[Film] Film 2015

[Bombadier Botty]

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.

Absolutely. Just nothing of quality or interest at all. There were only 20 or so of us in the cinema for the second night of Amy the other evening. Apathy all round. Hoffman is right.

 

[Shirty]

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.

I went to see this on Saturday and was pleasantly surprised too. I think my expectations has been set so low by the shocking reviews its received that I really didn't expect anything. In actual fact it was pretty enjoyable - certainly better than the third or fourth movies in the series.

 

[Nibble]

Mainstream cinema has been poor this year. Nobody wants to go up against Mad Max, Spectre or SW7. The big films that have tried have not been very good. JW and Terminator were both dire.

 

[vegster]

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.

Saw this this afternoon, Cusack was not to bad but Dano's portrayal is SO good it's difficult to match. Quite an enjoyable film, great listening to the genesis of some of the songs...quite moving.

 

[vegster]

Mainstream cinema has been poor this year. Nobody wants to go up against Mad Max, Spectre or SW7. The big films that have tried have not been very good. JW and Terminator were both dire.

It's very polarised, it seems to be a case of big budget sci fi/ superhero/ cuddly animation v Biopics/ Kooky screwball "comedy "/coming of age films.

 

[Acker79]

I saw Ant Man today. I liked it (as I tend to like most superhero films). It felt a bit 'by the numbers' but I enjoyed the references/links to the wider marvel cinematic universe, and I always find Paul Rudd to be generally likeable.

 

[Meade's Ball]

Yup, i went to Ant-Man today. I've always seen Paul Rudd as a rather small man, perhaps fitting to be an insect-sized hero, but i notice online it claims him to be 1.78m. This doesn't ring true in my head, with Lisa Kudrow - online height 1.73m - towering above him. During Ant-Man, he looked to me again rather compact. Maybe he just has rather stumpy legs and a very long head. Anyway, he goes into miniscule action in this, and he does alright. As Acker says it was a hero movie by numbers in essence, but at the same time you could feel the Edgar Wright wit to it who wrote the original storyline and left the project - as well as his annoying quick-edit and sound effects routine on a couple of occasions - and the combination doesn't always go. Still, i quite liked at times its irrelevance and it's step away from being universe-saving and so traumatic as superhero films have looked to become. I'd rather there wasn't a follow-up and this was just left as it is as a throwaway moment of silly fun, but the comicbook world, or should i say business, doesn't tend to let that happen at present.

 

[Gullflyinghigh]

I don't know if anyone else has seen it, and apologies if it's mentioned elsewhere in this (rather large) thread but I found myself watching 'The Voices', starring Ryan Reynolds, recently.

It was a bit odd but one of the few films that claims to have dark humour that actually seemed to manage it (for me anyway). Reynolds was very good, managing to play someone with quite pronounced issues in a manner that still made him quite likeable.

Basically, worth watching.

 

[Prince Monolulu]

Mrs Monolulu and I have just enjoyed Child 44. All round a pretty good film.
Solid movie from a good story, strong performances and just about right lengthwise.

 

[Meade's Ball]

I'm a general fan of Jake Gyllenhaal and the variety of films and characters that he goes for, if all very much centre stage. Tonight i saw him as Billy Hope, a bruising and bruised champion boxer, whose life falls into ruin with personal tragedy, and i felt it wasn't his best performance, in spite of his battling throughout with a cringeworthily juvenile script as much as the brutish boxers he looks to pound. The film is Southpaw and i had reasonable expectations of it for Gyllenhaal being there along with Forest Whitaker. The director, Antoine Fuqua, had his good name-making film in Training Day - blimey that was 2001 - but the films i've seen of his since have been clunky macho nonsense suitable for a Sunday night Channel 5 10pm showing. This one is looking to have more to it, honouring Rocky in particular and having a few different styles of camerawork during the fight scenes as Raging Bull had, but for me it didn't have the necessarily intelligent or woven feel to it to allow the silly turns and tv-movie melodrama elements to pay off. It felt at times like i was watching Over The Top.
Gyllenhaal does ok in the mid area of the film, largely helped by Forest Whitaker who can't help but be watchable, but for the most part it was a ludicrous and leaden show full of stereotypes, poor mimicking of much better films and some awful backing music. A bit gashy. Sort it out next time, Jake.

 

[Acker79]

Fantastic Four
Eh. Lacked fun. Their teaming up seemed sudden and without build, and the big finale seemed equally rushed and hollow.

 

[Uncle Spielberg]

Mission Impossible Rogue Nation. Wow what a great film. Easily the best of the 5 by some margin. The story action acting plot were all top drawer. Some of the greatest car and bike chase scenes seen in a film and numerous ingenious moments Tom Cruise a very underated actor IMO was at his best. Simon Pegg had a major role and added a lot of humour. Good baddies and the always wonderful Alec Baldwin as well but the real find was Rebecca Ferguson she will become a major star. It has to be a 9

 

[Prince Monolulu]

After dinner, settling down to watch the much lauded 'The Falling' incorporating great music from the wonderful Tracey Thorn.

 

[Acker79]

Ooh, forgot to add to this earlier this week, so a bit of a catch up:

Inside Out
A decent pixar effort. Not quite up there with Wall e, the incredibles or finding nemo, but much better than cars and brave. Great casting - all the voice artists seemingly match their characters really well.

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation
A fun film, impressive stunts. It avoided the cliche of the girl agent a a love interest. Everyone is comfortable in their roles. It's not going to go down in history as a classic, it's not challenging for the best in the series, but a generally enjoyable two hours.

Southpaw
Eh, very middling. It felt like it took a sports movie about a boxer who loses it all and has to build his career back up with a gritty drama about a man whose life is turned upside down when his wife dies leading to losing his daughter and having to process everything and get his life back on track to win her back, which would be fine, except both films cut lots of scenes that explain or establish important points of plot and character, and then just mashed them together.

 

[Meade's Ball]

I took perhaps a suggestive seat when almost lately arriving to view Diary of a Teenage Girl this evening. I was in a corner seat near the front, all on my lonesome, where no other viewer could catch me in an excited state whilst seeing this coming of age comic-drama being quite full of the coming and nudey teen female form. I realised quite quickly what position i'd taken in the theatre, and felt a little worse when noticing the possible added damage of my wish to be less plump meaning no Bounty or Yorkie accompanied me, but a quite large banana.
Anyhow, besides my mild social anxiety there was a film on show. An 18 that didn't take long to reveal why really. The setting was 1970s San Francisco and drugs and a loose sense of monogamy in relationships both familial and sexual, and 15 year old Minnie, a wannabe cartoonist, loses her virginity, telling all on the tape recorder that acts as diary. Who she loses her virginity to is her mother's 35-year-old boyfriend, played by the quietly simple yet charming Alexander Skarsgard. Minnie is played by Bel Powley, and she does it well. What unfolds is a vivid sexual awakening for Minnie, mixing mild comedy with the thinking and imaginings of her and how she sees men and the world and moving to darker realms when the increasingly adult world she is in overwhelms. The blend doesn't work perfectly and i didn't quite laugh or feel enough for the characters, but the film was ok, having me ponder at times a childhood so entirely unlike my own, or at least how i remember it.

I plan to return to the same cinema for the next 3 nights too for another few films, but on the next occasions i shall consider where i am best to sit and what healthy food to take with me to nibble on. No nude teens or bananas are on the agenda.

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

Attention all Film 2015ers!

Would be genuinely interested in the honest opinion of NSC's resident film buffs on the new short film made by my nephew Chay Milne. I know I'm probably biased but I reckon the boy has some serious talent. Well worth 13 minutes of any film afficionado's time. IMHO, like.



Cheers

 

[RandyWanger]

I'm really looking forward to Everest and The Martian coming out later this year.

 

[piersa]

Short term 12. What an excellent film. If you haven't seen it, go and watch it.

 

[Meade's Ball]

Ok, in chronological order.

Precinct Seven Five - an interesting documentary about the rottenness throughout the police force in New York in the 70s and 80s. The main confessor is Michael Dowd who reminisces without guilt of the crime spree he went on for all that time whilst in uniform. His anecdotes are told with the uncaring and malicious vigour of a Joe Pesci in a Scorsese film, and the documentary continues pretty much only with Italian Americans nattering without much regret or remorse over the corruption they engineered and got messed up in. It was good. It got a bit samey though and i was in and out of interest at times. Still, shocking and darkly, wrongly humorous in parts.

Mistress America - there's something about Greta Gerwig's on-screen character that i find very lightly appealing and really quite annoying. I blame a bit of that on the director Noah Baumbach, whose general tales of the coolest hipster cats get on my wick a bit. This one is about a lonesome sophomore chick whose mother is soon to wed Greta Gerwig's dad, who is ten years her elder. Gerwig is quickly adulated upon by the young girl, and after some comical oddness a roadtrip occurs and a farcical long piece of comedy theatre unfolds. It wasn't all bad, but i couldn't care too much for the self-centred wisecrackers when emotional moments came to appear.

Trainwreck - i downloaded this film last night to watch to save a few bucks, but as the day passed, i decided instead to see it at the cinema, pretty much knowing full well that watching films at home, particularly comedies, doesn't allow me to laugh as much, either led by fellow viewers in fits of laughter or just by the large envelopingness of the screen in front of me. So, i went, and was pleased i did. It had some very good comedy in this romcom about anti-monogamy from the perspective of a father who drilled into one of his daughters the impossibility of authentic togetherness. It's really just a collection of skits just about kept together, but the writing of those sketches was well done and well performed. The funniest 2 people in it for me were John Cena - his naked excessively muscular buttocks are horrible, and threatening, to look at - and Lebron James - his deadpannery as the friend of the nice and ordinary doctor that Amy might disagreeably fall for was very funny at times. Some scenes didn't work and when it got sentimental and standard romcom it grated, but overall it was a pretty funny flick. Amy Schumer, the writer and lead, looks a bit like me in drag on a good day, and i find that unnerving, but she's good and i wonder what's up next for her.

 

[Meade's Ball]

Sometimes, of course, trailers to films sell them incorrectly. And, of course again, a number of very good films struggle to have the meat and meaning of them shrunk into the briefest highlights. I recall seeing the trailer for 45 Years a few weeks ago and thinking 'no, not for me', pulling a slight face at my girlfriend sat next to me - i do that a lot with her, meanly. I was most wrong. Or my predictions were. What an excellent film. Such a slowly tense affair with some real sort of spinetingling moments of realisation that take one aback far more than most horrors would have me reel. It's basically the tale of a single letter that changes the entire feel to a marriage lasting almost half a century. We know of it merely moments in, when the husband, played excellently by Tom Courtenay, receives correspondence in German that the body of his first love has been found, frozen as it was when it fell, in the Alps. What follows then in the week to their 45th wedding anniversary is a growing rupture of their bond, their making, all thanks to the fact that Courtenay never fully spoke of this pre-marriage love and all it did to him. Charlotte Rampling is the wife and we concentrate mostly on her increasingly angst-ridden realisation that history is not what she thought it was. Little is spoken out loud but the subtle signs of stresses building on Rampling's face, and the background noises of clocks ticking and their alsatian yelping and whimpering, make it a growingly tense drama.
I really liked it, for all its heartbreakingness. I felt, though, that Rampling's deep suspicions were in part a lack of understanding of how one can romanticise times before a tragedy. I also think there is a sometime confusion from one partner to another of loves of different people being the same. Anywho, that's just me rambling. The film was tender and striking and i felt refreshed to see something well-made, especially on the day that the London Film Festival reveals its line-up and my love for film and all that that 10 tiring days of 30 films or so will bring excited me.

45 Years. Meade likey.