Hostiles- Really great performance by Bale, he owns the screen. But an otherwise pretty forgettable film I thought which is a shame because I think Scott Cooper is a great filmmaker.
This movie is written and directed by Taylor Sheridan. Sheridan directs, actors and writes, but he's best known for writing the scripts for the brilliant "Sicario" and "Hell or high water".
The movie takes place in the mountains of Wyoming in the very poor native American communities there. A native American girl is found raped and frozen to death in the snow. Murder rates for Native American girls/women in the US and Canada are very high. An FBI agent (Elisabeth Olsen) and a local hunter and tracker (Jeremy Renner) try to find the killer.
Sheridan may not be a director quite as good as Mackenzie and Kathrine Bigelow, but he directs very well. The setting is unusal, something I like and the story and acting is exellent.
I think Taylor Sheridan should be teamed up with a writer from Britain who can write comedy and adventure and write a Bond movie together. Sheridan must be one of the best screenwriters today when it comes to tense thrillers with a strong sense of location.
This movie is written and directed by Taylor Sheridan. Sheridan directs, actors and writes, but he's best known for writing the scripts for the brilliant "Sicario" and "Hell or high water".
The movie takes place in the mountains of Wyoming in the very poor native American communities there. A native American girl is found raped and frozen to death in the snow. Murder rates for Native American girls/women in the US and Canada are very high. An FBI agent (Elisabeth Olsen) and a local hunter and tracker (Jeremy Renner) try to find the killer.
Sheridan may not be a director quite as good as Mackenzie and Kathrine Bigelow, but he directs very well. The setting is unusal, something I like and the story and acting is exellent.
I think Taylor Sheridan should be teamed up with a writer from Britain who can write comedy and adventure and write a Bond movie together. Sheridan must be one of the best screenwriters today when it comes to tense thrillers with a strong sense of location.
I got this for my Dad, it's a Bogart war movie that reunites some of the cast of The Maltese Falcon, namely Mary Astor and Sydney Greenstreet. No Peter Lorre though.
It was very talky, I suppose like Falcon. I was hoping for a mellower watch. The film was going to be about an attack on Pearl Harbor but once that actually happened they fixed it for the Panama Canal instead. This is the one David Niven refers to in his book, where John Huston directs but gets called up to the Army before the finale, leaving a note on the door along the lines of 'You figure out how he escapes!'
Greenstreet is usually welcome but he is in this one a lot, about as much as Bogart. Some kind of charm is missing and much of it is set on cruise liners, it gets claustrophobic aside from the slightly hamfisted action fest finale. The print I had seemed a bit blurred, lacking in grain, so the actors looked a bit waxy and almost CGI at times. Sound quality good though.
Trainspotting : At last I got to watch it, and very impressive it is too.
Our Kind of Traitor : Thriller with Ewan McGregor and Naomie Harris, also very good.
"I've been informed that there ARE a couple of QAnon supporters who are fairly regular posters in AJB."
Our Kind of Traitor : Thriller with Ewan McGregor and Naomie Harris, also very good.
I watched that too a little while back. Its yet another John leCarre adaptation. That couple sure went out of their way to help their new friend they met while travelling abroad.
So between that and your Danny Boyle research, it was a Ewan McGregor double bill.
CHiPs--the latest film in the "hot" new trend of taking a TV show from 30 years ago and turning it into a gross-out comedy. Unfortunately, this one was all gross and no comedy.
There were a few things to like, but Alden Ehrenreich wasn't one of them. To me, it seemed like a checklist (Solo meets Chewbacca: tick. Meets Lando: tick. Gets Millenium Falcon: tick.) with some good scenes.
I know about the behind-the-scenes turmoil, and it does hold together surprisingly well despite that but as a movie somehow seems inconsequential.
There were a few things to like, but Alden Ehrenreich wasn't one of them. To me, it seemed like a checklist (Solo meets Chewbacca: tick. Meets Lando: tick. Gets Millenium Falcon: tick.) with some good scenes.
I know about the behind-the-scenes turmoil, and it does hold together surprisingly well despite that but as a movie somehow seems inconsequential.
It's entirely unnecessary, but surprisingly fun nonetheless. If Trump were YOUR leader, you'd be more like me I suspect, enjoying an inconsequential little movie for the two hours YOU didn't have to hear or think about how he's driving your country into the ground.
Chinatown (1974)
Roman Polanski, Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston
I freakin' love this movie
-solid Chandler pastiche, better than some actual Chandler adaptations, especially with the byzantine plot, the sense of local geography, the moral rot radiating out form the old rich guy up on the hill who has ruined so many little peoples lives … it doesn't have Chandlers use of language though, but what film does? also I think Jake Gittes dresses better and has a nicer office than I ever pictured Marlowe.
(The Big Lebowski is another great unofficial Chandler pastiche)
-Nicholson at the height of his powers, before he became a professional parody of himself.
-the sepia toned colour scheme and all that beautiful woodwork, architecture, costumes, cars … Nicholson is wearing a very nice suit when he gets himself into trouble at the dam.
-at one point, Nicholson spots two workmen scraping a dead man's name off the office door where he used to work. The Coen Brothers used that same image in one of their early films, I forget which one - Barton Fink? Hudsucker Proxy? anyways, in both cases that image is a tribute to a classic shot from the Maltese Falcon, which was directed by, oh what's that guys name? John Huston of course, the very villain of this movie!
-the local history, based on real events, suggesting the very origins of Los Angeles' famed suburban sprawl was spawned from acts of evil … something I read online argues that the shock ending, which deviates suddenly from the water diversion plot, is a metaphor for the "rape" of the farmland to benefit the crooked real estate scheme. At any rate, it adds a more primal level of evil underneath the plot, just in case all the talk of city engineering and planning policy was a bit obscure.
And the environmental message about the true cost of water diversions has only grown more relevant in the years since. Wasn't it just recently Southern California was rationing water and penalising farmers while diverting water for frakking during a record drought?
-my own most recent work experience was with a municipal engineering department, mapping storm sewer infrastructure, so all the emphasis on the reservoirs, dams, culverts, engineering departments, property searches, and vast archives of handwritten records, is speaking my language.
There's just not enough glamorous thrillers about municipal infrastructure!
-SCTV did an excellent parody of this called Polynesiantown. I'm sorry I cant find it on youtube, but this one has been officially released on one of their dvd's.
-An early episode of Six Feet Under paid tribute to the shock ending revelation, when Nate confronts his creepy girlfriend's creepier brother about why he's always hanging round naked in her apartment. It's good when a film can inspire such an obscure reference in an otherwise unrelated teevee show decades later!
Finally caught up with Blade Runner 2049, which I enjoyed a lot more than I expected to. Slow and stately, with the exquisite design expected of a Blade Runner sequel and an interesting feminist subtext about the commodification of women. I can see why it didn't make money - it might almost be described as a very expensive art movie and the pacing might be just too slow for many. The length of the movie worked against it also in a financial sense - at 163 minutes (which equals a good three hours including ads and trailer in a cinema) the number of screenings possible per day were reduced.
Ryan Gosling is great as lead character K. I've never been a big fan of his before but here he gives a very internalised performance as a character who either cannot or must not display any overt emotions.
Altogether the best sequel to Blade Runner that could be imagined. The memory of the original was not besmirched.
Incredibles 2
written & directed by Brad Bird
music by Michael Giacchino
more of thee stylin' retro-future set design (when'd that disappear from our films? Moonraker?)
more of the swell toonage with the swaggery brass section (and even though Barry was still doing Bond soundtracks into the 80s, I think the big brass sound disappeared after Diamonds... )
and about halfway through appears... the Incredobile!
I shall not spoil the final action setpiece, but its all for us.
Comic book fans will get something out of this film too, but the best stuff is for Bondgeeks.
Giacchino's music is exactly what we need. Check out the snappy groove as the Incredibles move into their new house, followed immediately by the sweeping heroic theme as Elastigirl begins her first day at her new job. The music tells the story!
by coincidence the other day I watched Ghost Protocol, which is Brad Bird's first live action film, and Giacchino does the music for that one too. Its pretty good, another 60s spy franchise, but not the same. Here Bird and Giacchino deliver exactly the experience we've been missing from our official Bond films for decades now.
Alsho: I offishally nominate Holly Hunter ash my candidate for the nexht Jamesh Bond actor. Becaush she natshurally shpeaks with Connery shtyle shibilansh. What I'm shaying, is she shlursh her eshesh, jusht like Jamesh Bond is shupposhed to do.
I saw two films recently.
Papillon (1973) and Get Carter (1971)
Both endings left me empty after watching the film and I'll explain why.
On Get Carter, the concept of a psychopathic killer for the British mafia, avenging his brother, taking lives left and right felt like the prototype for a 70s John Wick. They coulda made several sequels with this character but they never did.
It's not even an Italian Job style cliffhanger wether they had plans to or not. He gets a shot to the head.
Sure, he was out on revenge but he had no compulsion on taking a human life. He didn't even care about the girl in the boot.
It was fitting, certainly, but I would've loved to see more. The venerable "European" ending to a movie.
On Papillon, just the whole journey for freedom leading to eventually nothing due to a dumb move by the protagonist made me feel very down. Granted he survived in the end, but I don't think he managed to enjoy his final years due to his wasted youth.
Maybe getting killed in freedom was a happier ending for him. At least he found a purpose and a goal he achieved in his wasted life behind bars.
Finally caught up with Blade Runner 2049, which I enjoyed a lot more than I expected to. Slow and stately, with the exquisite design expected of a Blade Runner sequel and an interesting feminist subtext about the commodification of women. I can see why it didn't make money - it might almost be described as a very expensive art movie and the pacing might be just too slow for many. The length of the movie worked against it also in a financial sense - at 163 minutes (which equals a good three hours including ads and trailer in a cinema) the number of screenings possible per day were reduced.
Ryan Gosling is great as lead character K. I've never been a big fan of his before but here he gives a very internalised performance as a character who either cannot or must not display any overt emotions.
Altogether the best sequel to Blade Runner that could be imagined. The memory of the original was not besmirched.
That's a great review and pretty much sums up my thoughts of the film. I loved Blade Runner 2049 but can see it's not for everyone (like Tosca I guess).
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. I enjoyed this and my 7 year old son said it’s the best film he’s ever seen. It’s a few years after the closing of the theme park and the remaining animals are being transferred to a new idyllic island to live peacefully as a volcano is erupting. But of course there are villains about who want to capture the dinosaurs and sell them at auction. Sounds a bit silly but it works and there are several outstanding moments and the ending paves the way for a final movie. We saw it a the Director’s Club cinema which is in the latest shopping mall in Cebu and very impressive it is too.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
This movie is a Russian/Ukrainan co-production, probably one of the last things the two countries co-operated on before the war between them started. The title is misleading. The movie is mostly about Lyudmila Pavlichenko who is the deadliest female sniper in history with 309 kills. I wasn't sure if I should bother watching this movie, to be honest. The last Russian war movie I saw was as "Stalingrad". It was so exagerated (soldiers in flames who keep fighting - as a tactic!) and so nationalistic even Michael Bay would blush.This one is far better. I reccomend it. There are a couple of scenes where fast-forward is used, and it feels even more out of place than in DAD. There are also three montages to songs. It only works one time. Woody Guthrie wrote "More than 300 fascists" to her. After being wounded by mortar fire she was sent to the US and Canada to push for the opening of a second front and raise money for the war. The press called her Lady Death. The lines:"I am a 25 year old woman. I have killed 309 facist occupants. Don't you think you gentlemen have been hiding behind my back for long enough now?" was very effective with the crowds. Lady Death was invited to the White House as the first Soviet citizen ever and became friends with the First Lady.
The Soviet attacks on Finland and Poland are actually questioned and Stalin's GULAG camps are actually mentioned. PTSD is shown and an officer attempting to rape a female soldier is shown.
The film also informs us that the civilians and soldiers where not evacuated when Sevastopol fell. The general got away with 80 staff officers, valuables and the communist party archives in two submarines.
If you only watch one Russian war movie this year, watch "Battle for Sevastopol"
Comments
This movie is written and directed by Taylor Sheridan. Sheridan directs, actors and writes, but he's best known for writing the scripts for the brilliant "Sicario" and "Hell or high water".
The movie takes place in the mountains of Wyoming in the very poor native American communities there. A native American girl is found raped and frozen to death in the snow. Murder rates for Native American girls/women in the US and Canada are very high. An FBI agent (Elisabeth Olsen) and a local hunter and tracker (Jeremy Renner) try to find the killer.
Sheridan may not be a director quite as good as Mackenzie and Kathrine Bigelow, but he directs very well. The setting is unusal, something I like and the story and acting is exellent.
I think Taylor Sheridan should be teamed up with a writer from Britain who can write comedy and adventure and write a Bond movie together. Sheridan must be one of the best screenwriters today when it comes to tense thrillers with a strong sense of location.
I got this for my Dad, it's a Bogart war movie that reunites some of the cast of The Maltese Falcon, namely Mary Astor and Sydney Greenstreet. No Peter Lorre though.
It was very talky, I suppose like Falcon. I was hoping for a mellower watch. The film was going to be about an attack on Pearl Harbor but once that actually happened they fixed it for the Panama Canal instead. This is the one David Niven refers to in his book, where John Huston directs but gets called up to the Army before the finale, leaving a note on the door along the lines of 'You figure out how he escapes!'
Greenstreet is usually welcome but he is in this one a lot, about as much as Bogart. Some kind of charm is missing and much of it is set on cruise liners, it gets claustrophobic aside from the slightly hamfisted action fest finale. The print I had seemed a bit blurred, lacking in grain, so the actors looked a bit waxy and almost CGI at times. Sound quality good though.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Our Kind of Traitor : Thriller with Ewan McGregor and Naomie Harris, also very good.
So between that and your Danny Boyle research, it was a Ewan McGregor double bill.
Hum.
Preceded by Ho.
Well done. It's on Film4 tonight at 9pm if anyone wants
A look. Stars Olga Kurylenko.
Finally caught up with this and have to say it lived up to the hype.
I really enjoyed it for the bit of fluff and fun it was. Great songs and Hugh Jackman is always watchable.
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
I know about the behind-the-scenes turmoil, and it does hold together surprisingly well despite that but as a movie somehow seems inconsequential.
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
When America sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold....
My sincere apologies my friend.
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
Roman Polanski, Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston
I freakin' love this movie
-solid Chandler pastiche, better than some actual Chandler adaptations, especially with the byzantine plot, the sense of local geography, the moral rot radiating out form the old rich guy up on the hill who has ruined so many little peoples lives … it doesn't have Chandlers use of language though, but what film does? also I think Jake Gittes dresses better and has a nicer office than I ever pictured Marlowe.
(The Big Lebowski is another great unofficial Chandler pastiche)
-Nicholson at the height of his powers, before he became a professional parody of himself.
-the sepia toned colour scheme and all that beautiful woodwork, architecture, costumes, cars … Nicholson is wearing a very nice suit when he gets himself into trouble at the dam.
-at one point, Nicholson spots two workmen scraping a dead man's name off the office door where he used to work. The Coen Brothers used that same image in one of their early films, I forget which one - Barton Fink? Hudsucker Proxy? anyways, in both cases that image is a tribute to a classic shot from the Maltese Falcon, which was directed by, oh what's that guys name? John Huston of course, the very villain of this movie!
-the local history, based on real events, suggesting the very origins of Los Angeles' famed suburban sprawl was spawned from acts of evil … something I read online argues that the shock ending, which deviates suddenly from the water diversion plot, is a metaphor for the "rape" of the farmland to benefit the crooked real estate scheme. At any rate, it adds a more primal level of evil underneath the plot, just in case all the talk of city engineering and planning policy was a bit obscure.
And the environmental message about the true cost of water diversions has only grown more relevant in the years since. Wasn't it just recently Southern California was rationing water and penalising farmers while diverting water for frakking during a record drought?
-my own most recent work experience was with a municipal engineering department, mapping storm sewer infrastructure, so all the emphasis on the reservoirs, dams, culverts, engineering departments, property searches, and vast archives of handwritten records, is speaking my language.
There's just not enough glamorous thrillers about municipal infrastructure!
-SCTV did an excellent parody of this called Polynesiantown. I'm sorry I cant find it on youtube, but this one has been officially released on one of their dvd's.
-An early episode of Six Feet Under paid tribute to the shock ending revelation, when Nate confronts his creepy girlfriend's creepier brother about why he's always hanging round naked in her apartment. It's good when a film can inspire such an obscure reference in an otherwise unrelated teevee show decades later!
Ryan Gosling is great as lead character K. I've never been a big fan of his before but here he gives a very internalised performance as a character who either cannot or must not display any overt emotions.
Altogether the best sequel to Blade Runner that could be imagined. The memory of the original was not besmirched.
written & directed by Brad Bird
music by Michael Giacchino
more of thee stylin' retro-future set design (when'd that disappear from our films? Moonraker?)
more of the swell toonage with the swaggery brass section (and even though Barry was still doing Bond soundtracks into the 80s, I think the big brass sound disappeared after Diamonds... )
and about halfway through appears... the Incredobile!
I shall not spoil the final action setpiece, but its all for us.
Comic book fans will get something out of this film too, but the best stuff is for Bondgeeks.
Giacchino's music is exactly what we need. Check out the snappy groove as the Incredibles move into their new house, followed immediately by the sweeping heroic theme as Elastigirl begins her first day at her new job. The music tells the story!
by coincidence the other day I watched Ghost Protocol, which is Brad Bird's first live action film, and Giacchino does the music for that one too. Its pretty good, another 60s spy franchise, but not the same. Here Bird and Giacchino deliver exactly the experience we've been missing from our official Bond films for decades now.
Alsho: I offishally nominate Holly Hunter ash my candidate for the nexht Jamesh Bond actor. Becaush she natshurally shpeaks with Connery shtyle shibilansh. What I'm shaying, is she shlursh her eshesh, jusht like Jamesh Bond is shupposhed to do.
Papillon (1973) and Get Carter (1971)
Both endings left me empty after watching the film and I'll explain why.
On Get Carter, the concept of a psychopathic killer for the British mafia, avenging his brother, taking lives left and right felt like the prototype for a 70s John Wick. They coulda made several sequels with this character but they never did.
It's not even an Italian Job style cliffhanger wether they had plans to or not. He gets a shot to the head.
Sure, he was out on revenge but he had no compulsion on taking a human life. He didn't even care about the girl in the boot.
It was fitting, certainly, but I would've loved to see more. The venerable "European" ending to a movie.
On Papillon, just the whole journey for freedom leading to eventually nothing due to a dumb move by the protagonist made me feel very down. Granted he survived in the end, but I don't think he managed to enjoy his final years due to his wasted youth.
Maybe getting killed in freedom was a happier ending for him. At least he found a purpose and a goal he achieved in his wasted life behind bars.
That's a great review and pretty much sums up my thoughts of the film. I loved Blade Runner 2049 but can see it's not for everyone (like Tosca I guess).
You can (not) call yourself a Bond fan and not watch this.
This movie is a Russian/Ukrainan co-production, probably one of the last things the two countries co-operated on before the war between them started. The title is misleading. The movie is mostly about Lyudmila Pavlichenko who is the deadliest female sniper in history with 309 kills. I wasn't sure if I should bother watching this movie, to be honest. The last Russian war movie I saw was as "Stalingrad". It was so exagerated (soldiers in flames who keep fighting - as a tactic!) and so nationalistic even Michael Bay would blush.This one is far better. I reccomend it. There are a couple of scenes where fast-forward is used, and it feels even more out of place than in DAD. There are also three montages to songs. It only works one time. Woody Guthrie wrote "More than 300 fascists" to her. After being wounded by mortar fire she was sent to the US and Canada to push for the opening of a second front and raise money for the war. The press called her Lady Death. The lines:"I am a 25 year old woman. I have killed 309 facist occupants. Don't you think you gentlemen have been hiding behind my back for long enough now?" was very effective with the crowds. Lady Death was invited to the White House as the first Soviet citizen ever and became friends with the First Lady.
The Soviet attacks on Finland and Poland are actually questioned and Stalin's GULAG camps are actually mentioned. PTSD is shown and an officer attempting to rape a female soldier is shown.
The film also informs us that the civilians and soldiers where not evacuated when Sevastopol fell. The general got away with 80 staff officers, valuables and the communist party archives in two submarines.
If you only watch one Russian war movie this year, watch "Battle for Sevastopol"
Haven't watched this since the cinema, and enjoyed it
More this time around. Still think it's the weakest of the
New films though.
Regard to script. I too prefer the older films. Some very witty
Scripts.