djw180 6,839 Posted July 9, 2022 Share Posted July 9, 2022 (edited) The Stendhal Syndrome (1996) dir Dario Argento Italian horror, of the not-that-horrific more psychological / violent thriller type of film. Asia Argento (daughter of the director) plays detective Anna Manni of the Rome police on the trail of a serial r*pist-murderer. Marco Leonardi (Toto as a young man in Cinema Paradiso) plays her fellow detective and ex-boyfriend. The films starts with a very good scene with almost no dialogue. Anna is in Florence in an art gallery. As she looks at the various paintings and sculptures they seem to come alive to her, she feels very emotional and overcome by the art and she faints. When she comes around she has amnesia but as her memory returns and we learn she is a detective and was in the gallery following a tip-off. It kind of goes down hill after this though and what could have been a quite interesting story about people who get overwhelmed by fine art and faint (that is apparently what the Stendhal syndrome is, it's a real medical condition) just becomes a fairly formulaic thriller. The criminal gets close to the detective without her realising who he is at first. He then targets her. There's a confrontation. She kills him, or does she? More people are killed, but who killed them? The ending is a bit predictable. The actual Stendhal Syndrome plays very little part in the film, it simply something both Anna and the r*pist-murderer both suffer from, but is hardly mentioned. It makes me wonder why you would name a film after such an unusual medical condition and it play so little part in the plot? The other big issue I have is that whilst the cast are mainly Italian the dialogue is English and some actors words seem dubbed, which I've mentioned before that I hate. To be fair the dubbing is good and in sync, but it's just that for me an Italian production, set in Italy, with a mainly Italian cast ought to be in Italian. It just feels wrong when most characters have a not-very authentic British or American accent. At one point there is a French character and he speaks with a French accent – so why don't the Italians have Italian accents or actually speak their own language? The score is by Ennio Morricone; the reason I watched this. It's not a memorable score, but it does fit the film. It's not a film that would really have worked with a score like his more famous ones with big, prominent pieces of music dominating scenes. He just provides the occasional bit of background music that fits the tense mood. Overall not bad, but could have been a lot better for me. 5/10 Edited July 9, 2022 by djw180 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,175 Posted July 14, 2022 Share Posted July 14, 2022 What I Watched This Week #27 (July 2-8) Possessor dir. Brandon Cronenberg/2020/1h44m Tasya Vos (Andrea Riseborough) is a high-end assassin who possesses other people, using their bodies to carry out her hits. She becomes trapped in the mind of her latest victim Colin (Christopher Abbott) after he starts to fight back and take back control of his mind. This sci-fi horror film is from the son of David Cronenberg, and he is just as f*cked up as his old man. There is some great gore here, but the most unsettling thing is the theme of the loss of control, the loss of your bodily autonomy. There's solid support from Jennifer Jason Leigh as Tasya's handler and Sean Bean as her target. Slow paced to start but it really picks up momentum in the second act, and the finale is a killer. 9/10 Lime's Film of the Week! Florence Foster Jenkins dir. Stephen Frears/2016/1h50m Meryl Streep plays the title role in this biopic about a wealthy New York socialite who dreams of becoming an opera singer, but unfortunately has an awful singing voice. Hugh Grant is her husband, St. Clair Bayfield, who seems to care about her – in a motherly way - but has a relationship with another woman. He mollycoddles her, protecting her from bad reviews when she performs to select audiences, but when she hires out Carnegie Hall he is helpless to protect her from the truth. I wanted to really like this, but neither of the leads are decent people, not that I need a film to be about good people to enjoy it, but here they are presented as being good people. Jenkins is infantilised, treated like she's made out of porcelain, and the film wants you to believe that she's ignorant of her awful voice but in the end shows that she's very aware of what she sounds like – something that's never even hinted at in the previous hour and forty. Bayfield is just a smarmy, manipulative c*nt who only really loved her money, and nothing the film showed me did anything to make me think otherwise. I liked Simon Helberg as her pianist Cosme McMoon, he comes across as genuinely caring about Jenkins, and the scenes where she sings are very funny, but that can't really save the film from feeling like a big joke at the expense of a mentally frail old woman who is totally disconnected from reality. 4/10 Heat dir. Michael Mann/1995/2h50m Robert De Niro is master thief Neil McCauley, heisting his way through LA with Al Pacino's obsessive cop, Vincent Hanna, hot on his trail in this crime thriller from Michael Mann. This is a slick film pulled off with a huge amount of style – the prototype for Christopher Nolan films at least aesthetically, and surely the biggest influence on GTAV. De Niro is understated here, the consummate professional, but it's Pacino who steals all the attention with his manic, coked up performance. His delivery of the line “she's got a GREAT *ss” may be the greatest line reading in film history. Val Kilmer is perhaps at his coolest here amongst an eclectic supporting cast that includes Jon Voight, Danny Trejo, Henry Rollins and a young Natalie Portman who, thankfully, isn't being totally sexualised by a creepy Frenchman in this film. There's a certain sterility to proceedings that left me a little cold, but this is still a fantastic movie, and the diner scene between De Niro and Pacino is worth the price of admission alone. 8/10 Vagabond dir. Agnes Varda/1985/1h45m The film begins with a dead woman being found in a ditch next to a farm. She is Mona (Sandrine Bonnaire), and the film flashes back so we can witness the last days of her life. Varda switches between narrative and documentary styles here, people who encountered Mona in her last days are interviewed by Varda herself, giving their very differing opinions on here – some pity her and some are jealous of her. The film never asks for sympathy, Mona is a strong character who choses this life of her own free will, with full mental capacity. She is someone who wants total freedom and is willing to pay the price for it, and there is something heroic about her end, dignified in its lack of dignity. Bonnaire is extraordinary in the lead, her story told through her movements and her expressions. Despite the fact that we know that she will die, we are always on her side, willing her to survive. This foreknowledge of her death also add a frisson of tension to her every encounter – is this the moment she's going to die? Varda has managed to make a film that is both bitterly sad and strangely empowering, well worth watching. 9/10 Two Shorts by Rose Glass: Moths 2010/11m Room 55 2014/22m Two early shorts here from the director of the brilliant horror film Saint Maud. The first, Moths, is about a man and a woman who live in adjacent apartments. They both live alone, but there is a peephole in the wall between their flats that allow them to watch each other. Rather then creeping them out this seems to bring them together, and their lives become a performance, with a strange relationship developing between the two without a word being spoken. Room 55 is set in the 50's and follows a television chef, Alice Lawson (Charlotte Weston). Driving home after a show one night she is caught in a storm and stops off at a hotel to spend the night. During the evening she hears strange sounds coming from room 55, and her discovery leads to her s*xual awakening. What these two films – and Saint Maud - show is that Glass has a masterly control over the atmosphere in her films. They start off without giving you much information and she really trusts you to figure things out for yourself, the biggest clues coming from the production design and her direction. These are two great shorts that really built the foundations for her feature length debut. Moths 7.5/10 Room 55 8/10 The Master dir. Paul Thomas Anderson/2012/2h17m Joaquin Phoenix plays directionless alcoholic WW2 vet Freddy Quell who is drawn to a new “religion” created by the charismatic Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman), with the two forming a strong bond right off the bat. What I like about this film is the relationship between these two people who need each other but also repel each other, much like the Daniel Day Lewis/Paul Dano dynamic from There Will Be Blood. PSH is incredible here, commanding the screen whenever he appears. He reminded me in many ways of Charles Kane from Citizen Kane – his personality fills up every room he's in, his unwavering confidence drawing everyone into his orbit. The scene where he audits Quell is amazing, it's intimate in what feels like a very real way, like I was sitting in on a therapy session. Some have seen this as a critique on Scientology – which it is – but it goes beyond that to explore the people at the top and the bottom in cults like that and why they are there. This is a film about two painfully lonely people who react to that loneliness in very different ways. 8.5/10 Tony Takitani dir. Jun Ichikawa/2004/1h16m Based on a short story by one of my favourite writers, Haruki Murakami, this is another film about loneliness. Tony Takitani (Issey Ogata) is a lonely man who had a lonely childhood. He falls in love with Eiko (Rie Miyazawa), but she is obsessed with clothes shopping, which becomes a problem when they have to devote a whole room to them. After she suddenly dies Tony hires an woman to come and wear her clothes, but he can't bear that so he gives them away instead. More than a film this feels like a poem or a haiku, you can feel its literary source despite the fact that it's not a particularly dialogue heavy film, there's just a lyricism to it. I did find it drag somewhat despite its short length, and I didn't really connect with any character, even Tony. He just comes across as quite detached and cold. Not a bad film but I won't be re-watching this any time soon. 6/10 The House That Jack Built dir. Lars von Trier/2018/2h31m Matt Dillon stars as Jack, engineer, architect and serial killer. In this film he recounts five incidents from his twelve year spree to a strange presence called Verge (Bruno Ganz). His killings become more elaborate and deranged as time goes on, starting off with simply bashing in Uma Thurman's head with a car jack to constructing a house out of body parts. Along the way Jack also espouses his theories on how killing is art, with a lot of references to the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould (there is a brilliant biopic of him called Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould, well worth watching). This is also kind of self-referential, with von Trier using clips from his other films at certain points. If you're thinking this is a straight-forward serial killer film then you are in for a surprise. The thing with von Trier is that he makes his films to be hard to like – they're confrontational and violent and s*xual with no filter – but he makes them so well that you can forgive almost anything he shows to you (the h*nd job scene in Anti Christ still haunts me). I really like this and would recommend it but with the caveat that they are not for everyone and there's a good chance you won't like it. The dude makes Marmite films. I don't like Marmite, but I like this. 8/10 Flying Padre dir. Stanley Kubrick/1951/9m Like Day of the Fight this is an early Kubrick film from 1951, and like that film this is another news-reel style documentary affair told in voiceover. This time we're following Father Fred Stadtmuller, a priest in New Mexico. He flies around in his plane, the Flying Padre, administering the good news over thousands of square miles of desert. He also helps in a more practical way, the film ending with his heroically flying a sick child and their mother to a hospital. This is another film where Kubrick is more interested in honing his filmmaking skills. This has some excellent compsitions and editing, but there's just no interest in the subject. Only watch this is you're a Kubrick superfan, otherwise you can miss this. 5/10 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djw180 6,839 Posted July 16, 2022 Share Posted July 16, 2022 (edited) Memoria (2012) dir Apichatpong Weerasethakul A quite unusual style of film, quite arty and a Palme d'Or nominee. Tilda Swinton stars as Jessica, a British orchid collector / seller, running her business from Medellin (Columbia). The film starts with us watching her sleeping. Nothing happens for a minute or so then suddenly she is woken by a loud bang. She hears the noise again on other occasions. But no one else seems to hear it and there is no obvious cause. She tries to find out what is going on but the explanation is revealed to her via people she sort just happens to meet, sometimes not obviously in connection to the noises. It's over 2 hours long but with not much dialogue. If you were to write the story down it would be quite a short book. There are a lot of scenes where you a re just watching, sometimes, like the opening, watching nothing happen for a while and then suddenly something does happen. There is no soundtrack, the only music comes from a couple of scenes where characters are either playing or listening to music. But there are a lot of interesting background noises. If you do watch this I really recommend having a decent sound system. I was fortunate in that I watched this on a streaming service I can only get through my PC (which does not have great speakers) and had the sound fed through a stereo. I don't think it would have been as good if I was listening through my TV. So it it technically very, very well made in terms of the sound, cinematography, direction and Tilda Swinton's always great acting. It's classed as sci-fi, but definitely not the action, space ships & lasers sort of thing. In fact were it not for what Jessica ultimately finds out about herself right at the end of the film, I would not have said it was sci-fi at all. Very worth watching, if you don't mind a slow paced, low dialogue, no action, no thrills, no high drama style of film. 9/10 Edited July 20, 2022 by djw180 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,175 Posted July 20, 2022 Share Posted July 20, 2022 (edited) What I Watched This Week #28 (July 9-15) Brian and Charles dir. Jim Archer/2022/1h30m Brian (David Earl) is a lonely, eccentric inventor in a small Welsh village – the pine-cone bag and the flying grandfather clock are some of his most successful creations – who, after finding an old mannequin head in some rubbish, decides to build a robot, Charles Petrescu (Chris Hayward). Charles – at time excitable puppy, other times like a stroppy teenager – wants to see more of the world, but Brian is reluctant to let him go and end up alone again, and interest from the local family of hooligans threaten to split them apart. This is basically a very British telling of the Frankenstein story. It is sweet and charming without ever stepping over the line into twee sentimentality. The two leads have a fantastic chemistry together – honed from years doing this act on the stand-up circuit – and make for a really likeable duo; Charles's dancing and the joy it brings to Brian is genuinely adorable. One slight negative for me is that at the beginning the film is presented as a mockumentary, with a crew there because of Brian's weird inventions – something I could see being broadcast on Channel 5 – but this framing device is abandoned for long stretches for conventional narrative filmmaking, only being used when it suits the filmmakers, when they need exposition or for a character to speak while they're alone. It's not a huge problem in the least, but I just think if you're going to commit to something then you commit all the way. Also don't expect this film to be sci-fi just because there's a robot – the most technical description of Charles is that he has “a washing-machine for a tummy”, and none of the other characters seem remotely impressed that real AI has been created in their village - this is a film about relationships. An oddball film with a big heart, and a cool blue light for an eye. 9/10 Lime's Film of the Week! I Am Not A Witch dir. Rungano Nyoni/2017/1h33m Eight year old girl Shula (Maggie Mulubwa) is accused of being a witch because of her serious demeanour and refusal to answer when she is questioned. She is sent to a government colony of old women, all witches, and forced into working. All of these witches are attached at the back to giant spools of white ribbon, said to stop them flying away. When she correctly guesses the correct criminal in a line-up she starts to be exploited by government official Mr. Banda (Henry B.J. Phiri), the culmination of which is an incredibly uncomfortable appearance on a television talk show. One night Shula leaves, the following day a body is buried and after the old witches mourn her death we see all of the spools unattached, their ribbons flying up into the air. The first two acts of this play like the blackest of comedies right from the opening interrogation, but after the talk show appearance it becomes a serious tragedy, the hopelessness of her situation written all over her face. It's a superbly assured performance from such a young actor, and it really carries the film. This is also a gorgeously shot film with some striking imagery and it's full of Wes Anderson like pastels and shot composition. A great debut from a new British/Zambian voice. 8/10 Weekend dir. Jean-Luc Godard/1967/1h44m Weekend is na absurdist political black comedy that really lost me in the final stretch. Before that comes the traffic jam. Corinne and Roland (Mireille Darc, Jean Yanne) head out on a road trip to see her parents because her father is dying and they want to ensure their place on the will. However, society seems to be totally breaking down into violent anarchy. One long tracking shot of a seemingly never ending traffic jam ends with a violent revelation, and it is breath taking. As Corinne and Roland move forward they encounter revolutionaries and fictional characters, becoming increasingly frustrated at their philosophical musings, shouting over them, asking for directions that they never get. Toward the end they are captured by a revolutionary group and this is where I got lost. Sometimes you watch a film and realise that you are a lot stupider then you thought. This is one of those films. I'm sure Godard is making some amazing points, I just couldn't tell you what they are. Thankfully it's all shot with a real sense of creativity that ensures it's never boring. Godard is an acquired taste, and I don't think this film will win him many fans from his detractors, but I really dig his style and how different all of his films are from each other. If you wanna watch a bunch of French people go crazy then check this out. 8.5/10 Monster dir. Jennifer Kent/2005/10m This short horror film from Jennifer Kent acts as a kind of first draft of her debut feature, The Babadook. Susan Prior plays a mother whose young son (Luke Ikimis-Healy) seems to be very afraid of a witch doll. After hearing something go bang in the night she begins to suspect that he's not being irrational. This is a really effective short which gave me some genuine chills, especially the first glimpse we get of the witch (Trash Vaudeville), that image stayed with me for a while. This is really well shot, and the use of black and white really sells the creepiness of the piece. The performances aren't great but they do the job – I'm not one to complain too much about amateurs in short films – but Kent gets the best out of them. I really like the ending and the message about facing your fears, it's played very obviously but done well, and in a weird way it ends on a quite sweet note. Horror fans will get a lot out of this, but it's still worth watching even if you're not. 8/10 Edited July 20, 2022 by LimeGreenLegend 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beez 5,091 Posted July 22, 2022 Share Posted July 22, 2022 @LimeGreenLegendwhat happened to the Bond films? I started watching them in order inspired by your reviews. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,175 Posted July 22, 2022 Share Posted July 22, 2022 2 hours ago, Beez said: @LimeGreenLegendwhat happened to the Bond films? I started watching them in order inspired by your reviews. They took the old ones off of Amazon Prime 😂 I'll be getting back to them soon though, just have to borrow them from the internet. How many have you got through so far? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beez 5,091 Posted July 23, 2022 Share Posted July 23, 2022 22 hours ago, LimeGreenLegend said: They took the old ones off of Amazon Prime 😂 I'll be getting back to them soon though, just have to borrow them from the internet. How many have you got through so far? Oh gotcha. They are all on the US Amazon Prime right now. I am at the Timothy Dalton era now and I’m losing interest. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,175 Posted July 26, 2022 Share Posted July 26, 2022 What I Watched This Week #29 (July 16-22) Bottle Rocket dir. Wes Anderson/1994/14m Wes Anderson's first film is this short, which he would expand to feature length a couple of years later. It stars Owen and Luke Wilson as Dignan and Anthony, two friends who plan a robbery with their friend Bob (Robert Musgrave). What stands out here is how much this doesn't look like what we now expect from an Anderson film. I don't think I saw a single symmetrical shot, and the whole thing is in black and white! However, the character and the dialogue is still very Andersonian, very idiosyncratic with a real great pace to it, coupled with a fantastic rhythm in the editing. The Wilson brothers are great in the leads, with an understandably natural chemistry. This is a fun short and a solid start to a stellar career. 7/10 Doodlebug dir. Christopher Nolan/1997/3m In a grimy flat a crazed, sweaty man (Jeremy Theobald) is desperately trying to squash a bug. This early short from Christopher Nolan is the closest he has come to a horror film, and despite it's short length you can still tell that it's his. This comes from the mind-f*ck ending that he has become famous for, but sadly in this case it elicited nothing but laughter from me. Seriously, when you see the big twist at the end you can't help but laugh. This may be in large part to the very rudimentary special effects – it would be a few years before he got a decent budget – but it's also quite silly. I get the point he was trying to make, but still, watch it for yourself, it's only a couple of minutes long. 5/10 The Hearts of Age dir. Orson Welles, William Vance/1934/8m The first film directed (along with his schoolmate William Vance) by Orson Welles when he was just 19, this is a surreal silent short that is as obtuse as it is compelling. An old woman sits on a bell while a man in blackface pulls the rope for it, and a strange figure with a demonic face (played by Welles) stalks through the house. The bell tolls, the man in blackface hangs himself and the devil (?) plays the piano. While this may be pretentious with the sense that this is just Welles and his friends f*cking around with a film camera for me that's where the charm here comes from. And even in what is basically a student film (hence the pretentiousness), where he was mucking around, Welles's was still able to create some fantastic imagery. 7/10 Onibaba dir. Kaneto Shindo/1964/1h45m A mother and her daughter-in-law (Nobuko Otowa, Jitsuko Yoshimora) survive during a war in feudal Japan by killing weakened samurai who wander into the swamp where they live. After learning that her son has died in the war they are both upset, but the daughter-in-law starts an affair with his friend, the one who delivered the news. Wanting to end the affair, the mother uses a mask she took from a dead samurai to try and scare her daughter-in-law straight (I keep saying mother and daughter-in-law because the characters have no names). What's great about this film is the use of the environment as a character. The tall grass of the swamp, the wind that rushes through it and the hole in the ground where they dump the bodies are all integral to the film and are treated as such. This is also in some ways a war film, even though you don't see any battles. This is about the effects of war on everyday people. The mother and daughter-in-law aren't evil people, but circumstances have forced them to kill and rob in order to survive in a cruel world. I went into this knowing nothing, and was honestly expecting a horror film from the poster artwork, but what I got instead was a film about the horrors of war and the things that desperation and grief will force normal people to do. 8.5/10 Three Short Films by Daniels (Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert): Puppets 2011/3m My Best Friend's Wedding/My Best Friend's Sweating 2011/1m Pockets 2012/3m Diving back into the world of Daniels is always a treat, and these three shorts don't disappoint. Puppets see a couple talking about their relationship before it's revealed that they are puppets being controlled by the Daniels. They start arguing and it's revealed that these are both puppets being controlled by each other. The main point here is the Daniels's argument about what is happening, and what should happen, basically explaining the whole creative process. My Best Friend's Wedding/Sweating is the most basic of the three, but still strange and entertaining. Daniel Scheinert is a groom nervous on the day of his wedding. Kwan is his best man trying to calm him down. But the groom can't stop sweating, explosively so, and makes Kwan promise to tell his wife his vows. Pockets, my favourite of the three, sees a down on his luck guy try to rob someone in order to buy dinner for his girlfriend. Unfortunately for him, his target has magic pockets that act as portals to other pockets, and a brilliantly bizarre fight scene ensues. Like the rest of their work, these films are sold on a weird concept, but when you actually watch them you realise that that is just the bait, and they actually make really emotionally impactful films. Everything I've seen of theirs has been like that and I just can't get enough. Puppets 7/10 My Best Friend's Wedding/My Best Friend's Sweating 6/10 Pockets 8/10 Charade dir. Stanley Donen/1963/1h53m Charade is an Hitchcockian style thriller from Stanley Donen, director of the best musical ever made, Singin' in the Rain. It stars Audrey Hepburn as Regina Lampert who, after her husband's death, discovers he may not have been as law-abiding as she thought as she now has three hoods after her looking for a missing quarter of a million dollars. Thankfully the dashing Peter Joshua (Cary Grant) is there to help her, but can he really be trusted? This is a real fun film, Hitchcock with a lighter touch, with a lineage that clearly runs back to the screwball rom-coms of the 30s and 40s, of which Grant starred in some of the best like My Girl Friday and Bringing Up Baby. The chemistry he has with Hepburn is great, especially when they're antagonistic toward each other. Hepburn is always a class act, able to convey vulnerability or strength whenever it's needed. The plot does get a little convoluted, with Grant's character going through several identities, but for the most part it's very well constructed, if a little long. There's great support from Walter Matthau in a rare straight turn, and James Coburn as Tex, one of the hoods after the money. A thrilling little romp full of style and class. 8.5/10 Silent Movie dir. Mel Brooks/1976/1h27m After the one-two knockout combo of Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein Mel Brooks had carte blanche to make any film he wanted, and he wanted to make the first silent film in Hollywood for over forty years. The studio said no. He said, “what if I can get some of the biggest stars to be in it?” They said okay. Silent Movie stars Brooks as Mel Funn, film director. Funn has a dream, he wants to make the first silent film in Hollywood for over forty years. The studio said no. Funn said, “what if I can get some of the biggest stars to be in it?” They said okay. Is it life imitating art or art imitating life? Either way it's f*cking hilarious. Playing Funn's assistants are Marty Feldman as the self-proclaimed pervert Marty Eggs and Dom DeLuise is the constantly hungry Dom Bell, both comedy perfection. The big stars that Funn/Brooks managed to get include a wheelchair racing Paul Newman, a charmingly polite Liza Minnelli, Brooks's wife Anne Bancroft, James Caan who seems to be in the middle of filming a boxing movie, and best of all Burt Reynolds, who can't walk past a mirror without stopping to admire just how damn handsome he is (Burt Reynolds is damn handsome). Brooks himself has said that he'll do anything for a laugh, and that is fully evident here, not a second goes by without some sort of joke – much like a precursor to Airplane! And the like – but he always stays true to the style of classic silent comedies. I was chuckling throughout this film like an idling motorbike, a constant murmur of enjoyment. I have no idea why this isn't as talked about as Brooks's other films because this is up there with his best. *Disclaimer – Silent Movie is not a totally silent movie. It contains one single word of dialogue spoken by world famous mime Marcel Marceau. No refunds* 9.5/10 Lime's Film of the Week! Stay Hungry dir. Bob Rafelson/1976/1h42m Stay Hungry is a drama from a key voice in the New Hollywood film movement, Bob Rafelson, who recently passed away. It stars Jeff Bridges as Craig Blake, a rich but directionless person. He becomes part of a dodgy real estate scam which involves him buying a small gym for it to be later demolished. However, he becomes intrigued by the people who work there including Mary Tate (Sally Field) and the mysterious bodybuilder Joe Santo (Arnold Schwarzenegger), who we first see pumping iron in a cape and Batman style mask. His relationships with these people cause Blake to re-evaluate his life, leading to a great finale where, after a fight breaks out at the gym, a gaggle of bodybuilders from a nearby competition storm the streets to see what's going on, and then putting on an impromptu show for the delighted passers-by. I only watched this for Arnie to be honest, and even though I've seen an older film of his (Hercules in New York, 1970) you can't really compare that to this. Hercules was a cheap b-movie where all Arnie had to do was pose. But here, even though there is a lot of posing, he also has to actually act, and he's really good. There's a tender reality to him here that we've rarely seen since. For most of his career he's been just a personality, but in this you don't get any of that. My main issue is with the character of Blake. His development doesn't feel fully earned. At the end of the film you don't get any sense that he actually cares about bodybuilding or the gym, and maybe even the people he's met there, and he just does what he does to p*ss off his former business partners. Other than that this is a really good film, and one of the best performances of Arnie's career. 7.5/10 Rams dir. Grimur Hakonarson/2015/1h33m Gummi (Sigurdur Sigurjonsson) and Kiddi (Theodor Juliusson) are brothers. Both are sheep farmers, and they live and work on farms next door to each other. They haven't spoken in forty years. When a lethal disease is found in their valley, and the idea of having to slaughter their entire flocks looms large, maybe the brothers can reconcile to help each other through some tough times. Like with Onibaba I went into this with very wrong expectations. For some reason I thought this was a quirky comedy but instead it's an honest and sometimes brutal drama about loss. The two leads are great, you can really feel the gulf of all those years between them just from a look. The direction is great, making the most of the gorgeous setting but also not afraid to confront the ugly side of life. 7/10 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djw180 6,839 Posted July 31, 2022 Share Posted July 31, 2022 Vatel (2000) dir Roland Joffe Gerard Depardieu plays the title character, the chief steward on the opulent estate of a 17th century French aristocrat. His master has fallen on hard times so invites King Louis XIVth to spend a few days with him, hoping to impress him with the entertainment, food and hospitality that Vatel arranges. The King of course does not travel alone and arrives with a massive entourage of Dukes & Duchesses and various other hangers on, plus all their servants. It's enjoyable enough and visually very impressive, but didn't really get me that excited by the actual story; surprising given Tom Stoppard wrote it. The cast is very good. Julian Glover plays Vatel's master, Julian Sands the King, Tim Roth a scheming Marquis and Uma Thurman one the Queen's ladies in waiting who the King, The Marquis and eventually Vatel all want to sleep with. It does try a little to portray the massive gulf between the nobility, who could have anything and anyone they wanted, and the peasants who just have to do as their told, with a few people like Vatel in between the two classes. But mainly it's about Vatel, who is very, very good at his job, just getting on with it and calmly coping with all the unexpected mishaps that could have ruined his master's plans. There is no great drama until the very last scene and then it's confusing as to exactly what happens and why. At times it's quite light-hearted without actually being a comedy. So it just doesn't seem to know what sort of film it wants to be. For me, it may have been better if Tim Roth's character had a bigger role. He is very good when he does makes an appearance. Ennio Morricone wrote the original music, though a lot of the score is from actual 17th / 18th century composers. The main theme is one I have heard before and is good but not one of his more memorable ones. 6/10 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,175 Posted August 3, 2022 Share Posted August 3, 2022 What I Watched This Week #30 (July 23-29) Walkabout dir. Nicolas Roeg/1971/1h40m A teenage girl (Jenny Agutter) and her younger brother (Luc Roeg) are driven out into the Australian outback by their father who, after attempting to shoot them, kills himself. After wandering for a few days they come across an Aboriginal teenage boy (David Gulpilil) who is out on his ritual walkabout, where boys become men, and he helps them survive. This film is hauntingly beautiful with its depiction of the outback and the untamed wilderness, with a tone like that of Picnic at Hanging Rock. It's also fascinating thematically, with it being a coming-of-age/loss of innocence story as well as a back-to-nature story – the scene of the three of them bathing naked could have been from the dawn of man in its rejection of all modernity. I also loved the ending, with the now older Agutter (none of the three main characters have names, being credited as just Girl, White Boy and Black Boy) having a husband and family in normal suburbia, but she has flashbacks to her time in the outback, yearning for a simpler more natural life. I did have a small problem with the sexualisation of the Girl, especially in the scene where she bathes alone and naked, the camera lovingly lingering on her body. I checked and I'm pretty sure that Agutter was 18 at the time of filming, but she looks younger and maybe that scene could have been shorter. Like, I get the point that she is changing as a person and that's what the scene represents, but it could have been much shorter and still make the same point. Or maybe I'm just a prude. Nevertheless, this is a fantastic film and a worthy entry in the canon of great Australian films. 8.5/10 Lime's Film of the Week! For Your Eyes Only dir. John Glen/1981/2h7m Bond is back, at the behest of @Beez! This time Roger Moore's super agent has to find an encryption thing that was sunk along with a British spy boat. This is a real mixed bag of a Bond film. It starts with one of the worst openings in the series where Bond apparently kills off Blofeld, his greatest nemesis, in a really jokey manner. It has several other sequences that are played for laughs, like his fight against an entire ice hockey team, and the chase scene where Bond, on skis, is chased by a motorcycle on a bobsleigh run. The rest of the time it;s quite bland. The villain, Milos Columbo (Topol), is one of the worst in the series so far, right down there with Hugo Drax and Largo. This is better than Moonraker, with a theme song that I really like but doesn't fit the film, but not by much. This is also the first film where Moore's age starts to be really noticeable, particularly in any scenes with the Bond girls. A decent entry, but the series is starting to creak and could really use a shake up. 6/10 High Anxiety dir. Mel Brooks/1977/1h34m After spoofing musicals, westerns, horror films and silent comedies, Mel Brooks now has Hitchcock in his sights. High Anxiety is his loving tribute to the master of suspense in which he plays psychiatrist Dr. Richard Thorndyke, newly appointed at the Psycho-Neurotic Institute for the Very, Very, Nervous. Upon his arrival he notices that the doctors seem to be crazier than the patients, and that Dr. Montague and Nurse Diesel (Harvey Korman and Cloris Leachman) may be up to something, and I'm not talking about their kinky BDSM relationship. While not as good as his previous work, this is still a funny, silly, and well made film. Brooks is so funny that his talent as a director is often overlooked, so I'll highlight one example from this film. There is a scene where Korman and Leachman are discussing their sinister scheme, and the dialogue is pretty straight. Brooks shoots this from a low angle looking through a glass coffee table, a very Hitchcockian type of shot. However, the cameraman is frustrated by Korman and Leachman placing down cups, plates and saucers, forcing him to constantly move and reframe. The scene ends with Leachman asking Korman if he's tried the strudel and she slams down a huge baking tray, totally covering the shot. That is one of the funniest scenes that Brooks has ever filmed. While not as laugh-out-loud funny as Blazing Saddles, this is still a great film and well worth watching, but you will probably get more out of it if you're familiar with Hitchcock's more famous films. 7.5/10 Seven Rooms, Kitchen, Bathroom, for Sale dir. Agnes Varda/1984/28m (there is literally no video of this on the internet, not that I could find, so here's a short video of Varda talking about some of her favourite films) This short from Agnes Varda is a tour of a home, the title coming from the real estate listing. There is narration from the realtor as we float through the empty house, but is it empty? The history of the house is revealed in a dreamlike, surreal way, ghosts from the time it was a hospital, a family, fade in and out. There is no narrative here that I could see – but I am not a smart man – rather a melancholic feeling of forgotten history. You know that feeling when you try to remember your childhood home, or your first school, or your best friend's house, and you can't quite make out the geography of the building, that's what this film is. The most enigmatic Varda film I've seen so far. 7/10 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,175 Posted August 11, 2022 Share Posted August 11, 2022 What I Watched This Week #31 (July 30- August 5) Vincent dir. Tim Burton/1982/6m This early stop-motion short from Tim Burton is all about a morbid young boy who wants to be horror legend Vincent Price, and he indulges in macabre daydreams much to the annoyance of his mother. This is narrated in rhyming verse by Price himself, his incredibly distinctive voice suited perfectly to the twisted world of Burton – his last film appearance was in Edward Scissorhands. The style is instantly recognisable as Burton's, especially if you've seen his other animated works like The Corpse Bride and A Nightmare Before Christmas (which was directed by Henry Selick, but is very much Burton's film), but there are also hints of Beetlejuice and Ed Wood in here too. I really like his book of poetry, The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy, and this is just like one of those poems bought to life in the most pitch perfect way. 8.5/10 Xenogenesis dir. James Cameron/1978/12m A man and a woman are searching for a new planet where they can start a new civilisation. They find a giant abandoned space ship and he decides to investigate. He is then attacked by a giant cleaning robot. Just in time, the woman comes to his rescue in a giant spider like mech-suit. This is really impressive when you consider this was shot mostly in someone's living room. Most early shorts are very simple, especially when it comes to production design and effects, but here we see that Cameron has been pushing his limits since the very beginning. While it is obviously very cheap this still has a great look to it. There are sketches of what we would later see in The Terminator and Aliens – the design of the cleaner robot running on tracks like the tanks in the future war of the machines, and the ending of this is basically the ending of Aliens. I also really like the opening, which is narration over illustrations that reminded me of sci-fi book covers. His ambition may out reach his limits, but we can see from this that he has always had a clear vision. It's just a shame that the only copy of this I could find is a low quality VHS recording of it. 7.5/10 The Wicker Man dir. Robin Hardy/1973/1h34m Stoic Scottish policeman Neil Howie (Edward Woodward) flies off to the remote island of Summerisle in order to investigate the disappearance of a young girl. When there he finds the locals less than helpful in his investigation as they claim she never existed, and he, as a devout Christian, is horrified to find that the islanders are all pagans with bizarre and very s*xual rituals. They are all led by the mesmeric Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee), who can't wait to introduce Howie to The Wicker Man and bring about a more fruitful harvest the following year. This is the height of folk-horror, which has seen a resurgence lately with films like The Witch and Midsommer, but The Wicker Man is the blueprint and the bar. Everything about this film – the production design, costuming, photography and music – is perfectly suited to constantly ratchet up the unease to unbearable levels. The way Howie is stymied at every turn by a friendly face is incredibly frustrating, but the more he confronts them the more they smile and act politely. Woodward gives an incredible performance here, and you can really feel the conflict between his religious side and the temptations of this island in one particular scene, this fight totally being told in his expressions and movements. And then there is his iconic reaction to meeting The Wicker Man - “Oh God! Oh Jesus Christ!” which just sends shudders down my spine every time I see it. That whole ending is just a total spectacle of beautiful barbarity, maybe one of the best endings in horror history. A high point in British horror which very few films in the fifty years since its release has matched. 9.5/10 Lime's Film of the Week! The Twelve Chairs dir. Mel Brooks/1970/1h34m After The Producers, Mel Brooks made what is probably his least well known film, an adaptation of a Russian novel and a satire on communism, The Twelve Chairs. It stars Ron Moody as Vorobyaninov, an aristocrat fallen on hard times since the revolution. He discovers that there is a fortune of his family's jewels sewn into the seat of one of a dozen identical dinner chairs that they used to own, whereabouts currently unknown. And so his quest begins, but “helping” him on his quest is the smooth talking con man Ostap (Frank Langella). The two are racing a third party who wants the jewels, sleazy priest Father Fyodor (Dom DeLuise). While not a slapstick laugh riot this is still a funny film, but the laughs come mostly from the ridiculous lengths these people will go to for a bit of money rather than from gags. DeLuise gives the broadest performance here, but it is still restrained compared to his work in Silent Movie and other Brooks films. What stands out to me most about this film is the ending, which is the most depressing one in Brooks's filmography. We see a man who has been all about nobility and pride forced to writhe about on the street pretending to be disabled in order to scrabble together a few pennies. A very different Mel Brooks film, but one that is still very good and well worth watching. 8/10 Man with a Movie Camera dir. Dziga Vertov/1929/1h8m This is not a film, it is an experiment. Vertov tells us this in a title card at the start of Man with a Movie Camera, and it feels like an understatement. This feels like it invented film technique and modern movie-making. This is a montage film that literally tries to cover every aspect of life, from birth to death and across all social spectrums, and it succeeds. The editing in this film is breathtaking, the constant match-cuts just full of the joy of experimentation. This is a document of a man having fun with a pretty new medium and that comes through in every frame. This is a hard film to talk about because I just don't have the language to convey what I feel. This feels like the start. Like, there was a time before this film, and a time after it. I have heard about this film for years, every great director of the last seventy years saying how influential it is, and you can tell that right from the start. This is film history and film future. 9.5/10 Broomshakalaka dir. DANIELS (Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert)/2013/11m This short film from the always inventive DANIELS is a mock infomercial where host Denny Boffa (Michael McCafferty) is desperately trying to sell the Broomshakalaka, an all purpose broom that can perform every household task. After things go violently wrong Boffa's true intentions are revealed in that selling enough of these broomshakalakas can bring someone back to life. What is great about DANIELS is their ability to follow through with a ridiculous idea to the most absurd conclusion, and that is in full effect here. What lets this down slightly is how closely they follow the way actual infomercials are filmed. At the start it helps in selling the idea that this is a real product, but when things got crazy I was expecting the film to become more stylised, which it doesn't. But it's still a very entertaining and strange film from two of my favourite modern filmmakers. 7/10 Nadja in Paris dir. Eric Rohmer/1964/13m A student at Paris's Cite Universitaire takes us on a tour of her campus, the Sorbonne, and the streets of the city while her narration talks about her thesis on Proust. This is like an arthouse tourist film. It looks gorgeous, but I didn't really connect with what Nadja was saying. What's best about this film is just the mood and the tone of the piece. It's very cool but quite shallow. It's decent but I wouldn't really recommend it, and I doubt I'll be watching it again. 6/10 Brian and Charles dir. Jim Archer/2017/13m Before it was a feature film (which I really enjoyed) Brian and Charles was a short film. Brian (David Earl) is a lonely farmer who builds a robot, Charles (Chris Hayward), for companionship. What makes this different from the feature is that it only stars the two title characters, so the whole focus is on their relationship. There are times in this where it feels like Brian is caring for a parent sick with dementia, there's a tenderness there that's very gentle and sad. The conflict here feels forced just for narrative purposes, but apart from that this is a very idiosyncratic, very British short. 7/10 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djw180 6,839 Posted August 13, 2022 Share Posted August 13, 2022 Chariot (2022) dir Adam Sigal This is an odd, and for me, very confusing film. It's about reincarnation. Although for most of the film you would only know that because each section starts with an on-screen title, such as “The Reincarnation Station – part 1” at the very beginning. If it had not been for those I would not have got what it was supposed to be about until towards the end when a character starts to explain but then just gives up saying he can't explain properly. Ignoring the section titles it's about a young man, Harrison (Thomas Man, average sort of performance), who goes to see a doctor (John Malkiovicz – good, but has been better than this) to try and treat a sleep problem. Harrison has a recurring dream that he always wakes up in at the exact same point after a minute or so. He rents an apartment in the unnamed city where the doctor practices and there he meets Maria (Rosa Salazar, OK kind of performance), they start seeing a lot of each other and she tries to cure his sleep problem too by getting him to take acid. There's other odd characters living in the same block who's presence in the film did not make sense to me. The opening and final scenes do not seem related to the rest of the story at all, to me. Why is it called Chariot? It does have the feel of a David Lynch film at times, but no where near as good. The biggest similarity for me is to Mulholland Drive, in that your not quite sure if the story was meant to all be in Harrison's mind or did it actually happen to him. Then at the end your left thinking – WTF happened there? it made no sense! But unlike Mullholland drive your not left wanting to re-watch to find out what you missed first time to make sense of it because it isn't good enough to want to re-watch. 4 / 10 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,175 Posted August 19, 2022 Share Posted August 19, 2022 What I Watched This Week #32 (August 6 – 12) Notorious dir. Alfred Hitchcock/1946/1h43m Notorious is a thriller from the master of suspense, Hitchcock, starring Ingrid Bergman as Alicia Huberman, daughter of a n*zi war criminal who is recruited by Cary Grant's U.S government agent, T.R. Devlin, as a honeypot to trap other n*zis hiding out in Brazil. The only problem is that they are falling in love but are helpless to do anything about it. This is different from a lot of Hitchcock's other films in that the focus is mostly on the characters here, and the mechanics of the plot are a secondary thought. He takes great care to build their relationship in such a way that they – and we – are left unsatisfied, right up until the final scene. This final scene is also one of the coldest in Hitchcock's filmography as the n*zi whom Alicia has had to marry, Alexander Sebastian (Claude Rains), is left to face his fate. This isn't top-tier Hitchcock, but is still very good. As expected it's masterly shot, and the two lead performances from Bergman and Grant are fantastic. This is a film that builds all the way to the finale, and few could do it as well as the master. 8/10 Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe dir. John Rice, Albert Calleros/2022/1h26m After being sent to space camp in 1998, Beavis and Butt-Head end up falling into a black hole, being spit out instantly and also in the far flung future of 2022. They become targets of several government agencies as well as being tasked with saving the multiverse (of course) by alternate, smarter versions of themselves. This was a bit of a let down as someone who really like Beavis and Butt-Head, and their previous film, Do America. While not much has changed – they're still absolute morons whose only goal is to get laid – this just feels flat and uninspired. The animation also looks rushed in places. It looks like an episode of the television show in comparison to Do America. I still had a few laughs at this, but the time between them was too long. Worth watching if you're a fan of Beavis and Butt-Head, otherwise I wouldn't bother. 6/10 Star Trek: First Contact dir. Jonathan Frakes/1996/1h51m After the Borg travel back in time and conquer Earth in the past, Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and the crew of the Enterprise follow them to try and undo the damage. To that end, they run into the inventor of the warp engine, Dr. Zephram Cochrane (James Cromwell), who is less impressive than they imagined, and help him with his inaugural flight, the one which catches the attention of passing Vulcans and leads to humanity's first contact with an alien race. The first film featuring the crew of the Next Generation was overshadowed somewhat by the presence of Kirk, so this is really their first chance to shine on their own and it results in one of the most fun, adventurous romps in the series. It helps that I'm a big fan of the Borg, the best villain in the history of the series in my opinion, and they are used really well here. They are used sparingly, and when you do see them they are always presented as a threat. Some of their scenes could even be described as being body-horror. A great entry in the series, almost up there with the very best. 8/10 Harold and Maude dir. Hal Ashby/1971/1h31m Bud Cort is Harold, a clinically depressed young man whose main interests are attending funerals and staging mock suicide attempts for his uninterested mother. Ruth Gordon is seventy-nine year old Maude who has a real lust for life and a penchant for stealing cars. When they meet at a funeral they become friends, and soon fall in love. This film, from Hal Ashby – who made the excellent Peter Sellers vehicle Being There – is one of those films that leaves you feeling good at being alive, and makes you look at the world differently, despite its devastating ending. This is also an incredibly funny film, with a real black streak of humour running throughout. Cat Stevens wrote a beautiful soundtrack for this film, which is incorporated into the film in a really touching scene where Maude encourages Harold to sing out loud. The two lead performances are perfect, particularly Gordon who just lights up the screen whenever she appears, and they have amazing chemistry together, you totally believe that they are in love despite, or maybe because of, all of the differences between them. The best rom-com I've ever seen. 10/10 Lime's Film of the Week! Apocalypse Now: Final Cut dir. Francis Ford Coppola/1979/3h2m Based on Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness, this is Coppola's sprawling Vietnam war epic which stars Martin Sheen as Captain Willard, sent on a mission to head deep into the jungle to find and kill a rouge US colonel who has gone native, the enigmatic Kurtz (Marlon Brando). While this does have a simple narrative, Coppola presents this film instead as a series of encounters, each one more deranged and surreal than the last, so that when we finally meet Brando's Kurtz we're not sure what's reality and what's a nightmare. He has managed to capture not only the madness of the war, but more importantly “the horror, the horror”. And when you start with Sheen drunk off his *ss in a hotel room, totally destroying it, slicing his hand open by punching a mirror, you know things are gonna get really freaky. I won't go over all of the iconic scenes and performances in this film, I'm sure you know them all, but I will single out a few. Robert Duvall as the surfing obsessed Col. Kilgore, “Charlie don't surf”. Dennis Hopper as the maniacal acolyte of Kurtz, and of course, the main man, Brando, who didn't read the script, the novel it was based on, and insisted on being shot in mostly shadow, and he still gives an incredibly hypnotic performance. After being built up for nearly three hours the appearance of Kurtz had a lot of hype to live up to, and Brando nails it. I watched the fairly recent Final Cut, overseen by Coppola himself, and it flows a lot better than the bloated Redux version. A brutal, grotesque spectacle, just like the war it depicts. 9.5/10 The Ladykillers dir. Alexander Mackendrick/1955/1h31m Ealing Studios are a legendary British film studio who are known for their run of incredible comedies from the 40s and 50s – Passport to Pimlico, Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Lavender Hill Mob – but the jewel in their crown is The Ladykillers. Alec Guiness stars as Professor Marcus, leader of a ruthless gang of thieves, who has a fool=proof plan to pull off the perfect heist. The final piece of the puzzle is a base of operations close to the caper. To this end, he rents out a couple of rooms being let by a sweet little old lady, Mrs. Wilberforce (Katie Johnson), but he doesn't realise just how much of a problem she, and her parrots, are going to be. If you've not seen this I think you'd be surprised at how dark this film is, it's a distinctly British flavour of black comedy, very different from the American black humour of Harold and Maude. The finale, where several bodies need to be disposed of off of a railway bridge, is fantastic slapstick, especially the fate of the Professor. Guiness is perfect as the slimy career criminal, and his gang are packed with some great support, including Herbet Lom as the sinister Mr. Harvey, and a young Peter Sellers as the simple but sweet Mr. Robinson. Carry On fans will also appreciate an appearance from Frankie Howard as a put upon barrow boy. A timeless classic of British comedy, just try to ignore the pretty bad Coen Brothers remake. 9.5/10 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,175 Posted August 21, 2022 Share Posted August 21, 2022 What I Watched This Week #33 (August 13 – 19) The Producers dir. Mel Brooks/1967/1h28m It's Springtime for Hitler in the debut feature film from Mel Brooks. Zero Mostel stars as Max Bialystock, a sleazy failure of a Broadway producer. When his new accountant, Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder) realises that you can make more money from a flop than from a hit, they set out to find the worst play ever written. Enter Kenneth Mars as Franz Liebkind, a n*zi who has written a love letter to Hitler. They assemble an awful director and a terrible cast, but never figured that the audiences would take it as a comedy and love it. This is my favourite Brooks film – perhaps my love for musicals helps that – but I really think that it's also his best. The script is tight, there's not a wasted moment here, and every role is perfectly cast. Mostel is the epitome of the loveable sleaze-ball, you can see the cogs in his head turning as he comes up with one scheme after another, and Wilder is hilarious as the nervy and hysterical (both meanings are appropriate) Bloom. His breakdown at the start of the film is pure comedy from start to finish, “I'm in pain! And I'm hysterical! And I'm WET!”. The supporting cast is excellent all round, Christopher Hewett and Andreas Voutsinas as the director Roger De Bris and his “assistant”, the impeccably made-up Carmen Ghia are a hoot, as is the actor they cast as Hitler, Lorenzo St DuBois (d*ck Shawn), an acid soaked hippie who sings about love power. Brooks set out his stall early with this one, cementing his insane parodic tendencies from the off. 9/10 Moby d*ck dir. John Huston/1956/1h56m John Huston directs this adaptation of Melville's epic classic of obsession, revenge, and the eternal fight between man and nature. It stars Gregory Peck as Ahab, the grimly determined captain of the whaling ship Pequod, who has only one target, the great white whale Moby d*ck, who took his leg some years before. He will hunt this beast to the ends of the Earth, and gladly give his life to do so, and he has some badass final words ready - “from hell's heart I stab at thee! For hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee!”. The story is told from the perspective of Ishmael (Richard Baseheart), a new recruit aboard the Pequod, and relies a bit heavily on narration, but that's not really a problem for me because it is so well written – taken practically verbatim from the book. The hunt scenes are excellently directed, full of energy and a real sense of danger. The sense of scale is also really well done, with some great model work, particularly in the climactic battle with the white whale. The best thing about this film though is the lead performance from Peck, the best of his career in my opinion. He is a man who is just barely in control of his anger, letting it slip occasionally, but always managing to rein it in. You can tell just from looking at him that he would sacrifice every last one of his men to get at that whale. Orson Welles has a small role as Father Mapple, giving a gripping sermon on Jonah and the Whale before the Pequod sets sail. Baseheart is good as Ishmael, but he kind of falls out of view about halfway through, and the film becomes more about Ahab and his first mate, Starbuck (Leo Genn), a much saner fellow – though that also happens in the book, so I can't complain too much. This film also omits my favourite chapter from the book, in which we get an incredibly detailed account of how to turn a whale's f*reskin into an apron. Very useful information. But this is still a rip roaring adventure that also speaks to the dark nature of mankind, and is a worthy adaptation of a literary classic. 9/10 The Trial dir. Orson Welles/1962/1h58m Josef K (Anthony Perkins) wakes up one day to find a couple of policemen in his room. They tell him he is under arrest, but don't tell him what for. They also don't take him into custody, leaving him in a state of confused paranoia. This confusion doesn't abate, as this film is purposely made to be obtuse, like a fever dream, or nightmare. There's a great style to this film, like a dystopian, grey Orwellian future of constant surveillance. It reminded me a lot of Godard's Alphaville, a sci-fi film without the sci-fi. Perkins is great as the innocent man desperately trying to prove his innocence, despite not knowing what it is he's supposed to have done. Welles also acts in the film as well as directing it, playing Josef's lawyer, and as always he dominates every scene he's in. A totally confusing film in all of the best ways. It's best not to try and follow the plot and just absorb the mood and the gorgeous visuals – the design of the office, a huge room full of row after row of desks has been copied so many times since. This is what happens when you give a simple noir thriller and give it to a pure artist. Not my favourite Welles, but still an excellent film. 8.5/10 The Arbor dir. Clio Barnard/2010/1h34m The Arbor is a biopic/documentary about Bradford born playwright Andrea Dunbar, author of works like The Arbor and Rita, Sue and Bob Too. This film has a totally unique style, it is filmed on the Bradford council estate where Dunbar lived, with residents crowded around watching the cast act out scenes from her very autobiographical plays, and a lot of the time the actors are lip syncing to audio of the actual people being interviewed. This also focuses a lot on her daughters, particularly Lorraine (Manjinder Virk), a mixed race girl who always felt less loved than her white siblings. Like her mother, Lorraine fell into addiction which leads to real tragic consequences. Dunbar died at 29 an alcoholic and it looked like Lorraine was going down the same road. This is an unflinchingly brutal portrayal of a troubled genius told with real style and honesty. I've not seen a biopic like this before, and highly recommend it. 9.5/10 Lime's Film of the Week! Possum dir. Matthew Holness/2018/1h25m See the bag? It opens wider. What's inside it, man or spider? Possum is a relentlessly grim horror film from Matthew Holness – Garth Marenghi himself! Sean Harris plays Philip, returning to his childhood home after losing his job as a puppeteer for traumatising children with his puppet, Possum – a giant arachnid creature with a creepy dolls head, pure nightmare fuel. He attempts to destroy or abandon Possum, but it always comes back to him. Staying with him is his uncle Maurice (Alun Armstrong), a vile old man who constantly belittles and mocks Philip. Like I said, this is a grim film. There is a subplot about missing children, and the clues we are fed about Philip's past just paint an awful picture of abuse and neglect. I don't get really creeped out at horror films, but this got to me. Not only is the design of the creature just perfect, but the tone and the themes of this film are just, well, grim. There's no other word for it. The last five minutes of this film are just hard to watch as Philip is reduced to the state of a scared little boy being abused again. If you're in a bad mood probably don't watch this, otherwise you need to check this out, a truly disturbing and original horror film, I'd love your opinion on this one @Con, I think you'd dig it man. It just needed more Dean Learner. 9/10 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djw180 6,839 Posted August 28, 2022 Share Posted August 28, 2022 (edited) The Legend of 1900 (1998) dir Giuseppe Tornatore This is the third feature film I've seen by this director and it is in a similar sentimental style to his others with a great Ennio Morricone score that suites it well. It stars Tim Roth as '1900'. Abandoned at birth on a trans-Atlantic liner in 1900 he is adopted by one of the stokers who names him after the year. With no nationality he never leaves the ship. Even when eventually he does get the paper work to allow him to leave, he decides to stay. The story is told many years later by Max (Pruitt Taylor Vince), a trumpeter who was in the ship's band. He joined the ship in the 1920s where he became friends with 1900 who had turned out to be a brilliant pianist. 1900 can play any style of music, but mainly he plays jazz. He improvises by watching the passengers and just using them as inspiration. Max tells the story of 1900 first to a music shop keeper (Peter Vaughan) and then to the people decommissioning and demolishing the now well outdated ship in the late 1940s. Given who the main character is, the film's music is very important. For me it's not one of Ennio Morricone's very best, but still very good. There are a couple of notable musical scenes. One where a leading jazz pianist boards the ship and challenges 1900 to a jazz battle, to see who can play the most outrageous music. Then later on a music company want to record 1900 playing and he improvises whilst watching a young women he is clearly falling in love with. Tim Roth was not actually playing the piano of course, but they do a good job of making it look like he was. It's generally well made and they clearly found an authentic looking 1900s ocean liner from somewhere, because I can't believe they would have built one just for the film. It's let down a bit by some of the support acting. Pruitt Taylor Vince is not that good on his own towards the start of the film, but is OK in scenes with Tim Roth who is excellent. 7/10 Edited August 28, 2022 by djw180 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,175 Posted August 31, 2022 Share Posted August 31, 2022 What I Watched This Week #34 (August 20 – 26) Robin Hood dir. Wolfgang Reitherman/1973/1h23m Disney's version of the Robin Hood legend was a big favourite of mine when I was a child and I wanted to see if it holds up to my memories of it. Rather than a full narrative, this seems more like a series of sketches, small parts of the full story. The main through line is Robin's (Brian Bedford) attempts to rescue Maid Marian (Monica Evans) from the clutches of the evil Prince John (Peter Ustinov). What really stands out about this film is the tone – there's a real pervading sense of melancholy that runs through the whole film, and a lot of Disney's output in the wake of Walt's death, very much like The Rescuers (another childhood favourite of mine). The folk soundtrack really suits this mood, particularly the song Not in Nottingham, which has been stuck in my head all week. The voice acting is solid all round with some big standouts like Bedford's classically heroic Robin and Ustinov's whimpering, weedy Prince who constantly cries out for his mummy. And while I liked it, I found it strange that Little John is a bear that looks exactly like Baloo from The Jungle Book and is voiced by Phil Harris, the same actor who played Baloo. But who's gonna really complain about more Baloo? Not me. 8/10 Murder on the Orient Express dir. Sidney Lumet/1974/2h8m This adaptation of the most famous murder-mystery story ever written stars Albert Finney as the legendary Belgian detective Hercule Poirot who is travelling on the famous train of the title when one of his fellow passengers, Edward Ratchett (Richard Widmark), is murdered in the middle of the night, and everyone is a suspect. There's a real lavishness to this film that comes not only from the setting, but also from the star studded cast which includes names like Lauren Bacall, John Gielgud, Ingrid Bergman, and Sean Connery. Having read the novel, and seen the recent Kenneth Branagh version, there were no surprises in the story for me, but it's a testament to not only how good of a story it is, but also how well it has been adapted here, that I was still gripped by the murder and subsequent investigations. Finney is captivating as Poirot, his chin tucked to his chest rendering him neckless, taking real delight in the mystery and acting every part the “strange little man” that Agatha Christie described to a tee. The Branagh version is glossier than this, but this one has more class. If you don't know the end to this story then I guarantee that you won't work it out before Poirot lays it all out in the brilliant parlour scene where he reveals the murderer (it wasn't the butler). 8.5/10 Chaplin dir. Richard Attenborough/1992/2h23m Robert Downey Jr. stars in the title role in this biopic of the world's first film star, Charlie Chaplin. This film tells his whole life story, from his Dickensian childhood in Victorian London, his time on the vaudeville stage, his move to America and his pretty instant stardom, right through his exile and death in the 1970s, and it has an interesting framing device. We keep cutting back to the elderly Chaplin as he goes over the manuscript for his autobiography with his editor (a fictional character invented for the film), George Hayden (Anthony Hopkins). In this way not only does the narration not feel like an easy way to get out some exposition, but the character of Hayden at times challenges Chaplin, saying that he's trying to avoid certain subjects. This also applies to the film itself, which doesn't shy away from showing the more negative aspects of Chaplin, particularly when it comes to his relationships, several of which were with questionably young women. Downey Jr. has never been better than here, totally capturing the physicality of Chaplin, as well as his vulnerabilities. At times it feels like this film skips over big moments, as well as the making of some of his most famous films like The Great Dictator. But this is about the man, not his work, and in that respect I think this is one of the best biopics ever made. I first saw this when I was a kid, before I had seen any Chaplin films, and I loved it. Watching it now, with a knowledge of, and appreciation for, his films, I love it even more. 9/10 Waltz with Bashir dir. Ari Folman/2008/1h30m Directed by a former member of the Israel Defence Force, Ari Folman, Waltz with Bashir is an animated documentary where he explores his PTSD and his memory loss concerning a massacre in Beirut. The use of animation allows this documentary more leeway creatively when it comes to depicting actual events, being able to convey emotions and states of mind. My problem with this film is that it feels a lot like the director trying to elicit sympathy despite being on the side of the aggressors in this conflict, and it does seem like he downplays his part in the massacres that the IDF committed in Beirut. I'm not saying that he's a bad person, or can't feel bad or that he isn't dealing with serious issues thanks to the conflict, but there's a real big sense of him saying “what about me?” I like the animation style, thick black lines and a colour palette that switches between dirty yellow and dull grey, but the ending was a total gut punch. The last few minutes is actual footage of the aftermath of one of these massacres. We first see women in the streets crying and wailing, then corpses, then finally a dead child buried almost up to her head in the rubble of a bombed out building. It really emphasised that even though the film we had just watched was a cartoon, these things are very real. A film that left me with a lot of polarising feelings. 7/10 Octop*ssy dir. John Glen/1983/2h11m A British agent is found dead dressed as a clown and holding a Faberge egg, so MI6 send their best man to investigate. What Moore's Bond finds, in this penultimate appearance for the actor in this series, is an all-female smuggling ring led by a woman called Octop*ssy (Maud Adams) with links to the rogue Russian General Orlov (Steven Berkoff) who wants to start WW3. I had no memory of this film, so this was a practically a first watch for me, and found it to be a real mixed bag. There are great moments in this film, but for a lot of the run time it's kinda bland. A lot of the first half of this film is set in India, a first for the series, and makes it feel fresh after being in Jamaica and the snowy Alps for so many instalments. Moore's performance is good here, and despite still looking too old for the role he feels looser and like he's having more fun with it – the final act where he has to dress as a clown to infiltrate a circus is very silly but very fun. A decent entry in the series that, while being far from the best that Bond's given us, is also far from the worst. It could do with losing about twenty minutes though. 6/10 Mad God dir. Phil Tippett/2021/1h23m Mad God is a labour of love from Phil Tippett, director of Starship Troopers 2, who is best known as a visual effects genius who won an Oscar for his work on a little known monster movie called Jurassic Park. This film, thirty years in the making, is (mostly) animated using stop-motion. We follow a figure in a gas mask as he is lowered into what seems like hell on a mission to plant a bomb for some reason. Not having any dialogue we never know why he's doing it. But this is about more than plot, this film is a visual feast of grotesque, slimy, nightmarish landscapes populated by the most imaginatively disgusting creatures. This film is Jim Henson in Dante's Inferno; Wallace and Gromit in Salo. This is a film that makes you feel like you need a shower after watching it. There's one scene in particular that left me nauseous, a surgery scene where the sound design left me close to vomiting. This is a hell of a trip, and I can't really say much more about it than you should watch it, a brilliantly disturbing piece of animation that I'm sure will become a cult classic. 9/10 Lime's Film of the Week! Doubt dir. John Patrick Shanley/2008/1h44m In the 1960s Amy Adams is Sister James, an innocent teacher at a Catholic school who has suspicions about the very close relationships that Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) has with some of the children. She takes this concern to the headmistress of the school, the stern and steely Sister Beauvier (Meryl Streep), who starts her investigations. This film, adapted by Shanley from his own play, is a tour de force of acting. You can feel the theatrical roots of this film from how it is structured around several confrontations between Flynn and Beauvier. The entire film could have been Hoffman and Streep in her office arguing back and forth and it would be brilliant. The title of the film is key here, as we are never presented with concrete evidence as to Flynn's guilt or innocence, and Hoffman's performance plays to this ambiguity perfectly. At times he seems the model of the perfect priest, and other times he feels like the manipulative monster that Streep believes him to be. Streep is, needless to say, fantastic, especially in the very last scene where Adams confronts her about her actions. This is a very heavy film a about a very serious subject, but there are also some moments of humour – when a boy at the school is sent to Streep's office because he was talking in class she says “so go back and shut up”. If you want to see three incredible performances from three brilliant actors – Adams is no slouch here and totally keeps up with Streep and Hoffman – then you need to watch this, of that I have no doubt. 9/10 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djw180 6,839 Posted September 5, 2022 Share Posted September 5, 2022 (edited) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) dir Michael Gondry One of my all time favourite films. It's a a brilliantly original, Oscar winning, script from the mind of Charlie Kaufman. Jim Carey (in none-zany acting mode) plays New Yorker Joel Barish. He awakes on Valentines Day 2004, clearly feeling something is not quite right. He sets off to work and on a whim decides to call in sick and travel to Montauk (beach resort on the end of Long Island). There he meets Clemantine Krucynski (Kate Winslet) and they clearly hit it off, but both have the feeling they have met before. They have, they just don't remember it, at first. It's a romantic comedy, but not like most films that get described as this, which often seems to be a default description for a film that can't be classed as anything else. It's not too romantic and it's certainly not like Jim Carey's usual comedies. It's just a not-that-serious story about two people who don't know they should be in love. It can be described as sci-fi, but as a scientist I would say it doesn't have much in the way of actual science, to me it's more like a modern fantasy. Most of the film takes place in Joel's subconscious the night before he wakes at the start of the film. He is willingly undergoing a medical procedure to erase memories of Clementine that takes place in his own home while he is asleep. But after it has started he begins to dream. Aware of the situation but unable to wake up, he changes his mind and starts to try and remember Clementine. He imagines that he is with her in various places where they have met before and some where they have not. It gets very surreal (if you forget it is in his subconscious) and is very well directed in scenes such as where buildings they are in start to disintegrate as Joel's world almost literally collapses around him. The cast is great. Jim Carey is perfect as Joel and is at times like a lost, bewildered puppy. Kate Winslet is great, I think this is one of her best performances. The rest of cast includes Tom Wilkinson as the doctor who runs the clinic carrying out Joel's procedure, Kirsten Dunst as his receptionist with Mark Ruffolo and Elijah Wood as the two technicians performing the procedure. It has some great music as well. 10/10 Edited September 5, 2022 by djw180 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,175 Posted September 9, 2022 Share Posted September 9, 2022 What I Watched This Week #35 (August 27 – Sep 2) As Above, So Below dir. Sarah Francis/2020/1h10m As Above, So Below is a documentary about the moon, but rather than dealing with facts and missions to the moon this is about the emotional connection and resonance it has with us down here on Earth. Shot in gorgeous black and white that turns the film into a palette of greys - like the moon itself - this is more like a visual poem than anything else. The relationship between the moon and the Earth is represented in a few clever ways, people line up to have a go on a swing set, their back and forward movements like the ebb of the tide, which is controlled by the moon. This is also shot in a flat, empty landscape, again very lunar like. Deliberately slow paced and meditative, this won't be everyone's cup of tea, but if you give it a chance you'll find a hypnotic ode to that ever watchful body in the sky. 8/10 Death on the Nile dir. Kenneth Branagh/2022/2h7m Branagh puts on the legendary moustache of Hercule Poirot for a second time in this follow up to Murder on the Orient Express. This time he's stumbled upon the honeymoon of Linnet Ridgeway (Gal Gadot) and Simon Doyle (Armie Hammer) as they cruise the Nile on a luxury steamboat, but of course he can't relax for very long when the blushing bride turns up dead. Like Orient Express, this is a very glossy film, the use of CGI backdrops – which are very noticeable – give it a kind of unreality that I don't think is intentional, but I didn't totally hate like a lot of other reviews I've read. This is an Agatha Christie story that I wasn't familiar with, so I was guessing along with the characters in the film as to who it was, and I have to say I'm kind of disappointed with the reveal. It's literally the most obvious answer. There are attempts at making it look like several of the other characters, but they are pretty weak and unconvincing. What carries this film is the cast and their performances, with an exception that I'll get to. Branagh is having a blast as Poirot and it's always fun watching him on screen. British comedy duo Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders (if you want a laugh watch their film parodies – their version of Star Wars The Phantom Menace is hilarious) play a rich heiress and her nurse and Russell Brand, someone who I usually can't stand, gives a great performance as Dr. Windlesham. Sadly, since she's one of the leads, Gadot is pretty bad. I just don't believe a single thing she says and she's totally wooden, having no chemistry with Hammer. There's also a totally unnecessary prologue with a young Poirot that is literally the origin story of his moustache. A fun little murder mystery, but not as good as the previous film. 7/10 Kind Hearts and Coronets dir. Robert Hamer/1949/1h44m When his mother - who was disowned by her rich family for marrying a commoner - dies, Louis Mazzini D'Ascoyne (Dennis Price) determines to kill the remaining members of his family in order to avenge her and claim his birth right. This is another comedy from Ealing studios, so I was expecting greatness, and I almost got it. My main problem, pretty much my only problem, is with Price's performance in the lead. He's very cold and unlikeable, and even though I agreed with him, I was never fully behind him. Thankfully, the rest of the film is on point. The script is incredibly dark, the comedy here even blacker than in The Ladykillers, and it's fantastically shot. The main attraction here though is Alec Guinness, the MVP for Ealing studio by a long shot. He does an Eddie Murphy here and plays every member of the D'Ascoyne family on Louis's hitlist, all eight of them! And every one of them is distinct, I'm just sad we didn't get more of Lady Agatha, who was shot down in her hot air balloon. There is a moment late on where we get the original racist lyrics of the eenie meenie rhyme, but apart from that this has aged really well. The Ladykillers is still my favourite Ealing film (and it doesn't have a single N-Bomb), but if you want a dark comedy (I know you like those @omarcomin71😉) then you should check this out, if only for Guinness's performance(s). 8.5/10 Nope dir. Jordan Peele/2022/2h10m Nope is the latest film from Jordan Peele, teaming back up with Daniel Kaluuya who plays OJ Haywood, a rancher who trains horses for movies. He took over from his father Otis (a sadly under-used Keith David) after he was killed by a coin falling from the sky. Things take a turn for the creepy when he and his sister Emerald (Keke Palmer) notice that something is hiding in the clouds. This is Peele in Spielberg mode, with this being like a cross between Jaws and Close Encounters. There's also an interesting blend of genres here, with this being a sci-fi horror film that turns into a western near the end, with Kaluuya and the gang having to defend his ranch against an aggressive outsider. There's also a great exploration of spectacle and exploitation here that gives the film its meat. The whole film is a comment on how we can't look away even if it'll kill us, like how we all slow down in our cars if we see an accident, we all just want to see. The most interesting character for me is Steven Yuen's Ricky Park, a former child actor who starred in a show with a monkey who went mad. As an adult he runs a western themed park where the star attraction is something to behold. His motivations and his actions cover all of the themes of this film perfectly and I wish he was the focus of the film, not that Kaluuya gives a bad performance, but his character is kind of annoying. Visually this is stunning, with a great sequence near the end that uses those wacky waving inflatable tube men like the barrels in Jaws. The ending kind of peters out a bit, but it doesn't really detract from the film. This isn't as good as Get Out, but to me it's better than Us. Peele is on a great run here and I can't wait to see what he does next. 8.5/10 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs dir. David Hand/1937/1h23m Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is the first feature length film from Disney, and arguably the most important animated film ever made. It stars Adriana Caselotti as the titular princess, forced into hiding after her wicked stepmother (Lucille La Verne) tried to kill her for being more beautiful than she. There she finds sanctuary with a group of loveable mining dwarfs. This film set the bar and it set it high. From the start I was blown away by the quality of the animation, from the incredibly detailed backgrounds to the characters who all move fluidly and distinctly. I've not seen this in close to thirty years and was surprised by how much I enjoyed it, it's a thoroughly charming film from top to bottom with some great songs to boot. I'll even admit to getting a little teary eyed when the dwarfs were laying flowers at her grave. If there's one reason why Disney are so big now then it's this. My only complaint is that Caselotti's opera style falsetto singing voice gets a little shrill for me at times. Other than that, this totally deserves its reputation. 9.5/10 Lime's Film of the Week! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djw180 6,839 Posted September 11, 2022 Share Posted September 11, 2022 Antigone (2019) dir Sophie Deraspe A French-Canadian drama based on the ancient Greek story of Antigone. The writing credits are the director and playwright Sophocles. I'm not sure how much it follows the Greek original as I only know the basics of that. Antigone's brothers were cheated out of their inheritance when their father, King Oedipus (the one who married his own mother) dies. They fought back but were killed and their uncle, who took the throne, ordered no one was allowed to mourn them. But Antigone refused and as punishment she was sealed in the tomb with her brothers. This modern version is not that gruesome, but it's still quite a harrowing story of a young woman who puts family loyalty above all else. The family are Algerian refugees in Montreal. Antigone lives with her sister, two brothers and their grandmother. Her parents were murdered by the Algerian government some 15 years or so earlier. Her brothers have become gang members dealing drugs. One is killed by police and the other arrested. He faces deportation to Algeria so Antigone, who with the right clothing and hairstyle can pass for him to someone not looking too closely, breaks him out of jail and takes his place. What he has done, and he has done a lot wrong, does not matter to her. He is her brother and she is willing to sacrifice herself for him. Nahema Ricci is very good in title role. There are a couple of nods to the original Greek tragedy; an advertisement for 'Oedipus Roi' (it's in French) and the fact that they are being raised by the grandmother who refers to them as her children, not grandchildren (although other than that it never implies she is actually their mother). It's got a very modern feel. In jail Antigone attracts a lot of support from other teenagers and they make here into a social media celebrity. This is quite cleverly done. The director incorporates images and short tweet-like posts into kind of montage-like sequences to give you the impression of the social media campaign. 8/10 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,175 Posted September 12, 2022 Share Posted September 12, 2022 What I Watched This Week #36 (Sep 3 – 9) All My Friends Hate Me dir. Andrew Gaynord/2022/1h33m Tom Stourton plays Pete, a thirty one year old who is celebrating his birthday by meeting up with some friends from university at one of their father's manor house (they are all rich toffs), but when he arrives he finds them strangely antagonistic. He also doesn't appreciate that they've bought colourful local Harry (Dustin Demri-Burns) along to the party. As the weekend progresses tensions rise and the film becomes an anxiety inducing study in paranoia and awkwardness. This culminates in one of the most uncomfortable and cringe inducing confrontations that I've ever seen. This is a brilliant tight little thriller that constantly makes you wonder whether Pete is paranoid or if there actually is something sinister going on. The script is fantastic and all of the characters are well drawn, with all of the performances totally nailing it, particularly Demri-Burns as the passive aggressive interloper – and speaking as a native, his Devonshire accent is perfect. If you want to sustain an anxiety attack over ninety minutes then this is the film for you. 9/10 Lime's Film of the Week! Sunset Boulevard dir. Billy Wilder/1950/1h50m William Holden plays unsuccessful screenwriter Joe Gillis who, after a chance encounter with faded silent movie star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), is hired to write her big comeback movie after twenty years out of the spotlight. The problem is she's a narcissistic, manipulative, egomaniacal fantasist who doesn't realise that she's not that famous anymore - “didn't you use to be big?” “I am big. It's the pictures that got small.” - and she refuses to take no for an answer. You know how this ends right from the start, as the film opens with his corpse being fished out of her swimming pool. He then narrates the tragic events that led to his death in classic film noir style, and this may be the best narration I've ever heard. Even though we know he's dead we still root for him, and there is still tension in the film even though we know what's going to happen. The entire script is superb – Wilder was no slouch behind the typewriter, having written other films like Some Like It Hot and The Apartment – and this may be one of his best works. The main attraction here though is Swanson and her performance. She is totally melodramatic and over the top with mad staring eyes and a rictus grin stamped on her face – everything you would expect from this character. Everything is so dramatic and has to be a scene, she feeds off of the attention, and that is shown perfectly in the incredible final scene where she has totally lost grip on reality, and that final line, “I'm ready for my close up Mr. DeMille,” sent shivers down my spine. There's a reason this film is considered a classic. 9/10 The Italian Job dir. Peter Collinson/1969/1h39m Michael Caine stars as Charlie Croker, fresh out of prison and ready for another caper, in this classic of British cinema. This caper involves stealing gold bullion in the middle of a traffic jam in Turin and whisking it away in three Mini Coopers. Running the scheme from behind bars – where he's treated like a king – is Mr. Bridger, played by Noel Coward, a strange casting choice but he's great in the role. Another weird casting choice is comedian Benny Hill as s*x obsessed crew member Professor Peach, but again he does a good job. While this film is enjoyable, for me that was mostly down to the actual heist and the incredible car stunts in the final act – and the literal cliffhanger of an ending – with the rest of the film being not boring, but just kind of unsubstantial. The film is carried up to that point by Caine's charisma, which he has turned up to eleven here. There are fun moments in the first hour - “you were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off” etc – but upon revisiting this film for the first time in a long time I found it good but not the stone-cold classic I was expecting. 7/10 Carry On Sergeant dir. Gerald Thomas/1958/1h24m If you're not British you're probably not familiar with the Carry On film series. With 31 entries, from the late fifties to the early nineties, they were most popular in the late sixties to the mid seventies where they gained a reputation of being cheap and cheerful and full of b*wdy humour usually centred around big bouncing boobs or er*ctile dysfunction – cheeky but never filthy. These were the films I was familiar with, but having never seen the earlier films I decided to give them a go, and where better to start than at the beginning. William Hartnell (the first Doctor Who) is the Sergeant of the title who is retiring at the end of the year and has just one goal – for his squad of trainees to win the best squad award, something he has never achieved. Sadly, his squad is full of misfits and shirkers who'd rather be doing anything else. Imagine the first hour of Full Metal Jacket crossed with Police Academy set in fifties Britain. That's what this is. Bob Monkhouse, more famous as a comedian and light entertainer, plays Charlie Sage, the lead trainee, and he's great as the cheeky chappie with a heart of gold. There are some cast members who would go on to appear in several Carry On films making their series debut here, Kenneth Conner, Charles Hawtrey, Hattie Jacques and Kenneth Williams being the most familiar faces to me. The most surprising thing about this film is how it doesn't really feel like a Carry On film. This is more like a classic Ealing comedy. It's also still very funny, there's one running gag where Conner's hypochondriac trainee visits Jacques's army doctor several times that always made me laugh. I know that there are some really bad films in this series, so I'm glad that they got off to a strong start. 8/10 Bubble Bath dir. Gyorgy Kovasznai/1979/1h19m On his wedding day a man called Zsolt (Albert Antalffy) visits his fiancée's workmate Ani (Katalin Dobos) and begs her to call his fiancée and tell her the wedding's off. This is a really distinctive animated film, the characters contorting and distorting frame to frame in an almost free form way that is complimented by the jazz soundtrack. The musical numbers also feel the same, improvisatory and spontaneous. Visually this is almost overwhelming, it reminded me a lot of the recent Cryptozoo in that respect, but I'm not saying that in a negative way. There's a kaleidoscopic, hallucinogenic quality to the film that's totally absorbing. An inventive, surprising film that's really having fun with the medium of animation. 8/10 Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence dir. Nagisa Oshima/1983/2h4m David Bowie gives probably his best film performance as Jack Celliers, a Major in the British Army during World War II who is captured and taken to a Japanese POW camp on the island of Java. At the camp he is witness to the battle of wills between Colonel Lawrence (Tom Conti) and Sergeant Hara (Takeshi Kitano), a complicated relationship that endures the war and sees their roles reversed. I watched this for Bowie, he's the attraction here, but the real star is Conti. His performance is incredible, and he has great chemistry with Kitano, who is also fantastic. Their scenes together, especially the ending, are the highlights of the film. I also loved the score for this, especially the main theme which is a real earworm. This is a WWII film unlike any other that I've seen, one that looks at the conflict and what it turned people into in a very humane way. 9/10 Never Say Never Again dir. Irvin Kershner/1983/2h14m Due to complicated rights issues Sean Connery was able to return as James Bond after a 12 year hiatus in this non-EON production, the first since the ridiculous Casino Royale in 1967. Unfortunately it's quite boring. The main problem is that it's a remake of Thunderball, which was quite boring to begin with. A lot is made of how Roger Moore was too old for the role in his last few Bond films, and you can say the same for Connery here. He's trying to play Bond the same as he did twenty years earlier. They also waste Max von Sydow who plays Blofeld and is in the film for about five minutes. It's been about a week since I watched this and I couldn't describe to you one action scene, it's all just so bland. Oh wait, I got one. Early on Bond is sent to a spa to detox, and that includes giving a ur*ne sample. Later on he gets into a fight with someone who Bond just can't knock out, that is until he throws his p*ss in his face, at which point the brute immediately falls unconscious. Apart from that, the rest of the film is totally unmemorable. The worst Bond film by far. 3/10 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djw180 6,839 Posted September 12, 2022 Share Posted September 12, 2022 @LimeGreenLegend Carry On Seargent does have a very different feel to the others (from what I remember, ages since I've seen it). I don't think they had a whole series planned then. It was just a one off, but being successful they did more and stuck to the title convention of Carry On ....... If you're watching them all in order (not that I ever have) I think you will see them gradually evolve into the more famous 70s b*wdy style. Totally agree on Never Say Never Again - always thought "Carry On Bond" might have been an appropriate title for that, except it wouldn't have been good as a Carry On film either. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,175 Posted September 17, 2022 Share Posted September 17, 2022 What I Watched This Week #37 (Sep 10 – 16) The Man Who Fell to Earth dir. Nicolas Roeg/1976/2h20m David Bowie is perfectly cast as Thomas Jerome Newton, an alien who has come to Earth looking for water in order to save his dying planet. Using his advanced technological knowledge he becomes very rich very quickly, but is soon consumed by his life on our planet, spiralling into a world of s*x, drugs and television. This is an hallucinogenic, disjointed film that seems to become more so as it progresses, mirroring Newton's mental state. We get unannounced time jumps, moving forward months, perhaps years, at a time. While Newton looks the same, everyone around him ages and drifts away from him, revealing his ultimate loneliness as he is stranded here unable to return to his family. Bowie is excellent here, and while I don't think it's his best performance – Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence holds that honour – this is the role best suited to him. His Newton is a detached, otherworldly presence, occasionally delighted by the absurdities of life on Earth. He does look kinda funny in his alien make up though. This is a mad LSD trip that isn't greater than the sum of its parts but is still one hell of a ride. You also get to see Bowie's p*nis. 7.5/10 Carry On Nurse dir. Gerald Thomas/1959/1h26m The Carry On series takes an immediate downturn in quality after the very entertaining Sergeant with their first hospital set film, Carry On Nurse. The very simple premise is that a men's ward in a hospital is more trouble than they're worth, only behaving in the presence of the intimidating matron (Hattie Jacques). The first hour is basically a string of sketches involving the various patients, the funniest of which is Kenneth Connor's boxer with a broken hand. The rest of the film is the best part where the patients, under the influence of some booze, decide to perform surgery on Jack Bell (Leslie Phillips, ding d*ng), who is there to have a bunion removed. The rest of the film is pretty unmemorable, but never outright bad. The cast is solid, Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtry and Joan Hickson are all great, but they are let down by the material. Not the worst entry in the series, but far from the best. 5/10 Clue dir. Jonathan Lynn/1985/1h34m Clue is a comedy murder-mystery based on the board game, which is called Cluedo in the UK. A group of seemingly unconnected strangers are invited to a manor house by a man who is blackmailing them all, Mr. Boddy (Lee Ving). When Boddy is murdered everyone becomes a suspect, and the police have already been called. They're on a race against time as they try to find out who the murderer is, how they did it, and in what room. While the cast is packed with some fantastic comedic actors like Madeline Khan, Michael McKean and Christopher Lloyd, the real star is Tim Curry who plays the butler Wadsworth. The final act, where he manically runs through the house re-enacting the entire film in order to reveal who the murderer is, is just a masterclass of acting. I also loved the ending where, like Wayne's World and Bad Luck Banging or Loony p*rn, we are presented with three different options, and they're all solid resolutions to the mystery. The first hour of the film is solid, with some decent laughs, but I honestly think it's not as funny as Death by Murder, another comedy murder-mystery (if you like Clue you need to check that out). What surprised me about this film is how good the actual mystery is, and how everyone's motivations made sense. A decent murder-mystery worth watching for Tim Curry alone. 7/10 Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon dir. John Maybury/1998/1h32m Derek Jacobi plays English artist Francis Bacon in this biopic that details his fractious relationship with wannabe London gangster George Dyer (Daniel Craig), a relationship that ended when Dyer committed suicide in 1971. This is a brilliantly directed film that really embraces Bacon's style, shooting through glass to distort faces, using unconventional lenses and multiple exposures creating a really unique feeling film. The performances from Jacobi and Craig are great. Jacobi really captures the layers of this subject, decades of pain hidden behind catty remarks and violent s*xual encounters. He causes pain to try to get rid of his own. As for Craig, this is one of the best performances of his career, and I'm not just saying that because you get to see his c*ck (a lot of c*ck for me this week). I liked him more in Knives Out – can't wait for the sequel later this year – but you can't really compare the two as they are so different. This is just a side of him I've never seen before and he is excellent. His cockney accent does get a bit “gor blimey Merry Poppins” at times, but not too often. A brilliant biopic that is really elevated by the direction. 9/10 Lime's Film of the Week! Star Trek: Insurrection dir. Jonathan Frakes/1998/1h43m The Next Generation crew of the Enterprise return for their third feature film outing, the ninth in the series overall. This time, a small group of Starfleet higher-ups have teamed up with a race called the Son'a, led by F. Murray Abraham's Ru'afo, in order to forcibly evict a race from a planet that is basically a giant fountain of youth. Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) and crew fight to save the alien race and also expose their superior officers for their crimes. This is a bit of a step down from First Contact, feeling like an extended episode of the series, and not one of the best ones. There's a theory that the show The Next Generation only got good after Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes, also director) grew a beard (growing a beard has become the opposite phrase to jumping the shark). Early in this film he shaves it off, a dark portent if ever there was one. The story is quite weak, despite a pretty good twist as to the real identities of the Son'a, and Ru'afo is a pretty naff villain, a total waste of an incredible actor in Abraham. There's an annoying subplot where Data (Brent Spiner) bonds with a young kid, which was already done much better in the show. I also have a problem with the actual evil plot, which isn't really that evil. This race aren't indigenous to the fountain of youth planet and the Federation/Son'a weren't going to kill them, just relocate them, and then use the planet to synthesise cures for every disease in the universe. It's like the writers never saw The Wrath of Khan where “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one”. It's like the end of The Last of Us where Joel murders a hospital full of doctors just to save one person, the person whose brain stem would cure the planet. I get that emotions are involved, but don't be so damn selfish! Apart from that, this is a serviceable entry in the series with some good moments, and the performances are solid all round, these are people who really know their characters. Not the best Star Trek film, but also not the worst. 6/10 Grease dir. Randal Kleiser/1978/1h50m American Graffiti meets High School Musical as bad boy Danny (John Travolta) and good girl Sandy (Olivia Newton John) unexpectedly reunite in the last year of school after a summer fling. But with the added element of peer pressure things don't go as smoothly as they'd like. Grease is one of the most popular musicals ever made so I'll spare the plot details. This is f*cking great. You all know how much I love musicals, and I love this. The songs are all bangers and the choreography and staging are perfect. The long scene at the National Bandstand show could be a short film in itself with all of the stories it tells, mostly through dance and direction. The performances are all spot on, Travolta and Newton John have great chemistry together, and the supporting cast all manage to shine individually, making every one of them memorable. The cast for the faculty are great too, particularly Eve Arden as the principal and Sid Caesar as Coach Calhoun. This is also a really funny film, much funnier than I remember it being. It's also a lot hornier than I remember, but I was pretty young when I last saw this and didn't know what flog your log meant, nor what a p*ssy wagon is. In my opinion this is one of the best musicals ever made, up there with The Blues Brothers and Singin' in the Rain. 10/10 See How They Run dir. Tom George/2022/1h38m Set in 50s London, See How They Run is a murder-mystery starring Sam Rockwell as Inspector Stoppard, investigating the murder of movie director Leo Kopernick (Adrien Brodie) backstage at Agatha Christie's play The Mousetrap, assisted by bright eyed rookie Constable Stalker (Saoirse Ronan). Among the prime suspects are movie producer John Woolf (Reece Shearsmith), pretentious writer Mervyn Cocker-Norris (David Oyelowo) and lead actor in The Mousetrap, Richard Attenborough (Harris Dickinson). This is a stylish, I loved the use of split screen, and quirky film – it's becoming a cliché at this point to compare films like this to Wes Anderson films, but this is very Andersonian – that has a very well written script that had me guessing up to the reveal. I really like the chemistry between Rockwell and Ronan, he the weary old hand who's seen it all and her the enthusiastic newcomer. Rockwell reminded me at times of David Jason's Inspector Frost, and his English accent is great. Ronan is great as always, she's just so sweet and sincere, and I just love her accent. Oyelowo is the standout of a great supporting cast. There are points where the meta references to the tropes of murder-mystery stories gets a bit much, but overall this is a fun film that any fans of the genre should watch. 8/10 A View to a Kill dir. John Glen/1985/2h11m Roger Moore returns as James Bond for the last time in A View to a Kill where he's up against Christopher Walken's Max Zorin, an industrialist who plans on monopolising the microchip market by flooding Silicon Valley. This film has a reputation of being one of the worst Moore Bonds, and he himself has admitted to being too old for the role, but for me this is a great film, and Moore seems more energetic and invested than in Octop*ssy and even For Your Eyes Only. For starters it has one of the best theme songs in the series, performed by Duran Duran, and some great action set pieces. It starts with a great snowboard chase – which does undercut its own badassery by playing California Girls over it, a song choice that just doesn't work – and finishes with a genuinely thrilling (if you're afraid of heights at least) fight between Bond and Zorin on top of the Golden Gate Bridge. Tanya Roberts is the Bond girl, Stacey Sutton, but the real Bond girl here is Grace Jones as Zorin's muscle, May Day. She's great in this and has a real presence every time she's on screen. A great send off for Moore, especially after the lacklustre last couple of entries. 8/10 Three Thousand Years of Longing dir. George Miller/2022/1h48m George Miller returns for the first time since Mad Max Fury Road, directing Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba in Three Thousand Years of Longing. Swinton plays Alithea, a lonely English scholar in Istanbul for a conference. In a bazaar she buys a small unassuming bottle, but when she tries cleaning it in her hotel room later on she releases Elba's Djinn, a genie able to grant her three wishes. Being a narratologist Alithea is all to aware that any story involving wishes are always cautionary tales, so the two seek to form a bond of trust by telling each other stories about their pasts, he about how he came to be trapped, on more than one occasion, and she about her lonely childhood and failed marriage. While they remain in the hotel room, the stories are relayed in lavish flashbacks, full of vibrant colours and often grotesque characters. In that respect this is very much like the Mad Max series, but this is a more tender film about the connections that stories can make, emotional and physical. This is an intimate film told on an epic scale, with two great lead performances to carry it along. It didn't quite connect with me emotionally at the end, but that doesn't take away from the fantastic tale I was just told. 8.5/10 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djw180 6,839 Posted September 18, 2022 Share Posted September 18, 2022 (edited) Days of Heaven (1978) dir Terrence Malick Richard Gere and Brooke Adams star as a young Chicago couple, Bill and Abby. It's set around 1915/16 I think (they mention president Wilson but there is no indication the US is at war until towards the end of the film). Bill loses his job in a steel mill after a fight so they head out West taking Bill's young sister Linda (Linda Mainz), who narrates the story, with them. They intend to be itinerant farm workers, starting out on a north Texan barley farm. Bill and Abby pose as brother and sister; why isn't really explained, I assume because they are not married so it lets them be close without raising questions. (But why not pose as a married couple instead, no one else they are with knows otherwise?) Bill overhears a doctor saying the farm's owner, Sam Sheperd, is very ill and only has a year to live. The farmer clearly likes Abby, so she and Bill stay on after harvest in hope of her marrying the farmer and inheriting the farm. It's no surprise that it ends in tragedy – you can sort of see that coming a mile off. It's very well directed, as you would expect from Terrence Malick. There are some marvellously shot, very slow scenes, almost stills at times, of landscapes, wildlife and the people and machinery working it. (And it does make you think the creators of RDR2 might have got their inspiration from something like this). It's only 90mins long but feels longer, in a good way. It made me feel like I had watched a much longer, epic story. The score is by Ennio Moriccone, the main reason I watched this. It was Oscar nominated. It's another one I would say is very good, but for me not one of his very best. 8/10 Edited September 18, 2022 by djw180 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djw180 6,839 Posted September 25, 2022 Share Posted September 25, 2022 Allied (2016) dir Bob Zemeckis This is a fairly average War film. The director and the two stars, Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard, have all made far better than this. It's about two secret agents. MC is member of the French resistance based in Cassablanca in early 1940s (technically under the control of the bit of France not occupied by Germany) and BP a Canadian pilot turned special opps agent. They pose as a pro-n*zi husband and wife in order to get close enough to assassinate the German ambassador. Having completed the mission, that they gave themselves less than a 50% chance of getting out alive from, they eventually meet again in London, get married for real, have a baby and the husband seems set to continue the rest of the war from a desk job. It doesn't turn out like that, obviously. The acting is reasonably good but the script lets it down. It seems to vary between action-film and slushy-romance without really knowing what it is supposed to be. The story is a little implausible at times too, such why would the allies take such a risk with the lives of these two agents just to kill the ambassador to Morocco? I can't believe such a person would have been seen as a particularly top-ranking n*zi. I suspect the film makers just wanted to set a war film in Casablanca, for obvious film-related reasons. Brad Pitt's accent seems dodgy too, sounds similar to how he usually does, no Canadian hints to me. A couple of plus points though. It got a deserved Oscar for Costume Design as it has some very stylish 40s clothes on all the characters. Also it could be appealing to anyone with an interest in 2nd World War aircraft as it's the only film I recall to feature the Westland Lysander; a small plane that could take off and land from very short runways and fields that the RAF used to take agents and supplies into occupied Europe. 6/10 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,175 Posted October 2, 2022 Share Posted October 2, 2022 What I Watched This Week #38 (Sep 17 – 23) Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind dir. Hayao Miyazaki/1984/1h57m Even though legendary Japanese animation studio Ghibli wasn't founded until 1985, this is still considered their first film, and the style and themes explored here would become a trademark for them, especially the films of Hayao Miyazaki, who directed Nausicaa. The world is covered by a forest of decay after an unnamed event, with the only green and pleasant land left being the valley of the wind. The lives of the people living there are thrown into turmoil when they are encroached upon by a militaristic state who are intent on destroying the forest and the giant mutated insects that inhabit it. Leading the charge to bring peace to the valley and unity between man and nature is the young, strong willed Princess Nausicaa (Sumi Shimamoto). While this has all of the ingredients for a great Ghibli film, they don't really mesh for me as a whole. The animation, especially the design of both the machines and the creatures, is excellent but it lacks the detail of Princess Mononoke or Howl's Moving Castle. It also didn't have the emotional resonance of those films, apart from one scene where Nausicaa is talking to a dying insect and she says “I can't ask your forgiveness. It's too cruel”. That's a fantastic line. But those are some of the best animated films ever made, by anyone, so maybe it's a harsh comparison. Compared to most other animated films this is still on a different level. 7/10 Pinocchio dir. Ben Sharpsteen, Hamilton Luske/1940/1h28m After watching Snow White I figured I'd just watch all the Disney animated films because I haven't seen most of them in close to thirty years, so next up is Pinocchio. Toymaker Geppetto's wish comes true one night when his little wooden doll Pinocchio (Dickie Jones) comes to life. But Pinocchio soon finds out that life is hard and people lie and he ends up first as the star attraction in the abusive Stromboli's (Charles Judels) puppet show, and then whisked away to Pleasure Island, where naughty little boys who like to smoke and drink get turned into donkeys and sold into labour. This is another absolutely charming film where you can see the care and attention to detail in every frame. Just the way Pinocchio moves is a joy to watch. This is also a really dark film, the scene where the kids transform into donkeys is just as horrific as the transformation scene in An American Werewolf in London. I love the character of Jiminy Cricket (Cliff Edwards), and how he gets annoyed and frustrated with how easily led Pinocchio is. There aren't as many good songs as there are in Snow White, but When You Wish Upon a Star more than makes up for it. 10/10 A Streetcar Named Desire dir. Elia Kazan/1951/2h5m Vivian Leigh plays the mentally unstable Blanche DuBois, who has to move in with her sister Stella (Kim Hunter) after selling their family estate. Whilst staying in their small apartment in the bad part of New Orleans she also has to contend with Stella's husband Stanley (Marlon Brando) who doesn't appreciate being taken for a ride. Adapted by Tennessee Williams from his own play, this is a sweltering and squalid film, with the tiny set in which it is mostly happens really heightening the sense of claustrophobia and helplessness that Blanche feels. The best thing about this film are the two duelling lead performances from Leigh and Brando, which plays out very much like a clash of generations and acting styles, with Leigh, star of Gone with the Wind, being melodramatic and performative, and Brando, in his breakout role, bringing the new, naturalistic Method style. Also he's f*cking s*xy. This is a complex film about unlikeable people with no one winning in the end. 8.5/10 s*xy Beast dir. Jonathan Glazer/2000/1h29m Gal (Ray Winstone) is a retired bank robber living easy in sunny Spain when he is offered the chance at one last job. Sadly, the offer comes from the totally psychotic Don Logan (Ben Kingsley), who won't take no for an answer. What is a very simple story is totally elevated by the two lead performances. Winstone is great as the sun soaked ex-pat sweltering away without a care in the world. But Kingsley is the star of the show as the prolifically potty mouthed Logan. His performance is one of the most intense and intimidating in film history. He is an absolute c*nt, even when he's on his own. There's a great moment when he's taking a p*ss in Gal's home – hands free – and he just casually turns his hips to p*ss on the floor a little. That little character moment tells you everything you need to know about this man, and the film is full of loads of little moments like that. The direction is inventive and the film is full of some great, eerie symbolism. I think that this is Glazer's second best film, but since I consider Under the Skin to be a solid ten this film does well to nearly match it. 9/10 F for Fake dir. Orson Welles/1973/1h29m F for Fake is an Orson Welles documentary with two main subjects, Elmyr de Hory who forged art by the likes of Picasso, and Clifford Irving who wrote a fake autobiography of Howard Hughes. But he uses these two people as a starting point for an exploration of the meaning and value of art and how important truth really is. Is it really important that Van Gogh actually painted the masterpiece hanging in the Louvre? Is it still a masterpiece if he didn't? Does it matter? Welles is close to the end of his career here, but he is still as playful and as innovative as he was in Citizen Kane over thirty years earlier. He revels in his role as master trickster, the film even opens with him performing magic tricks – he was an amateur magician and loved it more than filmmaking - to the delight of a young child. Because this is a documentary we get to see Welles being himself, which is a delight. I could listen to him talk all day, he's charming and witty and incredibly intelligent and knowledgeable, but never comes across as pompous or like he's talking down to anyone. This is a brilliant film that, like Welles himself, always has a trick up its sleeve. 10/10 Lime's Film of the Week! Carry On Teacher dir. Gerald Thomas/1959/1h26m A beloved headmaster (Ted Ray) is set to retire at the end of the school year, but his students don't want him to, so they set about scheming some pranks to keep him there. This also coincides with a visit from a psychologist, Mr. Grigg (Leslie Phillips), who has some radical ideas about education, like not using the cane! The faculty is made up of the Carry On regulars, Kenneth Williams as a snooty English teacher Mr. Milton, Charles Hawtrey as scatty music teacher Mr. Bean and Joan Sim as PE teacher, and object of Mr. Grigg's affections, Miss. Allcock. This is a slight improvement on Carry On Nurse, with more of an actual plot woven in between the wackiness. This film is also where the series starts to get a bit cheekier, with scenes like Miss. Allcock splitting her shorts during a lesson, giving Grigg an eyeful of her knickers. Pretty tame stuff, but it's only going to build from here. Another solid entry for the series. 7/10 Crimes of the Future dir. David Cronenberg/2022/1h48m Viggo Mortensen and Lea Seydoux play Saul and Caprice, performance artists with a unique act. His body is able to generate new organs, and during their shows she performs surgery on him, exploring his new organs before removing them. This is done in a H.R. Giger looking autopsy bed, something that looks more organic than artificial, with claws that slice and dice with inputs from a device that looks like a toad covered in buttons. This all happens in a strange future where surgery has replaced s*x and art, and a child who eats plastic could signal the next stage in human evolution, one more suited to a synthetic world. This is very much a Cronenberg film, with some real squelchy, gross imagery like you'd find in The Fly or Scanners, but here he's in a much more meditative, introspective mood, literally looking at what makes us human. The performances are great, particularly Mortensen. The way he holds himself, and seems to be constantly choking on his words, like his new organs are blocking something, or being pushed up into his throat, is really uncomfortable in the best ways. This is a man who is at war with his body, but is able to turn it into something beautiful. A very singular entry in the body-horror canon. 8.5/10 Last Year at Marienbad dir. Alain Resnais/1961/1h35m In a luxury hotel a woman (Delphine Seyrig) is approached by a man (Giorgio Albertazzi) who acts like he knows her. He begins to talk about how they met last year in Marienbad and had a whirlwind affair. She doesn't recall this, so he goes into greater detail. The film, without notice, fluidly moves between past and present, the real and the imagined, and we're never sure what's what. This is the very essence of dreamlike cinema, an enigmatic cloud shrouding everything in a fug of uncertainty. At times the figures in the hotel freeze, as if in a tableaux, while the camera glides through them, ghost like. This is an hypnotic film, an impregnable fortress of human solitude that leaves you with a melancholic sadness. How much do we really know each other, or ourselves? A gorgeously shot puzzle of a film with no answer. 8/10 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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