Pevenseagull
meh
- Jul 20, 2003
- 20,840
Both on my list. Only hearing good things about them.
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[Film] Film 2024
- Thread starter Barry Izbak
- Start date
Both on my list. Only hearing good things about them.
dolphins
Well-known member
Trailer for the new Quiet Place film. Loved the other two - and really looking forward to this one:
I went to see Argylle this evening. I thought the trailer made this look like it would be quite fun. It was not. I mean, I didn't hate it, but there is a long boring bit in the middle, and with a lot of scenes you can kinda see how what they were going for might have been silly fun, but for whatever reason it's just not there in the execution. One couple left about 20mins before the end, meaning they sat through almost two hours of it before leaving. Maybe they had somewhere to be, or it was just longer than they expected. Sam Rockwell tried.
Pevenseagull
meh
- Jul 20, 2003
- 20,840
Didn't want to queue for the train
Randy McNob
> > > > > > Cardiff > > > > >
- Jun 13, 2020
- 4,732
Watched Oppenheimer on a plane, so was glad to have saved the effort and expense going to the flicks. It's one of those biopics like Lincoln so if that floats your boat this is right up your street but for me, boring.
vegster
Sanity Clause
- May 5, 2008
- 28,290
Just back from Poor Things at The Dome, Worthing. Cracking film, it has everything and some. Hard to accurately describe the transitions between horror, comedy, steam punk, suspense, macabre and porn, it's absolutely insane at times but you do invest in the characters.
Meade's Ball
Well-known member
My son and his mum headed off to warmer climes for halfterm, so there was only one combination of events for me to form: longish-walks, overeating, saying a word to barely anyone, and cinema. Luckily the last mentioned has been quite good thus far, particularly with last night's wild-eyed extravaganza of immorality and gruesome style with The Settlers. The look of this film, throughout the start in particular, stuns the eye, with grass glistening and tainted, a spectral limbo prior to a journey to Heaven or Hell, the latter more likely. Chile is the settling as 3 quite different chaps on horseback roam to protect a vast and corrupt estate, led by the red pig, the foulest of beasts to begin with. A merciless trip unfolds as they head to the edge of the world, land unclaimed and barely lived in, bumping into the unexpected for me in the form of british actor Sam Spruell, who i play football with on a Monday night. He gives a sterlingly eerie performance as a British general who floats in this hades of choice with vices and death at his fingertips. The look of the film overall astonished most though, and the music near the start especially darkly pounding into hearts unready for a misguided thump.
Murky and wrong and film as it only sometimes should be.
And today i saw The Iron Claw. I was a fan of wrestling in days of yore - the 80s and 90s mainly - and this felt agonisingly true in its blend of religion and masculinity and juvenility and absurdity and drugs. And also of course of the legends on display - Ric Flair doesn't quite look like the actor who played him, but the hair colour, and general manner, were accurate. Zac Efron does give a career-best performance as the oldest living brother, Kevin von Erich, but i can't really recall any others standing out to rival it. He is believably innocent and repressed, and muscular, in a family destined to fail on the outskirts of success. His passion for family has been drilled into him by a father hungry mostly for champions in his children, for them to be in battle with each other for his respect, distorted as love. His brothers give generally good performances too, with Englishman Harris Dickinson a master of accents it seems, in this case Texan. And the father is monotone and marauding.
It's a moving tragedy, both invited and predicted, and it's America, and wrestling, in a replicating pocket of time. Pretty good.
Murky and wrong and film as it only sometimes should be.
And today i saw The Iron Claw. I was a fan of wrestling in days of yore - the 80s and 90s mainly - and this felt agonisingly true in its blend of religion and masculinity and juvenility and absurdity and drugs. And also of course of the legends on display - Ric Flair doesn't quite look like the actor who played him, but the hair colour, and general manner, were accurate. Zac Efron does give a career-best performance as the oldest living brother, Kevin von Erich, but i can't really recall any others standing out to rival it. He is believably innocent and repressed, and muscular, in a family destined to fail on the outskirts of success. His passion for family has been drilled into him by a father hungry mostly for champions in his children, for them to be in battle with each other for his respect, distorted as love. His brothers give generally good performances too, with Englishman Harris Dickinson a master of accents it seems, in this case Texan. And the father is monotone and marauding.
It's a moving tragedy, both invited and predicted, and it's America, and wrestling, in a replicating pocket of time. Pretty good.
dolphins
Well-known member
Coming in July.
Saw The Iron Claw today. As a wrestling fan, I was somewhat familiar with the Von Erichs story, which probably didn't help (what about the other brother? Why do they make it seem like those two things happened on the same night when they were years apart? How can someone do such a bad impression of somone as cartoonish as Ric Flair?) But for some reason it just didn't all come together for me. It felt all surface, no real depth, the sort of biography you usually get when the subject is part of the project. I thought it was fine, but could have been much better.
Meade's Ball
Well-known member
A continuous week of cinema visits for Meade. A mixed bag of results. I'll begin with the worst, which i just returned from: Madame Web,
I'd mostly forgotten her as a comic book character, only recalling really about halfway through, and my comicbook knowledge ended before she was ever a character under 75. In this we have the not hugely likeable Dakota Johnson playing the ludicrously-named Cassandra Webb. It was a Sony Spider Man spin off so had a similar feel to Venom in terms of it being barely thought out and nonsensical, and with an actor for the bad guy you'd generally expect so much more from - i chortled heartily and sadly when spotting Tahar Rahim attempting an American accent. A generally stupid 2 hours, but i don't think it buried itself in faux depth. Churned out bobbins that i hope is a box office success and demands a sequel to more sh*t without connection to its instigator.
In the middle of the 3 films seen for quality since the weekend is Poor Things. Now, i find that director, Yorgos Lanthimos, one of cinema's most annoying. Deadpan absurdity i can stomach, but his style grinds at me, and i can't shake it. It remained true here, but i could get by thanks to Willem Defoe, mainly. He can make anything seem interesting, and the evil of his heritage was regaled with matter of fact amusement. In general though it was a madcap tale of the grotesque and sex, partly disguised as pubescence and development. I found it a visual spectacle, but juvenile in its surreality and invention.
The best of the bunch was Zone of Interest. It was so so so funny. I jest. It was a hideous watch, but felt pertinent and necessary, for normalcy to be made of a space just metres outside of one of the foulest death zones of history. As the commandant and his wife and family live their lives, upset by change approaching and their achievements - of making a perfect home and a perfect Auschwitz in the eyes of the Nazis - being under-appreciated, we hear the whirr and sporadic screams of the horrors so close by. The nonchalance of their existence there coldly sweeps across each moment watched, and thrust into the air a string of reminders.
It was the second time i've watched this film. The first time was at the film festival last year, and at that time i wasn't cruelly grasped as i was this week. This week i watched in the front row of the cinema. with a mere 10 or so people sat in the theatre behind me. I suppose i needed to be immersed in it, tortured by it, mostly alone, to have it take and semi-throttle me. A really good film.
I'd mostly forgotten her as a comic book character, only recalling really about halfway through, and my comicbook knowledge ended before she was ever a character under 75. In this we have the not hugely likeable Dakota Johnson playing the ludicrously-named Cassandra Webb. It was a Sony Spider Man spin off so had a similar feel to Venom in terms of it being barely thought out and nonsensical, and with an actor for the bad guy you'd generally expect so much more from - i chortled heartily and sadly when spotting Tahar Rahim attempting an American accent. A generally stupid 2 hours, but i don't think it buried itself in faux depth. Churned out bobbins that i hope is a box office success and demands a sequel to more sh*t without connection to its instigator.
In the middle of the 3 films seen for quality since the weekend is Poor Things. Now, i find that director, Yorgos Lanthimos, one of cinema's most annoying. Deadpan absurdity i can stomach, but his style grinds at me, and i can't shake it. It remained true here, but i could get by thanks to Willem Defoe, mainly. He can make anything seem interesting, and the evil of his heritage was regaled with matter of fact amusement. In general though it was a madcap tale of the grotesque and sex, partly disguised as pubescence and development. I found it a visual spectacle, but juvenile in its surreality and invention.
The best of the bunch was Zone of Interest. It was so so so funny. I jest. It was a hideous watch, but felt pertinent and necessary, for normalcy to be made of a space just metres outside of one of the foulest death zones of history. As the commandant and his wife and family live their lives, upset by change approaching and their achievements - of making a perfect home and a perfect Auschwitz in the eyes of the Nazis - being under-appreciated, we hear the whirr and sporadic screams of the horrors so close by. The nonchalance of their existence there coldly sweeps across each moment watched, and thrust into the air a string of reminders.
It was the second time i've watched this film. The first time was at the film festival last year, and at that time i wasn't cruelly grasped as i was this week. This week i watched in the front row of the cinema. with a mere 10 or so people sat in the theatre behind me. I suppose i needed to be immersed in it, tortured by it, mostly alone, to have it take and semi-throttle me. A really good film.
Is it PotG?
Thrifty non-licker
Just watched The Last Repair Shop.
This Oscar nominated documentary grants an all access pass to the nondescript downtown warehouse where a dwindling handful of devoted craftspeople keep over 80,000 student instruments in good repair.
Great view.
This Oscar nominated documentary grants an all access pass to the nondescript downtown warehouse where a dwindling handful of devoted craftspeople keep over 80,000 student instruments in good repair.
Great view.
dolphins
Well-known member
Saw this on Sunday and whilst we thought it entertaining, it isn't one we'll rush to see again. Some of the CGI was eye-waveringly bad, and the storyline was so convoluted - did they need SO many twists in it?! Rockwell was pretty decent in it; Sam Jackson had such a slight appearance in it...and his performance seemed very phoned in. A bit of a mess of a film, really...
Oh and that credit scene? What the hell was that about?
Matthew Vaughn announced he was working on a second movie which would be a prequel 'based on the first book in the [in-movie] book series' it was a tease for that. Henry Cavil and Sam Rockwell have not yet commited to the film and have said it will depend on audience reaction. So it seems that it won't happen.
This evening I went to see Madame Web. I went in with very low expectations and an awareness that the trailers massively overplay how much we see of the three young girls as spider-themed superheroes in the movie. They are barely costumed heroes at all. It is not their story, they are the potential victims being protected by Dakota Johnson's Madame Web as some previously unknown abilities begin to show themselves in her following a near death experience. This is primarily in the form of being able to see the future.
All of the reviews I saw said it was bad. A lot of them suggested it was worse the Morbius, which was previously considered the worst of the Sony Spider-man-adjacent movies (also including the two venom movies, an upcoming Kraven the hunter, and supposedly somewhere down the line a sinister 6 movie). While I am not saying this movie was good (it wasn't), it didn't seem as bad as Morbius to me. Maybe I am misremembering Morbius, and time has made it seem worse in my memory than it really was. I am (so far successfully) fighting the urge to re-watch that to find out.
It is not good, but wasn't offensive to me. The humour never lands. Nothing was particularly new or fresh. Neither the characters or the story aren't overly complex. It doesn't go far enough to venture into 'so bad it's good' territory. There are big holes in the story (not necessarily in logic, but in explanation). The ending seemed designed to try to placate the fans upset that a grey-haired old woman who never leaves her throne in the comics/cartoons is suddenly Dakota Johnson rather than because it was a natural way for the story to end.
I wouldn't recommend it to anyone unless your only options are Madame Web or Morbius
dolphins
Well-known member
Just back from Wicked Little Letters. Great film. Set in Littlehampton, 1920, it relates the real life story of a spate of poison pen letters being sent to local residents. Great cast (Jesse Buckley, Olivia Coleman, Tim Spall, etc) well written, absorbing and in turns very funny and rather moving/emotional. VERY fruity language throughout.
Meade's Ball
Well-known member
A couple of films to speak of.
Firstly, as last week almost closed with a gruffling whimper, was The Taste of Things. It's the story of a kitchen, grandiose and natural and obscene in its warmed perfection, where gourmet food is engineered and rejoiced over without a flinch. It's France in the last 1800s and love and esteem conquer the environment, whilst the labour of concocting an elaborately layered and glorious looking meal is welcomed without the merest whiff of resentment. Juliet Binoche plays the cook and Benoit Magimel the endlessly smirking twinkly-eyed chef. Their romance is mostly through the food they make, and the synergy of their thinking and doing, but throughout the film seemingly have to finally speak of it.
It's quite a moving watch, and i marvelled at the industry presented and the yearning for it to continue in that space. Is love half-true if blossomed and kept for an eternity in a functional locale and uttered in act rather than poetry? I don't know, but it echoes with authenticity and a small squeak of regret through this generally sweet tale.
Twas good, like.
And today i saw Perfect Days. Now, i have to admit that i thought Wim Wenders was dead. But he isn't and directed this gentle, mostly, take on a controlled and appreciated life for a senior fellow in Tokyo. We see him almost wordless going through his near identical daily processes - he is a public toilet cleaner and arrives to each venue with this organised van and products - with pride, and appreciating sunlight through the overhanging branches. The film plods, mostly, coming to life in episodic parts as the Hirayama's previous life grimly sparkles and gives clues to his slightly hermetic existence. It was poetic and ordinary, being about perspective and life process rather than physical or emotional explosions. Hirayama says to his niece at one point about elements sometimes connecting and at other times just not, and this slow tale seemed to be of that. The music he listens to in his van seemed to say a lot about him too, rare reminders of his life before the current one as a caring and workhardy servant to the order he has created. Not bad.
Firstly, as last week almost closed with a gruffling whimper, was The Taste of Things. It's the story of a kitchen, grandiose and natural and obscene in its warmed perfection, where gourmet food is engineered and rejoiced over without a flinch. It's France in the last 1800s and love and esteem conquer the environment, whilst the labour of concocting an elaborately layered and glorious looking meal is welcomed without the merest whiff of resentment. Juliet Binoche plays the cook and Benoit Magimel the endlessly smirking twinkly-eyed chef. Their romance is mostly through the food they make, and the synergy of their thinking and doing, but throughout the film seemingly have to finally speak of it.
It's quite a moving watch, and i marvelled at the industry presented and the yearning for it to continue in that space. Is love half-true if blossomed and kept for an eternity in a functional locale and uttered in act rather than poetry? I don't know, but it echoes with authenticity and a small squeak of regret through this generally sweet tale.
Twas good, like.
And today i saw Perfect Days. Now, i have to admit that i thought Wim Wenders was dead. But he isn't and directed this gentle, mostly, take on a controlled and appreciated life for a senior fellow in Tokyo. We see him almost wordless going through his near identical daily processes - he is a public toilet cleaner and arrives to each venue with this organised van and products - with pride, and appreciating sunlight through the overhanging branches. The film plods, mostly, coming to life in episodic parts as the Hirayama's previous life grimly sparkles and gives clues to his slightly hermetic existence. It was poetic and ordinary, being about perspective and life process rather than physical or emotional explosions. Hirayama says to his niece at one point about elements sometimes connecting and at other times just not, and this slow tale seemed to be of that. The music he listens to in his van seemed to say a lot about him too, rare reminders of his life before the current one as a caring and workhardy servant to the order he has created. Not bad.
Easy 10
Brain dead MUG SHEEP
The Zone of Interest
The true story of a high-ranking SS officer who lived with his family in a house directly next to Auschwitz, where he worked. The walls of the death camp are literally lining their pleasantly manicured back garden - a wall of concrete separating them from the daily routine horrors and atrocities which were occurring just a few short yards away from his wife and young children.
There is an almost constant plume of thick smoke in the backdrop belching from the crematorium chimneys, sometimes spreading ash into their perfect little annex from hell. But their lives carry on in banality and routine, almost totally removed from what was happening in the adjacent death camp. You get a disturbing insight into the cold, decision-making processes of the Nazi's in the logistics of how to exterminate Jews on an industrial scale.
This film is slow paced. You don't see any of the horrors - you are as protected from that as his family was as they just carried on almost oblivious, literally in the shadow of such horrors, choosing to ignore the occasional howls and cries from over the wall. Its a deeply unsettling film which plays out slowly but is all the more affecting for it. Not one I will forget in a hurry. I can't say you'll enjoy it, but IMO you should experience it. For that reason, I'm not going to score this one. Its just one I think everyone should see.
The true story of a high-ranking SS officer who lived with his family in a house directly next to Auschwitz, where he worked. The walls of the death camp are literally lining their pleasantly manicured back garden - a wall of concrete separating them from the daily routine horrors and atrocities which were occurring just a few short yards away from his wife and young children.
There is an almost constant plume of thick smoke in the backdrop belching from the crematorium chimneys, sometimes spreading ash into their perfect little annex from hell. But their lives carry on in banality and routine, almost totally removed from what was happening in the adjacent death camp. You get a disturbing insight into the cold, decision-making processes of the Nazi's in the logistics of how to exterminate Jews on an industrial scale.
This film is slow paced. You don't see any of the horrors - you are as protected from that as his family was as they just carried on almost oblivious, literally in the shadow of such horrors, choosing to ignore the occasional howls and cries from over the wall. Its a deeply unsettling film which plays out slowly but is all the more affecting for it. Not one I will forget in a hurry. I can't say you'll enjoy it, but IMO you should experience it. For that reason, I'm not going to score this one. Its just one I think everyone should see.
Easy 10
Brain dead MUG SHEEP
Just noticed your review sir, and I concur with every word. Good to have you back, btw.
S'hampton Seagull
Well-known member
I'm off to see it too this evening. Going to the pub first so more concerned at what point in a 2hr 46m film to go take a leak
Is it PotG?
Thrifty non-licker
Went to cinema last evening to watch Andrew Scott go solo in a spellbinding, mesmerising solo presentation of Vanya in a theatre stream.
Truly amazing performance and interpretation of this classic. Highly recommended.
Truly amazing performance and interpretation of this classic. Highly recommended.