Films you've seen lately

[pastoralguy]

I saw 'La La Land' this week. I thought it was very poor. I'm still amazed that I managed to sit through it. It was a real relief when the final credits rolled on the screen. For me there were not enough dancing sequences or singing to describe it as a musical!

We watched it on DVD and were extremely disappointed!

[vinteuil]

Incidentally, who watches the Internet Movie Database? If I watch a film I enjoy looking it up to see reviews and comments plus masses of background information. Most of the viewers reviews are American, some crass but others perceptive. Perhaps this thread might become our own version.

... yes, I very much like looking up on imdb (... and rotten tomatoes, wiki etc) after watching a film - it really adds to the experience.

Sad that the imdb message-boards seem to be closing -

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/feb/06/imdb-shuts-down-message-boards

[johncorrigan]

Recently I watched 'Embrace of the Serpent' on DVD. This Colombian film was nominated for best Foreign Film at the Oscars a couple of years back. It concerns two explorers in the Colombian Amazon separated by 40 years who enlist the help of a shaman to search for a healing plant. Filmed mostly in black and white, it uses the writings of these very different explorers to look at the exploitation of the Amazon. I thought it was fascinating.

[Stanfordian]

Christopher Nolan's 'Dunkirk' is a dramatic watch. More about atmosphere than dialogue.

Hans Zimmer's thrusting, droning music built on the sound of a ticking watch. I like the way he incorporates 'Nimrod' from Elgar's Enigma Variations into the score at its end.

[Richard Tarleton]

Christopher Nolan's 'Dunkirk' is a dramatic watch. More about atmosphere than dialogue.

Seems to be prompting some extremes of opinion amongst the critics. Ben Macintyre listed a few howlers in the Times the other day.

[jayne lee wilson]

Recent Hits with me....

A Streetcat Named Bob.... hard for any cat-lover not to watch it at least twice (and pore over the stills...), but to be fair it doesn't pull its punches about - homelessness, addiction, poverty and family difficulties with all of that.

Nocturnal Animals... Brilliant film-making, but definitely not one to watch twice...! Very moving, often beautiful and devastating, but very upsetting too. Not completely sure though, if the story-within-the-story quite works....(Aaron Taylor-Johnson, as Ray, has one of the most unpleasantly menacing, haunting screen-presences I've experienced for many years...)

I must say though I find TV Drama usually more compelling these days. Episode 9 of Handmaids' Tale was - terribly moving & disturbing, again almost unwatchable (the scene on the bridge with Ofwarren, oh dear, dear me...)
As for Twin Peaks 2017.. everything I'd hoped and more. Stunning television, but yes - cultishly difficult and often nonlinear in a way some will be baffled by(***), and you do need to know the 1990/91 series to follow it. But David Lynch is one of the very few directors I would dare to call a genius.

And....GoT is Back!

(***) often very funny too though, in its own offbeat fashion)

[pastoralguy]

Have you seen 'Kedi', Jayne? We went to see it on its opening day and really enjoyed it. No plot was of course but a lovely study of the positive side of the cat/human relationship.

[pastoralguy]

Re GoT, out upstairs neighbour's daughter's husband's SISTER is a senior wardrobe person on the show! We had never watched it but I spoke to said daughter last weekend when she was visiting her mum. The result is that Mrs. PG and I are now addicted!!

Ok, we're a bit late to the party but let's rejoice we showed up at all! (And we've been promised an autograph from Lena Headey and Emilia Clarke!)

[jayne lee wilson]

Have you seen 'Kedi', Jayne? We went to see it on its opening day and really enjoyed it. No plot was of course but a lovely study of the positive side of the cat/human relationship.

No - I don't go to the flicks anymore, but I've watched the trailer several times , and can access the film via youtube.... when time allows...!

[pastoralguy]

Re GoT, out upstairs neighbour's daughter's husband's SISTER is a senior wardrobe person on the show! We had never watched it but I spoke to said daughter last weekend when she was visiting her mum. The result is that Mrs. PG and I are now addicted!!

Ok, we're a bit late to the party but let's rejoice we showed up at all! (And we've been promised an autograph from Lena Headey and Emilia Clarke!)

And the guy who plays 'John Snow'...

[pastoralguy]

No - I don't go to the flicks anymore, but I've watched the trailer several times , and can access the film via youtube.... when time allows...!

Lovely film, Jayne...

[jayne lee wilson]

Lovely film, Jayne...

I meant to say, about Streetcat Named Bob above - isn't Luke Treadaway disarmingly gentle, attractive and engaging in the James Bowen role? The success of the film isn't only down to Bob himself...

[pastoralguy]

I meant to say, about Streetcat Named Bob above - isn't Luke Treadaway disarmingly gentle, attractive and engaging in the James Bowen role? The success of the film isn't only down to Bob himself...

To be honest, I've not seen it but since its on Mrs. PG's Christmas present list I've no doubt I'll be on between Christmas and New Year!

[Belgrove]

Dunkirk is an overwhelming experience when seen on a huge IMAX screen, filling the field of view, and with thunderous sound system whose throbbing base eventually makes one feel rather queasy. The vast vistas the IMAX medium presents, including images of destruction seen from afar, can have an abstract and even alluring beauty to them.

The film is, despite Hans Zimmer's incessant score, essentially a silent movie, told in images with a narrative played out on three separate timescales. The same events are seen from different interlaced temporal and spatial perspectives according to which group of characters we are with. It's a narrative jigsaw that the director Christopher Nolan has used before in Memento and Inception, (even Interstellar), but here it is so deftly executed that seems an entirely natural way to portray the complex events of the evacuation with great clarity. Nolan's other trademark of distorting perspective and canting the horizon with disorienting effect is also displayed through being claustrophobically trapped in flooded listing warships and breathtaking aerial dogfights.

Were not such an impressive and huge reconstruction years in the planning, execution and compilation, one could almost believe it to be a metaphor for Britain's leaving Europe... . Impressive, but take earplugs.

[Conchis]

Dunkirk is an overwhelming experience when seen on a huge IMAX screen, filling the field of view, and with thunderous sound system whose throbbing base eventually makes one feel rather queasy. The vast vistas the IMAX medium presents, including images of destruction seen from afar, can have an abstract and even alluring beauty to them.

The film is, despite Hans Zimmer's incessant score, essentially a silent movie, told in images with a narrative played out on three separate timescales. The same events are seen from different interlaced temporal and spatial perspectives according to which group of characters we are with. It's a narrative jigsaw that the director Christopher Nolan has used before in Memento and Inception, (even Interstellar), but here it is so deftly executed that seems an entirely natural way to portray the complex events of the evacuation with great clarity. Nolan's other trademark of distorting perspective and canting the horizon with disorienting effect is also displayed through being claustrophobically trapped in flooded listing warships and breathtaking aerial dogfights.

Were not such an impressive and huge reconstruction years in the planning, execution and compilation, one could almost believe it to be a metaphor for Britain's leaving Europe... . Impressive, but take earplugs.

Nigel Farage's rave review has really put me off seeing this film, though I don't whether I'd have bothered in any case.

I was unimpressed by the one previous Nolan film I've seen (Memento).