The Last Film You Watched

This was my last film of the festival last Sunday and I liked but didn't love it for similar reasons. Has all the usual melodramatic Almodóvar trappings but no one is really treating it like melodrama. The dialogue just comes across as stilted like it's lifted directly from a book that was never meant to be read aloud or a too-literal translation from another language (the flashbacks in particular have very on-the-nose, expository dialogue without a lick of subtext). Great score, look and performances but it never quite gels as well as you'd hope.

Feel exactly the same!

Emilia Pérez - *** 1/2

Is this an absolute mess? Yes.

Did I kind of love it once Karla Sofía Gascón emerged in her full glory? Also yes.

Just had the displeasure of watching Heretic: the trailer seemed amusing, Hugh Grant in moustache twirling bad guy mode haranguing a couple of Mormon girls but the reality was a horrible, turgid mess that was a cross between the worst bits of Seven and Saw that really had no redeeming features, a two hour joyless cruise around various basements and cellars that only seemed to exist for the writers to have an extended rant about organised religion, but if you have ever felt a yearning to hear Hugh Grant singing Creep, your prayers have been answered (thank God I only paid £4 to see it)

Bluebeard

(Breillat)

All very watchable, the tension was present but never really strong enough. The tale is told by a meta device of two young girls reading the story aloud which worked well and was apt.

The film has some comedy Freudian beds. Plus the plots wraps up too quickly, perhaps a deliberate choice.

In the summer i watched the Emma Rice version which worked brilliantly and weaved in the horrors from the Sarah Everard case. It was reflective and said enough is enough. From Brellat's tale i did not get the modern perspective and that it is to the films detrement.

You held out longer than I did. I checked my phone about an hour in. I read the book last year so I knew the subject matter well but I didn't really feel this needed a movie adaptation. They should have explored the inner workings of the Magdalene laundry in more depth. As in the book, they skimmed over this so both the book and the film lost their impact. I've read a few Claire Keegan books and I feel the same way about all of them. They always feel unfinished. 

I really disliked The Room Next Door. It looked beautiful and had a very good cast, but that dialogue! It was so clunky and all that stuff about the Bloomsbury Group and later mention of Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn felt shoe-horned in. As did some of the issues. Poor John Turturro having to spout all that stuff about neo-liberalism. Honestly I spent some time wishing Martha would just take the pill! Such a shame as I have enjoyed a lot of Almodovar films over the years. But listening in to conversations in the Barbican toilets afterwards it was clear that some people loved it. So maybe it's just me.

It's November which means Channel 5 cracks out the Christmas TV movies. The one I watched today was Christmas in Notting Hill which had Killian Donnelly in a small role, it was filmed in Ireland because I assume for cost reasons.

I actually did like Small Things Like These.

Haven't felt that much atmospheric claustrophobia and simmering rage as a viewer in a long time. The film isn't as dynamic as you might want it to be given the searing subject matter, but as the title suggests, it focuses on the 'small things' that people would have been experiencing on the periphery of this formidable cultural tragedy.

A great companion piece for Peter Mullan's 'The Magdalene Sisters' in my opinion.

I went to see Blitz tonight at the Barbican - it seemed appropriate to see it at a place which was once a huge bomb site. I enjoyed it more than I expected. Having grown up in Stepney (I was born 18 years after the end of the war and our adventure playground was a on a piece of land that had once been blitzed housing) I was a bit worried that there might be too much Cockney bonhommie. But there wasn't and it was nice to see the very real Mickey Davies (known as Mickey midget) given some recognition. It is hard to see what it adds to the Second World War movie cannon - although it does, of course, incorporate the sorts of revisionist history which has now become commonplace (people behaved selfishly in the shelters for example, looting happened too). But it's properly involving, you are rooting for young George and it looks very beautiful.

showgirl I can't compare this to other Steve McQueen films as I can't recall any that I've seen. I loved his art project which took photos of school classes of London kids. The excitement in Tate Britain as groups of school kids looked for their photo - on a proper gallery wall - was contagious. I think with Blitz you just have to accept that it's not gritty. Reviews which have mentioned the Children's Film Foundation and the Railway Children are on to something. We were discussing the lack of grit on the way home. My husband, who at the time I met him (32 years ago) was writing a PhD on changes in social attitudes due to WWII, is easily angered by portrayals of 'everyone came together in the Blitz'. He thought McQueen's film was an admirable attempt to bring a more rounded picture to the big screen in a totally non art house way.

On a side note we are very much looking forward to Conclave because at the same time that my husband was researching his - currently film relevant - PhD, I was writing mine about the politics of the Catholic Church!