Slim Pickings On The New Films Front

Good point re Theater Camp, jek; I'd forgotten that one, probably as Curzon haven't emailed about it or trailed it yet but I do recall looking it up a while back and thinking it sounded worth a try, so thank you for the reminder. I haven't seen a trailer for Past Lives, either, but recall coming across that, too. What with the ongoing wet weather and lack of anything which seems to fall between heavy and too light, I wouldn't mind something credible which doesn't stray too far either way, but Joy Ride certainly doesn't tick that box. Paris Memories seems to have had little publicity and Curzon are only showing it at a single venue, once a day only from Friday 4, which is annoying and unlikely to improve its chances, but PH are giving it a little more help, if not much.

Also expect films to start delaying their releases with the current strike action - Poor Things already moved from Sep release to Jan 24 and Dune II is the next one expected to move if there doesn’t look like any chance of a near-term resolution to the strikes in the next few weeks.

Graham Norton’s gonna have an empty couch when his show returns with no actors to promote their films.

Thought Paris Memories was excellent yesterday; well worth seeing (with some difficulty, due to ongoing train issues & limited release) & exactly the type of film which seems so scarce atm, but probably not worth me starting a thread unless others have also seen it or plan to.

I'm going to see a preview of Passages tonight which I hadn't planned on seeing but it's free and my daughter is keen to go. One of my friends went to see The Innocent and said it was very enjoyable so I'm going to see if I can find a convenient screening of that.

I enjoyed Passages more than I expected but some of that was to do with the audience which, at the free preview at my local Picturehouse, was very much at the older end of the age scale. I'm 60 and I certainly wasn't the oldest viewer. In fact my 22 year old daughter was probably the youngest by some decades. So the very graphic sex scenes were greeted with an air of 'I couldn't possibly get into that position with my arthritis' rather than shock. The audience were quite verbal at various moments as befits a film where the central character is an almost comic book villain. The real porn in the film is of the French lifestyle variety. Beautiful flats and houses filled with art. And Ben Whishart works in the most gorgeous stone lithography workshop. There is the most beautiful blue palette used by the art director. As we were leaving two of the other customers were commenting on the very nice knitwear which was telling, I thought. I think the 4 star Guardian review from when it was on the festival circuit is quite fair. Hope that is helpful showgirl

Imo things are improving, which I say on the basis of having recently seen Afire, Lie With Me, Theater Camp (which has its own thread & is in another category to these more indy foreign films) and most recently, The Innocent. The last was particularly captivating & enthralling, but I enjoyed them all.

The Transylvanian set movie F.M.N turned out to be a less gloomy watch than I had feared from the trailers/reviews. The scenery is stunning, and it is fascinating about a community in which old rituals live alongside EU funded high tech industry. Even which language to use is contested - it made me very aware of how different it is for us living on an island, rather than surrounded by borders which have shifted over decades. Completely baffled by the ending but that just gave us a lot to talk about as we walked back from our local picturehouse.

I'm really looking forward to seeing Saltburn.

Glad you enjoyed Brother, mkb; I commented on it in the "Last Film You Saw" thread (why the US word for film? Grr!) but only thought it was OK. I can see that a lot of effort went into this and that it's well done, but for me it was a little too reminiscent of Moonlighting, albeit with - thank goodness - more dialogue, so although it made a change to see a film set in Canda rather than the US, it didn't seem that original or memorable. However, I went with my ex, who had never heard of it and was very impressed, so a result for him and I satisfied my curiosity.