UKC

Dogman.

Very good film with outstanding performance from Marcello Fonte. 

Interesting filming location, too.

In reply to Tom Valentine:

I watched The Aeronauts. It was wretched 

In reply to Tom Valentine:

Farmageddon - best belch in the history of cinema.

In reply to Tom Valentine:

+1 for Farmageddon. If you are into sheep and aliens then this is the best sheep-alien based film of the decade.

In reply to Tom Valentine:

Le Mans 66, such a dreary muddle it doesn’t even know what to call itself 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

I guess the beginning and the ending were ok then?

Do you have access to early screenings for some reason?

In reply to Tom Valentine:

What?

In reply to Blue Straggler:

I don't understand how but your typo was still showing on my screen half an hour ago

In reply to Tom Valentine:

Cached from last night. Not technically a typo but an overlooked aggressive "autocorrect". 

The film was pretty poor though. Unnecessarily jingoistic, no sense of what a 24 hour race is like or even how it actually works, totally one-sided, no engagement with the characters, no reason to root for them, and its purported aim - to look at the relationship between Carroll Shelby and Ken Miles - is very much not met. Also aside from an early mention of Porsche, it plays as if no other manufacturers were involved in Le Mans. 

It does get comedy points for Christian Bale's accent sounding like a cross between an Ozzy Osbourne impersonator and that bit in I'm Alan Partridge where Alan mocks the young Yorkshire builder. 

In reply to Tom Valentine:

Just occasionally. I have a Cineworld Unlimited card and they do the occasional early screening and/or "mystery film" (in the latter case it is always something major that will be on release in the next few weeks). Odeon cinemas do the same but you don't have to be a card-holder for them. 

Actually I expected last night's to be 21 Bridges or The Good Liar as the website wrongly stated a 100 minute running time (whereas Odeon's "Screen Unseen" stated 160 minutes so I guess they were running Le Mans '66 as well). 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Another excellent documentary film from last night   "A British Guide to the End of the World"  ( available on I Player)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b1gn

It links our own bomb research  programme with the woeful preparations for civil response to nuclear war and the consequences of the fallout, especially for the poor sods who were human guinea pigs at the Christmas Island tests. Very moving, well directed and designed.

In reply to Offwidth:

Thanks for typing the title 

In reply to Tom Valentine:

Monos 9/10. A haunting, hypnotic and at times hallucinogenic exploration of the dark heart of the human condition. The movie follows a ragged squad of teenage guerillas as they move from a bleak windswept upland into the claustrophobia and confusion of the rain forest, with their hostage, a female doctor. Their mission remains vague, the exact geography is left undisclosed and the guerillas all have noms de guerre such as Rambo, Wolf and Lady. We are in the realm of the archetypal. Joseph Conrad and William Golding are lurking in the shadows and there are a couple of clear nods to Lord of the Flies - including a pig's head on a stake - but the difference is that Monos doesn't depict a descent into savagery and ritual: it's there from the start. The movie has an enigmatic, dream-like quality - but the acting of the teenage stars is universally excellent and gives it real credibility. Cinematography and score are equally impressive. The film is full of arresting imagery, from sweeping panorama to detail so focussed upon it almost becomes abstract. The eerie, unsettling music merges in and out of the sounds of the child soldiers and the natural world. Everything shifts in a world without moral fixities. (In Spanish, with English subtitles.)

In reply to Andy Clarke:

Have you seen Beasts of the Southern Wild? 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Missed it unfortunately. 

In reply to Andy Clarke:

Aspects of your Monos review brought it to mind. A river journey, an allegory, a vagueness. Shifts, imagery, young lead performer.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

The more I ponder "Le Mans '66", the worse the film turns out to be. Essentially, regardless of how interesting the Ford vs Ferrari saga of the 1960s might be to real motorsport fans, in book or real documentary form, it just doesn't work as a narrative story suited to glossy formulaic dramatised cinema - there is no underdog to root for and you are just left with various shades of obnoxious rich white men doing a Hooray Henry thing in their noisy toys.

I predict a weak box-office performance for this one. 
 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

A weirdly connected double bill from last night.

The first was Mother! that I'd been wanting to watch for some time. A strange movie indeed: incredibly well acted and filmed and as stretched to the limits as an allegorical and satirical, mainstream released 'horror' movie could be. I thought your review (second post on the film thread below) was spot on and I was pretty mesmerized.

https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/culture_bunker/september_film_thread-6707...

The second, Only God Forgives, was almost a recording afterthought, as the reviews I'd previously caught were bad, but I quite liked Drive so I gave it a chance. Sumptuously filmed and very stylized, this bleakly violent film was never going to be a crowd pleaser. I thought it was flawed but well worth the viewing, with something almost spaghetti western about it, including the sparse but brash dialogue.

As a bonus for you, no RT links this time, as much because they don't do the auteur efforts (or the marmite) due justice.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Only_God_Forgives

In reply to Offwidth:

The Wikipedia link to the Aronofsky film will not paste correctly 

Try a tinyurl like this

https://tinyurl.com/y62emafc

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Thanks. No idea why but I managed to insert a space before the exclamation mark when copying the url over.

In reply to Offwidth:

No, I tested it twice from mobile phone (iPhone, Safari) and the space is automatically placed there once you hit "Post message". Not sure where the "fault" lies. 

Just tested it again posting from a MacBook Pro, also running Safari, and the same thing happened. 

In reply to Offwidth:

Your link to my review also made me look at my review of the Kevin Costner film "Criminal", thanks for that as I needed a laugh  

In reply to Andy Clarke:

Yes brilliant. I know the composer, it's very odd to meet someone so talented who is so genuinely modest and humble. Did you see that she didn't want to do the score as she didn't think the film needed one?

In reply to mike lawrence?:

Glad she changed her mind! The soundtrack undoubtedly adds an extra dimension to what is a pretty immersive cinematic experience.

In reply to Tom Valentine:

Galveston. 

Read and enjoyed  the novel a couple of years ago so when I saw a review which said ..." a little too slow and a lot too serious for today's typical action audiences..." that was recommendation enough.

I liked it a lot, increasingly aware of Foster's talent after the last thing I saw him in, and there was a lovely piano score to accompany some of the deliberately dated cinematography.

In reply to Tom Valentine:

Thanks! I was unaware of this, I have long admired Foster and also Fanning who is actually an even stronger guarantee of quality/interest. I will seek this out soon. 

In reply to Tom Valentine:

Just saw the new "Midway" film, an odd one to review as it was pretty good (sometimes hard to follow the logistics admittedly, and a number of the characters/actors were confusingly interchangeable); it pretty much did what it said on the tin, told a fairly straightforward story without muddying things too much with more expansive politics and was refreshingly free of "judgement"(*), including giving decent screen time to the Japanese side of things. Well acted by a solid cast of reliable B-listers (plus Woody Harrelson as Nimitz). Nice to see Quaid getting decent screen time. 
The special effects were ambitious and pretty much flawless. You got a good sense,in the combat scenes, of just how hard it could be to actually hit a target.

And yet, despite all this, I am sure I will have forgotten a lot of it when I wake up tomorrow. Does this matter though? They have my money, I enjoyed my 2.5 hours in the cinema...


* in Second World War films involving Nazis, the screenwriters maybe have an easier job, as the Nazis are almost universally reviled and can easily be made "the bad guys", whereas the layman tends to "only" recall Japan in terms of Pearl Harbor, Midway, nasty POW camps, and Hiroshima/Nagasaki, and not with any sort of equivalent to the Holocaust

In reply to Blue Straggler:

"Meh-dway" perhaps.
Bit harsh and pithy. 

To add to my comments in the first post, I got a feeling that this film was very respectful. I have no idea as to whether it was historically accurate - it is after a Roland Emmerich high budget special effects action blockbuster - but amongst the inevitable bombast there was some sobriety. 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

 Regarding Foster,  I've not seen Hell or High Water  but am in the process of rectifying that .

In reply to Blue Straggler:

If you talk to soldiers involved in the two campaigns, especially those soldiers taken prisoner, they usually have the opposite view. The death toll due to Japanese Imperialism was terrible, especially in the Chinese and SE asian campaigns: 6 million total dead is a standard estimate.

https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP3.HTM

In reply to Offwidth:

Hence my use of the term "layman". I probably should have added "European".

In reply to Tom Valentine:

Sorry We missed You: 8/10. Classic Ken Loach: an unflinching portrayal of a family crushed by the exploitative gig economy and corporate cost-cutting. Decent working people struggling to make a better life for their kids are chewed up and spat out to make a better profit for the lords of the system. It is a pretty savage indictment of the system - but since it's honest, how could it not be? As in its predecessor, Daniel Blake, Loach uses graffiti to express the anger and frustration of those denied a meaningful public voice. Intriguingly (for me, as an avid Shakespeare fan) I noticed some fleeting echoes of Hamlet in a moment of tender conversation between the father and mother in bed: he laments how 'the time is out of whack' and she confesses she is plagued  by 'bad dreams.' Can't work out the thematic relevance. In-joke? The movie is of course political and polemical - but what drives it is the human drama of the family striving to stay together. Since I'm a sauvignon socialist, I could live with the irony of getting outraged on a comfy indie cinema sofa with a chilled glass of white. If you're the sort of person who thinks what this country needs is a more laissez faire approach to employment legislation and workers' rights, this may not be the movie for you.

In reply to Andy Clarke:

Thanks Andy 

In reply to Tom Valentine:

"Hell or High Water".  Excellent performances from all three leads and a really good looking film with a fitting soundtrack but I still felt a bit short-changed at the end.

Also watched the Northern Ireland production "A Bad Day For the Cut",  a grim ride through the province and I didn't feel short-changed at the end, just depressed.

In reply to Tom Valentine:

Echoes my feelings, I didn't want to say anything before you'd seen it. 
Basically I didn't really root for the ostensible protagonists. Yes they were hoodwinked by sly financial salespeople into signing that contract, but they did sign a contract....
I realise that such a lack of sympathy might today come off as being a bit "Jacob Rees-Mogg" though!

 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

a contract involving "hoodwinking" is void so what difference does signing it make?

In reply to Blue Straggler:

The black dude in Charley Varrick who gets his car repossessed by Molly presumably signed some sort of contract........ 

In reply to wercat:

My use of the term "hoodwinking" was an attempt to make the protagonists in the film appear more sympathetic. I've only seen it once and I don't recall if there is any explicit statement to say their contract should actually be void. Maybe Tom V knows? 

In reply to wercat:

Basically the premise of the film in question is that payments on a reverse mortgage have fallen behind so a property is about to be repossessed, and we the audience seem to be expected to side with the two sons of the deceased property owner when they decide to rob the bank in order to balance the books. Because banks are inherently evil....

In reply to Blue Straggler:

I don't see the two robbers as being equal in terms of our sympathy: one is quite clearly a psycho type ( who still loves his little brother) and the other an unfortunate man forced to adopt criminal means to better the lot of his children, much less attracted to violence but capable of a turn when the occasion requires it. But there were enough shots of derelict farms and for sale signs, and vocalised support from the community, to show us that these were desperate measures for desperate times. 

 I hope there's no talk of a sequel.

Incidentally, I 'm pretty sure it was their mother who was hoodwinked into taking out the reverse mortgage, the implication being that she was a vulnerable person who had already had a lifetime of abuse from her husband.

In reply to Tom Valentine:

It was the mother's mortgage, I did not imply otherwise but I wasn't able to easily cram this information into an already-long sentence. The question is, really, was there something illegal about the bank's action, beyond preying on the vulnerable?

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Probably not. I 'm not sure that selling PPI payments was actually illegal at the time it was done but I don't actually know.

By the way, I'm not condoning real life robbery in any shape or form : I think the great Train Robbers were a bunch of bastards and wish Biggs had been forced to die a long and painful death in Brazil.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

don't worry I was only being legalistic.  I am beginning to see the value of Revenge in today's society, however.  So perhaps I might be more sympathetic.

In reply to wercat:

"As in the old Italian proverb: revenge is the dish which people of taste prefer to eat cold..."

In reply to wercat:

Possibly this ought to have a specific thread, but what is/are the value/s of revenge?

In reply to nufkin:

oh, it's personal satisfaction, restoration of balance, demise of the wrongdoers etc

In reply to wercat:

Key pillars of cinematic storytelling, I suppose

In reply to Tom Valentine:

Doctor Sleep.

My God, did anybody not just stop and think for one moment. Just terrible from start to finish. 

In reply to Tom Last:

I didn’t post a review here cos I was in a moody period but....yes. Have not read it but the film was basically a decent (improved) rehash of The Lost Boys (you know, the daft 1987 Kiefer Sutherland vampire film with teen appeal) with bits of The Shining lazily dolloped onto it .

I thought it needed more Emily Alyn Lind (the young psychic) 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Haha yes it was! I was wondering what it was that the cringe flying scenes reminded me of and Lost Boys is exactly it. 

Similarly, the closing scene reminded me of the closing scene of Ghost, which would be okay if I was actually watching Ghost but...

Overall I think it suffered by (presumably) trying to crowbar in references back to the book, which didn’t really go anywhere and just left me wondering wtf was that bit about...? and required too many assumptions on the audiences part.

Also, Ewan McGregor doing his pantomime bit as usual, Uurgh.

In reply to Tom Valentine:

Donne Moi des Ailles - french film produced by Nicolas Vanier - renowned for his work with nature. For anyone who likes birds, flying and .... Melanie Doutey

The story borrows generous cinematic licence (its for kids right !) but the actors are good; sweeping panaromas from S France to Norway inside the arctic circle - works v well on a big screen.

A great family outing - will it ever be shown in UK ??

In reply to Tom Valentine:

 The Mule.

Quietly enjoyable, probably a good vehicle for Clint to bow out on.

The Kid

Rather disappointing for reasons which I'm not sure of ;  maybe it didn't give Ethan Hawke scope enough to show what he can do.

In any event, give me a mediocre Western over a highly-rated zombie film any day of the week.

In reply to Tom Valentine:

The Mule was a 4/10 for me! 

In reply to Tom Valentine:

Not in the cinema , not new films (I've seen them both in the cinema, and one of them several times since), and actually hard to review let alone score, so rather than trip over my words, I'll be brief. 

I recently watched Wendy & Lucy, writer-director Kelly Reichardt's first collaboration with Michelle Williams. 
Reichart specialises in extremely low-key, minimalist human dramas in which very little actually "happens" during the narratives, yet if you are of the right temperament and in the right mood, a lot is "said". 
Wendy & Lucy is an 80-minute film in which Williams plays a Wendy, a young near-penniless woman travelling to Alaska by car, with her dog Lucy, in search of blue-collar work. Almost zero background is offered, we're not even given that much reason to "side" with Wendy. Essentially the film is a snapshot of the still-existing poverty and vagrant culture, it's almost like a modern-day version of a Great Depression film. 
This was the fourth time I've seen it, and it felt so rewarding. It is brutal but touching - it is full of soul and is somewhat open-ended, which is in turn thought-provoking. 


And I watched Reichardt's more recent collaboration with Williams, "Certain Women", which is a portmanteau film with Williams being one of three women in the three separate (albeit very very tenuously linked) stories. Again, barely anything of consequence happens in these stories, the first one involving Laura Dern as the lawyer for a total loser of a man, being perhaps the most "dramatic" and the third and longest section featuring a brilliant Kristen Stewart in an awkward friendship with a student being the dominant one (Williams' section basically involves negotiating the purchase of some sandstone rubble!). 
I found this underwhelming at the cinema but somehow enriching on my second viewing, at home. The ending of Stewart's section manages to be devastating without any high drama.

I don't know if it's accurate to say that Reichardt's films are studies of the human condition, but maybe that's it. 

What I've never been able to get on with, is her "Meek's Cutoff" starring Williams again. Tom V might "get it", but I just don't. A very very very very very slow minimalist Western, with shades of "Eagle's Wing" (that weird thing with Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston) but far less "action". I'll try it again soon though, just for the sake of the cast (Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan are in it, and Bruce Greenwood)


I know there has been some love expressed on this sub-forum for the work of Debra Granik (Winter's Bone, Leave No Trace). Reichardt is working in a similar arena, I'd say. 
 

In reply to Tom Valentine:

The Farewell. Outstanding in every way. A Chinese production (well, technically an American production because I think it had all-American backing, and post-production in New York) about a Chinese family coming together in Changchun ostensibly for the wedding of a cousin, but in fact to say goodbye to the grandmother, the matriarch of the family, who is dying of cancer but does not know it's terminal. Both very moving and very funny, sometimes even in the same scene. The emotional range and subtlety is absolutely amazing. The leading lady, the grand-daughter from New York, is outstanding. The photography and use of music throughout, superb. Some truly brilliant scenes. A masterpiece reminiscent of Fellini at this very best. *****

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

Thanks for a nice review. I think I missed its cinema run near me but I’ll keep an eye out. It sounds like a nice companion to Ang Lee’s “The Wedding Banquet” 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Really enjoyed Miss Slone... it's a little bit silly plot wise, with a sort of revenge fantasy feel about it, but from a perspective of ruthless guile and intellect rather than violence. A lot of critics seem fussed that it didn't directly attack lobbying and the gun lobby more and that the lead character was weirdly somehow testosterone fuelled, but I think they missed the point... this wasn't a serious campaign piece it was a thriller with some sharp twists and a blatant subversive edge: the US political system and their lobbyists and the second ammendment (and their respective impacts on women), all end up smelling very bad. Jessica Chastain plays the lead role with an amplification of eleven.

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

In reply to Blue Straggler:

I'd like to thank whichever UKC er it was who recommended "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs."

Only because it got me to join Netflix, on which I have seen a few good films and tv series.

It took me three attempts to watch the film, largely because of the first part with the singing cowboy.Maybe it's something as simple as the actor's voice/ accent ( he does make me cringe a bit on Watchmen) or maybe it was just the general tone of it. 

Some of the rest was OK but out of the six pieces I only really enjoyed one.  I won't name it but I think when they were playing with their digital effects library they must have found a Terrence Mallick drop down menu and clicked on Days of Heaven.

In reply to Tom Valentine:

21 Bridges

6/10

Acceptable old fashioned police procedural. Like a glossy well made well acted superior version of any of the glut of such films from the late 1980s, but left me feeling "what was the point of making this film in 2019". 
Fairly predictable "good cop discovers rotten corruption within the police force", starting with a robbery gone wrong. It rattles along at a good enough pace to just about engage you, but some of the "twists" are painfully obvious and the timescale and the resources allocated to a single officer, feel a bit ludicrous. Actors play it well with earnest conviction and there are a couple of very good one-on-one dialogue scenes. 
One thing to note is that it is gorgeously shot. The Manhattan aerial shots are just beautiful. 

But I wouldn't spend your money on this one. 

In reply to Tom Valentine:

rare DVD review, but this was one that I had wanted to see at the cinema but never managed. Others on here have praised this film

The Florida Project.
"Slice of life" stuff, like a slightly glossy Ken Loach / Mike Leigh "poverty safari" but set in Florida. Just felt very genuine and earnest, and no preaching, not particularly "heavy" (indeed there are moments of light comedy infused throughout it).

Amazing performance from Bria Vinaite (this is her film, she is the lead, not Willem Dafoe).
She's so good that at times I was wondering if she might even be playing a version of herself! I doubt that this is the case, it's just that sort of naturalistic performance that can be elicited from near-non-professional near-first-timers - again, see comparisons to Ken Loach here)
 

In reply to Tom Valentine:

Quick one for now simply because the trailer campaign is awful and doesn’t do it any justice at all...Knives Out is actually as good as the cast(*) suggests, very entertaining and engaging. Rian Johnson back on “Brick” form 

* by this I mean that the trailers might have you wondering “why would these people sign on for THIS?”

In reply to Blue Straggler:

I found the trailer quite compelling. Anyhow, we're seeing it in 10 days time. 

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

I thought of you whilst watching as I think you will enjoy it a lot.  You are tenuously linked to it. There are a couple of trailers including a new long (and frankly tedious) one, they have tried to be clever and pretend to show the whole film whilst not even showing half of it, a ploy that I think  worked on Mad Max: Fury Road but which might bury Knives Out 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Thanks - the trailers had definitely convinced me not to bother, maybe I'll have to reconsider!

In reply to Simon Caldwell:

If nothing else, you can spend an enjoyable 2 hours wondering how just how young or old Ana de Armas is!

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Saw this last night. My verdict: 2 ½ stars. Visually superb (Oscar nomination worthy CGI); good lighting, sets and costumes; poor, uneven soundtrack (fx and music far to loud cp with dialogue); very poor music track; desperately verbose, ponderous, clichéd script. Very contrived, weak premise. I.e. the story was simply not strong enough.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

The Irishman is available to watch on Netflix today if anyone fancies an oscar contender tonight from the comfort of their living room.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

2 ½ stars out of 5? 

I didn't write a points score but I think it would be approximately 2.5/10 or 3/10 from me.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Yes, out of 5. Possibly being a bit generous. The production values, though, raise it above 1 star

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

The film simply made no attempt at all to give us any reason to root for the success of the two principals. There was no tension, what did they expect audiences to be gripped by, some sort of "ooh I hope he gets his data, he's such an oppressed underdog" etc. ?? 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

The only dramatic tension for me was the naughty thought about 1/3 of the way in: will they have sex by the time they land? Sadly, even that failed to materialise (spoiler)

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

That would be The Aeronaughties. 

In reply to Bjartur i Sumarhus:

A lot of people might have to make two nights of it......

In reply to Bjartur i Sumarhus:

Disappointing. I could probably list ten Scorsese films I thought better. Best thing about it: Pacino's Jimmy Hoffa; worst thing: three and a half hours.

In reply to Tom Valentine:

Is caring about Jimmy Hoffa, outside of the USA, a generational thing? Serious question. For context, I am 44. 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

No idea; I was only vaguely aware who he was and had to read up on him during my half time break. But I enjoyed the performance. 

In reply to Tom Valentine:

Fair enough. I just remember when the Jack Nicholson vehicle “Hoffa” was released and at least in the UK the reception was basically “who?” 

Like trying to sell a Scargill biopic globally ! 

That said, Jimmy Hoffa is referenced briefly in quite a few alternative-rock and hip-hop releases...

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Probably a good analogy.

Pacino was good playing Arthur as well!

In reply to Tom Valentine:

I see you see what I did there 

peeling that ORANGE! 

In reply to Tom Valentine:

Regarding The Irishman, I am also a bit ambivalent about Scorsese slating the Marvel films whilst happily using the CGI de-ageing technology funded surely by the profits of those films, to enable identical gimmickry on his own film. 

I know I should separate the artist from the art and all that but really what an arse. 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

I avoided reading any reviews till after I 'd seen it ( hence the 5 /10 I awarded it in a text conversation with a friend) so was unaware of any CGI issues but one of my lasting impressions was how false De Niro looked in some scenes and I think I was probably blaming it all on  poor make up artistry.

In reply to Tom Valentine:

They look like bad waxworks just on the poster / promo material!

In reply to Blue Straggler:

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

A remarkable and highly original movie, with some memorable imagery, taking a satirical look at superstition and exploitation. 

In reply to Tom Valentine:

Finally got around to watching Andrzej Zulawski’s “Possession”. As expected, I didn’t quite “understand” it but I think that was the intention. The central performance is absolutely as astonishing and fearless as reputed. What I had not expected was the amazing pre-Steadicam moving camerawork and in fact the cinematography in general. All very good, uncategorisable, not indecipherable but I might need to watch it again, although in itself that is not a very enticing prospect!