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