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WhyNow review :read:

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Fairly predictable action movie that was ok("ish") but not one that I would re-watch or recommend.

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A very strange and odd film of the time, we are introdufed with a future people on a spaceship cult movie fans all waiting for next cult film as publi screenings of the old world stuff is banned

^
Possibly the best part of story.

We then are introduced with a black n white film before another feature film, now and then we go back to the spaceship while the main feature is on.

The main feature is about two couples one about a african american and american both going through tough times the women in the african american relationship is firbidden by father while the other relationship the man just abbandons the female.

The women then meet and engage in a relationship.

Majority of the spaceship peoplle look bored the acting was bad from them and other cast was suppose be sexploit but felt like a parody scifi.

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Classic French romantic tragedy.

Along with the nineties': Run Lola Run (Lola Rennt) a movie from a non-English speaking country which transcended national boundaries, and punched through into a broader International consciousness... And like Lola, the poster alone became an iconic emblem of the time every bit as much as the movie itself.

And while in this case, it's prime selling point that brought it to the wider audience was the rather, um... - if perhaps graphic would be the wrong word to use on it's own, then maybe illustrative -matter of fact sex scenes right from the first shot, which reputationally, have rather overshadowed the substance of a great, and haunting movie with a tragic, brilliant story.

Jean-Hughes Anglade's Zorg, is a bit of a drifting, easy going wannbe writer, bumming along from menial job to menial job with all his dreams always in the never never land of tomorow, or some way down the road. He happens to have scored (to use the common vernacular) big time, in hooking up with the feisty, intense Betty, played by Béatrice Dalle, who seems to complete his vision of a free and easy life of sun, sand, sex and fun.

So far, so good.

...Except, Betty's zest and intensity reveal themselves to be more than just a lust for life, and a reasonable passion for Zorg, for as their relationship develops, and Zorg begins to unconsciously fall for and accept Betty as a more permanent fixture in his life, she becomes more obsessive about him, and cajoling in trying to make him more of a doer than a dreamer, pushing him to get his work published, and abandon his more itinerant lifestyle... and her methods become gradually more extreme and eye-brow raising.

Fr what transpires is that she is labouring under the heavy dark could of a growing storm of profound mental illness, which Zorg, is now emotionally obliged to try to assuage, and try to save Betty, or at least manage her, because now he loves her.

It becomes a tough, but hauntingly beautiful watch the further in you get, as what began as fun, and joyous in seeing a burgeoning youthful love affair becomes a dark, and tragic relationship.

So, if you can get past the opening sex-bout, and concentrate on the story therafter, you have an all-time classic tragedy, as well as a quite important movie from the late eighties, and as well as the movie itself, the simple, devastating piano theme will stay lodged in your head and haunt you long after the film is over.

Simply brilliant.

(Great poster too! :)

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She Will gained a lot of critical acclaim. It was voted film of the week by Mark Kermode in The Guardian and had largely favourable reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. I think it's mediocre at best.

An ageing actress goes to a remote highland retreat after a double mastectomy with her assistant played by Kota Eberhardt. Weird stuff keeps happening. There's some stuff with crystals which is never explained, sludgy liquid coming out of the earth and Alice Krige has flashbacks.

The film was billed as a feminist witchcraft film. We learn Veronica (Krige) was the victim of sexual abuse as a 13 year old in her early film Navajo Frontier, it's never explained if she did a film since or was simply a childhood actress. Which begs the question why is she still front page news in her golden years. We also see Desi (Kota Eberhardt) have suffer some sexual abuse by a man in a pub. In this scene we learn Veronica is protecting Desi with witchcraft and the man gets drowned in the muddy ground. Veronica sexually abusive director also dies by falling off a set of stairs which is called suicide. The director played by Malcolm McDowell is obviously based on Roman Polanski and possibly Harvey Weinstein. The message could be rapists must die. It's clumsily handled and very unsubtle compared to a film like Darling which has a similar message or even more unsubtle films like Dirty Weekend or A Gun For Jennifer which are more rape and revenge films it seems a bit dull as we've seen it all before.

The film has a lot of atmosphere and a great Clint Mansell soundtrack which sounds like the fairytale music of Danny Elfman with an electronic edge. The film for me isn't clever, intelligent or unique but it is well made.

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A curious blend of dark, gritty and tragic with the bizarrely comic and absurd.

Still is, and ever will be Paul Thomas Anderson's Masterpiece.

An ensemble character study of a collection of people who are either closely related or more loosely so, but all bearing some relationship to the others by degrees, and how those relationships change when set against a surreal set of circumstances which act as a catalyst:

...A couple pretty offensive types who are broken down during the course of the movie to reveal their humanity, while other more genial ones are revealed to have the darkest undertones, and even a few weaker people discovering some real strength,

A must see. Very moving, well orchestrated, quirky, odd, and has Philip Seymour Hoffman's most devastatingly human role as a carer for the terminally ill, Tom Cruise doing the full obnoxious bit (initially), before turning in a: "Should have got an Oscar" performance, and a brilliant set of soundtrack songs by Aimee Mann.

(but the whole cast is excellent too).

Watch it... Watch it now! :)

((I copied and edited this review from my own review on the DVD page))

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Along with it's counterpart: Some Kind Of Wonderful, a film I grew up with, and still an unguilty pleasure.

Archetypical eighties high school melodrama: Poor girl loves rich boy, their friends from rich world / poor world don't mix, and make it hard for them etc. tears, tantrums, cheeeeeese.

(Does have a Cure tune in the soundtrack, as well as the brilliant title track, so not a total disaster in that respect)

Except here, in this epic slice of dated cheese, the thing that makes this is the Father / Daughter relationship between Ringwald and Harry Dean Stanton, and shows why he is one of my favourite actors of all time.

(James Spader also showing why he was king of the eighties high school baddies too :)

You don't need CGI to add depth to a movie, and make it immersive, you just need Harry, or someone like him.

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Luther, a great BBC TV series that is 100% worth watching if you haven't done so already.

Luther the movie is a poor cash attempt on the brand and Idris Elba.

Where the TV series had a credible storyline that was interesting this movie is a far fetched fantasy that tries to play every cliché going. It got to the stage where I could predict the next stupid turn..... spoiler alert

the car crashes through the ice in a remote mountain lake and low and behold a helicopter arrives right on time and fully suited frogmen are able to jump in and rescue him from drowning......hmmm thankfully someone had the foresight to send a police helicopter with frogmen ready to go up a mountain in the middle of winter just in case there was a frozen lake....

Action packed ... ok yes
Great lead actor ... ok yes
Good credible storyline ... not really
Will I watch again ... NO

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Love Actually... for adults.

This is another of those that had only bubbled away in the back of my consciousness since it's release...

(I think the market and such made me simply categorize it as just another movie release at the time - nothing to write home about)

...But having stumbled across the DVD, I thought the time was right to give it a go - And I'm very glad I did!

As I alluded to, this is along very similar lines (ish) to the walking abomination that is Love Actually in it's evident multi-stranded (and intertwining) tales of love.

Except here, it's all kind of within one family and their world, proceeding from Juliane Moore's character Emily, announcing to Steve Carell's Cal that she's had an affair with someone at work, and wants a divorce... While dining out... it's news to him, a shock in fact, as well as to the other diners!

This leads to a separation, and reveals other family love related bother such as the babysitter is in love with Cal, and their son, whom she babysits, is in turn in love with her.

Where this really gets good is when Cal goes to a bar, in despair, and begins to bother the customers with his depression, including Ryan Gosling's local stud / pick up artist, who takes pity on Cal, and resolves to help him rediscover his mojo, by teaching him how to get with the ladies and become a stud himself.

This odd couple bro-mance really is the beating heart of this movie, as it is actually (chuckle) very quite a warm relationship, as well as being laugh out loud funny and very witty.

Gosling is brilliant in playing to the character he's given, and basically, everyone in this is great.

More sharply written, presented, funnier, and effective, by orders of magnitude than the aforementioned schlock-fest, I think this could, and should be regarded in years to come, an early contender minor classic from the still recent-ish 2010s.

Top level rom-com, having both elements of this genre combo in spades.

(Especially the laughs!)

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Meeting again sometime after their first encounter, which Ethan Hawke's character has recounted in a book he is promoting in Paris, they set off on another philosophical chat while they walk around the city...

... And having talk about a great deal of things, in the polite and awkward manner of friends who haven't seen each other in a while, and clearly want to say more than they are saying in words, they finally arrive at the more personal issues between them.

...Which is when this begins to become a proper movie in it's own right, rather than simply a sequel, or re-hash of the original... after all the first captured perfect, naïve, romantic magic which, like anything one may do in life, can only be done for the first time once :) - And if they simply tried to redo the original in this way, it would, because of this, have suffered by comparison. Instead, this one captures the later years, of having been deeply impacted by their first meeting, and finding that their lives since have been hooked around that time, and so the longing and nostalgia for a time long gone is the key note here, a little sadder, a little wiser, but just the thing to do to set against the original film.

One point of particular note, that really sets this up a bar, is how it ends...

You may have had that experience in movies where you find yourself thinking:

"If they would just end it right here, that would be just great"

...But they seldom, if ever do. Except here, in this case, they do! Just at the perfect moment, and in the perfect way, it ends. Perfect.

So my fears about seeing a sequel to what was essentially a perfect little movie have been greatly allayed, and now can't wait to find the final film in this trilogy: Before Midnight

(This has got to be a rarity, if not unique in this genre: A romantic trilogy? - Often Romance is defined by tragedy, which tends to preclude sequels: Romeo And Juliet, Titanic, The Terminator etc.)

Superb.

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Evening Standard review :read:

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Filmed in England so does this class as Europe film?

Review

A good Giallo bit silly bit different from what usually see, usually watch ones with more dark themes with nudity.
This had a cludo like story various weapons used various suspec in vatious room though one killer who is it?

Very good storyline which makes you watch much more.

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Quintessential Modern Gothic.

Here's a movie that has since become regarded as a cult classic... but even that seems to have faded somewhat over recent years.

The reason is, it's one of those profoundly weird, strange, and unsettling movies that people either come to dearly love, or just "don't get it".

To characterise it, or convey a sense of it, I'd invite you to imagine David Lynch's Blue Velvet, done as an 80's / 90s teen high-school melodrama, about time travel (and the philosophy thereof)...

...The superficially idealised American suburban setting with a deep sense of something "off" about the world, in which, Donnie Darko, a high school student with profound mental health problems (history, and current issue of schizophrenia / arson / psychosis) feels very strongly the off-ness of the world around him, but of course, who would believe him anyway, he's crazy?!!!

But he is visited by a very unsettling presence in the shape of a giant rabbit, who informs him of the imminent end of the world, and sets a clock ticking in a countdown to doomsday. Donnie must get to grips with not only his issues, but his family, friends, and school kids, their parents, teachers (one or two sympathetic, others not so), as well as the nature and philosophy of time travel in order to prevent this end of the world scenario.

The bunny is a very malign and disturbing element in this movie, giving it the sheen of a horror movie, and the sense of time running out weighs like lead on these proceedings.

And that's really what struck me when I first saw it all those years ago, as it was perfectly in tune with the times, at the turn of the millennium, and captures the sense of impending doom, and an undefinable sense of all pervading dread... heightened and exacerbated by the evident obliviousness of others to this coming unidentifiable calamity, as they chunter about their lives in blissfull ignorance while those like Donnie, are all too sensible to the peril.

I'd simply say that, if you are of the cast of mind, like mine, of being what I like to think of as "A Natural Melancholic"...

(As distinct from depressive - the one being the nature of the person, the other, an affliction contrary to the natural, or desired state)

...You'll find a strong ring of truth, and will sympathise entirely with the mood created here, but of not, I don't thin this movie is perhaps for you.

To conclude, while it's been a while since I saw the original theatrical release (my DVD is scratched to buggery, and won't play, so need a replacement), I have recently picked up a DVD of the "Director's Cut" which adds a couple of features briefly it seems, like chapter headings, and changes a couple of already well chosen eighties songs in the soundtrack, but overall, nothing really leapt out at me in being dramatically different, so far as it might alter the tone, point or purpose of the movie - it's still the same basic movie as far as I can see - so I don't think it makes too much difference tot he experience which version you might choose to see.

A great, strange movie that captures the mood of the cusp of a change of eras.

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A sumptuous boredom festival.

This ghost story movie is astonishing to look at, but mind numbingly tedious and dull. The excessive CGI makes the ghosty things decidedly unscary, plastic looking crap... And the look is too good for the kind of film they were trying to make - by my estimation, a kind of Hitchcock suspense, haunted house ghost story.

The cinematography is so sumptuous and colourful that it distracts from any drama or suspense this might have otherwise have had.

This tale of an intelligent, yet innocent aspiring writer getting hooked up with Tom Hiddleston's baronet (landed gentry type - Hiddleston doing yet another wonderful rendition of a non-variation of the typical Hiddleston character - as Hiddleston - getting boring now ) and his whacky sister could have been good if they'd gone more for atmosphere, rather than look - grimed it up a bit - gone dark, kind of thing (Might even have been better in black and white!)... and had a less boring screen play.

I was only half hour in and was playing with my phone, and feeling defeated that there was still an hour and some many minutes left.

Feels a lot like that 90's Liam Neeson version of The Haunting, where a lot was made of the visual gimmick, and how it looks, while being equally stultifyingly dull.

Avoid.

(Del Toro is vastly over-rated in my book - a poor man's Peter Jackson)

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