LimeGreenLegend 4,175 Posted October 4, 2022 Share Posted October 4, 2022 What I Watched This Week #39 (Sep 24 – 30) Carry On Constable dir. Gerald Thomas/1960/1h26m In my review for Carry On Sergeant I compared it to Police Academy, a comparison I should've saved for this film. After a flu outbreak an understaffed police station is forced to take on some less than suitable new officers. The new recruits are series stalwarts Kenneth Conner, Kenneth Williams and Leslie Phillips, who won't make another appearance in the series until the final entry, the awful Carry On Columbus, in 1992. Making his first appearance in the series is Sid James, who would go on to become the face of Carry On. He plays Sergeant Wilkins, who'll be out of a job if he can't whip his new recruits into shape. These are very simple films where the threadbare plot is there just to hang several sketches on, and that works in some entries more than others. Here I think it works really well, and the addition of James throws in a huge amount of cheeky charm. There's just something about him that gives me a warm, comforting nostalgic feeling. He's like the uncle that would sneak you a sip of his beer and teach you how to play cards. Not quite on the same level as Carry On Sergeant, but this is still a fun film, and the surprisingly solid start for this series continues. 7.5/10 Lime's Film of the Week! The Living Daylights dir. John Glen/1987/2h10m The Bond series enters a new era with Timothy Dalton taking on the role for the first time. The plot for this film is so convoluted that I'm not even going to try to explain it. It just involves multiple double crosses by a Russian general, illegal arms trading, diamond smuggling and drug deals with the Mujahideen. The Dalton films are said to be the dark films, but I didn't really see that here. This could've starred Moore and not felt much different. Not that Dalton isn't any good, he's great and the best thing about this film. He is more intense than Moore, but still charming with it. He also has some of the physicality of Connery. He has a good mix of the characteristics that make a good Bond. But other than it being Dalton's first Bond film this is pretty forgettable. None of the action sequences stand out, apart from the part where Bond and this film's Bond girl Kara Milvoy (Miriam d'Abo) ride down a mountain on a cello case. The theme song is a banger though, another pop tune like A View to a Kill. 6.5/10 tick, tick...BOOM! dir. Lin-Manuel Miranda/2021/2h tick, tick...BOOM! is an adaptation of the autobiographical musical monologue by Jonathan Larson, who would go on to create the Broadway hit Rent. As his 30th birthday approaches Larson (Andrew Garfield) feels an increasing need to do something with his life. He has been writing a musical inspired by Orwell's 1984 called Superbia for the last eight years, and finally gets the chance to workshop it in front of a load of Broadway producers. But as the personal and professional responsibilities start to stack up he begins to lash out at the people he loves the most. You would think this has a happy ending, as he went on to write one of the most successful musicals in Broadway history, but he died suddenly from a genetic heart disorder the day before its first public performance. I love a good musical, but honestly I don't think this is that good. Garfield is great in the lead, but I just didn't like any of the songs. I also quite disliked the first half hour or so as the characters really grated on me. They all just come across as annoying theatre kids and I was over it pretty quickly. Thankfully, once the drama kicks in the film gets much better, and I especially liked the character of Michael (Robin de Jesus), Larson's best friend who used to be an actor but “sold out” and became a successful ad executive. I had high hopes from this as it is directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, who wrote Hamilton, and his direction is good, but sadly he didn't write any of the songs. Not a terrible film but a bit of a let down. 6/10 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
omarcomin71 3,837 Posted October 8, 2022 Share Posted October 8, 2022 (edited) Willy’s Wonderland If you’re a Nicolas Cage fan and a fan of campy slasher films this is exactly what you’re looking for. Nicolas Cage plays a quiet drifter whose car breaks down in a small quiet town. In order to get it repaired he agrees to clean up a children’s arcade and theater. Little does he know the place is cursed and the animatronics come to life. But little do the animatronics know that Nicolas Cage is there to kick *ss! Pretty cheesy but pretty entertaining. If you’re looking to get away this Halloween I recommend this movie. For what it is, I give it a solid 7 out of 10. (by the way, Nick Cage doesn’t say a word the entire movie 😂) Edited October 8, 2022 by omarcomin71 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,175 Posted October 8, 2022 Share Posted October 8, 2022 53 minutes ago, omarcomin71 said: (by the way, Nick Cage doesn’t say a word the entire movie 😂) Really?! Now I wanna check it out. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djw180 6,836 Posted October 9, 2022 Share Posted October 9, 2022 A Field In England (2013) dir Ben Wheatley An unusual film set during the mid-17th century English Civil. Reece Shearsmith plays Whitehead, an assistant to alchemists, astrologers, magicians etc. who has picked up bits of knowledge of those “sciences”, as they were regarded in those days. It starts in the aftermath of battle, Whitehead is on the run from his current master trying to find his old master and some sort of treasure, buried somewhere in a field. He tags along with a group of survivors of the battle all trying to find the nearest pub and uses them to discover his old master, O'Neil (Michael Smiley), who using his magic has hidden himself in the field. Whitehead and O'Neil have clearly had a serious falling out, and the latter now forces the former to find the treasure for him. So it has a lot of weird magic / occult like scenes, but nothing particularly scary (no way I would class this as horror). It's a little gory at times; it is set during a war, people get killed, limbs blown off etc. It's very nicely shot, all in black and white. The story was confusing at times as I didn't get what exactly Whitehead was looking for, what the falling out with O'Neil was about, why his new master at the beginning appears to be trying to kill him etc. The title is also confusing, perhaps deliberately so. They clearly say they are in Monmouthshire, that's in Wales, not England. But at the time English people would have regarded Wales as just another part of England, there was no concept of any autonomy for Wales then. So from the character's point of view the Field is in England, but from our point of view today it's in Wales. I couldn't see anything to suggest this was making any deliberate point, maybe it's just the film makers little joke, maybe they are just taking a very 'as it was at that time' point of view? It just seems strange to me to have it set in modern day Wales given the title. 7/10 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,175 Posted October 9, 2022 Share Posted October 9, 2022 @djw180 I really liked A Field in England. The scene with the tent and the rope I thought was genuinely scary, and loved all of the hallucinogenic stuff after they gobble up those shrooms. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,175 Posted October 11, 2022 Share Posted October 11, 2022 What I Watched This Week #40 (Oct 1 - 7) Saturday Night Fever dir. John Badham/1977/1h58m Tony Manero (John Travolta) is a teenager working in a hardware store with no prospects for his future, but he has one passion, disco dancing. And he is good at it, maybe the best. He needs a partner for the upcoming competition, so he teams up with the upper class Stephanie (Karen Lynn Gorney). So the best thing about this film by a long shot is the soundtrack by The Bee Gees, and all of the dance scenes that they accompany. I kinda wish that the whole film was set in the club, because the rest of the film is let down by how sh*tty Manero and his friends are. Near the end of the film a girl is gang r*ped by his friends in the back of the car while he sits in the front, and afterwards he calls her a c*nt. I did like the relationship between Tony and his brother Frank (Martin Shakar), who has recently come home after leaving the priesthood. That should have been explored a lot more, maybe making Tony a more sympathetic character. Despite that this is still decent, and worth watching for the iconic dance scenes alone. 6.5/10 Fantasia dir. David Hand, James Algar, Samuel Armstrong, Ben Sharpsteen, William Roberts, Paul Satterfield, Hamilton Luske, Jim Handley, Ford Beebe, T. Hee, Wilfred Jackson, Norman Ferguson/1940/2h4m Fantasia is an animated anthology film made up of several shorts set to classical music played by The Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski. I was surprised that this starts out in live action, with a presenter, Deems Taylor, giving a brief overview of each piece of music and what to expect from the shorts. The first piece of music, Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, is set to expressionistic shots of the orchestra playing in silhouette with great blasts of giallo style lighting in bright colours. This is probably the most experimental thing Disney has ever made! The Sorcerer's Apprentice is the only good thing Mickey Mouse has starred in – I seriously think he is a trash tier cartoon character – but I loved watching him conduct an army of living brooms. My favourite section was the last, Night on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria, where a genuinely scary devil summons his evil hoards before they are defeated by the power of good. This is a sublimely crafted work that is at times surreal, charming, and inventive. Disney are three for three for me so far, as I think this is another 10/10 Carry On Regardless dir. Gerald Thomas, Ralph Thomas/1961/1h30 Sid James is the owner of an odd job business, sending out his crew of no hopers – regular Carry On cast members Kenneth Conner, Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtree, Joan Sim et al. - to perform all sorts of strange tasks. This is the weakest premise in the series so far. It's so low effort it may as well be no effort. This film is totally carried by the charm and chemistry of the cast because there aren't really any great gags or memorable moments save one – Kenneth Williams taking a chimp for a walk where he takes it to the zoo for a tea party with all of the other chimps. Like, it's not funny – there aren't really any jokes in the segment – but just seeing Kenneth Williams interacting with some chimps was great. You would think, watching this, that the series was running out of steam, but there are another 26 to go! Hopefully they put some more effort into the rest. 5/10 Moonage Daydream dir. Brett Morgen/2022/2h20m Moonage Daydream is a new documentary about David Bowie from Brett Morgan, who has previously made the brilliant Kurt Cobain doc Montage of Heck. It is made up mostly of archive footage, a lot of it from Bowie's personal collection and previously unseen, with narration by Bowie himself, relevant soundbites from interviews over his career accompanying the footage. As well as the footage there are other moments where his music is interpreted through shapes and colours – one of my favourite parts is where the bass and guitar to Sound and Vision is represented through flashes of colours popping all over the screen. We also see clips from films he has appeared in like The Man Who Fell to Earth. There are also new mixes of his songs made by Morgen himself and they are fantastic. The film follows Bowie's career chronologically, with the bulk of it exploring the 70s and early 80s. If I had one complaint about this film then it would be the short shrift given to his career from the 90s onwards – it doesn't even have I'm Afraid of Americans, one of my favourite songs of his. A nice addition though is the focus given on his other artistic endeavours like his paintings, which are really good, but most surprisingly his mime and interpretive dance work. I could've watched a six hour version of this. This isn't an informative film in the terms of facts and anecdotes, but it gives a fuller picture of the man than anything else I've ever seen. One of the best music films ever made. 10/10 Lime's Film of the Week! Star Trek: Nemesis dir. Stuart Baird/2002/1h57m Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) and the crew of the Enterprise return for the final time in Star Trek: Nemesis. This time they must face up against the new head of the Romulan Empire, Shinzon (Tom Hardy), who has a shocking link to Picard. So the good things here are Hardy who, though very young here, still has the intensity that would become his trademark. Although here he is pretty skinny. There is a plot reason for it, but he just looks weird without some bulk on him. The scenes between him and Stewart are the highlights here, and I liked the political stuff between the Romulans and the Remans. The overall plot though isn't the strongest, and there is a lot of filler here like a totally pointless scene where Picard and Data (Brent Spiner) take a dune buggy out to tool around a desert. Not the worst Trek film, but not a fitting send off for such a beloved crew. 6/10 Licence to Kill dir. John Glen/1989/2h13m Timothy Dalton returns for his second and final appearance as 007. This time he has gone rouge to get revenge on drug lord Sanchez (Robert Davi) after his friend Felix Leiter (David Hedison) is left for dead on his honeymoon – I love the note left on his body after it was fed to the sharks “he disagreed with something that ate him” - and his wife murdered. Even though there is some light hearted stuff here like the evangelical leader of a meditation cult who acts as a front for the drug smuggling, this is the film that really feels like it's leaving behind the Moore era silliness. There are some pretty gruesome kills here, most memorably the guy who gets his head exploded in a pressure chamber, and there is more blood than every previous Bond film combined. Dalton also has more of an edge to him here, getting straight to business after Leiter is attacked. Davi, who I always think of as the bad guy in The Goonies, is brilliant here and always feels like a threat. He also has a young Benicio del Toro as his main henchman. I also love the theme song by Gladys Knight, a return to the big booming numbers like Goldfinger and Thunderball. One of my favourites of the series. 8.5/10 Carry On Cruising dir. Gerald Thomas, Ralph Thomas/1962/1h29m Sid James is Wellington Crowther, captain of a cruise liner celebrating his tenth year in charge. Unfortunately for him several of his regular crew have gone off sick so he has to make do with some less than capable replacements, including series regulars Kenneth Conner and Kenneth Williams. This is, thankfully, a step up from Regardless, with the setting, and the fact that this is the first film in the series in colour, adding some freshness to the formula. At the same time this feels less like a Carry On film as only the three leads appear in any other entry. There are some funny running gags here like Conner's attempts to woo a female passenger, and the guy who rushes straight to the bar every time the ship pulls into port, opting to get smashed rather then go and see the sights. Not a total laugh riot but decent enough to recommend. 6/10 Orlando dir. Sally Potter/1992/1h30m Orlando is an adaptation of Virginia Woolf's novel starring the always wonderful Tilda Swinton in the title role. In 1600 Orlando is a young, male, aristocrat obsessed with romance and poetry in the court of Queen Elizabeth I (Quentin Crisp). She promises Orlando a grand estate and a vast fortune if only he stays young forever. So he does. The film spans the next four hundred or so years of his life. After a couple of centuries Orlando is an ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, but after a near fatal accident he wakes up as a woman. She then has to fight a legal battle because, being a woman, she can't possibly be allowed to have all that land. The film ends in the modern period, with Orlando now a mother looking for a publisher for her book. This is a real lavish production with amazing locations and costumes. I loved watching the passage of time expressed through the clothes and hair styles. I also loved Swinton here – I feel like I say that a lot. This is one of the best performances I've seen of hers, I just wish I felt more of a connection to the story. I felt like everything was kept at arms length and that we're never really allowed into this world. But that doesn't detract too much from what is a great film, which is worth watching just for the amazing score, which was also co-written by the writer/director Sally Potter. This is a very different kind of costume drama, so if that genre really isn't your thing then maybe you should check this out, it may just change your mind. 7.5/10 Goldeneye dir. Martin Campbell/1995/2h10m After a six year hiatus – the longest in the series up to that point – Bond returns with a new face, that of Pierce Brosnan. This time he must track down a terrorist organisation that has hijacked a secret EMP satellite that could send a country back to the stone age with one blast. Brosnan is surrounded by one of the best supporting casts in the series. Sean Bean as 006, Robbie Coltrane as Russian gangster Zukovsky, Alan c*mming as bad guy hacker Boris “I am invincible” Grishenko and the first appearance of Judi Dench as M. Izabella Scorupco is great as the modern Bond girl Natalya, with Famke Janssen as the s*xy femme fatale Xenia Onatopp. The pre-title scene is the best in the series, with a daring assault and escape on a mountain side base, and there is great action throughout with a standout tank chase through some city streets. The theme song, sung by Tina Turner, is also one of the best in the series, even though it was written by Bono. Sadly, the one bad point to this film is the score. It is awful. There's a flirty car chase between Bond and Onatopp right after the titles that has some of the worst music I've ever heard in any film ever, it's so bad. Go and listen to it now and try to tell me it's good! Apart from that this is a near perfect action film and, in my opinion, the best in the series. 9/10 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djw180 6,836 Posted October 15, 2022 Share Posted October 15, 2022 I watched a few films this week, taking advantage of the Netflix subscription in the holiday home I was staying in. Blonde (2022) dir Andrew Dominick I thought this was a stunning film, but reading online reviews I seem to be in a minority. It's a fictionalised story about Marilyn Monroe. I know very little about her so maybe that is why I have no objections to the plot elements that were made up. But to me it did a great job of telling a story about beautiful actress that the male-controlled Hollywood & press of the 60s were obsessed with and ultimately drove to suicide, whether that was actually the true story or not. Ana de Armas was brilliant as Monroe, and I would think is in line for award nominations. Adrien Brody is good too as one of her husbands, playwright Arthur Miller. It's very well shot, mainly in black and white but using colour in places. It is mostly shown in a square rather than wide screen format; at first I thought I would hate that, but it worked. It has good special effects such as altering the faces of photographers to make them more wild and lascivious. It also uses some actual scenes from her films and does a very good job of blending them in to the scenes filmed for this. For me this is 10/10. The Courier (2020) dir Dominic Cooke A 60's spy story with a difference. Based on real people and events, Benedict Cumberbatch plays businessman Greville Wynne. Because Wynne did a lot of trade with Eastern European countries he was recruited by MI6 and the CIA to act as a courier smuggling top secret Soviet documents obtained by genuine spy Col. Oleg Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze). As well made and acted as it is, it is the basic story that makes this. Wynne was a very traditional Englishman, all smart suite and stiff upper lip, just doing his job to support wife (Jessie Buckley) and son and never meant to be an actual spy himself. But he ended up helping Penkovsky, probably the most valuable spy the west ever had, to get out the information that may well have averted nuclear war at the time of the Cuban Missile crisis. Much of the film has a quite light-hearted and not too serious feel, it's all business meetings over dinner, lots of drinks, going to the theatre etc. But it takes a very different direction towards the end, reflecting what actually happened to Wynne and Penkovsky in reality. 7/10 I Came By (2022) dir Babak Anvari A very decent British thriller with a very modern feel, it has quite a bit of use of very modern technology. It stars Hugh Bonneville as retired judge Hector Blake. But this is not the sort of role you might usually associate with him, such as Paddington or Downtown Abbey. He's the bad guy in this, a very, very bad and sadistic character. It centres around two graffiti artists who break into the homes of the rich and powerful to write “I Came By” on the wall, just because they can and to send a political message. It did take a while to get going and I came close to picking something else to watch instead early on, but I'm glad I stuck with it. It had some unexpected turns, I won't say more specifics as that would spoil it and this is a recently released film, but it gets quite scary later on. 8/10 Persuasion (2022) dir Carrie Cracknell An adaptation of the Jane Austen novel of the same name. Whilst I do like films based on her novels, this was not one of the best for me. Dakota Johnson plays Anne Elliot, one of 3 daughters to a wealthy widower-father (Richard E Grant, rather under-used in this) who wastes his fortune. Years earlier she refused a marriage proposal, on advice from a good friend, because the young suitor was not wealthy enough. Now he is back in her life, with a lot of money, and looking for a wife. The cast are OK and it looks nice, but the script just seems lacking at times. I know the book reasonably well and this adaptation just didn't quite do it justice for me. 5/10 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,175 Posted October 16, 2022 Share Posted October 16, 2022 (edited) What I Watched This Week #41 (Oct 8 – 14) Tyrannosaur dir. Paddy Considine/2011/1h33m Tyrannosaur is the feature length directorial debut of one of my favourite actors, Paddy Considine, adapted from his short Dog Altogether. It stars Peter Mullen as Joseph, a violent, self-destructive, lonely raw-nerve of rage. By chance he meets Hannah (Olivia Colman), a religious charity shop worker and the two form something of a friendship, despite his being a total c*nt a lot of the time. She is married to James (Eddie Marsan), a controlling, jealous sh*t of a human being – he is introduced in the film by coming home drunk and pissing on Hannah who is asleep on the sofa – and he doesn't like her hanging out with Joseph. This f*cked up triangle of violence and abuse ends about as well as you'd expect, but in an unexpected way. This is a brutally grim film, and also something very special. All three lead performances are exceptional. Mullen is incredibly sympathetic despite his at times abhorrent actions. This is a man who kills two dogs during the course of the film and I still wanted him to find some happiness at the end. The scene where he opens up to Hannah about his dead wife, which ties into the title of the film, was gripping. Needless to say that Colman is brilliant, and I think this may be her best performance ever. This is a woman who tries to smile through everything that happens to her, thinking that that will help, and when she breaks it is heart breaking. @Con I know you love you some Olivia so you need to check this out! Marsan is just as spectacular as one of the most detestable people I've ever seen in a film. Watching him bully Hannah hurt my soul and made me want to break his face. This is not an easy watch, and not a film that you'll want to re-watch any time soon, but it is one of the best dramas I've seen in a long time. I already loved Paddy Considine going in to this, and now I love him even more and hope that he makes many more films in the future, once he's stopped starring in the new Game of Thrones show. 10/10 Lime's Film of the Week! The Trouble with Being Born dir. Sandra Wollner/2020/1h34m Georg (Dominik Warta) lives with an android replica of his ten year old daughter Elli (Lena Watson), who died, along with his wife, ten years earlier. They spend their days hanging out by the pool – with her repeating memories that he has told her - and at night sleep together. Yes, in that way. She runs away one night and is found by a man who re-programmes her to be his mother's twin brother Emil, who died when they were ten. Again, there is lots of repetition as Emil explores his new memories and his new role in the world. This is a very slow, contemplative film, which is usually right up my alley, but the amount of repetition here began to get really, well, repetitive. I get that it's about Elli being programmed, just as all parents programme their children, but they really hammer the point home. What makes it work is the performance by Watson, who is very detached and robotic, her face an expressionless mask. Use of prosthetics and CGI also gives her a slightly artificial look that sells the fact that she is an android. Then we get to the controversy. So, a story about a guy having a s*xual relationship with a robot replica of his ten year old daughter is pretty messed up but there is one scene that I think maybe went a little too far. Apparently done in CGI, there is a scene where you see Elli totally naked and Georg removes her v*gina to wash it out in the sink. There are some things that you can't unsee and that is one of them. To say that that distracted me somewhat for the rest of the film, and the rest of the day for that matter, would be an understatement. This is a shame because this is a genuinely original sci-fi film with some really beautiful, tender moments, especially in the second half of the film after she is turned into Emil. It's like they wanted some shock value, but it totally detracts from the rest of the film. In many ways this is a less successful After Yang, a Colin Farrell film also about the nature of memories in androids. A difficult, conflicting film. 6/10 Carry On Cabby dir. Gerald Thomas/1963/1h31m Sid James plays Charlie Hawkins, owner of the most successful cab firm in town, and the only cab firm in town. After his wife Peggy (Hattie Jacques) has had enough of being second best to his fleet of cars she secretly opens up a rival, all female, cab company and the battle of the sexes is on. There's a nice little change to the formula here as this film isn't about Sid James trying to get a bunch of incompetents in line. James and Jacques also get a lot of screen time together which is a treat as they have brilliant chemistry, something we'll get to see a lot of going forward. There's a hilarious scene where Kenneth Connor tries to infiltrate Glam Cabs in drag, getting all flustered when he gets into the changing room, and I really liked the ending where a couple of robbers are thwarted by a carefully coordinated chase involving the entire cab company. I'm really surprised at how much I'm enjoying these early Carry On films, and this is another really solid entry. 7/10 Staying Alive dir. Sylvester Stallone/1983/1h33m Did you know that there is a sequel to Saturday Night Fever directed and co-written by Sylvester Stallone? You do now! Five years later Tony Manero (John Travolta) is no longer c*ck-of the-walk of his small neighbourhood. He's a struggling Broadway dancer giving his all to make it big, and maybe with enough training montages he can get his shot as the lead dancer in the big new show, Satan's Alley. It's basically Rocky with dancing and I'm not even joking. This time he's torn between the sweet backup dancer Jackie (Cynthia Rhodes) and the frosty, b*tchy lead dancer Laura (Finola Hughes). He's still a bit of an *sshole here, but at least he doesn't try to r*pe anyone, so there's been growth. Honestly, I like this better than Saturday Night Fever, even though the soundtrack is much worse. The final dance scene, where we get to see Satan's Alley in all its glory – think a scantily clad Dante's Inferno – is insane, and the ending where Travolta says that “I just want to strut” before doing just that to the beat of Staying Alive is brilliantly cheesy. T2: Judgement Day, The Godfather Part 2, Staying Alive. Sequels better than the first. 7.5/10 Edited October 16, 2022 by LimeGreenLegend 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Con 5,703 Posted October 19, 2022 Share Posted October 19, 2022 On 10/16/2022 at 12:29 PM, LimeGreenLegend said: What I Watched This Week #41 (Oct 8 – 14) Tyrannosaur dir. Paddy Considine/2011/1h33m Tyrannosaur is the feature length directorial debut of one of my favourite actors, Paddy Considine, adapted from his short Dog Altogether. It stars Peter Mullen as Joseph, a violent, self-destructive, lonely raw-nerve of rage. By chance he meets Hannah (Olivia Colman), a religious charity shop worker and the two form something of a friendship, despite his being a total c*nt a lot of the time. She is married to James (Eddie Marsan), a controlling, jealous sh*t of a human being – he is introduced in the film by coming home drunk and pissing on Hannah who is asleep on the sofa – and he doesn't like her hanging out with Joseph. This f*cked up triangle of violence and abuse ends about as well as you'd expect, but in an unexpected way. This is a brutally grim film, and also something very special. All three lead performances are exceptional. Mullen is incredibly sympathetic despite his at times abhorrent actions. This is a man who kills two dogs during the course of the film and I still wanted him to find some happiness at the end. The scene where he opens up to Hannah about his dead wife, which ties into the title of the film, was gripping. Needless to say that Colman is brilliant, and I think this may be her best performance ever. This is a woman who tries to smile through everything that happens to her, thinking that that will help, and when she breaks it is heart breaking. @Con I know you love you some Olivia so you need to check this out! Marsan is just as spectacular as one of the most detestable people I've ever seen in a film. Watching him bully Hannah hurt my soul and made me want to break his face. This is not an easy watch, and not a film that you'll want to re-watch any time soon, but it is one of the best dramas I've seen in a long time. I already loved Paddy Considine going in to this, and now I love him even more and hope that he makes many more films in the future, once he's stopped starring in the new Game of Thrones show. 10/10 Lime's Film of the Week! Yo you know it. I love me some Ms Colman, for sure. She can come get this D…….iamond Ring. Word. 1 RSC FILM CLUB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,175 Posted October 22, 2022 Share Posted October 22, 2022 (edited) What I Watched This Week #42 (Oct 15 – 21) Nitram dir. Justin Kurzel/2021/1h52m Nitram, the latest film from the director of the excellent True History of the Kelly Gang, details the events leading up to the 1996 Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania Australia, an event that led to immediate gun reforms in the country. Caleb Landry Jones plays Martin Bryant, only ever referred to in the film by his nickname Nitram. He is a social outcast, spending his time letting off fireworks when he's not arguing with his mother (Judy Davis). One day he meets the reclusive Helen (Essie Davis), a rich older woman who lives alone in a large, run down house with about twenty dogs. The two form a Harold and Maude style relationship, but after she dies, and his father (Anthony LaPaglia) commits suicide, he spirals downwards, culminating in him taking a bagful of guns to a tourist attraction and killing over thirty people, including several children. Kurzel does well not to actually show these acts, treating the victims with respect and not just banking on shock factor. That's not to say this isn't a shocking film. Landry Jones is incredible here, actually eliciting sympathy, particularly in the first half of the film, and there were times where I felt sorry for him. This isn't the film making excuses for him, just trying to understand what could lead to somebody doing something like this. Knowing how things turn out there's a grim inevitability to proceedings that lends an edge to the film. I've seen a few films about similar subject matters, Denis Villeneuve's Polytechnique and Gus van Sant's Elephant, both about school shootings, spring to mind, but this is the only one that never veers into sensationalism. This is a brilliant film that handles a heavy subject with sensitivity and grace. 9/10 Lime's Film of the Week! Tomorrow Never Dies dir. Roger Spottiswoode/1997/2h Brosnan is back as Bond, this time facing off against media mogul Elliot Carver (Jonathan Pryce) who wants to start a war between Britain and China in order to have a big story to launch his new global news network. Along the way he teams up with Chinese operative Wai Lin (Michelle Yeoh) in order to bring Murdoch, I mean Carver, down. This film feels much more modern than Goldeneye, which was still rooted in the 80s Cold War Soviet threat world. The threat of the film being a manipulative, immoral media mastermind still feels very relevant today. A lot of people are of the opinion that the Brosnan Bonds took a sharp dive off a cliff after Goldeneye, but I just don't see that here. There's some great action, the pre-title sequence is thrilling, I love the scene with the remote control BMW, and Michelle Yeoh is one of the best Bond girls ever - the scene of her and Bond handcuffed together riding a motorcycle trying to escape a helicopter is up there with any chase scene in the series. The Sheryl Crow theme is criminally underrated, and the score, the first by David Arnold for the series, is a huge improvement on the aural enema that is the awful Goldeneye score. It's not quite up to the high standards of Goldeneye, but it's close. One of the most fun adventures in the series. 8.5/10 Teknolust dir. Lynn Hershman-Leeson/2002/1h23m Tilda Swinton plays bio-geneticist Rosetta, who makes three clones of herself who she keeps hidden. One of the clones, Ruby, occasionally leaves to seduce men because they need sp*rm, which they inject intravenously, to live. This is a very strange sci-fi film that I appreciated more as a time capsule of the early 2000s more than an actual film. It's not that I didn't enjoy it, it's just that it's so obtuse and strange that the actual plot and the themes get kinda lost behind all of the noise. I'm talking about stuff like the awful green-screen dance number where the three clones vogue like a bad music video, or the fonts used on the computers that all look like the ones used in cheap ringtone ads, or how the look of early digital video just hasn't aged well and gives everything a harsh edge, or how Rosetta talks to Ruby through her microwave, her tiny f*cking car. The performances are also pretty strange. Swinton does well to give each of her four characters distinct personalities, but she also feels spread too thin, not able to give any real depth to any of them. The rest of the cast are pretty bad. There's a doctor who whispers all of his dialogue for some reason. This is an interesting film, with some pretty striking moments, but it is also a confused mess that feels longer than its brief runtime. 6/10 Carry On Jack dir. Gerald Thomas/1963/1h27m The eighth film in the series is also the first period piece, set aboard a Navy frigate during the Napoleonic wars. Kenneth Williams plays Captain Fearless (yes, it is an ironic name), whose crew includes former cess-pit cleaner Walter Sweetly (Charles Hawtree) and Sally (Juliet Mills), who is looking for her lost love who went missing in Spain, and so dresses up in drag in order to go after him. The historical aspect does a lot to add some freshness to the Carry On formula. Williams is the best he's been in the series, and any scene with him is a highlight. There are also some really nice shots of the ship at sea, and the sets look great. One major downside is the lack of the Carry On regulars. After being in the last few films you really miss Sid James who has such a big presence, and I missed seeing Kenneth Conners, who has fast become my favourite. Nevertheless, this is still a solid entry in the series, and the historical setting and spoofing of other genres is something that will stand them in good stead in the near future. 7/10 Dumbo dir. Ben Sharpsteen/1941/1h4m Dumbo is the story of the baby elephant with giant ears who learns that his difference is a strength thanks to the help of a little mouse and a lot of booze. This is a real comedown after the triple whammy of Snow White, Pinocchio and Fantasia. This is a slight story that hardly manages to fill up an hour. There are things I liked – the scene where Dumbo and his mother are separated, and then when he goes to see her locked up in prison had me tearing up, and the Pink Elephants on Parade number is a real trippy treat, like a b-side for Fantasia – but I mostly felt indifferent. Timothy Mouse (Edward Brophy) is pretty annoying and had me missing Jiminy Cricket, and I couldn't believe how overtly racist those crows were – one of them is literally called Jim – although their song When I See an Elephant Fly is a banger. The animation also looks a lot cheaper, there is a distinct lack of detail compared to the previous Disney films. This isn't a terrible film, not by a long shot, but it's not up to the standards I'm expecting of them. 6/10 Halloween dir. David Gordon-Green/2018/1h46m Halloween is the direct sequel to Halloween, ignoring all of the other sequels in the Halloween series, and the remake of Halloween, Halloween, by Rob Zombie. Michael Myers has been in prison ever since the events of Halloween night 1978, while Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), who is no longer his sister, has been living in her own prison of paranoia and isolation. Her trauma has been passed down to her daughter Karen (Judy Greer), who is currently trying to pass it on to her own daughter Allyson (Andi Matichak). While being transported to another facility Michael escapes, and wouldn't you know, it's just a few days until Halloween. This is alright, much better than most of the sequels, though it still isn't great. I like Jamie Lee Curtis in this, her development as a character feels authentic, as does her relationship with her family. There is a lot of nonsense though. The whole opening with the podcasters is pointless, and for some reason his mask seems to be incredibly special to him, even though in the original film its just something he stole from a store to hide his face. I get it's iconic to us, the audience, but would he really care about it? Get another mask you *sshole. The pacing of the kills is also off, like they happen irregularly. The original built up to a crescendo of violence in the last act, but here they're peppered randomly throughout. There are also way too many on the nose references to the original, I'm talking recreating shots for no reason a la Gus van Sant's Psycho remake. Some pointless, inconsequential fun for spooky season. 6.5/10 Edited October 22, 2022 by LimeGreenLegend 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djw180 6,836 Posted October 22, 2022 Share Posted October 22, 2022 (edited) Men (2022) dir Alex Garland This a fantasy horror starring Jessie Buckley as Harper, a young woman who rents a house in a small English village (in Devon I think) to mentally recover from traumatic events. Rory Kinnear plays her landlord, Geoffrey, and all the other male characters from the village that Harper meets. The only other cast members are the actor playing Harper's deceased husband in flash-back scenes, 3 other women in minor / supporting roles and a young actor playing a boy in the village. But he just plays the boy's body with Kinnear 's face CGI'd onto his head. So all the men of the village look very similar, some are creepy as well and later on grotesque. One is clearly based on the 'Green Man' – a pagan forest god / spirit. But he is the support, Buckley is the star of this and very good, as ever. It starts as a story of a woman haunted by recent events, seeing and hearing disturbing things, before ending in a very gory, bloody encounter with the various 'men' of the village. It seems like the sort of film that the writer-director is trying to make a message from, but it's not really clear what that message is. Are Kinnear's characters supposed to represent all men, just those who have hurt Harper in the past, or has she just found herself in a very weird place inhabited by supernatural malevolent creatures? I don't think it's as simple as the latter, but other than that I am really not sure. That doesn't really matter though. It is visually very watchable (other than the gory ending if, like me, you do not really like that sort of thing) with some great cinematography, good sound and music too. The special effects, mainly at the end, are worth a mention as well. They are very good without dominating the film, they happen when the story needs them and blend seamlessly with the standard filming / acting. 8 / 10 Edited October 22, 2022 by djw180 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djw180 6,836 Posted October 22, 2022 Share Posted October 22, 2022 @LimeGreenLegend I see you are watching a few Tilda Swinton films. I would highly recommend Memoria if you have not already seen it. Just make sure you have a good sound system. The actual sound, rather than music, is crucial to it. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,175 Posted October 22, 2022 Share Posted October 22, 2022 3 hours ago, djw180 said: @LimeGreenLegend I see you are watching a few Tilda Swinton films. I would highly recommend Memoria if you have not already seen it. Just make sure you have a good sound system. The actual sound, rather than music, is crucial to it. Funny you mention that, it just got added to the BFI Player a couple of days ago and it's already on my watchlist, I'm a big fan of the Thai director with the impressive name who directed it too. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djw180 6,836 Posted November 6, 2022 Share Posted November 6, 2022 Zoe (2014) dir Drake Doremus Sci-fi, roughly present day setting. Ewan McGregor plays Cole, chief designer for a company that makes androids, indistinguishable from real humans (unless you open them up), that are intended as friends, lovers or just very high-tech s*x toys. He ends up falling in love with one of his creations, Zoe (Lea Seydoux). It obviously has some themes in common with Bladerunner (and it's produced by Ridley Scot's company), Zoe does not know she is artificial, at first. The cast also features Christina Aguilera as android prostitute who is wearing out and knows she hasn't got long left to 'live'. It is kind of examining the issue of rights for AI, are they machines that humans can do whatever they like to, or because they have feelings and understand the concept of being alive do they have rights? But it's mainly played out as complicated love story. The plot got a bit confusing in the middle for me, I didn't really understand exactly what was happening, but it recovered towards the ends. Nicely made and acted without anything outstanding. 6/10 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,175 Posted November 7, 2022 Share Posted November 7, 2022 (edited) What I Watched This Week #43 (Oct 22 – 28) White Zombie dir. Victor Halperin/1932/1h7m In Haiti a rich plantation owner falls in love with the fiancée of a Christian missionary, Madeleine (Madge Bellamy). He hires a voodoo master, Murder Legendre (Bela Lugosi), to turn her into his love sl*ve. But Legendre takes a liking to her himself, and it's left up to her fiancée Neil (John Harron) and Dr. Bruner (Joseph Cawthorn), a missionary preacher, to defeat him. The first feature length zombie film, the undead here are very different to the modern brain munchers, created by George A. Romero, that we know and love today. Still the living dead, here they are used as mindless sl*ves on plantations, perhaps a comment on the sl*ve trade and colonialism. There's a moment early on where one of the zombies falls into a machine used to crush sugar cane and he is totally silent the whole time and it really creeped me out. This is a very cheap film, and the performances are pretty bad apart from the inimitable Lugosi, already a superstar thanks to Dracula. He is, appropriately, mesmerising in this role, totally commanding every scene like he commands his mindless hoards. Every close up of his eyes sent chills down my spine. While this isn't close to the quality of other horror films from the period, including Dracula, this is still a fascinating film and should be on every horror buffs watchlist. 6/10 The World is not Enough dir. Michael Apted/1999/2h8m After an oil tycoon is assassinated Bond (Pierce Brosnan) is assigned to protect his daughter, Elektra (Sophie Marceau), who is the target of a terrorist group led by the ruthless Renard (Robert Carlyle), the man who feels no pain thanks to a bullet in his head. This film starts off strongly with a great pre-title sequence that ends with Bond being dropped on the Millennium Dome, and then another highly underrated theme song, this time by the band Garbage. However, the rest of the film has a really uneven tone that veers from wanting to be taken totally seriously in terms of the personal stakes for Bond to the totally ridiculous like his stupid inflatable ski jacket. I liked seeing Robbie Coltrane return as Zukovski and, even though his character is pretty stupid, Carlyle really gives this his all and at times comes across as a genuine threat. Sadly, both the Bond girls are pretty bad. Denise Richards is very unconvincing as a nuclear physicist in Lara Croft cosplay, and Marceau is pretty bland in her role. This film would be a lot better if these roles were swapped and Richards were playing the spoilt rich girl who always gets what she wants with Marceau as the cold, calculating scientist. John Cleese is also out of place as R, the replacement for Q (Desmond Llewelyn) who had been in the series since From Russia with Love in 1963 and passed away just before this film's release. He is just too over the top, playing it like a bad Monty Python skit. That said, there are some great action scenes here, and another great score by David Arnold. This is a middle of the road entry from the Brosnan era that doesn't come close to Goldeneye, but is also a lot better than what comes next. 6/10 Carry On Spying dir. Gerald Thomas/1964/1h27m Carry On Spying is the first film in the series that really goes all out when it comes to spoofing another genre and it really pays dividends. When STENCH (the society for the total extinction of non-conforming humans) steals a top secret chemical formula British Intelligence sends the only agents at their disposal. This team is led by Kenneth Williams as Desmond Simkins, assisted by Charles Hawtrey as Charlie Bind and, in her first Carry On appearance, Barbara Windsor as Daphne Honeybutt. This is a lot of fun with some great slapstick and innuendo, and it does a great job of sending up not just the Bond series but films like Casablanca and The Third Man. Williams is again a highlight, his bumbling agent the antithesis to Connery's raging machismo, and Windsor is a delight, really given chance to show off her comedy skills. There are even some jokes that aren't about her big t*ts! I'm also starting to think that Hawtrey doesn't actually read the script and they just let him do what he wants. It's not just in this film, but all of the Carry Ons. He really seems like he's high as f*ck and just having a blast, and it's great to watch. If you like spoof films then you shouldn't sleep on this one. This is like the prototype for Austin Powers, and it's much better than the Casino Royale spoof that would release a few years later. 8/10 Early Chaplin Shorts (all 1914): Making a Living – dir. Henry Lehrman/13m 4/10 Mabel's Strange Predicament – dir. Mabel Normand/12m 6/10 Kid Auto Races at Venice – dir. Henry Lehrman/7m 6.5/10 A Thief Catcher – dir. Ford Sterling/8m 3/10 I'm currently reading Charlie Chaplin's autobiography and reading about his arrival in America made me want to check out some of his early films, so I watched his first four, made with the Keystone company who were famous for the Keystone Cops. Making a Living sees him as a scam artist who becomes a reporter and gets into a rivalry with another reporter, trying to get the scoop on a big car crash. Very simple stuff but Chaplin's charisma is obvious from the start. There are also some pretty impressive scenes including the car tumbling down a hill and a great tracking shot from the back of a streetcar as Chaplin chases after it, something I wasn't expecting from 1914. Mabel's Strange Predicament sees the first appearance of The tr*mp, who here gets drunk in a hotel lobby and causes mayhem for a newly married couple. Just seeing him in that iconic outfit gives this film a touch of magic. Mabel Normand, a huge star in her own right, holds her own against Charlie here, giving this more substance than the other films here. Kid Auto Races at Venice is the most simple film here, and my favourite. The tr*mp attends some automobile races in Venice (California, not Italy) and when he sees a film camera decides he wants to be the star. He spends six minutes walking back and forth in front of the camera, prancing about and mugging and it's fantastic. He's making something from nothing and it all seems so effortless. I also love that fact that he was an unknown at this point, so all of the crowds there for the races probably thought he was some drunk making trouble for a film crew. The final film here stars Ford Sterling, another star of the time and the man who Chaplin was hired to replace. He plays a man who witnesses a crime and is then pursued by the criminals. Chaplin appears as one of the Keystone Cops in what is basically a cameo, and even then you can tell that he is far more talented than Sterling, who spends the film totally overacting in all the wrong ways. His facial expressions are grotesquely hammy, a far cry from the subtle inflections of Chaplin. The appearance of Chaplin is the only notable thing about this film. The Banshees of Inisherin dir. Martin McDonagh/2022/1h54m On a small island off the coast of Ireland during their civil war in the early 1920s Colm Doherty (Brendan Gleeson) tells his best friend of many years, Padraic Suilleabhain (Colin Farrell), that he doesn't want to be friends anymore. He offers no reason why, and when Padraic keeps bothering him about it he gives him a violent ultimatum, and he is deadly serious. McDonagh, who wrote and directed the brilliant In Bruges, teams up with that films leads once again and the result is more dark magic. This is a very simple story that is elevated to greatness by the writing and performances, not just from the leads but also Kerry Condon who plays Padraic's sister Siobhan, and one of my favourite young actors Barry Keoghan as the village idiot Dominic. Like the best black comedies this is both absolutely hilarious and worryingly distressing, often at the same time. Farrell gives maybe the best performance of his career here as a simple man totally heartbroken for reasons he doesn't even understand, and Keoghan starts off as a punchline, but by the end of the film may be the most tragic character in the film. But the star is Gleeson, and he totally makes the film his own. This is one of the best films of the year, but if you're not used to very thick Irish accents then you may need subtitles. 9/10 Lime's Film of the Week! Edited November 7, 2022 by LimeGreenLegend 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,175 Posted November 8, 2022 Share Posted November 8, 2022 What I Watched This Week #44 (Oct 29 – Nov 4) Shadow of the Vampire dir. E. Elias Merhige/2000/1h32m John Malkovich plays director F.W. Murnau in this film about the making of his horror classic, Nosferatu. However, in this version he has made a deal with a real vampire (Willem Dafoe), offering him the fresh neck of his leading lady in exchange for his appearance in the film. As the shoot progresses Murnau struggles to control the monster, while also falling deeper into his own megamaniacal madness. This is a great film that really captures the atmosphere of the original film – the recreations of scenes are perfect – while also adding to the mythos surrounding it. Malkovich and Dafoe are excellent together, two monsters clashing their wills against each other with dire consequences for the innocents around them. This is also quite a funny film, the way the vampire becomes more and more of a diva on set is always hilarious to me. Then there are times when the vampire is a tragic figure – in this film he's old and weak, unable to even transform other people into vampires so he is totally alone – and the scene where he sympathises with Dracula from the novel is truly heart breaking. This may be one his more obscure films but I think it's one of Dafoe's best performances. Malkovich is just as threatening as the vampire and Malkovich is having a lot of fun hamming it up. There's also solid support from one of my favourite comedians, Eddie Izzard, who plays the lead actor in Nosferatu. This year is the one hundredth anniversary of the release of Nosferatu, and this film is a testament to its enduring legacy as one of the most iconic horror films of all time. 9/10 Die Another Day dir. Lee Tamahori/2002/2h13m Pierce Brosnan returns as James Bond for the fourth and final time, this time going up against Gustav Graves (Toby Stephens) and his giant space laser. Sadly he is assisted by CIA agent Jinx (Halle Berry), one of the worst Bond girls ever. This film is rightly derided as crap, but there are some things I like. The entire opening sequence set in North Korea that ends with a hovercraft chase and Bonds capture is great, and the shots of him being tortured over the opening song is something we've never seen before and feels fresh. The song, by Madonna, is the worst in the series and a bad omen for the rest of the film. Graves is one of the worst villains in the series, totally forgettable in every way. His henchman with the diamonds in his face would have made a more interesting antagonist. There is some really bad CGI in several places, and no stand outs in the supporting cast. Judi Dench as M is good in the very limited screen time she has, but that's about it. John Cleese thankfully makes his final appearance as R, and Michael Madsen is in it for some reason, but I don't think he actually does anything. A true low point for the series, but things can only get better. 4/10 Funeral Parade of Roses dir. Toshio Matsumoto/1969/1h45m Funeral Parade of Roses is an experimental film that blends fiction and documentary filmmaking in a non-linear narrative focused on Eddie (Shinnosuke Ikehata), a young trans woman who works in a gay bar in Tokyo. This film has an incredible sense of style and inventiveness about it that makes it always engaging even when the narrative becomes hard to follow. Ikehata is brilliant in the lead, giving real emotional depth through movement and subtle looks. While it heavily focuses on the gay and trans community it does take in the whole breadth of the Tokyo underground, from drug dealers to revolutionary avant garde filmmakers, making it feel forbidden and cutting edge. It's hard to talk about a film like this because it's something that needs to be experienced. I can say that the black and white cinematography is beautifully crisp, the editing and direction is always inventive and it has an ending that outdoes Oldboy in the shock factor and actually made me go “WHOA” out loud, and it takes a lot to make me do that. 9/10 Lime's Film of the Week! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djw180 6,836 Posted November 13, 2022 Share Posted November 13, 2022 (edited) Deception (2013) dir Giuseppe Tornatore Geoffrey Rush plays eccentric millionaire auctioneer and art expert, Virgil Oldman. With the help of friend Donald Sutherland, he has amassed a massive private collection of portraits of female subjects by numerous renowned artists. He is still adding to his collection which he keeps in a secret, secure room in his luxury apartment. His job entails a lot of travelling to high-art auctions around the world and coordinating the sales of wealthy client's collections. One day he is contacted by a mysterious young woman, Sylvia Hoeks, who wants him to catalogue and auction off the contents of her late parent's mansion. He isn't that interested at first but she gets him intrigued, particularly by her reclusiveness, and soon he is taking more than just a professional interest in her. He also starts to find bits of antique mechanisms around the mansion and with another friend, Jim Sturgess, starts to re-assemble these, convinced they are part of some sort of hundreds-years-old “android”. His courting of his new female client is guided by this same friend, as Virgil himself has no experience of any long-term relationships; it's the subjects of his portrait collection that he sees as the women of his life. You have to take the title of film into account. It's clear something is not quite what it seems, and someone is being deceived. I won't spoil it further incase anyone else does end up watching this. There was a bit of plot-twist at the end, and I only worked out what was really going on just before they revealed it. Others may well have worked it out earlier. I wouldn't call it a thriller or a romance. It's just a fairly decent drama with some unusual elements. Rush and Sutherland are great actors and good in this. Some of the support cast not so good. The vagueness of the location annoys me, but that is just me I suppose. Almost all the characters, leads, support and bit parts, speak with English or American accents, yet it is clearly not set in England nor America from what we see on screen. It was filmed mainly in Milan and other Italian cities, I think we are supposed take it as being set there too. It's very stylish and has a very good Ennio Moricone score (reminiscent of Once Upon a Time in America) that is not as dominant as his most famous films but more than just background music. A couple of scenes in the secret art room with no dialogue and the score playing are very watchable and listenable to. 7/10 Edited November 13, 2022 by djw180 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djw180 6,836 Posted November 19, 2022 Share Posted November 19, 2022 The Year Of The Cannibals (1970) dir Liliana Cavini age restricted trailer due to some naked arses on show, nothing I would call explicit This is a very 70s, arty, political drama. The title could be misleading; it's not horror, there is no actual cannibalism in it at all. That was all symbolic, I think. It's set in an unnamed modern day fascist dictatorship. There's been a rebellion that has been put down ruthlessly. The bodies of the dead rebels have been dumped in the streets and people are banned from burying them or even touching them. Antigone (Brit Eckland) is the sister of one such rebel and she defies the ban (in that there is similarity to the original Greek tragedy “Antigone”). With an almost silent accomplice she starts to bury other dead rebels, and of course the army hunt them down. It is a little surreal at times. It seems to be trying to make a political point and I'm not really sure what that is other than Fascist Dictatorship = Bad – well yes, I don't think many people will disagree with that, though maybe in early 70s Italy that was not the case? There are some truly bizarre scenes; naked soldiers, in a sauna, crawling under a boy who stands over them dressed in an officer's uniform – and the meaning of that is …. ? Bodies are always buried with food, especially fish – again no idea why. The fish is also their resistance symbol, maybe a reference to the fish as the symbol of the early Christian church when it was being persecuted by the Romans? Ennio Morricone wrote the score; the reason I watched this. It's quite good, not orchestral, mainly played on various keyboards (Hammond organ I think features prominently). There are some glimpses of what would come in his music decades later, some definite hints of the music from The Mission. The acting and script are reasonable without being outstanding. It's quite low on dialogue at times, which I quite liked. Worth watching if you are into early 70s Italian cinema, or a fan of Brit Eckland or Ennio Morricone. But nothing that special. 6/10 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,175 Posted November 20, 2022 Share Posted November 20, 2022 What I Watched This Week #45 (Nov 5 – 11) Weird: The Al Yankovic Story dir. Eric Appel/2022/1h48m This review is dedicated to the memory of “Weird” Al Yankovic 1959-1985 RIP Weird tells the incredible true story of Al Yankovic, played by Daniel Radcliffe. From his childhood, where his parents (Toby Huss, Julianne Nicholson) dismissed his dream of becoming maybe not technically the best, but the most famous accordion player in a very specific genre of music, through his meteoric rise to fame, his relationship with Madonna (Evan Rachel Wood), his problems with alcohol and his tragic assassination at an awards show in 1985. Obviously this isn't a traditional biopic, this is a parody of a biopic, and it nails all of the tropes perfectly. If you're a fan of Weird Al then you'll love this movie, and I think you'll love it if you've never even heard of him before. Radcliffe is fantastic in the lead, playing it totally straight like he's the greatest musician in history. I also love how he plays Weird Al as a total badass, particularly in the section where he has to rescue Madonna from Pablo Escobar (Arturo Castro). I also like how his casting is kind of a joke, just for the fact that Radcliffe looks nothing like Weird Al and is a good foot shorter than him. The supporting cast are all great, and there are a bunch of cameos, my favourites being Jack Black as DJ Wolfman Jack and Conan O'Brien as Andy Warhol. The funniest film of the year. 9/10 Lime's Film of the Week! Seven Up! dir. Paul Almond/1964/40m (no trailer for this so here's a clip) Seven Up! is the first entry in the ground-breaking documentary “Up!” series. Director Paul Almond and assistant Michael Apted (who would direct every subsequent film) interview twenty English seven year olds from a wide variety of backgrounds about their lives and their views on subjects like race and relationships. The series revisits these kids every seven years, with the latest film, 63 Up!, released in 2019. The biggest takeaway from this film is the class differences. You have some snooty rich kids talking about what private schools and universities they'll be going to, while one working class kid, when asked about his future, just says he'll “walk around and see what I can find”. The candidness of these kids is always endearing, especially the kid who worries about getting married because his wife might make him eat vegetables. At the same time you can also clearly tell when the kids are just parroting their parents views, which I think is most obvious with the rich girl Suzie who, and please don't judge me for saying this about a seven year old, comes across as a total c*nt. I also would have liked more representation. Only four of the subjects are female, and there is only one person of colour. There was a huge surge of immigration to England after WW2, particularly from India and the West Indies, and I think the film would have been better for their inclusion. That said, this is a brilliantly fascinating time capsule/social experiment and I can't wait to watch the next instalment. 8/10 Carry On Cleo dir. Gerald Thomas/1964/1h34m The Carry On series continues its trend of sending up other genres and this time it's the swords and sandals epics like Cleopatra, and Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Through a case of mistaken identity, cowardly Briton Hengist Pod (Kenneth Connor) becomes personal bodyguard to Julius Caesar (Kenneth Williams). Meanwhile, Caesar's top general, Marc Antony (Sid James), plots to assassinate him after being seduced by Queen of the Nile Cleopatra (Amanda Barrie). This is top tier Carry On here, with a script full of brilliant one liners – including one of my favourite lines in any film, when Caesar learns of the plot against his life he cries out “infamy! Infamy! They've all got it in for me” - and the cast firing on all cylinders. Williams is perfect as the preening, sickly Caesar, and he has great chemistry with James here. I love the way they call each other Tony and Julie. Also, the sets and costumes look really good despite the low budgets of these films. One of the best entries of the series. 8/10 Wendell & Wild dir. Henry Selick/2022/1h47m Wendell & Wild is a stop-motion animation from the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline. It stars Jordan Peele (who co-wrote the script with Selick) and Keegan-Michael Key as the titular characters, two demon brothers with dreams of designing their own theme park, who are summoned by teenager Kat (Lyric Ross) because of the guilt she feels over her parents death. There are a load of sub-plots including stuff about for-profit prisons and trans rights, and none of them really get the time they need. This is still a decent film, but if it were more focused then it would be up there with the rest of Selick's work. Thankfully the quality of the animation does equal his previous films, and his distinct style comes across in the character design, which is incredible. I don't mind having so many plot threads to follow when every scene is full of imaginitive and unique visuals. The voice cast are all great, Key and Peele play dumb really well, and there is able support from the likes of Angela Bassett and Ving Rhames. 7/10 The Sound of 007 dir. Mat Whitecross/2022/1h28m This is a documentary that celebrates the music of the Bond franchise. It purports to cover the entire sixty year history, but comes across more as a DV D special feature for No Time to Die, the latest film in the series, with the amount of time given to discussing the Billie Eilish title song. There are some songs we don't even hear like Man With the Golden Gun and, as much as I hate it, Die Another Day. They talk about the amazing long note that nearly made Tom Jones pass out at the end of Thunderball but we don't hear it. This is also a very standard documentary with no real flair or originality. It just goes from talking head interview to archive footage to film clip and back again for the duration. There are some good snippets of information in here, like how the main Bond theme is an adaptation of a piece of sitar music John Barry wrote for an unproduced musical, or how Michael Caine, an unknown actor who was staying at Barry's house for a while as the two were friends, was the first person to hear the song Goldfinger after Barry kept him up all night composing it. But those golden nuggets are few and far between. If you're a Bond fan you'll probably enjoy this, but you'd be better off just listening to a Spotify playlist. 5/10 The Sound of 007: Live from the Royal Albert Hall dir. Matthew Amos/2022/59m (again, no trailer, so here's paloma faith singing goldeneye) This concert film acts as a companion piece for the documentary, and honestly does a better job of covering the series' musical history. The Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra are joined by a series of guest singers and musicians as they play a selection of music from the series. It starts off strong with Shirley Bassey singing Diamonds are Forever and Goldfinger, and though she can't belt them out like she used to she sounds great for an 85 year old. She is also still a fantastic performer and just exudes star power. The other original singers here were Lulu who did a good job with The Man with the Golden Gun, but her mic was mixed really low, and Garbage performing The World is not Enough, and they were actually garbage. The only other bad act was some guy who butchered Louis Armstrong's We Have all the Time in the World. I really enjoyed the rest. Skin from Skunk Anansie rocks the sh*t out of Live and Let Die, composer David Arnold did a serviceable job singing You Know My Name (from Casino Royale) as a tribute to the late great Chris Cornell and Paloma Faith does a brilliant Tina Turner impression singing Goldeneye. 8/10 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djw180 6,836 Posted November 21, 2022 Share Posted November 21, 2022 @LimeGreenLegendtotally agree with you on Carry on Cleo, the "Infamy" quote is brilliant. I also love the deliberate, ridiculously over-the-top historical inaccuracy of having the ancient Britons still in the stone-age with one of them mentioning an encounter with a dinosaur. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,175 Posted November 22, 2022 Share Posted November 22, 2022 What I Watched This Week #46 (Nov 12 – 18) Il Buco dir. Michelangelo Frammartino/2021/1h33m Il Buco (The Hole) is a contemplative film about the connection between man and nature from the director of the sublime Le Quattro Volte (The Four Times). A television news report about the construction of Italy's tallest building at the start of the film is followed by a group of speleologists travelling into the countryside to explore and map the Bifurto Abyss, one of the deepest cave systems in the world. An elderly farmer nearing the end of his life watches on from the hillside. Largely dialogue free, this is constructed like a visual poem – beautiful shots of the forests and the wide open sky are juxtaposed with the claustrophobic inky black abyss lit only by the caver's torches. There are some incredibly composed shots here like the one looking up out of the entrance to the cave at the clear sky, a football flying back and forth across the frame, or the close up of the pulse on the dying farmer's wrist. This is a very deliberately paced film that requires some patience and attention, but is very much worth it. 8.5/10 7 Plus Seven dir. Michael Apted/1970/52m (no trailer or any clips for this so just use your imagination) Michael Apted revisits the children from Seven Up! at 14 to see how they have grown and changed over the previous years. I'm sure everyone remembers being that age and how awkward and uncomfortable you felt most of the time and that is evident in the kids here, with a lot of shoegazing and muttered answers. They are a lot more guarded with their responses, and are now aware that this is going to be shown on TV, but Apted is still able to gently pry them open. Some of them also seem to be embarrassed of what they said in the first film. But on the whole the kids haven't changed that much since they were 7. The class divisions are still plain to see, and Suzy is still a c*nt. Although, the best part of the film happens during one of her interviews, which were taking place in her extensive gardens, when her dog mauls a rabbit in the background. Another fascinating documentary that makes you look forward to the next instalment. 8/10 Carry On Cowboy dir. Gerald Thomas/1965/1h33m The Carry On team head out to the Wild West, where the peaceful Stodge City is being ransacked by the ruthless Rumpo Kid (Sid James), so Judge Burke (Kenneth Williams) sends for a new Marshal. But thanks to a case of mistaken identity they get a mild-mannered English sanitation engineer called Marshal (Jim Dale). With more than a little help from Annie Oakley (Angela Douglas) he endeavours to bring law and order back to town. I was looking forward to this after the great run the series has been on but I found it a bit of a let down. A lot of the jokes don't work, and I don't think such a quintessentially American genre lends itself to the Carry On style of cheeky, end-of-the-pier English humour. Also, a lot of the accents are awful, especially James's. I know people say that American actors are bad at English accents, well it goes the other way too. The exception here is Williams, who is almost unrecognisable underneath a big moustache and talks with an old timey prospector type accent. This film is carried by the charm and charisma of the performers, and, like Cleo, the sets and costumes look great for the budget they had. Fun in parts but it should have been better. 6/10 The Image Book dir. Jean-Luc Godard/2018/1h28m The Image Book is the final film from the legendary Jean-Luc Godard, who passed away earlier this year aged 92. It is an experimental montage of clips from the entire history of film spliced with political news footage, and all of this has been distorted and morphed, sometimes beyond recognition, and it creates this beautifully incomprehensible essay that sums up his entire philosophy on the art. I won't pretend to be smart enough to say I understand this. I don't. At all. But I was entranced and moved throughout just by the sheer audacity of the technique on display. It would be easy to pass this off as pretentious rubbish, but everything JLG made throughout his entire career was made his way, every image has meaning and purpose, even if that meaning is totally obfuscated. I must admit that I'm in the majority of people who prefer his early films from the 60's that were slightly more narrative driven, but JLG was always moving forward, he was never comfortable staying still and doing the same thing over and over again. He pushed boundaries with every film, and this is a fitting finale for one of the most confrontational, difficult, and influential filmmakers of all time. 7.5/10 The Four Troublesome Heads dir. George Melies/1898/1m An early short film from the man who put the magic in the movies, George Melies, where he appears on stage and, using very simple multiple exposures, appears to remove his head, grow another, and remove that etc. This looks basic now, but imagine going to a theatre in 1898 and seeing this. You'd blow your f*cking mind! Everything I've seen of Melies is so playful and inventive that I can't help but smile the whole time. He was such an incredible person and I really suggest you do some reading about him, or watch some YouTube videos because it's so tragic what happened to him, who gave so much to the movies. 8/10 The Wonderful Wizard of Oz dir. Otis Turner/1910/13m This early silent version of the classic story crams it all in in less than a quarter of an hour and still manages to hit all the major beats, albeit with a lot of changes. Bebe Daniels is Dorothy who is swept off to the land of Oz during a hurricane – depicted with pretty good effects here – where she makes some friends and defeats the wicked witch. The animal costumes are almost scary at times, but the production design isn't bad for the time. Plus there are a couple of pretty banging dance numbers. This feels like a stage version of the story with how it is presented, but that's common for a lot of early films. A very strange, but entertaining film, although it obviously doesn't come close to the Judy Garland version. 7/10 The Boys Think They Have One on Foxy Grandpa, But He Fools Them dir. Unknown/1902/1m Of course I was going to watch a film with a title like that. This short shows a couple of young brats mocking poor old Grandpa with their dance moves, but he shows them by cutting a rug while also shredding the sh*t out of a banjo. I don't know why this is a thing, but I'm glad that it is. Early cinema was weird. 6/10 How To Make Movies dir. Charlie Chaplin/1918/16m In what may be the first ever mockumentary Charlie Chaplin gives us a behind the scenes look at his film studio as only he can. What's strange about this is that it's one of the few times where we see him as Charlie Chaplin and not the tr*mp, although his physicality is unmistakeable. This is short but it's packed full of gags and most of them had me laughing. He spends a minute eating a lemon and it's hilarious. This isn't just a fascinating look behind the scenes of early Hollywood, it's a funny film in its own right. A sweet and charming little film. 9/10 Sallie Gardner at a Gallop dir. Eadweard Muybridge/1878/1m Well this is it. The beginning. The first film. A series of 24 photographs that, when shown on a device called a zoopraxiscope, appears to be in motion. This was done by photographer Muybridge in order to see whether a horse ever has all four hooves in the air when it's galloping (it does). The horse, Sallie Gardner, is being ridden by Gilbert Domm – a plot point in Jordan Peele's latest film Nope. This isn't entertaining – it's a side on shot of a horse that loops over and over – but it is important. It is history. Every film ever made is a result of a Victorian photographer taking some pictures of Gilbert Domm riding a horse called Sallie. I'm not giving this my film of the week award, because I want to give that to an actual film, but there's no doubt that this is a 10/10 Argentina, 1985 dir. Santiago Mitre/2022/2h21m Argentina, 1985 tells the true story of the Trial of the Juntas, where the leaders of the Argentine military dictatorship that ruled the country until 1981 were tried for their crimes. Ricardo Darin plays lead prosecutor Julio Strassera, an experienced lawyer who always remains calm even when his life is being threatened. Because no one else wants to be a target he has to assemble a team of young lawyers, including his assistant Moreno Ocampo (Peter Lanzani). This is a standard courtroom drama that is elevated by the incredible performances of both leads, particularly Darin who is amazing despite looking like a flabby Ray Romano. The court scenes, which make up the meat of the second half, are expertly staged and never gets bogged down in exposition, and the closing argument by Strassera is one of the best single pieces of acting this year and Darin should be nominated for all the awards just for that. 9/10 Lime's Film of the Week! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,175 Posted November 27, 2022 Share Posted November 27, 2022 (edited) What I Watched This Week #47 (Nov 19 – 25) Hit The Road dir. Panah Panahi/2021/1h33m Hit The Road is an Iranian road movie and the directorial debut of Panah Panahi, son of filmmaker Jafar Panahi, who is currently in prison for speaking out against the regime there. The film follows a family as they drive to the Turkish border, the reasons for which aren't made clear until late on. In the backseat, the father (Hassan Madjooni) is struggling with a broken leg whilst trying to keep the younger son (Rayan Sarlak) under control. In the front, the mother (Pantea Panahiha) is trying not to cry while the older son (Amin Simiar) quietly drives. This is a brilliantly observed family drama with each character so fully fleshed out by both script and performance that we can discern their individual relationships with each other almost instantly. Panahi manages a fine balance in tone here masterfully, as even though the family are joking and squabbling with each other in a very funny, naturalistic way, there is always an edge of danger in the background. They are never quite safe and you can always feel that. This is also expressed through the performances of Madjooni and Panahiha as the parents. The scenes with just the two of them are some of the best in the film because they perfectly convey that particular brand of parental angst and worry. But the real star of the film is the young Sarlak who steals every scene with his excellent performance – which doesn't feel like a performance at all - as the youngest son. He is a force of nature bursting into song and injecting the film with a lot of energy, which it needs as a lot of it is set in a car. I also love him in the totally unexpected fourth-wall breaking ending. 8.5/10 Carry On Screaming dir. Gerald Thomas/1966/1h27m The Carry On team spoof the classic Hammer horror films in what many consider the best in the series. Harry H. Corbett plays Detective Bung, investigating a series of kidnappings of beautiful young women. The women are being taken by the crazed Dr. Watt (Kenneth Williams) and turned into mannequins, which he's selling to shops. Bung is also hampered in his case by Watt's sister, the vampish Valeria (Fenella Fielding), who uses her considerable charms to distract him. I'm with the general consensus here as I think this is the high point for the series. Corbett, in his only Carry On appearance, is great as the bumbling detective, and he shows a great range swinging from incompetent nincompoop to dedicated professional to slavering beast. Williams is having a lot of fun as the mad scientist with another iconic line - “frying tonight”. Again, the production and costume design are a step above what you would expect from one of these films, and I thing the design of the monster – a kind of hybrid Wolfman and Frankenstein's Monster – is genuinely scary. We're a dozen films into this series now, and I'm still surprised at how good they are. 8/10 Casino Royale dir. Martin Campbell/2006/2h24m Daniel Craig takes on the mantle of the world's most famous spy in what is the first true reboot in the series' history. We go back to the beginning from the beginning as the fantastic pre-title sequence shows him earning his double-0 license. His main mission is to take on Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen) in a high stakes poker game. Le Chiffre is the money man for the world's biggest terrorist organisations, but he lost it all – thanks to Bond – and needs to make back a few hundred million pretty sharpish, hence the poker game. This is a real stripped back effort that maintains the familiar traits of a classic Bond film with a modern simplicity. This is from the same director as Goldeneye and is again the best film in that actor's run. The producers of the series would be foolish to not have him direct the next one. Campbell is great at giving action scenes the time and space they need so you can appreciate what's going on, and there are some spectacular set pieces in this film, the standout being the early parkour chase through a building site. The theme song – You Know My Name – by the late, great Chris Cornell, is like the film itself, a simple, stripped back song that still has the classic elements, this is complimented by David Arnold's excellent score. Arguably the best film in the series, and depending on what day it is I may just agree with that. 9/10 Enola Holmes 2 dir. Harry Bradbeer/2022/2h9m Millie Bobby Brown returns as the titular Enola, who has started her own private investigation business hoping to step out of her older brother Sherlock's (Henry Cavill) shadow. She is about to shut up shop – because no one wants to hire a young woman – when she gets a case to find a missing match factory girl, a case which seems to be connected to something big Sherlock is working on. I'm a big fan of the Sherlock Holmes universe, and this series is a fun addition to the mythology. The best parts of the first were when she was working together with Sherlock, and we get a lot more of that here. The actual mystery itself is decent and had me guessing up to the big reveal, and there is another big character from the mythology introduced here which I did not see coming, and I hope we get more of them in the inevitable third part. MBB is a good actor, but there's a lot of fourth-wall breaking here – like the first film – and she just doesn't pull it off very well, but other than that she's great. Cavill is brilliant as Sherlock, and I would love to see him get a film of his own, doing a slick Netflix take on one of the classic stories. It is overlong, but if I were a 12 year old girl this would be my favourite film. 7/10 Life After Flash dir. Lisa Downs/2017/1h34m Life After Flash is a documentary that explores the life of Sam J. Jones, who played Flash Gordon in the 1980 film, after his one big role. It also acts as a behind the scene documentary with interviews with other cast members like Brian Blessed and Topol. This is a very shallow documentary that never really digs into anything. It brings up topics, like Jones's legal battles with producer Dino de Laurentiis, but there's no follow through or resolution. Most of the Jones half of the film is made up of talking heads interviews with his friends who all think he's a great guy and deserves his happiness. It's all very Hallmark channel. The other half of the film is nothing more than a DVD extra. The Blessed interviews are great because he's such a character, we get to see Brian May play the theme on the piano, and there are some fun interviews with Flash super-fans who show off their memorabilia collections, but this is an otherwise insignificant film. I only watched this because this month's film club film is Flash Gordon, and I wouldn't watch this otherwise. 4/10 Invention for Destruction dir. Karel Zeman/1958/1h23m Based on several Jules Verne stories, Invention for Destruction is a breath-takingly brilliant combination of live action and stop motion that looks like illustrations come to life. The plot sees a professor (Arnost Navratil) kidnapped by a dictator (Miroslav Holub) in order to produce a super weapon. But all of that is secondary to the incredible pre-steampunk style of the film. Every single shot is full of creativity and invention and are just gorgeous to look at. This bought to mind the films of George Melies with his beautifully intricate backgrounds, and is a clear influence on the likes of Terry Gilliam and Wes Anderson. This is the second Zeman film I've seen now, after The Fabulous Baron Munchausen, but I can already tell he's a filmmaker with a unique vision that is a testament to his imagination. Absolutely beautiful. 9/10 Triangle of Sadness dir. Ruben Ostlund/2022/2h27m The winner of the Palme D'Or at this years Cannes Film Festival, the director's second, Triangle of Sadness is a dark comedy that takes a super-yacht full of the super-rich and gives them the worst vacation ever. The film is split into three acts. The first introduces two of the passengers before they get on the yacht, the male model Carl (Harris Dickinson) and his more successful model girlfriend Yaya (Charlbi Dean, who sadly passed away earlier this year at just 32). The second act, The Yacht, is set on the yacht, with the final act set on a deserted island. This is a blunt force satire that wears its message on its sleeve, but, like the greatest writer of all time, Garth Marenghi, once said, subtext is for cowards. I don't want to say much more here because I loved this and think you should all watch it without knowing much about it. The performances are all superb, with my favourites being Woody Harrelson as the alcoholic, communist captain of the yacht, Dolly de Leon as the toilet cleaner turned island leader and Zlatko Buric as a Russian billionaire who sells sh*t. If seeing people vomit makes you queasy then maybe have a bucket on hand because there's a twenty minute sequence that you may have trouble with, and the ending is kind of ambiguous which can be quite divisive. But I always enjoy seeing rich people realise how f*cking worthless they actually are, and this delivers that in spades. 9.5/10 Lime's Film of the Week! Quantum of Solace dir. Marc Forster/2008/1h46m Daniel Craig returns for his second Bond outing, which picks up just moments after the end of Casino Royale. Bond is out for blood after the betrayal and death of Vespa, which leads him to Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric), who has connections to the shadowy organisation behind everything. Right from the opening scene this is a huge let down. That scene, a car chase, is one of the worst edited scenes in any big budget film ever. It's totally incomprehensible with no regard to making it clear who is who and what is happening. The villain is totally bland, maybe the worst in the series, and I actually can't remember what his big evil plan is despite watching it only yesterday. He doesn't even have an interesting henchman. Even the guy in Die Another Day had a cool looking henchman. There are good things, like Craig, who gives a great performance as a blunt force instrument bent on revenge. Casino Royale was always gonna be a hard act to follow, but they really fumbled the ball here. 4.5/10 Decision to Leave dir. Park Chan-wook/2022/2h18m The latest film from the director of Oldboy is a slow-burn noir thriller with a strong debt to Hitchcock. The plot follows detective Hae-joon (Park Hae-il) who is investigating the suspicious death of a man, with the man's wife Seo-rae (Tang Wei) soon becoming the prime suspect. The two soon form something of a relationship, but is she an innocent widow or a manipulative femme fatale? This is a comparatively understated film compared to Chan-wook's other works, with a focus more on the characters and their motivations. This is a film all about communication and things lost in translation. There are times when Seo-rae, who is Chinese, has to use a translator on her phone to talk to Hae-joon, which seems to symbolise their whole relationship. The performances are solid all round, and the direction is always crisp with some inventive framing and editing. A fantastic film with a haunting ending. 8.5/10 The Witches dir. Nicolas Roeg/1990/1h31m From the director of Walkabout and The Man Who Fell to Earth comes this Roald Dahl adaptation which stars Anjelica Huston as the Grand High Witch, who has a cunning plan to kill every child in England. She is holding a convention at a hotel run by Mr. Stringer (Rowan Atkinson) where she has gathered every witch in the country, but a young boy, Luke (Jasen Fisher), and his grandmother (Mai Zetterling) plan to stop her once and for all. This was a favourite of mine as a child, but watching it now I was actually shocked by how disturbing this film is. Just the make up of the Grand High Witch, a grotesquely twisted, rotten looking, slimy design would be enough, but the performance of Huston really sells it. She is brilliant here as the embodiment of pure evil, and she steals every scene she's in. Fisher isn't the greatest child actor, but he's a mouse for most of the film, so it never really becomes a problem. I'm a huge fan of Roald Dahl, and I really think this is up there with Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory when it comes to screen adaptations of his work. 8/10 Ulysse dir. Agnes Varda/1983/22m In 1954 Agnes Varda took a photograph. A dead goat lies bloated on a stony beach. A naked man looks out to sea while a child, sat on the ground, looks back over his shoulder. Nearly thirty years later she uses this photograph as a starting point for an exploration on the nature of memory. She talks about her memory of taking the photo, and also interviews the two subjects about what they can recall. She shows the photo to some children for their opinion on it. Varda is a filmmaker who can make anything interesting, and that is evident here. That she can take an old photo and make something so thoughtful and fascinating is incredible. This isn't my favourite of her documentaries, and the subtitles on Amazon were out of sync, but this film is still a testament to her singular way of looking at the world and finding stories everywhere. 7.5/10 Edited November 27, 2022 by LimeGreenLegend 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,175 Posted December 3, 2022 Share Posted December 3, 2022 Just finished watching Skyfall, so I've now see every Bond film this year. After giving it a lot of thought I now present the definitive Bond film tier list. I probably rate Licence to Kill and A View to a Kill much higher than most people, but apart from that I don't think there are any controversial placings. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djw180 6,836 Posted December 4, 2022 Share Posted December 4, 2022 (edited) Suspiria (2018) dir Luca Guadagnino A fantasy horror, remake of an original 70s film by Dario Argento. It's set in West Berlin in 1977 at a dance studio run by a group of slightly creepy middle-aged women. Dakota Johnson plays new dancer Susi, raised in a Pennsylvanian Mennonite community (like the Amish but not quite so anti-technology), which she leaves after her mother dies. Tilda Swinton plays the studio's artistic director plus a couple of other roles with a lot of prosthetics and make up to disguise her. One of those others is an elderly, male, psychiatrist, Dr Klemperer. He was treating another of the studio's dancers who has gone missing. Swinton is almost unrecognisable in this role, but I could just about tell it was her from the way he was played, some of the facial expressions and mannerisms. Klemperer believes this former dancer uncovered something at the studio and has either been killed or taken prisoner to prevent her revealing it. I don't think it is spoiling this too much, especially given what is in the trailer, to say there is something more to this dance studio than just putting on unusual contemporary productions. Something very sinister and occult is going on behind the scenes. The studio has hidden doorways leading down into a nightmarish basement. Early on another dancer decides to quit, but she never makes it out of the studio alive. Her death scene is quite shocking as her follow students kill her, without realising that is what they are doing. For the most part this is more a high suspense than a visually horrific film. But there are some scenes early on that are definitely of the latter type. However, it is the ending where it goes into the full blown, gory, blood splattered, evil monstrosity (Swinton's third character included) type of horror. There are elements to the plot that are confusing. There was definitely something more to the Susi character that to me was not made very clear, and the relationships between the various women running the studio, who was really in-charge? etc could have been done better. There are background plot elements as well that I would have liked to see a bit more depth on, but at over 2 1/2 hours I can understand there not being more. The dancer that went missing appears to have been involved in a terrorist group and the whole film takes place during the high jacking of a plane by this group, something that actually happened in real life. Also, Klemperer's back story was quite touching; during the second world war his wife spoke out against the n*zi's and was sent to a concentration camp, never to be seen again but never confirmed dead. You can tell Klemperer has never quite given up hope that even decades later she might still be alive somewhere. The acting is very good, obviously in Tida Swinton's case, but Dakota Johnson too – who either can dance or they did some very good CGI for those scenes. It also has quite a good modern soundtrack from Radiohead's Thom Yorke. All in all a good and fairly unique film (other than the original of course). A little bit too gory and messy for my personal tastes in a couple of places. @LimeGreenLegend this should definitely be one for your Tilda Swinton watch list, even if just to see her playing 3 roles in the same film. 8/10 Edited December 4, 2022 by djw180 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djw180 6,836 Posted December 11, 2022 Share Posted December 11, 2022 Havoc (2005) dir Barbara Kopple I was trying to find a free film on Amazon Prime, and having started watching two that I stopped after about 10 minutes I decided to persevere with this one, even though it wasn't great. Anne Hathaway plays spoilt rich kid Alison. She is in a gang with a bunch of other spoilt rich, mainly white, LA kids, who act like they are straight out of GTAV, all talking and dressing like Franklin and Lamar. One night her boyfriend takes them to a East LA district to get some drugs. Alison likes the look of the Mexican gang leader there, Hector (Freddie Rodriguez), so she and other female members of her gang go back to hang out with Hector and his friends. It's a bit predictable. You can see the direction this is all going to head in; Alison getting in trouble with the police but rich mummy & daddy bailing her out, the boys from the spoilt rich kid gang getting into confrontation with Hector's gang, etc. Anne Hathaway is quite good, the rest of the cast no so. I would have given it a lower score than I have, but the ending is actually quite good, not quite as I expected and leaves it to your imagination to fill in the details as the screen goes blank but the sound continues for a minute or so. 5/10 Death on the Nile (2022) dir Kenneth Branagh Kenneth Branagh's second film playing Agatha Christie's detective Hercule Poirot. I must have seen at least two other versions of this. Though I don't remember the full original story I am sure scriptwriter Michael Green changed and added a lot to this version. The basic plot is a murder, obviously, amongst a group of friends taking a Nile cruise in the 1930s. Famous detective Poriot happens to be amongst them so sets about solving the case, but not before more deaths. A back story is given to how Poirot got his trademark moustache (hiding a scar from a war injury) which I don't really think was needed. It's very well made with a great cast, as is usually the case for Branagh's films, including Russel Brand (almost unrecognisable), Gal Gado, plus Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders. The setting on the river Nile is great and makes for some fantastic panoramic shots. 8/10 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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