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Post by amyja89 on Sept 30, 2024 13:54:11 GMT
First of my five cinema trips this week complete!
The Outrun - *** 1/2
This doesn't do anything revolutionary in terms of reinventing the wheel for the addiction/recovery/trauma genre, but there is some nice use of pathetic fallacy and the geography being a central character in itself is really good. Always love seeing Saoirse Ronan, and she holds it all together brilliantly.
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1,469 posts
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Post by mkb on Oct 1, 2024 0:17:58 GMT
Well I did go see Megalopolis because I couldn’t get a refund- it is just as bad as everyone is saying. Utter drivel - scene setting was way too long and the message was superficial and done a thousand times before. Such a waste of good actors and money. I don’t know what Coppola was thinking tbh. Even Adam Driver was bad and I usually really like him! 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.
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Post by amyja89 on Oct 1, 2024 13:26:45 GMT
My Old Ass - ****
Definitely more schmalzy than I usually go for, but something about this made me forgive its overarching cheesiness. The humour was to my taste, and everyone on screen was enjoyable to watch. Nowhere near enough Aubrey Plaza though!
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2,031 posts
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Post by Marwood on Oct 1, 2024 20:20:58 GMT
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
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4,919 posts
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Post by Someone in a tree on Oct 2, 2024 9:29:11 GMT
Scenes from a marriage.
Raw and close up, literally. Made in 1973 and still feels very pertinent. I can see why divorece rates shot up afterwards.
Liv Ullman was totally captivating.
A masterpeice.
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Post by amyja89 on Oct 2, 2024 14:27:53 GMT
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.
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Post by juicy_but_terribly_drab on Oct 2, 2024 16:27:50 GMT
Scenes from a marriage. Raw and close up, literally. Made in 1973 and still feels very pertinent. I can see why divorece rates shot up afterwards. Liv Ullman was totally captivating. A masterpeice. Watch the original miniseries if you can find it (I don't think it was ever officially released in UK markets so you might struggle to find it but it fleshes everything out even better than the theatrical release).
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Post by amyja89 on Oct 3, 2024 16:22:06 GMT
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.
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3,494 posts
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Post by Rory on Oct 3, 2024 17:03:48 GMT
Speak No Evil. Thought it was great. James McAvoy was superb!
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4,919 posts
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Post by Someone in a tree on Oct 4, 2024 13:51:04 GMT
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
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Post by amyja89 on Oct 6, 2024 12:19:05 GMT
The Maids (1975)
A pleasure to watch Glenda Jackson and Susannah York doing the absolute most, even is this work doesn't feel particularly suited to the big screen. It's unhinged in all of the ways that draws me in.
Jackson in full flow towards the end is a real treat. I'm perpetually gutted to have never been able to see the Cate Blanchett/Isabelle Huppert version on stage.
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Post by crabtree on Oct 8, 2024 22:23:32 GMT
Anyone seen The Critic? My last few films have been in honour of Dame Maggie.
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4,919 posts
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Post by Someone in a tree on Oct 9, 2024 15:37:41 GMT
The Silence (Bergam)
Two sisters and child wait in a hotel . Bergman left me with lots of questions, but in a good way. Lots happens but at the same time not much happens. Reminded me a wee bit of Uncle Vanya and the Shining, albeit a much better version of the latter.
I'll definitely revisit in a year or so.
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236 posts
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Post by harrietcraig on Oct 10, 2024 1:07:46 GMT
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.
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Post by showgirl on Oct 10, 2024 2:41:00 GMT
Having run out of other films to see & wanting something to fit in before a matinee, I saw A Different Man yesterday. I knew it wouldn't be run-of-the-mill but I wasn't expecting something quite so peculiar & certainly not gruesome, as it was in places. Interesting but impossible to categorise; I still don't know what to make of it & whilst I couldn't exactly recommend it, I wouldn't discourage anyone planning to see it, either. One review I read said that it was Sebastian Stan's best performance yet, but I'd never heard of him until now, though I do know he's shortly to be see again on UK screens in The Apprentice - I'm sick of that trailer already.
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2,031 posts
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Post by Marwood on Oct 10, 2024 11:27:21 GMT
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.
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4,919 posts
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Post by Someone in a tree on Oct 14, 2024 17:07:45 GMT
Soldier Orange
(Verhoeven)
I always find it interesting to watch a war film that isnt UK or USA made and this one did not disapoint. Surprised at how humorous it was and at its forward thinking / anti monachy tones.
The interval in a film still amazes me and the 'act 1 finale' was really well structured.
In general, good but not great as it took quite a while to get going and the familiar story was refreshingly humorous.
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Post by SilverFox on Oct 15, 2024 20:07:41 GMT
Having run out of other films to see & wanting something to fit in before a matinee, I saw A Different Man yesterday. I knew it wouldn't be run-of-the-mill but I wasn't expecting something quite so peculiar & certainly not gruesome, as it was in places. Interesting but impossible to categorise; I still don't know what to make of it & whilst I couldn't exactly recommend it, I wouldn't discourage anyone planning to see it, either. One review I read said that it was Sebastian Stan's best performance yet, but I'd never heard of him until now, though I do know he's shortly to be see again on UK screens in The Apprentice - I'm sick of that trailer already. 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.
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4,919 posts
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Post by Someone in a tree on Oct 17, 2024 9:53:36 GMT
Belle du jour (Bunel)
A sureal and fascinating look at frigidity and the roles we play in life. Catherine Deneuve is magnificent and she really is the 'beauty of the day'
Three days later and im still thinking about it. Definitely one to revisit.
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