Return of the RECENT VIEWING

[Darkness_Fish]

Picked this pretty much at random while trying to find the usual weekend horror film to chat through, and was really quite impressed. It doesn't do anything particularly original, a found-footage horror-flick following the set-up of a Halloween-night haunted house attraction in an abandoned hotel. But what it does do, is do the unoriginal really well. No CGI (so far as I noticed, and I normally do), no pointless jump-scares, just understated creepiness which properly freaks the cast out.

[Butch Manly]

Loved it. Blubbed like a baby.

[the masked man]

The Hourglass Sanitorium

Have you ever watched a film where you felt that a lack of understanding of the culture it comes from is a serious problem? This was the case with this colourful Polish fantasy directed by Wojciech Has in the early 70s. Based on the writings of Bruno Schulz, a Polish writer of Jewish heritage who was killed during WWII, this is a picaresque tale that frequently lost me. The set-up was good - a man takes a bleak train journey to visit a sanatorium where his father is dying. Yet, once inside the institution, he finds that the normal rules of time are suspended and that he is re-visiting his own past in a fantastical manner. He flits from scene to scene, finding his father, an eccentric ornithologist, let loose in an attic. He also spars with a teenage philatelist, who may possibly be a youthful version of himself.

There is some humour here, and a lot of oddness. The film also has serious reflections on the Holocaust (and more general warfare) at times, and these are the film's best moments. Yet I rarely felt this was more than the sum of the parts, and I feel the problem could be mine. I was actually reminded of films Fellini made in the 70s and 80s after his imperial phase had ended, in that it was always imaginatively staged yet somehow failed to really move me. Still, if you like Buñuel or Gilliam, you are likely to find this film diverting.

[Snarfyguy]

^^^ That sounds intriguing, thanks!

Meanwhile,



This has been playing in the background at Snarfy Manor for a while now. It appears to be some kind of stoner movie for children.

[Goat Boy]

I walked out of that Polish film

[Matt Wilson]

The Hospital
Black comedy by Paddy Chayefsky written a few years before Network (which shares many similar plot elements). George C Scott gives one of his signature performances (and the last of his four nominated ones) and Diana Rigg is on hand as a too-young love interested. Much of it prescient, it nonetheless is more interesting than funny.

[Darkness_Fish]

Tom's doing some Greek mythology at school, so why not introduce him to the classics, Harryhausen style. Whatever anyone says, I still much prefer stop-motion to CGI, any day.

[pcqgod]

Lady Bird (2017)

Saoirse Ronan plays what I imagine is a typical American Catholic school senior; she's somewhat rebellious, tries to be a bad-ass to hit it off with "cool" students, tries hard to be an individual (going so far as insisting that she be called by her self-chosen nickname), is rather insensitive at times, mediocre student, wants to go to a college far from home to get away from her mom who is a total drag -- at least in her teenage mind. You could criticize this comedy/drama by saying that it falls into the pattern of some dramatic character clash/falling out being defused by a light comic moment, or by its embrace of conservative values, but Ronan's performance is so charming that you can't help rooting for her and loving the journey her character takes.

[PENK]

Saoirse Ronan plays what I imagine is a typical American Catholic school senior; she's somewhat rebellious, tries to be a bad-ass to hit it off with "cool" students, tries hard to be an individual (going so far as insisting that she be called by her self-chosen nickname), is rather insensitive at times, mediocre student, wants to go to a college far from home to get away from her mom who is a total drag

... is 23 years old...

[pcqgod]

Saoirse Ronan plays what I imagine is a typical American Catholic school senior; she's somewhat rebellious, tries to be a bad-ass to hit it off with "cool" students, tries hard to be an individual (going so far as insisting that she be called by her self-chosen nickname), is rather insensitive at times, mediocre student, wants to go to a college far from home to get away from her mom who is a total drag

... is 23 years old...

I'd have figured older as it seems I've been seeing her in theatrical releases for years and years now. Completely believable as a teenager and as an American, however.

[Matt Wilson]

double post

[Matt Wilson]

Night of the Iguana

I've always enjoyed this. One of Tennessee Williams' best film adaptations with Burton, Kerr and Gardner all in fine form. It needs an upgrade to blu.

[Tom Waits For No One]

Smashing.

[Matt Wilson]

The Seven Year Itch

One of Billy Wilder's most successful films is remembered primarily today for one thing and one thing only - Marilyn Monroe. She was never more sexy than in this picture. This is the one where she stands over the subway grate and the air blows her dress up (causing Joe DiMaggio to divorce her, I might add). It looks great on blu with the Cinemascope widescreen photography but the movie itself is only so-so. But Marilyn, good Lord...

[toomanyhatz]

Saoirse Ronan plays what I imagine is a typical American Catholic school senior; she's somewhat rebellious, tries to be a bad-ass to hit it off with "cool" students, tries hard to be an individual (going so far as insisting that she be called by her self-chosen nickname), is rather insensitive at times, mediocre student, wants to go to a college far from home to get away from her mom who is a total drag -- at least in her teenage mind. You could criticize this comedy/drama by saying that it falls into the pattern of some dramatic character clash/falling out being defused by a light comic moment, or by its embrace of conservative values, but Ronan's performance is so charming that you can't help rooting for her and loving the journey her character takes.

I loved it, and disagree that it embraces conservative values. I think it portrayed her rebellion very honestly - as a confused by-product of adolescence, switching on a dime from wise to childish, from naive to thoughtful, from loving to angry. And I suppose there was a bit of cliche in how she related to the mom - so alike that they see their own weaknesses in each other, which can't help but make them butt heads - but it also felt quite realistic. I almost felt like it was a live action Simpsons in a way. For all their internal battles, they're also sometimes united in battle against the world.

I don't want to say too much as it might give too much away, but I thought it was very subtle and pulled back every time it seemed like it was going to become too sentimental or too dark-humored. The pain and the humor co-existed quite naturally.

And Ronan is fantastic. I love that two years down the road from playing a young adult in "Brooklyn" she's playing a teenager believably.

[Dr Markus]

Smashing.

Good to hear. Looking forward to seeing this.

[Darkness_Fish]

Low-budget British black-comedy horror thing, a kind of Sweeney Todd meets Taxi Driver effort, where a young Asian kebab shop owner wreaks vengeance on the drunk and drugged who enter late at night. It's a great premise, and a decent enough film (barring the obvious plot-holes - especially hoarding mobile phones and not being discovered), but it feels a bit aimless in the end. It just felt like it should have had more purpose, and more to say.

[Darkness_Fish]

I wasn't particularly impressed with this, it has a decent central performance form Emily Blunt, but the whole film felt like an extended episode of some daytime TV soap. The entire thing is constructed around a slow reveal from an unreliable narrator, and as such the film hangs around the plot device, rather than any particular character development, insight or intrigue. The only real moment of note was when you see how old Pheobe from Friends looks now.

[Snarfyguy]

Stunning, if hard to watch in places. A profoundly distressing social-realist horror film, its "show, don't tell" approach gives it an intriguingly elliptical quality, as if Robert Bresson had directed 10 Rillington Place. It's a superb performance from the ringleader of a series of murders, and the use of what surely are local, non-actors, gives it a striking verisimilitude.

[Goat Boy]

That movie blew me away when I first saw it and I've bigged it up on here before.

It's a great film with a level of naturalism that few movies can match. The lead actor should be a star.