Films you've seen lately

[hmvman]

... yes, same here : we went on Saturday and loved it. Beautifully photographed too (gorgeous frocks for the curia) - they must have had such fun constructing 'their' (quite believable) Sistine Chapel, and the choreography of the cardinals (loved the white umbrellas... ). An oscar for Ralph Fiennes, please

Went to see Conclave this afternoon an agree with your comments on all counts. It's a very dark film - in luminance terms.

[Master Jacques]

Does anyone know Bernard Hermann's opera ? I wondered if he had appreciated this aspect of the novel.

I don't think he did. It's a filmic, neo-romantic splurge with precisely one tune, thin characterisation and risible action. A dud, in a word.

[smittims]

Yes, that's what the Gramophone said. A pity, as he had high hopes . I enjoyed his score for The Snows of Kilimanjaro. Rather more than I enjoyed Gregory Peck's acting, which disappointed me after hs superb performances in Twelve o'clock High and The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit.

[Belgrove]

Slim cinematic pickings of late, but the new year customarily brings releases of greater interest. Robert Eggers has an impressive track record in the horror genre, with The Witch and the extraordinary The Lighthouse to his credit. These films contained memorable, inventive, unsettling images and sound design.

Nosferatu is his latest, being a revamp of the 1922 expressionist classic, and Herzog’s 1979 remake of that. It’s a take on Stoker’s familiar Dracula story, and is in the high concept design style of Eggers’ previous films. You’ll have seen many of its elements in previous Dracula films, and they are all assembled here to provide something genuinely unnerving. The action is transferred from Whitby to a fictional town in Mittel-Germany to take advantage of gothic architecture and wintery vistas, although the customary Transylvanian home of Count Orlok is retained, with the wild Carpathian mountainscapes providing sublimity and an unsettling otherness beyond civilisation. It’s all done with verve, and the almost monochrome colour palette is very beautiful. The composition of the shots is artful, exteriors like a sequence of Döre prints, cool interiors with objects placed with Vermeer-like precision.

Lily-Rose Depp is impressive as the innocent Ellen Hutter, who is transformed by Count Orlok’s unwholesome attentions in her dreams and is subjected to a variety of dubious 19th Century medical practices to treat her melancholic hysteria. Bill Skarsgård as the Count is not the mole-rat creature of the previous films, but an animated corpse, seen mostly in shadow - a horrible creation. Willem Defoe and Simon McBurney chew the scenery as vampire catcher and Orlok’s crazed acolyte, and Nicholas Hoult restores balance and decency in trying to do the best for his wife and making sense of the uncanny events into which he is immersed.

Stoker tapped into something that crystallised diverse, resonant myths which has generated endless variations from its themes. The mixture of horror, madness, disease and eroticism is all there in the novel and is given a fresh polish in this film - it’s very accomplished and great fun.

[richardfinegold]

Slim cinematic pickings of late, but the new year customarily brings releases of greater interest. Robert Eggers has an impressive track record in the horror genre, with The Witch and the extraordinary The Lighthouse to his credit. These films contained memorable, inventive, unsettling images and sound design.

Nosferatu is his latest, being a revamp of the 1922 expressionist classic, and Herzog’s 1979 remake of that. It’s a take on Stoker’s familiar Dracula story, and is in the high concept design style of Eggers’ previous films. You’ll have seen many of its elements in previous Dracula films, and they are all assembled here to provide something genuinely unnerving. The action is transferred from Whitby to a fictional town in Mittel-Germany to take advantage of gothic architecture and wintery vistas, although the customary Transylvanian home of Count Orlok is retained, with the wild Carpathian mountainscapes providing sublimity and an unsettling otherness beyond civilisation. It’s all done with verve, and the almost monochrome colour palette is very beautiful. The composition of the shots is artful, exteriors like a sequence of Döre prints, cool interiors with objects placed with Vermeer-like precision.

Lily-Rose Depp is impressive as the innocent Ellen Hutter, who is transformed by Count Orlok’s unwholesome attentions in her dreams and is subjected to a variety of dubious 19th Century medical practices to treat her melancholic hysteria. Bill Skarsgård as the Count is not the mole-rat creature of the previous films, but an animated corpse, seen mostly in shadow - a horrible creation. Willem Defoe and Simon McBurney chew the scenery as vampire catcher and Orlok’s crazed acolyte, and Nicholas Hoult restores balance and decency in trying to do the best for his wife and making sense of the uncanny events into which he is immersed.

Stoker tapped into something that crystallised diverse, resonant myths which has generated endless variations from its themes. The mixture of horror, madness, disease and eroticism is all there in the novel and is given a fresh polish in this film - it’s very accomplished and great fun.

Two my adult kids saw it last night. I had dinner with them afterwards. They and their significant others are both into horror films, my wife and I are not. They all gave it the big thumbs up

[richardfinegold]

Had a movie binge over the January Holiday.
First up was A Real Pain, with Jessie Eisenberg and one of the Culkin brothers. It’s essentially a a Bromance, 2 cousins who take a group Holocaust tour together in Poland as they try to find their ancestral home. The cousins both have Mental Health issues and have drifted apart after having been close. There is a lot of humor but the antics of Culkin made it a squirm fest for the first 30 minutes. The movie then has a big reveal and that hooked me in for the last hour.
Next up was Get Shorty, a 1995 Barry Sonnenberg treatment of Elmore Leonard novel. John Travolta is excellent here, a perfect casting choice for the role of Chilli Palmer. Dennis Farina steals the show in a minor character role, and Gene Hackman, Danny Devito (Shorty), Rene Russo, and Del Ray Lindo are excellent characters. Sonnenberg perfectly captures Leonard sly sense of humor and the inevitable script changes actually improve the story.
It’s the century anniversary of the Scopes Monkey Trial. There is a new book about it and I read the review by Adam Hochschild in the New York Review of Books. This stimulated me to watch Inherit the Wind, the movie version of the play about the events, with Spencer Tracy and Frederick March. I hadn’t seen it in 50 years. I didn’t realize that Gene Kelly plays the HL Mencken character. It’s a powerful but wordy film with many noble sounding speeches by Tracy and March that both come off as sounding archaic in our more cynical times. A period piece

[LMcD]

Having just enjoyed Euston Films' 1998 'Jack The Ripper' on Talking Pictures Encore, I shall now watch Lucy Worsley's new BBC programme to discover her take on the subject.

[richardfinegold]

Having just enjoyed Euston Films' 1998 'Jack The Ripper' on Talking Pictures Encore, I shall now watch Lucy Worsley's new BBC programme to discover her take on the subject.

We much enjoyed her 3 part series on Holmes vs Doyle

[Belgrove]

Having no interest or enthusiasm for the life or music of Bob Dylan, seeing A Complete Unknown was prompted for experiencing its cinematic qualities alone. And whether Timothée Chalamet provides a convincing account of Bob’s singing is best left for aficionados to decide. So, approached from the perspective of a story about a musician who joins and becomes prominent in an established musical tradition, and then changes his style, does it succeed? Absolutely - it’s an excellent film. There is a lot of music in it, and the songs are placed for dramatic and narrative effect rather than documentary truth. There are plenty of documentaries out there if verisimilitude is what you want. The four central performances (Chalamet, Monica Barbaro -Joan Baez, Elle Fanning - Sylvia Russo, Edward Norton -Pete Seeger) are all superb. Seeger is portrayed sympathetically, an avuncular King Canute who as mentor to Dylan, recognises and understands the roots of his music but also that he will overturn and sideline that tradition. The shrewd and self-confident Baez accurately sums up Dylan as a ‘… kind of a**hole…’ . But then exceptional individuals don’t have to be nice people. It’s pretty conventional as a narrative, told linearly, with the tumultuous events of the early sixties charted with grainy black and white tv newscasts played in the background of apartments and hotel rooms. The folk club scene in Greenwich Village is evocatively captured. I doubt that this film reveals anything that isn’t already known about Dylan, but then again he remains unknowable, and Chalamet’s performance is compelling, capturing his enigmatic quality (and to my untutored ears, has a better voice than Bob - he also plays all instruments). The film culminates with the 1965 Newport Folk Festival when Dylan went ‘electric’ and changed a course of music. So, I went into the cinema indifferent to the subject matter, but was totally won over by a brilliantly well-told story. Has it stimulated an interest in Bob’s music or life? No, but James Mangold has crafted a wonderful film.

[johncorrigan]

Having no interest or enthusiasm for the life or music of Bob Dylan, seeing A Complete Unknown was prompted for experiencing its cinematic qualities alone. And whether Timothée Chalamet provides a convincing account of Bob’s singing is best left for aficionados to decide. So, approached from the perspective of a story about a musician who joins and becomes prominent in an established musical tradition, and then changes his style, does it succeed? Absolutely - it’s an excellent film. There is a lot of music in it, and the songs are placed for dramatic and narrative effect rather than documentary truth. There are plenty of documentaries out there if verisimilitude is what you want. The four central performances (Chalamet, Monica Barbaro -Joan Baez, Elle Fanning - Sylvia Russo, Edward Norton -Pete Seeger) are all superb. Seeger is portrayed sympathetically, an avuncular King Canute who as mentor to Dylan, recognises and understands the roots of his music but also that he will overturn and sideline that tradition. The shrewd and self-confident Baez accurately sums up Dylan as a ‘… kind of a**hole…’ . But then exceptional individuals don’t have to be nice people. It’s pretty conventional as a narrative, told linearly, with the tumultuous events of the early sixties charted with grainy black and white tv newscasts played in the background of apartments and hotel rooms. The folk club scene in Greenwich Village is evocatively captured. I doubt that this film reveals anything that isn’t already known about Dylan, but then again he remains unknowable, and Chalamet’s performance is compelling, capturing his enigmatic quality (and to my untutored ears, has a better voice than Bob - he also plays all instruments). The film culminates with the 1965 Newport Folk Festival when Dylan went ‘electric’ and changed a course of music. So, I went into the cinema indifferent to the subject matter, but was totally won over by a brilliantly well-told story. Has it stimulated an interest in Bob’s music or life? No, but James Mangold has crafted a wonderful film.

You've covered most of the bases there, Belgrove. As a Bob fan, having read the book the film is based on, 'Dylan Goes Electric' by Elijah Wald, as well as some other stuff, I knew most of the story and the main protagonists; and had been looking forward to seeing this film for ages. Chalomet does a great Bob. He performs the songs very well. It would appear that he did not play guitar or mouth harp before he got the role. However because of Covid and then his contractual obligations to 'Dune' and 'Wonka', and strikes, 'A Complete Unknown' was held up for a few years. Tim used the time to bone up on his skills carrying the guitar everywhere he went. My pal, a very excellent guitar player, said he prided himself in recognising a guitar cheat when he saw one; and Chalomet, as far as he was concerned, was for real.
I found the scenes when Bob visits Woody Guthrie in hospital very moving. Chalomet's performance of 'Song for Woody' for Woody and Pete persuaded me early on that he knew what he was doing.
I wasn't completely convinced by Elle Fanning's Baez, though Dylan was certainly an ***hole when it comes to his treatment of the Sylvie Russo character (aka Suze Rotolo).
Edward Norton was, of course, superb as Pete Seeger. I loved your description of Seeger, Belgrove, as a King Canute figure. In the end it's Seeger you feel for as you see his folk dream disintegrate, and Bob sings 'It's All Over Now Baby Blue' to the Newport audience, after having electrified the place.
One of my favourite characters in the film was Boyd Holbrook playing Johnny Cash. I thought he was brilliantly cast. Dan Fogler's cigar-chomping Albert Grossman was the archetypal baddie and did a cartoon version of it very well. A few irritations - 'Judas' didn't happen at Newport; it happened at Manchester Tradehall - that annoyed me, and Manchester is where Dylan reputedly said 'play it loud'. Also, very good though Chalomet is, he never at any point persuaded me that he was a smoker despite the number of ciggies that he got through during the picture.
As you say, Belgrove, there's a lot of music in the film and that works because of the wonderful quality of those early Dylan songs. Tim is another person added to the extensive list of artists who have done fine versions of Bob's songs. Funnily enough, the thing that I came away with from the film was that I had forgotten how much I loved Joan Baez' 'There but for Fortune'.

[Ian Thumwood]

We often go to the pictures but the Bob Dylan film does not appeal. I find biographies really unsatisfactory as the life story is manipulated for dramatic effect. The last film I saw was Nosferatu which had excellent cinemamatography but not as good as was suggested. Don't think there is much on at the moment.

[gurnemanz]

We often go to the pictures but the Bob Dylan film does not appeal. I find biographies really unsatisfactory as the life story is manipulated for dramatic effect.

In general I agree about biopics but Dylan fans often have a completist inclination and as such I shall almost certainly succumb.

[Ian Thumwood]

One of the best film biographies was the one about Edith Piaf with Marillon Cottiard. I hate Piaf's music but felt the film portrayed her as a monster. It was a mesmerising performance and I had no idea that Piaf was so grotesque.

I am fascinated by French cinema and this is a masterpiece.

[Belgrove]

…
First up was A Real Pain, with Jessie Eisenberg and one of the Culkin brothers. It’s essentially a a Bromance, 2 cousins who take a group Holocaust tour together in Poland as they try to find their ancestral home. The cousins both have Mental Health issues and have drifted apart after having been close. There is a lot of humor but the antics of Culkin made it a squirm fest for the first 30 minutes. The movie then has a big reveal and that hooked me in for the last hour.

Thanks for the recommendation richard, as you say, it takes an unexpected turn, the last shot is quietly devastating. An impressive screenplay and directoral debut from Jesse Eisenberg.

[Keraulophone]

We went to see Maria last Saturday afternoon. There were just two other couples watching. Mrs K had the same reaction as I did - a very gloomy experience, with the declining Diva wandering around Paris towards her last days, ordering her loyal butler who suffers from backache to move her unplayed grand piano repeatedly from room to room, concluding with a last gasp of a 'performance', with hallucinatory flashbacks to her prime in the opera house. Angelina Jolie made a pretty good job of an impossible task, though it seemed we were watching her all the time trying very hard to be someone other than the real Callas; in other words, miscast, but I've no idea who else could have played this complex personality, let alone sing along. Worth seeing, but mixed emotions at the end, and I managed to finish my popcorn, which is a bad sign; in the best films I forget to eat it.