[Film] Film 2014

[LamieRobertson]

Went to see Gone Girl this evening..throughly enjoyed it...fairly full screening and no one popped put to the loo...which for 2.5 hours is pretty good

 

[Meade's Ball]

I'll try not to go on about it too much, but that's more than likely a lie, as i will mention it each and every day and not really interest any of you in the merest fragment of it. The London Film Festival started today, and i've already notched up 2 films, neither of which were outstanding, but gave me a taste again in parts of different atmospheres within the festival. Something i was reminded that i like to see is the sheer enthusiasm and, ideally, pleasure that some directors have in taking centre stage for a few moments and their works being seen and talked about. Of course some will see people laugh in the wrong places or excess numbers leave in the middle of their fare, and they'll feel the sickened in their undesirability, but carry on eventually regardless.
For the first film tonight - French Riviera - no one came out to introduce it or at the end take Q&As, and after watching it that seemed like the right move. Based on a true story, they say, it's about the casinos of Nice in the mid-70s, and in particular the one managed by Catherine Deneuve. It's a jumbled film maneuvering carelessly between meanings and seemingly intentions, and it doesn't send you here and there with great enjoyment or control. Deneuve is good enough, and the devilish Guillaume Canet is alright enough as the increasingly bad guy, but overall it weren't great.

The second film was The Shrew's Nest, a Spanish horror, coated in dark humour. It was a debut from this pair who came out in front of the 50 or so who stayed in the theatre to take questions about the film. They did it with such joy and pride that it felt impossible not to be warmed by their company. They're a pair of professors at the film school in Madrid, and they walked around in front of us with a friendly lecture, in suits they never seemed to have worn anything like before. The film itself was alright. It's the story of two sisters in Madrid in the 1950s, and the older one by far is a rather unsettled character who won't leave the flat at any time, the ghost of their father appearing on her occasion, played by Luis Tosar who i've loved in a couple of Spanish films - Cell 211 and Sleep Tight - and he's a nasty phantom to remind the sister of all that she hates of herself. Living in a dictatorship and religious oppression are slight themes underneath the blood and humour, but the film is a horror and not trying to be too clever about it. Not bad and made all the better by the directors seeming so happy.

Tomorrow, 4 films. It should be a good day.

 

[keaton]

Pride was excellent. Feelgood but able to deal with some serious issues and politics without much dumbing down.

 

[Uncle Spielberg]

Pride has absolutely tanked at the box office. Strange as I thought it was very good

 

[Nibble]

I saw Gone Girl. While I enjoyed watching it at the time, on reflection it was pretty rubbish. Brilliant performance by lantern jawed comeback king Affleck though and the black guy who played the top lawyer, his short time on screen was the best of the film. Fincher has made a few off beats and this is one.

I'm intrigued by Interstellar it looks quite interesting but I suspect it will be nothing more than another Armageddon or Deep Impact with a few wistful musings on our place in the universe thrown in to give MM something to do.

 

[vegster]

Pride has absolutely tanked at the box office. Strange as I thought it was very good

I thought it was doing quite well ?, I saw it and found it thoroughly entertaining. Hopefully word of mouth may boost the takings as it would be a tragedy if this sort of British film struggled for backers in the future.

 

[keaton]

Pride has absolutely tanked at the box office. Strange as I thought it was very good

Has it?
It's taken about £2m already in the UK (it's ffed in the US due it getting the most adult rating possible)

 

[Uncle Spielberg]

3.3m which is very poor, it would have expected to get 15m at least, very limited release in usa 6 cinemas from 4000 and doing well in those but maybe the subject matter is too much for them ?

 

[Uncle Spielberg]

I saw Gone Girl. While I enjoyed watching it at the time, on reflection it was pretty rubbish. Brilliant performance by lantern jawed comeback king Affleck though and the black guy who played the top lawyer, his short time on screen was the best of the film. Fincher has made a few off beats and this is one.

I'm intrigued by Interstellar it looks quite interesting but I suspect it will be nothing more than another Armageddon or Deep Impact with a few wistful musings on our place in the universe thrown in to give MM something to do.

Spielberg is an executive producer Nibble so no fears mate

 

[Uncle Spielberg]

I saw Gone Girl. While I enjoyed watching it at the time, on reflection it was pretty rubbish. Brilliant performance by lantern jawed comeback king Affleck though and the black guy who played the top lawyer, his short time on screen was the best of the film. Fincher has made a few off beats and this is one.

I'm intrigued by Interstellar it looks quite interesting but I suspect it will be nothing more than another Armageddon or Deep Impact with a few wistful musings on our place in the universe thrown in to give MM something to do.

Pike was the star of Gone Girl. She will be nominated for an Oscar. Affleck was good but then he is a good actor so it was not a surprise for me

 

[Meade's Ball]

The festival hasn't really caught fire for me yet, but i'm enjoying myself. Sometimes i think there's a moment early on in a film, in which the audience react in a particular way which feels to me just unusual, and i might slightly turn against it, as i mildly turn against them. It's usually with laughter, i suppose, and today such was the case with The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing. Cumberbatch is one of the favourites for an oscar, apparently, and i wouldn't agree if he was the winner. He's alright, but the film is a pile of formulaic corn that gives such little depth to his struggles that the whole piece can not nudge him on his own toward glory, i think. The subject overall is an interesting enough one with him and his team looking to break the enigma code and do in the Nazis, but the "comedy" i found generally unticklesome and the whole feel of it so standard, led of course by roaring music all the bloody way through, that i groaned more than revelled in what could have been more than the standard biopic. It was my least favourite of the day. I expected more.

My second least was Queen and Country, by John Boorman, an autobiographical fable of his time in the military in the 1950s filled with escapades and clashes between different generations and times. It weren't great, but Boorman came out at the end and i liked to listen to his thoughts, even briefly.

Second favourite, then, was the last of the evening, El Nino. I'd liked the director's last film, Cell 211, and this one, set in Spain and Morroco and the Gibraltar straits, is a crime thriller sort of told from the angle of the law and the criminals. This had some thrills to it, if not quite the meat that i'd hoped for. Afterwards the director came out for questions and said that everything in the film was real. No cgi and the action was pretty much carried out by the actors. Some of the chase scenes are dramatic and look mighty real. A generally enjoyable enough 2 and a bit hours of smuggling and corruption.

The best was the one the started the day for me, Black Coal, Thin Ice. This is a Chinese thriller with a serial killer that isn't hugely odd or different, but i liked the chill to it and the bent morality and the lack of eerie music that's meant to scare. This just had the deafening noises of daily life accompanying the investigation, and the constant feeling in this region that everyone is about to be frozen over. Not fantastic, but it had the slight feel of elsewhere, that i'd felt a bit without this far.

Tomorrow, just 3 films. The star of the festival for me thus far, though, has been my newly-bought flask. I spent £7 today - forgetting the £40 on the films themselves which left my bank a month ago - and that was all thanks to having a litre of uncoolable decaf coffee to sip on here and there throughout the 12 hours. I hope to do the same tomorrow and wonder why i haven't been a flasky person before this week.

 

[Meade's Ball]

Well today was a mixture of thrills, surprises, being accidentally in the hub of a strange row and a disappointment.
Let's do it in chronological order.

White God - Hungarian film that opens like 28 Days Later with our heroine Lili cycling innocently through a completely peopleless Budapest, until the eerie pristineness is undone by the eruption of a pack of wild beasts. In this case it's not zombies, but hounds. We then go to the origins of how this canine uprising occurred. It's an odd film for the most part in it being strangely enthralling and hilariously bad in bits. Hagen is our dog, mistreated in a variety of ways by clearly unloving and evil humans. Lili is a young-looking 12 or 13 year old who loves Hagen and is reunited with her father, which neither seems to want. The father leaves Hagen on a motorway, and for all Lili's attempts to find him again, she doesn't, leaving Hagen to fend for himself and fight off various human fiends. The rampage of the dogs was just very funny when it arrives. No CGI is used, so it's 400 dogs sprinting. They seem to have run out of money though, closing down innumerous streets of the capital to film and hiring so many dog-wranglers, and the few extras they have badly feigning the bombardment of these woolly menaces were excellently awful at seeming terrified and overrun. At the same time we grow into caring for Hagen as we did Caesar in "...Apes", and watch Lili go through certain rites of passage at discos and in the school orchestra, whilst she hungers for the return of her best friend. I liked it. It was different and had some good trumpet-playing and terribly unbelievable maulings.

Second up was a double documentary, both set in Russia. I went to this to fill time inbetween the two main ones i wanted to see, but chose it because i was seeing too many of the obvious choices and thought i should go for something at a small screen that fundamentally was the black and white telling of a travelling blood bank in the rural parts of Russia. I thought few people would be there, and i was half-right. Around 35 or so, all of them of the maturer range.
The first documentary was called Winter and set in SIberia. Only 10 minutes long, but the voiceovers of local people who survived through the fiercest weather conditions, whilst the surroundings were so beautiful, made it a moving little piece. Twas good that.
The second was an hour long and called Blood and as i described above. A quite engrossing series of travels for this van full of nurses who go and collect blood from the Russian outback. In Russia, donors actually sell their blood to the state. This means that most of the ones giving, in this documentary at least, are on benefits and use selling their blood to get by. It was weird to watch these portly strugglers with needles in their arms to get the equivalent of 17 euros for a litre of the red stuff. And in so many cases about to faint from it, being walked around to regain consciousness or being lain on the floor by these nurses to refind their senses. The nurses tell the other side of the story in being a funloving set who roam around and have drunken nights out all too often. it was fascinating. The director at the end talked about it really being a metaphor for the state sucking the blood out of the people, and also how in spite of selling blood, you also have to buy it if you're injured and in need, so it's a strange vampiric commodity all of a sudden there.
What was strange, though, was the Q&A afterwards which ended in 3 blokes having a massive abusive arguments about the future of artificial blood. The man sat next to me started it by talking for quite some time, with a microphone, about the future of blood and also of the clear decline of Russia as a country. SO there i was with men shouting around me, all of them at least 50 years old, calling each other idiots and other names. It must be the documentary crowd.

Finally, the disappointment in The Cut, made by Fatih Akin. I was looking forward to it, even though that sounds sick when i knew it was about the Armenian genocide a hundred years ago. It starred Tahar Rahim who of course i like from the off with Un Prophet. The problem with it mostly was language. The Turks spoke turkish, but the Armenians spoke English with an accent to each other. And those whole segments felt like they were written by the director's niece, 15 years old and writing her first school play at her new school in Hemel Hempstead. Every line was out of a movie from the God channel, blatant and message-plastered, and i cringed.
Overall, it was a tale worthy of telling, and interesting that Akin wanted to mix the obvious horrors with an ode to westerns, with the almost-dead Tahir surviving and striding unstoppably, mute, through these widescreen settings looking for a tad of justice, but some scenes were just awful and the whole thing was painfully unsubtle. I've liked a couple of Akin films quite a lot, but this was a real shame. This one is now down there for me with The Imitation Game as festival baddies.

Tomorrow, just two films. Home by six, i hope, looking forward to some actual dinner rather than constant nibbles - no offence Nibble - and cheese baguettes.

 

[Lady Whistledown]

Has it?
It's taken about £2m already in the UK (it's ffed in the US due it getting the most adult rating possible)

Why on earth have the Americans given it the equivalent of an 18 rating?? There's no violence or gore. There's a bit of old fashioned British swearing I suppose, but nothing worthy of an 18 certificate. Is it because there are a couple of men kissing at one stage? Are they really that delicate that they think only adults can cope with men kissing? It's hardly porn.

 

[The Buttery Biscuit Base]

Go and watch '71. It is wonderful.

It's gripping, intense and exceptionally gritty.

Great bit of British cinema.

 

[The Merry Prankster]

In order of disappearance - Norwegian movie with sub-titles. Tarantino meets the Coen Bros. Darkly funny. Recommended. 8/10

 

[Meade's Ball]

A friend of mine who will see more in this 10 days than the 31 i've purchased, goes entirely by reviews and top10s from Cannes and Sundance and Toronto and Venice. That doesn't mean he's without opinion, because he really does have an in-depth opinion on everything, but it means in some ways he's without risk. I am no courageous gambler, but i sort of refuse to be just like him and make sure i see a few films from a variety of places that i haven't read too much of. The latter of today's two was that, and i was pleased with it.
The first film, though, was better, and expected to be. It was Mr Turner, Mike Leigh's take on the last 25 years of the life of the great British artist. Timothy Spall plays Turner and he was rightly rewarded at Cannes for best actor. I've read that he trained to paint for two years in the build-up to this film so that his handling of the brush didn't seem so obviously not that of an artist. That's devotion. The film itself is a very interesting character study of this gruff but strangely charming man, that as per usual with Leigh revels in the idiocy and closed-off-ness of the elite in part. The cinematography at times was beautiful as Turner traveled under pseudonym and sketched in his notebook what would become landscape pieces of real beauty. I liked it. Some funny caricatures in this world of endless manners and pomposity to go along with the study of a usually heartless Turner witnessing the slow decline of his reputation and health. Good film.

Sometimes, and it is very rare, i get the shivers when i see an actor or actress, most of all when i least expect to see them. I had that in the second film this afternoon, Tales, when i saw Peyman Mooadi, the Iranian actor star of A Separation a few years ago. I loved that film, and in this one, an ensemble piece with a number of little stories told in conversation and debate in Tehran, and when i saw Peyman appear i had a joyous tingle in my brain. His performance was in the last chapter of the film, but i loved seeing him in action. Not all the film was great, the transfer of tale from one character to the next in coincidental passing a tad clunky and the statements about the awfulness of state oppression and the mistreatment of women sometimes too heavy, but i'm interested in Iranian cinema's attempts to talk of class and religious clashes and this did what it could to speak of it with both honesty and humour. I'm glad i gambled.

 

[Acker79]

Triple bill at the cinema.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
The story, the action, the acting - the main things - we're all poor to m'eh, but had lots of small things I enjoyed to make it overall decent enough. Michelangelo was particularly funny.

gone girl
I enjoyed it well enough, but didn't think it was worthy of some of the hype that paints it as Fincher's best, better than seven etc.

Dracula Untold
It wasn't a terrible as it could have been, but nowhere near as fun as it should have been.

 

[keaton]

Why on earth have the Americans given it the equivalent of an 18 rating?? There's no violence or gore. There's a bit of old fashioned British swearing I suppose, but nothing worthy of an 18 certificate. Is it because there are a couple of men kissing at one stage? Are they really that delicate that they think only adults can cope with men kissing? It's hardly porn.

Theyv'e not said why it was rated so strongly, the British censor made it 15 as it had them looking at a gay porn mag, the dildo and maybe the kiss

 

[Meade's Ball]

Went to see one half of a Godard doublebill yesterday arvo. A Bout De Souffle, or Breathless as we unskilled non-linguists prefer to know it. I don't feel as if i'd seen it before, so i thought i better. I saw the first 3 minutes of it twice as the projectionist, i suppose, forgot to click SUBTITLES, at the first attempt. I wondered whether it said it was in French the whole time, this doublebill, and was billed for the fluent without me checking or remembering. Gladly it was restarted with English printed across its bottom 10th.
I quite liked it. It was incredibly dated and ludicrous here and there, but for an amoral homage to film noirs coated in 60s stylings and general babble about life and love, it's strangely gripping/interesting.

Right, my flask is full now to head off for 4 films, starting with The Drop. Could be a good day.

 

[keaton]

Went to see one half of a Godard doublebill yesterday arvo. A Bout De Souffle, or Breathless as we unskilled non-linguists prefer to know it. I don't feel as if i'd seen it before, so i thought i better. I saw the first 3 minutes of it twice as the projectionist, i suppose, forgot to click SUBTITLES, at the first attempt. I wondered whether it said it was in French the whole time, this doublebill, and was billed for the fluent without me checking or remembering. Gladly it was restarted with English printed across its bottom 10th.
I quite liked it. It was incredibly dated and ludicrous here and there, but for an amoral homage to film noirs coated in 60s stylings and general babble about life and love, it's strangely gripping/interesting.

Right, my flask is full now to head off for 4 films, starting with The Drop. Could be a good day.

A Bout De Souffle is very good, very 'French' and very 60s