Tag: weekly rundown

Weekly Rundown 21st-27th January 2013

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Django Unchained

Mixed thoughts – it is a little long and has a few other problems here and there but I enjoyed it a lot.

Piano 17

Not as good as I’d been led to believe but an OK crime caper with TV production values. The subtitles were pretty awful but it encouraged me to turn them off for better Italian practice 🙂

Lincoln

Would have liked this a lot more if it hadn’t been for the ever present John Williams score. Excellent script, excellent performances and excellent filmmaking but somehow it falls on the slightly trite side for me.

The Blue Angel

Der Blaue Engel

Eureka’s new Blu Ray edition of the first collaboration between Von Sternberg and Dietrich. I’ve only watched the German version so far but this is an excellent transfer and of course the film is essential viewing. Tony Rayns’ commentary track is worth the price of admission alone!

Once Upon a Honeymoon

Being a lover of screwball comedies and not having heard of this one I dutifully went down to the BFI during their screwball comedy season to give this a go. There was a reason I’d never heard of it – IT IS AWFUL. At one point the leads get sent to a concentration camp by mistake which is every bit as funny as it sounds. Accidentally offensive, totally not funny and with the least interesting romance ever committed to celluloid I feel it is my duty to strongly recommend you DO NOT EVER WATCH THIS FILM!

 

Watch Bringing Up Baby instead. It’s the funniest film ever made – that’s how you make a screwball comedy!

Piccadilly

Another choice offering from Mubi, BFI’s recent restoration of the 1929 silent film. The credits included those for the new score but there was no sound at all when I streamed it so I watched totally silent. Excellent cinematography and an almost proto-noir atmosphere make this a very interesting late silent feature.

Clone

Womb

Weird film about a woman who gives birth to the clone of her recently deceased boyfriend and then continues to feel conflicted about it forever. Weird, just weird. Doesn’t really engage with any of the issues you might expect it to raise so obsessed is it with its own weirdness! It’s quite forgettable as a consequence.

Weekly rundown 17-23 December 2012

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Goodness, I’m late already and this is only the second time I’ve done this! Must do better! Oh well, not so many films this week what with Christmas fast approaching – not sure how many I’ll get to see over the festive period as I’m staying with family so it’ll probably be mostly old favourites. My family don’t really share my taste in films so much but I’ve bought my mother some Scandinavian thrillers which she really likes at the moment (unfortunately we seem to have exhausted the available French policiers which are her favourite!) so hopefully we’ll be able to fit some of those in.

Yakuza Graveyard

Yakuza no hakaba: Kuchinashi no hana

やくざの墓場　くちなしの花

Eureka DVD

The second film in Eureka’s first Fukasaku box set, now OOP, and another genre classic from the prolific director. Police Corruption and Yakuza honour play out as mirror images as a complicated policeman ends up caught between two worlds.

Smuggler

HK Blu Ray

Slightly disappointing film from Katsuhito Ishii, director of The Taste of Tea, which sees Satoshi Tsumabuki’s failed actor being unwittingly forced into the criminal underworld. Unfortunately this is a film that might have benefitted from being more absurd as the darkness of the story and the humour of the script/direction never really gel. Still, the action scenes are entertaining and the performances are universally good it’s just a shame it never quite comes together.

The Silent War

Ting feng zhe 聽風者

HK Blu Ray

Chinese late ’40s war film about radio telephonists and code breaking – lacking in tension and high on propaganda it’s never quite as exciting as it promises to be.

Joyeux Noel

Film4

Maudlin film about the 1914 Christmas truce. Excellent performances from the international (and often multi-lingual) cast can’t quite enliven the uneven, unsubtle scripting.

Babycall

Soda Pictures DVD

Odd Norwegian psychological thriller with Noomi Rapace where a brutalised woman trying to protect her son becomes increasingly paranoid and believes she overhears a murder on her baby monitor. The ‘twist’ can be seen a mile off but at the same time nothing is actually explained adequately at the end making this quite a frustrating experience despite Rapace’s excellent performance.

Weekly Rundown 10-16th December

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Seeing as I never have time to write about half the films I’d like, I thought I’d try keeping a weekly list of all the films I’ve watched during the week – mostly first time views with the occasional old favourite, plus anything else that crops up. I’ll just write a few words about each of them and expand some into full reviews.

Pickpocket

BFI – Passport to Cinema screening

I haven’t made things easy for myself have I? Bresson’s tale of redemption through love reads like a mid twentieth century French Crime & Punishment but is full of Bresson’s usual spiritual complexity. The pickpocketing scenes take on a sort of balletic quality and almost glamourise the crime being committed but leave the audience in no doubt that it is also a violation. Elusive but essential.

The Family Friend

L’amico di famiglia

Curzon on Demand

Not as beguiling as The Consequences of Love or as studied as Il Divo, Sorrentino’s The Family Friend is a modern day fairy tale with a central character so loathsome it’s difficult to see how the audience is expected to endure a whole film in his company. Certainly a very strange film but very Sorrentino and all the more welcome for it.

Battles Without Honour and Humanity

Jingi naki tatakai 仁義なき戦い

MOC DVD

An out and out classic, Fukasaku’s Battles Without Honour and Humanity is a landmark Yakuza movie that shows the gangster lifestyle for what it really really is – senseless violence fuelled by pride and greed. It was so successful it spawned FOUR sequels (and I can’t wait to watch them all)!

!I’m sorry about the weird aspect ratio and the German subs but it seems like there’s no other footage around!)

The Hobbit

Odeon Leicester Sq, HFR 3D

Full review already up, short story – eh, it was OK.

Life of Pi

Odeon Covent Garden

I’d heard really mixed things about Ang Lee’s latest but actually I was pleasantly surprised. Nowhere near as profound as it seems to want to be but the visuals are truly astounding. Look out for a full review soon.

Magic Mike

Mubi

Came up as Mubi’s film of the day and having heard quite positive things about it I decided to give it a go despite my misgivings – unfortunately my I should listened to my intuition, this film did nothing for me and I’m baffled by some of the critical praise.

Thermae Romae

HK Blu Ray

Hilarious movie about a Roman bath architect who accidentally time travels to modern Japan, steals all their modern bath technology and so ends up having to design baths for Hadrian and some of his cronies. Full review coming soon but this is so much fun!

35 Shots of Rum

35 Rhums

Channel 4 HD

Claire Denis’ homage to Ozu’s Late Spring set in a French lower class tower block – to quite as moving as Ozu’s film but brings its own lyrical sense of transience with perhaps more of a political component than you would generally find in an Ozu film.

Midnight Express

Film4

An oscar winner much trumpeted in its time that helped to jump start Alan Parker’s career but more than thirty years on it’s starting to feel its age and its extremely harsh view of the Turkish people is quite difficult to take.

The Keep

Film 4

Apparently the full version of this film was close to three hours long but studio execs were so unhappy with it they hacked it down to 90 minutes! It’s quite obvious a lot of material is missing and the film doesn’t really make that much sense but then how much sense do you really expect a movie about a strange rubbery monster accidentally let out of its cage by a bunch of greedy nazis to make?