Return of the RECENT VIEWING

[driftin]

Something of a pleasure compared to the recent slew of smugly bland 'live action' superhero flicks. Much more stylish and smart, the comic-book art aesthetic is carried through with aplomb. I felt the second half weakened a tad, the extra characters were a little silly and unnecessary, but I'd take this over another CGI mugfest anyday.

I thought it was pretty damn terrific. Not only is it really inventive visually, its story is just as over the top but at the same time manages to keep a sense of character development going and its message is lovely and wholesome. I only wish the villain was a little more developed but even that doesn't stop me from thinking this is the best superhero film since I can't remember and the best animated film in a couple of years.

[driftin]

Its editing and sound is still rather arresting almost 60 years later, even if it is more arch than meaningful.

[Snarfyguy]

Kind of a coming-of-age teen gross-out stoner comedy drama that's actually quite sweet.

[Matt Wilson]

Ingmar Bergman's Cinema

I just lost an essay where I dealt with the first nine films in this thirty nine film box. I hit submit and it didn't go through. Fuck it, I'm not gonna do that again. Needless to say, Criterion put this out a couple of months ago and I've been working my way through it ever since. Bergman is a maestro on the level of Hitchcock, Fellini, Kurosawa, etc. - a director who has made more than his share of classics and merely 'great' movies. An average film in his catalog is better than a good movie from most other auteurs if you follow me. He's not for everyone, as his relentlessly dour worldview permeates most all of his pictures - but if you're willing to go along, his talent is obvious. Anyone with Smiles of a Summer Night, Wild Strawberries, The Seventh Seal, Summer with Monika, Scenes from a Marriage, Fanny and Alexander, the Silence trilogy, The Virgin Spring, Persona, The Magic Flute, Cries and Whispers, Autumn Sonata, and many more on his resume must be conceded the stature of genius.

[Samoan]

The League of Gentlemen is a stylish comedy crime caper set in the 50's in London featuring a group of former army officers, disgruntled, disgraced and on their uppers. Led by Jack Hawkins, as Lieutenant-Colonel Hyde, a perfectly planned bank raid drawing on the gang's individual skills is almost pulled off. Delightfully funny, fast paced and very well acted. If you want a vicarious taste of tinned fruit salad dating back to the Boer War, this is the movie for you.

[Matt Wilson]

Gosford Park

Superb transfer from Arrow highlights this release of the last great Altman film. I recall there was some dissension here regarding the merits of this picture a month or so ago. Nonsense, it's easily amongst his better movies with a great Julian Fellowes screenplay serving as a dry run for the later Downton Abbey. There's even Maggie Smith doing her schtick and Ivor Novello is one of the characters who talk about him in Hitchcock's The Lodger. No less than three commentaries serve as icing on the cake. The Helen Mirren/Clive Owen denouement at the end was half the fun.

[Diamond Dog]

A documentary about "Sue" the greatest ever Tyrannosaurus Rex archeological find, in the Black Hills of Dakota, back in the early 90's..... and the incredible legal battle that then ensued (including prison time) over years, before the eventual sale at auction for over $7 million.

A fascinating film, with more skullduggery (see what I did there?) and plot twists than you'd have thought possible.

[Neige]

This was on TV last night, I expected it to be kitsch as hell, not to be moved by it as much as I was.




Beautifully filmed, the cast is fabulous and Saoirse Ronan just wonderful.

[pcqgod]

Vice (2018)

I was surprised to learn that this is a movie where the best bits are in the trailer. Not that it's bad, by any means. Cheney's career is traced from his days as a "ne'er-do-well" in the late 60's to his post-Whitehouse activities, and it's a fascinating story. Great performances from the primary cast. Some of the comedy bits seemed a bit unnecessary/superfluous to achieve the feel the film makers were after.

[driftin]

Decent story (for a comic book film) but with the usual snooze-worthy and overlong sequences of pixels punching each other.




Not as good as Spider-Verse obviously but it's probably the best of the MCU.

[Jimbly]

if only it was in black n white with no dialogue

[The Modernist]

I was so looking forward to this - Hoffman, PT Anderson, interesting subject matter..what could possibly go wrong?
Well superficially very little. The performances are great ( Phoenix's idiosyncratic performance takes some getting used to, but makes sense once you understand more about the character), it looks fantastic with beautiful, epic photography. The artistry and intelligence are evident throughout.
Unfortunately the narrative is lifeless, with little drama or momentum. Things should happen in the second half of the movie and they just don't. Instead Phoenix's character hangs around on the periphery of scenes like some prop before leaving for reasons the film never bothers to explore. One scene typifies the problems I had with this movie. Phoenix's character is put through a punishing mental exercise where has to repeatedly touch a wall and describe it. Much screen time is devoted to it so we assume it's important (especially as it comes near towards the end of the film). After he completes the exercise, after some real mental strain, we expect to see the consequences of what he's done. Has he achieved some illumination? Does passing the test mean he advances deeper into the cult? Does it drive him towards mental breakdown? Who knows because it then switches to something completely different.
I was left with a real vagueness of purpose, as if Anderson didn't know what he wanted to say. Shame, but certainly worth watching for Hoffman's performance.

[Darkness_Fish]

Slow-paced little psychological study, heavily influenced by Martin and Let the Right One In, both of which are name-checked in the film. Milo is a disturbed, isolated kid, probably autistic, who meets a similarly isolated new girl on the block, and a relationship of sorts is struck up. The lingering problem in the background, amidst the poverty, violence, and hopelessness of their impoverished lives, is that Milo is a serial killer who believes he is a vampire.

It does the standard art-house annoying stuff of long periods of silence and stilted odd conversations, but it also really hits hard with the brutality of both Milo's violence, and the hopelessness of their situation. The ending is genuinely touching, at odds with much of what went before. Quite an odd, unsettling, and uncertain little flick.

[algroth]

I was so looking forward to this - Hoffman, PT Anderson, interesting subject matter..what could possibly go wrong?
Well superficially very little. The performances are great ( Phoenix's idiosyncratic performance takes some getting used to, but makes sense once you understand more about the character), it looks fantastic with beautiful, epic photography. The artistry and intelligence are evident throughout.
Unfortunately the narrative is lifeless, with little drama or momentum. Things should happen in the second half of the movie and they just don't. Instead Phoenix's character hangs around on the periphery of scenes like some prop before leaving for reasons the film never bothers to explore. One scene typifies the problems I had with this movie. Phoenix's character is put through a punishing mental exercise where has to repeatedly touch a wall and describe it. Much screen time is devoted to it so we assume it's important (especially as it comes near towards the end of the film). After he completes the exercise, after some real mental strain, we expect to see the consequences of what he's done. Has he achieved some illumination? Does passing the test mean he advances deeper into the cult? Does it drive him towards mental breakdown? Who knows because it then switches to something completely different.
I was left with a real vagueness of purpose, as if Anderson didn't know what he wanted to say. Shame, but certainly worth watching for Hoffman's performance.

Yeah, I liked that overall but I very much felt like I came out from it with only what I brought in. I'm going by what I recall of my one viewing of it back when it was in theatres, but I reckon the point to the protagonist's seemingly ambiguous reaction to much of what he's exposed to in this cult is sort of the point, in as much as he's something of a broken and troubled man in search of meaning and guidance and desperate to the point of self-delusion to find these in this new religion. I reckon the reason for his seemingly stony, impenetrable reactions to these sessions, exercises and lectures was there to demonstrate that he indeed didn't achieve that state of illumination or transcendence, it all ended in further frustration basically. I recall feeling that the film sort of meandered about after a while, and that there was a particular scene in the desert, where Phoenix's character sort of breaks down and drives away on a motorbike, that I feel could have been a rather fitting and Antonioni-esque ending to the whole thing - the half-hour that came after that felt to me rather superfluous. Of the Anderson films I've seen (need to catch up with Inherent Vice and Hard Eight), it's at the bottom of the list for me without a doubt.

[driftin]

Best animated film of all-time? Probably. I watched the original Japanese one though, not the dubbed one with all those famous people in it.

[Snarfyguy]

Best animated film of all-time? Probably.

I didn't even think it was the best Miyazaki of all-time, but I did like it a lot (even if I don't actually remember it so well).

Meanwhile,



Remarkable. Starts out on a kind of Putney Swope tip, but veers into some places you did not see coming. Bracing and, in parts, hilarious, I thought.

[The Modernist]

Yeah, I liked that overall but I very much felt like I came out from it with only what I brought in. I'm going by what I recall of my one viewing of it back when it was in theatres, but I reckon the point to the protagonist's seemingly ambiguous reaction to much of what he's exposed to in this cult is sort of the point, in as much as he's something of a broken and troubled man in search of meaning and guidance and desperate to the point of self-delusion to find these in this new religion. I reckon the reason for his seemingly stony, impenetrable reactions to these sessions, exercises and lectures was there to demonstrate that he indeed didn't achieve that state of illumination or transcendence, it all ended in further frustration basically. I recall feeling that the film sort of meandered about after a while, and that there was a particular scene in the desert, where Phoenix's character sort of breaks down and drives away on a motorbike, that I feel could have been a rather fitting and Antonioni-esque ending to the whole thing - the half-hour that came after that felt to me rather superfluous. Of the Anderson films I've seen (need to catch up with Inherent Vice and Hard Eight), it's at the bottom of the list for me without a doubt.

I agree with those impressions. In many ways I think it might have been a more purposeful film had Hoffman's character been the main character rather than Phoenix's.
I've not seen Inherent Vice either, but Hard Eight is nothing to write home about. Very much a debut effort - interesting mainly to see so many of the actors who would become part of Anderson's stock repertory early in their careers

[Samoan]

Moonlighting stars Jeremy Irons as Nowak, master electrician, foreman and the only English-speaking member of a group of four Polish builders who arrive in London for a one month job in the early '80s. Solidarity had already been founded and is active back home.
Just a week into their renovation project, where they are all working, living and sleeping, martial law in Poland is imposed and Nowak goes to extraordinary lengths to keep the news completely hidden from his team so the highly paid job is completed on time and in budget. Understandably this leads to many farcical and humorous events and incidents during these grave, serious times in their homeland. A phenomenal film.

[Darkness_Fish]

Half-arsed gimmicky teen horror thing. They're conned into playing a game of Truth or Dare in an abandoned church in Mexico, and the consequences of refusing either is death. Watchable, but a bit rubbish.

[Minnie the Minx]

We watched The Swimmer with Burt Lancaster the other night. Baron hadn’t seen it before but I had, years ago. I did enjoy it but I forgot how utterly creepy he was in it at times, and I’m not sure that was intentional at the time.