The Last Film You Watched

I concur. It really is as bad as people are saying. I don't think you can even enjoy it by celebrating its awfulness.

I sat through the four-and-a-half-hour turgid melodrama that is Cleopatra -- the Liz Taylor version -- at a cinema on Sunday, and Megalopolopolis, or whatever it's called, felt longer tonight. Rex Harrison is the better Caesar, which is saying something.

To think this comes from the same mind that created one of my all-time favourite movies (One from the Heart) is mystifying. Yet that flopped too. I can't imagine what the cast of this latest Coppola work were thinking when they read the dialogue. The money must have been good to wreck acting careers like this.

It’s going to be on Sky by the end of the month but went to a screening of The Life And Deaths Of Christopher Lee at the BFI this evening. I was disappointed that Peter Serafinowicz couldn’t make it for the post screening q&a but it had some lovely moments like Lee’s last meeting with Peter Cushing and some nice anecdotes from Joe Dante, Peter Jackson and John Landis (shame that due to some studios being sh*tty there were no clips from the LOTR films or Gremlins 2, but we got to see him fighting with Yoda , and those ‘interesting’ heavy metal albums 🤣): I don’t know if I’d watch it again but I thoroughly enjoyed it, after the double whammy of Megalopolis and My Old Ass at the weekend, I was wondering why I bother with the cinema

The Substance - **** 1/2

Loved! I think I have to accept that I'm just not the kind of person who can be made to feel unwell by body horror. Sure, there was some gasping and eye covering, but nothing that made me nauseous. A great bloody time though, literally.

Megalopolis - *

OOOOOOFFFF. Absolute yikes. I knew what I was in for so wasn't disappointed, just simply baffled and bored. Truly dreadful. Gotta hand it to FFC for having the range to make some of the best films of all time and one of the worst.

Parallel Mothers

Not a bad film but not Almodóvar's finest. Great interiors and a soap like plot make it interesting but the two different strands of baby mixup and the civil war didnt really marry. The latter only really appear in prologue and epilogue format, during which you see some soberig images.

Perhaps if i were Spanish it would of spoken to me more?

Currently on iplayer

Anyone seen The Critic? My last few films have been in honour of Dame Maggie.

I’ve seen The Critic. It’s pretty silly, but fun as long as you’re not expecting great art. The man who runs the small movie theater where I saw it (in New York) usually gives a brief talk to the audience before a screening; in his talk before The Critic, he called it a “popcorn arthouse movie”, which is a pretty accurate description. He seemed a little embarrassed about showing The Critic (he usually shows more hifalutin films), said he only took it as a favor to the distributor, who is a friend of his, because the 13-screen multiplex down the street decided they didn’t have room for it. Make of that what you will.

Speaking of Dame Maggie, I recently streamed Quartet — not her 1981 film of that title with Alan Bates, but the 2012 film of the same title with Dame Maggie, Tom Courtenay, Pauline Collins, and Billy Connolly all living in a home for retired musicians. Highly recommended.

Went and saw The Surfer at the Prince Charles Cinema on the opening night of the London Film Festival last night, and not exactly a surprise, it wasn’t great. Nicolas Cage plays someone who wants to buy his fathers house on the coast in Australia and just wants to go surfing with his son but let’s just say things don’t go well (the first thing one of the locals says to him in the first five minutes is ‘f*** off!’ which is a taste of things to come, this film is not a good advert for Australia ) but he gets put through so much you want to warn the locals that this is Nic Cage they’re messing with, have they got a death wish?

While he has a couple of minutes where he does go sort of crazy and will provide material for even more memes in the future, it all seemed a bit tepid and he never boils over into Mandy mode and apart from bashing a rat against a car door and beating up a bozo whose mantra is ‘don’t live here, don’t surf here!’ (Which was rich coming from him as he sounded like he didn’t come from within 1000 miles of Australia) proceedings seemed tepid and just trundled to a not particularly satisfying end.

To be honest, after twenty minutes of what he gets put through, anyone with a brain cell would tell them to stuff the house and move on, the viewers would have been better off doing the same.

We saw this today, and it is decidedly not run of the mill. Interestingly, we each thought it was going to go in a different direction from each other, and all were (arguably) wrong. There are gaps in the narrative, possible leaps of credulity, and yet the consensus was that this was intentional and did not matter. Difficult to recommend, due to some of the graphic scenes, but it kept us talking for long after - and there are not many films that do that. We all loved the circular, recurring, nature of the narrative, and thought the performances outstanding. It held our attention throughout.

Had booked to see 2 afternoon films yesterday after an AM hospital appointment but the latter over-ran, so I was gutted to miss the first film, which of the 2 sounded both more appealing and light-hearted: this was The Crime Is Mine. The screening times were so limited, even in central London, that I couldn't switch to a later one that afternoon, only in the evening, which was too late with another early start and long day today.

However, I did see the second film, The Apprentice, which was excellent, though compelling in an awful way as you might expect. Surprisingly for an early afternoon midweek performance, the auditorium was pretty full; certainly the busiest I've ever seen it at that time. So even as no fan of Donald Trump and someone who can't bear discussions about politics (pointless imo and I will not engage), as with any good story, well told, I found it absolutely worth seeing & would definitely recommend it.

Wild Strawberries
(Bergman)

Literrally a journey of self relfection. One plot point that really stood out was the fighting couple, which showed how negative people are present in life but should not be entertained. Nb i must remember this point!

I really liked the blurring of past and present, i suspect this was really revolutionary in 1957?

Another hit from Mr. Ingmar

Terrifier 3 - **

In this franchise, the kills are getting grimmer but the plot is getting dumber. If it's a trade off you don't mind, then this is a fun enough watch through your fingers. Some truly gnarly stuff going on here, makes the gore of The Substance look like a 12A.