Film 2016

[Acker79]

Bastille Day
I've never watched Luther or The Wire so am not overly familiar with Idris Elba's work (unless you count the sky box set adverts). I don't know if being a fan of him improves the film. For me it was eh. The sort of film I would probably enjoy as a straight to dvd movie, but that is missing something when shown in a cinema.

Eye in the Sky
I quite liked this. Some of the Americans were a bit one dimensional, which didn't really help the debate or feed anything into the central dilemma of the film. Other than that, it was quite good. I imagine some people may find it trite or simplistic, but I thought it was a good discussion and presentation of a complex situation.

 

[Meade's Ball]

As Acker did above, i'm hear to talk of those 2 films.

Eye in the Sky i saw on Wednesday afternoon, taking a day off of work thanks to the Tuesday QPR spanking, and i quite liked it. Hadn't been to the cinema for a couple of weeks, so it felt nice to be back in the dark, but the film itself was good. A drone, controlled by the US, but led by the British military, is to spy on one house in East Africa that two dangerous terrorists will arrive at. Once there, these fiends, one of which is British and a converted and radicalised Muslim, will be captured by the local forces. The drone, though, catches a more threatening scenario, and characters, that mean the action intended must change. What unfolds then is how that action can be given the go-ahead, with the military and politicians watching and debating, with many a character causing delay with their own agendas - British politicians are painted most feebly, with not a one willing take responsibility for fear of repercussion on their position of power - although the decision to be made is an almighty one. I was quite gripped. Performances were hugely important to carry this complicated run of events, and political and moral quandaries, through, and for the most part they were good enough. Aaron Paul wasn't great, and neither was the believability of his character and his supposed conundrum, but Helen Mirren was alright and Alan Rickman, perhaps with the thoughts of not seeing any new performances from him again, shone. Some bits were cheesy and some stereotypes were dumped in there, but to make it into the film it was, full of enough suspense and thrills to keep a wide enough audience enthralled, it couldn't dig deeply and morosely non-stop.
Anywho, i thought it quite good.

Twas this morning that i saw Bastille Day - a title the person at Cineworld didn't understand me saying when i asked for a ticket - and what a funny film it was. I expected it to be written by or co-produced by Luc Besson, to be a match for one of his electronic music nonsensical action films set in France or full of French people, but i didn't see his name in the credits. This one is set in Paris and has the most northern-faced actor, Richard Madden, amusingly pretending to be from Las Vegas. His thick stubble changes length during the film, illogically shorter, and his eye make-up is that of an actor from a black and white film. Idris Alba also pretends to be American, as a CIA op classed as reckless - reckless people are always best to send into dangerous situations, i find, for a subtle outcome. Alba is mostly a slight frown and a swagger, but this is all he needs here, outside of weaponry. The story was ludicrous and the acting mostly comical and the action not hugely thrilling. I found it quite funny though.

 

[studio150]

Enjoyed eye in the sky. I think the I can't make this decision I need to refer up was more about explaing the thought process that would be undertaken and to explain to the audience the complexities involved. I would like to think that in the real world the legal expert in the room with Heken Mirren would have made the decision on the spot.

Also a film that clearly illustrates the issues for pilots now. Previously dropping bombs from 30000ft up they never saw the personnal death that the bombing brought, but with the HD close ups and body identification it is very real.

 

[Acker79]

Captain America: Civil War
I think the glut of Marvel movies and the similarity in tone from one film to the next has led to each new one not wowing me as much as they used to. That's not to say I didn't like it. I did, and I'll probably watch it at least one more time before it leaves cinemas.

There is a good deal of heart and humour in this (particularly from Spider-man and Ant Man), making it a better film than the very similar themed Batman v Superman, but it does have its own flaws. But I think at this point yopu know what you're getting from Marvel and this delivers.

 

[Meade's Ball]

Went for a morning visit to that Captain America thang, and i have to say it was the best of them, i thought. Some of that is down to it not being hugely centred on Captain America, who is unendingly dull, but i felt it had an alright comicbook balance - there was more fighting than misery and moping, but had an air of sadness rather than being crushingly that. I quite enjoyed it. Even though i don't remember much of it now. Maybe that is the make-up of a reasonable blockbuster.

 

[Acker79]

Green Room
I'd largely indifferent to the new releases showing at cineworld this weekend (Angry Birds, Everybody Wants Some) and have no interest in catching the films I gave a pass to last weekend (Florence Foster Jenkins, Robinson Crusoe, Bad Neighbours 2) in favour of a repeat viewing of Captain America. But I wanted to keep going with my once a week cinema trip challenge, so turned my eyes to what was being offered by Duke's.

I was surprised to see Green Room showing at the Komedia, becuase it was an unlimited advance preview screening a few weeks back on a night Brighton were playing at home, so expected it to be on show there when it was officially released, since it wasn't showing I didn't think it was out.

The film was very violent, very gruesome, very intense, and also very good. Patrick Stewart was menacing, even if his accent seemed a little inconsistent. Worth having to pay for this cinema visit (beyond my usual cineworld unlimited payments, of course).

 

[Meade's Ball]

Before speaking a tiny bit more about a film just seen today, and the pick of the bunch really, i should mention t'other 3. 2 of them were from the Psychological Western season at the BFI. I have another couple that i have tickets for, but thus far i've seen:
Pursued - this interested me as it's a noir western, two genres i didn't see working combined, and i was slightly right. The wide expanses of the sun-baked way out west aren't as cloaked in shadow as the nefarious nighttimes of downtown New York. Darkness and vengeance are engineered well, but the music and narrative elements taken from each genre don't perfectly mix. Still, it was quite good to watch, and amusing to see Robert Mitchum fairly early in his career only using one facial expression in times of deep love and affection and also of psychological horror. His raised eyebrow and smirk became somewhat ticklesome by the end.
Johnny Guitar - this was a film i expected more from, at least for it being weird and wonderful. The melodrama element of it, by melodrama master Nicholas Ray, became excessively hard going, the dialogue clunkily crushing the absurdity of the outlandish setting and characters. Still, it got better as it went.

So, for newer films last Monday i sat through Florence Foster Jenkins. Meryl Streep always give a strong performance, and she does here as the eponymous lead. I can't say i found it all that funny though, as i was seemingly meant to. A mostly true-to-life tale of the American socialite who gave her inherited wealth to music. In a partially dreamy state, and with so many well-paid people not wanting to inform her of her limitations, she sings her heart out, in an out of tune fashion. She finds fame with it, but unable to see or hear the laughter at her that accompanies it. The old couple sat next to me were close to having a heart attack whilst cackling at Florence's singing. I chuckled on a couple of occasions, but not for the most of it and the tragedy of her situation and those around her were more powerful than the comedy of it. It wasn't for me.

Finally, today i saw Mustang. A good film this, set in a turkish village and showing us the growingly determined restriction of the lives of 5 young sisters. The youngest is around 12, and it's her that we hear for just a few moments narrate. The others are up to around 16/17 years old, all of them orphaned and living with their grandmother and uncle. On the last day of school for that year they head to the beach and frolic in the surf, playing games with the boys that came with them. We see their innocence and playfulness and togetherness, before they return home to be slapped around by the grandmother, who has received gossip around the village that they were being sexual, illicit, unclean. The director from then on drifts between tales of childhood and its incurable lust for adventure, and them being dragged into a mostly joyless adulthood by a local culture crushing youthfulness with suspicion and oppressive moral certainty. So it's beautiful and hopeful for seconds here and there, with the knowledge of what male-led punishment will come at the end of it. The performances were excellent and the feel of it potent and haunting. I thought the story had an unnecessary bit of badness to it, but overall it was good to finally see a decent film again.

 

[Meade's Ball]

Sometimes the very start of a film can lead to its demise, and X-Men: Apocolypse cannot get beyond its awful beginnings. It looked like a Vin Diesel pic, both in mindset and expenditure. What followed our trip to ancient Egypt and the introduction of Oscar Isaacs as a flatly evil super-mutant from long ago - the lengthy cumface of his receiving the powers had me laughing - is a series of re-intros of key characters that deserve feelings of embarrassment in the story-writers. Maybe they were stolen from the comics, i don't know, but even so the Magneto segment with him working in a steelworks in Poland in the 1980s and then the wily communist police coming to him and disrupting his perfectly peaceful life with wooden weapons was impossibly lame. The dialogue for trustworthy actors like Fassbender and McAvoy in these bits was also painful to listen to. And the snippets of each tale were told in an unfluent and unmatching way - the last film was about jumping through time and changing things but this time it was just scattered and shoddy.
Difficult to turn things around from all this, and it didn't much. There was a flat air to the drama and emotion, which then leaves the action without substance, for all its brightness and thunder. Twas a disappointment over all, and delivered without the sometime light-heartedness and charm of the previous 2. Sophie Turner, as Jean Grey, makes one of the film's few jokes when her and a couple of other young mutants emerge from a Return of the Jedi screening that people always dislike the 3rd chapter of a series. Many a true word spoken in jest.

 

[Acker79]

X-Men: Apocalypse
I had managed to avoid any early reviews before I headed in to watch the midnight showing on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. I had only had a few hours sleep the night before, then a full day at work (including some travelling), so I was quite tired.

I actually really enjoyed it. I thought it was fun, and the returning actors were all their usual self - Fassbender and McAvoy were good, Hoult and Lawrence were eh, Peters was a film stealer again. I like Oscar Isaac a lot, so have nothing bad to say about him. The other new actors were not really given the material or the time to really connect or leave an impression. I ended up enjoying it more than I did Civil War, and there was a round of applause from some in the cinema.

So it was quite surprising to hear that reviews have been, at best, mixed. With some (quite ridiculously, I think) calling it the worst X-men film (I mean, come on, there's no way this was worse than Origins: Wolverine or Last Stand), others calling it the best (I wouldn't go that far, either). I was even more surprised to hear some people describe it as confusing and hard to explain. I was working on very little sleep and felt like I understood it perfectly.

Perhaps my lack of sleep lowered my standards, but I liked it.

 

[Garry Nelson's Left Foot]

Captain America: Civil War. 7.8/10.

This was probably my favourite of the Marvel movies(I've watched a lot of them but not all). I liked it despite rather than because of Captain America who is an insufferable, self righteous bore of a character. Luckily Civil War is, like its name suggests, about a civil war between the avengers/marvel superheroes so there's a lot of extra, more entertaining characters (including a new spider man) who make up for the charisma black hole that is the alleged lead.

The plot revolves around what happens after the Avengers complete their missions or rather the destruction, mayhem and unaccountability of their actions. The U.N puts forward a motion that the Avengers fall under their oversight. Some Avengers agree with the proposal, some don't. Captain America leads one faction, Iron man the other. There's plenty of action (and destruction) and a great punch up between the competing sides.

All in all it was highly entertaining. It would score higher marks if it had less, or perhaps no, Captain America.

 

[Uncle Spielberg]

Florence Foster Jenkins. Surprisingly very good, Streep is an Amazing actress and Hugh Grant's greatest acting performance. A real treat 8.2 out of 10

 

[Uncle Spielberg]

Zootopia 8.9
The Jungle Book 8.7
Room 8.4
Florence Foster Jenkins 8.2
The Danish Girl 8.1
Joy 7.6
Cloverfield 10 6.7

 

[Prince Monolulu]

Room is certainly the best film I have seen for some time.

Clever writing and superbly acted by both leads....not OTT.

 

[Brightonfan1983]

Deadpool
I thoroughly enjoyed this. Again I qualify that with mention of my general love of superhero movies. I found it fun, and there were some clever references. The villain wasn't the most dynamic or cinematic, but this is an origin story, so he shouldn't be.

I also really loved the post-credit sting.

Whereas I loathe superhero films, can't bear Batman/Spiderman/Superman, the Marvel stuff can take a running jump as far as I'm concerned, but Deadpool was absolutely fanTAStic. Relentless big budget tomfoolery. Top entertainment.

 

[Acker79]

Sing Street
Went to see this at the Duke of York's this evening. Apparently you can rock up with a pizza for everyone in your party at the DOY's. Interesting to know.

The film itself was very good. I don't really have much to say, other than that. Thoroughly enjoyable film.

 

[Meade's Ball]

I've walked out of 2 films during my lifetime, and i had to add a third to that a couple of days ago. Everybody Wants Some! What a pile of shite. Just agonising to see someone of the sometime calibre of Richard Linklater make something so vapid. I walked out in part, about 90 minutes in, thanks to the audible huffs of my friend sat next to me, but i was glad to go down to the bar and get the badness of it out of my mind.

Just remembered that i saw Ivan's Childhood, by Tarkovsky, t'other day. Pretty impressive. The visuals and brooding sound were amazing. Thoughts of the Tin Drum came here and there when watching it. Brutal and poetic.

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

Sing Street
Went to see this at the Duke of York's this evening. Apparently you can rock up with a pizza for everyone in your party at the DOY's. Interesting to know.

In the movie theatre itself? Not exactly conducive to enjoying a film, being subjected to other people's stinky food. It's bad enough on the train.

 

[LlcoolJ]

In the movie theatre itself? Not exactly conducive to enjoying a film, being subjected to other people's stinky food. It's bad enough on the train.

We went to a gig at Sheffield Arena recently and people were buying whole pizzas, burgers and chips etc to eat while watching it. WTF? You're supposed to drink BEER at a gig not have a full on junk food binge.

No wonder there are so many fat c***s about. Everything is seen as an opportunity to stuff their fat faces with lard nowadays.

 

[Acker79]

In the movie theatre itself? Not exactly conducive to enjoying a film, being subjected to other people's stinky food. It's bad enough on the train.

Yup. There was about six or seven of them with individual pizzas. In fairness, I didn't actually smell them, even though I was quite close. It just surprised me because it was the Duke of York's. I wouldn't be surprised if it happened at the odeon or cineworld, but DOY isn't that sort of cinema.

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

Yup. There was about six or seven of them with individual pizzas. In fairness, I didn't actually smell them, even though I was quite close. It just surprised me because it was the Duke of York's. I wouldn't be surprised if it happened at the odeon or cineworld, but DOY isn't that sort of cinema.

Quite. Even if they were vegetarian pizzas, it's the thin end of the veg.