LimeGreenLegend 4,259 Posted June 5 Author Share Posted June 5 What I Watched This Week #126 (May 27-June 2) Le Pupille dir. Alice Rohrwacher/2022/39m This Italian coming of age film is centred around a group of young girls living in a strict Catholic boarding school during WWII and a small act of rebellion involving a delicious cake. Full of charm and whimsy this also has a distinctive style where at times the girls sing the plot to us like a Greek chorus. It reminded me occasionally of a Wes Anderson film but with a more muted colour palette that fits the period. The main conflict of the film is between the mean Mother Superior Fioralba (Alba Rohrwacher) and the leader of the rebellion, the very sweet and headstrong Serafina (Melissa Falasconi) and they are both fantastic. Falasconi nails that righteous indignation of a child who knows that they're in the right but are being told that they are wrong anyway. It reminded me of the Matilda/Miss Trunchbull dynamic without the telekinesis. This is a mischievous little film that had me smiling the entire time and has a brilliantly funny ending that perfectly captures the anarchic spirit of these kids. 9/10 The Bounty dir. Roger Donaldson/1984/2h12m Anthony Hopkins leads an incredible cast as Lieutenant William Bligh, commander of the HMS Bounty and victim of the most famous mutiny in naval history, led by his friend Fletcher Christian (Mel Gibson). The story is told in flashback with the framing device of Bligh giving his testimony to a court of inquiry headed by Admiral Hood (Laurence Olivier). A historical epic in every sense, this really sells the danger of being on the high seas, especially in the storms around Cape Horn. But what really surprised me is how little of the film we actually spend at sea, with the majority of it being set in Tahiti, the mission of The Bounty being to transport breadfruit to Jamaica. The time spent in this idyllic paradise is what leads to the rebellion, with the men seeing Bligh more and more as a domineering taskmaster who doesn't care for them. But my favourite part of the film has to be when Bligh is set adrift in a lifeboat with the few loyal men he has left and has to show some real leadership in order to save all their lives. Here his real character comes out, it just took a lot to make it happen, taking away all the bells and whistles of his ship. Hopkins is brilliant, barking out his commands with real authority but also showing weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Surround him with a cast that also includes Daniel Day-Lewis, Liam Neeson, Bernard Hill and Phil Davis and every scene becomes a masterclass. 9/10 Lime's Film of the Week! Morbius dir. Daniel Espinosa/2022/1h45m When Morbius first released it was a massive flop both critically and commercially – and rightly so because it's sh*t – but it then became a huge meme on social media with the phrase “it's Morbin' time” (which isn't actually said in the movie which is a shame because it's better written than anything they actually used) being something I saw all over Reddit. Then some genius at Sony thought that because lots of people were talking about it they should release it again. It flopped a second time. That story is the most interesting thing about this film. Jared Leto is an awful lead as a blood doctor who gets turned into a vampire, his love interest is so bland and forgettable that I don't know either the character or the actor's name and I'm not going to waste three seconds looking it up, and it's only the incredible, scenery-chewing overacting of Matt Smith as the bad guy (again, no recollection of who he actually is) that stopped me from plunging a stake through my own heart. Apparently this has something to do with Spider-Man, but I'm not a comic book guy so I don't know how and nothing in the film told me either. 1.5/10 Laura dir. Otto Preminger/1944/1h28m This classic film-noir stars Dana Andrews as Detective McPherson who is investigating the brutal murder of successful advertising executive Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney), killed by a point-blank shotgun blast to the face. As McPherson learns more about this woman he starts to fall in love with her. His two main suspects were both love interests of Laura's; the older, catty newspaper columnist Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb) and the young gold-digger Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price). With shades of both Vertigo and Twin Peaks thematically this is an enthralling watch that's let down by some flat performances from the two leads, Andrews and Tierney. They aren't bad, in some scenes they're quite good actually, but I never really believe in who they are. Laura is someone who inspires nothing less than obsession in every man who falls for her but I couldn't really see that in Tierney's performance. She's better in some scenes later on where she's more of a classic femme fatale, but overall it's pretty average. Andrews is pretty much the same, I never feel the depths of his obsession with this woman like you can with Jimmy Stewart's performance in Vertigo, although that is a high bar to measure it against. But still, this is a gripping story with some great twists that's definitely worth watching if you like thrillers and mysteries. 7/10 The Expendables 2 dir. Simon West/2012/1h43m The beefy boys are back in town and this time it's personal as Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone) and his hand picked gang of ridiculously named mercs seek revenge on Jean-Claude Van Damme's villain Vilain (…) after he kills their new recruit Billy The Kid (Liam Hemsworth). This is just more of the same, badly written awkward banter between the lads, overblown action set pieces, nonsense story. At least this time they turned the lights on so you can see what's happening. My biggest problem with this film is that it's just nostalgia bait, this one even more so than the first. The scene where Stallone, Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis all just say their catchphrases to each other is so cringe inducing it gave me a hernia. The Chuck Norris appearance is pretty f*cking awesome though. 4/10 If the Streets Were on Fire dir. Alice Russell/2022/1h11m This documentary, made as part of the BBC's Storyville series, follows Mac, a social activist in central London who runs the Bike Stormz initiative where kids and young people get together to ride their bikes around as a way to escape gang culture and knife crime. He comes up against opposition from the police and the local council who see them as nothing more than troublemakers. This is a really powerful film that highlights just what fourteen years of cuts and closures in youth services, not just in London but across the entire country, has done. Mac comes across as a real force for good in this world and the sort of person who should be given control of this country. There are some beautifully shot sequences of the kids riding through the streets that really capture that sense of freedom that they are feeling, a real lightness that floats just off the ground. That is contrasted with their clashes with the police, never violent, but there is always an undercurrent of threat, for the most part coming from the police. f*ck the Tories, I can't wait for the election next month. 9/10 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djw180 6,956 Posted June 9 Share Posted June 9 A Hidden Life (2019) dir Terrence Malick This is a visually stunning film, as you might expect from Terrence Malick, with lots of great cinematography of mountains and valleys and also some of the more urban and human scenes too. It's a very moving story based on true events from the life of a very brave man. It stars August Diehl as Austrian farmer Franz Jägerstätter. In 1943 he was conscripted into the n*zi German army (Austria and Germany then effectively the same country), but he refused to swear an oath of loyalty to Hitler and fight for him. He had served earlier in the war, but as things were going well for Germany then, he was sent home to work his farm. Since then he had come to realise the war was totally unjustified and did not want to do anything that might help the n*zis. He would not even accept a non-combat role. He knew very well he would be charged with treason and what the consequences of his defiance would be, but was prepared to accept it. I've not seen all of Terrence Malick's films but this is similar in style to The Thin Red Line. It's very slow paced, almost comes to a standstill at times. There are scenes with very little dialogue. A lot of the time you hear one of the characters talking, as if they are narrating the scene there are in or just talking in the background as you watch something else happen. But there are also plenty of more standard dialogue scenes too. It's very well acted, with a mainly Austro-German cast, including Valarie Pachner as Franz's wife, Karl Markovics as the town's pro-n*zi mayor but friend of Franz, and a nice cameo from Bruno Ganz (Hitler in Downfall) as the judge at Franz's trial. All the important dialogue is in English, but much of the background chatter and officers shouting orders etc is in German. There's no subtitles for the German parts and I really like this. You either don't need to understand what is being said or it's fairly obvious from what you watch, so keeping it in the language that would have actually been used seems right to me. The only slight downside is it is maybe a little too long at nearly 3 hours. 9 / 10 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,259 Posted June 9 Author Share Posted June 9 (edited) What I Watched This Week #127 (June 3-9) Nineteen Eighty-Four dir. Michael Radford/1984/1h53m In this adaptation of George Orwell's legendary dystopian novel John Hurt stars as Winston Smith, mindless drone working for a totalitarian state rewriting history for the good of the party. But his heart yearns for freedom and love, and he finds a kindred soul in Julia (Suzanna Hamilton), but every secret meeting of theirs brings them closer to the ever watchful eye of Big Brother. Bleak, terrifying and more relevant with each passing year, this offers us a vision of a future under total state control, control of body and of thought, that is every Torie's w*t dream - “if you want to imagine the future imagine a boot stamping on a human head, forever”. Hurt is excellent in the lead, a man who wants freedom but not at any cost. A man who ends up totally broken by the society he lives in. A coward. The brutalist Soviet style set design, with everything covered in grime and rust, really sells the tone of this world, along with the costuming, anonymous jumpsuits robbing everyone of their individuality. Being an adaptation there are many things that have been left out, and having read the book at least half a dozen times I really felt these exclusions and changes, but if they were kept in I think the film would be just too depressing, especially the ending. There's good support from Richard Burton, in his final role, as O'Brien, Smith's ally from the inner party, and Gregor Fisher – the man who would be Rab C. Nesbitt – as his hapless neighbour Parsons, but I felt that the performance of Hamilton as Julia was a bit wanting, but a lot of that has to do with the writing, which really cut a lot of her development from the novel. But that said, this is still a worthy effort to bring to life one of the most important books ever written. War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength. 8.5/10 Maurice's Bar dir. Tom Prezman, Tzor Edery/2023/15m Based on a true story, Maurice's Bar sees a drag queen, Bobette (Soa De Muse), reminiscing about one of Paris's first gay bars as she takes a train journey during WWII. The flashback, set in 1903, sees patrons of the bar gossiping about its owner, the mysterious Maurice, a gay Jewish-Algerian man who was murdered by the n*zis in Auschwitz. Beautifully animated in a simple art-deco style that's very evocative of the period in which it's set, there's a real fluidity to the animation that sees it morphing and transforming between scenes in an almost organic way. The simple colour palette of reds and blacks suits the nightclub setting yet at the same time signals the impending danger. At times this reminded me of the short animations of Susan Pitt, several of which I recently watched and I'm sure was a big influence on these filmmakers. A beautiful reclamation of a piece of history that was nearly destroyed. 8/10 Bolt dir. Chris Williams, Byron Howard/2008/1h38m Bolt (John Travolta) is the superpowered canine star of a TV show where he helps his sweet owner Penny (Miley Cyrus) track down evil villains. The thing is that he thinks it's all real, including his powers, so when one episode ends with Penny being kidnapped he heads out on a cross country adventure to save her. Along the way he picks up the manipulative alley cat Mittens (Susie Essman) and a hamster in a ball who is his biggest fan, Rhino (Mark Walton). The first thing that struck me about this film is how much better it looks than their previous CG films. Disney's purchase of Pixar in 2006 has a lot to do with this I'm sure. I was particularly impressed with the texture of the fur on all the animals, the lighting and the dynamic camera movements, all a marked improvement over their previous efforts. The second thing that really struck me was how much I was enjoying everything about this film. I think the story is great with some really funny scenes along with some exciting action and a very well done emotional ending. A very pleasant surprise and a severely underrated entry in the Disney canon. 9/10 Glago's Guest dir. Chris Williams/2008/7m This dialogue free animated short is set in the 1920's and centres around a lonely Russian soldier in his isolated outpost in the Siberian wastes. One day he receives an unexpected guest. Very experimental for a Disney production with a distinctive style I found myself instantly engrossed in this story. I really liked the simple visual storytelling with us watching his very boring daily routine before it is disrupted in a world changing way. I don't think this would translate to a full length feature but I was left wanting more at the end and feel like it could have been developed more. But still, I got more than I was expecting considering I only watched it because the only cast member is Macho Man Randy Savage, and he doesn't even say anything, just a little chuckle at the end. 8/10 Godzilla Minus One dir. Takashi Yamazaki/2023/2h5m The latest Japanese Godzilla film, which I'm pretty sure have no connection to the recent American Godzilla vs. Kong movies, presents us with the origin story of the world's most famous kaiju. Set during post-war Japan Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) is a kamikaze pilot who saw the way the war was going and refused to kill himself for a lost cause that he didn't even believe in to begin with. Struggling with not only his personal shame but the national shame felt across the country at the time he finds s chance to redeem himself when a giant monster born from the fires of nuclear devastation appears and wreaks havoc and chaos across Tokyo. To my shame the only other Godzilla movie I'd seen before this was the awful 1998 version (though that does have a banger theme song in Jamiroquai's Deeper Underground). Unlike that film, this has a very strong emotional core and human characters that you actually care about, so you're never left just waiting for Godzilla to show up again. But when he does boy is it f*cking awesome. The scenes of him smashing up battleships and levelling skyscrapers are all excellently shot, really showing you the scale of the destruction without ever getting choppy or confusing as to what's happening. 9/10 Lime's Film of the Week! King Kong dir. Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack/1933/1h44m Godzilla Minus One gave me a taste for monster movies so I watched the granddaddy of them all, King Kong. Director Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) has heard rumours of a giant ape on an uncharted island and he wants to film it. When his ship arrives they find what they were looking for, but they didn't count on Kong falling for leading lady Ann Darrow (Fay Wray). Transported to New York, Kong breaks free and captures Ann, taking her up to the top of the Empire State Building in one of cinema's most iconic scenes. Still an exciting adventure, I was actually surprised by how violent this gets, despite the dated (but still magical) effects. The ending to the fight between Kong and a T-Rex where Kong kills it by wrenching its jaws apart to the crunching and cracking of bone, blood pouring out of its mouth, was brutal. The effect, dated as they are, still work well, with brilliant use of rear projection and some ingenious moments where the projected footage appears to interact with live elements. Some dated attitudes towards s*x and race are to be expected, but they're never too egregious, and some really entertaining characters like Denham and the ship's cook Charlie (Victor Wong), and whip-crack like dialogue always kept me engaged. 9/10 Paris Is Burning dir. Jennie Livingston/1990/1h18m This documentary, shot over several years, takes us inside the world of New York's drag-ball scene, parties where drag queens and trans and gay people come together to show off who they are without fear. Split up into groups called “houses” they're like gangs that fight with dancing and catwalk modelling. If you ever wondered where Madonna stole the vogue from, it's right here and shown off to its full effect by the master of the vogue Willi Ninja. He is just one of many warm and colourful people interviewed for this film who are ready to open themselves up so freely, despite the hate that exists in the world for people like them. Having to deal daily with homophobia, transphobia, racism, the fear of AIDS and homelessness it is inspiring that they still want to dress up and face the world as their fabulous selves without a second thought. The film ends with the news of the murder of one of its subjects, Venus Xtravaganza, really hammering home just how dangerous the world can be if you're different. But the overall feeling of this film is one of celebration and community and love, something we could all do with more of. Happy Pride. 9/10 The Expendables 3 dir. Patrick Hughes/2014/2h6m Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone) is back, this time facing off against co-founder of the Expendables, and a man who he shot and thought he killed years ago because he went rogue or something, Conrad Stonebanks (Mel Gibson). These films are the cinematic equivalent of dangling some car keys in front of a baby, exploding car keys with badly written one-liners. I preferred this one to the previous two but I don't think I could tell you why. There's no crappy looking CGI blood spatter, but they didn't bother using practical effects either so now there's nothing. I'm not sure if that's better or worse. Kelsey Grammer is in it for a couple of scenes and I like him. Harrison Ford is there too, and the part where he's flying a helicopter and spouting random non-sequiturs was funny. Wesley Snipes and Antonio Banderas are both funny too. Ridiculous and a bit too over the top for the tone that this is aiming for, but I still enjoyed their performances. There's also less nostalgia bait here, though I did cringe at Arnie shouting about getting to the choppa not once but twice. 5/10 The Marshal's Two Executions dir. Radu Jude/2018/10m (no trailer for this) Ion Antonescu was the leader of Romania during WWII and was a n*zi sympathiser who was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Jewish people during that time. In 1946 he, and three other high ranking members of the Romanian regime, were sentenced to death and executed. This short film from Romanian director Radu Jude takes actual footage of their execution and compares it with a biopic made in the 90's that attempted to redeem Antonescu. Despite showing the same event these two films are in stark contrast to each other. The real footage is silent, in black and white and strangely emotionless and clinical. The biopic is in colour with a sombre and stirring score and it tries to paint this man as a martyr, dying for his country. If all you saw was this colour section with no other context you could easily believe that this man was a hero, Jude showing us here how easily history can be rewritten and manipulated to serve whatever narrative you want. This is something he has done in the other films of his I've seen, but here it feels distilled to its purest, most potent form. I would score this higher but the footage of the real executions, despite them being n*zi's, still disturbed me. It's not like in the films when people get shot. In reality they just drop on the spot like a puppet having its strings cut. 8/10 Edited June 9 by LimeGreenLegend 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,259 Posted June 16 Author Share Posted June 16 What I Watched This Week #128 (June 10-16) La Belle et La Bête dir. Jean Cocteau/1946/1h36m This lavish production of the Beauty and the Beast story from French poet Jean Cocteau stars Josette Day as Belle, a young woman devoted to her father and mistreated by her sisters in a very Cinderella like way. When her father plucks a rose from a garden deep in the forest he is sentenced to death by the Beast (Jean Marais, who also plays Avenant, a friend of Belle's brother and the Gaston-type character of this film, to compare it to the Disney version). Belle offers to take her father's place, and slowly she and the Beast start to fall in love with each other. This is a film with incredible production design that makes it truly feel like a fantasy come to life. I love the Beast's castle with faces in the walls and disembodied hands holding candelabras always making you feel slightly unsafe and ill at ease. The costuming is just as impressive and full of detail, but what really steals the show is the make up of the Beast himself. It is both animalistic and human, with Marais's performance, full of snarling and prowling, really selling it. I do prefer the Disney version because I'm a sucker for a musical, but this is still a magical experience. 9/10 Shaft dir. Gordon Parks/1971/1h40m Richard Roundtree stars as the black private d*ck that's a s*x machine to all the chicks, Shaft (you're daaamn right), in perhaps the most iconic blaxploitation film ever. The plot sees Shaft hired by gang lord Bumpy Jonas (Moses Gunn) to find his kidnapped daughter, something that could lead to an all out war with the mafia. But the plot really takes a back seat to the vibe and atmosphere. I could have watched a whole film of Roundtree walking around grimy early 70s New York in turtle neck sweaters and leather jackets to Isaac Hayes's legendary funk score, including the Oscar winning title song. One thing that I really liked, and something I didn't get when I first watched this as a teenager, is how much this is just an updated take on the film noir genre of the 40s. I would love to see a version of this that really leans into that, filmed in black and white with more of a jazz score, that would be really interesting. 8/10 Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga dir. George Miller/2024/2h29m A prequel to Fury Road, Furiosa tells the story of the title character (Anya Taylor-Joy with Alyla Browne as the child Furiosa) and how she was taken from her home when she was young by the Biker Horde under the command of the Warlord Dementus (Chris Hemsworth) before falling into the clutches of Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme). It's not long before gang war breaks out with the two warlords battling for control of the wasteland and all the while Furiosa has to survive to stand a chance of ever getting home again. Less of an adrenaline fuelled rollercoaster ride than Fury Road, this feels like an excavation of an ancient mythology with more in common with Miller's last film Three Thousand Years of Longing, which is all about storytelling. One of the most interesting characters to me is The History Man (George Shevtsov), who Dementus keeps almost like a pet and is called upon whenever he needs something explained to him. Shevtsov also appeared in Three Thousand Years of Longing as a character called The Old Storyteller, which in itself is telling. But this is still an exciting film full of the mad car chases and explosions and insane, twisted characters that you would expect from a Mad Max film. Now, Max himself doesn't appear here, but there is one very interesting character that Furiosa teams up with and kind of takes under her wing that is basically a stand in for him and I'm not sure what I think about it yet and would like to hear some more opinions on it. Taylor-Joy is excellent in the lead, being able to portray both incredible strength and vulnerability even with about ten lines of dialogue. What I did feel was a bit of a let down was the ending, which we already know because we've seen Fury Road and know she doesn't escape. Apart from that I thought this was a thrilling ride that expands the mythology of the wasteland in an interesting way. And, watching it in the cinema, it's f*cking loud. 8.5/10 The Princess and the Frog dir. Ron Clements, John Musker/2009/1h38m Tiana (Anika Noni Rose) is a waitress in New Orleans saving up to open her own restaurant. When a visiting prince is turned into a frog by voodoo trickster Dr. Facilier (Keith David) he promises to help her dream come true if she just kisses him and turns him human again. Unfortunately, instead of turning him human, she also turns into a frog. I instantly liked this because it is traditionally animated in the classic style and it looks fantastic. The characters just look more expressive and alive than they do in CGI, at least at this point in time. This film also returns to the Disney tradition of being a musical where the characters break out into song, and there are some really good ones all in that hot New Orleans jazz style, but none of them really stand out as classics. Noni Rose is great in the lead role, headstrong and determined to earn everything through hard work but at times too stubborn, and she's surrounded by a fantastic supporting cast with my favourite being Michael Leon-Wooley's trumpet playing alligator Louis. I could say something about the lazy stereotyping that pops up occasionally, but I honestly loved this and it made me cry over a firefly. Back to back bangers from Disney. 9/10 Lime's Film of the Week! Evil Dead Rise dir. Lee Cronin/2023/1h36m The latest entry in the Evil Dead series moves the action from the creepy woods to an LA apartment building where demonic forces are unleased by a teenage boy, Danny (Morgan Davies), that soon possess his mother Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland). He and his sisters, teenage Bridget (Gabrielle Echols) and young Kassie (Nell Fisher) along with their aunt Beth (Lily Sullivan) must fight to survive the night. Although the film does well to make this location interesting I do think they lose a lot in terms of atmosphere by taking this story out of the woods. Much of the original Evil Dead was about the battle between nature and man and you can't have that if you get rid of the nature. There are some very well done gore scenes and gross out moments and the performances are all solid, especially from Fisher who has a lot to do for such a young kid, this just doesn't feel connected to the other films in any way. This feels like it was an original story that had the Evil Dead brand slapped on it to make it easier to sell. 6/10 Hairspray dir. John Waters/1988/1h32m In early 60s Baltimore “pleasantly plump” teen Tracy Turnblad (Ricki Lake) has just become the star of the local TV dance show, using her platform to fight for civil rights, much to the chagrin of her rival for the title of Miss Auto Show 1963, Amber Von Tussle (Vitamin C). This is a fun, tongue in cheek film from master of bad taste John Waters with a catchy r&b/soul/rock 'n' roll soundtrack and an adorable lead performance by Lake who just personifies the gee whizz candy coated optimism of the time. She is surrounded by what can only be called an eclectic supporting cast with Sonny Bono and Debbie Harry as Amber's parents and Jerry Stiller and legendary drag queen Divine as Mr and Mrs Turnblad. Some nice costuming and fun choreography make this seem as fluffy as candy floss but there is some biting social commentary here. Rude, crude and with a heart of gold, though I was under the impression that this was a musical because the remake was, so colour me slightly disappointed that it isn't. 8/10 Expend4bles dir. Scott Waugh/2023/1h43m Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone) is back and more tired than ever, so tired he can't even be bothered to dye his hair jet black anymore – and he looks better for it. This time he and his gang of big boys have to save the world from nukes or something, there's some guy called Ocelot whose identity is a secret and Megan Fox is in it now as a member of the team called Gina. And 50 Cent too! And I don't know which is the worst actor. There's some really bad CGI here, and a lot of scenes look like they were shot on a green screen in 2003. A lot of this film feels like a test to see whether Jason Statham can carry the franchise on his own and I have one question to that, why bother? There's no cringe inducing nostalgia bait here though, so that's something. 3/10 Yuki's Sun dir. Hayao Miyazaki/1972/5m The first ever film by living god of animation Hayao Miyazaki is a proof of concept pilot for a TV show about a young orphan girl, Yuki, who is adopted by a wealthy family. This is just a montage of scenes that introduce her and her personality, which feels very familiar if you've seen any of his later works. This is much simpler in style than what he would become known for, but the emphasis on nature is still there, and he already has an eye for a striking composition. Because this isn't a complete work it's hard to say much about it, but it does give a glimpse at the artist yet to come. 6/10 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djw180 6,956 Posted June 16 Share Posted June 16 The Merchant Of Venice (1973) dir John Sichel No trailer for this but various clips on Youtube, e.g. This is a made for TV version of Shakespeare's play, starring Laurence Oliver as Shylock. The basics of the plot are a Venetian merchant, Antonio (Anthony Nichols), borrows a large sum of money from Shylock, a money lender, in order that he can help his young friend Bassanio (Jeremy Brett) impress the wealthy heiress Portai (Joan Plowright). Antonio agrees to pay the money back within 3 months, something he easily expects to do once any one of his many trading ships returns full of cargo. As his bond, i.e. what he will forfeit if he does not repay, he and Shylock agree “a pound of flesh” (the exact reasons why this is an acceptable bond are never explained). Shylock's daughter, his only child, elopes and marries one of Antonio's friends, leaving Shylock seeking revenge. When all of Anontio's ships due in are lost at sea, Shylock grabs the chance to take revenge on one of those who helped rob him of his daughter and he demands his pound of flesh. The play is somewhat controversial. It's a comedy, which in Shakespearian terms means not that is is necessarily funny, but that it has a happy rather than tragic ending, with an obvious villain who gets his just desserts in the end. Shylock is that villain, unjustly demanding a draconian penalty on Antonio. He is also Jewish, and the way the play is written, I would personally say, is anti-Semitic. Shylock's Jewishness makes him the villain, since in the 1500s, had it been the other way round with a Christian man seeking revenge on a Jew who had married his daughter and made her change her faith, I do not think he would have been seen as in the wrong. Some have said Shakespeare wrote it in a way that was less anti-Semitic that other similar plays and even that he foresaw a more enlightened time when you would not see Shylock in such a bad light. I'm not sure I agree. I think Shakespeare was a product of his time and he just wrote a story he knew his audience would like. But this version does turn the play around. Keeping the same lines, but having the actors say them in a different way, altering their emotions and what goes on in the background, this comedy is turned into a tragedy, with Shylock the victim rather than the villain. Olivier is outstanding and most of the main cast are pretty good too. It is shot mainly on studio sets, but with a couple of outside scenes, so it appears mainly like it is a play on stage. It's not aged well, a bit grainy in appearance, but the sound quality is fine. It has a couple of minor aspects that are very early 1970s. A white actor blacks up to play a Moroccan Prince and there is weird scene of two ladies singing an operatic aria in a very forced, odd manor (reminds me of the times my Grandmother used to sing to the family at Christmas and us grandchildren had to be polite and pretend we appreciated it, even though we just wanted to cover our ears!). 7 / 10 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,259 Posted June 23 Author Share Posted June 23 What I Watched This Week #129 (June 17-23) Hit Man dir. Richard Linklater/2023/1h56m The latest film from Richard Linklater tells the (mostly, well...) true story of Gary Johnson (Glen Powell), a psychology professor who assisted the police by pretending to be a hitman in order to get evidence of people soliciting for murder so they can be arrested. The meat of the plot, which is wholly fictional, sees him fall in love with Madison (Adria Arjona), a woman who wants her abusive husband taken out. This is a surprisingly light and breezy film considering the subject matter, with Linklater calling it a screwball comedy in interviews, and I can certainly see that in the interplay between Powell and Arjona being somewhat reminiscent of the likes of Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn, just not at that level. Though I did enjoy watching them together, for me the best part of the film is the opening act where we see Gary begin his new side hustle as a fake hitman and really getting into it, adopting disguises and putting on accents, tailoring himself for each different client in order to sell this fantasy of murder for hire to them. That's also something I learned from this movie. Hitmen aren't real. Sure, there are “button men” in mafia type organisations, and you could probably pay a crackhead a few bucks to stab someone, but a professional assassin that anyone can hire? They're as real as unicorns, and in a weird way I was actually disappointed by that fact. I would have preferred this as a pure character study on Gary but I was still charmed by the film that I got. 7/10 Stan & Ollie dir. Jon S. Baird/2018/1h38m This biopic tells the story of the sad final tour of one of comedy's greatest double acts, Stan Laurel (Steve Coogan) and Oliver Hardy (John C. Reilly). Well past their heyday in the early 50s they take on a tour of the UK where they play to nearly empty houses in order to prepare for making a new film that's never going to happen. Hardy is in poor health and Laurel still resents him for breaking up the act and making a film on his own decades earlier. This all sounds like a miserable time but the film adds slapstick moments throughout that feel taken right out of their act, things like struggling to haul loads of luggage up some stairs only for them to slide back down. Simple stuff but it adds a brightness to what could have been a very depressing movie. These flourishes stand out in what is otherwise a very bog standard generic biopic that strays into Oscar bait territory. What makes this worth your time are the two lead performance, especially Reilly who becomes totally lost in the character and is unrecognisable. They have amazing chemistry together that really makes you feel the love they have for each other, despite all their quarrels. 6.5/10 The Silence dir. Ingmar Bergman/1963/1h35m The final part of Bergman's thematically connected Faith trilogy - following Through a Glass Darkly and Winter Light - The Silence stars Ingrid Thulin and Gunnel Lindblom as Ester and Anna, sisters travelling through an unspecified country on the brink of some war or other stopping off in a hotel before heading home. With them is Anna's young son Johan (Jorgen Lindstrom). Ester is sick, possibly dying and Anna doesn't care, instead spending her time there seducing the locals despite not speaking the language, “how nice that we can't understand each other.” This is the whole film boiled down to one quote, a total lack of communication and absence of any kind of feeling. This is one of the most empty, hollow films that I've ever seen, deliberately so, as this exploration of what to do when there's nothing there, no god, no love, no hope, no future, is a recurring theme in Bergman's films. This is the most extreme example that I've seen of that and it does suffer slightly from that detached coldness. His direction adds to that, especially the scenes where Johan wanders around the hotel alone which has a surreal quality to it. A quietly unnerving film that will leave you thinking what's the point of it all? 8/10 Recreation dir. Charlie Chaplin/1914/6m Chaplin one said something along the lines of “all I need to make a film is a pretty girl, a park and a policeman” and Recreation is pretty much that. Chaplin tries to hit on a pretty girl in a park, her boyfriend gets annoyed, they fight, some police show up, they fight, and everyone ends up in the lake. The bare bones of this is to be expected as he was still in the first year of his film career, but he already has that charm and mastery of slapstick despite his inexperience in front of a camera. 5/10 The 400 Blows dir. Francois Truffaut/1959/1h39m One of the most important films of the French New Wave, The 400 Blows is a partly autobiographical film starring Jean-Pierre Leaud as teenage Antoine Donial, a disillusioned kid who has no respect for authority figures as they have no respect for him. Spending his time with best friend Rene (Patrick Auffay) it's not long before a brush with the law changes his life. Over sixty years later this still feels fresh and vital and really speaks to the experience of being a teenager better than most other films on the subject I've seen. It really does feel like Antoine against the world which is a feeling we've all had at that age. This is helped by the incredible performance from Leaud, who would go on to be one of the defining actors of the epoch-making film movement and reprise the role of Antoine in four more films over the next twenty years. His performance is totally naturalistic and always believable, out-acting all of the adults in the film. The direction matches the atmosphere of restless, youthful energy with a score that really propels it along to a stunning, fourth-wall breaking freeze-frame ending. 9/10 Lime's Film of the Week! Nimic dir. Yorgos Lanthimos/2019/12m This short film from Poor Things and The Favourite director Yorgos Lanthimos stars Matt Dillon as a cellist who has a bizarre encounter on a subway train with a strange woman (Daphne Patakia) that turns his world upside down. This is an excellently crafted short with great performances all around, but I was quite distracted by the fact that the premise is pretty much taken from the Doctor Who episode Midnight (which you should watch even if you have no interest or knowledge about the show as it can be viewed as a totally standalone sci-fi horror short and honestly one of the best episodes of any TV show I've ever seen.) That aside, this is a brilliant, condensed taster of one of the most unique filmmakers working today. 8.5/10 Copa 71 dir. Rachel Ramsay, James Erskine/2023/1h31m The World Cup was held in Mexico in 1970 and is considered one of the most iconic tournaments in football history due to Brazil, and their star player Pele, winning their third cup. One year later another World Cup was held there and was largely erased from the history books by FIFA (c*nts) because it was the first ever Women's World Cup, the final of which, held in the Azteca Stadium, still holds the record for the highest attendance for any women's sporting event with 110,000 people packing it out. This documentary tells the story of that tournament and the women who competed there, the highs they felt at feeling recognised for the first time in their lives and the crushing blow when women's football actually took steps backwards after it, with many football associations around the world banning women from the sport due to threats from FIFA (c*nts). A totally by-the-numbers, talking heads documentary, there is nothing stylistically here that stands out so it needs to be carried by the story being told, and this is an incredible one full of bigger than life characters like star Italian player Elena Schiavo and England captain Carol Wilson. Although their careers didn't have a happy ending, this is still a film full of hope as it ends with them watching last year's Women's World Cup (the competition returning after twenty years in 1991) with the games being played in the same stadiums as the men in front of sold out crowds and being broadcast live all around the world. 8/10 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djw180 6,956 Posted June 23 Share Posted June 23 Dune: Part Two (2024) dir Denis Villeneuve This is the visually stunning second part to Villeneuve's 3 part adaptation of Frank Herbert's classic sci-fi. I really enjoyed watching it, more so than Part One. However I have read the book many times and know the story really well. I do wonder if some of the plot would be confusing to someone who does not already know the story. Set thousands of years in our future, Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet) and his mother Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) have survived the overthrow of their family as rulers of the desert planet Arrakis (a.k.a. Dune) by their arch-enemies, the sadistic House Harkonnen. They have found refuge amongst a group of Dune's indigenous population, the Fremen, lead by Stilgar (Javier Bardem). Paul is starting to form a romantic relationship with a a young Fremen woman, Chani, (Zendaya), but many of Fremen distrust these outsiders. What comes to Paul's rescue is the deep set religious prophecies put in place centuries earlier by the mysterious Bene Gesserit order, of which his mother is a member. This is where I think it starts to get potentially confusing. I already knew what this is about, not just from reading Dune but it's sequels as well. Paul is not only fulling a Fremen prophecy, but he is also a potential super-human product of Bene Gesserit's manipulation of the galactic aristocracy's gene pool, as over many, many generations they have controlled who married, and who parented, who. Anyway, potential confusions aside, Paul and Jessica's plan is to take advantage of him being the Fremen's expected messiah, lead their army to retake the planet, taking revenge on the Harkonens and those who aided them, and gain much, much more. Paul gets help along the way from Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin), one of the men who taught him to fight, who since the events of the previous film has been working with a group of spice smugglers; again does the film really explain why this “spice”, only found on Dune, is so important? I found all the rest of the cast pretty good. I like Christopher Walken as the Emperor. To me he does a good job of portraying a man who ought to be unbelievably powerful, but really is quite weak and being manipulated by other influences. It's hard not to compare this to David Lynch's attempt at turning the novel into a film. I think the Harkonens overall, are done better in this version, Stellan Skarsgard as their Baron with Dave Bautista and Austin Butler as his nephews vying to be his successor. They come across as more evil in this, shockingly so at times. The various Bene Gesserits are very good too; Charlotte Rampling as Reverend Mother Mohaim, Lea Seydoux as Margot Fenring (the bit she is in was cut from Lynch's version) and Florence Pugh as Princess Irulan. In this film you get more of an idea of the extent of their long-term plans. But again I also feel someone who has not read the book would still be a little confused here. I like Hans Zimmer's score, although it did seem similar at times to Vangellis' version. Maybe that is just a case of when you ask two film composers to write something to accompany “people riding giant sand worms”, they both come up with a similar tune? One thing I did not like so much was an aspect of the story that was changed from the book, not that is matters too much, but I don't see why it was done. The whole film takes place over just a few months. We know this since Jessica is pregnant at the start and has not given birth by the end. But in the book this all spans a few years and the daughter Jessica gives birth too, Alia (shown in a flash-forward scene played by Anya Taylor-Joy) is the one who kills Baron Harkonen. Also this means when Paul finds Gurney it's only months since they last saw each other, when in the book it is years. The novel Dune is split into 3 distinct parts. The film Dune Part One covered the book's 1st part. This film covers the books 2nd and 3rd parts. So Dune Part 3 must be the next book, Dune Messiah or maybe even cover the 3rd too? 7 / 10 Mrs Dalloway (1997) dir Marleen Gorris Another film based on a book I have read more than once, but this one I don't remember too clearly. It's based on Virginia Wolf's unusual novel of the same name. Set in 1923 in London, the title character (Vanessa Redgrave) is a middle aged, middle class wife of an MP. The main story is set all on one day. Mrs Daloway is hosting a party that evening and much of the early part of the story is her making her preparations; you get the impression this or similar activities is how she spends her days. She obviously does not work, that would have been unthinkable for a woman in her position. As she goes to buy flowers, checks they have the drinks ordered, etc, etc she starts to remember her youth in flash-back scenes where she is played by Natasha McElhone, and some of the people from then turn up later at the party. We learn she had a number of potential romantic interests, and she decided to settle for a comfortable life with a nice, stable, husband. There is also another sub-plot where First World War veteran Septimus (Rupert Graves) has started to suffer from delayed shell-shock, repeatedly hallucinating the friend he watched get blown up. Although he and Mrs Dalloway never meet, at the party she hears about him, and what has happened to him and this further adds to her thoughts of her past and how things might have been different. Redgrave is very good, as always, and so are most of the main cast. But it does feel and look a lot older than 1997. Maybe that was deliberate, I don't know. It's good but it's seems more like some of the made-for-TV period dramas I remember from the 70s and 80s than a feature film. 6 / 10 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,259 Posted June 30 Author Share Posted June 30 What I Watched This Week #130 (June 24-30) Alps dir. Yorgos Lanthimos/2011/1h34m This early film from Yorgos Lanthimos stars Angeliki Papoulia as a nurse who also works for an organisation that hires people out to stand in for recently deceased relatives in order to help the grieving process. These sessions see them act out a script that is often very emotionally intimate, but it is all done in Lantimos's trademark emotionally detached deadpan style lending everything an air of unreality. As the film progresses the nurse (none of the characters have names, again adding to the feeling of cold detachment) becomes more and more entwined with the role of a teenage tennis star who died in a car crash, her need for connection seeming to erase her own identity in a way that destroys all of the real relationships she has, particularly that with her father (Stavros Psyllakis). An intriguing puzzle of a film that lays its pieces out very deliberately, this is a great lesson in building a constant sense of unease that I think he would go on to master in The Killing of a Sacred Deer. The performances are all very good, and I like the dynamics between the four members of the organisation - the nurse, the leader (Aris Servetalis), the coach (Johnny Vekris) and the gymnast (Ariane Labed), particularly that between the latter two. 8.5/10 Lime's Film of the Week! Necktie dir. Yorgos Lanthimos/2013/2m A group of young teens in a forest. Two pistols. An old fashioned duel. What happens when you die? This impactful short from Lanthimos packs more ideas in less than two minutes than a lot of films manage in two hours. So many questions for us to ponder. Why are they duelling like it's the 18th century? Where are they? Who are they? The uniforms suggest a rich private school but there's nothing childlike about them. And the end credits are a work of art in themselves. This feels like a half remembered dream/nightmare or the results of an alien trying to imitate human interaction and not quite getting it right. It feels nit-picky to criticise a film that's just over one hundred seconds long for feeling a little underdeveloped but it does, a little. 7.5/10 The Fall Guy dir. David Leitch/2024/2h6m Ryan Gosling stars as stuntman Colt Seavers. After recovering from a near fatal accident on a movie set he's back, this time working under first-time director Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt), who happens to be his ex. He also has to track down the star he doubles for, Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), who has gone missing. This is a goofy, fun, thrill-ride that works both as an action and a comedy and has a romantic sub-plot that doesn't feel tacked on. Gosling is a brilliant comedy actor, his performance as Ken in the Barbie movie is one of the funniest I've ever seen, and he's on top form here having great chemistry with both Blunt and Winston Duke who plays his best friend and stunt coordinator Dan. I also loved Hannah Waddingham as manipulative producer Gail, giving off strong Tilda Swinton vibes. But what this film really is is a celebration of practical stunts and the stunt performers who pull them off and it totally nails it, which isn't surprising given that director David Leitch is a former stuntman. He's made sure that everything feels impactful and dangerous from the car chases to the fights. It did start to drag for me a little in the third act but just when I was starting to feel that there was usually a fantastic stunt to get my attention back. 8/10 Tangled dir. Byron Howard, Nathan Greno/2010/1h40m Disney's take on the Rapunzel story sees Mandy Moore star as the princess who was kidnapped as a baby by the witch Mother Gothel (Donna Murphy) for the magical properties in her hair that can grant eternal youth. On the eve of her eighteenth birthday thief Flynn (Zachary Levi) finds her tower accidentally while on the run and she forces him to escort her to the city to see the annual lamp lighting ceremony. I have to say I was a little disappointed going into this knowing that we're back to CGI animation after the beautiful looking Princess and the Frog but that feeling soon left because this looks great. This is a huge step up from Bolt, which didn't look bad, but the detail in the textures and the lighting look so much better. Moore is charming as the lead and has good chemistry with Levi. Murphy is having a lot of fun as the evil witch and has a great song, Mother Knows Best. I did find the story somewhat predictable and I felt that we spend too much time locked in the tower at the start of the film, with it becoming more entertaining as Rapunzel escapes and discovers freedom for the first time. But that aside I found this an enjoyable modern Disney princess film. 8/10 The Machine That Kills Bad People dir. Roberto Rossellini/1952/1h25m (no trailer so here's a short clip) In this magical realist film from Roberto Rossellini Gennaro Pisano stars as Celestino, a photographer in a small town on the Italian coast. On the feast of St. Andrea he is visited by a strange old man who claims to be the saint and convinces him that it is imperative for good people to kill bad people. He then bestows magical powers on his camera, making it kill anyone he photographs. This is played as a black comedy, and while some of the jokes land – the fascist policeman who died giving a n*zi salute needing a special coffin because they couldn't get his arm to go down – most of them didn't really work for me. Pisano gives a decent performance, becoming more and more enamoured and indignantly righteous with his new powers before realising what he has become. This film does have some nice ideas and interesting things to say about the difference between good and evil but they never move beyond ideas and develop into something substantial. 6.5/10 Supernova dir. Harry Macqueen/2020/1h34m Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci play Sam and Tusker, a long term couple taking a road trip across the UK to visit family on the way to Sam's piano recital. Tusker has early onset dementia and the effects are starting to show. A beautifully tender film that revels in the small, quiet moments with some gorgeous shots of the British countryside as they wend their was cross-country in their camper van. Firth and Tucci have wonderful chemistry and you can really feel every year of their decades long relationship. There's a comfort they have with each other that's hard to pull off in film and they nail it. I also like how a film about a gay couple doesn't derive its drama from any sort of trauma or abuse stemming from that which just feels lazy, especially in this day and age. However, I did feel that this is a little too underplayed and subtle at points, needing just a little more meat on its bones. But this is still worth watching just for the two excellent lead performances. 7.5/10 Rambo: Last Blood dir. Adrian Grunberg/2019/1h29m In this last film in the series Sylvester Stallone's one man army comes out of retirement when his housekeeper's granddaughter Gabriela (Yvette Monreal) is stolen into a s*x trafficking ring while looking for her father in Mexico. This devolves into a final act Home Alone style invasion but with a seriously mentally ill vet instead of a small child. I don't really like any of the Rambo sequels because they all seem antithetical to the themes and the character of the original. In that film Rambo is a man who could kill every single one of those *sshole cops but he chooses not to, he's done with killing. I always found that film very optimistic at the end because he chooses to live rather than going down in a hail of bullets. In my head, after that film he got to work on some serious therapy, maybe started a support group for other vets. There's only one death in First Blood, and it's accidental. In the subsequent films his body count is in the hundreds and it's like he doesn't even feel it any more. Some of the traps at the end of the film were cool, but the use of CGI blood is once again quite distracting. A shallow experience overall. 4/10 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djw180 6,956 Posted June 30 Share Posted June 30 Hamlet (1948) dir Laurence Olivier Olivier's version of one of Shakespeare's most famous plays, that has had many film versions over the years. As I have said before, I do often have problems appreciating films from this era. But this one is pretty easy to appreciate. Maybe that's because it's Shakespeare and that makes the way this is acted seem more fitting? But also Olivier himself is brilliant in the lead role; he won that year's best actor Oscar for this, and got nominated for best director. Some of the support cast are more what you expect from 1940s, but they seem right for this, and most are still pretty good. The basic story is Hamlet is the Prince of Denmark. His father died recently but with Hamlet being not quite old enough (he's sort of still “in college”) it's Hamlet's uncle Claudius who has become king and then married Hamlet's mother, Gertrude. The speed at which this all happened has upset Hamlet. The play starts with his father's ghost (confusingly also called Hamlet) appearing and telling Hamlet he was murdered by his own brother. So the story is about how Hamlet copes with this news, not very well, and what he does about it. It's a tragedy, i.e. has a tragic ending, so you expect characters to die. Some of Shakespeare's scenes are were cut out, not unusual for given the length; Kenneth Branagh's full version is 4 hours long, this one is 2 ½. It's was shot in a studio and most of the play is set indoors anyway, in a castle. The sets are good; they look very good for the 1940s. There's a couple of other actors of that era I recognise. Anthony Quin plays the guard who first sees the ghost, and Peter Cushing (from Hammer horror films and Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars) plays Osric, a minor character but who has a lot of lines in the bit he is in at the end where he referees a duel Hamlet fights. 8 / 10 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,259 Posted July 1 Author Share Posted July 1 It's halfway through the year and I've seen a lot of good films in 2024, but only 9 good enough to give a perfect score, so here are the best films I've watched this year (so far) in chronological order. The Kingdom of the Fairies - Georges Melies, 1903 Brief Encounter - David Lean, 1945 The Red Shoes - Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1948 Let It Be - Michael Lindsay-Hogg, 1970 Sleuth - Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1972 Monty Python's Life of Brian - Terry Jones, 1979 All of Us Strangers - Andrew Haigh, 2023 The Zone of Interest - Jonathan Glazer, 2023 Poor Things - Yorgos Lanthimos, 2023 Needless to say I highly recommend any and all of these films and would love to hear your thoughts if you watch any of them. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djw180 6,956 Posted July 6 Share Posted July 6 The Insider (1999) dir Michael Mann Based on the true story of how two men fought to expose lies told in public by the CEOs of various tobacco companies. It stars Al Pacino as journalist Lowell Bergman, producer of CBS's news show “60 Minutes”, and Russel Crowe as scientist Jeffrey Wigand, who had worked in the tobacco industry for Brown and Williamson. In 1996, whilst investigating fires apparently started by cigarettes, Bergman is anonymously sent a box of highly technical documents. Needing someone to help him understand this he ends up being put in contact with Wigand, who had then just left his job. Wigand is incredibly nervous and is very clear he can't say anything about the work he did due to a gagging order he had to sign to keep his and his families medical and pension benefits. But Bergman's journalistic instincts tell him Wigand has something he really wants to tell, unrelated to the fire story. So the film is about how Bergman comes up with a way that Wigand can legally speak openly, in a filmed interview, about the work his former employer wanted him to do and what they really knew about the health risks of smoking and had known for many years. Of course the tobacco company does everything it can to stop the truth coming out. Bergman is the main character really, it's more a journalism story than a scientist-whistle blower story. I wouldn't say it is anti-smoking. It's more about the ethics of gagging orders that ought to have exemptions for things like public health issues or when those imposing the orders are hypocrites and have even lied under oath. It's well acted by the two leads. It is a somewhat untypical role for Crowe, he is definitely not a tough guy in this. Al Pacino is Al Pacino. It also features Christopher Plummer as 60 Minutes host Mike Wallace and Michael Gambon as the Brown and Williamson CEO. I've seen it before, and had not remembered all the details. The plot does get a bit confusing towards the end as Bergman pulls strings and manipulates various situations to contrive something that forces CBS to air the interview and it does seem a little implausible, but “they” do say truth can be stranger than fiction sometimes. The music is a bit strange too, nothing wrong about it, but at times it sounds incredibly similar to Hans Zimmer's score from Gladiator, but that was released after this. 7 / 10 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,259 Posted July 11 Author Share Posted July 11 What I Watched This Week #131 (July 1-7) Vivacious Lady dir. George Stevens/1938/1h30m Strait-laced botany professor Peter Morgan Jr. (James Stewart) scandalises his hometown and his family when he impulsively marries wild nightclub singer Francey Brent (Ginger Rogers). His father (Charles Coburn) is outraged that his son would put a woman before his job, but his mother (Beulah Bondi) starts to appreciate Francey's wild ways and follows her lead when it comes to her own marriage. This is a very light romantic comedy that almost strays into screwball territory but never feels like it goes all the way. Stewart, still early in his career, is a good lead but a little understated here and is totally dominated on screen by Rogers, but that fits the film pretty well as it matches their characters. My favourite part of the film is the final act where Peter's mother and Francey join forces against their uncaring husbands, a situation that is resolved all too quickly and easily. 7/10 Incoherence dir. b*ng Joon-ho/1994/31m This early short film from South Korea's biggest director, made as his graduation piece for film school, is made up of three seemingly unconnected stories about middle aged men behaving badly – a teacher who's into p*rnography, a mischievous jogger and a drunk who desperately needs to take a sh*t. An epilogue brings them all together and adds a stinger of some pretty biting social commentary, something he would perfect in his Oscar winning Parasite. While this is cheap and a bit rough around the edges you can still feel the precision with which b*ng directs and his focus on storytelling in a unique and engaging way. I think this is particularly true of the second segment featuring the jogger which has the feel of a silent comedy, the story being told almost totally visually. 8/10 Free Fire dir. Ben Wheatley/2016/1h30m In 70's Boston Michael Smiley and Cillian Murphy play Frank and Chris, two IRA members over from Ireland in order to buy some guns from South African arms dealer Vernon (Sharlto Copley) in an abandoned warehouse. Things quickly go wrong and a protracted gunfight ensues, one which makes up the majority of the film. This starts out really strong with some funny lines and great performances from those already mentioned as well as Brie Larson as Justine, a woman there to help Frank and Chris, and actual cannibal (really!) Armie Hammer as Ord, a kind of facilitator between the two parties. The first half of the gun fight is very good too, with Wheatley really making the most of his single location, but it does start to lose steam by the start of the final act with the rest of the film really being carried by the performances. Copley is the standout throughout the entire film, his character is hilarious and I could watch a whole series about his exploits. I don't know why this guy isn't a bigger star because he's brilliant in everything I've seen him in and is just as adept at drama as he is at comedy, which you can see in District 9. This film is worth watching just for him alone. 7/10 Bernie dir. Richard Linklater/2011/1h39m This true story stars Jack Black as Bernie Tiede, a friendly, God loving funeral director in a small Texas town where everyone likes him. He strikes up a friendship with rich widow Marjorie (Shirley MacLaine), who is the opposite of Bernie in that everyone in town hates her (except Bernie), so when he kills her after she pushes him too far no one really gives a sh*t, perplexing district attorny Danny Davidson (Matthew McConaughey). Black is one of those actors who doesn't really act, and mostly plays themselves, relying on their charisma to do all of the heavy lifting – Keanu Reeves and The Rock are also like this – but he really gives a great performance here, and though he is still clearly Jack Black that just seems to fit the character of Bernie. I also really like the way Linklater presents this film as a quasi documentary with lots of talking heads interviews with real people who knew Bernie and Marjorie, reinforcing the fact that this actually happened. An underappreciated gem. 9/10 Lime's Film of the Week! Winnie the Pooh dir. Stephen J. Anderson, Don Hall/2011/1h3m Disney's second theatrical Winnie the Pooh film, the first being 1977's The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, is also their last traditionally animated film to date. The plot sees Pooh (Jim Cummings) on the hunt for honey, helping Eeyore (Bud Luckey) find his tail and setting a trap for a mysterious creature who he suspects has kidnapped Christopher Robin (Jack Boulter). Warm and cosy, this is also imaginitive in its presentation, with the film taking place in a book, the illustrations coming to life and interacting with it in a very meta way, just like the 70's film. However, I did find this dragging at points despite its short length. The characterisations seem a little simple too, with the characters just not feeling the same as they did in the earlier film. That was an anthology of three different stories, whereas this is one story with too many plot threads, feeling occasionally jumbled. But this still has its charms and some gorgeous hand drawn animation that I made sure to really drink in as I won't be seeing any more of that from Disney. 6/10 She Fell Among Thieves dir. Clive Donner/1978/1h18m (no trailer so here's the full film instead) This 20's set made for TV film stars Malcolm McDowell as Richard Chandos, an Englishman on holiday in the south of France who is drawn into the world of the evil Vanity Fair (Eileen Atkins), criminal mastermind running her empire from a lavish Chateau. She is set to inherit millions if she marries off her stepdaughter Jenny (Karen Dotrice), and decides to use Richard as part of her plot. Very camp and over the top at points, very dry and boring at others, this feels cheaper than it looks and always feels like it's struggling against its budget. McDowell is decent but I never really bought him as a wide eyed innocent caught in a spider's web. Atkins is having a lot of fun as the stereotypical wicked stepmother, like something straight out of a Disney film but with an edge. Very inconsistent both in terms of the filmmaking and the performances, the most excited I got watching this film is when I realised that Dotrice played the little girl in Mary Poppins. 5/10 Monsieur Hulot's Holiday dir. Jacques Tati/1953/1h27m This French comedy marks the first appearance of the highly influential character Monsieur Hulot (Jacques Tati, also the writer and director), a bumbling, clumsy man who leaves chaos in his wake everywhere he goes. This film sees him take a trip to the seaside, arriving in his clapped out old car and instantly causing trouble just by opening a door. Clearly influenced by the silent era, this is a film that you could watch without subtitles and still enjoy. Tati is pretty tall and really knows how to use his entire body to full comedic effect, reminding me of John Cleese. I also like how straight faced and oblivious he is to the disasters unfolding around him, much like Mr. Bean. There's not much of a plot here, but just watching the meticulously choreographed sight gags and slapstick nonsense unfold is a pleasure in itself. 8/10 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Con 5,719 Posted July 11 Share Posted July 11 On 7/1/2024 at 1:28 PM, LimeGreenLegend said: The Zone of Interest - Jonathan Glazer, 2023 This was really an amazing film. It’s genius from start to finish. Everything about it was so enthralling. Man, I would have loved to have watched this with you, Lime. 1 Quote RSC FILM CLUB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djw180 6,956 Posted July 14 Share Posted July 14 (edited) Richard III (1955) dir Laurence Olivier This is Olivier's version of Shakespeare's “history”, which is renowned as being historically inaccurate. And this film makes that very clear in the text of the opening credits. Richard III almost certainly was not the evil, scheming murderer of this play; plotting to kill his older brother, two young nephews and any one else that might stand in his way of becoming king of England. But he also probably was not the wonderfully enlightened medieval monarch some of his modern day supporters think he was. What we have to remember is this is a play written in the 1590s, during the reign of Elizabeth I. Her grandfather, Henry VII, was the man that defeated, killed and replaced Richard III as king. In those days you said / wrote good things about the current monarch's ancestors and bad things about their enemies. So you have to see it in that context and, as the credits ask you, accept it for what it is, fiction not history. Olivier, in the lead role of course, plays down the physical disabilities Richard is traditionally meant to have had, which is his day superstition interpreted as signs of his malign character. In this he simply has a limp, although his lines often refer to what you would expect to be more visible conditions. He also has a rather pronounced pointy nose, which looks a bit odd at times. In fact I found Oliver almost unrecognisable. He gives his usual outstanding performance and there are also very good performances from contemporary great names like John Geilgud as Richard's brother George and Ralph Richardson as the scheming Duke of Buckingham (the man most versions of the truth hold at least partly responsible for the crimes committed.) The costumes look very odd, but I believe they are authentic, and that in the late 15th century it was the fashion for men to wear tights and silly hats. It's mostly shot on set, and those look good for the 1950s. I do however have to take issue with the final scene, of the Battle of Bosworth. That took place in the heart of England. This film shot it in Spain, and it is very obviously wrong. It's far too dry, almost treeless and very brown, rather than the green landscape of the true location. I get that the film makers would probably have needed a dry, sunny location that you can never guarantee in England, but I'm sure other contemporary films managed to shoot outdoor scenes in England, so I don't really understand why this didn't. I also have to question how clear the plot of the first half of would be to anyone who does not know the actual history this claims to tell. I know who the characters of Clarence, Buckingham, Stanley etc were, and what they actually did, and the plot does seem to assume all the audience have the same level of interest in English history that I have. But I have seen Olivier quoted as saying he had similar feelings, but that was how Shakespeare wrote it, so he largely kept to the original lines. 7 / 10 And in case anyone is wondering, I got a DVD collection of Laurence Olivier's Shakespearian adaptations for my birthday. I am half way through them. Edited July 15 by djw180 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,259 Posted July 16 Author Share Posted July 16 On 7/14/2024 at 10:18 PM, djw180 said: I also have to question how clear the plot of the first half of would be to anyone who does not know the actual history this claims to tell. I know who the characters of Clarence, Buckingham, Stanley etc were, and what they actually did, and the plot does seem to assume all the audience have the same level of interest in English history that I have. I was pretty ignorant of the actual history the first time I saw this and was able to follow it pretty well, though I did get a few of the characters swapped around in my head when they weren't on screen. What other films are in your collection because I only know the three he directed, Richard III, Hamlet and Henry V? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djw180 6,956 Posted July 16 Share Posted July 16 1 minute ago, LimeGreenLegend said: I was pretty ignorant of the actual history the first time I saw this and was able to follow it pretty well, though I did get a few of the characters swapped around in my head when they weren't on screen. What other films are in your collection because I only know the three he directed, Richard III, Hamlet and Henry V? There's two more, one from each end of his career; King Lear (1983) & As You Like It (1936). Plus The Merchant of Venice I have already watched. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,259 Posted July 16 Author Share Posted July 16 What I Watched This Week #132 (July 8-14) Escape Room dir. Adam Robitel/2019/1h40m Six strangers are mysteriously invited to experience an escape room with a prize of ten grand on offer, but it turns out to be a bit too real and they're soon fighting to survive. Our protagonist is Zoey (Taylor Russell), who is still traumatised from being the only survivor of a plane crash that killed her mother. What could've been a fun thriller is lost by being totally predictable and surprisingly tame with bland, shallow characters. It's like they were trying to make a Saw film without the gore, rendering the kills pretty unsatisfying and thus pointless because if you're not going to make the characters likeable then at least make their deaths fun to watch (as f*cked up as that sounds) which these just aren't. Russell isn't a bad lead, she just doesn't have anything to do with what she's given. Nik Dodani is fun as the stereotypical nerd, but again he's so one-dimensional he could give you a paper cut. This is torture p*rn for the squeamish. 4/10 Escape Room: Tournament of Champions dir. Adam Robitel/2021/1h28m Taylor Russell is back as Zoey, this time in New York to uncover the evil secret society of rich psychopaths who set up these fatal escape rooms when she gets trapped in another one with other escape room survivors. Still as boringly bloodless as the original, this is also more incredulous as now the New York subway system is part of the game. I know it's a film, suspension of disbelief and all that, but this is just stupid. The ending has a big reveal that's supposed to blow our minds but it has no impact because you can see it coming a mile away. The biggest puzzle this film presents us is how it took four people to write this. 3/10 Beverly Hills Cop dir. Martin Brest/1984/1h45m Fast talking Detroit cop Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) heads to Beverly Hills in order to investigate the murder of a friend which ends up being linked to drug smuggling art dealer Victor Maitland (Steven Berkoff). A glossy action comedy that feels like an extended music video for much of the run-time, this has been crafted to show off the talents of Murphy, giving him space to really let loose. So what really surprised me watching this for the first time in over twenty years is how restrained his performance is with him coming across really naturally and making Foley feel like a real person rather than a character. He's only twenty three here, already a global superstar, and he carries that without a burden. He also has great chemistry with Rosewood and Taggart (Judge Reinhold, John Ashton), two local LA cops helping Foley out. That can't be said for his scenes with love interest Jenny (Lisa Eilbacher) who is not a very good actor and seems lost a lot of the time. It also feels a little too shallow with maybe a too thick layer of gloss slapped on top and a villain that never felt like a threat to me, despite Berkoff's good performance. This is the definition of a star vehicle, but that's not a bad thing when that star has as much charisma as Murphy. 8/10 White Man dir. b*ng Joon-ho/1994/19m Another early short from b*ng Joon-ho, White Man is a basically plotless film about a man who finds a severed finger outside his office building and decides to keep it, using it for things like dialling a phone or strumming a guitar. Like Incoherence, which he made around the same time, this is rough around the edges and clearly limited by buget and time restraints but still very well made, with the young b*ng clearly knowing his way around a camera. The way this film is edited shows his skill at building up narrative through montage, something he mastered by the time he made Parasite which contains one of the best montages ever. This just didn't grab me in the way his other films have however, and feels more like a segment of a bigger story. 6/10 Petite Maman dir. Celine Sciamma/2021/1h12m While staying in her recently deceased grandmother's house while her parents clear it out eight year old Nelly (Josephine Sanz) goes to play in the woods where she meets Marion (Gabrielle Sanz), a little girl who looks exactly like her and has the same name as her mother, because she is. This is a time travel film without the sci-fi and where no explanations are needed. A child's viewpoint on grief and loss with an excellent lead performance from Josephine, who has a lot more to do than twin sister Gabrielle. The scenes between her and her parents, particularly her mother (Nina Meurisse) are beautiful and adds real depth to the friendship between Nelly and Marion which then feeds back into the relationship between Nelly and her mother. Josephine and Gabrielle naturally have amazing chemistry together, with that almost telepathic link that twins seem to have. Scenes of them playing together or baking a cake aren't acting, it's just them being and it's wonderful to see. Made with such tender love and care, even during the emotionally heavy moments there's a warmth that's reassuring, like a hug from your mother. The best time-travel film ever made, and it doesn't even need a DeLorean to do it. 10/10 Lime's Film of the Week! Bring It On dir. Peyton Reed/2000/1h38m When new cheerleader captain Torrance (Kirsten Dunst) discovers that her predecessor stole their award winning routines from a poor, inner-city school she has to come up with a new routine to retain their title while facing off against the squad they stole from, who are competing for the first time. I have vague memories of watching this when it came out and having a massive crush on Dunst, but thirteen year old Lime didn't realise that this is a film about cultural appropriation in a very simple way. But that kinda gets obfuscated by the regular homophobic slurs and pretty creepy male gaze that this was shot with, the camera lingering on the bodies of what are supposed to be schoolgirls, and at one point making a bl*wjob joke about a pre-pubescent child. That detracts from what is, at heart, a fun goofy comedy. Dunst is charming in the lead as the naïve new captain who wants to do everything the right way, and I really liked Eliza Dushku as Missy, the bad girl transfer student who joins the cheerleading team because the school doesn't have a gymnastics team. These performances and a few very funny jokes, as well as some pretty impressive cheer routines, save this from being just another late 90's/early 00's teen comedy that has aged as well as milk. 6/10 Good Thanks, You? dir. Molly Manning Walker/2020/13m This short film from the director of last year's excellent How To Have s*x – her debut full length film – stars Jasmine Jobson as Amy, a woman suffering the aftermath of a s*xual assault. The film shows her being interviewed by several different people, a doctor, a police officer etc, and how overwhelming reliving the experience can be. At one point the police officer (T'Nia Miller) asks about clothing, with Amy starting to give a description of what her r*pist was wearing before being corrected and asked what she was wearing. Manning Walker uses silence to great effect here, really symbolising the isolation that Amy is feeling. There are also scenes that show how the attack has affected her relationship with her boyfriend (Michael Ward) which are handled in a very grounded way. The themes of this film are expanded on in How To Have s*x, making this feel a little underdeveloped, though the performance by Jobson is very good. 7/10 Nosebleed dir. Luna Carmoon/2018/9m (no trailer, so here's a very good short video about the director) Nosebleed, the first work by Luna Carmoon, is a short about the toxic friendship (maybe more) between two teenage girls, the sweetly compliant Lilah (Ruby Stokes) and the coldly manipulative Coby (Lily Newmark). Bookended by scenes in a swimming pool, both with bloody endings, this doesn't really have a plot but is more interested in tone and atmosphere, which it has in spades. There's a precision to the threat and presentation here that feels like a Peter Strickland or Yorgos Lanthimos film. The two performances are solid, with Newmark really coming across as a psychopath in the way that only teenage girls can be. Equally enigmatic and provocative with an ending that really hits hard, this is easily worth ten minutes of your time. 8.5/10 Shagbands dir. Luna Carmoon/2020/18m Set in London in the mid 00's, Shagbands is centred around a group of four teenage girls and the coloured bands on their wrists indicating how far they're willing to go, and how their burgeoning sexuality is exploited by older men. Very different from Nosebleed, here Carmoon shoots with a neorealist's eye presenting a very authentic portrait of a friend group who mean more to each other than family. The lighter scenes where they are just hanging out and joking with each other are delightful. The performances, dialogue and interplay between the four leads is totally authentic, making the ambiguously bloody ending feel real and not just something out of a revenge thriller. 8/10 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djw180 6,956 Posted July 21 Share Posted July 21 The K--.ller (2023) dir David Fincher Michael Fassbender stars as the un-named title character, a professional assassin, and the entire film is focussed on him. It starts with him on a job, narrating as he waits for his opportunity to take his shot. It doesn't go as planned and the rest of the film is him dealing with the aftermath, basically taking on a new target in each scene. Each of the other actors appear in one scene only, apart from one who we hear on the phone in an earlier scene. So if you don't like Michael Fassbender, this is probably one to give a miss. It's technically well made. It looks good. But there is nothing that outstanding. The acting is OK, because that is all that is required. Tilda Swinton stands out in the scene she is in though. I found it hard to really enjoy since the main character is so unlikeable. He kills for a living, and not just his targets, but anyone else who might get in the way or be a risk of exposing him. And he tells us he just does it for the money. So he is an utterly immoral character. It's not one of those films where you find yourself rooting for the criminal, he has no endearing qualities. I'm not really sure if there was meant to be anything more to the story than just a killer killing people. It's certainly not an action film because there is just not enough action in it; one decent fight scene, one car chase and that's all I remember. The music is reasonably good, but there's a lot of The Smiths, which we hear because The Killer has them almost constantly on his i-pod. 5 / 10 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,259 Posted July 21 Author Share Posted July 21 What I Watched This Week #133 (July 15-21) Wreck-It Ralph dir. Rich Moore/2012/1h41m Wreck-It Ralph (John C. Reilly) is the bad guy in the game Fix-It Felix, but all he wants is to be the good guy and have people like him instead of fear him, so he goes rogue which puts the future of all the games in his arcade at risk. To help him on his quest is a glitched racer from the game Sugar Rush, Vanellope von Schweetz (Sarah Silverman). A fun film with a good message about being yourself and full of nice little ideas like the support group for video game baddies that also includes Zangief from Street Fighter and a ghost from Pac Man, what really makes this worth watching is Reilly's performance. The dude is able to do it all, drama, comedy, musicals, and his distinctive voice is perfect for the character of Ralph, a big, loveable lug who you can't help but warm to. I can't say the same about Silverman or her character who just comes across as an annoying brat. There are some good emotional moments later on between her and Ralph, but it's Reilly doing all of the heavy lifting there. I much preferred the relationship between Ralph and Felix (Jack McBrayer), and would have liked to see them team up for the adventure. That said this is still full of charm and is probably one of the best video game movie to date. 7/10 Manhunter dir. Michael Mann/1986/2h Based on the novel Red Dragon by Thomas Harris, Manhunter stars William Peterson as FBI agent Will Graham who is on the hunt of a serial killer (Tom Noonan). He is aided in his game of cat and mouse by the biggest arrest of his career, Dr. Hannibal Lecktor (Brian Cox) in his first screen appearance – though I don't know why they spelled his name that way. This is a slick and glossy crime thriller, which is no surprise coming from the director of Heat and the creator of Miami Vice. This is dated but I don't mean that in a bad way, just that it is very of its time, especially the soundtrack and score. I had the same feeling about Beverly Hills Cop in that it's such a time capsule of the 80's. The weakest aspect of the film to me is the performance from Peterson which is very cold and detached, and in the moments where he's supposed to be heated I just don't buy it. Noonan is a perfect creep as the film's antagonist and Cox makes a huge impression as Dr. Lecktor in the three scenes he has. There's a physicality to him, a brutishness, that doesn't come across in performances from Anthony Hopkins and Mads Mikkleson in Silence of the Lambs and the TV show Hannibal. All of the elements here don't come together in the same special way they did for Silence of the Lambs but this is still an excellent thriller. 8.5/10 Lime's Film of the Week! The Magician dir. Ingmar Bergman/1958/1h41m Max von Sydow stars as Albert Vogler, mute mesmerist and leader of a troop of healers and mystics travelling through 19th century Europe. Entering a new town they are told they're not allowed to perform unless they prove the authenticity of their magical claims to the town's leaders. Despite being a very dark and brooding film, bordering on horror at points, this is also quite playful with Bergman always making us question whether they are authentic magicians or fraudsters. Even Vogler's appearance is part of this trickery, with his obviously fake beard and shock of long black hair, very uncharacteristic of von Sydow. His performance is excellent and mostly done through his eyes as he has no dialogue. Heavily shadowed to make them really stand out, he has one of the most intense stares I've ever seen and he could probably actually hypnotise someone if he wanted to. There's also a link between his silence and the silence (or absence) of god, a theme in many of his other films, and the frustrations and existential crises that that can cause. While I don't think that the ideas here are as fully formed as they could be, this is still an excellently crafted and thought provoking film. 8/10 Lemon Tree dir. Rachel Walden/2023/17m A young boy (Gordon Rocks) and his father (Charlie Chaspooley Robinson) are at a carnival. After failing to win a rabbit at one of the attractions the father steals it. The two then travel home, stopping off for food along the way. Drenched in nostalgic Americana, largely helped by the warm, grainy 16mm film, this is an assured debut that is brimming with energy. Handheld camerawork, frenetic editing, lots of close ups and the deranged carnival music score give it a sense of threat at the start, giving way to a mini road trip where the son realises that his father may not be so great of a guy. The way this is shot from the son's perspective is very well done with the camera always looking up to his father, both literally and in a role model sense, something that is challenged in little ways by glimpses of things he does beyond the theft of the rabbit. I can't wait to see what this filmmaker does next. 8/10 Beverly Hills Cop II dir. Tony Scott/1987/1h43m Eddie Murphy returns as Detroit cop Axel Foley, back in LA after the near fatal shooting of a friend, which he finds is linked to a bigger criminal conspiracy, which is exactly the same plot as the original. Still shot with that artificial, glossy 80's sheen, this is a better directed film because Tony Scott (True Romance, Top Gun) knows his way around an action scene. In the original I was pleasantly surprised by how relatively restrained Murphy's performance was, despite still being very much an Eddie Murphy performance, but here he's started to turn the dial up a bit to the detriment of the film. I feel that films like this lose some of their impact when they lean too heavily on the comedy over the action. That said he is still incredibly charismatic and entertaining. The same can't be said for the antagonists, played by Jurgen Prochnow and Brigitte Nielsen who are both one dimensional, totally forgettable, and in the case of Nielsen, not very good at acting. Thankfully the supporting cast is solid with the likes of Dean Stockwell and a funny cameo by Gilbert Gottfried, and Murphy still has great rapport with Judge Reinhold and John Ashton as his LAPD buddies Rosewood and Taggert. 7/10 The One dir. James Wong/2001/1h27m Jet Li stars as both Gabriel Yulaw, a man hopping into every parallel universe in order to kill every other version of himself, absorb their power and ultimately become The One, the most powerful entity in the multiverse, and Gabe Law, an everyday cop who must stop him to save the multiverse. Assisting him are two time agents played by Delroy Lindo and Jason Statham with hair and an awful American accent. This is absolute straight-to-video trash and the most 2001 film ever made down to the blue filter over every shot and the dated yet awesome nu metal soundtrack and I enjoyed it way more than I thought I would. Li is a brilliant martial arts star but not a very good actor, so having a film where a lot of it is just him fighting himself was a good call. The plot, despite being total nonsense, does loop back on itself in a pretty clever way and has a pretty f*cking badass final scene, “I am Yulaw! I am nobody's b*tch! You are mine!”. It's so stupid that it's awesome. 6.5/10 Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes dir. Wes Ball/2024/2h25m Set several generations after the events of the Andy Serkis trilogy, the latest entry in the rebooted Planet of the Apes series stars Owen Teague as Noa, a young ape whose village is burned and family captured by tyrannical ruler Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand). Setting out on a quest to rescue them he eventually teams up with orangutan Raka (Peter Macon) and human Nova (Freya Allan) who holds a secret that will change his world. Visually stunning with incredible CGI, this film does a great job of world building without force feeding it to us. In many ways it's like the latest Mad Max film with mythology being an important part of the plot, here it's the teachings and actions of Serkis's Caesar from the last three films. I also like the design of the film and how it feels like it's naturally turning into the Planet of the Apes from the 1968 original with some more obvious references like the creepy scarecrows and use of the original score in a very tense bridge crossing scene. Teague is an okay lead but he just doesn't measure up to Serkis who was genuinely incredible in the previous films and still casts a long shadow over this one. The ending is also kind of anticlimactic but does set up some potentially interesting developments for the inevitable sequel. 7/10 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,259 Posted July 28 Author Share Posted July 28 (edited) What I Watched This Week #134 (July 22-28) The Son of Kong dir. Ernest B. Schoedsack/1933/1h10m Released less than a year after the original film, Son of Kong could have been a cheap cash in but surprisingly isn't just a carbon copy of King Kong and has some quite interesting ideas. Set a few weeks after the events of the original, quick talking filmmaker Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) is in hiding and broke from being sued by everyone in New York. He and Captain Englehorn (Frank Reicher), also persona non grata for his part in bringing over the giant ape, head back to Skull Island searching for treasure, but instead find the smaller, but still very large, Son of Kong. The film doesn't get to the island until the last half hour, but I didn't find the first part dragging too much. This is because I found the characterisation of Denham to be quite well developed from the original. Here he actually feels remorse for what he did to Kong, and his interactions with its son is in stark contrast to his actions in the original film, saving it from quicksand and making friends with it. The whole tone of the film is very different from the original, which was a straight forward monster movie. There's somewhat of a conservationist message here with Denham realising maybe just leave wild animals where they are, and there are more comedic moments, even some involving the son of Kong. The special effects are really good for their time, and still look good today in my opinion. 7/10 L'Atalante dir. Jean Vigo/1934/1h29m This highly influential film tells the story of newlyweds Juliette (Dita Parlo), a small-town girl yearning for freedom, and Jean (Michel Simon), a barge captain. I was expecting this to be more romantic than it is, but it's really not and is more about being together out of not wanting to be alone. They don't make a very good couple, their natures seeming to be in opposition to each other, but neither can imagine a future without each other. Maybe that just seemed more romantic in the 1930's. Jean Daste adds some comic relief in the form of Jean's first mate, a drunken, selfish lout who ends up being the voice of reason. I can see why this was so influential to the directors of the French New Wave in the 60's as it's beautifully shot with an eye for social realism but with a poetic flair, a not quite magical realism, like Miracle in Milan without the miracle. Parlo gives a decent performance as a conflicted woman pulled between two desires but I thought Simon was a bit flat and the two have no chemistry together. There are scenes when I could believe them as a couple, and I did like the ending and Jean's moment of realisation but it still feels like we've missed out on a lot of their relationship. 7/10 La Chimera dir. Alice Rohrwacher/2023/2h11m Josh O'Connor plays Arthur, an Englishman in Italy, recently released from prison for selling artefacts stolen from tombs. He soon gets back together with his gang of tombaroli – tomb raiders – and gets back to business, using his special powers of divination to find the tombs. It's often remarked that he's good at finding things that are lost, but he still can't find his missing love, Beniamina (Yle Vianello), whose mother, Flora (Isabella Rossellini), he is still close to. It is while visiting Flora that he meets Italia (Carol Duarte) and forms a relationship with her. This is an absolutely gorgeous film suffused with an autumnal melancholy that is personified in the character of Arthur, lost and lovesick, his crumpled linen suit getting dirtier and dirtier over time as if he were recently unearthed himself. His readiness to delve deep into the earth is both a desperate search for Beniamina and a way to escape and isolate himself. It is through Italia that he is able to hold on, for a short while at least, to the world of the living. This film reveals itself like an archaeological discovery, gentle strokes of a brush revealing more and more of the whole picture to us until we're left with an aching portrait of love. 9/10 Lime's Film of the Week! Dammi dir. Yann Demange/2023/16m This autobiographical short stars Riz Ahmed as Mounir, a man returning to Paris to confront his past, his estranged father (Yousfi Henine), and his own identity – an Englishman born in France to an Algerian father. While there he meets Hafzia (Souhelia Yacoub), a French-Algerian woman who is comfortable with her identity and the two form a relationship. A lot of this film is told through narration from Ahmed. This would be a problem usually but Ahmed has such an intense delivery that it really works. It's like spoken word poetry at times, which really reminded me of the Oscar winning short The Long Goodbye in which he stars. There's also some great imagery here, particularly of Mounir submerged in water, that reinforces the themes of the film. I first saw Ahmed in the hilarious terrorist comedy Four Lions, but his recent performances in the likes of Mogul Mowgli, The Sound of Metal and short films like this have cemented him in my watch-everything-they're-in list. 8/10 Deadpool 2 dir. David Leitch/2018/2h Ryan Reynolds returns as the merc with the mouth, this time battling time-travelling hard *ss Cable (Josh Brolin) who has come from the future to kill teenage boy Russell (Julian Dennison) aka Firefist. Reynolds is a very charismatic and likeable lead, and I do like the whole gimmick of Deadpool with the constant fourth-wall breaking and foul mouthed humour, but stretching that out over two hours is frankly tiresome. I also find it hard to take any of the emotionally heavy scenes seriously just because of the tone of the character and the film. It's like if the film Airplane! made the romantic subplot serious and expected you to treat it as such. You just can't. There are some well choreographed fight scenes, with this film coming from the stunt coordinator of John Wick and the director of this year's fun The Fall Guy, but they are occasionally peppered with some dodgy looking CGI. Also, it's so desaturated with all of the colours looking so dull. Not a bad movie but it's way too long and doesn't have the breath of fresh air advantage that the first one did. 6/10 Frozen dir. Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee/2013/1h42m Disney's take on The Snow Queen tells the story of sisters Elsa (Idina Menzel) and Anna (Kristen Bell), princesses in the kingdom of Arendelle. Close when they were young, after Elsa's ice powers almost accidentally kill Anna her parents separate them. When they're older a confrontation at Elsa's coronation causes them to argue and she causes an eternal winter. The sisters must reconcile to save the kingdom, helped by ice cutter Kristoff (Jonathan Groff) and sentient snowman Olaf (Josh Gad). This feels more like a classic Disney film than anything they've made in years which ironically makes it feel fresh and new. They are unabashedly going back to their roots and it really works. The two main characters are both interesting and compelling, especially Elsa who has a surprising emotional depth to her, the songs are great, even the overplayed Let It Go which, in context, is an absolute banger, and the animation looks beautiful. I feel like they only made this film because they cracked the secret to animating snow and ice and just wanted to show off. My only negative is Josh Gad who has such a punchable voice. I've not liked him in anything else I've seen him in and I don't like him here. 8.5/10 Edited July 28 by LimeGreenLegend 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djw180 6,956 Posted July 28 Share Posted July 28 As You Like It (1936) dir Paul Czinner Not an actual trailer, just exerts from some scenes. The picture quality is better than this, but at times the sound is pretty poor. That's not the fault of the original film of course. Laurence Olivier makes his Shakespearian screen debut playing Orlando alongside Elisabeth Bergner as Rosalind. It's one of Shakespeare's comedies and one I have never been that impressed with. There just isn't enough substance to it, and unlike Much Ado About Nothing, just does not seem to have anything else to make up for that. Orlando and Rosalind are down on their luck. His older brother made him homeless and penny less by denying him any inheritance from their recently deceased father. Her father was the duke of the area they live in, somewhere in France, but was deposed by his own brother, who now turns on her. They meet and fall in love at first sight, but then separately head to the nearby Forest of Arden, a place where it appears lots of displaced characters have made their home. There they meet again, but in a very common Shakespearian plot element, Rosalind is in disguise and Orlando does not recognise her. The rest is not particularly dramatic, but it does contain the famous “All the worlds a stage …..” speech. For a 1930s film I found the acting reasonably good. Olivier is his usual outstanding self. Bergner's performance is quite strange, but quite good, and I assume the director wanted her the play the role how she does; Rosalind starts off as a very childish, carefree young woman, but matures rapidly as she has to fend for herself, and her companions, in the forest. There are some weird aspects though. It may be the film is simply true to how the play was written or maybe they cut a lot out, the run time is significantly less than other film versions. I don't know enough about it to decide for sure. But whether a film has odd elements because that's what the director / screenwriter wanted or because they are strictly following another source, it doesn't really matter. Original or adapted screenplay it should be judged mainly on it's own merits. Plus films, even in the 1930s, have the opportunity to add to the script of play and do things you can not do on a theatre stage. Some scenes seem to have quite a jump from the previous, as though something has been missed out. The worst example is one where Orlando comes across his brother, asleep and about to the strangled by a python and eaten by a lion (neither native species of Europe!). It then fades away and in the next scene the brother is explaining to Rosalind how he was saved from certain death by his brother, who he is now reconciled with. That seems to be quite a lot left out! Another is the fact that just by wearing different clothes and doing her hair differently, Rosalind is unrecognisable to Orlando. If you know the story, or that Shakespeare did this a lot, then it's just about fine. But if you don't then I am sure you would be puzzled by how he doesn't recognise this woman he is supposedly madly in love with. 5 / 10 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sinister 2,583 Posted July 30 Share Posted July 30 Deadpool & Wolverine Drove to Tallahassee to celebrate our daughters 22nd Birthday and we went to see our favorite Marvel characters join forces. Great movie with humor, crazy action and lots of blood. The things missing from most any other superhero movie and what makes the antihero so great. Was not afraid to completely skewer all things MCU and inject some much needed life into the MCU at the same time. Worth watching for the cameos alone and especially a certain day walker that we all miss. 5 stars. Hopefully Disney is watching closely after this nearly half a billion dollar opening weekend and learning what they need to do to get their MCU back on track after a string of disappointments. Saw a trailer for the upcoming US take (that's something they haven't done in awhile, lol) on Speak No Evil. Bought a shudder subscription so we can watch the real one before seeing this one. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimeGreenLegend 4,259 Posted August 4 Author Share Posted August 4 What I Watched This Week #135 (July 29-August 4) Wicked Little Letters dir. Thea Sharrock/2023/1h40m In a small town in 1920s England the conservative and devoutly religious spinster Edith (Olivia Colman) has been receiving incredibly foul-mouthed anonymous letters. She and her overbearing father Edward (Timothy Spall) blame their rowdy Irish neighbour Rose (Jessie Buckley) but the town's only woman police officer Gladys (Anjana Vassan) thinks there's more going on so decides to investigate on her own. Based on a true story this really leans into the absurdity of the situation and is very funny with some of the most imaginatively vulgar insults I've ever heard. The film is at its weakest when it tries to get serious, especially with the relationship between Edith and her father, but only because it is tonally inconsistent with the rest of the film. The performances are all fantastic, with Colman and Buckley playing off of each other really well. Spall's character is rather one-dimensional but he does a great job at making you hate him in a pantomime villain sort of way. The plot is pretty predictable but it handles the twist of who's writing the letters nicely and still keeps its momentum even after that mystery has been revealed. I also appreciate that in a film with more swears than Tarantino's entire filmography they saved c*nt for the very end and it is so satisfying. 8.5/10 The Happiest Days of Your Life dir. Frank Launder/1950/1h21m From the same creative team that would go on to make the anarchic school-set St. Trinian's series, The Happiest Days of Your Life feels like a test run for those films and even shares the same lead in Alastair Sim. Here he plays Wetherby Pond, headmaster of an all boy's school who, due to wartime shortages, will have to share their premises with another school for the next term. To make a bad situation worse it just happens that they'll be sharing with an all girl's school, led by their indomitable headmistress Muriel Whitchurch (Margaret Rutherford). Cue the battle of the sexes. This film lacks the edge and sense of chaos that the St. Trinian's films had – this school doesn't even have its own on-site bookies – but there's still a lot to like. Top of that list is the always brilliant Margaret Rutherford who I loved as Miss Marple in the films I watched earlier this year and is just as good here. She is a real force of nature with a remarkably expressive face and is just entertaining to watch. The scenes between her and Sim are the highlights of the film as their characters both try to assert dominance, a battle that Sim was always going to lose. A lot of the humour is very dated but there are still some funny scenes. Not a classic British comedy of the era but it still has its charms. 6/10 Attenberg dir. Athina Rachel Tsangari/2010/1h35m This comedy is part of the “weird wave” of Greek cinema that also produced filmmakers like Yorgos Lanthimos (who appears in front of the camera here in his only acting role). It stars Ariane Labed as Marina, a young woman who is sexually inexperienced, unlike her best friend Bella (Evangelia Randou) who acts as a sort of s*x education teacher to her. The title is a misspelling of Attenborough, as in Sir David, whose nature documentaries Marina is a big fan of. In this film she takes on a sort of Attenborough role as she observes human relationships and interactions, experimenting with her own like an alien experiencing humanity for the first time. This makes her sound like a cold character but there is a warmth and affection there below the surface of awkward, stilted affectation in her relationship with her dying father Spyros (Vangelis Mourkis). The way that he treats her strangeness so matter-of-factly is quite touching and speaks of a love and patience that doesn't need to be articulated. These moments don't fully cohere with the overall tone of the film but this is still a very good film that makes me want to watch more of the director's work. 7/10 Early Pixar Shorts: The Adventures of Andre and Wally B. dir. Alvy Ray Smith/1984/2m Luxo Jr. dir. John Lasseter/1986/2m Red's Dream dir. John Lasseter/1987/4m Tin Toy dir. John Lasseter/1988/5m Knick Knack dir. John Lasseter/1989/4m These five shorts make up the filmography of Pixar before they changed the film landscape with Toy Story in 1995. The first film, made when they were still known as the Lucasfilm Computer Graphic Project, sees an ugly creature wake from a nap whereupon he is harassed by an equally ugly bee. The whole thing is set in an ugly looking forest. For the time I'm sure this was incredible, but it has aged awfully like all bad CGI. But there is a charm in the animation and it manages to get in a few decent silent comedy style gags. Luxo Jr. is a huge step up, with it focusing on inanimate objects, avoiding the uncanny valley problem of trying to animate living things in a realistic way. It's a simple story of a baby lamp playing with a ball, annoying its parent. They knew they hit onto something here, bringing life to everyday objects, so the lamp became their mascot. Red's Dream continues this trend, this time telling the story of the only unicycle in a bike store who dreams of being bought by a clown and becoming the star of a circus, but in the end it's all a dream and he returns to his lonely corner. Here we see Pixar bringing in some emotional depth to their films, and it's genuinely amazing that they are able to make a unicycle look depressed. The final shot of it clunking back against the wall defeated and lifeless is really f*cking sad. Tin Toy is the most important of these films as it would spark the idea that would become Toy Story. This film tells the story of a little tin toy that is terrified of the giant baby who wants to play with it (this is perhaps the ugliest baby in film history). The comparison between this film and the first is night and day, with the location of the room being pretty good looking with a lot of detail, and the texture of the tin toy is really good with the light reflecting off of it's metallic surface. The final film is about a snowman in a snow globe who wants to break out and party with all of the other ornaments. What's impressive here is the animation of all of the particles in the snow globe, something that must have been mind blowing back then. What all of these films show is a studio that found out its strengths quickly and honed in on them with laser like precision. If you put all of the ingredients of what made these films, and the technological advances they made from film to film, it all adds up to Toy Story. All of these films are worth watching if you have any interest in the history of animation, and even if you're not they are still entertaining. I'll give them a combined score of 7.5/10 Beverly Hills Cop III dir. John Landis/1994/1h45m Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) returns to LA after the murder of a friend leads him to uncovering a bigger conspiracy, for the third time! His investigation leads him to a money counterfeiting operation working out of the Wonder World theme park. This is an oddly low energy film, with Murphy seeming tired or disinterested for a lot of it, even when he's trying to do his typical fast talking schtick. Everything about this feels like that, the action scenes are unremarkable, the jokes aren't funny and the villain is so bland that I genuinely thought he was a glorified extra until about halfway through. I do like Judge Reinhold and his character of Billy Rosewood but he really doesn't have anything to do here. His scenes with Murphy are the highlight of the film and some of the rare instances where the film shows the same energy as the original. A middle of the road film deserves a middle of the road score. A forgettable 5/10 Godzilla dir. Ishiro Honda/1954/1h36m After several ships are sunk off of the coast of Odo Island palaeontologist Kyohei Yemani (Kurosawa regular Takashi Shimura) is sent to investigate. There he discovers that Japan is under attack from a giant monster, displaced from its underwater home by nuclear testing. An allegory of what happened to Japan during and after WWII that doesn't lay the blame at the feet of foreigners but instead is more introspective. There's a scene here where some politicians discuss whether they are to blame for what is happening due to their own actions, and several shots of the aftermath of Godzilla's attack on Tokyo that could have been documentary footage. The effects are very simplistic with a man in a rubber suit stomping on cardboard skyscrapers but the way they are shot, with a lot of it happening at night, really helps sell the sense of dread and horror. I also love the character of Dr. Serizawa (Akihiko Hirata) who has a weapon that can destroy Godzilla, but after seeing what happened with nuclear weapons is conflicted about handing it over to anyone else and in the end makes the ultimate sacrifice. A good monster movie should be one where you're still invested even when the monster isn't on screen, and in that respect this one is great. 9/10 Russian Ark dir. Aleksandr Sokurov/2002/1h39m Shot on location in the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg a ghostly, unseen narrator (director Aleksandr Sokurov), from whose perspective we view the film, drifts through the hallways and rooms led by The Stranger (Sergei Dreiden). As they pass through they experience three hundred years of Russian history with a cast of hundreds representing different eras from Catherine the Great to the 900 day siege of the city during WWII to the modern day with tourists wandering through its many galleries. What makes this film incredible is that it is all done in one shot, immersing you fully in this experience, because that's what it felt like more that a film. I have to be honest, I didn't understand a lot of this film, or the historical references or which characters are real and which are fictional, but I got it, if that makes sense. This film has amazing pacing that really mesmerises you and draws you in. Dreiden is a wonderfully enigmatic figure, equal parts mocking and pleading, full of love and hate but trapped in the past. And the ending is just incredible and might be one of the saddest, melancholy endings to any film I've seen as the cast of hundreds slowly file out of the ballroom, through the hallway and out of the palace like the passing of a thousand ghosts. Every part of this film comes together perfectly to create a beautifully unique work of art that you should all watch. 10/10 Lime's Film of the Week! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djw180 6,956 Posted August 4 Share Posted August 4 Scoop (2024) dir Philip Martin The true story of BBC Newsnight's interview with Prince Andrew over his involvement with the convicted s*x trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. It stars Billie Piper as the journalist Sam McAllister who made the approaches to Buckingham Palace and did the ground work for getting the interview, Gillian Anderson as the show's host and interviewer Emily Matlis, Rufus Sewel as the Prince, Keeley Hawes as his press secretary and a number of other decent actors. They all do a good job but Anderson and Sewel really become the characters they play – I don't know if that can be said for the others because they are / were not public figures. I've always liked Rufus Sewel and think he ought to have got more big film roles than he has had. It's a drama closely based on real events, but of course they do make clear in the opening credits that some things were changed. The actual interview appeared to me to be exactly as it happened in reality. There is no great tension or thrills, no special effects or action, because that is not what happened. It's just the story of a rich, powerful man, a member of the British Royal family, who thought he could get away with anything and if he just gave a public explanation favourable to him, denying he ever had s*x with underage girls, then every would believe him. The journalists were only too happy to allow him that opportunity, and it's well known the reaction was not what he wanted, it was pretty much the exact opposite. 7 / 10 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djw180 6,956 Posted August 10 Share Posted August 10 Chariots of Fire (1981) dir Hugh Hudson. With the Olympics coming to a close in Paris at the moment I had to watch this, the story of four British runners at the 1924 Paris Olympics. I have seen it once before, but a very long time ago. It stars Ben Cross as Harold Abrahams (Gold 100 m), Ian Charleson as Eric Liddell (Gold 400m), Nigel Havers as Andrew Lindsay (Silver 400m hurdles), Nicholas Farrell as Aubrey Montague (5th Steeplechase) and Ian Holm as Abraham's coach Sam Mussabini. It's great British film with an iconic soundtrack by Vangellis. Although over 40 years old now it does not seem dated. Abrahams and Liddle are the main characters. They were rivals until the actual games when the deeply religious Liddle refused to run on a Sunday, when the 100m heats took place, and so was switched to the 400m, which turned out to be his better event anyway. Definitely one of the best sporting films ever made. 9 / 10 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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