What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[CraigFowler]

10 - All of Us Strangers

Not gonna lie, was a little disappointed by this. It's definitely very good and for the most part beautifully wove together the emotional impact of loss through fantasy and reality. The scenes with the parents are all incredibly well done. But I spent the film wondering about the Paul Mescal character and, I have to say, the payoff just didn't work for me at all. Can't really say too much more about it without getting into spoilers, but the choice detracts from the main plot of him having these conversations with his parents that he never got to have and facing the reality of finally letting go. It took away from its impact and just made it all a little too much in the end. I also found it hard to emotionally connect with Alan. I shed one tear in the entire film and I'm typically a blubber at emotional movies. I'm very lucky to have not had any real devastating fatal losses in my life, yet, so perhaps that's to do with it. But there's other films were I have nothing in common with the lead but still end up really rooting for them. In this I didn't really. That said, like I said at the start, it is good, just not as good as I expected it to be or as the premise promised.

11 - Anyone But You

Oh dear lord, I absolutely HATED this movie. I never walk out of the cinema but I strongly considered doing so. I can forgive a romantic comedy for being cliched and predictable, sometimes that's exactly what you want and need and having went straight to the screen after All of Us Strangers finished, that was precisely what I was in the mood for. I can even forgive romantic comedies that aren't even consistently funny, just so long as the characters act like human beings would and there's a certain degree of charm. There is none of that in this film. It isn't funny, it isn't charming, there is many a dialogue that is absolutely cringe-inducing. Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell both feel miscast, there are no likeable side characters (they aren't dislikable either, they are just NOTHING) and it's built on a premise that is so, so tired. 'Couple who really like each other don't get together due to miscommunication'. Jesus wept. Been a while since I properly really disliked a movie, so I'm glad I saw it. It was cathartic. And Sweeney and Powell spent most of the movie with barely any clothes on with Sydney, Australia, as a setting, so at least it was good to look it.

Edited February 8 by CraigFowler

[Savage Henry]

On 01/02/2024 at 18:35, RuMoore said:

I can cope with the style and framing etc but if they're all self aware I can't see myself working through the entire catalogue, what would you recommend from him? Are there any that are complete stand outs? 

Do you like brown corduroy suits?  Serious question.   
 

If yes, The Life Acquatic with Steve Zizou and the Royal Tennenbaums are wonderful.  If no, The Darjeeling Limited will be insufferable.  Whatever your sartorial take, you’d have to have a heart of coal not to love The Grand Budapest Hotel, which is a flat out masterpiece irrespective of who directed it. 
 

Not going to lie, I’m a bit of an Anderson fanboy.  Except for The French Dispatch, which stunk. 

Edited February 8 by Savage Henry

[coprolite]

20 minutes ago, Savage Henry said:

Do you like brown corduroy suits?  Serious question.   
 

If yes, The Life Acquatic with Steve Zizou and the Royal Tennenbaums are wonderful.  If no, The Darjeeling Limited will be insufferable.  Whatever your sartorial take, you’d have to have a heart of coal not to love The Grand Budapest Hotel, which is a flat out masterpiece irrespective of who directed it. 
 

Not going to lie, I’m a bit of an Anderson fanboy.  Except for The French Press, which stunk. 

 

 

On 01/02/2024 at 18:35, RuMoore said:

I can cope with the style and framing etc but if they're all self aware I can't see myself working through the entire catalogue, what would you recommend from him? Are there any that are complete stand outs? 

Loved Rushmore when it came out. Thought the life aquatic was entertaining if annoyingly whimsical and was put off seeing any more of his films by that Tenembaums pish. 

Did give the Budapest Hotel a go though and glad i did, was magic. Agree on French Dispatch, abandoned half way. 

[Savage Henry]

4 minutes ago, coprolite said:

 

 

Loved Rushmore when it came out. Thought the life aquatic was entertaining if annoyingly whimsical and was put off seeing any more of his films by that Tenembaums pish. 

Did give the Budapest Hotel a go though and glad i did, was magic. Agree on French Dispatch, abandoned half way. 

I know why I typed the French Press, but I also have no idea why.  But yeah, absolute clunker.  

[accies1874]

16 hours ago, CraigFowler said:

10 - All of Us Strangers

Not gonna lie, was a little disappointed by this. It's definitely very good and for the most part beautifully wove together the emotional impact of loss through fantasy and reality. The scenes with the parents are all incredibly well done. But I spent the film wondering about the Paul Mescal character and, I have to say, the payoff just didn't work for me at all. Can't really say too much more about it without getting into spoilers, but the choice detracts from the main plot of him having these conversations with his parents that he never got to have and facing the reality of finally letting go. It took away from its impact and just made it all a little too much in the end. I also found it hard to emotionally connect with Alan. I shed one tear in the entire film and I'm typically a blubber at emotional movies. I'm very lucky to have not had any real devastating fatal losses in my life, yet, so perhaps that's to do with it. But there's other films were I have nothing in common with the lead but still end up really rooting for them. In this I didn't really. That said, like I said at the start, it is good, just not as good as I expected it to be or as the premise promised.

First time around, I found the ending a bit disappointing too for a similar reason to you, but I do think it was a necessary more hopeful ending than if it finished 15 minutes earlier - even if, to me, it didn't feel like that at first. 

[RuMoore]

23 hours ago, Savage Henry said:

Do you like brown corduroy suits?  Serious question.   
 

If yes, The Life Acquatic with Steve Zizou and the Royal Tennenbaums are wonderful.  If no, The Darjeeling Limited will be insufferable.  Whatever your sartorial take, you’d have to have a heart of coal not to love The Grand Budapest Hotel, which is a flat out masterpiece irrespective of who directed it. 
 

Not going to lie, I’m a bit of an Anderson fanboy.  Except for The French Dispatch, which stunk. 

I'm going to give TGBH a try sometime in the next few weeks and that will probably decided if try a third one. 

What were your thoughts on Asteroid City? I mean I didn't think it was bad at all really just perhaps very different from what I expected. 

 

[Ewanandmoreagain]

The Long Hot Summer ( 1958 )

BBC I player

Pretty good 

Paul Newman's con man causes conflict in Orson Welles' family , which includes Joanne Woodward 

Spoiler

but incredibly , thinking of Daddy Vriner and son , it all ends happily 

IMHO Paul Newman could play these roles in his sleep e.g. " Hud "

The answer is yes

[accies1874]

Gonna hold off on doing The Zone of Interest until I've rewatched it, so here are these two:

7. Samsara - Cinema

A very slow and atmospheric film that is partly set in Laos, partly set in Zanzibar and partly set in the plane between death and reincarnation. 

It has a terrific soundscape that transports you into all three of these locations, especially the nature of the Laos monastery which complements the dreamy score beautifully The grainy cinematography and colour grading also allows the orange robes of the boys in the monastery to pop against the greens and blues of the forest and water that surrounds them. That retro cinematography, peaceful soundscape and lack of story creates an incredibly relaxing experience that almost feels like the last knockings of life - but in a way that embraces what's to come. 

The second half in Zanzibar replaces the prominent orange with reds and yellows - which I'd imagine will have some meaning given the fact those two colours make up orange - and, interestingly imo, the Buddhist characters are replaced by those of different religions, some of whom are Muslim and others whose religion escapes me. I found that interesting because death and the afterlife are key to the whole film, so you get to see how all of these different cultures respond to the great unknown. This was never really at the forefront of my mind, though, as I got most pleasure from just soaking in the experience. That experience peaks halfway through the film, which will be what almost everyone will remember of Samsara. 

At the end of the section in Laos there is a message on the screen telling you to close your eyes until you finally hear silence. What follows is like the astral projection scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey, only in complete darkness aside from the flashing lights that sometimes pierce through your eyelids. This is done with the intention of realising the idea of "bardo" - the space between death and reincarnation - and it worked perfectly for me as an incredibly unsettling experience. You hear an elephant, people chatting and other sound effects which I found disarming due to the feeling of having no idea where I was or why these sounds were happening, exactly like how I'd imagine the uncertainty and terror of being lost on a journey like that. I can't imagine watching this at home as that experience really needs to happen in the cinema, though I would like to 'cheat' and see what it looks like with my eyes open. It's ironic that such a brilliant cinematic experience requires you to not watch, but it does work in terms of transporting you beyond the cinema. The screening was pretty busy too, so, despite not being able to see how others are reacting, there is a communal experience to it. It's like collective isolation. 

8. American Fiction - Cinema

I found the trailer for this to be really funny, especially the premise of an author needing to live a stereotype to succeed, but that's a sideshow to the family drama stuff. I know that they just wanted to tell a normal story of a middle class man who happens to be black as opposed to feeling compelled to tell a "black story" which is obviously a meta quality of the film as the author is struggling with the same conflict, but I just found the normal story really quite dull and the other stuff really entertaining. That will naturally create a tonal imbalance which I think sometimes works in the film's favour to contrast the different directions Jeffrey Wright's Monk is getting pulled in, but that could also become jarring when it's interrupting scenes like the mourning of a character's death where a quite misplaced joke interrupts the emotion. That issue extended to the script for me too, as I though it was a bit disjointed due to being like vignettes of a family life that I didn't find all that interesting. 

It's not really stuck in my mind since seeing it last week, so this review might be a bit unfair, especially as I think it has some really interesting ideas about race and storytelling, but I just couldn't enjoy it as a piece. 

[MSU]

021 El Conde -- Pablo Larrain's surreal satire that sees Pinochet as a centuries-old vampire ready to die is certainly ambitious and, more than anything, beautifully shot.  It seems to be aiming for territory that Armando Iannucci is able to occupy with ease, and maybe it's because the subject matter here isn't all that well-known that the humor flies under my radar. The Thatcher narration for this child of the 70s is unmistakable, though. Edward Lachman's Oscar nom for cinematography is well-earned and the real star of the show. Shot in a luscious black-and-white, the shots of a flying Pinochet as a bizarrely appropriate bat man are breathtaking and contrast very well with some more brutal images. Overall, the depiction of a monstrous dictator as an actual monster fell a bit flat for me but that might say more about my ignorance of Chilean politics than anything else. 5/10

022 Society of the Snow -- The story of the Uruguayan rugby team whose plane crashes in the Andes has, of course, been told already in 1993's Alive. While I saw that at the time, I think, I don't remember much of it but I recall enough for this version to feel like it covers old ground. That said, the setpieces of the crash and the avalanche are done exceptionally well here and the make-up and effects do a marvelously convincing job. It's a dark tale of human survival and the determination to live and although I knew how it was going to end, and arguably it took a bit long to get there, I was emotionally connected enough to have to flick a tear or two away. 7/10

023 They Called Him Mostly Harmless -- It's an intriguing tale of a mystery man found dead in a tent on a Floridian hiking trail and no one knows who he is, and then years later when someone figures it out, the story takes a turn. Patricia E. Gillespie's documentary maintains the intrigue through its runtime, partly through the distraction of how bitchy the online sleuth community can be to each other, and it manages to subtlely ask questions of ourselves, of who gets to see the real us, how long it would take for us to be identified, and who would miss us if we just packed up one day and never came back. 7/10

024 Upgraded -- I threw this on just as something to have in the background and ended up enjoying it much more than I expected to. It's a typical Cinderella-style rom-com that sees lowly auction house worker, Ana, get upgraded on a flight to London to help her boss in an emergency and in the hype of traveling first class, she inadvertently pretends to be the boss of the company to impress the cute guy, Will, she's sat beside. When it transpires that Will's mother intends to sell her fabulously expensive art collection through Ana's company, she finds that her deceit is likely to come back to bite her. Camila Mendes and Archie Renaux have a cute chemistry together, although he's a bit wet, but Marisa Tomei as Ana's ball-busting boss steals every scene she's in. It goes absolutely nowhere new but it covers a familiar track pretty well and throws in a few chuckles for good measure along the way. Not bad at all. 6/10

025 How to Have Sex -- Never, ever go on vacation as part of a trio. Someone always ends up getting sidelined and you're lucky if you all go home still friends. The odd one out here is sixteen-year-old Tara, who finds herself on presumably her first holiday without parents, instead going with Skye and Em, and it's difficult to decide which one to hate the most as they obnoxiously drink and smoke their way around Malia while looking for fun and a hookup. And therein lies the only real drama in the movie when Tara finds herself alone with the wrong boy. The movie plays more as a series of repetitive vignettes, although I found a few laughs in the familiarity of Brits abroad, before the heartbreaking finale. Molly Manning Walker writes, directs, and draws from personal experience here, and there were enough uses of reflections to make me think of After Sun here and there, and although the comparisons don't begin or end there, After Sun was a far better film. Mia McKenna-Bruce stole the show for me with a pretty rounded performance, but in the end, I wanted to be left with more than a few hints that everyone knew that the wrong 'un was a wrong 'un, as unsettling as that was, and as much as it demands more from those witnesses maybe the movie could've done the same itself. Rape is bad. The movie should have more to say about things than that, I'd suggest, and a closing sequence where all seems to have been forgotten in favor of chips. Extra half-star for the subtitles. I may have scoffed at them to begin with, but they were definitely useful. 5/10

026 Lisa Frankenstein -- The irony that this (sort of) take on Frankenstein feels like it's stitched together of so many different parts may just be the cleverest part of the movie. The 80s setting gives us a stonkingly good soundtrack but little else as Diablo Cody's story brings romance, horror, and comedy together but doesn't quite hit the mark on either component. I like Kathryn Newton and she does a good enough job here, and I like Diablo Cody's writing, but a lot of the jokes fell a bit flat, tried too hard, and landed awkwardly for me, particularly in the uneven first act, and when proceedings took a murderous turn, I felt like I checked out a little, which was a shame as on paper this had an awful lot going for it. For me, it just failed to deliver on that promise. 4/10

 

[Savage Henry]

On 09/02/2024 at 19:04, RuMoore said:

I'm going to give TGBH a try sometime in the next few weeks and that will probably decided if try a third one. 

What were your thoughts on Asteroid City? I mean I didn't think it was bad at all really just perhaps very different from what I expected. 

 

Haven’t seen it.   His last one, The French Dispatch, put me off a bit.  Going to wait till it pops up on Prime. 

[JustOneCornetto]

1 hour ago, Savage Henry said:

Haven’t seen it.   His last one, The French Dispatch, put me off a bit.  Going to wait till it pops up on Prime. 

I'm not a massive Wes Anderson fan but I did like Asteroid City. FYI it drops on Sky Cinema a week on Friday

[accies1874]

9. The Zone of Interest - Cinema

A great film on so many different levels, but one that didn't really affect me as much as it has with others. 

It starts with an extended black screen with weird sort of sci-fi sounds rumbling in the background, which I think sets the scene perfectly for what's to come as it helps you understand right from the off that the sound of the film is the most important part of it. That's because this is a dry domestic drama which has the inconvenient backdrop of Auschwitz. You only see one shot inside Auschwitz during the Holocaust and even that's framed upwards towards the sky. The rumbling sound transitions into a normal scene with a family down by the river where they're immersed in the sound of chirping birds, however those peaceful noises get replaced by rifle fire, incinerators and screaming that is at points hard to distinguish from a baby crying or children playing in a garden, which I think is essentially the crux of the film. Despite noise playing such a huge part in it, there's a very stripped back score in the form of occasional interruptions from similar electronic pulses, adding a sense of surrealism to something very dry. 

In addition to the soundscape, the cinematography framing Auschwitz alongside the "paradise" that the family have created for themselves remains striking throughout. Like with Jonathan Glazer's previous film Under the Skin, he uses hidden cameras to create a clandestine atmosphere which provides a sense of detachment and lack of empathy towards the family, however it also gave me an insight into the deeply repressed guilt that they might feel; a nagging feeling that they know that this paradise is built on evil, so they want to revel in it but don't want to be closely observed doing so. I'm not quite sure if that's a fair reading though. I found the psychology of the married couple interesting due to that question of whether they've come to live with the Holocaust being the soundtrack of their life, or if it is always playing on their mind. There's a scene where Rudolph Hoss thinks he can hear a bird in the distance, so the fact that he can make that out suggests that he can always hear the other horrific sounds too. There are also a couple of scenes where a heroic act plays out while he reads a story to his kid which I found to be another example of deep, deep inner turmoil as he reads a good vs evil fairytale while committing such evil acts in his job. 

Turning the Holocaust into a woman trying to protect her status and a man trying to climb the corporate ladder also relates it back to pervasive themes of power and class and what you're willing to overlook to achieve them. I'm still not sure why it didn't provoke much of a reaction in me other than admiration for how it's made. 

10. The Iron Claw - Cinema

I loved the director's first film, Martha Marcy May Marlene, which was the main selling point for me to go see this, and they're actually surprisingly similar considering that was about a woman escaping a cult and this is a wrestling picture. I knew sweet f.a. about the Von Erich family going into The Iron Claw, so I could only really see it as a story rather than an account of their real-life rise and fall, and in that respect I thought this was absolutely excellent. 

Like Martha Marcy May Marlene, this looks to explore abuse and the ripple effects it has. There's talk of the Von Erich Curse and the thing I found most interesting about the film was that it agrees with the characters that there is indeed a curse on the family - just not the one they initially think. They don't have a supernatural entity haunting them, but the four sons were cursed by being brought into a patriarchal family where their father pushes them to wrestling success and anything less than being number one is seen as failure, which is maths that doesn't add up when there are four of you. I thought the characterisation of the four brothers managed to convey the detrimental impact of their father's attitude while still letting them be individuals in their own right - individualism that their dad tries to eat away at. One of the brothers was left out altogether, which I didn't know about until after, but I thought it worked in terms of keeping the flow of the film, however I can see why others might find it to be a bit disrespectful. 

Zac Efron was genuinely perfect as he has the kind of face that suggests there's very little going on between the ears, so combine that with being absolutely jacked and you've got a main character who you wouldn't automatically assume is dealing with such inner trauma. The fact he manages to fight through that to deliver a really agonising performance is impressive. His in-film dad, played by Mindhunter's Holt McCallany, didn't work for me quite as much, as I think he pitched the performance a bit too high, not helped by him having to deliver a couple of the more on-the-nose lines. 

The wrestling scenes were, on the whole, intense with a lot of closeups in the ring which kept the focus on what the characters were going through in those moments rather than just trying to depict a cool wrestling match, however there were a couple of big moments that they chose to shoot either entirely from a distance or through a television screen. I've seen complaints that the film didn't quite convey just how big of a deal the brothers were from a cultural standpoint, but I thought that worked in its favour as it never glamourised success and always kept a focus on what the brothers should be striving for rather than what they were achieving for their father. 

[RuMoore]

District 9 (rewatch) - Love this film on so many levels, creative, terrific acting, non stop from the get go. Really hope they finally get round to making a sequel. 

8/10

Argyle - Really enjoyed this, first trailer I've seen in a while that actually looked interesting and it delivered and then some. Won't say much on the plot as its only just came out but I thought it was fantastic, very silly, visually enjoyable and fundamentally just a fun thing to watch. Can imagine people from all ages enjoying it.

9/10

[KnightswoodBear]

Went with the kids to see Wonka today. Thought it was absolutely magnificent. 

[MSU]

027 Lover, Stalker, Killer -- I dunno if it's because I've watched so many of these Netflix documentaries, but because of the way they set out the players at the start of this, it becomes fairly obvious fairly quickly what the real story is. That notwithstanding, Sam Hobkinson's film is still interesting enough and maybe even something that would've been astounding to watch 10 years ago as it follows the tale of a man who got more than he bargained for when he opened up a Plenty of Fish account. 5/10

028 The Color Purple -- After enjoying Wonka so much, it almost fooled me into thinking I liked musicals. Thankfully, The Color Purple comes along to remind me that I really don't. It's such a shame because so much of this is first-rate: the acting, the cinematography, and the lighting is *gorgeous*, but every time it threatened to make an emotional connection with me, a big ole song in its size 12s would come along, trample over that good work, and make an already long film feel even longer. 6/10

... and then I went to see the five Oscar-nominated documentary shorts ...

029 Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó -- "Documentary" seems too grand a term for this nevertheless delightful short about the elderly grandmothers of the filmmaker, Sean Wang, who live and grow even older together. There isn't an awful lot to this, except the quirky, sharp, amusing old women who laugh and dance and fart and seem to gain energy whenever Sean comes to visit, but who measure the summers they have left as under five. Very pleasant but overall maybe just a bit too twee and offers too little that lingers. Even the farts. 6/10

030 The Barber of Little Rock -- I loved this short documentary about Arlo Washington, a man who set up a barber college in Little Rock, AK but has given so much to his under-privileged and ignored community. Arlo articulates brilliantly the generational poverty that afflicts those born on the wrong side of I-630, and the ridiculous additional hoops they have to jump through for financial services and loans. Washington is an inspirational character, doing something great for the community he loves, but the film also provides an interesting history lesson for those in need to learn. 8/10

031 Island in Between -- I'm a sucker for geographical quirks such as Kinmen Island shown in this documentary short, which despite belonging to Taiwain, lies a couple of miles from the Chinese mainland. What was most interesting, along with relics from the civil war, was the propaganda that swayed those on Kinmen away from the evil Commies across the water that seemed to be immediately dispelled once a ferry between the two was opened. S Leo Chiang's film doesn't get much deeper than that and fails to convey the tensions that still exist. 5/10

032 The ABCs of Book Banning -- If you weren't aware of the books that find themselves either restricted, challenged, or outright banned, from school libraries in the US, it's unlikely you'd expect to see The Hobbit on the list. And yet here we are. This short documentary interviews kids on their views of the books on the list that mostly appear to promote conversation around race, sexuality, and religion and whose talking points are squashed. You've got to be fucking kidding me, is the general view of the youngsters and it's hard to argue against it. Bookending this are the thoughts of a 100-year-old woman who gives an incredible speech to a Floridian school board, reminding them that the freedoms that people fought and died for include the freedom to express thoughts that some may find challenging. You get the impression that some of the soundbites are a bit manufactured, but the message remains incredibly strong. 8/10

033 The Last Repair Shop -- My pick of the bunch of the 2024 Short Documentary Oscar nominees focuses on the last repair shop in Los Angeles that fixes musical instruments for tens of thousands of school students. There's a pretty clear metaphor that the instruments aren't the only things that get broken or fixed, but the film handles this pretty smoothly. The craftspeople in the shop bring their own stories to the table along with those of the students and it's a hugely uplifting experience and a worthy reminder of the importance of music in children's lives and how playing an instrument can take you anywhere. Beautiful stuff. 9/10

[Sergeant Wilson]

9 hours ago, MSU said:

027 Lover, Stalker, Killer -- I dunno if it's because I've watched so many of these Netflix documentaries, but because of the way they set out the players at the start of this, it becomes fairly obvious fairly quickly what the real story is. That notwithstanding, Sam Hobkinson's film is still interesting enough and maybe even something that would've been astounding to watch 10 years ago as it follows the tale of a man who got more than he bargained for when he opened up a Plenty of Fish account. 5/10

028 The Color Purple -- After enjoying Wonka so much, it almost fooled me into thinking I liked musicals. Thankfully, The Color Purple comes along to remind me that I really don't. It's such a shame because so much of this is first-rate: the acting, the cinematography, and the lighting is *gorgeous*, but every time it threatened to make an emotional connection with me, a big ole song in its size 12s would come along, trample over that good work, and make an already long film feel even longer. 6/10

... and then I went to see the five Oscar-nominated documentary shorts ...

029 Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó -- "Documentary" seems too grand a term for this nevertheless delightful short about the elderly grandmothers of the filmmaker, Sean Wang, who live and grow even older together. There isn't an awful lot to this, except the quirky, sharp, amusing old women who laugh and dance and fart and seem to gain energy whenever Sean comes to visit, but who measure the summers they have left as under five. Very pleasant but overall maybe just a bit too twee and offers too little that lingers. Even the farts. 6/10

030 The Barber of Little Rock -- I loved this short documentary about Arlo Washington, a man who set up a barber college in Little Rock, AK but has given so much to his under-privileged and ignored community. Arlo articulates brilliantly the generational poverty that afflicts those born on the wrong side of I-630, and the ridiculous additional hoops they have to jump through for financial services and loans. Washington is an inspirational character, doing something great for the community he loves, but the film also provides an interesting history lesson for those in need to learn. 8/10

031 Island in Between -- I'm a sucker for geographical quirks such as Kinmen Island shown in this documentary short, which despite belonging to Taiwain, lies a couple of miles from the Chinese mainland. What was most interesting, along with relics from the civil war, was the propaganda that swayed those on Kinmen away from the evil Commies across the water that seemed to be immediately dispelled once a ferry between the two was opened. S Leo Chiang's film doesn't get much deeper than that and fails to convey the tensions that still exist. 5/10

032 The ABCs of Book Banning -- If you weren't aware of the books that find themselves either restricted, challenged, or outright banned, from school libraries in the US, it's unlikely you'd expect to see The Hobbit on the list. And yet here we are. This short documentary interviews kids on their views of the books on the list that mostly appear to promote conversation around race, sexuality, and religion and whose talking points are squashed. You've got to be fucking kidding me, is the general view of the youngsters and it's hard to argue against it. Bookending this are the thoughts of a 100-year-old woman who gives an incredible speech to a Floridian school board, reminding them that the freedoms that people fought and died for include the freedom to express thoughts that some may find challenging. You get the impression that some of the soundbites are a bit manufactured, but the message remains incredibly strong. 8/10

033 The Last Repair Shop -- My pick of the bunch of the 2024 Short Documentary Oscar nominees focuses on the last repair shop in Los Angeles that fixes musical instruments for tens of thousands of school students. There's a pretty clear metaphor that the instruments aren't the only things that get broken or fixed, but the film handles this pretty smoothly. The craftspeople in the shop bring their own stories to the table along with those of the students and it's a hugely uplifting experience and a worthy reminder of the importance of music in children's lives and how playing an instrument can take you anywhere. Beautiful stuff. 9/10

Have you seen Holiday On the Buses?

[MSU]

8 hours ago, Sergeant Wilson said:

Have you seen Holiday On the Buses?

No, but I watched Carry on Abroad last night.

[Sergeant Wilson]

1 minute ago, MSU said:

No, but I watched Carry on Abroad last night.

Ells Bells!

[Sherrif John Bunnell]

Moonfall - I'm normally a fan of these nonsense disaster films, including previous films from the same director, but I thought this was just complete garbage from start to finish The director seemed to have ideas for about a dozen different movies and decided to cram them all into one. The acting is also laughably bad, but they didn't have much of a script to work with.

[CraigFowler]

Don't have a lot of time this evening so I'm going to do quick reviews of these.

12 - Howl's Moving Castle

This is the third Hayao Miyazaki film I've seen and the one I've probably liked the least. It lacks the cutesy charm of My Neighbour Totoro and, even though it was set at a time of war, I didn't feel the same sense of peril with the main character and those close to her as I did with Spirited Away. I guess it was just a bit too fantastical for my tastes. That being said, I still enjoyed it. The Witch of the Waste going from being a domineering presence to a bug-eyed grandmother was the highlight for me, I laughed just about every time she was on screen after that.

13 - The Apartment

A romantic comedy that was well ahead of its time with a concept that's more original and interesting than 99 per cent of romantic comedies which have been released since. Jack Lemmon is such a likeable and relatable lead, Shirley MacLaine is an enchanting presence and plays the messed-up, love-sick interest of the lead with just the right balance, and Fred MacMurray superbly goes against type as the manipulative Sheldrake. All three of them are perfect in the roles and that's what makes it. The script is funny and while you have a fair idea of where the film is headed, it throws in a few curveballs along the way to keep you on your toes. My only main gripe is that it's about 15 minutes too long. 

14 - Zone of Interest

The best movie released in 2024 so far for me. There is nothing much which happens over the course of 100 minutes and yet I was transfixed on the screen throughout. That's because the attention to detail is astounding. Talking about it with my partner afterwards, there were little moments we each picked up on which, once shared, enhanced our experience of seeing it. It's very much a film which is show, don't tell. I've hastened to use the word "enjoy" so far because it's not an easy watch by any means. Even as the film continued and I began to realise how restrained it was in any sort of dramatic elements, I still had a sense of dread coursing through me, which isn't all that surprising given the subject matter. It's a hugely important and brave movie to make, as well. It's just commonly accepted that Nazi's were monsters, which is what we tell ourselves as a society to bring comfort and banish the idea that something like that could happen again (of course, it already has happened again in some form elsewhere, just not in countries that the UK cares about, but I digress). When in fact they were not monsters, they were people, and people can do things so heinous that we don't have the words to properly describe them.

15 - American Fiction

There was a lot I liked about this. Movies and books only really showing black people living in poverty or being involved in drugs or crime isn't something that had crossed my mind before, so it posed some tough questions amid the well-balanced satire. It was also a lot funnier than I expected the movie to be and, despite just watching it by myself, I laughed out loud on several occasions. Furthermore, it was an interesting character study with regards to Monk and how he struggles to relate to the world around him. However, it's also a film about family and that's where I thought it was a little weak. As a drama it didn't get to me emotionally. I think the best way to describe why was the use of the mother's dementia. It's really just used as a reason to drive the plot. The scenes with Sterling K Brown are all great and I think it would've been better if they'd trimmed that part down and just made it about their dynamic and nobody else. But the biggest problem for me came in the third act. Had it all been tied together nicely then I think I would've liked it a lot more. As it was, I was left feeling a bit like the film was unresolved and narrative decision late on which really didn't work for me.