What films have you watched recently?

Brio

In the court of the Crimson King. King Crimson at 50

I'm a massive Crimson fan and approached this with trepidation. It is simply brilliant. The band seems like a bunch of very determined individuals who have problems with each other but still manage to produce Crimson's challenging music.
Fascinating interviews with everyone cover a lot of ground and make you wonder how they can still keep doing it.
Brilliant but I'm a massive fan. Probably awful if you're not.

I watched Moonage Daydream and that did nothing for me. Bowie fans seem to love it so it is definitely horses for courses.

10/10 for fans as long as you aren't expecting a lot of music.
4/10 for non fans for the way it shows how a great band (IMHO) may not be the place to work.

ICBM

On Danny's recommendation - and because it has Colin Firth and Olivia Colman in it, so MrsICBM was interested - Mothering Sunday

Drama about a domestic servant in the aftermath of WWI, with a couple of families coming to terms (or not) with losing their sons in the war.

Yes, there is a huge amount of nudity, but after a short while it's actually not intrusive despite the main character (Odessa Young) spending about half the film naked. Interestingly the film was both written and directed by women. Aside from that...

It's beautifully directed and shot, and although slow the way it jumps around in time means you have to pay attention, and of course there's a twist in the tale. (Although not the one I was expecting.) The acting is absolutely top-notch too - Firth and Colman only have fairly minor parts, but they're absolutely outstanding, a masterclass in subtlety and emotion.

So if you like slow, arty emotional drama and aren't easily put off by - to be honest, largely unnecessary! - nudity, then I would recommend it .

8/10

(Netflix)

Winny_Pooh

Banshees of Inisherin 8/10
Excellent acting holds it all together, gratuitous ick in places. Interesting metaphor for the internal world of relationship breakdowns. Adorable donkey. Almost as good as 3 billboards.

Crimes of the future 4/10
Dated feeling. Artistically reaching but despite 2 leads leads adding gravitas (and an unspeakably bad Kristen Stewart character) it's ultimately a silly B movie.

Zootropolis 9/10
Sharp script, brilliant visuals, fun.

The Batman 6.5/10
Does what you expect from a modern thriller but loses out on undeveloped psychological tension and character involvement.

The worst person in the world 7.5/10
Well acted and scripted Norwegian coming of age story.

Memoria 7/10
Slow slow slow, some affecting scenes. Swinton has been better in other movies but still good. Recommended if you have much patience and a taste for otherworldliness.

goldtop

We've got Mothering Sunday lined up. Plus the new Ada Driver movie. 

But we just watched Glass Onion (Netflix). Witty, fast-paced and featuring Elon Musk (not really, but clearly - despite the director's panic back-tracking). I like that Daniel Craig is getting even more camp than in Knives Out, and the cameos were fun. The big explanation towards the end was far too long, though, and it needed a better twist than the sign-posted ending. But 7/10

BigBearKris

goldtop said:

We've got Mothering Sunday lined up. Plus the new Ada Driver movie. 

But we just watched Glass Onion (Netflix). Witty, fast-paced and featuring Elon Musk (not really, but clearly - despite the director's panic back-tracking). I like that Daniel Craig is getting even more camp than in Knives Out, and the cameos were fun. The big explanation towards the end was far too long, though, and it needed a better twist than the sign-posted ending. But 7/10

Really mixed reviews of this film. 


We watched ''Stranger'' (2022 - Netflix) Two men who meet on a bus and strike up a conversation that turns into friendship. For Henry Teague, worn down by a lifetime of physical labour and crime, this is a dream come true.

Based on true story, and a book by Kate Kyriacou - about the abduction and murder of 13yo boy in Australia.

Good thriller and well acted - Starring Joel Edgerton and Sean Harris.

Strong 7.125/10

SteveRobinson

Haych said:

Glass Onion

... poor old Edward Norton is acting his socks off but his character is so bizarre that he stands not a chance of being convincing. 

He reminded me too much of Colin from Two Doors Down

SteveRobinson

Petite Maman

Delightful French timeslip story. Short but so perfect.

10/10

boogieman

Brio said:

In the court of the Crimson King. King Crimson at 50

I'm a massive Crimson fan and approached this with trepidation. It is simply brilliant. The band seems like a bunch of very determined individuals who have problems with each other but still manage to produce Crimson's challenging music.
Fascinating interviews with everyone cover a lot of ground and make you wonder how they can still keep doing it.
Brilliant but I'm a massive fan. Probably awful if you're not.

I watched Moonage Daydream and that did nothing for me. Bowie fans seem to love it so it is definitely horses for courses.

10/10 for fans as long as you aren't expecting a lot of music.
4/10 for non fans for the way it shows how a great band (IMHO) may not be the place to work.

Another KC fanboy here and I’ve been debating whether to get this on dvd but some of the reviews have put me off. Did you see it at the cinema or on dvd @Brio ? The lack of music kind of puts me off too, but the extended dvd box set apparently has loads of live and studio material as an extra. 

SteveRobinson

Spirited (2022) - Apple TV

Dreadful.

Matilda (2022)  - Netflix, sort of

Worse. 

vanlooy1

Men - Amazon Prime

Very odd English folk horror with Jessie Buckley and Rory Kinnear.

Both unsettling and silly in equal measure!

SteveRobinson

vanlooy1 said:

Men - Amazon Prime

Very odd English folk horror with Jessie Buckley and Rory Kinnear.

Both unsettling and silly in equal measure!

I enjoyed this film. Weird but interesting.

Just about anything with Jessie Buckley is great. E.g. Wild Rose is a fab film. 

vanlooy1

Yeah was strangely compelling and beautifully shot and yes Jessie Buckley is excellent. I’ll have to check out Wild Rose.

Stratavarious

The Lady Vanishes.. 1938

Still a classic.   

 8/10

axisus

Winny_Pooh said:

Almost as good as 3 billboards.

I read all your mini-reviews, interesting of course, but just picking up on that phrase ..... that was a very good film but I probably wouldn't watch it again. I found the central premise of the storyline harrowing, I didn't like Woody Harrelson's story and I found the ending very unsatisfying. Same bracket for me as Pan's Labyrinth, an amazing film that I could never watch again.

Emp_Fab

"Non-Stop" with Liam Neeson and Julianne Moore.  A plane hijack thriller.

Without doubt the biggest pile of absolute dog shit I've ever had the misfortune to watch.

Just beyond awful.

Haych

Emp_Fab said:

"Non-Stop" with Liam Neeson and Julianne Moore.  A plane hijack thriller.

Without doubt the biggest pile of absolute dog shit I've ever had the misfortune to watch.

Just beyond awful.

Agreed. Liam Neeson is in danger of going the same way as Bruce Willis with his spate of dire, low budget action films of recent years. 

RocknRollDave

RocknRollDave said:

fretmeister said:

RocknRollDave said:

The Phantom Menace.

Having agreed to watch all the Star Wars movies again over the Xmas break, I was somewhat horrified that my other half insisted on doing them in chronological order, in terms of the story itself, rather than starting with the original Star Wars film.

Hence I’ve been putting it off until after xmas…

but….well, it’s no classic, there are some huge casting missteps and it’s obviously flawed, but if you let that go and take it for what it is.. it’s enjoyable enough.

Should be in the machete order.

https://www.t3.com/news/star-wars-machete-order

4,5 to start. Than 2,3 as flashbacks. Then 6,7,8,9

Bin 1 completely as it does nothing for the story and then removed the midichlorians and most of jar jar.

It also preserves the Vader / Luke reveal.

That makes sense, but I’m not in control of the remote control box in my own house. 

Have now followed this up with Attack of the Clones, which was OK-ish, and Revenge of the Sith, which was a little better - neither of which I’d seen in full before. All three prequel movies are utterly superfluous in the series, of course, although Revenge… does have more of a case to argue for, in that respect.

Tonight, we watched Solo. A far, far better film than the prequels. Baffled by its flop status. I think if it were released now as a Disney+ series rather than back then as a cinema movie, it would fare much better.

Grangousier

If you've seen a trailer for White Noise and thought it would annoy the hell out of you, you're right. I quite like that sort of thing - Don de Lillo, who wrote the novel it's based on, and similar stuff like David Foster Wallace and Thomas Pynchon - and I enjoyed it, but it does ramble somewhat, and the things I enjoyed are sort of incidental things. Wes Anderson and David Lynch in equal measure.

I'm also one of those people who liked Glass Onion a lot.

And In the Court of the Crimson King was great, I thought (we watched the live stream, and my wife got the blu-ray boxed set, which includes live performances and out-takes). Not one of yer typical BBC4 Friday evening documentaries, but all the better for that. Robert being spiky, Adrian being annoyed, Bill B being sardonic, lots of testimony to the difficulty of being in King Crimson and a rather moving section devoted to Bill Rieflin. And there's a very long pause which is Robert quoting a very long pause by someone else, which isn't something I've seen before. 

Philly_Q

I've watched loads of films over Christmas, but tonight, because I promised a friend I would watch them before going back to work, I've watched...

Home Alone
Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

I'd never seen them before, although of course I had some idea what they were about... I wasn't really expecting the odd mix of two-thirds mild, sentimental family comedy to one-third cartoon violence.  I enjoyed the cartoon violence because I'm a sicko, but it really is kind of shocking at times (Disney+ rates both films for ages 6+!).  The second film takes everything from the original and turns it up to eleven, but they both work, just about.

stickyfiddle

RocknRollDave said:

 

 
Tonight, we watched Solo. A far, far better film than the prequels. Baffled by its flop status. I think if it were released now as a Disney+ series rather than back then as a cinema movie, it would fare much better.

Solo is not actually bad at all, aside from a little bit too much fan service. It (relatively) flopped because it came a few months after The Last Jedi, which was divisive (to say the least!) and certainly a far cry from Empire Strikes Back. 

I'm well convinced movies only do as well at the box office as the quality of the one before. e.g. Matrix 2 did 750m despite being rubbish. Matrix 3 did 425m because Matrix 2 was shit. Same for the various ups and downs of the X-Men series. 

TFA did 2.0bn, Rogue One made 1.0bn then TLJ did 1.3bn (because TFA was ok but not spectacular), Solo did 400m, and TROS got 1.0bn, which is the lowest of the trilogy but more than Solo because I guess people were invested in seeing the end of the story.