Films you've seen lately

[LMcD]

Some of the best tele on at the moment.

(Along with BBC2's Travels in Trumpland with Ed Balls on Sundays.)

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Overcoming my innate aversion to all things Trump, I decided to watch this and I'm glad I did, so thanks for the heads up. The words 'awful fascination' came to mind as Ed Balls asked many of the questions that I would like to see answered. I can't imagine that I'll ever approve of 'the Donald', but perhaps I'll understand a bit more than previously the reasons for his popularity among many Americans. Looking forward to next week's episode!

[kernelbogey]

I watched An Education on BBC2 last night, a 2009 film based (in a Nick Hornby script) on Lynn Barber's memoir of her life as a teenager in 1961 - 62. Carey Mulligan received plaudits for her portrayal of Jenny (the LB protagonist). But she was a 22 year old actor playing a girl on the brink of her seventeenth birthday, and together with some elements of the screenplay, this just didn't ring quite true. The innocence of a clever, bookish teenager being groomed and seduced by an older (and distinctly dodgy) man was not quite caught. I would have thought that a 2009 film would have shown greater alertness to the abusive element in the relationship, to which the older man's manipulations seemed to blind Jenny's parents; but perhaps we have moved on, morally, over such issues in the intervening nine years. The viewing left me vaguely disturbed and dissatisfied.

[aeolium]

This seems like good moment to say - don't miss Mark Kermode's Secrets of Cinema!

Going out on BBC4 2100 Tuesdays, so far he's done The Romcom and The Heist, all with brilliantly insightful and entertaining analysis of archetype, stereotype, cliché and subversion. With many wonderful clips!

The key to it (well apart from his astonishing filmic omniscience) is really his use of language and his effortlessly gripping delivery-to-camera. Perfect blend of levity and gravity. Addictive.
(Tomorrow it's...Coming of Age... can't wait to see what he says about The Breakfast Club....and if you want to know why The Fly featured in Romcoms, you'll have to catch up for yourself...)

It is good - I only wish he had had a sixth episode covering film noir. But watching last night's episode illustrated some of the pitfalls of the deconstructionist approach, that some wonderful films which don't fit the template are excluded, and the template itself can be formulaic to the point of cliche. For instance, Losey's The Go-Between is arguably as powerful a coming-of-age film as any but because it doesn't fit the formula it's left out - and the same could be said about Lindsay Anderson's If. Both these films are of course about much more than coming of age, and this is the drawback of the Kermode approach: he confines himself to the archetypal examples.

[johncorrigan]

A tough watch is how I would describe 'First Reformed' which we saw last night. Ethan Hawke plays a pastor suffering a crisis of faith who ministers in a tourist church in Albany County, upstate New York, and who is asked to offer some counselling to an environmental activist suffering with depression. I was riveted to the screen throughout and it is of those films that has stayed with me all day - 'Taxi Driver' and 'Raging Bull' screenwriter, Paul Schrader, wrote and directed, and Ethan Hawke continues to astound me with his power as an actor with a magnificent performance. Great sets and a sort of David Lynch-ish 'Eraserhead' era soundtrack add to the atmosphere, and it certainly deals with some complex issues, not least American Evangelism and its links to corporate America, and environmental activism. Great film, I thought.

[LMcD]

Have just watched 'Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri'. Frances McDormand sensationally good (when isn't she?). Woody Harrelson sure has come a long way since 'Cheers'! A fascinating study, among other things, of the pervasiveness of prejudice in all its many forms.

[vinteuil]

Have just watched 'Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri'. Frances McDormand sensationally good (when isn't she?). Woody Harrelson sure has come a long way since 'Cheers'! A fascinating study, among other things, of the pervasiveness of prejudice in all its many forms.

... yep, we loved it too -

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... a wonderful film -

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

We saw it yesterday, and it is still reverberating (in a good way). Yes, I know the critics have raved over it, and given it five stars &c - for once I think they're right.

Stonking performance by Frances McDormand, and excellent Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell and others. Written, produced, and directed by Martin McDonagh, who did In Bruges and The Guard. Beautifully paced, literate script, which wrong-foots you again and again. The best thing in quite a time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Billboards_Outside_Ebbing,_Missouri

[ ... wiki entry contains spoilers ]




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[Richard Tarleton]

By an amazing coincidence we watched that for the second time two nights ago - superb film, a lot to take in first time through, one to keep. Frances McDormand - what she can pack into a look.... So much sadness in so many forms....

PS vints, watched In Bruges for the first time the other week, on Netflix, I didn't realise it was him...

[johncorrigan]

Woody Harrelson sure has come a long way since 'Cheers'!

If you do such things and haven't seen it, L, may I suggest the first season of 'True Detectives' from two or three years back with Harrelson and Matthew MacConnachie playing two very different detectives in Louisiana (I seem to recall). Two brilliant acting performances...and I agree, Harrelson has come a long way since 'Cheers' and he's usually really good value for it.

[LMcD]

Thanks for that - I'll investigate! I was very impressed with his performance in 'No Country For Old Men'.

[jayne lee wilson]

If you do such things and haven't seen it, L, may I suggest the first season of 'True Detectives' from two or three years back with Harrelson and Matthew MacConnachie playing two very different detectives in Louisiana (I seem to recall). Two brilliant acting performances...and I agree, Harrelson has come a long way since 'Cheers' and he's usually really good value for it.

A true all time TV Classic! "If you ask me, the light's winnin'".......from Sky Atlantic.
MacConnachie had the darkest, deepest, all-time world-weariest Texan drawl... especially as the latter-day stoner...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oX2xFo7JA4

I loved True Detective 2 even more (Vince Vaughn, Colin Farrell). It had a climax, out in the white sands of the Mojave, of truly Shakespearean grandeur. But sadly the critics, largely, loved it not. Hence no True 3...
Classic scene... such verbal/directorial spareness, beauty and depth...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-PDn0SNASI

Harrelson's filmography also includes the very violent Natural Born Killers (with Juliet Lewis & Robert Downey jr), playing brilliantly to some extent against type...

[Dave2002]

Overcoming my innate aversion to all things Trump, I decided to watch this and I'm glad I did, so thanks for the heads up. The words 'awful fascination' came to mind as Ed Balls asked many of the questions that I would like to see answered. I can't imagine that I'll ever approve of 'the Donald', but perhaps I'll understand a bit more than previously the reasons for his popularity among many Americans. Looking forward to next week's episode!

If nothing else, does that now confirm what many have said for years that wrestling really is fake? Ed looks tough, but some of the jabs looked as though if given by a boxer they would have had him unconscious.

[LMcD]

If nothing else, does that now confirm what many have said for years that wrestling really is fake? Ed looks tough, but some of the jabs looked as though if given by a boxer they would have had him unconscious.

It was made very clear on several occasions during the programme that the entire wrestling programme was 'an entertainment', i.e. faked. The aim was to provoke 100% of the audience to hate him - something which he seems to have achieved.
The tasering to which we can look forward tomorrow night, on the other hand, may have been authentic.

[Pulcinella]

Not sure if this is the most appropriate thread, but I thought I'd mention that, on Sunday 5 August, BBC1 is showing Florence Foster Jenkins (Meryl Streep and Hugh Grant) at 20:15.
Well worth watching, if you haven't seen it already (and even if you have!).

[Richard Tarleton]

Not sure if this is the most appropriate thread, but I thought I'd mention that, on Sunday 5 August, BB1 is showing Florence Foster Jenkins (Meryl Streep and Hugh Grant) at 20:15.
Well worth watching, if you haven't seen it already (and even if you have!).

It certainly is (the most appropriate thread) - not entirely sure what Ed Balls is doing in it but there we are .

Meryl Streep's oeuvre seems to divide neatly into films in which she plays original characters, and ones in which she plays real people (recently, FFJ, Julia Childs, Katherine Graham, Margaret Thatcher....). I can never quite rid myself of the thought that I'm watching Meryl Streep playing yet somebody else, and how well she's doing it......Recently watched the film in which she plays a (fictional) former white water rafting instructor, opposite baddie Kevin Bacon, The River Wild - now there's another fine actor.

[LMcD]

[QUOTE=Richard Tarleton;691170]It certainly is (the most appropriate thread) - g in it but there we are .not entirely sure what Ed Balls is doing....
Meryl Streep's oeuvre seems to divide neatly into films in which she plays original characters, and ones in which she plays real people (recently, FFJ, Julia Childs, Katherine Graham, Margaret Thatcher....). I can never quite rid myself of the thought that I'm watching Meryl Streep playing yet somebody else, and how well she's doing it......Recently watched the film in which she plays a (fictional) former white water rafting instructor, opposite baddie Kevin Bacon, The River Wild - now there's another fine actor.

Introduced by Vinteuil in #478