[Film] Film 2015

[Papa Lazarou]

I took the kids to see Minions yesterday. I must admit i've only caught bits of the Despicable series of movies, but I've seen enough clips of the Minions in action to 'get' their brand of humour.

However, I found it pretty dull - very few laugh out loud moments, and a pretty unimaginative story.

The kids seemed to enjoy it though.

6/10 - meh.

 

[Surf's Up]

Watched "Le Quattro Volte" (The Four Times) last night. Its a very slow moving Italian art house movie with little to no dialogue. Its about life in a remote Italian village and the plot follows the four elements of Pythagoras' theory that he had four lives. The first life is the human realm seen through the eyes of an old goatherder, one of whose goats gives birth, the second is the animal realm and is a study of the young goat who gets separted from the herd and shelters under a lone pine tree, the third is the plant realm and is a study of the fir tree and the final realm is mineral as the tree is cut down and made into charcoal.
Amazingly, although pretty tired at the time, I didnt fall asleep at any point during the film which was beautifully filmed and, in a strange kind of way, strangely moving. I dont normally watch this kind of movie (not enough violence, sex and drugs...well, no violence, sex or drugs actually) but as a one-off I'm really glad I did.

 

[Wilko]

Watched Frank, the film VERY loosely based on the career of Frank Sidebottom. All that is similar to his actual life is the papier mache head. I thought it was very good indeed and a great performance from Fassbender. Maggie Gyllenhall does her stock in trade loony bird role perfectly. Yeah, worth a watch if you like a well told, quirky little tale.

I really liked this film, absolutely bizarre but very enjoyable.

 

[piersa]

I took the kids to see Minions yesterday. I must admit i've only caught bits of the Despicable series of movies, but I've seen enough clips of the Minions in action to 'get' their brand of humour.

However, I found it pretty dull - very few laugh out loud moments, and a pretty unimaginative story.

The kids seemed to enjoy it though.


6/10 - meh.

I went to see it with the kids (mine, not yours) on Friday. Very disappointing. So much better in despicable me. 5/10.
My kids quite enjoyed it though.

 

[Nibble]

I took the kids to see Minions yesterday. I must admit i've only caught bits of the Despicable series of movies, but I've seen enough clips of the Minions in action to 'get' their brand of humour.

However, I found it pretty dull - very few laugh out loud moments, and a pretty unimaginative story.

The kids seemed to enjoy it though.

6/10 - meh.

#
Good God, those bloody things are everywhere presently. On adverts, on social media, at fancy dress shops. Awful things.

 

[Papa Lazarou]

Anyone seem 'Spy' - I've heard good things about it, but haven't had the chance to see it yet?

 

[Bombadier Botty]

I really liked this film, absolutely bizarre but very enjoyable.

I'm a big fan of 'leftfield' film making, but I just found Frank, well to be 'frank' boring. For me they could have done the same thing in a UK setting, made it equally off the wall, but had some actual parallels to the life of the man himself rather than the whole thing being Stateside and them ending up at South by South West Festival (wtf!?)

 

[Meade's Ball]

Went to see Mr Holmes today. I was always a fan as a youngster of Basil Rathbone as Sherlock both in and out of the propaganda-ridden takes on the great detective. Jeremy Brett i could sometimes stomach and in the modern day i accept the added mirth and quick-cuts of Cumberbatch. What i didn't hugely rejoice in was the Young Sherlock Holmes in the mid-80s. In Mr Holmes, we see him watch and scoff at a fictionalised version of himself on the big screen, played for just a moment by the now very grown up Nicholas Rowe, who was the lead in Young Sherlock Holmes. I had to check it was him when i got home, and feel more that i had been embroiled in this muddling of realities and fictions. Mr Holmes is 93 in this tale, and much of this film is about his deeply wrinkled age and uncertainties of the past, in moments the genius of renoun and at others in the tortured befuddlement that time brings to all who live that long.
I quite liked it. I expected a little less of it at the start with a tv-movie-ness to it, but once Ian McKellen gets in full swing he's an astonishing watch. My girlfriend described it as a little slow and perhaps cliched, but i didn't share that impatience. Maybe that's in part down to a love of the character, and a continuous fascination with characters with jumbled recollections, but i felt the film was stitched reasonably well together and, as mentioned already, McKellen puts in a great performance to sometimes cover up the slight corn or lack of pace.

 

[looney]

I just find it odd that Jurassic World has had 5 or so reviews on here and pretty much everyone said it was crap. That is the opposite to a lot of very positive reviews generally with 7.5 average imdb and 84% positive, 8.2 average rotten tomatoes from a combined 272k votes. Even critics voted it fresh with 71% average. It was also very well received during the 2 showings I went to.

Now if you want dull, watch Mr Holmes, my God that was slow. It picked up thankfully in the last 30 minutes and the acting was very good from McKellan and the Boy but I almost fell asleep twice in the first hour and that would have been a first. Also all the time I could hear JW from next door and was wishing I was watching that again.

Still of course the critics loved it

Have to agree with you here, thought JW was enjoyable. Coming to the conclusion that reviewers are pretentious, self absorbed wankers who are as crap as the people who vote on these things. Specifically, The Grauniad, The Independent and Telegraph, also Rotten Tomatoes.

The Film Divergent Series Insurgent was the best ive seen this year, the above mentioned organs panned it yet critics average was 52% and Audience reveiw was 84%. Now those are wide differences, I read the above on Film Wizard btw..

 

[AZ Gull]

Saw "Amy", the new Amy Winehouse documentary last night. Before the movie I didn't know too much about her; the overriding impression now is, what a tragic figure

An incredible talent whose self-destructive tendencies met little resistance (and even encouragement) from many of those close to her. Fascinating, if heartbreaking, stuff.

 

[Vegas Seagull]

Saw "Amy", the new Amy Winehouse documentary last night. Before the movie I didn't know too much about her; the overriding impression now is, what a tragic figure

An incredible talent whose self-destructive tendencies met little resistance (and even encouragement) from many of those close to her. Fascinating, if heartbreaking, stuff.

Now you know the lies about her father that her 'best' friends told the Director

 

[AZ Gull]

Now you know the lies about her father that her 'best' friends told the Director

Hi Mitch

 

[Meade's Ball]

I am a general disser of mainstream fare, the repetitive nature of so much formulaically-made tending to grind more than appeal, and it would be wrong to say i found surprising wonder in the mechanical arms of Arnie in his 18th outing as a once-merciless robotic assassin, but i had a mild enjoyment over parts of Terminator Genisys. Ok, i think it was out of laughter at the dialogue early on that set the tone of the film thereon, and the seemingly deliberate bad acting to make it a typical 12A blockbuster, but there was enjoyment had even if by accident. It's a true nonsense of a film, with endless chatter to explain how they've bent time to make it fit into this new timeline, and an insult to some of the cast that Arnie is the best actor on show. I can't see how the franchise will go on now, or who could make it seem fresh or different, but that won't stop Hollywood churning out another version in around 4 or 5 years time, preferably if the real-life Arnie, if you could really call him that, remains breathing and willing to spew out a standard line or two for a couple of million. Still, i had some laughs in this one and the finale had a few kicks to it.

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

Been a very thin year for cinema, has to be said. Really STRUGGLING to find anything much worth watching since Birdman in January as an DoY STH. They just seem to now block-book uank like 50 Shades Of Grey for weeks on end. Not impressed one little bit.

 

[Bombadier Botty]

Amy

Fielder-Civil - irredeemable scum
Mitch Winehouse - and you were supposed to be her father!

Decent watch 7.5/10

 

[Barry Izbak]

I was looking forward to Jurassic World and wasn't the only one judging by the fact that Screen 15 at Plymouth Vue was probably 75% full on a Monday night

What a disappointing movie 5/10

 

[AZ Gull]

Been a very thin year for cinema, has to be said. Really STRUGGLING to find anything much worth watching since Birdman in January as an DoY STH. They just seem to now block-book uank like 50 Shades Of Grey for weeks on end. Not impressed one little bit.

Dustin Hoffman would agree with you - Dustin Hoffman: Cinema Is "Worst" It Has Been in 50 Years

 

[Meade's Ball]

No better way to celebrate one's age's turning point than waddling down to the Barbican to watch a biopic peppered with mania and heartbreak. Love & Mercy is the tale of Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys and he's played by two different actors at different times of his life. The two stories run side by side with Paul Dano as the young and naive and ambitious Brian looking to escape the phony surfer boy image the band had and unleash his increasingly wild creativeness into the music they produce, whilst John Cusack, who looks entirely unlike Dano, who doesn't look a lot like Brian either, is the 1980s Brian largely held hostage by his manipulative and thieving therapist. It jumps from one era to the other, back and forth, but as soon as you accept both actors as Brian, then the stories together work ok in tandem. The problem with the film is in the casting of Cusack, perhaps made worse by the actors around him, who in spite of the soap opera settings and dramatic door openings and not wholly mighty script have the capability to control their hammery. Cusack would have watched Brian's walking style from footage of that era and looked to mirror his spasmodic mannerisms, but i am not sure if i have seen Cusack really carry out physical acting before, and he does it badly. The actors he is playing with are Paul Giamatti, who although in playing the monstrous therapist has to be fairly pantomimey does so with conniving venom, and Elizabeth Banks, playing Wilson's now wife with a giving and subtle feel.

Luckily there is enough of Brian in the 60s, dealing with an anxiety and half-deafness brought about by the unloving tyranny of his father accompanied by an increasing attachment to some hardcore hallucinogenics, to keep one interested in the main character himself and put aside Cusack's clunkiness when the 1980s reappear. Overall, though, the film has an ally in the drama of the man's story and the use of sound, both in the music itself and how it dominated Brian's thinking and feeling in day to day life, making him an outsider and a musical genius.

For a biopic, it wasn't bad, and ends with a snippet of a live performance that really hits home.

 

[Rambo]

Terminator Genisys looks good.

Saw this yesterday, was pleasantly surprised as I thought it would be rubbish. Watched it at the Imax with 3D and the visuals are amazing, it does seem to have some of the magic of T2, and probably should have been the official 3rd Terminator movie. As with most sequels though, most of it has been done before so there are no real revolutionary plot lines or new concepts.

The interesting 'Google' - 'Skynet' comparisons are quite though provoking, good film, worth seeing.

 

[symyjym]

Saw this yesterday, was pleasantly surprised as I thought it would be rubbish. Watched it at the Imax with 3D and the visuals are amazing, it does seem to have some of the magic of T2, and probably should have been the official 3rd Terminator movie. As with most sequels though, most of it has been done before so there are no real revolutionary plot lines or new concepts.

The interesting 'Google' - 'Skynet' comparisons are quite though provoking, good film, worth seeing.

Good to know. It sounds like an easy watch without revolutionary plot lines or new concepts, that's the beauty of the Terminator films. The concept of Skynet was way ahead of its time and Google is a powerful beast that taps into our everyday lives and connects every computer to one digital organism.

The only far fetched part of these movies it the time travel.