Films you've seen lately

[Tevot]

We were lucky to be able to see Interstellar at the IMAX cinema at the Science Museum yesterday. (A wonderful venue ... to walk past a real lunar landing module from the Apollo missions, and then to see a model of it play a rôle in the film, gave a frisson...).

I've never been a fan of 2001 and so missed many of the references I think(apart from the two obvious repeated references to the opening of 'Zarathustra' in Zimmer's score, which I liked more than you did, Belgrove).

There were one or two silly plot points, and I parted company with the 'ethos' of the film towards the end, whatever the cinematic splendours.

But the 2h 50m sped by, it was frequently gripping and visually vertigo-inducing on the mega screen. And I don't have a problem with McConnaughey's accent (just watched all of True Detective - maybe I'm acclimatised!) and I find his performances totally involving and convincing. Much better computer/robots than any other film I've seen, too!

Not sure what it added up to though, as with all Nolan's stuff.

Inclined to agree with your last point there Caliban. Interstellar certainly was gripping, well acted and very appealing to the eye - and I'm not just talking about Anne Hathaway here I actually think that the music worked brilliantly to enhance the mood and feel of the piece. Indeed it was an integral part of the film I think - packing at times a huge punch. There's a particularly striking passage when McConnaughey is leaving the house and his daughter behind ( "Leaving Murph" linked below) and it is just an overwhelming and spine tingling moment as to my ears the score (almost) quotes from the finale of Mahler 10. This is even more apparent on the OST in a later track called Detach where the theme is repeated for reasons which will become apparent. What is the film about precisely? - Love, Loss and the passage of time? I'm not sure to be honest - but Interstellar and its music has stuck in the mind since I saw it about 5 weeks ago...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pjdbT4o79A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT50cl80tG8&spfreload=1

The other film that I'd like to mention and I 'd love JLW's take on it and others who've seen it is Under the Skin, which given my cheerleading for its director Jonathan Glazer on these boards, came as something of a disappointment. Passages of it were eerily beautiful - but the ending struck me as being incoherent and peremptory...

Best Wishes,

Tevot

[jayne lee wilson]

No I didn't care much for Under the Skin...

Scarl Johanssen's much vaunted-and-vamped alien as sexually-predatory female turns out to be controlled by 4 male aliens on motorbikes, looking a bit like traffic cops. Little green pimps who control our Scarl as a harvester of human flesh, which is sent via what looks like some kind of glittering liquid production-line (i.e a celestial time-compressed molecular transfer or similar) to their world for nourishment... much slowmo dwelling on how this is achieved as bodies dissolve in vats of oily blackness...

The images do have their incidental photographic beauties, yes, and you can see it as a bold attempt to blend various genres (it often feels like a road movie, reminding me at times of Chris Petit's Radio On), but the art house scifi SFX seemed at odds with the styled realities of rain soaked fields and housing estates, grim-faced folk plodding over-and-over through city streets, then Scarl-alien looking poutingly glamorous inside the van - perhaps rather too revealing of its 10-year gestation - it didn't cohere well. And it managed to draw on that cliche of scifi, the moment when the alien starts getting...you know, feelings - so Scarl tries to eat cake and - it ends up back on the table of the genteel hotel restaurant, to the disgust of the bourgeois patrons.

Trying to avoid spoilers but the ending is artistically at least an unhappy one...
If, after presenting her as the human sexual predator, then revealing her controlling pimps and what happens when she gets lost in the woods (yes, really ), the director is making an obvious point about what various men would feel about, and do to a vulnerable-and-lost-looking solitary female, this still leaves a sense of blurred vision...

Or you could turn it around and say: if an alien race perceives predatory female sexuality to be a powerful, if desperate, means of their own survival, they might be in for a shock as the more likely fate of such a woman is the conclusion...(seen as a comment on etc etc...).

It might be worth a second look, but I feel a bit too about it...

[clive heath]

I'm looking forward to the new "Far from........" with similar memories to vinteuil of Devizes and the filming there of a little alley behind the Town Hall up to the church which had been on my route home from school for 6 or 7 years at least a decade earlier. When it comes to films "not being made like that.." well there was "Tamara Drewe" which was a riff on "Far" with Gemma Arterton as the returned native and Roger Allam, Dominic West among many other well known names and those two precocious schoolgirls who threw eggs at passing cars....outrageous, of course.. and it appears you can watch it for free.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQOgQG7bMEc

[clive heath]

.... and, stap me vitals! if Jessica Barden, one of the precocious teenagers, reappears as Bathsheba's maid. Very enjoyable for stunning Dorset scenery, the coastal views often had the Isle of Portland lurking on the horizon and the way the actors seem to inhabit their roles especially Michael Sheen as Farmer Boldwood. Didn't like the syrupy music which was far too far from Egdon Heath in style. Has there been any other music directly relating to the Dorset countryside?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I spent a few days at the seaside last week, and Far from the Madding Crowd was advertised at the cinema just a few yards from the Guest House where I was staying. I went along, intending to watch one evening, but was told that it was only being shown in the 2:30 slot (the weather was far too nice to spend and afternoon in a cinema) and that the 5:30 and 8:00 slots were devoted to a film called San Andreas. I told her that that wasn't my fault.




No, she didn't get it, either

[Nick Armstrong]

No, she didn't get it, either

I on the other hand was ROFLing by the time I reached your full stop

[Tevot]

I on the other hand was ROFLing by the time I reached your full stop

Absolutely love it Ferney

And of course the puns continue...

e.g. San Andreas review: Visually spectacular earthquake movie let down by disaster of a plot (The Daily Mirror)

and "Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson's disaster movie has clear fault lines. " (The Independent)

and finally... "The cleverest 'San Andreas' gets is surrounding a guy nicknamed "The Rock" with a heap of falling boulders." (USA Today)

Best Wishes,

Tevot

[Nick Armstrong]

Absolutely love it Ferney

And of course the puns continue...

I heard it was a tremendous film... and very moving.

[clive heath]

Dorset music? puns? what about the scores to those famous films "The Sherborne Supremacy", "The Drowning Poole", "Shaft!" and wasn't there something about "The Silver.." nooo, too far out, I'll get my Russell-Coates.

[Nick Armstrong]

Dorset music? puns? what about the scores to those famous films "The Sherborne Supremacy", "The Drowning Poole", "Shaft!" and wasn't there something about "The Silver.." nooo, too far out, I'll get my Russell-Coates.

No need to get a Cobb on, clive!

[pastoralguy]

I watched a film on dvd last night that'll be showing at our local arthouse cinema, The Filmhouse, here in Edinburgh. Alas, I can't do the dates but was delighted to see the film, Man of Marble, was available on silver disc.

This film, directed by Andre Wajda, is a super story of a young filmmaker who attempts to investigate the life of a worker hero. Once the authorities get wind of what she is up to, they do everything they can to prevent it.

I first saw this film, along with its companion, Man of Steel, back in the 80's whilst I was recovering from chicken pox. Both these films made a huge impression on me although I couldn't remember a thing about either of them despite watching them many times. Alas, the video tapes were either recorded over or simply wore out so I've not seen them for many years.

[Belgrove]

I am quite happy to watch the mediocre and even outright dross when it comes to films. The new Far From the Madding Crowd falls into neither of these categories, indeed it is well crafted - but utterly pointless, being neither an improvement of the nigh perfect earlier movie, nor shedding any fresh perspective on the novel.

By comparison, the remake of Mad Max makes no claims to classic status or intellectual depth, but is an exhilarating piece of film-making, relying entirely on the visual to tell its (very simple and daft) story. Paradoxically, for all its punkish grungy look, the film is stylish and beautifully shot, and ends up improving and refreshing the earlier series. Totally bonkers and almost as entertaining as the Test at Lord's. See it at an IMAX cinema if possible, but take ear-plugs.

[johncorrigan]

The Beach Boys were the first band I ever saw live (and the second), sometime about '67/'68. I remember scouring the stage wondering which one was Brian, not knowing that he had already disappeared from view. It was years later I learned about him coming off the road and then hitting the skids. 'Best of the Beach Boys' was my first ever LP too. For me he remains one of the true greats of 20th century music. Certainly the new Bri biopic 'Love and Mercy' paints him as the fragile genius and there's a good few of the usual baddies in there from Brian's story, but I thought that Bill Pohlad's film was really well put together. I particularly enjoyed Paul Dano's portrayal of the young Brian, especially in his relation with the Wrecking Crew and the scenes in the studio. I've heard the outakes but liked the picture they created in the film.

And the story jumps back and forward between the 60s and John Cussack's trapped version of the 80s Wilson, banned from seeing family and other 'bad' influences by the psychotherapist svengali and arch-baddy, Eugene Landy, played with mad gusto by Paul Giametti.

The music was mostly from the Pet Sounds/ Smile era, so for me I was left thinking of lots of the wonderful Brian songs that were missed out, but that's not the job of a biopic, I suppose. And I didn't learn too much that I didn't already know, but it was a really well made and enjoyable film and left me once again with that soft spot for this great and troubled man.

[Nick Armstrong]

Is it just me or does this look to others like the most jaw-dropping, wince-inducing, talent-wasting, misconceived shocker of recent years.....?

[Richard Tarleton]

Is it just me or does this look to others like the most jaw-dropping, wince-inducing, talent-wasting, misconceived shocker of recent years.....?

The trailer a bit puzzling historically, too...."The year is 1944. On the brink of defeat....." - on the brink of D-Day, Russians rolling westwards....victory had been a foregone conclusion for a year or two, just a question of when......