbreaking. The instrumental theme is also an absolute banger, though the title sequence is pretty naff. It's a shame that Lazenby didn't get another chance at the character, because I think he had real potential. 8/10 Edited May 9, 2022 by LimeGreenLegend 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djw180 6,836 Posted May 9, 2022 Share Posted May 9, 2022 @LimeGreenLegend I really like On Her Majesty's Secret Service, it's my favourite Bond film, and the ending has big contribution to that. It really was a pity George Lazenby didn't get to do more. Paths of Glory is great as well. Did you know it was banned in France until fairly recently? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,175 Posted May 9, 2022 Share Posted May 9, 2022 16 minutes ago, djw180 said: @LimeGreenLegend I really like On Her Majesty's Secret Service, it's my favourite Bond film, and the ending has big contribution to that. It really was a pity George Lazenby didn't get to do more. I had only seen this once before when I was a kid, so I was pleasantly surprised by how good it is, and yes, the ending was really brave for a Bond film, showing him so vulnerable, something they never really did again until the Craig era. I've already watched Diamonds Are Forever and it's a real shame that they just brush off everything from OHMSS in the first couple of minutes. 18 minutes ago, djw180 said: Paths of Glory is great as well. Did you know it was banned in France until fairly recently? I did not, but I can see why, they're not exactly painted in the best light. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djw180 6,836 Posted May 15, 2022 Share Posted May 15, 2022 See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989) dir Arthur Hiller. A decent enough comedy from two of the all-time great comedy actors, but they have both made better films than this. Gene Wilder plays Dave, who is deaf, and Richard Pryor plays Wally, who is blind. They witness a murder, but obviously only one sees what happens and the other only hears what happens. They become suspects themselves and go on the run to try and track down the real culprits. A lot of the humour does come from the fact that both main characters have a disability, but I would not say it is ever disrespectful or mocking. It's more that they work together, Dave seeing for Wally and Wally hearing for Dave, and as it's a comedy they get into silly situations , do funny things etc because of that. such as you can see from the trailer with Wally driving a car and Dave telling him where to go. It probably would have been a better film with the actors that had the actual disability as the characters they played. But I think this was written with Wider and Pryor in mind for the lead roles, teaming up for the 3rd time, and this was the particular story they went for. 6/10 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,175 Posted May 15, 2022 Share Posted May 15, 2022 (edited) What I Watched This Week #19 (May 7 – 13) Wild Strawberries dir. Ingmar Bergman/1957/1h31m Viktor Sjostrom plays Isak Borg, a crotchety, lonely old doctor whose fifty years of practice is to be honoured at an event at his old university. He drives there with his pregnant daughter-in-law Marianne (Ingrid Thulin) who intends to divorce his son, a cold and distant doctor like his father. On the trip they encounter several people, most significantly the hitchhikers Sara (Bibi Andersson) and two young men who are both in love with her. This triggers memories and dreams for Isak, who contemplates his life and his mortality. Contemplative isn't even the word for the works of Bergman, and this is up there with his best work. The way Isak's life washes back over him in a gentle and probing way, the various flashbacks unpeeling the layers of the man while the incredible and at times unsettling dream sequences give us an insight into his troubled mind, the image of a clock with no hands standing out in particular. Andersson is a real spark here, embracing life with arms open. A fantastic meditation on life and death that isn't as sombre as I'm making it out to be. 8.5/10 The Cremator dir. Juraj Herz/1969/1h40m Directed by a concentration camp survivor, The Cremator is one of the most darkly macabre films I've ever seen. This is like an Edgar Allan Poe story about the holocaust. Rudolf Hrusinsky plays Karel Kopfrkingl, a cremator who takes his job very seriously. He is also a Buddhist, and believes that burning bodies relieves pain and saves the soul. He is radicalized by the n*zi party, especially when he learns of their plan which would allow him to save hundreds, thousands of souls at once. The film ends with Karel murdering his family and being driven off to run the furnaces at a concentration camp, saying to himself that he's going to save the world. This is so ahead of its time, it feels Lynchian. There is a surrealist nightmarish quality to the editing and the direction that is incredibly disturbing. Hrusinsky is terrifyingly creepy in the lead, his polite and mild-mannered shell barely containing his ever-increasing psychosis – seriously, this guy thinks he's going to be the next Dali Lama – which explodes in the brutal final act. A grim but brilliant film. 9.5/10 Diamonds Are Forever dir. Guy Hamilton/1971/2h Bond is back, and this time it's the first Bond again! Yes, Connery is back (not Neil, thankfully) for his last canonical appearance as the British super spy. His mission is to infiltrate and destroy an international diamond smuggling ring with links to the man who murdered his wife, Ernst Stavro Blofeld (this time played by Charles Gray). This might be my least favourite so far. Connery doesn't seem to be really trying, and he's starting to show his age a little. Rather than the dashing young agent of Dr. No he looks more like a part of the establishment. This film also takes place, for the most part, in Las Vegas, and I just think it's an ugly city. It just feels tacky and a bit cheap. The best thing about this film, other than Blofeld dressing as a woman, are the henchmen Mr. Wint (Bruce Glover) and Mr. Kidd (Putter Smith), two softly spoken yet incredibly threatening lovers who, honestly, have the best relationship of any couple in the entire franchise. These guys do everything together, they finish each other's sentences and they never argue. The worst thing about this is how it wants to brush the previous film under the carpet. At the end of OHMSS Bond was a broken man, yet here he seems to be back to his old swaggering ways. Not a terrible film – the theme song, again by Shirley Bassey, is a banger – but it feels like a misstep or a wasted opportunity. 6/10 The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse dir. Steve Bendelack/2005/1h27m A feature length spin-off of the fantastic BBC comedy, this film is a bit of a metatextual mindf*ck. The residents of Royston Vasey, the small town where the show is set, become aware of the fact that they are characters in a TV show, and because the creators have neglected them for so long, by not writing any new material for years, their world is ending. Three of the more “normal” characters break into the real world in order to force the writers of the show to write another series. This is as weird as a film of The League of Gentlemen should be. I also love how they explore some of the more one-dimensional characters in a meaningful way. The way Herr Lipp (Steve Pemberton) becomes so heartbroken when he realises he's basically just a pun is genuinely touching. My favourite character from the show is Geoff Tipps (Reece Shearsmith) so having him be the hero of the piece was something I really appreciated. You will have no idea what is happening here if you haven't seen the show, which you should watch if you haven't, but if you have you should really enjoy this. It's not as good as the best episodes of the series, but is a fitting finale for one of the most f*cked up shows in British history. 8/10 Persona dir. Ingmar Bergman/1966/1h27m The opening five minute montage of Persona, a heady and hypnotic barrage of symbolism that grabs your attention from the off, put this film in my favourite films of all time list. The following hour and twenty confirmed that position. Liv Ullmann plays actress Elisabeth, seemingly healthy yet electively mute. The young nurse Alma (Bibi Andersson) is charged with taking care of her as she convalesces in a beachside cottage. As Elisabeth is mute Alma does all the talking, and the more time they spend together the more she opens herself up. The story she tells of a s*xual encounter she and a friend had with two pubescent boys is one of the most incredibly acted scenes I've ever seen, and it's not just Andersson. The way Ullmann seems to be absorbing the young woman is subtle and so well done, not having any lines of dialogue she has to base her performance all on gestures and expressions and she nails it. You can infer so much about this woman without her ever speaking a word. Their relationship becomes more fraught as time goes on and Alma feels like her personality is mixing with Elisabeth's. This film is incredible and dense with symbolism and psychological complexity that I won't even pretend to understand. But what I do understand is the way I feel after watching a film, and with this I was left stunned with what I had just seen. 10/10 Lime's Film of the Week! Passport to Pimlico dir. Henry Cornelius/1949/1h24m When buried treasure is found in the London borough of Pimlico some documents are also discovered which proves that the area actually belongs to Burgundy, making it its own country (“blimey, I'm a foreigner!”). The residents decide to end rationing and get rid of pub closing times, and Pimlico becomes a black market heaven (“genuine stolen nylons”). The British government soon get involved in trying to make Pimlico part of England again. Being an Ealing film this is the cream of the crop of British comedy at the time, and this is still funny today, especially in a post-Brexit world. The political satire here is gentler than what we have today, but still as cutting. This may also be the most British film ever made – at one point a whole pub full of people break out singing Knees Up Mother Brown and it's awesome – but not quite in the top tier of Ealing films in which The Ladykillers is still king. 8/10 Red Beard dir. Akira Kurosawa/1965/3h5m Red Beard is a Japanese period drama and the sixteenth and final collaboration between director Kurosawa and lead actor Toshiro Mifune, a relationship that began with Drunken Angel in 1948. Mifune plays Dr. Niide, also known as Red Beard because of his red beard. He is respected in the poor community in which he practices, but also feared due to his abrasive personality. Cocky newly qualified doctor Yasumoto (Yuzo Kayama) expected to be assigned to a rich family, and is pissed off when assigned to Niide's free clinic. He tries to get fired by rebelling, but watching Niide and how he treats his patients soon starts to change him. When Niide rescues a young girl, Otoyo (Terumi Niki), from a brothel he assigns Yasumoto to look after her, and he realises the kind of change he can really have on the world. A common thing with Kurosawa films is the importance he puts on caring for other people, and that is in full view here. This is a gentler, softer film than many of his other works, and he really takes his time in showing us the effect of really caring for someone in the relationship between Yasumoto and Otoyo and it is beautiful to see. I don't need to say how brilliant the direction is, nor how amazing Mifune's performance is. This isn't my favourite Kurosawa, but when those films are solid 10's then you know this is still right up there by giving it a 9/10 Edited May 16, 2022 by LimeGreenLegend 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,175 Posted May 22, 2022 Share Posted May 22, 2022 What I Watched This Week #20 (May 14 – 20) Cabaret dir. Bob Fosse/1972/2h4m Cabaret is a musical set in 30's Berlin where life is always beautiful in the Kit Kat Klub, but outside fascism is on the rise as the n*zi party take more and more control. Michael York plays Brian, innocent Englishman new to the city, there to teach English. He moves into an apartment building where his neighbour is a performer at the Kit Kat Klub, Sally Bowles (Liza Minelli). A love triangle soon forms between the two and the rich Maximilian von Heune (Helmut Griem). This is one of those musicals that people who don't like musicals will love for a few reasons. Firstly, and this seems to be a big thing for people who don't like musicals, people in this film don't just break out into song and dance; all of the musical numbers happen on stage in the club, so they make sense if you want more realism from your musicals. Secondly, the story for this film is so good. The main plot involving Sally and Brian is great and feels like an authentic relationship, but the real meat is in the subtle rise of fascism. The way the n*zis are shown to quietly gain power in the background is perfectly done and so chilling. The scene of the Hitler Youth kid singing n*zi anthem Tomorrow Belongs to Me at a café, everyone else soon joining in, is terrifying, but what really got me is the way the film ends as contrasted to how it starts. At the start we're in the club and there is one rowdy *sshole in a n*zi uniform who soon gets thrown out. At the end the audience is full of *ssholes in n*zi uniforms. And the credits roll over silence. Everything about this film is impeccable; it holds the record for most Oscar wins without actually winning best picture – that went to The Godfather. All of the performances are incredible, but the obvious standout is Joel Grey as the MC of the club. 9.5/10 Live and Let Die dir. Guy Hamilton/1973/2h1m Bond is back, and this time it's another new guy! Roger Moore is James Bond for the first of his seven films and he's trying to bust an international heroin ring with links to New Orleans. Moore's Bond has the reputation of being campy and silly, and that may be the case in later films (I don't really remember, but I'll soon see), but I don't really see it here. He's not as rough as Connery, and not as convincing when he threatens people, but simply the fact that he chooses to wear black leather gloves just makes him seem like a psychopath to me. It's very Patrick Bateman. I wouldn't be surprised if this Bond has a fridge full of body parts. This film is very out there for the series, with implications that tarot cards are accurate and that Baron Samedi (Geoffrey Holder) is actually un-killable. Aside from that I really enjoyed this. Yaphet Kotto is great in the dual role of Mr. Big and Kananga, the villains of the piece, and there's another fantastic henchman in the form of the metal clawed Tee Hee (Julius Harris). We also get one of the best theme songs in the series, performed by Paul McCartney and Wings. A strong start for what really feels like a new era for Bond. 8/10 Bottom Live 2003: The Weapons Grade Y-Fronts Tour dir. Dewi Humphreys/2003/1h33m Richard Richard (Rik Mayall) and Edward Elizabeth Hitler (Adrian Edmondson) return for the fifth and final time and this time they're in the toilet. A time travelling one. As crude and foul-mouthed as ever, but they do seem to be running out of steam here. This is very much like the last show, the plot gets thrown out at the interval in favour of a lot of very meta material like briefly reprising their roles from The Young Ones and there's even a moment when recurring audience heckle “have a w*nk” is given its own moment to shine. This is the least funny of the five live shows, but I did go to see it with my dad when it was in Plymouth, so I have a soft spot for it anways. Worth watching just to see Rik Mayall get spit-roasted by a industrial strength vacuum and his own finger. 6/10 Wake in Fright dir. Ted Kotcheff/1971/1h49m Gary Bond plays English English teacher John Grant working in middle of nowhere Australia. He stops over in the town of Bundanyabba on his way to Sydney, hoping to be there for just a night, but instead he is trapped there by fate and circumstance and he soon spirals out of control, fuelled by beer and the passive aggressive locals, including Doc Tydon played by Donald Pleasence. For a film where practically nothing happens I was on the edge of my seat for a good length of this. This makes an overly insistent Aussie telling you to have another beer seem like the most threatening thing in the world. What's also scary is how quickly Grant goes feral in this environment, losing all civility in what seems like a few days. This culminates in a scene where the boys go on a drunken night time kangaroo hunt, and they shoot them for real here. A disclaimer at the end of the film says that the hunt was performed by licenced hunters etc but it is still totally shocking and, to me, unnecessary, especially the part where Grant wrestles with a baby roo before killing it with a knife. I get what the scene is representing, but you could achieve the same thing with some jarring editing, which the film actually does for some shots. I think this is a great film, but that whole animal killing thing really put me off. I had the same problem with Cannibal Holocaust. Despite that this is still a tense, grimy, sweaty little hell hole of a film. 8/10 Zero For Conduct dir. Jean Vigo/1933/50m This French short is centred on a strict boarding school where some of the boys plan a revolt against their authoritarian teachers. There are some nice flourishes here in the editing, reflecting the imaginative mind of a child, and the rooftop finale where the four instigators seem to walk up a stairway to heaven. There's also a great pillow fight scene that is full of energy and spontaneity. There's not much to say about the plot here, it's more a series of vignettes depicting life at the school, most of them ending with one of the boys getting Sunday detention and “zero for conduct”. This is a film that is infused with the spirit of childhood rebellion, I just wish there was more substance, like Lindsay Anderson's If....7/10 Friends and Strangers dir. James Vaughn/2021/1h24m Another Australian film where pretty much nothing happens, this one follows Ray (Fergus Wilson), a listless millennial wandering through various situations. He starts off on a camping trip with Alice (Emma Diaz), who is as vague and stunted as he is. The final act all takes place in the home of David (Greg Zimbulis) whose daughter's wedding Ray hopes to video. David is another passive aggressive Aussie who insists that you have a beer, what's up with that? There's something about these minimalist films that I really dig, you just let yourself get taken along and it becomes almost hypnotic. Also, the longer that nothing happens the more you're waiting for something to happen, there's a great build up of tension in a scene where David insists that Ray punch a wall to see how thin it is. I can see why some people might find this boring, but I just find it fascinating, especially if it's well made. 7.5/10 Everything Everywhere All at Once dir. Daniels (Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert)/2022/2h19m This is a f*cking brilliant film. This is one of the most original and breathtakingly audacious films of recent history. The creativity on show in the direction, the story, the visual effects is mind boggling. Michelle Yeoh plays Evelyn, who just wants to get her taxes done. Sadly she gets side-tracked by having to save the multiverse. I don't want to say any more because this is a film that needs to be experienced with as little knowledge of it as possible. What you should know going into this is the basic premise of the Pixar film Ratatouille. I'm not even kidding. This is from the same directors as Swiss Army Man, and like that film this is one that is so ridiculous that when the emotional gut punches come they knock you for six because you weren't expecting them. Everything about this is perfect. The performances are amazing all round, Yeoh is equally convincing as a confused middle aged mother as she is an *ss kicking world saver. Jamie Lee Curtis as the tax auditor Deidre may be the best thing she's ever done, and this film even sees the return to acting of Ke Huy Quan who you may know as Data from The Goonies or Short Round from Temple of Doom! Here he plays Evelyn's husband Waymond (not a typo) and he is just as good as Yeoh. Every so often a film comes along that embraces everything about the medium and explores it to its full potential, and this is one of them. This film has it all. It has Everything. Everywhere. All at once. 10/10 Lime's Film of the Week! The Northman dir. Robert Eggers/2022/2h17m The latest film from the director of The Lighthouse, Robert Eggers, The Northman is a Viking film that is based on the story that Hamlet was based on, so you have your classic revenge story where a son seeks to kill the uncle who killed his father and stole his throne. The son in this case is Amleth (Alexander Skarsgard) who was a child when his father (Ethan Hawke) was killed by his uncle (Claes Bang) who also kidnapped his mother (Nicole Kidman). As an adult he disguises himself as a sl*ve to get close to his uncle. Amleth is aided in his task by fellow sl*ve Olga (Anya Taylor-Joy). This is a good film, but the revenge story stuff is played very by-the-book and not what I expect from an Eggers film. He has said that this is his most commercial film, and that may be to his detriment. There is still some very weird stuff here though; Willem Dafoe plays a court jester/shaman character who has a couple of fantastic scenes, especially the one with young Amleth and his father performing a ritual, and Bjork shows up as an eyeless witch with an amazing headdress. The climactic fight on a volcano is amazing to look at, but Eggers uses this left to right tracking move a lot and it makes the film look like a platform game. Not really a criticism but it felt weird. Like The Witch and The Lighthouse this feels very historically accurate with not a h*rny helmet in sight, and that accuracy mixed with the fantastical elements always makes for an interesting mix. Not his best film but still very much worth a watch. 8/10 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,175 Posted May 29, 2022 Share Posted May 29, 2022 What I Watched This Week #21 (May 21 – 27) j*cka** 4.5 dir. Jeff Tremaine/2022/1h30m Like all of the other films in the series, j*cka** Forever was soon followed by a companion piece comprised of behind the scenes footage, stunts cut from the main film, and interviews with the cast and crew. Unlike the other .5 films in the series, the interviews here are proper sit down interviews that not only talk about the latest film but the legacy of j*cka** as a whole, adding a surprisingly emotional finality to the series. Also, the whole skydiving sequence at the end was so funny it should have been in the main film. 8/10 A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence dir. Roy Andersson/2014/1h40m Another deadpan black comedy from Swedish filmmaker Roy Andersson, this is the final part in his thematically linked trilogy (Songs From the Second Floor, You, The Living). Like those other films this is a series of loosely connected vignettes that explore the surreal absurdity of everyday life. The main thread here is that of a pair of dour salesmen who peddle cheap novelty gags (vampire teeth, a bag of laughs etc), never even cracking a smile when they tell potential buyers how funny they are. Andersson shot this like his other films, each scene being a meticulously framed static shot that never cuts to a different angle. This gives a fly-on-the-wall effect that lends a reality to the situations we're seeing, despite how absurd they get. The slow, deliberate pace of his films may be off putting for some, but it just adds to the comedy in my opinion, and are really worth sticking with. This isn't as good as You, The Living or About Endlessness, which I think are phenomenal, but it's very close. 9/10 Lime's Film of the Week! The Man with the Golden Gun dir. Guy Hamilton/1974/2h5m Bond is back, and this time he's fighting Dracula! Roger Moore returns as James Bond, and he seems to have become the target of the world's deadliest assassin, Francisco Scaramanga (Christopher Lee), recognisable only by his superfluous third n*pple (really, this film is weird). There's some stuff I really like in this film; the trippy hall of mirrors and creepy carnival vibes of Scaramanga's secret island base, the set design in general – M's base here is on a half-sunken ship which has tilted on its side so that all of the doors and walls inside are slanted, very cool looking – and one of the best car stunts in film history where Bond does a barrel roll over a river. However, there are signs of the silliness to come, a big sticking point to those who aren't fans of the Moore era. The biggest example for me is how they almost ruin that incredible car stunt by playing a stupid slide-whistle sound effect over it. Also, Britt Ekland's character, Mary Goodnight, is really f*cking annoying. Thankfully, Christopher Lee makes up for that by being terrific. This isn't one of the best Bond films, but, in my opinion, it has one of the best villains. 7/10 Ali & Ava dir. Clio Barnard/2021/1h35m Ali & Ava is a romantic drama starring Adeel Akhtar and Claire Rushbrook in the title roles; two middle-aged people both suffering trauma from past relationships who connect over a love of music. Barnard mixes kitchen-sink social-realism with some great stylistic flourishes, particularly in the use of editing and music; the scene where Ali and Ava swap phones and listen to each other's music silent disco style is incredibly tender and feels so authentic. Akhtar and Rushbrook are equally fantastic in their roles, with Akhtar perfectly conveying the deep sadness that lies under his happy-go-lucky exterior. There is a sub plot involving Ava's adult son Callum (Shaun Thomas) that seems like it was tacked on just for added drama and it feels like something out of a soap opera. Apart from that, this is a thoughtfully crafted film that explores relationships in a mature way, full of heart and with a couple of great performances in the title roles. 8.5/10 The Triplets of Belleville (a.k.a Belleville Rendez-Vouz) dir. Sylvain Chomet/2003/1h20m When her grandson is kidnapped while competing in the Tour de France, an old woman and her fat dog Bruno team up with a trio of singers who were big in the 30s, the Triplets of Belleville, in this French animated film. With hardly any dialogue this film relies on the animation to do the heavy lifting with the story-telling, and it really succeeds on that front. Evry character here is richly expressive in their movements, a richness that is matched by the gorgeous background artwork – the town of Belleville looking like New York if it was made up of Parisienne architecture. The actual characters are kinda grotesque – reminding me of the excellent stop-motion film Mary and Max – and I'm not quite sure if I like it or not. There are times where I think it's brilliant, like the bendy waiter and the Triplets themselves, but some of it I think just looks bad, particularly the grandson with his giant beak nose and buttock calves. This is still a great film though and I'd recommend it if you're looking for a different kind of animated film. 8/10 Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country dir. Nicholas Meyer/1991/1h53m The Klingon Empire is on the brink of collapse and are seeking to negotiate a peace treaty with the United Federation of Planets. However, a saboteur assassinates the Klingon ambassador and frames the crew of the Enterprise. Kirk (William Shatner) and gang must prove their innocence before war breaks out in this allegory for the breakup of the Soviet Union. After the pretty ropey fifth entry it's nice to send off the crew of the original Enterprise with one of the best films in the series. This has loads to offer and it pulls it all off really well; political intrigue, a murder myster, a prison breakout, Scotty (James Doohan) breaking through a door like the Kool-Aid Man before throwing a motherf*cker through a window, and Christopher Plummer giving a great turn as the Shakespeare quoting villain General Chang. 8.5/10 The Lower Depths dir. Akira Kurosawa/1957/2h5m (I couldn't find any trailers or even clips of this film, so here's a really good video about Kurosawa that has some clips from this in it) I always think of Kurosawa films as being deeply humanist, believing in the good of people and the importance of caring for each other. This is the exception that proves the rule. Set in a slum boarding house in the 19th century, this is Kurosawa at his most darkly cynical. All of the people in the house are there of their own faults, an alcoholic actor who can't remember his lines, a mean tinkerer who is abusive to his dying wife, a disgraced former samurai, gamblers, prostitutes and thieves. An old man (Bokuzen Hidari) turns up part-way through and he is kind and caring and thoughtful and spiritual, and for the most part he is met with derision, mockery and plain disbelief – what's he being so nice for? Toshiro Mifune plays the thief living in the boarding house who breaks off his affair with the landlady to go after her younger sister but surprisingly he doesn't steal the show like he usually does. To me, this film is about the ensemble. This is mostly set in the one-room boarding house, with the characters coming and going, and it feels very theatrical in that respect – this is the least cinematic Kurosawa film I've seen, but I don't mean that as a negative, it's just very different. This feels like mid-tier Kurosawa, but in general terms that means this is still a great film, just not up to his masterpiece standards. 8/10 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djw180 6,836 Posted May 29, 2022 Share Posted May 29, 2022 (edited) Ennio (2021) dir Giuseppe Tornatore Feature length (2 ½ hr) documentary-biography of the late great Ennio Morricone, the prolific and award winning composer of almost countless films scores and other music. Though it was released in 2021, after the great man died, it appears to have been made before his death as that is never mentioned and it has footage of him that feels like it was shot for this film. The director worked with Morriocone on more than one occasion, probably most famously for Cinema Paradiso. It is essentially a talking-heads film, with many of those he worked with from the Italian and Hollywood film industry, plus some of his contemporary Italian composers and a couple of rockstars (who use his music in their concerts) telling his life story and paying tribute. This includes the likes of the Bernado Bertolucci, the director Tornatore, Sergio Leonne (archive footage) and his children, Clint Eastwood, Qunicy Jones, Hans Zimmer, John Williams, Roland Joffe, Brian de Palma, Oliver Stone, Quentin Tarantino, Dulce Pontes (the singer from Once upon a time in the West & other films), Joan Baez, Bruce Sprinsteen and James Hetfield – to name but a few. It's a very interesting film both as a biography of a man who had long and interesting life, from humble beginnings to a master of his art, and also very informative about the actual music he is most famous for and the integral part it played in the films he wrote it for. It tells how he started off as a trumpet player; forced to learn by his father who knew it would provide an income in impoverished post-war Italy. He started composing very modern, unharmonious, abstract pieces at first. The style of these would appear in his later film work. Most noticeably in his westerns; think of the noises you might hear in Sergio Leone's films, signs blowing in the wind, water dripping etc. They were not simply background noise, they were part of the score, actually composed. The best example is probably the opening scene of Once Upon A Time in the West, about 20 mins with no dialogue with the sound coming from the noises Morricone composed, and then finally the harmonica comes in. Other aspects of his work were also integral to the films they were in as well, with scenes sometimes being shot with his score playing as it would be in the film. He was looked down on by his fellow composers, at first, for “selling-out” and working on films rather than sticking to the highly artistic, less financially rewarding, compositions. But they eventually recognised he could write film music that was as great as any other music, sometimes refusing to do what the director asked for and insisting it was his way or they find someone else. He was rather overlooked by the Oscars, though nominated 6 times (not actually that many compared to some film composers, John Williams has dozens), he finally got an honorary Oscar but kept going and won with Tarantino's The Hateful Eight in 2016. David Puttnam describes the shock he and many people felt when Morricone did not win for The Mission in 1987. It also shows his appeal went far further than those who you would normally expect to like orchestral music, there's a great scene of what you would think was rock festival fans eagerly awaiting the likes of Bruce Springsteen or Metallica, but then the lights go up to reveal a full concert orchestra and this rather frail, elderly composer taking in the adulation of the crowd. I think this is a must see for anyone, who like me, admires Ennio Morricone's work or is really interested in all aspects of the film making art. Maybe not so interesting if you're not in either of those two categories. It's given me a sizeable list of other films I want to see, and listen to. I have to agree with Quentin Tarantino that Ennio Morricone was one of the greatest ever composers, he definitely ranks along side the likes of Mozart and Beethoven. 10/10 Edited May 29, 2022 by djw180 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,175 Posted June 3, 2022 Share Posted June 3, 2022 (edited) What I Watched This Week #22 (May 28 – June 3) The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice dir. Yasujiro Ozu/1952/1h55m Takeo (Michiyo Kogure) is a well-to-do housewife who is constantly belittling and complaining about her husband, Mokichi (Shin Saburi), to all of her friends behind his back. Meanwhile, her niece Setsuko (Keiko Tsushima) is upset about being pressured into an arranged marriage, especially after hearing her aunt talk about her marriage. Like most of Ozu's films, this is a very considered domestic drama that appears calm and peaceful but is brimming with emotional depth. There's a scene late in the film where Takeo and Mokichi reconnect while preparing a meal together and I totally wasn't expecting that to make me cry. It's just a simple dialogue free scene of two people cutting up vegetables, but Ozu has built up their relationship so quietly and with such skill that when he unleashes the emotional moments, as simple and underplayed as they are, they really hit hard. Ozu also utilises a lot more camera movement here that in any of his other films I've seen. Seriously, him having a slow dolly shot moving through a corridor is like being on a rollercoaster compared to his other films. Not on the same level as Tokyo Story, his undisputed masterpiece, but it's no slight to say that at times it comes close. 8.5/10 Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatiana dir. Aki Kaurismaki/1994/1h2m A typically stilted and distinctive road movie, this follows alcoholic mechanic Reino (Matti Pellonpaa) and coffee addict Valto (Mato Valtonen) who, on a drive to test some repairs, pick up the hitchhiking Tatiana (Kati Outinen) and Klavdia (Kirsi Tykkylainen), who are Estonian and Russian respectively, unable to really communicate with the two Finnish men. A very awkward romance ensues as they drive to a harbour to drop off the hitchhikers. I think that, out of all of Kaurismaki's films, this is my least favourite. I still love the cinematography – gorgeously crisp black and white – and the way he directs his actors, stylistically similar to Yorgos Lanthimos, but the story is just lacking. The short runtime of this, I think, shows how little this has to say. It just feels underdeveloped compared to films like The Match Factory Girl or Calamari Union. 6/10 The Grand Budapest Hotel dir. Wes Anderson/2014/1h40m The Grand Budapest Hotel is a film about a girl reading a book (The Grand Budapest Hotel) written by an old author (Tom Wilkinson) in which he tells a story about how when he was young (Jude Law) and staying in the titular hotel he hears a story from an old man (F. Murray Abraham) about how when he was a young man (Tony Revolori), working in the titular hotel as lobby boy, the concierge of the titular hotel, Monsieur Gustave (Ralph Fiennes), changed his life. This story involves a murder mystery, the theft of a priceless work of art, a prison break, a ski chase, the rise of fascism, romance, and death. There is a lot packed in here, and the film moves at a breathless pace but, because it's so intricately plotted and clearly delivered – in Anderson's signature, idiosyncratic style – that you never feel left behind or that you missed anything. Ralph Fiennes as Gustave H. may be one of my favourite characters in the entire Anderson filmography. He is surrounded by a stellar cast including Jeff Goldblum, Willem Dafoe, Saoirse Ronan, Tilda Swinton, Bill Murray and a sh*t load more. This may be the most Wes Anderson film that he's made so far, and it's also my favourite. A gorgeously lush, brilliantly creative film that is well worth watching. 9/10 Be Kind Rewind dir. Michel Gondry/2008/1h42m Mike (Mos Def) works in the video store owned by Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover). When Fletcher puts Mike in charge for a couple of weeks his worst nightmare comes true; Mike's best friend, conspiracy theorist Jerry (Jack Black), becomes magnetised and deletes all of the tapes in the store. Needing money fast in order to save the building, they decide to remake all of the films themselves, and soon their homemade blockbusters become a hit in the community. I remember being disappointed in this when it first released. I enjoyed the cheap homemade versions of Ghostbuster etc, but wanted more of a typical Jack Black comedy. This is not that. And I really love it now. This is a film about the ability of films to bring a community together, not just as an audience but as active participants in the filmmaking process. The final scene – a Cinema Paradiso style sequence of the community watching the film that they made, about their community – had me welling up in ways I never expected. The performances are excellent all round; Mos Def has an awkward nervousness about him that is complimented really well by Black's more wacky antics. They have a great chemistry together. The direction, by Michel Gondry who also made Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, is brimming with creativity – best shown off in the long one-take shot that acts as a montage without the cuts, showing them make a whole bunch of different films from King Kong to 2001. In a strange way this is one of the most inspirational films I've ever seen. 9/10 Lime's Film of the Week! The Spy Who Loved Me dir. Lewis Gilbert/1977/2h5m Bond is back, and this time it's Alan Partridge's favourite film! When both British and Russian nuclear submarines go missing their respective secret services send their best agents to investigate. This means James Bond (Roger Moore) on the British side, and agent Triple X, Anya Amasova (Barbara Bach) on the Russian side. This, to me, feels like the classic Moore Bond film, and maybe the high point of his run. It opens with a fantastic ski chase that culminates with a loooong freefall off a cliff before Bond opens his Union Jack parachute. The theme, sung by Carly Simon, isn't to everyone's tastes – the more ballad-y songs seem to be more divisive – but I really like it and think that lyrically it's great. I like the Egyptian setting for the first half of the film, it felt like something different for the series, and there is an all time classic henchman in the form of the metal-mouthed Jaws (Richard Kiel) who, at one point, actually kills a shark by biting it. Awesome. And there are some really distinctive sets by Ken Adams, the best being the giant submarine hanger. The biggest let down for me is Bach as Bond's Russian equivalent. At first she seems to be totally capable, but by the end she's just another Bond girl who needs saving. Also, the main villain, Stromberg, (Curd Jurgens) is kinda meh. A real fun romp with only a couple of things that let it down. 8/10 Duck, You Sucker (a.k.a A Fistful of Dynamite) dir. Sergio Leone/1971/2h37m During the Mexican Revolution the ruthless leader of a bandit gang Juan (Rod Steiger) teams up with Irish dynamite lover John (James Coburn) to knock over the biggest bank in the country. Along the way Juan becomes a reluctant hero of the Revolution, we learn about John's past in the IRA, and the two become friends. This is probably Leone's least talked about film, despite it having his characteristic style and epic scale. It does feel different however. This is set after the age of the cowboys, the world is becoming mechanised – cars and tanks and motorbikes all feature which is weird to see in a Leone westers – and there are no heroes, even anti-heroes, just desperate men. The two lead performances are great, Coburn and Steiger have a great chemistry, and if you like explosions then this is the film for you. There are some spectacular explosions in this film, particularly the climactic head-on collision of two trains, one loaded with dynamite. The score, from Ennio Morricone, is good but I don't think it has that one iconic theme and doesn't match up to his other work. Not Leone's best film but still very much worth a watch. 8.5/10 La Ricotta dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini/1963/35m (This is a trailer for the anthology film that this short is from, skip to 2:25 for La Ricotta) This short is Pasolini's contribution to the anthology film RO.GO.PA.G, and it stars Orson Welles as a director trying to make a film of Christ's crucifixion. The main thread of the film follows an extra, Stracci (Mario Cipriani), who is starving yet constantly thwarted in his attempts to get some food. That is until he sells the lead actress's dog and uses the money to buy some cheese, which he gorges on. He then dies from indigestion as he is stung up on a cross. This satire on the church was controversial at the time, but seems pretty tame now, especially compared to Pasolini's other films (check out Salo the 120 Days of s*dom if you want some fun, family-friendly viewing) and plays out like a farce. On that level it's pretty successful and got a few solid laughs from me. I also like the switching between colour and black and white for the film they're making (colour) and what we're seeing (b/w). 7/10 Edited June 3, 2022 by LimeGreenLegend 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,175 Posted June 10, 2022 Share Posted June 10, 2022 (edited) What I Watched This Week #23 (June 4-10) Moonraker dir. Lewis Gilbert/1979/2h6m Bond is back, and this time he's in space! That's right, to cash in on the success of Star Wars, the next film in the series isn't For Your Eyes Only – as advertised at the end of The Spy Who Loved Me – but Moonraker. Bond is sent to investigate after a space shuttle belonging to Drax Industries is hijacked. He is aided by Dr. Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles), with Richard Kiel returning as metal-mouthed henchman Jaws. After the entertaining romp of the previous film this is a real downturn for the series. It's dull, and when it's not dull it's ridiculous. Even the Shirley Bassey theme is dull. Michael Lonsdale as the villain Hugo Drax is a charisma vacuum, a squat, grey little man with a sh*t beard. Moonraker is actually my favourite book in the series – a tense little thriller that is set entirely in England, the only time Bond never leaves the country, let alone the planet, in the novels – and apart from the names, this has nothing to do with that story. An actual adaptation of that book would be great, this is not that. There are some good things, Ken Adams set design is always a treat and there are some great ones here, the love story between Jaws and that tiny blonde woman is kinda sweet, and I actually like the character of Holly Goodhead, a genuinely competent woman in a Bond film! Other than that this is a slog. 4/10 Throne of Blood dir. Akira Kurosawa/1957/1h50m Throne of Blood is Kurosawa's adaptation of Macbeth, starring Toshiro Mifune as Washizu, samurai warrior under Lord Tsuzuki (Takamaru Sasaki). When he hears a prophecy telling how he will become lord he becomes engorged with a mad lust for power, spurred on by his wife Asaji (Isuzu Yamada), killing his lord and taking his place. Haunted by his actions and with his world becoming more about violence and paranoia, the film ends in spectacular fashion, with Washizu pin-cushioned by dozens of arrows fired by his own men. Not being a direct adaptation, Kurosawa was able to str*p the dialogue right down and put all of the focus on the atmosphere, which this film has in bucket loads. His use of fog and wind here makes this feel like a story stepping right out of the past, like Macbeth was originally a Japanese folk story. The lead performance by Mifune is one of my favourites of his career. His transformation from the start to the end of the film, from noble warrior to deranged lord, is incredible, with a lot of that told through his face alone. The way he is shocked at the end of the film when he realises he's about to die is almost heart breaking. This is one of Kurosawa's best films, and one of the best Shakespeare adaptations ever made. Kurosawa made one more Shakespeare film, Ran – his version of King Lear – and it's even better then this, and that's saying something because to me this is a near faultless 9.5/10 Lime's Film of the Week! Orange County dir. Jake Kasdan/2002/1h22m Shaun Brumder (Colin Hanks) is an Orange County surfer with aspirations of going to Stanford and becoming a writer, but he is rejected after an administrative f*ck-up. He and his dropout older brother Lance (Jack Black) head out on a road trip to try and fix things. I remember liking this a lot more when I was a teenager, but now I kind of can't stand Shaun. He's a whiny little rich kid who thinks the entire world revolves around him. Thankfully it's still full of stuff I like, Black as Lance is the real star here, with every scene he's in being a highlight. There's also some great support from the likes of John Lithgow and Catherine O'Hara and a hilarious cameo by Harold Ramis off his face on ecstasy. A fun little time capsule of the early 2000's if you can ignore the main character. 6/10 The Man Who Stole the Sun dir. Kazuhiko Hasegawa/1979/2h27m A school bus full of children and their science teacher Makoto Kido (Kenji Sawada) is hijacked by a gunman who wants to talk to the emperor. The situation is resolved by Inspector Yamash*ta (Bunta Sugawara), who is injured in the process. Afterwards, Kido builds his own atomic bomb and holds the city of Tokyo ransom, but he doesn't know what for. He settles on a baseball game being broadcast in full on television and a Rolling Stones concert. The only person who he'll talk to in negotiations is Yamash*ta, who doesn't know who he is. Kido also becomes something of a celebrity after he calls in to a popular radio show hosted by Reiko Sawai (Kimiko Ikigami), with the two soon becoming involved. This is a really strange one, with it satirising a lot of things, most notably the medias relationship with terrorism, but the tone at times feels like a soap opera, kinda cheesy. The best scenes in this film, for me, were the scenes of Kido lovingly constructing his bomb, cradling it in his arms as he sleeps. This does drag in the third act, but the last ten minutes or so are fantastic. Overlong, but entertaining, strange, and in a lot of ways very scary. 7/10 Bergman Island dir. Mia Hansen-Love/2021/1h53m A pair of filmmakers who are also a couple – Chris and Tony (Vicky Krieps and Tim Roth) stay in Ingmar Bergman's home on the Swedish island of Faro to work on screenplays. The more established and famous Tony has no problems, while Chris agonises over her work. She starts to tell her story to Tony, and the film turns into the film she is writing. This film stars Mia Wasikowska and Anders Danielson Lie as an on-and-off again couple who cheat on their current partners to get back together. So this is a semi-autobiographical film about a filmmaker making a semi-autobiographical film, both of which we are witness to. This is a very open and honest film that really questions the nature of being a woman and a filmmaker. They bring up in the film that Bergman had nine children from six different women and there's no way he could have had his career if he didn't basically ignore them all. Until recently that wasn't an option available to female filmmakers, feeling like they can put their career first. Krieps and Roth are great in the leads, with a very believable chemistry. The setting is gorgeous and Love brings out the best of the surroundings. The pace is quite slow, deliberately so, in the first half, but the film acquires a real depth when the extra layer of the film-within-a-film is added. 8.5/10 Being a Human Person dir. Fred Scott/2020/1h33m This is a documentary following legendary Swedish filmmaker Roy Andersson as he makes his latest, possibly last, film – About Endlessness. Now in his mid-70s, the film also looks back at his career, which started with the film A Swedish Love Story in 1970. Wanting total control over his films he bought a studio in Stockholm in 1981 and he has lived, and made all of his films, there ever since. I loved seeing all of the behind-the-scenes stuff here. I had no idea that every set in his films was constructed in his studio – there is some brilliant miniature and green screen work going on here. Andersson himself is a charming subject. Softly spoken and caring, even when he loses his temper it's nothing like the shouting matches you can imagine going on in other studios. What surprised me most was how insecure he seemed at times. His films are incredibly sure of themselves with a distinct and clear vision, so seeing him unsure whether what he was making is any good was quite shocking. There is a thread in this about his drinking becoming a problem, but it seems like that was inflated for some added drama. A fascinating look at the creative process of a truly singular artist. 8.5/10 I Am Samuel dir. Peter Murimi/2020/1h10m This Kenyan documentary follows Samuel and his partner Alex, two gay men living in a country where being gay is still illegal. The main focus, other than the sweet and loving relationship between Samuel and Alex, is the relationship between Samuel and his father, a preacher in a small village. This is a very low-key documentary with no shouting matches or big climactic confrontations, it's just about two men who want to be left alone. Near the start of this film there is real mobile phone footage of a gay man, naked bloodied and bruised, being beaten in the streets. “That could have been me”. These people are brave beyond comprehension, but it just goes to show that love is stronger than hate. Sadly, there's not much meat on this film's bones. Despite it being shot over five years I still don't feel like we got a real feeling for Samuel and Alex and who they are beyond the surface level. I would like to see a follow up to this in a few years time. 6.5/10 Edited June 10, 2022 by LimeGreenLegend 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djw180 6,836 Posted June 11, 2022 Share Posted June 11, 2022 (edited) The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), dir Sergio Leone Kicking off watching a selection of films with Ennio Morricone scores. This is one of his most famous. I'm sure I must have seen this before at some point, but it will have been a long time ago. It is, of course, one of Sergio Leone's classic Westerns. Clint Eastwood, Lee van Cleefe and Eli Wallach play the titular characters (the trailer has them in the wrong order). A bounty hunter, a hit man and a notorious bandit (you name a crime, he appears to have committed it) on the hunt for a stash of gold coins buried in a war cemetery somewhere in New Mexico during the US civil war. Some parts are a bit dated but I think that adds to the character. A modern day film would probably have more realistic gunfight scenes with more blood and more convincing shooting. I can not believe anyone can shoot 3 enemies as quickly and as accurately as Clint Eastwood's charter does with a mid 19th century revolver. It starts, as other Leonne films do, with a dialogue-less opening scene. Gunmen arriving, checking their guns, clearly waiting for something, lots of atmospheric background sounds / music, and then a burst of action. The ending is fantastic. Having finally found the gold the 3 characters all face off, clearly waiting for one to make the first move and of course it's all accompanied by one of Ennio Morricone's iconic pieces, The Ecstasy of Gold. If you only ever watch one scene of one Western, this is probably the one to watch. One slight down side is the dialogue for some of the supporting cast, mostly Italians, does look be dubbed; sometimes the speech is not quite in sync with lip movements. But that does not effect too much of the film. 9/10 Edited June 11, 2022 by djw180 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,175 Posted June 11, 2022 Share Posted June 11, 2022 @djw180agree with you about the showdown in the cemetery, Leone stretched the tension in that scene to breaking point. And of course the music is amazing. If you want to hear a Morricone score that you probably haven't heard before you should watch Salo the 120 Days of s*dom, it's totally your kinda film! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djw180 6,836 Posted June 11, 2022 Share Posted June 11, 2022 3 hours ago, LimeGreenLegend said: If you want to hear a Morricone score that you probably haven't heard before you should watch Salo the 120 Days of s*dom, it's totally your kinda film! That one didn't make my long list I'm afraid. Actually according to IMDB he was a 'music consultant'. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,175 Posted June 11, 2022 Share Posted June 11, 2022 9 minutes ago, djw180 said: That one didn't make my long list I'm afraid. Actually according to IMDB he was a 'music consultant'. Probably for the best, all the literal sh*t-eating is a bit much. What's your favourite score of his? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djw180 6,836 Posted June 11, 2022 Share Posted June 11, 2022 3 minutes ago, LimeGreenLegend said: Probably for the best, all the literal sh*t-eating is a bit much. What's your favourite score of his? yes, there's a quote that says something like "The president (whist eating a meal of faeces) ........" Favourite entire score, hard to choose between Cinema Paradiso and The Mission. I guess the Mission if I was forced to choose as it has bit more variety to it. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,175 Posted June 11, 2022 Share Posted June 11, 2022 1 minute ago, djw180 said: yes, there's a quote that says something like "The president (whist eating a meal of faeces) ........" Favourite entire score, hard to choose between Cinema Paradiso and The Mission. I guess the Mission if I was forced to choose as it has bit more variety to it. Oh yeah it's very classy. These people eat their sh*t off of the finest silverware, not just out of a bucket! Those are both excellent, and I prefer The Mission out of the two also, but my overall favourite of his is for The Untouchables, especially that awesome opening theme. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djw180 6,836 Posted June 11, 2022 Share Posted June 11, 2022 2 hours ago, LimeGreenLegend said: Oh yeah it's very classy. These people eat their sh*t off of the finest silverware, not just out of a bucket! Those are both excellent, and I prefer The Mission out of the two also, but my overall favourite of his is for The Untouchables, especially that awesome opening theme. Untouchables is a close 3rd for me - of those I have seen so far. Those three I have watched many times. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,175 Posted June 18, 2022 Share Posted June 18, 2022 What I Watched This Week #24 (June 11-17) In Fabric dir. Peter Strickland/2018/1h58m In Fabric is a horror film about a haunted artery-red dress that ruins the lives of everyone who wears it. The film starts out following Sheila (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), a middle-aged single mother who buys the dress to wear on a first date. Then at the end of the second act there is a sudden shift and we're now following washing machine repair man Reg (Leo Bill) and his girlfriend Babs (Hayley Squires). These stories are connected not only by the dress, but by the department store where it was bought, Dentley and Soper's. This store is stuck in a kitschy 70's world straight out of sitcom Are You Being Served, but suffused with an underlying creepiness, probably due to the fact that it seems to be the front for a witches coven. Strange rituals involving a menstru*ting mannequin, and a basement with more than back-stock in it, this is obviously inspired by the Italian giallo horror movies of the 70's, particularly Dario Argento's Suspiria. The bold primary colours, stylised lighting and the score all attest to that. An insidiously unsettling horror film. 9/10 Lime's Film of the Week! Star Trek: Generations dir. David Carson/1994/1h58m The torch has been handed over to The Next Generation as the Star Trek film series continues to boldly go. Scientist Tolian Soren (Malcolm McDowell) wants to return to a nirvana like realm known as The Nexus, but to do that he needs to destroy an entire star system. Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and, thanks to some time travel shenanigans, Captain Kirk (William Shatner) have to team up to stop him. My problem with this film is the involvement of the old cast. This film came after seven years of The Next Generation being one of the most popular shows on television, these characters were already well established, so there was no need to have the original series cast there as a crutch for old fans. This focus on Kirk also takes time and attention away from the rest of the new crew of the Enterprise, but what they are given they make work really well, especially Data (Brent Spiner) and his struggles with his new emotion chip. Not a bad first big-screen outing for Picard and crew. 7.5/10 In The Loop dir. Armando Iannucci/2009/1h46m In The Loop is a satire about all of the political f*ck ups in British and American governments in the lead up to a probably illegal war in the Middle East. The main player here is Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi), the foul-mouthed director of communications for the Prime Minister. He spends most of the film trying to clean up the mess left by incompetent MP Simon Foster (Tom Hollander) and his assistant Toby (Chris Addison). If you're a fan of the television show The Thick of It, of which this is a spin-off, then you'll love this. Iannucci's script is razor sharp, he's like a comedic Aaron Sorkin. The handheld camerawork adds to the documentary feel, giving even more of an edge to proceedings. The performances are all good – James Gandolfini as an alpha male army general is excellent – but Capaldi is the stand out. His white hot rage radiates out from the screen, and his insults are so good you'll have a notebook out so you can write them down. 8.5/10 Hugo dir. Martin Scorsese/2011/2h6m In 1930's Paris Hugo (Asa Butterfield) lives in the walls of a train station, looking after the clocks and tinkering with his own projects. One day he sees a girl, Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz), at her godfather's toy stall in the station. This bitter old man, Georges (Ben Kingsley), is actually Georges Melies, one of the greatest filmmakers of early cinema. Just as in real life, Melies was largely forgotten in the 30's, having burned his films in a fit of rage and depression years earlier. But thanks to Hugo and Isabelle (in the film, not real life obviously), his films resurface and he gains the recognition he deserves. So we have a family-friendly, child led Scorsese film, who would have thought? Made to be shown in 3D, you can see that in the set design, incredible depth with things happening on every level. The train station reaches out to infinity, and there are some long tracking shots where we dive through the clockwork machinery of the station's clocks. It's not gratuitous – like how some films of the era would just throw things in your face like they were shouting “LOOK, IT'S 3D” - but it is noticeable, and as such feels unlike anything else he's ever done. The big let down for me is the lead performance from Butterfield, I just don't think he's a very good actor. Thankfully, Grace Moretz is there to prop him up for a lot of his scenes. The star for me though is Kingsley as Melies. Honestly, I would have preferred it if the entire film were about him and his life. The flashback scenes where we see him making his films are incredible and I left the film wanting more of that. Probably the worst Scorsese I've seen, but it's still a decently entertaining film with some real nice touches. I'm not sure how much children would enjoy it – I don't remember it being that big of a hit – but if you want a glimpse into the life of one of the most important figures in film history then you could do much worse. 6/10 Martin Scorsese Shorts: What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing In a Place Like This? 1963/9m It's Not Just You, Murray! 1964/17m The Big Shave 1967/6m Three early shorts from Scorsese here, the first, Nice Girl, made when he was just 21 (hard to imagine him so young) and still in film school. This short concerns a writer who becomes obsessed with a painting, leaving him unable to write, eat or sleep. He meets a girl at a party, and marries her, his obsession with the painting ending. However, in the end he develops a new obsession over a different painting. The plot is not very important here, this is a film all about style. Scorsese throws in all of the techniques developed in European art-house films and the result is a bit of a mess, but one that shows a real enthusiasm and passion for the art. The constant jump-cutting, freeze frames and the narration are all things he would hone and perfect later in his career, and it's fascinating to see his first attempt at them. It's Not Just You, Murray! is a lot like Nice Girl stylistically, but the story is about a mobster, the titular Murray, looking back over his life of crime and his rise to power – a familiar theme. The editing here is less erratic, but still clearly with European influence, and feels more like a Scorsese film, albeit an almost amateurish one. My favourite of the three, The Big Shave, is quite unlike anything else he has made, something close to a horror film. A man walks into a pristine white bathroom and starts to shave. As he does so he cuts himself, but he shows no signs of pain and continues shaving. And he cuts himself. And he cuts himself. And he cuts himself. This unnerving five minute film had me feeling nauseous by the end in a really visceral way, particularly the coup de grace where, still unflinching, the man slits his throat. There is something about the extreme violence coupled with complete nonchalance that is incredibly unsettling. The three films, when taken together, really give you an idea of where his career was heading. What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing In a Place Like This? 7/10 It's Not Just You, Murray! 7.5/10 The Big Shave 9/10 Reservoir Dogs dir. Quentin Tarantino/1991/12m I didn't know whether to put this on here because it's not technically a film, more of a proof-of-concept/funding pitch, but it's interesting so f*ck it. As part of the Sundance film festival, Tarantino got the chance to film a couple of scenes for a film he was hoping to make – Reservoir Dogs. Tarantino plays the role of Mr. White – which would be played by Harvey Keitel in the actual film – Steve Buscemi plays Mr. Pink – as he does in the actual film – and David Jensen plays crime boss Joe Cabot – Lawrence Tierney in the finished product. The two scenes are Pink and Cabot talking about the job, and then Pink and White when they first meet up after the heist and discuss the possibility of there being a rat. The dialogue is pretty much the same as in the final film. What's interesting is that the whole thing was clearly filmed in a hotel room and the direction is kind of flat. There's none of the kind of movement you'd expect from a Tarantino film. The first shot of the actual Reservoir Dogs is a brilliant circling shot of the gang sat around a table adding some energy to what is just a dialogue scene. There's none of that here, but the framing is quite good, particularly the mirror shot in the second scene. Tarantino is an awful actor. He's really trying here, and he knows that his script is good, and he's being so sincere, but he's just awful. What makes this worth watching, apart from the curiosity value, is Buscemi. He's always brilliant, and he's brilliant here, even though he's probably just doing this as a favour and didn't expect anything to come of it. 5/10 Robert Eggers Shorts: Hansel and Gretel 2007/27m The Tell-Tale Heart 2008/22m Brothers 2015/11m Three more short films from the start of a filmmaker's career here, this time Robert Eggers, director of The Lighthouse, The Witch and the recent The Northman. The first two of these three are much more like what it seems a Robert Eggers film has become – dark folklore and historical settings – with Brothers feeling like an outlier, at least on the surface level. Hansel and Gretel, shot in black and white as a silent film complete with intertitles, tells the classic Grimm story of cannibalism with some assurance. The best thing about this film is the design, the gingerbread house and the actual witch are really well done. The Tell-Tale Heart, from the Poe story, is better than his first short in every respect. The direction has a clearer vision of what the film is, a rich Gothic atmosphere captured really well, with some great use of montage editing to show the passing of time and the servant's descent into madness. The make up for the old man is brilliant, making him like a living corpse. I thought this was great. Brothers, a film about the troubled relationship between a young boy and his teenage brother, was made to secure financing for The Witch, so this has some things in common with his debut feature. That is the woods that surround the farm on which they live. The way he shoots the trees here make them seem like bars on a cage or towering guards crowding in on the characters, giving their lives a constant feeling of oppression. This is the best directed of the three, a real progression obvious from the start. A gripping little short. Hansel and Gretel 6/10 The Tell-Tale Heart 7.5/10 Brothers 8/10 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,175 Posted June 25, 2022 Share Posted June 25, 2022 What I Watched This Week #25 (June 18-24) Day of the Fight dir. Stanley Kubrick/1951/13m The first film Stanley Kubrick ever made was this short documentary following middleweight boxer Walter Cartier throughout the day of his fight against Bobby James on the 17th April 1950. While Kubrick shows signs here of his undoubted genius in the composition and editing, I have a big problem with how this film is presented, which is in the style of a news reel. We only hear a narrator tell us how Walter is thinking or feeling, not from the man himself. This disconnect stopped me from being very invested in Walter or his fight. The fight itself is also quite anticlimactic, ending after a couple of punches and all shot from a distance. It's interesting in the way that first works by great artists always are, but beyond the curiosity factor I can't really recommend this. 5/10 Le quattro volte (The Four Times) dir. Michelangelo Frammartino/2010/1h28m Deep in the Italian countryside an elderly farmer is living the last days of his life. He dies and a goat is born. We follow the baby goat for a while before it becomes separated from his herd, lost in the forest. The goat, starving and freezing, nestles in the roots of a tree and dies. We now witness the tree, its bark, its foliage, its commanding height towering over the entire forest. It is cut down for a ceremony in a nearby village and afterwards it is cut into logs. We watch it be made into charcoal. We now follow the charcoal as it is delivered to a house in the same village, the village where the old farmer lived. Smoke rises from a chimney. This film about reincarnation and the soul and the afterlife is truly unlike anything else I've seen. Told without dialogue it is a visual poem. The tenderness with which Frammartino shoots really makes you care about the abstract idea of a soul. When the tree was cut up and unceremoniously dumped off of the back of a truck I was genuinely upset. Show this tree some respect! I'm not a religious person in any way, but the final shot of white smoke rising up from a chimney really hit me hard. I don't know if I was upset or elated. My only negative is that the first twenty minutes or so are pretty slow, even by my standards, but other than that this is an incredibly beautiful film. 9.5/10 Lime's Film of the Week! X dir. Ti West/2022/1h46m In 70s Texas a group of out-of-town aspiring p*rn actors shoot a film in a barn. But when the elderly couple who own the farm, Pearl and Howard (Mia Goth, Stephen Ure), find out what they're up to, they decide to murder them because they're Christian conservatives from Texas. I like the style of this film. There's a pissy yellow filter to the light that is very Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and the costume design is great. Sadly that doesn't stop this film being unrelentingly dull. I was expecting a grimy, sleazy grindhouse style film, something that makes you want to have a shower after watching it, like Driller Killer. What we got is just safe. It's a standard run of the mill slasher film but worse because the antagonists are not at all threatening. Also, they didn't actually hire real old people, they use awful looking old age make prosthetics. And for some reason Mia Goth not only plays Pearl, the old woman, but also Maxine, one of the group of p*rn filmmakers. No connection or relationship between the two characters is ever even hinted at. The thing I liked most is the performance by Kid Cudi as the brilliantly named Jackson Hole. I've seen a load of really positive reviews for this and I just don't get it. If you've seen it @Con I'd love to know what you think as a horror expert. 4/10 Two short films by Daniels (Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert) Dogboarding 2011/2m Interesting Ball 2014/12m Two early shorts from the directing duo Daniels (Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert), the guys behind my film of the year so far (and I don't see anything coming close to it in the next six months), Everything Everywhere all at Once. The first, Dogboarding, does exactly what it says on the tin. It's a skateboard video but with dogs instead of skateboards. There's really not much more to say about it. It's well shot and the effects, for such a small budget, are well executed. I think what this shows most is how Daniels are able to take a ridiculous idea and make it work. That is evident in both their feature releases, EEAAO and Swiss Army Man (also well worth watching). Interesting Ball is much more like their feature films; a ridiculous concept that has a very deep and emotional message behind it. A red ball bounces down a road and onto a beach. We see small slices of life of all the people the ball bounces past and how their lives are affected by the ball, some more than others. Daniels actually appear in this themselves as roommates who become very close when one gets their foot stuck up the other's *ss. Again, this ridiculous moment is just the beginning of a genuinely tender moment. Interesting Ball is the seed that EEAAO grew from and it is fantastic. Dogboarding 7/10 Interesting Ball 9/10 The Vast of Night dir. Andrew Patterson/2019/1h31m In small town 50s USA a local radio presenter Everett (Jake Horowitz), and switchboard operator Fay (Sierra McCormick) become obsessed with a strange signal they pick up one night. Over the course of the evening they try to find out what it is and soon start to realise that we may not be alone. There is a framing device to this film in that it starts off with a 50s television set showing an intro to a Twilight Zone style show, with tonight's episode being “The Vast of Night”, but this isn't really taken any further, and more than an homage to shows like The Twilight Zone, it seems more like an homage to radio dramas like Orson Welles's War of the Worlds broadcast. There are times, especially when Everett's show gets a call from Billy (Bruce Davis) who may know what the sound is, when the film cuts to black and we're left with just their voices. With the film being all dialogue and having excellent sound design, you could experience this as a radio play. That's not to say this doesn't look good, it looks great. There's a real texture to it that's bought out beautifully with all the different blues, both natural and unnatural. The two leads are good in their roles, and have a playfully antagonistic relationship. My slight negative is with the ending where we actually see the UFOs; I feel like it would play better if we never actually see them, maybe just see the character's reaction to them. But this is still a strong debut film from Patterson, and I look forward to what he does next. 8/10 Berberian Sound Studio dir. Peter Strickland/2012/1h32m In the 1970s an English film sound designer is hired by an Italian company to work on a horror movie. While working on the film and watching scenes of horrific torture day after day, Gilderoy (Toby Jones) becomes more and more affected by what he sees (much like Prano Bailey Bond's recent Censor, an excellent film, but about a film censor not sound editor). While there is nothing overtly hostile happening to Gilderoy, Strickland does an amazing job of ratcheting up the tension through his direction and the editing. He never shows us the film Gilderoy is working on, its all played out in his performance and his work – the scene of him violently stabbing a cabbage was incredibly unnerving, and the editing work of the scene where two watermelons are smashed by hammers while we hear a woman screaming for her life is terrifying. Jones is perfect for this role, his hangdog expression conveying a life of being put upon by everyone, and now he's getting it in a language he doesn't understand. No wonder he loses his f*cking mind. While this is a great film I prefer In Fabric, though the two are quite similar stylistically. But just from those two films Strickland is quickly becoming one of my favourite working directors. 8.5/10 Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter dir. David Zellner/2014/1h40m Kumiko (Rinko Kikuchi) is a lonely, depressed young woman in Tokyo who becomes obsessed with a battered old VHS copy of the film Fargo. Thinking that it's real (Fargo does start out with the statement “this is a true story”, even though it isn't) she becomes obsessed with the hidden stash of cash that's buried under the snow next to a fence somewhere in North Dakota. Stealing her bosses credit card, she heads to America to find the treasure. Reading a short synopsis like that you may be expecting something light-hearted, a comedy even. I was. What this is is a touching and sympathetic portrait of depression and the need for something to live for, and what happens when you find out that that doesn't exist. The lead performance from Kikuchi is brilliant, eliciting empathy from the audience without begging for it. A real tender and humane film, plus I love her pet rabbit Bunzo, so cute! 8.5/10 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djw180 6,836 Posted June 25, 2022 Share Posted June 25, 2022 (edited) A few quick reviews of films watched on holiday this last week. Some I would never have thought to watch myself, but the wife had decision making input as well. Radioactive (2019) dir Marjane Satrapi A biopic of Noble prize winning physicist Marie Curie, played by Rosemund Pike. With her husband Pierre they pioneered the study of radioactivity in late 19th / early 20th century Paris. It's a good story but not told very well. It doesn't really explain what it was she and her husband did that won them Nobel prizes. The consequences of their work, positive and negative, are shown in kind of strange, flash-forward, almost docudrama-like scenes. These are scenes that occur decades after the main character's deaths, e.g. they show a boy in 1950s USA undergoing radiotherapy treatment for cancer, they show the atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima. It just doesn't flow that well and seems a bit amateurish at times to me. 4/10 Sense and Sensibility (1995) dir Ang Lee Director Ang Lee and writer Emma Thompson's adaptation of the Jane Austen novel of the same name. Obviously if Jane Austin and similar costume drama's are not your thing, then you are probably not going to watch this. But I think it's a brilliant film and is one of my all time favourites. It won an Oscar for Emma Thompson's script plus multiple other nominations (best picture, leading actress for Thompson, supporting actress for Kate Winslett, costume, cinematography and score), plus a similar set of nominations, with more wins, in the Baftas. Like all Jane Austen stories it set in early 19th century England about middle class women and their search for suitable husbands. Mrs Dashwood and her 3 daughters, Eleanor, Marianne and Margaret are left 'almost penniless' after the death of their husband / father who's entire estate, due to the laws of the day, is inherited by their half-brother. His greedy wife convinces him he does not need to offer his step mother and step sisters any financial assistance. Of course compared to most people at that time the Dashwoods are wealthy, but compared to what they are used to and what society expects of them, they are not. It has a magnificent cast with excellent support from Hugh Grant, Alan Rickman, James Fleet, Harriet Walter, Gemma Jones, Tom Hardy, Greg Wise, Imelda Staunton. Plus in an early straight acting, as opposed to comedy, role, Hugh Laurie as Mr Palmer (the husband of the daughter of the mother-in-law of the cousin of the Dashwood's who eventually rents them a house on his Devon estate). He does not have many lines, mostly his character just tries to ignore his silly, over fussy wife, but when he does it's brilliant. There are some stunning scenes of the English countryside and some great little bits where I am not sure if it was the director or the screenwriter who was responsible, quite possibly both. 10/10 Mr Holmes (2015) dir Bill Condon Ian McKellen plays a very elderly Sherlock Homes, retired from detective work, coming to terms with his old age and reminiscing on his last case. He lives with a housekeeper and her young son who shows an interest in the great detective's cases and shares his current interest in bee-keeping. And to be be honest I don't really remember that much more about it. It did not hold my interest. It's not based on any of Arthur Conan Doyle's original novels and I'm not quite sure what it was the writer was trying to do. 3/10 Pride (2014) dir Marcus Warchus A great, heart-warming film based on a true story. In mid 1980s London, Mark Ashton (Ben Schnetzer) was watching news coverage of the strike by British coal miners (a strike that would last about a year). He sees scenes of police brutality against the strikers that he, as a gay man, was all too familiar with. Following that year's London Gay pride march he sets up the LGSM (l*sbian and Gays Support the Miners), and starts raising money for the striking miners and arranges to donate the cash to Welsh pit village. There is inevitable opposition from many of the miners, whose homophobia makes them unwilling to accept any assistance from the LGSM. But through a couple of miners, played by Paddy Considine And Bill Nighy, and some of their far more open minded wives (Imelda Staunton, Jessica Gunning and others) they eventually win most of the village over. It's set against a backdrop of the homophobia and anti-labour attitudes of Margaret Thatcher's government and much of the mainstream press, plus, in the 1980s, of course, AIDS. One of the LGSM, played by Dominic West, was based on the second man in Britain to be diagnosed as HIV positive, Mark Ashton would die from the disease a couple of years after the story. But in the main it's just a great story, nothing too over-dramatic, about two groups of people overcoming their own prejudice (and that went in both directions to some extent at first) to realise they had something in common and wanted to help each other. It end's a year after it began. The miners strike was then over and hundreds of Welsh miners arrive in London to lend their support to that years Gay Pride and march at the front alongside their new allies. 9/10 Edited June 25, 2022 by djw180 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Con 5,703 Posted June 30, 2022 Share Posted June 30, 2022 (edited) X (2022) [Spoilers ahead] From the moment the group arrives at the farm, I was filled with anticipation of what was to come and what was going to happen to these folks who had decided to make an adult film on rented property. I couldn't wait to see when the slashing and horror would begin. Would it be during one of the s*x scenes, maybe they'll have the actor's condom break mid-scene and someone has to now go to the car to get more condoms, only to get disemboweled and have guts and condoms fall to the ground, a guts and condom salad, if you will. We quickly learn that the elderly couple lives in the house right next to the barn they have just rented out to team p*rno. We see how upset the old man becomes when he learns that he has been deceived about how many people would be staying on his property. We then see his creepy wife at the window, is she a ghost, does she have dementia? Are the young people going to accidentally hurt her? I couldn't wait to experience the kills and thrills, as I anticipated the killers arrival and reveal. I then thought, maybe the old and the young people will have to work together to survive an indestructible force!!! This could go in so many awesome directions!!! Although, I did roll my eyes when they do the tracking shot from Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1973), I get it, it was in homage but it was the first time I became worried that the film would be a copy and paste job. Regardless, I was still filled with the excitement of a 14-year old boy. And that is the problem for me with this film, I am not 14-years old anymore and you need to be that age or younger to be fully creeped out by all the "horror" in the entire film. This film found ways to disappoint me, even when I was giving it the benefit of the doubt for it being a slasher. Let's start with the first night the young folks spend on the farm, lets call them team p*rno in this review. So team p*rno is sitting around on the first night and one of them has a guitar and begins playing it, one of the girls starts singing the song, Landslide by Fleetwood Mac. Nothing wrong with that song, but as she is singing it, we get a split screen of the old lady sitting in the dark (WHY?) applying what looks like makeup, and the camera pans up and down her old cosmetics and the lyrics of the song are talking about getting old and seeing the changes in our bodies, I was like, I came for horror not to feel bad about some woman who has aged. I'm sorry, I felt it was so cheesy in such a bad way. Why am I being forced to feel sympathy for the old woman, I already felt bad for her because if she comes across the killer, she surely will die at her advanced age, especially how decrepit she comes across at the beginning. That whole "Landslide" cover song scene felt to me like a Depends brand senior diapers commercial. The young girl is singing "Landslide", and the old lady has already experienced the aging process, I get the artistic message, but just because I have never seen that in a horror film before, doesn’t mean it’s good. Man, for as much as I killed Halloween (2018) for inconsistently handling senior citizen strength and abilities, at least that film didn't give me an infomercial. I'm sure some people liked the juxtaposition in that scene, I felt it was amateur and heavy-handed. The next thing that happens is the first kill. Up to this point we have no idea who the killer is going to be because now we have an irate camera guy super mad that his Sound Boom operating girlfriend decided earlier that day to just turn into a pornstar on the spot. So obviously one thinks, Oh the camera guy is going to turn into the killer, this is a movie about a wannabe Hollywood camera guy turning into a killer because he had to film his girlfriend making a p*rno. That is low concept even for a horror/slasher film but whatever, I'll go with it because it probably means the kills will be creative. Of course, we see the camera guy has decided to just abandon the project and his girlfriend in the middle of the night, he takes the keys to the van they all arrived in, we hear Blue Oyster Cult's, "Fear the Reaper" badass song playing in the van, and I was like oh, you cannot use this song and show something lame, this is going to be really good. We see the cameraguy driving away and suddenly the old lady is in the middle of the driveway, he gets out to help her since he thinks she is just a confused old lady outside of her house. But truth is, he is the first one to be killed after he refuses the s*xual advances of the old lady. Yes, the old lady kills him. Let me tell you, that was one of the most underwhelming horror scenes I have ever watched. How creative was the kill? The geriatric brittle old lady stabs him in the neck with a small knife. Remember, i'm not 14-years old anymore and stabbing someone on the neck like she did, does not disable the voice box or a person's mobility. A person can still run away or shout for help, especially if the knife isn't removed. But no, he falls to the ground as if she has slit his throat wide open and she calmly walks over to him and removes the knife and stabs him on the other side. Blood starts squirting from his wounds as she is now repeatedly stabbing his neck. I think they showed a little too much of the mangled neck for it to even look realistic. But this scene was important because it told me what to expect. Let me explain a few other things happening in that scene that confused me. Why did it look like the old lady regained some of her youth during the stabbing? I literally got closer to the screen to make sure I wasn't seeing things. You see, in that scene, we also get this artsy red light filter, you know the one, you see it in horror films all the time, here it comes from the blood from the neck wound spraying onto the van's headlights. I'm not 14 anymore, so showing me that blood on a headlight would turn everything red was not convincing and made me think, that the film was actually a grindhouse-style horror film. The stabbing and the red filter and the old lady turning young all made sense in a grindhouse context, and with grindhouse films, a certain level of sloppiness and amateurishness is expected on screen, hence the cheesy music moments and thin concept of the film at that point. I then thought, this film is about an old lady who is an alien or monster that married a human farmer and he has to get her young people to eat to stay alive. Not the most original concept, but okay, I liked the actors, and maybe the real filmmaker will do something new with this senior citizen "vampire" rejuvenation trope. But no, the film is really about an old couple who for some unknown reason like killing people that rent out their adjacent property as we see later in the film, previous victims hidden inside the house. But I think what made that whole first kill scene so bad for me was the use of "Fear the Reaper" song. It's hard to fear the reaper when an old lady is killing a young man who could have easily survived the initial stabbing in the neck, instead he falls as if she had severed his spine. Yeah, so watching the old lady grinding while "Fear the Reaper" plays from inside the van was just utter trash. How dare you use that song on such a boring killer and kill. I HATED THAT sh*t!!!!!!!!!!!! I wanted to stop the film right there. Everything I had anticipated about the killer's reveal was destroyed when I realized that the old couple are the killers and since we don't get a backstory for them, just forced sympathy for them being old, it makes the kills so undervalued, as killing people for being young is not enough, especially in this story, because at no time does team p*rno disrespect the couple to a degree that merits the massacre. In fact, the old lady gets turned on by the p*rno scenes she secretly watches them make, and she never complains to her husband about what she has seen team p*rno do, it seems to have the opposite effect on her, she wants her elderly husband to desire her physically at 90-years old. I can go on deconstructing just how boring all the slasher's kills were, but I won't and begin wrapping this up instead. I will mention one scene at the end of the film where one of the girls is trapped and locked inside a room by the old man. He leaves and she realizes she is locked in. She looks around the room and finds an ax. One would think that the best place to chop the door down would be nearest the door knob or where a lock could be. Instead, our actress chops the door panel furthest away from the door knob and lock. You can argue that she was trying to chop a hole big enough for her entire body to fit, but it looks like as soon as she can get her arm through, that her strategy was to reach for the lock. But how? She can't even see the lock or feel for it since she has to reach with all her might just to barely touch the door knob that she knows alone wont just open the door. Of course this struggle of hers to reach the lock gives the old man enough time to come back, see her arm reaching for the door knob, and he starts hitting her hand and mangles it. The whole thing could have had the impact they were looking for while still keeping the characters actions intelligent if they had just had her chop the door panel closest to the lock and just one milli-second before she was about to unlock the door, have the old man hit her hand and mangle it, ending our false hope and still giving us the hand brutality. The film failed for me because the main ingredient, the killer, the slashers are so underwhelming. Why did the filmmaker feel the need to further humanize the killers by showing us that at their advanced age, they still have feelings and needs? There is a reason we don't see many geriatric love stories being made, no one really wants to watch two 90-year olds fall in love. Never mind watching two finally having s*x in the middle of a killing spree in a horror film. Unless your elderly killers are going to be the most clever of killers, please stop using them as slashers. Stabbings and shotgun kills, and one lame alligator kill, that is what we get in this horror film....that is disappointing because nothing was exceptional. The one kill that barely made me chub up was the eye stabbing. But we see it coming from miles away and I don't think that as a practical effect, it was shot well. I mean, just the set up looks stupid with the three perfect holes in the wall and how precise the 90-year old woman had to be with that pitchfork. If I were 14-years old, I would have loved that scene, but that is because I would not have considered eye anatomy and what it takes to actually pull two eyeballs out of the sockets at the same time. Is there anything I liked? Yes. I felt the cinematography gets better as the film goes on. I liked the acting, especially the way the "p*rn" scenes were handled, I mean, there is absolutely nothing overtly raunchy seen on-screen, and all the p*rno talk was surprisingly tame as well, but it was effective. That's about all I liked. I also liked watching the old lady die. I won't spoil that here but I sure am glad that a new generation will watch some real gore in this besides the cow guts we see in the accident at the start of the film. I remember my first time as a teen watching a similar scene in The Toxic Avenger (1984), that was the highlight of my summer and could not wait to get back to school to tell everyone one about that scene. Yes, I went to elementary school before the internet. So where was the horror, you ask? Well I think the horror was really aimed at teenagers and children in this one. And no, i'm not talking about the kills, i'm talking about the horror and disgust young people feel when an elderly person touches them; now take that touch and make it perverse, and I could see children squirming at the scenes in which the old lady is getting frisky next to one of the sleeping youths. I found it funny instead of disgusting because I had forgot to mention just how awful the elderly prosthetics looked at times throughout the film, at times it looked like they picked someone different to apply them to the actors faces depending on the day. This is probably why the old lady looked younger during her first kill. Either way, hard to be disturbed by elderly masturbating slasher when the makeup looks bad and unconvincing. I honestly get what the director was trying to give us. He was giving us something we had never seen in a slasher, an elderly couple struggling with their age and s*xual frustrations. The old lady is trying to have s*x the entire film and only gets laid after her husband finally gets hard, from killing, one can only assume???? Your guess is as good as mine. Sure, that works as a story, an old couple who lived as serial killers, used killings to keep their s*x drives alive, but its hard to kill for fun after you turn 80-years old and vi*gra hasn't been invented yet. If that is what this film actually is trying to say, well, making that more clear would have helped...like after the old man kills his second victim, have the old lady grab his crotch and say, "You are almost there, honey." BAM!!!!!! That would have been amazing!!!!! This elderly couple has found a way to keep their s*x life alive and it is a very twisted one. Instead we just see the old lady asking the old man to touch her but he says he can't because of his weak heart and then like I said before, in the middle of hunting for the surviving team p*rno, the old couple finally makes love. Now that I think of it, the elderly s*x scene was far raunchier than anything we see team p*rno doing. I'm sure all the 14-year olds were disgusted and horrified by the 90-year olds s*x scene. I think even at that age, I would have found that scene goofy as hell. Seriously one last thing, I was in utter shock when I caught up with the many reviews for this film and discovered the praises that have rained down on this film. BEST SLASHER IN YEARS!!! I read that and said, no way, the best slasher in years despite the flaws was that Halloween (2018), at least MM was extra savage with his kills. This film is a decent entry with its themes of elderly loneliness and love. Yes, we all fear getting old and it seems to be the current horror trend, but having 90-year olds touch you isn't scary. A slasher with dentures isn't a crime but a human slasher with uninventive kills and unclear motivations, will never please me. I'm glad the actors got paid for being in it because they did their best and loved their characters. Just too bad they were in this film, with these killers. Final Verdict....2/5.....Underwhelming slasher kills. Underwhelming killers. Underwhelming gore. In Friday the 13th, it only takes one monologue for us to learn why Mrs. Voorhees is doing what she is doing. In this film, we have no idea why the elderly couple kills. Now I should mention that there is a post-credit scene in which we see a mini-preview of the prequel called "Pearl", that takes place at the same farm location but in the year 1916. Perhaps we will see how the elderly couple or at least how the old lady becomes a killer. But I have to ask myself, do I care about how the elderly couple became killers? Especially after we see what happens to them in this film? I'm really having a tough time getting excited about this horror trilogy to be honest. Here's hoping that this is the weakest of the entries to it. Edited June 30, 2022 by Con 2 RSC FILM CLUB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,175 Posted June 30, 2022 Share Posted June 30, 2022 Loved the review @Con, I've missed reading them. I'm glad you, the horror expert, were as underwhelmed at this as I was. I probably saw a lot of the same reviews and I'm not sure they watched the same film as us. Underwhelming is the word. When I read the synopsis for this and saw the favourable reviews I was expecting to see dicks getting cut off and crazy sh*t like that. Hope to see more of your reviews in the future dude! 🙂 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Con 5,703 Posted June 30, 2022 Share Posted June 30, 2022 7 hours ago, LimeGreenLegend said: Loved the review @Con, I've missed reading them. I'm glad you, the horror expert, were as underwhelmed at this as I was. I probably saw a lot of the same reviews and I'm not sure they watched the same film as us. Underwhelming is the word. When I read the synopsis for this and saw the favourable reviews I was expecting to see dicks getting cut off and crazy sh*t like that. Hope to see more of your reviews in the future dude! 🙂 Thanks bigguy! I will have more time to review these days since the wife is no longer taking online classes. That’s why I stopped watching and reviewing. Just couldn’t get through an entire film after helping her out every night. My goal is to catch-up with the Film Club reviews first and quickly. But yeah man, those reviews, can’t believe how positive they are about what was put on screen in this film. I love how some of them say, “we see things in this we have never seen before (elderly s*xual frustration) in a horror film.” Okay, that’s fine and dandy, but what about the countless other things in it we have seen before in other films? Lake Placid, TCM, F13 3D, Wrong Turn, The Toxic Avenger, all immediately come to mind. Those weren’t homages, just lazy bullsh*t writing. Honestly, this film was begging to be a comedy. Had they thrown in some slapstick during the old people killing spree, I might have liked this. You know, she goes to load the shotgun but her dentures fall out and lodge into the chamber. Saved by denture! Anyways, I had not read your review because I didn’t want to spoil how you felt about it, just read that you wanted me to check it out. After watching it, I went back to your post and started laughing, when I realized we both thought it s*cked. It’s part of a trilogy, so maybe I will get some answers in those installments but I can’t say I’m filled with anticipation. 1 RSC FILM CLUB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,175 Posted July 1, 2022 Share Posted July 1, 2022 What I Watched This Week #26 (June 25-July 1) Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair dir. Quentin Tarantino/2011/4h3m After an assassin, played by Uma Thurman, is shot on the day of her wedding (rehearsal) by her former colleagues and their leader, and her former lover, Bill (David Carradine), she sets out on a bloody trail of revenge. This was released as two separate films at the behest of the studio because they refused to release a four hour kung-fu film. Several years later Tarantino personally edited a director's cut that stays true to his original vision. And so we have The Whole Bloody Affair. Sadly, an official version of this has never been released, the only copy owned by Tarantino and screened very rarely at film festivals etc. However, there is a fan edit you can obtain online that follows this version to the letter and is basically considered official. I liked the original two films, but they always felt quite disconnected. The first is an action heavy blood splattered thrill ride while the second is much more personal and emotional, with the bride only killing one person at the end, Bill. However, seeing this as one continuous film really brings the whole thing together. There aren't many big changes, the biggest probably being that The Bride's fight against the Crazy 88 is in colour and longer, with some extra shots, and that really does make a big difference. The other changes are minor things in the editing. The original version of Volume 2 opened with The Bride recapping the first film, not needed here so it's been cut. For me, this is now the only way to watch this film. It marks a real change in Tarantino's style after the much more realistic LA crime trilogy of Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown, and the epic length of this cut really hammers home how much he's changed. 9.5/10 Saw dir. James Wan/2003/10m Before the feature length Saw, James Wan made this tight little short film that introduces the world of the Jigsaw killer. This is told in flashback as David (Leigh Whannel) tells a cop (Paul Moder) how he survived the bear trap on your face trap. I would have liked this a lot more if the acting was better, because it is so bad. I don't know who's worse, Whannel or Moder. I'll probably go with Moder, it's just so stilted and forced. The concept is great however, and is well executed. There is still some nu-metal music video style editing that you got a lot in horror films around this time, but it's not as egregious as it would become later in the series. A great little horror short let down by the acting. 6.5/10 Blow Out dir. Brian De Palma/1981/1h48m John Travolta plays Jack, a sound editor for b-movie horror films. While out recording background noise one night he records a car crash involving a presidential candidate that may actually be an assassination. So I really like the premise for this, it reminded me a lot of The Conversation, and when it comes to the direction it's executed really well, De Palma pulling out his classic split screen and split diopter shots to great effect. What lets it down is Travolta and Nancy Allen, who plays Sally, the prostitute who was in the car with the presidential candidate when they crashed. Travolta isn't bad, I just don't buy him as this character. Allen, however, is bad. The final fifteen minutes are brilliant, ramping up the tension perfectly, and the line “it's a good scream” gave me chills, such a dark ending. Still a great film, but it could have been even better with different casting. 8/10 In the Name of the Father dir. Jim Sheridan/1993/2h13m In the Name of the Father is an Irish drama about the real life case of Gerry Conlon who was falsely imprisoned for the IRA bombing of a pub, spending fifteen years in prison before his release in 1989. Daniel Day-Lewis plays Conlon, with Pete Postlethwaite as his father Giuseppe, who was also imprisoned as an accomplice, and they are incredible together. Any scene with the two of them interacting is just spellbinding. Emma Thompson plays Gareth Peirce, the lawyer who got their case bought up for appeal and won them their freedom, but I felt she was quite under-used. I was expecting this to focus more on the legal aspect of the case, but this is more of a character study, a biopic of Conlon. But that's not much of a negative when it's Day-Lewis knocking it out of the park, like he always does. The scenes where he is being tortures into signing a blank confession is just brutal. The direction is nothing spectacular but I really like how the passage of time was suggested through the music. A great film worth watching for the chemistry between Day-Lewis and Postlethwaite. 8.5/10 Mur Murs dir. Agnes Varda/1981/1h18m Mur Murs is a documentary by Agnes Varda, icon of the French New Wave. In it, Varda explore LA and the people who live there through its many murals. This is real observational filmmaking, the camera taking in small details of these huge murals before showing us the whole thing. The way she interviews people is complimentary to her filmmaking style, she really allows her subjects to speak for themselves, never interjecting or leading them. The interviews are also all shot interestingly, never just the typical talking-heads style set ups. The best thing about this film is the people and the murals and what they mean. And they mean many things to many people. A brilliantly observed portrait of a very specific time and place. 9/10 Black Panthers dir. Agnes Varda/1968/29m Another Varda documentary, this time covering the Black Panthers and their efforts to get one of their leaders, Huey Newton, freed from prison in the summer of 1968. Like Mur Murs, this is observational documentary filmmaking at its best. Rather than focus on the legal process, Varda focuses on the people gathered at the protests, capturing their anger, indignation and pride. This is intercut with an interview with Newton himself, articulating on his struggles beautifully. The worst thing about this film is that watching it makes you realise that not much has really changed. One of those films that leaves you angry at the end, but glad that there are people out there fighting the good fight. 9/10 The Innocents dir. Eskil Vogt/2021/1h57m In this Norwegian horror film four young children, including eight year old Ida (Rakel Lenora Flottum) and her older, non-verbal autistic sister Anna (Alva Brynsmo Ramsted) discover they have supernatural abilities. These kids, especially Ben (Sam Ashraf) push the limits of not only their powers but their boundaries. This is a supremely unsettling film that got under my skin right from the first scene. Ida and Anna are in the back of the car driving to their new house and Ida calmly reaches over and pinches her sisters leg hard. The casual, inquisitive cruelty of children is perfectly examined here, and it is escalated over and over again until the breath-taking finale. I know there are some here who find films with child leads off-putting, don't let that put you off of this film. All four of the kids here are incredible, particularly Flottum and Ramsted, who pull off a more nuanced and believable relationship as sisters than most adult actors could. The direction is inventive and always serves to keep you feeling uneasy, the use of upside down shots and slow dollies are excellent. A brilliant and shocking film. 9.5/10 Lime's Film of the Week! It's also the halfway point of the year, and I was going to do a quick top ten of the best films I've watched this year, but since I've given twelve films a perfect 10/10 here's my top twelve. In order of release: The Great Dictator 1940 Citizen Kane 1941 Singin' in the Rain 1952 Peeping Tom 1960 Persona 1966 The Blues Brothers 1980 Shoah 1985 JFK 1991 Iris 2001 Bad Luck Banging or Loony p*rn 2021 Boiling Point 2021 Everything Everywhere All At Once 2022 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djw180 6,836 Posted July 3, 2022 Share Posted July 3, 2022 (edited) Malena (2000) dir Guiseppe Tornatore Another film with an Ennio Morricone score, from the director he worked with most often. Set in Sicily during the second world war, Malena (Monica Belluci) is the beautiful wife of an army officer away on duty. All the husbands in the town lust after her and want her to be their mistress and all their wives hate her and gossip about her. A group of teenage boys follow her around and fantasize about her. One of these is Renato (Giuseppe Sulfaro) and it is he who is actually the film's main character. Malena herself hardly ever speaks. We mainly see her through Renato's eyes, sometimes with him fantasising they are characters in a film; he the dashing hero rescuing Malena. Renato also tries, in his own way, to defend Malena in real life as well, doing what he can to get back at the gossiping wives or bragging husbands; peeing in a handbag or spitting in a drink. Renato know Malena is faithful to her husband, even when he is reported missing, presumed killed in action. When two would-be suitors for Malena get into a fight and the wife of one sues for divorce the gossip and rumours lead to Malena being ostracised. People refuse to speak to her, shopkeepers refuse to trade with her and there is nothing Renato can do. Later in the war she ends up the mistress of at least one German officer, the local people (now mostly wanting the war over and their German allies gone) hate her even more. There is very brutal scene when after the Allies capture the town the local woman take what they see as their revenge on Malena, she has actually never done anything to warrant it. But it does have a happy ending. This is only the second Guiseppe Tornatore feature film I have seen, the other being Cinema Parradiso. This is not as good (it would be hard to be) but does have a very similar, quite sentimental style, which is of course partly due to the score. It's very nicely shot (Cinematography was Oscar nominated) with some good scenic shots and quite a lot of scenes with very little dialogue, where you are just watching what is happening. One issue I do have is that Renato ages from 12 to 16 in the film, but of course the actor playing him does not. To me me he looks about 12 for the whole film and that then makes some of the later scenes not work as well as they ought to. As for the score, which was also Oscar nominated, it is in Ennio Morricone's highly melodic, romantic style (like Cinema Paradiso, Once Upon a Time in the West / America) rather than his more experimental, varied style of most of his Westerns. For me it's very good, but I would not rank it is one of his best. 7/10 The Inbetweeners 2 (2014) dir Damon Beesley & Iain Morris The second spin off film from the TV sitcom of the same name. It's OK, fun enough to watch for 90mins but nothing special. If you like the TV series then you will be entertained by this. It does take the toilet humour a bit further than the TV series did and that did seem a bit unoriginal by the end. There is only so much humour you can extract from a turd following someone down a water chute or one of them, believing himself to be on verge of dying from thirst, begging his friend to let him drink p*ss straight from his c*ck. 5/10 Edited July 3, 2022 by djw180 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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