Happened to turn on theTV this afternoon and caught the start of David Lean’s “great expectations”.
Never seen it before but I thought it was rather wonderful. I came away from it with something niggling at the back of my mind and finally put a form to it. After seeing what they did with the source material of “True Grit” and their re-working of Homer’s Odyssey, I wonder what The Coen brothers could do with Dickens?
I reckon that’d be something to savour.
Last night it was Miracle on 34th Street.
I watched It Comes at Night, and was sadly disappointed. The best I can say is the acting was fine.
Went to see Spider-Man: No Way Home. It is sorely testing my previously-held view that Into the Spiderverse is the best Spider-Man film.
Not gonna spoil anything, but will note that IMO the level of writing and acting has really been going up in the MCU films, with a long scene of three characters just hanging out and talking right before the main battle being astoundingly good, and my favorite moment in the film. I mean, it still has plenty of the usual action sequences and superhero cliches but there are a lot of funny and/or clever and/or genuinely poignant moments throughout. I think Benedict Cumberbatch draws the short straw here as he’s basically just used to create the plot and then sidelined for much of the film and as such his writing is the weakest, but there is plenty of better fare, including a couple of genuine star turns from the villains. Highly recommended if you’re into the MCU films.
(And yes, there are stingers - I won’t give away the mid-credits one, but the end-credits one is just a trailer for the next Doctor Strange film. )
The three older girls weren’t Richard’s children. They were Brandy’s children from her first marriage (which ended when her first husband died). In the movie Richard claims that he formed a plan to make Venus and Serena great tennis players before they were even born.
I watched First Love (2019) on UK TV. It’s from prolific Japanese film maker Takashi Miike who usually turns out at least a half dozen films a year and is at well over a hundred in his lifetime. It’s Japanese language with subtitles.
With so many films he’s covered most genres but this plot is right in his comfort zone. A young boxer with an inoperable brain tumour and a drug addled prostitute get caught up in a double cross being waged between Japanese gangsters, Chinese gangsters and a corrupt policeman.
Despite his throughput Miike has a remarkably impressive quality control. The production values are high. One big stunt looked CGI and an even bigger stunt cheekily switched to deliberate cartoon animation. But otherwise there were no glaring limitations in the budget.
The film is violent (including a couple of heads being severed) but includes humour. It made me smile a couple of times. The humour isn’t being used to soften the violence.
My conclusion is it was good, it entertained where so many films these days disappoint. But… It was resolutely ‘good’ and I can’t help but speculate whether, if he reduced his work rate, could Miike have made a GREAT film?
TCMF-2L
Fire in the Sky (1993).
An alien abduction movie. I watched it about a month ago. The reviews were lukewarm, so I wasn’t expecting much. But it was a very well done movie, IMO. What I like most is that it focused on the skeptical reactions of the townsfolks afterwards rather than the abduction itself. In that sense, I really wouldn’t call it a science fiction film, though the brief scenes inside the spacecraft were excellent, and downright frightening. Acting is superb. I liked it so much that I watched it again last night, with my son. He also enjoyed it.
I watched that movie many years ago. It was great fun and I agree the spacecraft scene was a great cinematic experience even though I think the Travis Walton story is total BS. The scepticism, anger and fear depicted by the actors playing his co-workers was great too.
Oh, I totally agree; the “based on a true story” is mostly B.S., since the real Travis Walton is a bullshitter. None-the-less, I found the movie to be very good.
Watched a movie called The Green Room. Strange film, but somewhat original. A punk band gets held hostage till they can be murdered for witnessing a crime by Neo-nazis. It actually wasn’t too bad, but the end kinda falls apart, but it held my interest. Spoiler: Sir Patrick Steward makes a GREAT Skinhead Boogyman!
Wise decision. That movie sucks Trucker Ass.
Watched a movie called The House on Skull Mountain (1974).
Features an almost entirely black cast. Four cousins are invited to visit an elderly relative named Pauline whom none of them knew before. Nor did they know each other. Three of them are black and one is white. At the big house up in the mountains they find out Pauline has died and after her burial the matter turns to her will. Which sets off a chain of unexpected events.
There are some clearly outdated tropes because it features the use of voodoo and one uncomfortable scene in particular went on for what seemed like a loop. And the premise of the movie wasn’t very hard to figure out or very exciting but I thought the acting performances and location made it worth the while.
Scream 3
Terrible. I had no idea it was this bad. Scream movies are way overrated. It is not a good sign when Jamie Kennedy is the funniest/best thing in your movie and he is only in it for 5 minutes.
Skip it!
We just watched “Eye in the Sky.” Rickman and Mirren. Edge of your seat stuff.
I saw that when it was released. It was a good movie and sort of presented an example of the trolley problem. (BTW, I think it was Alan Rickman’s last movie.)
Speaking of Hans Gruber (Rickman), don’t forget to que up Die Hard on your christmas viewing list. Remember, it’s not really Christmas until Hans falls from the Nakatomi building.
Last night we watched the movie version of Dear Evan Hansen
My wife and daughter had seen the stage production of the musical and liked that a lot.
I am not a big musical fan, but really enjoyed Tick Tick Boom, and have watched a few other film versions of musicals. I can enjoy them
This , no one liked. If you dont know the musical / theme , well it’s a bit dark, but the stage production etc handles it all well apparantly.
This was just flat , the syncing of the singing to the actors actions was terrible, and Ben Platt, who was acclaimed for his performance in the musical, was the main character, on screen looked like he was just talking and standing still, whilst coming out of his mouth was full throated energetic vocals. It was the same for all the other characters , the singing was so clearly dubbed and there was no motion, action or any acknowledgement in the visual action that it was a musical just people acting as if they were talking whilst singing a musical number.
If you liked the the musical , I doubt you will like this, if , ike me you are ambivalent about musicals but can get behind a good performance, go watch tick tick boom and steer well clear of this. If you dont like musicals, why have you not already scrolled past ?
Tonight we just watched Official Secrets.(Netflix)
A movie based on a true story of a GCHQ analyst in the UK who leaked a memo from the NSA to UK intelligence to gather whatever they could on various member of the security council in the run up to the Iraq war to get leverage over members of the security council to get the needed votes
All well acted , well produced based on a true story so a bit ")’ by the numbers’ . Now the good gals n guys are clearly good , and the bad gals and guys are clearly not at all nice. Ordinarily one might think that would show a lack of depth, thoughtfulness and complexity in the filmmaking. In this case, alas, it is just sadly very true of the reality, they just were that bunch of lying malignant arseholes ( the bad gals n guys that is)
I don’t know anything about Dear Evan Hansen besides the songs I’ve heard while listening to the Broadway station on Sirius XM, and had already decided it wouldn’t be my cup of tea. Now with your confirmation, I’ll be sure to give it a miss.
I watched Mary Poppins last night with the kids, none of us had seen it before.
My thoughts? long and mental, without a properly coherent story and with not as many good songs as I thought there might be.
I saw Nightmare Alley yesterday. It was directed by Guillermo del Toro and starred Bradley Cooper and Cate Blanchett and is the second film adaptation of a 1946 novel of the same name. It was good, though seeing the director’s name, I assumed there was a supernatural element to the story, but there was not.