![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I used to do 'movie of the week' back before lockdown when I went to the cinema most weeks with my moviebuddy, H. Instead of an in depth piece on each movie, here's what I recall... movies are not in any particular order...
We mask-up and go to the Showcase Cinema in Batley - one of those with luxury reclining seats and plenty of space. Still being Covid-careful, we usually go to an early showing on a Tuesday when there are few customers. Sometimes we even get the cinema to ourselves. We skip school holidays unless we're going to see something we think won't have kid-appeal.
- Top Gun - Maverick - Excellent. Tom Cruise looks hardly any older than he did in the first TG. How does he do it?
- Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness - Both strange and mad. Glad I saw it but I won't be rushing to watch it again.
- Downton Abbey, A New Era - Yeah I'm a Downton fan, so I lapped this up
- Fantastic Beasts, The Secrets of Dumbledore - Frankly a bit meh I keep trying to like the Fantastic Beasts films and failing.
- The Lost City - Excellent fun. Good cast. Sandra Bullock is always woth watching in these kind of caper movies. Dan Radcliffe makes a good villain.
- Dog - Channing Tatum was excellent, and so was the dog.
- The Duke - Very sweet. Jim Broadbent was delightful.
- Death on the Nile: Better than Orient Express though Brannagh's tash enters every room ahead of him.
- Morbius - Utterly forgettable. In fact I forgot everything about it and had to look it up online just to put it on this list
- Uncharted - Good fun, much better than I expected.
- Cyrano - Peter Dinklage is brilliant.
- Moonfall - totally forgettable
We mask-up and go to the Showcase Cinema in Batley - one of those with luxury reclining seats and plenty of space. Still being Covid-careful, we usually go to an early showing on a Tuesday when there are few customers. Sometimes we even get the cinema to ourselves. We skip school holidays unless we're going to see something we think won't have kid-appeal.
The original Blade Runner is so iconic that Blade Runner 2049 was marked on my calendar months ago, not least because Harrison Ford was reprising his role as Deckard. Ryan Gosling, plays Officer K, working for LAPD as a blade runner, and this time obviously a replicant himself. Replicants now are new models, designed to have no desire for independence and no tendency to rebellion.
I've been looking forward to the second Kingsman outing, not least because Harry Hart/Galahad (Colin Firth) is back despite having 'died' in the first movie. Well, you can't keep a good Kingsman down. (That's not a spoiler, he's on the poster.) This time Eggsy (Taron Egerton) and Merlin (the ultra-reliable Mark Strong, not playing a villain) end up in the USA with an organisation called Statesman when the Kingman organisation in the UK is effectively destroyed. The two organisations go after drug queen, Poppy, in the depth of the jungle, while she holds the world to ransome.
Judi Dench is always worth watching and she's obviously the go-to actor when there's a Queen Victoria role on offer. In this case it's the story of Victoria's later years, after the death of Albert, and after the death of John Brown (also filmed with Judi Dench as 'Mrs Brown'). Abdul became Victoria's friend an teacher - her munchi - much to the horror of the rest of the Queen's household, her advisors, politicians and - especially, Bertie, her son and heir. Based on a true story, the munchi was with the queen for the last 17 or 18 years of her life. Abdul Karim came from India as a servant and became her friend, opening her eyes to India. Abdul, played by Ali Fazal, winningly handsome, is a much more engaging proposition than images of the real Abdul. Eddie Izard does a good turn as the blustering Bertie. Judi Dench, is, of course, outstanding. I swear I could watch that woman read the telephone directory!
What's not to like about the 'Pirates' movie franchise. Yeah, okay, the first was the best. It's hard to match that reveal as Johnny Depp sails into the harbour on a sinking boat, but they've all got charm. And this one has the ending that we've been waiting for since Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann were separated by fate.
Tom Cruise in a remake of The Mummy should have been good, but somewhere along the road it lost the sense of humour that made the first Brendan Fraser Mummy movie so good. Don't get me wrong, this is a perfectly acceptable action flick, with some good special effects (the kind we take for granted these days) but it's not memorable.
As movies go this one wasn't as bad as some of the reviews I've seen. The real problem was that it tried to present itself as a King Arthur movie while abandoning all elements of the legend apart from the sword in the stone and the names Uther, Vortigern and - oh yes - Arthur. Merlin got a brief mention but all of the magic came from his apprentice, a witch (unnamed). If the movie had simply presented itself as a second world fantasy it might have been better received.
Anyone can save the Galaxy once... so second time around Star Lord has some additional help from old foes who become new allies - Nebula, Yondu and Mantis. Add to that a delightful Baby Groot. (How can an animated twig be so appealing?) Of course the original team - Peter's family - is still on board, Rocky, Gamora and Drax.
Gemma Arterton plays Catrin Cole, a newly appointed script writer working on wartime propaganda films in the middle of London in the Blitz. The Ministry of Information wants a film that the public will relate to, so when Catrin finds a tale of two sisters who took part in the Dunkirk evacuation they jump on it as a possible storyline. Working with fellow writer Tom Buckley (Sam Claflin) and over-the-hill actor Ambrose Hilliard (Bill Nighy) they gradually pull it all together, though not everything goes their way. Catrin faces many challenges, personal and professional but succeeds. The overall tome of the movie is sweet.
A live action remake of Disney's animated Beauty and the beast, complete with talking household knick-knacks and singing furniture. Emma Watson apparently turned down LaLa Land and that was a very wise decision. Her singing is excellent and she makes a very fetching Belle. Kevin Kline is very sweet as her dad and Luke Evans takes the mickey out of himself beautifully as the self-absorbed Gaston. Dan Stevens is the Beast/Prince, but to be honest it's hard to tell how much is him and how much is CGI.
Tom Hiddleston takes the weight of this film making a good action hero. A team of scientists go on an expedition to explore a hitherto uncharted island taking with them Hiddlestone as a jungle tracker, Brie Larson as a world-class photographer and a military flotilla of helicopters with a somewhat unstable commander. Of course, nothing goes according to plan. There are people on the island already - and the inevitable ape the size of a skyscraper who isn't the monster the military types suppose him to be. There's also a pilot who crashed there in World War Two who provides information and a boat (of sorts) when the mission turns into 'get out alive'. It's all a frothy bit of fun with explosions and dismemberments and the sort of thing you expect from a movie called Kong: Skull Island. Leave your critical brain at the door and collect it again on your way out.
Possibly the best Logan outing of them all featuring Old Man Logan after the rest of the X-men are history. Logan (Hugh Jackman) is trying to live as unobtrusively as possible, working as a driver to support a ninety year old Charles Xavier, Professor X (Patrick Stewart), who is frail and liable to dangerous psi-fits if he's off his meds. Caliban (Stephen Merchant) is helping out as a babysitter. Logan calms Charles with stories of the boat they'll buy when they have enough money, but of course this is just a pipe dream.
A couple of European mercenaries, journeying to China to find the secret of (or supplies of) black powder get embroled in a battle on the great wall to keep out creatures that rise every 60 years. Matt Damon plays William who finally finds a cause worth fighting for after many years of being a mercenary. It's a slight plot with lots of monster action and some breathtaking visuals. Despoite what I read in one review it's not 'white man shows the locals how to save themselves'. The locals are doing just fine on their own. Matt Damon is always worth watching so this was a good way to spend a wet Wednesday afternoon on the two-for-one deal.
We had to go to Sheffield to find a cinema showing this in an afternoon. (Wakefield, our usual venue) only had it on for one week in the evening.) It was worth the effort - well worth it. Based on the book by Margot Lee Shetterly, and starring Taraji P Henson as Katherine Johnson, Octavia Spencer as Dorothy Vaughan and Janelle Monae as Mary Jackson, this tells the true (more or less) story of three of the black women mathematicians (known as 'computers') who worked for NASA (pre electronic computers) and calculated the trajectories for the Americans first flights into space in the 1960s.
An animated movie from the creators of Despicable Me about a struggling theatre impressario in a city of humanoid animals, who dreams up a singing competition to bring in an audience and get his theatre out of a deep financial hole. From there we break out into the individual stories of the aspirants from Johnny (voiced by Taron Edgerton), the young gorilla who doesn't want to be in his dad's gang of robbers to Meena (Tori Kelly), the shy young elephant and Rosita (Reese Witherspoon) the pretty but put-upon pig housewife and mum who is so thoroughly taken for granted by her husband and kids that they don't even notice she's not there as long as her chores are done. Told as a live action movie without the animal aspects this would still be a pretty neat story, but the animation is delightful.
Honestly, if you want to see a 'good old Hollywood musical like they used to make, skip La La Land and buy a video of Singing in the rain instead. I'm not sure how LLL got all the hype - well, actually I am. Hollywood loves a self-referential movie. My cinebuddy H and I took a friend to cheer her up. Unfortunately I had to wake her up halfway through this as she was starting to snore. That's how riveting La La Land is. The singing is lacklustre, the songs both tiresomely repetitive and intantly forgettable at the same time. The story... well there isn't one really. Aspiring actress meets aspiring jazz musician. The ending? Somewhat downbeat, I thought. And it's about 30 minutes too long. Altogether it hasn't got much going for it. Kudos to Ryan Gosling's piano playing. They claim that the onscreen fingers are really his and that he learned jazz piano especially for the movie.
With plot holes you could drive a bus through this game-to-movie outing featuring Michael Fassbender in a 'shirt-off' role is what it is. I don't play the game (or any games) so whether it will suit game players who already know this world remains to be seen, but as a one-off cinematic event the action fairly rips along. There is - as you would imagine - a lot of posing on rooftops, hand to hand fighting and a plot with Jeremy Irons (always worth watching) as the villain of the piece. There's a cameo by Charlotte Rampling, and I'm always reminded that someone once famed for her looks has matured to be a fearsome older woman. Of course she does only get cameo roles now, but she acts her socks off in them. Worth watching? Yes if relentless action is your thing.
Not what I expected at all, but enjoyable and interesting for all that, if a little low-key. When there is a glitch on board an automated passenger ship carrying five thousand cryo-passengers heading out to a colony, one passenger, Jim Preston (Chris Pratt), is woken up 90 years too early and has no means of resetting his cryo capsule. He has a whole luxury liner to himself, but his only companion is Arthur, a cybernetic bartender (an eerie Michael Sheen) unable to leave his place behind the bar. Eventually, after a year of loneliness, he gives in to the temptation to wake another passenger, Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence), a writer. He thinks he knows her after reading her writing, and believes that they will be soulmates.
Rogue One - very enjoyable. In the space battles they used archive footage of Red Leader and Gold Leader from the original Star Wars Movie, which was great for continuity. Some interesting CGI to create supporting characters from the right time period. (Actors long since gone!) Some of it (Peter Cushing) was a bit 'uncanny valley' but largely it worked. There's been a lot of online discussion about whether they should simply have recast characters like Tarkin, with opinion divided. I didn't mind the CGI. The whole thing was visually excellent, of course, and there's a new robot K-2SO voiced by Alan Tudyk. The plot held together reasonably well. It's a standalone story set just before the events in A New Hope, in which our heroes go after the plans for the Death Star. This is a one-off story, with one-off main characters. We kinda knew how it would go from knowing the status at the beginning of A New Hope, so no complaints from me on that score. The ending was wholly appropriate and bringing in a fravourite character at the end was a great 'lifter'. Felicity Jones is good as Jyn Erso. Only complaint, why have two actors who looked so physically similar? I'm not that good with facial recognition and it took me a while to sort out Bodhi (Riz Ahmed) and Cassian (Diego Luna) in the early scenes.
Right off the bat I'll say that Eddie Redmayne is not generally an actor I'd pay to watch just because it's him, but he makes a pretty good stab at the deferential Newt Scamander, champion of strange magical creatures. Newt arrives in New York with a suitcase full of magical beasts. (Yes, like hermione's handbag, Newt's suitcase holds a veritable zoo.) Unfortunately the American magicians are a bit uptight about magical beasts - in fact they've more or less banned them altogether. So when one of newt's beasts escapes he's immediately arrested by Demoted Auror, Tina Goldstein. At the offices of the Magical Gongress of the USA (MACUSA) we encounter senior auror Percival Graves who dismisses Tina out of hand. Back at Tina's aprtment with a no-maj (and American Muggle) more beasts escape and the hunt is on. This is all complicated by Mary Lou Barebone, the head of the New Salem Philanthropic Society, who claims that witches and wizards are real and dangerous, and something with an incrdible amout of power that seems to be wreaking havoc. Graves is after the power. Newt is after the creatures. It all gets terribly complicated, but, of course, is sorted in the end. And the ending ties in to what we know of a certain magician whose name was linked with Albus Dumbledore's darker past.
This movie got good reviews. It was labelled as 'cerebral', which closely translated into my understanding means 'no car chases'. That indeed is the case. There are no car chases (thank goodness) but plenty of tension. When twelve alien ships hang in the air over various points around the earth, twelve different governments rush to get their best translators on the job of 'talking' with the aliens, despite them having nothing in common on which to base language. It's an interesting problem. 
I loved this! I'm not a comics reader, so I went into it with no preconceptions at all, and nothing to compare it against. It's an origin story - starting us off down another tributary which will eventually join up with the big river that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This time it's an earthly superhero who taps into magic. That works for me.
I was going to read the book (by M.R. Carey) until a friend put me off by saying he thought the book was mostly great but he didn't like the ending. I don't know if the film followed the book closely, so you'll have to tell me whether it's the same ending if you've seen/read both.
Bridget is now 43 and once more living the single (and more-or-less celibate) life. She's a successful news producer by day, and a couch potato by night... until she's dragged to a music festival and after promising to shag the first man she meets, does just that. Luckily the shagee is Jack (Patric Dempsey). Just a week or two afterwards she meets old flame Mark (Colin Firth) who is on the verge of getting a divorce from his wife. More shagging ensues.
Visually stunning (with a lot of CGI), this is a Tim Burton movie about time loops, strange children and scary monsters. Jake (Asa Butterfield) has grown up on his Grandpa's (Terence Stamp) stories about his life fighting monsters wothout actually giving any of it much credence, until his grandfather is murdered by a monster that only Jake has seen. He goes in search of the orphanage (on an island off the coast of Wales), and finds the ruin of the Victorian Gothic house, bombed during the Second World War... or was it? Jake finds the time loop and is introduced to Miss Peregrine (Eva Green) and the peculiar children with a variety of talents (not all of them useful). He also discovers that the monsters are real.
What can I say about this? Well, I expected it to be a nostalgic trip back to the type of books I read in my childhood (though I admit I never read this one). Sadly it wasn't enough to hold my attention. I have to say that my enjoyment of this was severely curtailed by the audience. Why on earth someone would think it was a suitable movie for a two year old I have no idea, but said two year old was then allowed to run up and down the aisle for the duration. Couple that with a fidgety family kicking my seat at frequent intervals and I may not have been in the most receptive of moods. Yes, I know you can expect children in the audience at a children's film during the school holidays, but is a certain level of good behaviour (from the parents) too much to ask? Am I just a grumpy old git?
It's that time of year again. Most of the new movies are kiddie films. Thankfully Pete's Dragon was better by miles than last week's offering: Suicide Squad. I didn't see the original cartoon version of Pete's Dragon, so no comparisons. This was live action with a CGI dragon featuring Bryce Dallas Howard, Robert Redford, Karl Urban and Wes Bentley in the adult roles and a very cute Oakes Fegley as Pete. You probably know the story. Small child is orphaned by a car accident wonders into the forest and is looked after by a dragon (whom the child names Elliott). Six years later the child is found and the dragon revealed (to a timber cutting crew) whereupon unsympathetic adult (Karl Urban) captures the dragon and sympathetic adults help Pete to release him.
The trailer looked quirkily amusing with plenty of action and a cast of interesting characters. How wrong can one trailer be? Yes there was a plot (as much as there is ever a plot in this type of movie) which involved a lot of action (expected) but the pacing was off. There was way too much character set-up, way too little chartacter development and everything was deadpan straight. The whole thing just felt like a joyless mishmash.
More of the same from the Bourne franchise. It's ten years since Matt Damon's last appearance as Bourne. Now we're on a post-Snowden/post Wiki-Leaks era, and technology has given the CIA the ability to sit in a room in Virginia and track Bourne and his associates in real time through Athens, Rome, London and Las Vegas. In the ten years since we last saw him Bourne appears to have been making his living as a bareknuckle fighter. When an old colleague looks him up to offer information Bourne is drawn back into conflict with the Agency.
H and I have been so looking forward to this for months, and we were not disappointed. H thought it was possibly the best of the three ST reboots so far. maybe I wouldn't go that far, but I did enjoy it. The Enterprise is three years into her five year mission, with both Kirk and Spock starting to wonder if they need a new direction. When they stop over at Yorktown, a massive Federation city in space they get involved in answering a distress call that leads them into a nebula to rescue shipwreck survivors. It's a trap. Enterprise is attacked by a swarm of ships and the survivors end up on the planet Altamid where Krall has enslaved a variety of survivors (from the Enterprise and various other wrecks). The Enterprise crew is split up: Scotty is recued by a loner called Jaylah (who has escaped imprisonment by Krall and is repurposing a crashed federation ship); Spock and McCoy have adventures with emergency surgery; Sulu and Uhura are enslaved, and Kirk, Chekov and the somewhat devious Kalara end up together. It takes all of them to beat the forces ranged against them. Star Trek works best when the ensemble cast comes into full play as it does here.
This week has been busy at the cinema and because we know we'll be seeing Star Trek next week, we did two consecutive days at the movies this week with Tarzan and Ghistbusters (and we still haven't seen 'Now You See Me 2').
For some reason I missed blogging this back in May, so in the interests of providing a full and complete record, here it is, now, except...errr... it's a couple of months since I saw it and...it hasn't left much of a lasting impression. So that says something for starters. What does stand out is an interesting personal story for Eric (Magneto) who is incogneto Magneto working in a factory in Poland. When his wife and daughter are killed it turns him to the dark side (oops wrong movie, but you know what I mean). Michael Fassbender is once again, top-notch as Magneto. We also get to see the transition of Xavier from hirsute to egg-head. I still can't quite get my head around James McAvoy as a young Patrick Stewart, but - hey - that's my problem, not his. It was nice to see Sophie Turner (Sansa Stark in Game of Thrones) kicking arse as a young Jean Grey and Evan Peters did a decent turn at Quicksilver.
John Clayton (Alexander Skarsgard) is settled in England, married to Jane and seems to be well adjusted coinsidering he grew up wild in the jungle. Backstory in interspersed with the ongoing film plot which revolves around Belgian agent, Leon Rom (Christoph Waltz - everyone's favourite villain lately) luring Clayton back to Africa to the tribal chief who wants to kill him. Accompanied by American George Washington Williams (Samuel L Jackson), the Claytons soon discover a wicked plot to enslave the whole of the Congo for its diamonds and ivory.
Quite by chance I saw the original Independence day on TV just a few days before going to see Resurgence at the cinema, so I had the original movie firmly fixed in my brain with it's starry ensemble cast. Very pleased to see most of that cast reprising their roles. i can only speculate that Will Smith didn't want to play himself twenty years on, but everyone else aged relkatively gracefully, especially Goldblum and Pullman.
My friend H and I agreed to disagree over this version of Jungle Book. I thought it seemed over-long, dragging in the middle section - H didn't. That apart, we both agreed that it's a visual treat. The CGI and live action is seamless. Once again a Brit voices the bad guy, with Idris Elba's version of Shere Khan bringing a chilling menace to the part. Neel Sethi is the only live actor, playing Mowgli very well, though I wasn't too sure about the American accent at first, though I quickly ceased to notice it.
But song choices apart, the climax of this was gripping and really well done.
I don't remember too much about Eddie Edwards, Eddie the Eagle, in the Calgary Winter Olympics of 1988 except that for a short time he was a phenomenon, loved for coming last, for just being there and competing, the only British ski-jumper in the Olympics. The film lived up to the trailer's promise. It's a piece with tremendously good heart. Taron Egerton plays the misfit Eddie joyously as he overcomes all obstacles just to compete. His life's ambition to be an olympian, finally realised with the (fictional) help of alcohol-fuelled former ski-jumper Peary, generously played by Hugh Jackman. This unlikely 'odd couple' succeed in coming last, but that's not the point. The point is that Eddie, despite all odds, competes because he's willing to take the knocks and get up every time he falls down. It's the underdog story that was a sensation (briefly). The Olympic committee later changed the rules to make sure that no independents of Eddie's like would ever again be able to compete in the Olympics. Sad that.
Both a prequel and a sequel, this movie wraps itself around Snow White and the Huntsman, made better by the lack of Snow White, who is not on screen. It's a kind of grown up 'Frozen' with two sisters, each with different magical powers. Ravenna is the evil queen from Snow White, not quite as dead as we thought. Her sister, Freya, horribly betrayed by her lover, turns out to have ice magic. She runs off and sets up her own kingdom (queendom?) harvesting children and turning them into warriors to be her army.
What can I say? This movie has received auch a lot of hype coupled with abuse, that it's difficult to take it at face value. There was a lot wrong with it, but overall I wasn't bored and it worked on some levels. It wasn't as bad as I feared, but it was certainly not as good as I'd hoped. Unfortuantely it was a mishmas of a mashup.
It's the 1950s. Hollywood superstar Baird Whitlock (George Clooney at his bewildered best) is kidnapped in the middle of filming a blockbuster movie about a Roman centurion who finds God. It's up to studio fixer Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) to find him while juggling smaller dramas happening on other movie sets at Capitol Pictures. Brolin is the heart of this movie but there are excellent performances from the aforementioned Clooney, and from Ralph Fiennes as camp director Laurence Laurentz. I'm not usually fond of Fiennes but he has a superbly light touch with comedy. Alden Ehrenreich, playing contract singing-cowboy actor Hobie Doyle, whose normal repertoire consists of 'Howdy', is delightful when dropped into a movie part that's way beyond him. There are subplots involving Scarlett Johansson as an Esther Williams style swimming star, Tilda Swinton playing a set of rival gossip columnist twins, and Channing Tatum in an all-male song-and-dance set-piece that could be straight out of a Gene Kelly movie.
Don't, just don't. Go and see anything else.
We've missed several weeks at the cinema. There's been little to attract us for almost a month, but this week we thought we'd give Deadpool a go.
The story of the account on which Melville based his classic story of Moby Dick. A man-against-nature movie with both the sea and a great white whale batting for nature while on the man team is Chris Hemsworth, Cillian Murphy, Ben Wishaw, Benjamin Walker and Tom Holland batting for the crew of the New England whaling ship the Essex. The story itself is bookended in 1850 by Melville (Wishaw) hunting down the last survivor of the Essex, sunk thirty years before in 1820, to get the true account. And get it he does, in all its gory detail.
22nd December 2015
16th December 2015
You might think that the Frankenstein story has been mined out over the years, but this time the film industry has come up with Victor meets Igor, It's not quite a porequel because it does see the story through to the end, but much emphasis is put on Frankenstein rescuing the downtrodden hunchback, Igor, (Daniel Radcliffe) from a desperately bad life as a circus freak, hence Igor's devotion to Frankenstein despite his better judgement.
I was only half looking forward to this. I enjoyed the first two films (and the first two books), but Mockingjay Part One suffered from being the movie of the first half of the final book in the trilogy, depicting the period where Katniss, suffering from PTSD, has no agency. Frankly her agency is limited for part of this movie, too, until she takes it back in the final moments in an act which is flagged up so heavily that it comes as no surprise,
