UKC

Saw this on October 30th but posting in new thread.

First Man
7.5/10

Offwidth provided some good commentary in the October thread, much of which I agree with.
First Man essentially charts Neil Armstrong's career progress from X15 test pilot, to Apollo 11. 
This presents challenges to writer, director, actor and audience, as Armstrong was a famously reserved man so it is hard to get under his skin - however, a valiant effort is made here.
The other challenge with this sort of film is the inevitable comparisons - even though it's from 35 years ago - to The Right Stuff, which charted the Mercury space program by focusing on four of the Mercury 7 astronauts.
First Man opens boldly with a blatant reference to the earlier film, but afterward you can't help but wonder whether a) familiarity with The Right Stuff is simply assumed and b) Chazelle (director and co-writer) is sometimes trying too hard to NOT be making another The Right Stuff. 
Inevitably many ingredients are shared - questions about selection and suitability; worried wives; colleagues' deaths; frustrated wives shouting at NASA
As First Man is focusing really only Neil and Janet Armstrong, it goes a little deeper in these aspects but still doesn't offer much new, and I came away from it feeling that I'd learned very little about Armstrong and nothing at all about the other Apollo astronauts (I agree with Offwidth that especially Buzz Aldrin came across as badly written, but then maybe he really was just like that - but in the film he was almost a Greek chorus).

However, it was still really good. Aesthetically it's a joy, and not only in the high altitude and space visuals but also in some of the dramatic scenes, some compositions are wonderful. The score and the sound were brilliant. Mostly great performances - Gosling and Foy carry it brilliantly and are backed up by dependable character actors turning in solid "meat and potatoes" performances so as not to steal the show (Kyle Chandler, Jason Clarke, Ciaran Hinds)

I'd still rather watch The Right Stuff though  

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Peterloo: 9/10. Excellent: deeply serious, deeply political, deeply moving. Leigh has created a genuine epic, ambitious not only in its themes and scope, but also in its expectations of the audience. If you don't revel in the glory of impassioned rhetoric, then it's probably not worth seeking this out, as it's unashamedly wordy in its celebration and critique of the power of political debate and speech-making. It looks magnificent: some of the interiors seem to have been lit by Joseph Wright of Derby! Great period detail too. The shift out of more muted tones to bright sunlit colours for the massacre makes for an unflinching portrayal of the carnage. I thought this huge set piece was brilliantly orchestrated in its slowly rising crescendo of violence. The very large cast is almost uniformly excellent and we move back and forth across the whole sweep of society in the film's 2.5 hours. For me, a superb addition to Leigh's canon, showing he's lost none of his firepower in his mid 70s.

In reply to Andy Clarke:

Thank you, I have seen the trailed several times and it was hard to tell whether it was going to be one of those ploddingly earnest, overly "worthy" type of stories where despite epic length and skilled writers, complexity is thrown out of the window and it's reduced to "bad guys in authority" and "pure-as-the-driven-snow good guys as underdogs"

Please tell me it's more than that. ....

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Henry Hunt, or 'Orator Hunt' as he is sometimes addressed, is certainly not presented uncritically. His vanity and self-absorption is stressed. A fine performance by Kinnear. However, given the facts - and Leigh has obviously striven for historical accuracy - the authorities hardly come out of it well! Great turn by McInnery as the decadent Prince Regent. Leigh's political sympathies are clear, but since I share them it wasn't a problem for me. And if you love language, it definitely won't plod. 

In reply to Andy Clarke:

Thanks

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Bohemian Rhapsody. 4/10 and I am being generous

This film is a meandering mess.It goes for the lowest common denominator, throwing every “rock music movie” cliche into the mix and not in any clever/ironic way but more like they showed Queen’s Wikipedia page to a child and then got that child to write to screenplay. I couldn’t believe how bad some of the “band meeting” scenes were.

You know that cheesy bit in Oliver Stone’s “The Doors” where most of the band are mucking around and Ray shouts “guys, come back, I’ve got it!” as he writes the intro to Light My Fire?

Well Bohemian Rhapsody does that roughly 7 times.

Apart from a major clunker that I’ll get to shortly, I don’t really mind that factual chronology is altered, but it’s in any case all over the place with its pacing, with gaps of several years and not even any montage or caption to explain stuff (eg Freddie’s attempt to go solo in the early 1980s). For a 135 minute film it weirdly feels rushed

 

Rami Malek’s performance as Freddie is being heralded. It’s not that good, actually. Sure, he’s got the energy and can belt the songs out but he’s pretty dull when called upon to actually act.

Gwilym Lee as Brian May is very very good, as is Lucy Boynton in a sadly underwritten role as Mary Austin.

There is no real study of Queen’s place in rock hierarchy - I am pretty sure only two other artists (Elton John and Led Zeppelin) are even mentioned in passing. Pretty egregious given that the whole builds to a climax at Live Aid disingenuously presented in a way that can make you think Queen had been the headline stars of the event (they were on at about 6:30pm)

It is also disingenuous in appearing to suggest that Freddie was seriously ill (the old classic of “show the lead character coughing into a handkerchief and seeing spots of blood”) before Live Aid, just to make his performance look even more heroic. He was tested in 1986 and diagnosed HIV positive in 1987.

 

It also doesn’t really properly explore how kept his personal life quite private from the press, which should have been an interesting aspect given the general “in the closet” vibe of the whole period. Surprised at this from director Bryan Singer.

And there’s not even that many songs in it! I know it’s called Bohemian Rhapsody but hey didn’t need to keep going back to that one song! Nor is there much exploration of some of their pioneering work with pop videos. 

 

I am not saying that there SHOULD have been more on some of these lacking aspects, just commenting that there were more themes and material that could have been played with.

Just a big old pointless muddle. Queen and Mercury deserve better 

 

Nice to see the kid out of Jurassic Park as John Deacon

 

  

 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

I've not seen the Right Stuff, but I thought First Man was superb, both in the space travel sense and for the brilliant portrayal of the man. I find anything that reminds us that people went to the moon nearly fifty years ago boggling anyway.

In reply to Robert Durran:

50 years ago this Christmas, the first people to leave earth orbit in a spacecraft that had had only one manned flight previously (October 68).  It was the first manned flight of a Saturn V!

In reply to wercat:

And them by July we'd been to the moon.   With similar health and safety standards a big budget, we'd be on Mars by 2020.

In reply to Robert Durran:

 

Do see it. It is what I call a “cult Masterpiece” (bigger than a cult classic, as it is a proper major epic film that isn’t as well remembered as it should be).

It is interesting in that there is no clear protagonist aside from The United States of America (and that was writer-director Philip Kaufman’s approach in making the adaptation)

In reply to Robert Durran:

I thought First Man was great, especially the claustrophobic scenes in the vehicles, nailbiting stuff. But was the portrayal of Neil Armstrong that good? 

In reply to aln:

I don't know just how accurate it was to real life, but I thought it worked really well as a fictionalised portrayal.

 

In reply to Robert Durran:

I just wondered coz of Ryan Reynolds. He's a bit wooden, did he do Armstrong's emotionally reserved character well or is it just coz he's not good at portraying emotion?

In reply to aln:

I thought it was Ryan of the Goose clan but since I haven't seen it yet I could be wrong.

In reply to Tom Valentine:

Gosling

In reply to aln:

Good at portraying bottled up emotion?

In reply to Tom Valentine:

That's him. Memorable....

In reply to Blue Straggler:

I saw Mandy at the weekend. Weird, pretentious, self absorbed claptrap. I really dont know what all the fuss is about.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Three billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri.

excellent stuff from the director of In Bruge. Sam Rockwell as a bad guy and Francis McDormand grumpy as ever.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

I can't believe that I'm the first to recommend Steve McQueen's Widows. A classic heist movie, with real characterisation, superb acting, striking photography and a plot that no one will guess in advance.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

First Man 7.5/10. I found the first half of the film much stronger than the second, and surprisingly moving: 9/10. But the whole Apollo 11 sequence was much weaker ... the film seemed to run out of steam (oxygen), and it became surprisingly mawkish. I wonder if the deadly hand of the characteristically over-sentimental Spielberg (as Executive Producer) had something to do with its more mawkish decisions, and whether the film might have been better if he'd had nothing to do with it. There was also a terrible tendency to exaggerate (so that the small crater as final obstacle to the landing became absolutely huge, for example). The 'one small step for a man' sequence was a surprisingly protracted mess. And it didn't know how to end. A really poor, completely unbelievable ending. Good score. Excellent performances - particularly Ryan Gosling. 

Extra note. I have the book 'The First Man', but can't access it at the moment because I'm redecorating my living room and all those books are in massive, not easily accessible piles in another room. There are a few facts I want to check out ...

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

 

It might be worth checking the Trivia section on the film on IMDb.com at least as a starting point for fact checking. Some nice info there

 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Thanks, will do.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

One bit I wondered about was the degree ov violence in the X15 cockpit  during the linear part of the flight - I wondered if this was a little overdone as I don't recall the X15 film I referred to (made with NASA's cooperation while the programme was still under way) showing anything like that, though it certainly emphasised the danger and accidents. It didn't look as if the pilot and avionics would survive !

In reply to wercat:

I'm fairly sure that was all a wild exaggeration. One thing that irritated me from start to finish was the typically 'Hollywood' very noisy sound track. Lots of sequences in cockpits/capsules with a tremendous amount of noise. Which raises the old question of just how much sound there is in a space capsule/module once it's in space, out of the atmosphere ...

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

There is atmosphere INSIDE a space capsule!

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Sure, but there was often a lot of banging sounds going on on the outside. The film made a space capsule sound like quite a noisy place to be.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

I am fairly sure that they were careful to have no ambient sound during the very few exterior shots in the void of space

In reply to Blue Straggler:

I see the full film X15  is available.

youtube.com/watch?v=Yhrv1EFbQIw&

In reply to wercat:

Watched last night ..

Wow! haven't seen that since I was 6 or 7! Takes me back.   A few years later (think it was about 1965) I was in the garden looking at the moon with my father and he told me people could be there within 5 years and suddenly all the space books I read seemed to be coming true!

In reply to wercat:

Born in 1970, a year after the first moon landing, then came the space shuttle and the expansion of the ISS. To a small boy it seemed we were going places! Next stop a space elevator and moon base!

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Solo

This is the latest in the series of Star Wars films. It's a prequel to the first film about the character played originally by Harrison Ford: Hans Solo. This series of films seems obsessed with prequels. Don't know how many there are there now but it seems like more than actual sequels and the order in which events take place always seems confused to me.

This film could be watched separately without having seen any other Star Wars films. It neither relies on those films nor adds anything significant either. The scenes and special effects were very good as typical with most of the films in the series. Everything else was fairly unexciting and formulaic. The acting was OK but not outstanding. The most interesting characters got killed off as often seems the case in these films (Woody Harleson, his lover and the robot L3). It seems like special effects are the main attraction rather than acting skills. Why can't we have both? The story was uninteresting and didn't seem to have anything interesting to say. There were a few attempts at vague plot twists that didn't really make much sense.

At the end Hans Solo had the chance to join the rebels and do something good with his life. Strangely he chose not to. And his former girlfriend for whom he'd invested much of the time risking his life to get back together with chose not to be with him either. Both of these were fairly weird and disappointing storylines. No doubt all will be revealed in the next one. I'd be lying though if I said I can hardly wait.

Watchable and light entertainment for a couple of hours but nothing special apart from the special effects.

5.5/10

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 11/9. At least 8/10. The reason I'm being a bit vague is that I need to stand back a bit from it I think before passing a final judgement. It's very powerful, and fantastically well edited. So much so that one might refer to it, without pretension, as a 'montage' in the full, old cinematic sense of Eisenstein and Pudovkin ... in its strident, no-hold's-barred political polemic, I see it as a direct descendent of those great film makers. My only reservation is that perhaps it's a little too strident, too hyperbolic. To put it metaphorically: perhaps by shouting he actually weakens the rhetoric. And, towards the end it becomes a bit messy, structurally. But it's great film-making by any standards. Great use of music too, always very aptly chosen. Overall it's a terrific warning about the huge increasing threat to democracy in America. I just wish he could come and make a similar documentary about the dire political state we are now in in this country. Or some British film maker would take over the batten.

In reply to stp:

Spoiler alerts please!

I gave Solo 6/10 then I went to see it again and enjoyed it a lot more and revised my score to 8/10
I think the storyline featuring Qi'ra (the Emilia Clarke character - Solo's girlfriend/ex) was very good and will open the door to some stories parallel to the original trilogy. Han's decision at the end made sense - it's not until the end of Episode IV that he truly sides with the rebels - remember initially he is just doing a job for Obi-Wan and Luke, for cash. 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

I've been watching a right load of B-movies lately in the cinema and got a bit behind in the reviews, here's some quick scores though

Halloween (2018), 7/10
Overlord (2018) 6.5/10
Widows (2018) 6.5/10
Young Frankenstien, 8/10
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, 4/10

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Yes that's hinted at though her character didn't suggest she was someone who would be tempted by the dark side. The film was based around the fact that she was very much in love with Hans. But I think making things that parallel the original series is part of the problem: a lack of originality, retelling the same story with different characters in different places. Everyone who watched the original films is now very grown up yet I don't think the films take that into account.

This film could be the first part of a much better film. But as it is, on it's own, I didn't think it was that good because of the rather flat and strange ending.

When I wonder about what inspired them make the film I suspect an honest answer is more likely to be because it will make a sh*tload of cash than any desire to communicate something meaningful.

 

In reply to stp:

I didn't get that from it at all - I got that she had a ruthless survival instinct, but maybe it is meant to be open to interpretation

> But I think making things that parallel the original series is part of the problem: a lack of originality, retelling the same story with different characters in different places. Everyone who watched the original films is now very grown up yet I don't think the films take that into account.

A good point. We have to remember that ultimately these are childrens' films with a few tidbits thrown to amuse the grown-ups. Also remember that children are being shown the original films. 

Again a fair comment but then most studio films are supposed to make money. Arguably cash cows like the Star Wars franchise allow studios to make more commercially risky films (e.g. the moment that Jurassic World hit a certain box-office threshold, the go-ahead was given to start pre-production on Passengers, because Chris Pratt was seen as a box office attraction!)
None of this stops me from enjoying a well made space action romp though  

 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

The Girl in the Spider's Web, 7.5/10
Worth a look. 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

I am not familiar with the Halloween sequels, I may have have seen Halloween 2 many years ago (decades ago) and I know I've seen Halloween H20 but I don't particularly remember it as anything other than Josh Hartnett's calling card (and of course Michelle Williams is in but isn't given much to do).
The new Halloween film works as a direct sequel to the 1978 original and it works pretty damn well. It does assume not only knowledge, but also at least respect (and at best love) for the whole lore of Michael Myers. I am in the "respect" camp. I like the first film as it sits between conventional slasher horror and a more supernatural type of horror (Michael seems so indestructible and undetectable, as if he can teleport, but no explanation is offered). 
With the new one, Laurie is an ageing recluse, Myers is in a secure compound, Laurie has an adult daughter trying to lead a normal life, and a grand-daughter at high school...and Halloween is coming up. So guess what, someone tries to transfer Michael, it all goes a bit wrong and he rocks up back in his old home town to settle some old scores. And Laurie goes a bit Sarah Connor on us, and it all pretty much works. 
Ultimately only a 7/10 as it didn't feel as effective as I wanted it to, and it meandered a bit (spending a lot of time on some interesting journalist characters whose story really ends up going nowhere, which was disappointing). But worth a look


 

Marketed as a sort of bonkers Nazi zombie/clone/automaton horror, this is more like a decent standard Second World War action film with the "monsters" being a pretty minor part of it. By "standard", I mean that our protagonists are a plucky and diverse small unit cut off from everyone else and having to beat the Nazis, who outnumber them massively, on their own. The film plays things straight but clearly is a bit tongue in cheek with the way it embraces all the tropes. It has a vibe of 90% Inglourious Basterds and 10% Dead Snow. I didn't know any of the actors, which was refreshing as it makes things a little less predictable in "who will live and who will die" way. 
The "zombie" plot doesn't start until well into the film, so you get a good 45 minutes of well done standard WWII fare. Actually the first ten minutes are brilliant, with a D-Day air drop putting you right in the thick of it. 

This one was really hard to score. At times it was going to be either a 9/10 or a 3/10. It's bizarre - it's this old and often recycled story from the 1983 TV series (before my time, I never saw it) by Lynda La Plante, and there's nothing fresh or bold about it any more. Basically - a load of criminals die during a heist, and their widows use the plans for the NEXT heist to try to pull it off themselves. Maybe in 1983 this was an exciting "sisters doing it for themselves" thing, but in 2018 that's not that exciting. We've seen Thelma and Louise and Set It Off. Just this year we had Ocean's 8, and Widows has the misfortune to basically look like Ocean's 8 minus all the fun. It is presented as heavy mature adult drama, when it's still just a caper movie really. 
And yet....
It is so well made, and it does stay engaging. It's perhaps a bit pretentious, as we might expect from director Steven McQueen (Hunger, Shame, 12 Years A Slave) - or to be more kind, it's overambitious, trying to cram in themes of politics, corruption, grief, class, race etc. Maybe this would have worked better as a glossy TV series. It's a shame that it's not better given that the acting is first rate - Colin Farrell turns in maybe his best work, and the wonderful Elizabeth Debicki is an absolute standout. McQueen takes some bold directorial choices which all work well (most famously a dialogue scene between Farrell and his PA, shot from the exterior of the car so we don't even see them). But it feels like someone has taken a great chef, given them an amazing kitchen and restaurant and silver-service staff, and asked them to serve up fish fingers and spaghetti hoops. 

 

 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Hell or high water. A neo-western 'crime-of-neccesity' flick set in a depressed area of Texas. Jeff Bridges especially excellent as a grizzled flawed ranger on the edge of retirement but great performances all round.  Beautifully filmed from the opening sequence. Highly recommended.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/hell_or_high_water/

In reply to John2:

Was it on general release in the UK by 6 Nov when you posted? I am confused with dates as I was away for a week and didn't see it until 14 Nov but I'd thought it had only come out on 8 or 9 Nov on wide release. 

Anyway your opinion is mostly wrong smiley face smiley face

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Yes, I saw it at the Vue in Carmarthen. 

You'll have to say more than that to convince me I'm wrong - the relentless pace reminded me of Pulp Fiction. Don't tell me - you guessed the big surprise in advance.

In reply to John2:

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/my_entire_high_school_sinking_into_the_sea...

Just in case anyone knew Yellow Submarine could one day be reduced to grey scales in comparison !  Funny, visually stunning and very much grounded in its high school life, at least until the sea took over

In reply to John2:

 

I posted a review upthread. My misgivings were not related to “big reveals” 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Ah, didn't see your review. Must have been doing something interesting that day.

I, too, didn't see Linda LaPlante's original, but you can't criticise a film for being an update of an earlier idea. I thought the relentless pace of the plot was brilliant - compare it with last year's Baby Driver. That film got off to a brilliant start, and kept up the tension until 80% of the way through it just became incredible (in the literal sense of not to be believed) dross.

In reply to John2:

You are more generous than I was about Baby Driver too !

 

note that I did give Widows 6.5/10, that’s not “bad”. It’s the same score I gave to The Shining! Baby Driver was 6/10 or 7/10, can’t remember exactly. I mostly just remember Jamie Fox being unwatchably bad, and Jon Bernthal seeming to not be required in it!

In reply to Blue Straggler:

I'll add my praise for They Shall not Grow Old. Impressive use and adaption of footage alongside continuous oral history. A very fitting commemoration of the centenery of the end of the horrendous carnage of the great war. Highly recommended.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/they_shall_not_grow_old/

In reply to Offwidth:

Minimalist, paranoid and bleakly impressive.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_survivalist_2017/

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Peterloo. 9/10. I think this is the best film Mike Leigh's ever made. Superbly authentic in feel. Dick Pope's cinematography and lighting is quite exceptional, and will hopefully be awarded with an Oscar nomination.

In reply to Offwidth:

Have not seen The Survivalist but have seen two other grim films featuring Mia Goth! She must love doing them

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Mathangi/MAYA/M.I.A.
9/10
Excellent documentary about the British/Tamil hip-hop artist. You don't need to be a fan, or to be familiar with her work, or even a fan of the genre. It's a fascinating documentary covering all sorts of stuff such as immigration, pathways to success, "keeping it real", and whether an artist can or should be taken seriously when making political statements. It loses a point for dwelling just a bit too long on the Madonna Superbowl middle finger incident. 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Wildlife. 9/10

A beautifully done small family melodrama, elevated by an absolutely towering, career-best lead performance from Carey Mulligan. Sadly I missed the first ten minutes due to public transport shenanigans. Basically it's an early 1960s setting, Carey Mulligan and Jake Gyllenhaal are parents to a 14-year-old boy but this is no coming-of-age story, it's all about Mulligan's dissatisfaction with life, and Gyllenhaal's perceived failure as a husband, father and even as a man. He's out of the picture for much of the running time, as Mulligan starts an affair-of-convenience with an older man. This all makes it sound very slight and very cheesy but it is neither of those things. Very effective direction (it is actor Paul Dano's directorial debut and he has done a very good job) and writing (Dano and his wife, writer/actor Zoe Kazan)
It's in limited release but if Mulligan doesn't snag an Oscar nomination for this, then something is wrong (especially as she missed out by somewhat splitting her own vote when Suffragette and Far From the Madding Crowd came out in the same year - see also: Amy Adams with Nocturnal Animals and Arrival)

In reply to Offwidth:

I thought this was massively overrated. It was ok, 6.5 or 7 out of ten. 
Despite the strong performances, good dialogue, lovely cinematography etc, it suffered massively from giving us absolutely zero reason to root for the "protagonists" who basically signed a contract without understanding it, then got disgruntled when time came to pay up. 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

A semi reluctant thumbs up for Mad Max: Fury Road  as I don't rate Tom Hardy in the lead role and I found most of the main charcterisation a bit weak (even in a cartoon sense). The situation and plot is obviously ludicrous (not the least if which is where do all these tribes get their fuel?) but for those who just want vehicle carnage and post apocalyptic imagary it's excellent. For me it's nothing like as good a film as II, which set the bar for such movies.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/mad_max_fury_road

In reply to Offwidth:

I saw Mad Max II in a Portakabin Cinema in an encampment on the N shore of Loch Kishorn during a wild stormy night in Spring 1983 - it was very memorable as I'd seen nothing like it before!

In reply to Blue Straggler:

A film idea about poor people effectively conned into signing contracts they don't understand and then turning into pissed off anti-heros... who'd have thunk it!? I think their rootability matches simlar level cinematic anti-heros.  On your terms I'd say it should be maybe a bit over 7 so very much worth watching, albeit not a major classic.

Another less good but still worthwhile anti-hero style vigilante movie, with an unexpected mid-way twist, that I forgot to mention from earlier was:  https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/cold_in_july_2014,  let down by characterisation that could easily have been stronger.

In reply to Offwidth:

 

I don't remember at any point seeing them actually being conned, nor discussing in depth about having being conned. It was a few years ago, mind you, and maybe there was some nodding reference to the mother having been doorstepped. 

Cold in July was all over the place. Bending over backwards to be all low-key and gritty, then they throw in Don Johnson with his superhero hardman skills and swagger (in fairness he really brightened up the film, but the tone was jarring). 
I didn't have a score system when I saw it but it would probably be 5.5/10 from memory. 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Suspiria (2018) 7/10

The much-heralded remake of Argento's cult classic. I know the Argento film and admire its aesthetic but it always felt a bit overrated to me. It's certainly never scary. 
The new one comes loaded with interesting credentials - Luca Guadagnino directing (and reuniting with Tilda Swinton and Dakota Johnson), Thom Yorke doing the score, blah blah. Lots of hype about Johnson's ballet training. 

It starts well, in a bleak Cold-War divided Berlin in 1977, with a backdrop of Baader-Meinhof actions offscreen, and an effective opening scene with a terrified runaway (an extended cameo from Chloe Grace Moretz). I couldn't tell, from this point onward, whether the film assumed familiarity with the original. It felt that way to me, but then I know the original so maybe I was just thinking "they expect us to recognise that bit". 
(the wafer-thin plot of the original is simply that a ballet school is a cover for a coven of witches; the remake expands on this somewhat, beefing it up with notions of transmutation)
Parts are effective, and for sure the foley artists had a field day with their "bone crunching" button (the key scene in the main part of the film is actually pretty grisly to watch). The story deviates and expands further from the original, seemingly in order to pad it out to a frankly ridiculous 2.5 hours. 
Just as its outstaying its welcome and you're feeling bored, it enters an utterly bonkers and literally jaw-dropping finale. I can't say it was GREAT, but I'm glad that a major film is bold enough to even go that way. It's like Argento, Lynch, Cronenberg, Ken Russell, Julie Taymor and Shin'ya "Tetsuo Iron Man" Tsukamoto all got together and decided to create an insane 10 minute short. 

So all in all, it just passes muster. Swinton, oddly (given that she is working a third time with this director), phones it in. The editing is irritatingly choppy especially during all dance scenes, considering the hype about Johnson's training - she never really gets to show it off. It's elevated by a solid support performance from Mia Goth who actually comes across as more of the main protagonist than does Johnnson, at least for the bulk of the film.....

In reply to Blue Straggler:

The local (and financially opaque) bank company being partly culpable for the local economic mess and profiting from their own customers' misfortune was a pretty obvious mini-theme in the film; hence the black humour lawyer's advice on the trust fund formed from the thefts being re-invested in the same bank, as the perfect cover and protection. You must have been asleep!

In reply to Offwidth:

Maybe so, but then you have question whether a film that sent me to sleep is any good  

 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Except you spotted all the best bits and only missed the evidence that contradicts your main criticism.. pretty odd. 

In reply to Offwidth:

They were in the trailer

In reply to Offwidth:

"I don't remember at any point seeing them actually being conned, nor discussing in depth about having being conned. It was a few years ago, mind you, and maybe there was some nodding reference to the mother having been doorstepped. "

1) I put plenty of disclaimers in

2) Them being conned doesn't really contradict my criticism which was that I didn't have a strong reason to root for the ostensible protagonists

Anyway, you liked it more than I liked it. Big deal. I can live with that! 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

"They were in the trailor"

Great comeback !

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Completely agree about Wildlife: 9/10 for me also. Carey Mulligan is always classy but her performance here is an absolute tour de force: she has a level of technical expertise that I think you rarely get except with actors who are also outstanding on stage, like Glenn Close or Frances McDormand. Setting an intimate - even claustrophobic - family drama in the epic landscape of Montana worked very effectively, I thought. Most impressive for a directorial debut. It really would be unjust if Mulligan wasn't nominated for an Oscar. Quality support from Gyllenhaal, whom I always enjoy watching, and Ed Oxenbould as the teenage son Joe. ( I can't go along with you on Hell or High Water though - worth it for Nick Cave's soundtrack alone!)

In reply to John2:

John, that is pretty rude considering that you had demanded a deeper comment without having bothered to do a simple search in the thread.

In reply to Andy Clarke:

I have not seen Mulligan on stage but I know she does (or has done) high-end stage work. Don’t know how well it was received but I am assuming it was well-received. Assumption based on nothing as I am not aware of what goes on in Theatre-land.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Sorry, didn't mean to be rude. Just meant I obviously didn't have time to look at UKC on the day when you posted. I find your comments on film interesting.

In reply to John2:

Thanks, understood

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Somehow this flawed but very watchable major film completely passed me by... nerve-wrackingly perfection on the bridge scenes.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1019441_sorcerer

Has anyone seen the original French film based on the same book?

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/wages_of_fear/

 

In reply to Offwidth:

I am quite familiar with both and have surely commented on Sorcerer on here before. I am so glad that Sorcerer is viewable again (it was hard to get hold of for many years, I have a muddy-transfer R1 DVD but I saw that it was on FilmFour last year in a lovely print)

It was a bold venture and doomed to commercial failure at every step. 

Friedkin, the golden name associated with the double whammy of The French Connection and The Exorcist, making popular, quality, truly adult dramas and winning Oscars and making money with them, decides to remake some old cult classic with a cast of unknowns apart from Roy Scheider, and then have the first twenty-five minutes of the film take place in foreign languages featuring nobody internationally recognisable so we don't know who are going to be the protagonists; eventually we see Scheider! Hurrah!

And then for sure it gets interesting. The bridge scenes go on for ten minutes and as you say, they are fantastic. Partly because it's Roy Scheider and not the originally-hoped-for Steve McQueen (with McQueen, we would have no doubt of the outcome. With Scheider, that far into the film, the outcome is anyone's guess)

The final walk with the crate, through a near-alien landscape, is quality stuff indeed, and then that kicker of a final scene. 

And Tangerine Dream's track "Creation" during the montage of pimping up the trucks. Sublime. 


And they released the film the same week as Star Wars. OOOOOPPS

In reply to Offwidth:

 

It is a very famous film, I am really surprised you haven't seen it. 
Some say it set the template for the modern action drama film. No comment from me on that. 

La Salaire du Peur interestingly uses Strauss' The Blue Danube Waltz against  non-obviousl backdrop toward the end, well over a decade before 2001: A Space Odyssey

 

In reply to Offwidth:

It is December now!

In reply to Offwidth:

The bridge scene alone cost $1 million in 1976-7, they had to relocate the entire shoot as there was a drought in their main location. Tilting was all done with hydraulics.

this is probably why Friedkin's next film was just Al Pacino as an undercover bummer no expensive logistics...

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Which scenes in 2001 use The Blue Danube?

In reply to aln:

Spacecraft Ballet including cockpit scenes, almost the signature of the film at the time

In reply to wercat:

Jeez, doh! Yeah all those scenes with that music...

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

It would have been.