The 2017 Film DiScussion Thread

The third act is actually the only not from the play and is Jenkins own.

Also no act is weak they’re just different :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Ahh I never would have thought that! It was certainly better for having that third act in there, I would have liked if it was a bit longer though.

they’re all pretty evenly spaced aren’t they? It’s just that the third act is much slower because it only takes place in like 3 major locations

35 - 20th Century Women

Adored this, a film where I could easily have spent another hour with these characters. Beautiful.

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Bah, was meant to be seeing this yesterday but something came up, not sure I can do any of the remaining screenings at my local one

Think your local in my local (WIQ Cineworld?) - 4 people there including me yesterday so obviously not a hit.

That’s the one aye, they’re only showing it three more times at 20:50 each time so it’s tonight or nothing I think

Went to see Toni Erdmann but it was sold out!

I watched Closely Watched Trains on Mubi which was a joy and I Dont Feel At Home In This World Anymore or whatevver its called. Directed by yer man from Blue Ruin and Green Room. It was surpisingly underpar

GFF #8 Halfway wee indie film set in Wisconsin featuring yer man from The Blind Side but is actually a U.K production as the director is from London but has family in Wisconsin.

Anyway, this was very good indeed. About a guy who is out of jail on probation on the agreement he works at his step-brothers farm. Obviously a lot of culture clash/race stuff but the family aren’t quite as together as it first seems and becomes a very well drawn character/family study. Byron’s past eventually comes back to haunt him but it does well to avoid the usual cliched bloodbath as we see Byron is just a guy who got chewed up by the system

Investigation of a citizen above suspicion -
Blackly comic italian thriller about a famed homicide detective who commits a murder and hopes to be allowed to get away with it. Enjoyed it until it started bashing you over the head with a political allegory in the final act. Pretty wacky ennio morricone score to boot.

Bought a couple blurays in a sale today - wong kar wai’s ashes of time and melancholia. Might have a double bill tonight.

finally saw daniel blake fucking rough going eh? esp the scene in the food bank

Ashes of time (redux) confusing but visually stunning martial arts epic with very little fighting and lots of existential angst and emotional monologues.

Went to see La La Land with a couple of mates to see what the fuss was about. Yeah… no idea why this is hyped so much, it was alright, far too long. 14 Oscar nominations? Really?

Emma Stone was good, liked her auditions, which were actually the best bits and the photographer bit.

Gosling was a bit…nothing. “Ooh I like jazz more than you!” piss off.

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GFF #9 Stockholm, My Love Mark Cousins’ latest ode to a city told through/by Neneh Cherry, who recalls her Dad’s immigrant status, a traumatising moment of shame for her and Sweden and recalling childhood memories all while also studying Stockholm’s architecture in a good but fairly standard Mark Cousins film. The central moment Neneh recalls in which she reverts from English to Svenska is pretty incredible mind.

Heh.

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The Dead - Zombie outbreak flick set in Africa with the sort of slow moving undead that would make Romero proud. Obviously quite a low budget affair and it needed a slightly better score to ramp up the tension but overall quite enjoyable. 7/10

Jackie - An absolutely mesmerizing performance from Natalie Portman - She just stole every scene! All those claustrophobic close ups of the actors faces backed by Mica Levi’s searingly beautiful and perfectly suited score, made for some (at times) uncomfortable viewing. Did anyone else well up a bit when John Hurt appeared onscreen? 8/10

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The Founder - Really disappointingly pedestrian as it was a really interesting story. It was just so beige, from the trailer I was expecting something in the mould of The Social Network but for McDonalds but it was just such by-the-numbers storytelling. There’s nothing wrong with it but there’s nothing to get excited about.

20th Century Women - I had a really weird response to this tbh, I absolutely loved about 40% of it (basically whenever Annette Benning was on screen) but found the rest of it extremely fucking irritating. It felt so adolescent as opposed to being about adolescence, nothing grates on me more than performative “ooh I love music, look how much I love it, I love music so much more than ordinary people” and this was absolutely full of that sort of thing.

Some really weird visual choices as well, sped up sequences with weird purple hues and stuff which just felt so out of keeping with Benning’s amazing work. It’s odd as the other performances were largely good as well but they were more exposed by the lack of narrative thrust than Benning was.

Dunno, maybe I’ll appreciate it more as I sit with it but I thought it was a really mixed bag…

From what I hear he does like jazz more than you

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