Total watched: 15 (didn’t manage 31 days of spook, I was on holiday for half the month)
Best: Knives Out, Mad Max Fury Road, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Chicago (plane re-watches because my brain was soup), Home, My Home (short film at the Japan Film Archive), The Social Network (re-watch), Monster (excited to see this again this weekend!)
Worst: Cam (intriguing premise with frustrating pay off)
Going to be really annoying about Leeds International Film Fest in this thread and you can’t stop me!
My Movie Moment of the Month was when President Harrison Ford said “Get off my plane” and chucked Gary Oldman out of Air Force One in the film Air Force One.
best: asteroid city (was expecting to hate it!), dead reckoning (was expecting to love it… and i did!), psycho
worst: for your eyes only (dogshit, but loved the pre credits bit where blofeld tries to bribe bond by offering to buy him a delicatessen for some reason. that can be my movie moment of the month i guess)
A bumper 51 in October, mainly due to the London Film Festival, Halloween and a run of 1930’s Bulldog Drummond movies.
Best: The Zone of Interest, Poor Things, Do Not Expect Too Much of the End of the World
Worst: At Twelve Midnight (1933) - A film so primitive that there is no acting as such, just the novelty of being filmed. The set must have been really cold, you can see steam from the actor’s mouths even in indoor scenes.
Best moment: Discovering that the big galoot cowboy being beaten up by Hopalong Cassidy in False Colors (1943) is actually Robert Mitchum just before his career took off.
It’s slick and watchable cos it’s Spielberg so of course it is, but while it’s understandable that he finds his childhood interesting, I’m not sure it particularly was. Good last few minutes though.
3:10 to Yuma
This was the remake from 2007. Christian Bale is fine in it, Russell Crowe is clearly having a great time and is enjoyable as the baddie. Being a remake though it feels very dated as a story, it felt quite slight compared to what I’d want from a 21st century western. Enjoyed it though, reminded me of an old Sunday afternoon western I’d watch on the TV in the 90s.
The Usual Suspects
Fucking trash. Blows my mind that this seems to be highly-rated, is a twist really enough to be a smokescreen for the total nonsense that preceded it? Obviously harder to watch Spacey in the same way these days, but his performance is nonsense, christ knows how it got awards at the time. Stephen Baldwin, one of the least likeable screen presences imaginable, is a main character for crying out loud. At least Del Toro treats the whole thing with the clear contempt it deserves.
Air Force One
Now we’re talking. The President of the United States of America is gonna save his family and his staff goddamit, regardless of the risks. For some reason he’s in the lower part of the plane alone for most of the film and the terrorists leave him to it, maybe because they need to be gathered around Gary Oldman to listen to his Russian shouts. There’s an inside man and they never bother explaining why, which is also excellent.
Watched quite a lot but nothing too good apart from My November Bests
The Green Knight - watched it several times but it’s just an astounding bit of picturemaking. 6.3/5. Would love to watch this on a massive cinema screen one day.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire - re-watch. one of my favourites
Fair Play - enjoyed this.
Two Lovers - love Gwyneth. Can’t help it.
My MMotM was listening to a film podcast episode (the Zodiac ep of Blank Check to be specific) and being reminded of going to the cinema in Oct 2017 to watch Blade Runner 2049. It was the day when the sky turned orange in the afternoon because of a storm in the Sahara. It was one of the most surreal experiences coming out of the cinema into an almost perfect recreation of a scene in the film. It was amazing timing.
Made me smile remembering it.
solid month! bolstered by an all night horror event tbf
Watched: 13 new, 5 rewatches Best: To Live and Die in LA, Brain Damage, realising just how much I love Candyman Worst: nothing bad at all, but maybe Field of Dreams being total fine, and Killers of the Flower Moon being less than I was wanting
