What Films Have You Been Watching? November 2021

I feel like it should be possible run the middle ground of explaining you weren’t into it without spoiling the mood. I mean unless your date is FULLY into it in which case it might be a problem.

Are you normally into Wes Anderson films? If you liked earlier stuff you can at least fall back on saying how you just don’t like his modern shtick so much.

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Say you kept waiting for Popeye Doyle to show up and do some car chases

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So The French Dispatch then, liked it a lot. Thought Wes Anderson could get no more Wes Anderson but it seems he absolutely could and did haha. I imagine I’ll be with the consensus in that I thought the first and last stories were great but the middle one was a bit rubbish. Was absolutely howling at the animated car chase when the wrester guy jumped back on the bonnet of the car, totally did me. Timothée Chalamet was quite, quite unconvincing - thought he was a bit like what I would be like if I got to be in a Wes Anderson film i.e. not very good. 4/5 all round, a feast for the eyes, funny and good.

Recently watched:

Django - 60s spaghetti western. Highly rated but not in the class of any Sergio Leone’s. It was just slightly above average for me. 5.5./10.

Hypnotic - Utterly shit film on Netflix. Avoid. 1.5/10.

Willy’s Wonderland - Nicholas Cage doesn’t say much but he beats up possessed animatronics with help from a Scooby gang. Oddly a film where Cage doesn’t do Cage and has a somewhat subdued performance. It was ok but not much more. 5/10.

The Cowboy and The Lady - Merle Oberon pretends to be a maid instead of the the rich socialite that she is to win over Gary Cooper. I’ve seen both actors in far better but enjoyed it. 6.5/10.

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i didn’t realise it was a short stories/anthology thing going in and would have preferred the usual narrative film structure but i enjoyed it, even though i can’t imagine i’ll be rewatching it much compared to some of his others.

enjoyed Adrien Brody in particular

watched fight club last night for the first time in years, hmmmmm found it quite grating and gimmicky. Remember loving it when it came out.

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Watched these today whilst waiting for a smart meter installation:

Meander - A woman is abducted and wakes up with a bracelet/cuff thing on her in a maze with dangers and weird creatures inside. Inevitable similarities to The Cube but they’re completely different as The Cube was cubey and square whereas this one had round tunnels, with some rectangular. This film was a bit sci-fi-horror-fantasy but overall a bit shit. 3/10.

The Garden Left Behind - An undocumented Mexican trans woman tries to make ends meet and pay for surgery in New York. A good cast and well acted but lacked a certain something and I didn’t enjoy it as much as I’d hoped. 6.5/10.

Censor - Was looking forward to this one. Liked the style and the homage to the 80s as well as the Mary Whitehouse hysteria of how video nasties would degrade society. I remember that stuff well during the news.
Unfortunately I kind of got a bit bored with the film as it went on and didn’t like the direction it took. 5.5/10.

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I actually found time to watch couple of movies in the last 2 weeks!

Titane - I really liked it, although with some reservations, most of which have probably already been discussed. I know that ‘winner of the Palme d’Or’ is not always a certification of quality, but they’re on a pretty good run. I’ll be interested to see if France submit it as their entry for the Oscars. I can totally see it as a lone director nomination, like Cold War (I know that had other nominations, but you know what I mean) or Another Round (likewise)

Malignant - Absolutely ludicrous movie, and all the better for it. I didn’t second-guess the twist, and I kind of liked how the first half was all ‘you’ve seen all these tropes before’ and then went a bit “but you’ve never seen THIS before” with the ramped up violence. Good stuff. I like the passing the baton thing that James Wan and Leigh Whannell are doing

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Didn’t know where else to put this; it’s a good piece.

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Recently watched:

Maelström - Denis Villeneuve film. A young depressed business woman accidentally runs over a man and becomes romantically involved with his son who’s unaware that she’s killed him.
Plays out like a black comedy, there’s a talking fish that’s an occasional narrator and now and again goes off on a tangent but in a good way. I didn’t enjoy Villeneuve’s Enemy too much that I watched recently but did like this one. 7.5/10.

Love Hard - Nina Dobrev is catfished by nice but misguided Jimmy O. Yang into thinking he’s a ruggedly cool bloke when they match on a dating app as he’s put up a profile pic of his better looking mate. She then flies over to surprise him for Christmas, but yeah, he’s not what she’s expecting.

Thought I’d give this a go and didn’t have high hopes, just something to watch before my main film of the night, Mortal Kombat, when I was going to open some beers. Thought it was great though.

It’s an unashamedly cheesy Christmas film. The first part was laugh out loud funny and the second was more warm and contemplative. The gran gets some great one liners and delivers them brilliantly too.
Overall a great surprise of a film. Dobrev shows that she’s very good when she’s given a decent role with a good script. I do love a cheesy feel good film that hits all the right notes and more so when they’re an accidental/whim of a film choice. 8.5/10.

Mortal Kombat - Pretty good film. It’ll win no awards for anything but some good choreography and over dramatic fight scenes made it a very good no brainer whilst boozing. 7/10.

Booked to see Petit Maman, Lamb and Titane over the next week for Leeds International Film Fest. Exciting!

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thanks for sharing, thats a nice bit of writing

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Finally watched Knives Out and I enjoyed it but it was pretty scrappy in the opening half. The second half really saved it for me as it just seemed to settle into something more enjoyably mixing up daftness and cleverness.

Agree with you on Censor. The first third was excellent, but then the second third didn’t do enough to make the final third effective.

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Watched this last night and thought it was very sharp, and thoughtfully made, but it did really stumble when its homages became quite literal - shoulda sidestepped any gore altogether I think, although I guess you couldn’t get away with that either considering the subject matter/audience expectations etc. I liked the ending but Saint Maud probably did it better (spoilered because I don’t wanna give too much away).

First week of November;

Boxtrolls (ITV2) 3/5
:package: Ben Kingsley sounds like Mark Kermode doing Danny Dyer doing Johnny Depp doing Jack Sparrow doing Keith Richards… A rich and textured world once again created by the magicians at Laika, but not feeling much emotionally beyond that. The story is a nice allegory about accepting people that are seemingly ‘different’ to you and hopefully that message gets though.

Beetlejuice (Channel 5) 1.5/5
:house: Not sure what you’re all smoking. Tried to come into this with an open a mind as I really don’t rate any of Burtons previous work, but this didn’t do anything for me on any level. Such a shame as it (similarly to Corspe Bride) has such a good reputation, but found it a jumbled mess of nonsense. No emotional connection, no wonder, no humour (dark or otherwise) and felt like the much heralded Keaton performance was only in it for 5 mins.

Surrogates (Rakuten TV) 2/5
:busts_in_silhouette: Not a bad idea, but execution was severely lacking. Nearly every aspect has been bettered in all forms of other media.

The Harder They Fall (Netflix) 4/5
:cowboy_hat_face: What a cast. Everyone is absolutely oozing with cool and fits perfectly in this fast and loose throwback. A truly killer soundtrack with it and the score working in perfect harmony aiding every scene. It also has some great sound design adding heft, with the bullets bellowing in my headphones. The production design and costumes also rival Dune, with beautifully lush colours and textures used throughout. The script has bite and you can tell Samuel gave it everything directionally. The only downfall being the length with the middle chunk rather stodgy and stretched, but the final riotous act just about makes up for it.

The Day After Tomorrow (Channel 4) 3/5
:earth_africa: Well you have give Roland some props for actually laying out the causes/arguments that are still being fought against 16 years later at COP26 to the widest audience he could. You get some dodgy “biting off more they can chew” effects with some ropey ADR and some of the more obvious soundstage set you’ll see, but you also get a few nuggets of nifty and prescient filmmaking. Yeah it’s cliched, cheesy and Quaid is so bland, but it’s heart is in the right place.

Titane 4.5/5
:oncoming_automobile: What a follow up to Raw that cements Julia Ducournau as a person who i’ll be following throughout their whole career. So much going on that will reverberate and ruminate around my brain for a long long time. A film whereby you just sit back and let it run riot all over your senses. Up there in 2021 for me and will see this in a cinema when it eventually gets a release.

Happy Death Day (Channel 4) 3/5
:candle: Thankfully this became self aware as starting with a character that’s verging on the worst person in the world (admitting to spitting on a Uber driver ffs!) was a rough platform. They just about redeemed her when the cycle hit the 15th go around and rolled on fine to the conclusion. Like Palm Springs it adds just enough of a wrinkle to the Groundhog Day blueprint to make it watchable, but doesn’t hit the heights or ingenuity of either.

The Guilty (Netflix) 3.5/5
:rotating_light: Going a bit higher than the consensus. A solid tense and taut thriller that needed the more than capable shoulders of Jake to carry it. Will catch the Danish version when it pops up on TV.

Walk Like A Panther (Channel 4) 3/5
:women_wrestling: Not sure why this got the kicking it got! A load of laughs, visual gags and rightfully turns up the panto-vibe considering the content. The storyline has been done a dozen times before and I guess they hoped this broke though like Brassed Off / The Full Monty, but got nowhere close sadly. Thought it had a great eye for a specific British humour and a bit of harmless fun that would go down well on any lazy Sunday afternoon across the country.

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Just watched Supernova on dvd. Goodness me, there were tears.

Saw censor at the cinema and it was such a disappointment.

Had a hungover rewatch of The Darjeeling Limited today and had a pretty good time.

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