Films you've seen lately

[Dave2002]

Parasite - a superb film, for once a film which is a deserving Oscar winner. Brilliant.

Very much better than the Don Quixote/Terry Gilliam film we saw yesterday.

[gurnemanz]

Parasite - a superb film, for once a film which is a deserving Oscar winner. Brilliant.

Great piece of cinema. Striking use of staircases a la Hitchcock backing up the underlying idea of moving from one level to another. I thought of Brecht when the stone of luck was brought in and the mother said bread would better (Mrs Peachum in Threepenny Opera: Zum Essen Brot zu kriegen und nicht einen Stein).

[teamsaint]

Emma

Definitely foregrounds humour, and all done with a gentle touch. Excellent cast, well acted. Not likely to win many Oscars, but if you like this sort of thing, you probably won't be disappointed. A very enjoyable couple of hours, if not a life changing experience.

[pastoralguy]

Little Joe.

Excellent movie despite a couple of plot points one could drive a bus through.

[ardcarp]

I don't know if these has been mentioned before, but The Pianist on Netflix is pretty gripping stuff. Mrs A and I watched it last night, having shoo-ed off all the kids/g-kids from using out Netflix account!

It sadly brings home how little the world has learned from the horrors of Nazi persecution, as we hear on our news of millions of homeless, sick and starving refugees from place such as Syria and Yemen.

[jayne lee wilson]

I don't know if these has been mentioned before, but The Pianist on Netflix is pretty gripping stuff. Mrs A and I watched it last night, having shoo-ed off all the kids/g-kids from using out Netflix account!

It sadly brings home how little the world has learned from the horrors of Nazi persecution, as we hear on our news of millions of homeless, sick and starving refugees from place such as Syria and Yemen.

One of my all-time favourite movies.... the devastating scene near the end as Spielman plays for the German Officer in the bombed out ruins.......

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUfcoDrvzYQ

....the way The Piano itself is a dramatis personae, following through the whole film, from the studio before the attacks, to the silent keyboard in the (not so) safehouse, to the overwhelming rapprochement of a few survivors in the radio studio and the the concert at the end..... I think the tears are coming on again.....

[ardcarp]

Glad you said that, Jayne, because I felt moved almost to tears too; in the scene with the humane German officer especially so.

[Dave2002]

Glad you said that, Jayne, because I felt moved almost to tears too; in the scene with the humane German officer especially so.

I'd forgotten that film. Might be time to watch it again. Another very good film is La vita è bella which deals with similar subjects. These do tend to be a bit sad, though - like Schindler's List and Sophie's Choice.

[richardfinegold]

One advantage of the isolation is that I have been plumbing my DVD collection. Someone had gotten me a Jane Austen collection during one of my hospitalizations a few years ago after I had read her works a brief time before Yesterday we watched Sense and Sensibility, directed by Ang Lee with Emma Thompson and Hugh Grant. It was really done. The plot features many scenes where different characters that are in conflict are inhibited by persistent presence of outsiders from expressing their true opinions and the camera angles are superb at catching all of them with conflicting facial expressions and body language. Next up is Pride and Prejudice with Kera Knightley. Last weekend was Mansfield Park, my least favorite Austen work because I find Fanny Price to be an annoying prig, although the movie softened her up a bit

[Serial_Apologist]

One advantage of the isolation is that I have been plumbing my DVD collection. Someone had gotten me a Jane Austen collection during one of my hospitalizations a few years ago after I had read her works a few years ago. Yesterday we watched Sense and Sensibility, directed by Ang Lee with Emma Thompson and Hugh Grant. It was really done. The plot features many scenes where different characters that are in conflict are inhibited by persistent presence of outsiders from expressing their true opinions and the camera angles are superb at catching all of them with conflicting facial expressions and body language. Next up is Pride and Prejudice with Kera Knightley. Last weekend was Mansfield Park, my least favorite Austen work because I find Fanny Price to be an annoying prig, although the movie softened her up a bit

That's the version of Sense and Sensibility in my possession too - I must give it another go sometime. Having been force-fed Jane Austen in my teens, when my thoughts went along lines of "Why should I be interested in a bunch of snobby status-obsessed women nearly two centuries ago?", left me with a long-term dislike that stayed until the BBC televised Pride & Prejudice a couple of decades ago (?) Now her works brilliantly illuminate the class consciousness making up sections of the bourgeoisie rising on the cusp literally of trading industrial and colonial expansion for the old certainties of land tenure, or combining them, and how women carved their role in all this not without a good deal of irony, conscious and unconscious.

[richardfinegold]

That's the version of Sense and Sensibility in my possession too - I must give it another go sometime. Having been force-fed Jane Austen in my teens, when my thoughts went along lines of "Why should I be interested in a bunch of snobby status-obsessed women nearly two centuries ago?", left me with a long-term dislike that stayed until the BBC televised Pride & Prejudice a couple of decades ago (?) Now her works brilliantly illuminate the class consciousness making up sections of the bourgeoisie rising on the cusp literally of trading industrial and colonial expansion for the old certainties of land tenure, or combining them, and how women carved their role in all this not without a good deal of irony, conscious and unconscious.

Well put. Despite some anachronisms, such as the Gentlemen not being required to work and the Women being reduced to marriage as their Life Achievement, the issues she raises are timeless

[richardfinegold]

Rummaging through a few Blu Ray that have come in handy during the Lockdown, we saw First Man last night, the story of Neil Armstrong, with Ryan Gosling as Armstrong. He was portrayed as driven, but after the Cancer Death of his toddler daughter, unable to meaningfully bond with his wife and sons. In the movie as he is making his first moonwalk he is carrying a small bracelet momentous of her which he leaves in a moon crater as tears stream down his face while Buzz Aldrin bounces in zero gravity behind him.
Last summer I saw a documentary on Apollo 11 that did a great job explaining a lot of the Physics behind the Space Launch and that helped because none of that is done here, and I recommend trying to see that before watching First Man. Still, even without that it still was highly entertaining.

[jayne lee wilson]

I watched the new Lion King.....and sobbed my heart out over it just as much as I did the first time, with the cartoon....
It looks wonderful and sounds wonderful..... a tale for all time...... I'm just helpless before anything with such gorgeous-looking animals in it anyway....and I never have a problem with them talking! (Mind you, if my Cats could talk, they'd probably be even more demanding...)

Hakuna Matata doesn't quite cut it now though, does it...?
We can still learn from The Circle of Life, though it may be too late.....

Might try the new Le Mans soon.... (in the absence of the Grand Prix season.....etc...etc....)...

[Bryn]

200 Motels (the 2018 MVD Region 1 NTSC transfer on DVD).

Greatly enjoyed it back in the early 1970s when it was shown at the then Electric Cinema, Notting Hill Gate. I think they have played around with the aspect ratio for this release but it is far better than that put out under Tony Palmer's name a few years back. Bearing in mind this was made on video, then transferred to film, back in 1971, the video trickery is pretty impressive. Some of the content might offend those of a delicate disposition.

[Constantbee]

Judy (2019)

Renée Zellweger plays Judy Garland in the biopic.

It’s a tall order to play an accomplished singer and sing all her songs yourself. An Oscar winning performance but not for me, I’m afraid. Zellweger gets away with it but all I could think of was Bridget Jones meets Amy Winehouse. Sheridan Smith did a better on Cilla in the miniseries imho.

It helps if you know the outline of Judy’s life story before watching because there’s a lot of fast forwarding and backtracking in the first half of the movie that can get confusing.

One online reviewer puts it well: why show the lows without the highs? It’s very much a movie about performance anxiety and substance abuse, focusing on the last years of Judy’s life lived out in London, but where was the star?