Hmmm, personally I loved Vengeance Most Fowl, especially all the easter eggs of previous Wallace and Gromit films starting with A Grand Day Out. I agree that the basic W&G theme of crazy capers packed with Rube Goldberg/Heath Robinson devices is in a bit of a groove by now, but it’s a groove I’m still very happy to be in.
I really enjoyed it too. I’m annoyed at myself for missing the ‘No Parkin’ ’ sign on the Lancashire-Yorkshire border though!
We Live In Time with Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh.
It’s a cancer film. One of the main characters gets cancer and the film is centered around that and the relationship between the two. The gimmick here is that the story is told non-linearly, but I didn’t find the jumping around difficult to follow or distracting.
I don’t know what to tell you. I enjoyed the film, the acting was good, the story was good, but it just felt like something we’ve seen many times before. I came away wanting to know more about one of the supporting characters (a chef named Jade) than about the two leads. Also, the girl playing the young daughter is freaking adorable.
We also watched We Live in Time last night. Who knew Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh could do English accents. 
Wikipedia has it as a romantic comedy-drama. IMDb has it tagged as a feel-good romance. This is really a serious movie. Large chunks of downer.
The jumping around in time is really annoying. Even within the 3 sub-stories it’s not linear.
Other than that it is a decent movie. If you’ve been watching The Bear, the chef still will resonate.
Give it 3 Weetabixs. (Weetabixi?)
Weetabixen.
I watched on DVD Macbeth (1948), starring Orson Welles, and Lucy (2014), starring Scarlett Johansson and Morgan Freeman.
A Complete Unknown I haven’t seen much discussion about this movie, released in the last week of 2024. It is a superior biopic by the director of I Walk the Line (Johnny Cash). It covers the time from when Dylan arrived in New York to his “going electric” at the Newport Folk Festival. While it bends some of the events and creates a character (closely modeled on Dylan’s first lover in New York, but renamed at Bob’s request), it remains a true account of Dylan’s life and growth during that time. It doesn’t hide the warts (Dylan was a snotty punk who invented his past, but was clearly the most talented musician in the room wherever he went). All of the leads do there own singing in the movie, with some amazingly good imitations (Dylan and Seeger) of the real performances and some acceptable ones (Joan Baez). It’s going to receive all sorts of awards and nominations. Highly recommended.
The Room Next Door A film about two friends getting together to reminisce and discuss the impending end of life of one. It’s a Pedro Almodóvar film, who is a remarkable director of women. He gets great performances out of Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton. If you are an Almodóvar fan, this is a must-see, but for the rest of you, if you like talky movies (think My Dinner With Andre) you’ll want to see it…
Santosh Definitely not Bollywood. An Indian film about systemic corruption, misogyny, racism, and several other isms in Indian law enforcement. Anchored by two riveting performances of a rookie cop and her mentor (of sorts), it tries to end hopefully, but it leaves the viewer feeling how hopeless things really are. I had a thought that “well, that’s India” during the movie, but sadly realized that with a few adjustments it could have been set in just about any country in the world (yes, including the US). I’m glad I saw it, but I don’t want to see it again.
Den of Thieves 2: Pantera The sequel no one was clamoring for. As a heist film its not too bad, with lots of tech and clever, suspenseful scenes. But the leads aren’t up to carrying the film when we aren’t in the heist scenes. Sean Bean as the grizzled veteran cop gone bad demonstrates he can’t banter or bring any kind of light touch or nuance to the role. Nepo baby O’Shea Jackson Jr. (Ice Cube’s son) who was so perfect for his role in the original, is not a very convincing suave action hero (no to mention he is so obviously out of shape that the role of cat burglar is laughable). The supporting cast is actually more interesting than the leads and I think it would have been a better movie if it had followed them more. Stream it if you are a completest or if you like heist scenes.
Nosferatu. Late to the party, I know, but FWIW I liked it. I particularly appreciated the subtle, situational humor in it. Specifically, the contrast between the “science” of the time (bloodletting, the idea that a corset might prevent a woman from going insane, the “modern” hospital, etc) and the occult/mythology stuff, which everyone knows is ridiculous (unlike all that well-established “science” stuff).
Oh, and Count Orlok commenting on those ignorant peasants and their terrible superstitions, digging up perfectly innocent vamp—I mean harmless corpses—and driving stakes through their heart (in a “he doth protest too much” sort of way).
Comedy gold!
The thing is - if it hadn’t jumped around, it would have been a far duller film. Because there was little new in it.
I started Furiosa, but it was just so hollow after Fury Road that I stopped it and turned on Godzilla x Kong : Frozen Boogaloo. Entertaining big monsters! The hyped team up comes far too late in the film, not enough Godzilla (though I guess he’s not big on personality anyway) and most of the “humor” from Brian Tyree Henry was meh.
Inna and I watched Minions on Netflix last night because she thinks they’re cute. And it was a cute movie, not deep at all, but enough sight and language gags to keep us entertained for 90 minutes. It was pretty much what one would expect and if you like the minions, you’ll enjoy this one, and if you hate them, please avoid.
(We also started Despicable Me, which we turned off after 15 minutes. It’s minions or nothing for my lady!)
Steve Jobs, the Michael Fassbender/Kate Winslet one. Despite the Minions movie above, Inna and I are kinda going through a “smart people doing smart things” phase… which really doesn’t describe Steve Jobs, but in a way, does. Anyway, I like this movie, would recommend it to anyone who likes films about assholes, business, or assholes in business. Netflix. I think.
Moneyball. (Netflix) See above, though the main characters aren’t assholes and the business is baseball. This should be seen on a double-bill with Trouble With The Curve, a Clint Eastwood film which takes the counter-argument to Moneyball and mangles it so badly that you’re glad the Moneyball guys won out.
The Town. Friday night crime drama lights, I don’t think this one is as good as the Rewatchable guys claim, but it’s still an enjoyable 2 hours.
Schindler’s List. Halfway made it through this before we turned on the lighter-hearted Games of Thrones. Inna saw a Soviet-made film about Oskar Schindler which apparently made him out to be a saint. She was rather shocked by Spielberg’s film which portrays Schindler as a money-loving playboy who didn’t really care about the Jews at all until (events). Might finish it tonight, might finish it this weekend.
This is a deeply terrible movie, except for maybe Amy Adams. And it’s always fun to watch Matthew Lilliard play an asshole who will eventually get his comeuppance.
I’m on a panel about the recently-deceased Roger Corman next week at Arisia, so I dug out my old Corman movies and watched Not of This Earth (the original 1956 Corman-directed version, not either of the remakes) and a documentary about Corman.
I note that Corman regular Jonathan Haze (who’s in NotE, playing a tough, aggressive character rather than his usual schnook) also died last year, on November 24 at the age of 95.
I’ve been wondering if the time-jumping was one of those pitch meeting things.
Exec: sounds a lot like Love Story and a bunch of other stuff.
Pitcher: But, but … it’s not linear!
Exec: Sold.
I didn’t personally see it, but I can report that my daughter and her husband saw Better Man. They had a date night at the cineplex, where once a week they have a $5 mystery movie (as in you don’t know what movie you’re going to see until it starts). We don’t know who Robbie Williams is, but he’s a “thing” in the UK, and this was his life story. According to my daughter, something about animated monkeys and angels and such. A few couples walked out in the middle, but she said it was good. I can hardly wait to see it myself.
As film reviews go, that’s hilarious.
Better Man is yet another rock biopic, this time about pop star Robbie Williams who got started as a member of boyband Take That - which was freaking huge in the UK in the 1990s and got virtually no traction in the States - and then launched a solo career - which was freaking huge in the UK in the 1990s and got virtually no traction in the States. And then he sort of faded from the scene. I’ve seen some footage of his live festival shows, and he was quite a good showman with a lot of energy, even if the songs were nothing to write home about.
The gimmick in the film is that Williams is played by an anthropomorphic monkey (from the trailers I think everyone else is a normal human). I’d marked it down as “worth watching once it hits the streaming services but not interesting enough to pay to see it in the cinema”. We’ll see.
All I’ve seen / known about Better Man is what I’ve seen in trailers and ads. It looked to me like someone created an intelligent ape who became a rock star and showed intelligent apes are better than us hairless apes. To me, apparently, the adds aren’t doing the movie justice. Yesterday, my wife gave me the choice of Better Man and A Complete Unknown. I chose Bob Dylan over a monkey man, which from the ads has the possibility of being really stupid. I thoroughly enjoyed A Complete Unknown, but all of this makes me think Better Man might not be a bad movie.
I believe that the ape protagonist in Better Man is to symbolize the way Robbie Williams sees himself compared to others (a freak, an impostor who will be discovered at any moment). I thought it wouldn’t work in an otherwise “normal” rock bio pic, but I think it actually does. For those who haven’t seen it, the ape is in no way viewed that way by anyone else in the movie. None of the dialog makes any mention of his “apeness”.
My partner and I watched Better Man at the cinema yesterday. Well worth watching and doesn’t pull any punches. Robbie clearly ok with confirming to everyone that he was indeed a bit of a sh*t. If you’re not familiar with the man though, it might be rather bewildering. I knew he was far more well known in the UK (and probably other parts of Europe) but hadn’t realised he was that obscure in the US?
It’s possible I have never in my life heard of this guy, or the band he was in.