Category: Film

So it turns out I actually lost the South West London Film Blogs Red By Less Than 10 People award. Unfortunately, MotspurParkFansOfFilmsLikeCats.com beat my by three votes, those jerks. Needless to say, as I wasn’t able to see the count, this issue will be taken to the super film court. I will win the award I deserve.

If there is one genre of film I don’t tend to enjoy, it’s a quirky comedy. Think anything like Knives Out or The Favourite or Death of Stalin. They just aren’t my cup of tea. It is therefore fully to the credit of Amelie (2001) that I didn’t turn it off half way through.

The lead character, of the same name, has grown up strictly in her parents’ home. Her father has never shown her any affection, yet she has this almost gratingly positive attitude, yet is very shy. She then makes her life mission to make people fall in love, while also falling for this other person, but being too shy to contact him directly.

The whole thing could’ve been a bit of a mess. However, the characters on the whole were tolerable and the soundtrack was very charming. I was rather tired when I watched this, so let it fly over me instead of particularly engaging in it. If anything that probably helped, because if you think too much about this film, it probably won’t quite be as good.

On the whole, Amelie provides a really quirky, unique romantic comedy with enough redemption to counter some of the more potentially irritating characters

Amelie is not free, but is available on DVD/Streaming Services

Last week, I discussed the new BBC 2/BFI Partnership, where they are showing lots of new releases on Saturday nights. The most recent one was Perfect 10 (2019). An Essex teenager, Leigh, who has lost her mother recently feels all alone. In gymnastics, nobody is supporting her, the other girls are horrible and she is the only one without a parent there. This is taking a toll and she is struggling. Her dead-beat dad then forces her to live with her half-brother she didn’t know about. He himself has his own issues, however this is the first time Leigh hasn’t been alone. It’s all a bit down the rabbit hole as she gets involved in his activites, yet despite his issues, he is the first person to support her.

The film is a well made, fairly by the numbers film. It isn’t fantastical and you can guess its general direction. However, that doesn’t take away from two good debut performances and a solid directional debut from Eva Riley. The gymnastic moments are well made moments of escapism and a solid metaphor for her life. Interactions between the siblings are entertaining as you are provided two characters you root for. While not a perfect 10, this film is a solid 8.

Perfect 10 is available on BBC iPlayer

The other three films I watched this week were part of my attempt to tick off all 92 best picture winners. I am now up to 25.

The King’s Speech (2010) is the most recent one I watched this week. It’s a fairly by the numbers Oscar bait older drama based on a true story by the not very good director Tom Hooper.

Bertie is the younger child of George V in the 1930s. With the invention of radio, the royals have to be more communicative, an issue for young Bertie as he has had a stammer all of his life. This issue gets increasingly more dramatic, leading to a climax where Bertie’s brother abdicates and he has to be George VI and give a speech at the beginning of WWII. Yeah, that may be a spoiler, but if you know any history, it isn’t really. Who comes to save the day? Well, unorthodox speech therapist Lionel Logue. They buddy up, work through their problems using these strange methods, and lo and behold you’ll never guess what happens.

So, while it is incredibly predictable, the film deserves some credit. It is predominantly carried by some great performances from Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush. If you go in expecting a film to re-invent the wheel, this isn’t the one for you. But if you want a polished movie you can easily watch with the family, then this is the right one. Each character was entertaining enough and it was set up well for Bertie to develop into his character. While the climax had some tonal issues, and Hooper tends to be a kid in a candy shop in an editing room, seriously cuts every few seconds seemingly at random, this isn’t as big an issue when there’s only two people on screen. While this film doesn’t redeem Cats, it at least betters it. An enjoyable easy Friday night watch.

The King’s Speech is on Netflix.

Going back in time now to How Green Was My Valley (1941), the best picture winner which beat Citizen Kane. Now, I’m not a huge Citizen Kane fan, although I appreciate it’s influence. HGWMV had a lot of charm to it. It focuses on a Welsh mining town and a family torn apart by reductions in pay and whether to form a union. The father wants youngest son Huw to have a better life, however there is a question of whether the son will be able to.

There are themes of loyalty and class. What the film does brilliantly is show a vibrant and organic community. Sure, it might be a bit slow in places, but there, but the film shows a place and a period of time rather romantically. We see inequality and the impacts of a whole community specialising in one trade. The impact of health and wealth are all there and vivid, yet hidden behind a very traditional story. It’s worth a watch if you like old movies or are interested. However, others will find it a bit slow.

There is a free video of HGWMV on Youtube.

Film of the Week

1946 was a brilliant year for film. Brief Encounters is, in my opinion, the best romantic film of all time. It’s a Wonderful life is an all time Christmas classic. However, the best picture winner was, and I can’t really argue too much it, The Best Years Of Our Lives (1946), which deservedly wins Film Of The Week.

An allegory to it’s time, TBYOOL is the story of three soldiers coming home from WWII. One is returning to a last minute marriage without any love, but without his status, a job, or much money. Another is returning to a family with his kids all grown up and he doesn’t really know them anymore. A third, played by an actual soldier, returns home with hooks for hands after he lost them in the war. The film focuses on their reintegration and their issues, potently reminding us what those who came home also sacrificed.

At almost three hours long, this film didn’t feel that at all, each scene advancing one of the three interconnected stories usefully. It was big and dramatic with its music as films at the time were. The romantic stories between the soldiers and their romantic interests were each endearing and weighty. It was a beautifully shot character piece which shows the mood of the time and holds up wonderfully today. It can be found easily on youtube.

Good evening. Having only had one vote counted, I am pleased to announce my victory in the South West London Film Blogs Read By Less than 10 People award, taking the trophy from WombleFilms.com and ThePutneyPictures.org. I have demanded that the SWLFBRBLT10P folks stop counting the votes and look forward to being able to call myself South West London’s 14th best film blog for the next four years to come.

We all knew it was coming. Let’s not act shocked. Indeed there is a second lockdown, thus the cinemas are closed. With the weather colder and evenings darker, no longer can I enjoy the summer nights making out under the docks or staying out until 10 o’clock. Instead, it’s time to sit by the radiator and get to the films that “I’ll get around to eventually”.

I’ve previously talked about Pride and Train To Busan, so I won’t discuss them again, but I did watch them. I didn’t even mean to watch the latter. It was on TV and I just didn’t tear myself away.

The first film based thing I finally want to talk about is that BFI and BBC are pairing up to show recently released independent films on TV/IPlayer on Saturdays. I haven’t seen many of these, most were released this year. However, if you want to watch something different, I recommend giving them ago. This week’s offering was Make Up (2019), a psycho-sexual thriller set in a Cornish caravan park. I wrote a review on it which you no doubt can’t wait to read right here, so I will only briefly say that the style is fantastic and unpredictable. The slow pace and isolation reminded me of The Shining. However, it took a lot of time to get going and the characters weren’t written brilliantly. A good debut feature, but with plenty to work on.

Make Up is available on BBC IPlayer

As I can’t see any new films, now is as good a time as any to try and tick off all of the best picture films, one of which being American Beauty (1999). The film focuses on a depressed middle aged man called Lester, who falls for his sixteen year old daughter’s cheerleader friend. The whole film is rather uncomfortable. Thankfully, you learn pretty early on that Lester will die, which was enough to keep me watching.

It’s a really well written film. Sam Mendes (1917) has lots of different plot threads going cleanly, while each is affected by another. It has that sort of fight club feel where the whole theme is disaffection from the American Dream. All of the characters are out of love and looking for something to live for, except in this movie the lads don’t think “oh yeah it would be cool to be him”.

It really doesn’t help that the lead character is played by Kevin Spacey, although that can’t be helped. Otherwise, the story was well written, leading to an intense climax. Admittedly, I got a little bit bored with 10 minutes to go, however I was probably just tired. However, it definitely was well written.

American Beauty is available on Netflix.

The second best picture film of the week was Chicago (2002), the last musical to win a best picture (excluding the 30 seconds where La La Land won it). This is the sort of film I want to win the best picture, something really unique. Roxie Hart (Renee Zellweger) is sent to jail for the murder of her lover at the same time as cabaret singer Velma Kelly (Catherine Zeta-Jones) in the American 20’s.

She hires a lawyer to help her get out of jail, however most of this is all about raising her profile in the media. Everything is for show. As well as this entertaining crime story, Roxie imagines a musical in her mind, with a whole set of jazz songs including the famous “All That Jazz” and “Cell Block Tango”, with these big jazz halls contrasting the grey jail she is in.

The performances were all fantastic. Renee and CZJ were both fantastic, as was Queen Latifah and Richard Gere. The structure of the film with the musical nature interjecting provided something different. It showed a dream throughout and a facade of the judicial system. An upbeat film which was real fun.

Chicago is widely available to purchase on digital services/DVD

The Princess Bride (1987) doesn’t seem like an obvious choice to watch. However, it’s by Rob Reiner who directed Stand By Me and When Harry Met Sally and is a rather popular film, so of course I’d watch it. Set in the format of a grandfather reading his unwell grandson a fantasy book (and thus inspiring every unoriginal sitcom to use that trope), the film has Princess Buttercup stolen from the Kingdom by an evil man and his two henchmen, Fezzik and Inigo Montoya (His father is dead). Soon enough, her first love, Westley, goes to get her back, before the evil prince traps him and takes Buttercup back to the castle to marry him.

Seems like a bit of a cliché right? Yeah, it is. The whole film is styled as a comedy. It’s a parody of the classic fairy tale and it made me laugh a few times. The most obvious comparison is to Shrek. While Shrek jumps unapologetically into the parody, undermining tropes, The Princess Bride leans in a but more gently and unfortunately, the big green ogre may have taken away some of the impact of this piece.

However, it still deserves a fair amount of praise. It was new at the time. It’s well written, charming and a generally entertaining movie. Sure, the bad child acting narration thing was slightly irritating, but there was enough charm for me to give it a pass. It also has that famous line that Inigo Montoya says as well as having inspired a whole generation of fencers no doubt.

The Princess Bride is available on Amazon Prime Video

There are some films which are timeless, and it’s difficult to argue that City Lights (1931) is anything but that. The silent film is the oldest film I’ve ever seen. Featuring Charlie Chaplin, it provides a really entertaining harmless form of comedy for the whole family.

Chaplin plays a tramp who falls in love with a blind woman. She think’s he’s rich and Chaplin’s character will do what he can to help her pay her rent and get surgery to see anything. The black and white style doesn’t matter, because the set pieces are fantastic. The scene of him saving the rich man is laugh out loud funny and the boxing scene is absolutely iconic. The body language and facial expressions of Chaplin show why he is regarded as one of the all time greatest actors.

I don’t know what else I can say. It’s brilliant. The story works because it’s simple. The humour is fantastic. The characters are all brilliant in their own rights and distinct. The music is chirpy and upbeat. It’s 89 years old, yet as good as anything you’ll see today. Give it a watch.

City Lights can be found for free on Youtube.

Film Of The Week

Vertigo (1958), simply wow…

What an absolutely brilliant film this was. A fantastic script, two brilliant performances. A wonderful sense of intrigue and then tension. A psychological thriller showing a horribly complicated romance and desire.

Detective Scottie Ferguson has a fear of heights, or vertigo, which he tragically discovers on a police chase gone wrong. As soon as he retires, an old friend asks him to follow their wife, Madeline, who seems to be possessed by her great grandmother, who was suicidal at the same age her wife was at the time. This becomes a chase and a mystery, before the whole film totally transforms half way through.

This is known as one of the all time great films and for good reason. There really isn’t anything I can fault within it. I was totally on board for the whole thing and I can’t wait to watch it again.

Vertigo is available to watch on Netflix.

So you may not have heard that the cinemas have closed. How sad. It means that I have much more time and much less releases to look out for. However, there is hope. The BFI and BBC are teaming up to show a new British Independent film released in 2020 each week on Saturday Night on BBC Two and BBC IPlayer. Therefore, at least for the next month, I’ll be turning my attention to them, while also returning to the What I Watched This Week posts.

Make Up is a really weird film. Set in a Cornish caravan park in the winter, young couple Ruth (Molly Windsor) and Tom (Joseph Quinn) are working off season, keeping the place tidy while it’s being fumigated. Tom lives locally, while Ruth came down all the way from Derby, no doubt attempting to avoid a Tier 3 lockdown. Pretty soon in, Ruth notices some ginger hairs on Tom’s bedding. The film becomes a bit of a psycho-sexual thriller as she investigates who this ginger person is, even though nobody at the camp remembers anybody ginger being there. Infused with horror moments, the film takes many turns throughout.

Continue reading “Review: Make Up” →

It seems only fair that I lay my cards down on the table at the beginning of this review regarding my thoughts on Greta Thunberg, as it will undoubtedly have shaped my opinions on the documentary. Personally, I think she’s great. I really do. I understand why many people don’t like her, but I’m not in that camp. I don’t think she’s the answer to all of our problems, however what she has done is to inspire a very important movement which is critical for our future.

A movie where a 15 year old girl with Asperger’s starts protesting on her own outside of a building, slowly builds up a revolution in her awkward, quiet way, has to come against some evil world leaders to fight for the future of her planet and to stand on the biggest stage almost sounds like the most ridiculous film I could watch. So what a messed up world when this is true.

Continue reading “Review: I Am Greta” →

The brilliant thing about watching films is that you get all sorts of experiences. Woah, look there’s motorbike gangs!!! Supernatural weird pasty old looking government experiment children? BRO! Government corruption?!?! Military coups!!! Atomic weapons!!! Protests from disgruntles citizens!!! Giant mutant teddy bears?!? A weird 2001 style conscious from the beyond!! All of these were my reactions to one steam punk 1980’s anime film called Akira, which is getting a re-release in cinemas.

Continue reading “Review: Akira” →

I was sat at home one evening thinking “I don’t want to sit here and watch a movie in a room on my own”. That just felt a bit lame, so I went to my local chain of cinemas specialising in independent film and decided to give this film a go in the hope of some form of community. I went in and took my seat, waiting for this monsoon of other viewers to come in, hopefully without their loud smelly snacks, just so I could have a morsel of humanity… Nobody else came in. So there I was, sitting there and watching a movie in a room on my own. Lame. The rest of SW19 letting down the great leader Boris. When you’re all trialled for treason, I’ll be sat in the back row watching, while eating my quiet non-disruptive snack. Who will be laughing then?

So, the movie? Well, first of all, don’t get it mixed up with the Steve Carrell “No, Kelly Clarkson” movie. This film is totally different. It’s written/directed/acted by Radha Black and is semi-autobiographical. Radha is about to be forty and having won an award for thirty play writes under thirty, her career seems to be stalling. She’s lonely, teaches drama at the local school and she’s trying to get her new play she’s written into theatres, although the white theatre owner wants it to be more “universal”. It’s essentially a gentrification of a play about gentrification. In between this, Radha feels she needs to express herself more, so decides to start doing rap, something you don’t see 40 year old women do. It’s an attempt to reinvent the forty year old version of herself. It’s not really an A Star Is Born as it’s much more grounded.

Continue reading “Review: The 40 Year Old Version” →

I was on the way out of the house to a Picturehouse surprise film preview and my house mate asked me “What film are you seeing?” I replied that I didn’t know as that was he spirit of this evening. I then said “I’m worried it might be a horror film called Saint Maud”. I’m not a fan of horror and when the BBFC card came up revealing the surprise film, well as you can guess from the title of the review, Saint Maud was introduced to me.

When I go to a surprise film preview (I highly recommend them), I want two things, to enjoy it firstly and secondly for it to be something I wouldn’t usually go and see. This film certainly ticked the second part. A low budget horror, we follow former nurse Maud who has gone into palliative care and under the deep spiritual guidance of God finds renewed purpose in dancer Amanda. Amanda’s spine disease means she will die soon, however Maud sees her as lost and considers herself to be the way to focus Amanda and make her soul pure. It’s not a cutesy little film way, it’s a creepy cultish way.

Seriously, do people actually like horror? What on earth appeals about seeing people deliberately stepping on nails or peeling the skin off their hands and being burnt alive . There was some dark un-supernatural shit which wasn’t pleasant to watch either. The director never quite knew what she wanted to do. I knew what I wanted to do and that was to go out of the exit door.

I didn’t really like the film because Maud was a crazy witch and Amanda was boring as well. I know horror films are not character focussed, but these ones were just so… lame. The plot thought it was smarter than it was. It was First Reformed without any great questions and a plot twist so predictable that half way through I thought no, it won’t be that easy. Turned out it was.

The music was horror-y, but because it sounded horror-y, I could tell I was watching a horror film. Great, whatever. Now I know I’m watching a film I don’t really like because I don’t like this type of film. The acting was okay. It hardly changed acting.

Not my cup of tea, but horror fans seemed to like it [Grade: D+]

Just before I start no doubt what is a very high quality review which discusses themes, cameras and all that twaddle, I want to make something clear. I went to the cinema because I wanted to, not because Boris told me to. This was a decision of my own free will because I am a free man and don’t just bow down to his every whim. This blog is also not part of the deep state, encouraging you to attend the cinema. If you want to, great. If you don’t want to, fine, then don’t.

Continue reading “Review: On The Rocks” →