Films you've seen lately

[Richard Tarleton]

I'm in no way a film critic, I don't watch more films than the average viewer, so I'm a counter-example to your idea that Roma is just "a film for the critics". Maybe one needs to be in the right mood, I was looking for a relaxing few hours with some nice shots of Mexico, and certainly got that (along with much else...)

Cuarón’s blockbuster "Gravity" is also on Netflix, and I greatly enjoyed that as well - it was certainly more of a roller coaster ride. It also has some great static shots - wonderful scenes in near orbit - but these only lasted seconds before the next action sequence.

Ah well. I haven't seen any of his other films.

Just remembered, our Alsatian was called Carlitos

[Mal]

Ah well. I haven't seen any of his other films.

I hadn't seen any of his films before Roma! Now I'm a major fan... Thanks for the recommendation for "The Kominsky Method", by the way, I'm four episodes in and hooked.

Another film I enjoyed was "The Lady in the Van", a great performance by Maggie Smith.

[Stanfordian]

'If Beale Street Could Talk' - Very intense and focused on a single subject. I enjoyed it and the acting was good but it did drag on so. 5 out of 10.

[Edgy 2]

Wonderful, isn't it

Will record The Card. Am half-way through Malta Story. Ch 81 is a feast for Alwyn-lovers

Talking Pictures again.
Just watched Boys in Brown.
I had recorded it but it’s not a keeper for me despite starring Richard Attenborough,Jack Warner and Dirk Bogarde.
Worth a watch though,if it comes round again,for Mrs Alwyn’s music.

[Nick Armstrong]

Talking Pictures.... Boys in Brown... Mrs Alwyn’s music.

Noted, ta!

[Dave2002]

A man called Ove.

Brilliant film - with Rolf Lassgård. Swedish with subtitles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Man_Called_Ove

A Private War

also brilliant.

[Richard Tarleton]

Watched "The Bookshop" on Netflix. Lovely. Somehow I missed that it was supposed to be in Suffolk, and knowing the Strangford Lough locations (which look like nothing but themselves) well I was expecting Norn Ireland accents. Superb cast - I see that the young actress playing Christine, Honor Kneafsey, already has quite a career. Emily Mortimer - those eyes - Bill Nighy, Patricia Clarkson with her terrifying lipstick - all marvellous. The compulsory purchase device on which the plot turned - was that ever a thing?

[LMcD]

The updated 'Dad's Army' movie. I got this in a charity shop in North Berwick for 33.3p yesterday. Frankly, it's not great, imho. One keeps hearing the lines spoken by the inimitable original cast in one's minds eye. The cast try hard but only Catharine Zeta-Jones really makes much of an impression as an added on character. (And, sexist as this may sound, she's starting to show her age!)

The 'plot' is as thin as one might expect with the reveals being signposted at an early stage. Ok, a nice homage but who it's aimed at is a mystery.

As far as I'm concerned, lengthy sections of the 'Dad's Army' movie were laughter-free zones. There are quite a few other examples of TV series that were turned into pretty dire feature-length films, including 'Rising Damp' and 'The Likely Lads'.
After watching 'The Card', I wondered whether the football club storyline inspired the 'Glorious Gordon' episode of 'Ripping Yarns'.
According to the Suffolk Libraries website, Penelope Fitzgerald worked in a bookshop in Southwold, which was also used in Michael Palin's 'East of Ipswich'.

[Richard Tarleton]

According to the Suffolk Libraries website, Penelope Fitzgerald worked in a bookshop in Southwold, which was also used in Michael Palin's 'East of Ipswich'.

Thanks for that re Penelope Fitzgerald.

East of Ipswich was a gem.

[johncorrigan]

I enjoyed 'Slow West', set in Colorado, filmed in Scotland and New Zealand by Scottish Director, John MacLean, starring Michael Fassbender. Very enjoyable and strange with a good soundtrack.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFfsTsdJfF8

[Conchis]

Watched "The Bookshop" on Netflix. Lovely. Somehow I missed that it was supposed to be in Suffolk, and knowing the Strangford Lough locations (which look like nothing but themselves) well I was expecting Norn Ireland accents. Superb cast - I see that the young actress playing Christine, Honor Kneafsey, already has quite a career. Emily Mortimer - those eyes - Bill Nighy, Patricia Clarkson with her terrifying lipstick - all marvellous. The compulsory purchase device on which the plot turned - was that ever a thing?

Not seen this one. I know it's on Netflix but I'm avoiding it (for the moment) as I think I might find it upsetting, at a point when I can do without being upset!

Jeffrey Archer (yes, I know....) rather ripped the source novel to bits on A Good Read a while back, claiming that the story 'lacked tension' as you sense the heroine is doomed from the start. He had nice things to say about Ms. Fitzgerald's style and characterisation, though.

[Richard Tarleton]

Not seen this one. I know it's on Netflix but I'm avoiding it (for the moment) as I think I might find it upsetting, at a point when I can do without being upset!

Sad, definitely, though a sort of redemption at the very end....

Jeffrey Archer (yes, I know....) rather ripped the source novel to bits on A Good Read a while back, claiming that the story 'lacked tension' as you sense the heroine is doomed from the start. He had nice things to say about Ms. Fitzgerald's style and characterisation, though.

I can think of a few novels where we know the heroine is doomed from the start....Anna Karenina...lacks tension.... I was actually expecting her main problems to come from a different direction, from the controversial book she stocked.....

[Richard Tarleton]

The Children Act, with Emma Thompson, Stanley Tucci and an all-star cast, with Thompson as a workaholic judge neglecting her marriage. Superb acting, the courtroom scenes excellent, but after a promising start the story is dominated by an irritating character who you wish would just go away, and becomes less and less convincing. I realised looking at the end credits what was wrong - I'd missed that it was written by Ian McEwen based on his novel. I usually find his plots contrived and overworked. There seemed to be more than enough to drive the plot without the teenager's fixation on the judge.

[jayne lee wilson]

TANGERINE (Sean Baker, 2015)…

Transgender sex workers Sin-dee and Alexandra in downtown LA, one seeking revenge over a cheating boyfriend…..(quite happy to take it out on any bitch vaguely associated…the boyfriend/pimp, when we meet him, is a bit like a less stereotyped, downplayed Jay of Jay & Silent Bob fame).
Brilliantly pacy storyline, (very) racy dialogue, soundtrack running from really filthy thump-and-snarl techno to Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture…
A certain Almodovar-ish feel about it. (Think: downtown street-LA Hooker version of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown….). Some unpleasant violence.

Subplot wth taxi driver means lots of sad and funny and angry back-seat cameos (and front seat sex, or frustrated attempts at such) as he picks up each new fare….
One-day-in-the-life movies can sometimes drag, but this has a compulsive visual style - lighting, angles, handheld iphone-shot eye-level (punter car window level) direction generally catch the eye and lead it on from swift-cut to relaxed-cut, scene-to-scene…(whole film shot, quite brilliantly on three iphone 5Ss…)

(classic cut: front-seat blow job in the car wash (carwashes are a true movie-meme…); back-seat static camera shows us mainly the windscreen, a surreal kaleidoscope of wash-stage-effects…)

The climax is a jealous interfamilial fight in a donut shop, then a sudden pang of sadness with an attack on Sindi near the end….upsetting, tough to watch, but… the friendship between Alex and Sindi (a little tarnished by sexual revelations) finally, touchingly, finds a way in a late night visit to a laundromat.…

***
Anyone else spend 102 precious minutes of their short lives watching Serenity (Steven Knight, Sky Cinema Premiere, with Matthew McConaughey) last night...?
Dear, dear me. O.M.G.
Everything you heard about it is true. So unintentionally lol hilarious it really is a classic of the very select so-bad-its-a-masterpiece-of-that-particular-kind genre. Straight in at No.1!
I could almost recommend it on those grounds alone. The bizarre twist halfway through makes it almost uncategorisable.
Plot summary? I don't think I could even begin to try...

https://www.theguardian.com/film/201...-movie-is-here

[Mal]

Watched "The Bookshop" on Netflix. Lovely.

I found it a strange, subdued, miserable film, in which little or nothing happens. Although Nighy was quite intriguing as the extremely dour bookworm, his totally ineffective opposition to the local philistines was rather frustrating. How could you find this film "marvellous" and Roma boring? I kept on wishing for an earthquake, a fire, a drowning, a riot, or just a squabble (!) to liven things up. But, no, the Spanish director wants us to get the never-ending tedium of British seaside life by expressing the tedium directly, without relief. Maybe it was sponsored by the Spanish tourist board? (OK, at the end, one of my wishes was answered, but it was so low key and anti-climax it didn't help alleviate the tedium.) James Lance was quite unsettling and amusing as the louche BBC producer Milo North, but much more could have been made of his character, as with Nighy. It was quite perceptive on conformism and philistinism in British life, but there was not enough plot or intrigue to keep this in the air. Such a waste of some very good actors. So I'm with "rotten tomatoes" here, this is "rotten", 2/5. In fact it's the main cause of me deciding to quit Netflix...