UKH

Starting with a bit of a yaaaawn

 

Watched "Wanted" last night for the first time since its cinema release, and it was pretty much as remembered i.e. a somewhat squandered potential.
For those who can't remember fairly unmemorable films, this was the one with James McAvoy and Angelina Jolie in a sort of update of The Assassination Bureau (a mostly cool late 1960s thing with Oliver Reed and a never-better Diana Rigg, which loses its own way in the final act).
Wanted was the Hollywood debut of Timur Bekmambetov who had got a lot of attention with the mainstream-crossover appeal of his flashy but mediocre Nightwatch and Daywatch silly vampire films.
To its Assassination Bureau plot, it adds some fairly flashy camera gimmicks (sadly often overused making it come across as a too-late Matrix bandwagon jumper). "Curving bullets" in slow motion seems to be the main trick.
Where it really goes wrong is in the pacing, structure and lack of humour (especially when it seems to start like it's going to have a streak of black humour, almost like a tongue in cheek Fight Club with McAvoy's blank "nobody" narrating things), plus despite its $75 million budget and some truly imaginative action sequences, it looks like they overreached slightly with some of them and it comes across as unfinished and cheap.
And all of this is really frustrating because at its heart there is an intriguing premise and what COULD have been a good twist that COULD have made you really feel something, if there had been proper characterisation.

6/10. I only really rewatched it because I bought a really cool poster for it in the USA, bought for the visual rather than because I liked the film!

Watched "The Town" on Netflix last night.

Missed it first time round but it's a good Boston based robbery film.

It gets  comparisons to Heat but I'm not sure  it's quite up there.

A good two hours all the same with an excellent cast, Jeremy Renner is superb. (May have been Pete Postlethwaite's last screen appearance)

That comes from the graphic novel it's based on.

I know it is based on a series of graphic novels and I assumed a lot of the stuff in the film came from those. You seem to be defending the film somehow. I was only saying that the director liked to do lots of flashy camera shots for the action sequences but that he seemed particularly fond of repeating the curving bullets, so that the visual became old quite quickly, rather like the "bullet time" shots throughout the Matrix films, which similarly add next-to-nothing to the narrative. 

Dredd (2012) did this better with the ultra-slow-motion which did fit into the story and iirc was not overused. 

Any film with an urban shootout seems to get compared to Heat and I really don't know why, especially when it is something low-key like The Town, or last year's "Destroyer", and Heat's main set-piece is a massive long epic scene of total urban warfare. 

Not defending the film as such, though I did like it more than you. Maybe 7/7.5. What I was saying was that the curving bullets weren't the directors idea, I've read the graphic novel and it was in there. 

Ah, right, makes sense. No, I wasn't crediting Bekmambetov with any originality  

The night before last, I watched 1958's The Vikings. 

It was pretty much as I remembered it, i.e. colourful and silly and really not all that great (see "The Long Ships" for a much more interesting "Hollywood Vikings" film).

What I hadn't noticed before was that, aside from some fun character establishment in the first 25 minutes, the ENTIRE film is about 2.5 men fighting over Janet Leigh's pristine fanny. Literally, that is the plot, it's not even coy about it. 

That profile shot in front of the castle window shows that she has other strong points, although apparently the fact that she had an 18" waist added to the illusion.

This is all correct but in the film it is all quite specifically about her prized "honour" i.e. her fanny. It is unashamed!

And here 's me thinking they got a bit het up about the pommel stone of the sword Requitas!

A fairly minor sub plot, that. OK so the ENTIRE film is not about that one thing, but about 80% of it is. 

I was only showing off about my quote memory.

Finally got around to watching From Here To Eternity for the first time, two days ago. One of those titles that you always remember (as it is quite memorable and evocative as a title) but which, at least in my case, you are never quite sure what the film is ABOUT. And having now seen it, I can see that it is somewhat hard to make a synopsis for it without it basically sounding like a melodramatic soap opera (there’s romance! There’s workplace corruption! There’s tragedy!) which would be terrifically unfair on the film. 

It is quite hard to encapsulate the plot as there is not actually much story (at least without going into too much detail); it’s almost more of a character study coupled with a snapshot of a short period on army barracks (in Hawaii shortly before the USA enters the Second World War)

We mostly follow the travails of four main characters and three supporting ones, all somewhat archetypes but never stereotypes. I guess the main “plot” is that the captain in charge of the barracks is an all round bad egg, corrupt and feathering his nest; all other story elements are connected to this.

It is incredibly richly written both in story and dialogue, and very well served by superb performances; Montgomery Clift and Deborah Kerr are the standouts but everyone is on top form

8.5/10 

Great film. Isn't the original author the same as "Thin Red Line"?

James Jones? I think so.

Amusingly the opening credits of the film give the title, Director, stars, screenwriter, “based on novel by” and then the next credit is for “Gowns”. Priorities! 

Borgnine always looked good in a gown.

Borgnine was as terrifying in this as he was in Emperor of the North 

Agree totally.

< Big name drop alert >

Because Fred Zinnemann was a good friend of actor Tony Britton, who starred in my final year film at film school, I invited him to come and see it ... and he did!! I was amazed, frankly. We saw the film together and then had lunch in the posh upstairs restaurant at the RCA. He was very affable, chatty and encouraging (he quite liked my film) and said that I should go to Hollywood. I didn't follow his advice because I wanted to stay in England. He didn't help me directly, but his encouragement definitely gave me a psychological boost, and made me more determined than ever to succeed.

That’s my favourite namedrop of yours! 😃

I'll only be impressed if he says he interviewd Ebenezer Elliot.

Timbuktu is a beautiful film about the horrible Ansar Dine islamic fundamentalist occupation of the city. The mundane portrayal of such tragedy works really well, and the cinematography, both urban and rural is spectacular. Highly recommended.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbuktu_(2014_film)

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/timbuktu_2015

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00029l8

Also enjoyed the comedy Mistress America... at times it had a cautionary tale feel on similar themes to The Great Gatsby, but played as contemporary farce by female leads.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/mistress_america

If you liked Mistress America and you like Gerwig, you might enjoy "Maggie's Plan", which seems to have divided opinion. I found it passable, preferred Mistress America though. 

After watching From Here to Eternity I had a little "Deborah Kerr movie marathon" over the Easter weekend! More films that I'd never seen (actually, weirdly, I think I'd only seen one of her films before and that was the bloated 1967 Casino Royale)

An Affair to Remember. A troublesome film and overall unenjoyable because pretty much all the characters apart from Cary Grant's grandmother, were pretty mean. I didn't expect this from a classic 1950s studio "romantic comedy"

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. Meandering and only becomes engaging in the last (and excellent) 40 minutes. Shame it took 110 minutes to GET to the start of the last 40 minutes! Kerr, however, was astonishing throughout this in her three roles, it's unbelievable that she was only 21 when this was made. Actually all the leads were good and I was really impressed with the make-up

And another Fred Zinneman, The Sundowners, which I had to watch on a 14" portable TV/VCR/DVD combi that I'd recently bought! Almost as long as Colonel Blimp and arguably has far less going on, yet actually a lot more engaging once you get past Mitchum and Kerr mangling the Australian accents. Peter Ustinov steals the film. 

Deborah Kerr seems a peculiar case. She was clearly massively talented, and had an elegant, majestic, graceful beauty, but her looks were not DISTINCTIVE (maybe this helped the performances feel stronger)

The reason I went for a mini-marathon was that I noted that she could be the answer to an excellent pub quiz tie breaker. 
Although Glenn Close has the record for "actress with the most Oscar nominations without a single win" (7), three of hers were for best supporting actress. 
Kerr had six nominations ALL for Best Actress in a Leading Role, never won. 
Then when she was 74, the Academy awarded her an Honorary or Special Oscar, which is basically half apology and half "well done, you got old"
Ironically, this was presented to her by.....GLENN CLOSE. Maybe Deborah "Kerrsed" Glenn to never win  


 

My mum took me to watch The Sundowners.

She pronounced Kerr as " car" but then she also called that town Shrowsbury,

I watched 'Hold the Dark' on Netflix over the weekend. I still can't quite decide what to make of it - at first I thought it was going to be a crappy wolf-based horror, but it was more of a stark psychological thriller. However, I couldn't quite fathom various characters' motivations, so some of the impact of what might otherwise have been an interesting exploration about how geography, climate and local society affect people was lost. Generally decent acting; perhaps the cinematography could have made more use of the scale of the landscape

I got half an hour into A Hard Day's Night on Saturday, which I've been looking forward to for years, having heard that it is a goofy energetic fun classic, brilliantly directed by Richard Lester etc. 

I turned it off because The Beatles in character were coming across as conceited, insufferable pricks, and Lennon was wearing his typical "I'm above all this tomfoolery but I'll stoop to it anyway" expression. I just didn't get it. I will try to finish it off next weekend.