The Last Film You Watched

I’ve just watched The Greatest Hits on Disney+ wouldn’t really recommend it. It shares ideas with quite a few (better) films such as About Time and High Fidelity. Overall it just seemed a bit empty- lacking feeling and characters to care about. 2⭐️

We should be getting the Robbie Williams biopic later this year, and reportedly it is an exercise in original filmmaking. So maybe if that is a success…

Just saw 'Sometimes I think about dying' starring Daisy Ridley. It was a Picturehouse Preview (previously free, now £1). It was better than the two star Guardian review led me to expect. It feels like a filmed American short story. Nothing much happens but there are some profound moments and Ridley was excellent. The quality of the light in the film is also very pleasing.

Watched Back to Black and while I liked it, I think Mitch Winehouse and to an extent Blake Fielder-Civil were portrayed in a less negative light than compared to the 2015 documentary Amy which was very critical of Mitch.

I haven't posted in this thread since before Xmas. I seem to go to the cinema so often -- largely thanks to my Odeon myLimitless pass -- that I struggle to find the time to provide thoughts.

This month:

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire ***
Disengage brain and enjoy the many nostalgic touches.

Love Lies Bleeding ****
Erotic lesbian thriller that I imagine will divide opinion when released here next week. My husband hated it, but I was sucked in by its spit-and-sawdust grunge and b-movie vibe. Kristen Stewart commits fully.

Arthur the King ***
Marky Mark does cute in a true story about a dog, told Hallmark style. Much suspension of disbelief required, but not a bad way to pass an afternoon in the cinema while waiting for an overnight flight home.

Late Night with the Devil *****
Biting satire on the entertainment industry at the same time as being a darn good horror flick. Great performances and perfect editing. Loved it.

Mother's Instinct ****
Slow-burn drama thriller that grips throughout. The acting duel between Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain is wondrous to watch. Both great.

Immaculate ***
Serviceable horror that does the job in terms of cheap entertainment and scares.

The First Omen ***
Like the original Omen, this is more drama/thriller than horror, and is enjoyable as an origin movie for all the cross-referencing back to the former.

Back to Black ****
The bleating from all the Amy Winehouse fans that her dad gets off scot-free is somewhat unreal. They seem to believe that documentaries -- the greatest source of propaganda in the modern age -- are truth. Back to Black only sets out to tell a simple love story behind the celebrity, and it does so brilliantly, with incredible performances from Marisa Abela and Jack O'Connell as Amy and Blake. While Amy -- the documentary -- was interesting, Back to Black is actually entertaining, and while not taking positions on who failed in their duty of care towards Amy, this movie shows enough for the viewers to reach a conclusion. Of course, what happened in real life, who knows?

Bleeding Love ***
Nepotistic effort from Ewan McGregor and his daughter Clara playing a father and daughter travelling across the US. I'm a sucker for a road movie, but this doesn't quite gel although it has it moments. Three stars may be a tad generous.

The Taste of Things ***
This, particularly the meal cooked during the opening thirty minutes, was a very tough watch for me as a vegetarian for forty years. It was pretty repulsive in places and made me feel physically sick. However, you cannot but admire what the filmaker is trying to achieve in conveying the beauty in the colours and taste of gourmet cuisine through the medium of film. It's a little paradoxical that it's post-Revolution France that provides such a setting for the decadence on show.

Challengers ****
Another household split with hubby hating this and me loving. It's a homo-erotic sexploitation movie with the gender switch meaning that it's a power-woman taking advantage of two men. Oh, and there are some tennis matches, set to an 80s-style electronic score and increasingly immersive camerawork. As a homosexual, I don't see the physical attraction of Zendaya Coleman, but apparently people do, so what do I know.

Abigail ***
This is truly terrible, but it's such a hoot, especially, if, like me, you go in having no idea what genre it is. The script and direction is attrocious, and the set-up doesn't bear scrutiny, but go with it, and there is a lot to enjoy, not least the ballerina dancing of the amazing Alisha Weir (from Matilda and Wicked Little Letters) to Tchaikovsky while

Civil War ****
Civil War reminded me a lot of the Jodie Comer film The End We Start From out earlier in the year, in that it deals with the human consequences of societal breakdown while happily ignoring all of the how-come? and what-about? questions of the viewer in wondering how things came to be.

Nevertheless, this is a great piece of film-making that is character-driven rather than action heavy, and presents an interesting dsytopian scenario that seems paradoxically both absurdly improbable and yet worryingly close at the same time. While director Alex Garland tries to steer away from politics, the opening monologue from the president is distinctly Trumpian, and one cannot help but view events as the fall-out from someone like him, especially if the US Supreme Court go on to decree that presidents cannot be held accountable for criminal acts and Trump has a second term.

The minutiae of encounters between characters along their journey from New York City to Washington D.C. are what make this movie. Where it goes wrong is with the presence of the 23-year-old protegé character, who for the most part behaves like an annoying ten-year-old, and who does stupid things simply to serve the narrative. Without some of that Hollywood silliness, it would have been five stars.

I hadn't heard of the Italian movie There's Still Tomorrow until I read an article about it on the BBC News website a couple of days ago. It's set at the end of WWII and is filmed in black and white making it look like an Italian neo-realist movie. The Guardian gave it four stars and described it as resounding sentimental, which is about right. The reason for the BBC article was that more people went to see it in Italy than saw Barbie there. We could only find it on at our local Vue where we hadn't been for many years, but it was well worth seeking out. Some of the domestic violence sequences are very cleverly filmed. The lead actress, Paola Cortellesi, is also the director and the film is a real triumph for her. Three of us went (making the total audience six) and none of us saw the ending coming. Highly recommended.

What I did see most recently with Curzon was Challengers, which wasn't as good as I'd hoped but not bad enough for me to leave before the end, despite the fact that it was unnecessarily long. It seemed such an odd hotchpoth, with a former teen star now apparently trying to do something more adult; thumping disco music which seemed ill-matched to the material and plot, and a vast amount of tedious dwelling on the 2 male leads dripping with sweat as they played endless tennis matches - and yes, I do know that it's ostensibly a film about tennis. Of course knowing that the director was Luca Guadagnino should have alerted me, but only a item on Radio 4's Front Row the same day made more sense of it for me; however, I still can't envisage the audience to which this is designed to appeal.

I liked Challengers, it's a relationship drama with tennis, it's very homoerotic which I was not expecting.

Just got back from this.  I knew going into it that it's not my typical go-to film.  It's fine if you have a couple of hours to pass and don't really want to invest too much effort and just pass the time.  Aaron Taylor Johnson is among my favourite actors but I really wish he would stay away from these 'cheap' action films (Bullet Train was awful in my opinion).  He's so much better than this.  Same for Emily Blunt and Ryan Gosling.  I've experienced way too much cheap comedy / action in the last few weeks with Love's Labour's Lost and now this.  I need gritty drama with suspense and meaning.  Or maybe I just need to lighten up a little :-)

I saw both and Fall Guy is the better option. Challengers was a complete mess.