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A few reviews

IlFanEditore

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I'm new around here, and I'm just surfing the forum. If this thread is open to any reviews, I'll post some short reviews of my favourite Italian movies (of course, because that's my country). Maybe someone will care, haha. I won't write anything about really famous movies such as La Dolce Vita or "The good, the bad and the ugly", considering that everything has already been told.


Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle thieves) - 1948

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One of the most famous Neorealist movies by director Vittorio De Sica. It's main characters are played by non professional actors. The man who played the father was a factory worker. After the end of the war, Antonio (the main protagonist) gets a job of pasting advertising bills around Rome. During the first day of work, someone steals his bike, thus forcing Antonio and his son Bruno into a long search to find it. It's just a phenomenal movie, with a way of showing how a relatively simple thing as a bike can literally mean everything for a man. The ending is struggling.


Roma, città aperta (Rome, open city) - 1945
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Another Neorealist movie by Roberto Rossellini, starring Anna Magnani and Aldo Fabrizi. It's more tragic than the previous one, being set during german occupation of Rome. There is death, poverty, despair and yet feeble hope represented by young children who "will" become new members of the Resistance. 100% approval rating of Rotten Tomatoes.


Suspiria - 1977
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Ok, yes, this is a really popular movie. But it had to be here. The score, the way it helped to revolutionize the horror genre, setting the movie not in a spooky castle, not in a dark forest, but inside a dancing school, was just an amazing idea. The main theme is iconical, and the use of color still feels original today.


Il Gattopardo (The leopard) - 1963
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Political drama directed by Luchino Visconti, based on a famous novel that basically everyone here reads during high school. Set some time before Italy's reunification, in 1860, it tells the story of a noble sicilian family living during the growing changes in society (not just the unification, but also the role of middle class against nobility), with a criticism of the whole operation which led to a messy birth of the Italian state. Claudia Cardinale was a joy, as always.


Indagine su un cittadino al di sopra di ogni sospetto (Investigation on a citizen above suspicion) - 1970
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Crime drama directed by one of the most political and leftist directors in Italy, Elio Petri. The main lead is played by my absolute favourite Italian actor, Gian Maria Volontè (internationally known for his roles in Spaghetti Westerns). It tells the story of a corrupted police man who, after killing his mistress, starts living a quasi-bipolar life. On one side, he wants to get away with it. On the other, he wants to be found guilty, but he finds extreme difficulties in this because other police men seem completely blind in front of clear evidence. Some great monologues and a perfect ending, with the dangerous 70's conflicts between police and students in the background. It won the Academy award for Best foreign picture.


C'eravamo tanto amati (We all loved each other so much) - 1974
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A comedy-drama directed by Ettore Scola, and featuring some of my favourite actors ever, Vittorio Gassmann and Nino Manfredi. It tells a 25-years-long story of a group of friends who fought in the Resistance and then began different lives. One becomes some sort of nurse/keeper, the other becomes a professor obsessed with the movie "Bicycle thieves", and the third one becomes a corrupted business man. But their lives get intertwined again when the character played by Manfredi meets a young woman...
Amazing performance, great social analysis about what Italy was going to become, about friendship and love. Again, the ending, when Gassmann realizes what his life has become and what he has lost in his search for money and power, is wonderful.


...E tu vivrai nel terrore. L'Aldilà! (The Beyond) - 1981
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A horror movie directed by Lucio Fulci. During the first years of the 20th century, a man paints one of the doors which is one the seven entrances to Hell. Then the movie moves to the 80s, when a woman inherits an hotel which, you guessed it, is the same where the man painted the door. There are zombies, flesh-eating spiders, blind women, girls being shot in the head. The score is beautiful, and the grim ending feels so desperate and yet satisfying...


La maschera del demonio (Black Sunday) - 1960
La_Maschera_del_Demonio.jpg

Gothic horror movie directed by master Mario Bava, in his directorial debut. Witches, de-aging effects done decades before Rogue One or the MCU, and a stunning black and white. This movie heavily influenced Tim Burton's style, who paid homage to it during the opening of Sleepy Hollow.


Lo chiamavano Jeeg Robot (They called him Jeeg) - 2015
Claudio-Santamaria-Luca-Marinelli-Lo-Chiamavano-Jeeg-Robot-2019.jpg

These last two are more recent movies. This one, directed by Gabriele Mainetti, is basically a cinecomic. Its strength lies in its desire to not copy the classic cinecomics. It's deeply Italian, with characters speaking roman dialect, with thieves and small crime gangs as villains and with the last act set at the most important soccer stadium in the city. Overall it's a pretty enjoyable movie, and the main villain works really great.


Il nido (The nest) - 2019
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During the last years, we restarted working on some horror movies (considering what past we had, with Argento, Fulci, Bava, etc.). This one was the best, in my opinion. The actors are really in parte, especially the mother and the kids. It starts as a "secret cult" movie, with a bunch of people living inside a huge house surrounded by fields and forests. There's a woman who acts as the leader, and there's her paraplegic son. The others are all people who live and work in the house. Everything feels creepy and out of place. Things start to change for the mother and her son when a young girl comes to live in the house...


I could have named other movies, of course. Fellini, Antonioni, Monicelli. But as a start I think these are quite good.
 

TM2YC

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^ Some fantastic Italian films there! and some of my own favourites.

I've not seen 'Investigation on a citizen above suspicion' but 'Faccia a faccia' and 'La classe operaia va in paradiso' (also by Elio Petri) are a couple of interesting Volonté ones I have watched (Leone movies not included). Hadn't heard of 'C'eravamo tanto amati', 'They called him Jeeg', or 'Il nido'. I didn't really care for 'The Beyond' but I did watch it in a terrible dubbed version. I'd add 'Umberto D.', 'Rocco and His Brothers', 'The Battle of Algiers', 'Nuovo Cinema Paradiso', 'La dolce vita' and 'Il Postino' to the list, plus 'La vita è bella' and 'Once Upon a Time in the West' are two of my all-time favourites from any country. Anything by Leone and Argento too.



Inside Story: £830,000,000 - Nick Leeson and the Fall of the House of Barings (1996)
BBC Documentarian Adam Curtis uses incredible access to infamous "rogue trader" Nick Leeson (interviewed while he's awaiting trial) to tell the story of how he brought down Barings Bank in just 3-years (Britain's oldest Merchant Bank, lender to royalty, founded 14-years before the US declared independence). Curtis also has interviews with Leeson's wife Lisa and many of the major players, including those embarrassed by the scandal, who you'd think would be shy about talking on camera. It's a "perfect storm" of people's willingness to believe a vast false reality if they are incentivised to do so, of an astonishing lack of financial oversight, of ancient gentlemanly incompetence and of Neeson's increasingly outlandish deceptions. The most revealing bit was when Leeson foolishly faxed a £50 million request for funds he'd put together with glue and Tipp-Ex from his own printer with "From: Nick and Lisa" printed at the top and still nobody noticed. Leeson comes across as totally lacking in remorse and in fact despising of the posh people in charge of Barings for being negligent enough to allow him to have gotten away with his criminality for so long. I'll have to rewatch the 1999 Ewan McGregor film to see how close it was to reality.




Geronimo: An American Legend (1993)
Walter Hill's
Western bombed at the time but thanks to it's recent HD blu-ray remaster and addition to Netflix, it's ripe for rediscovery. The poor reception might be down to several things: A lack of a big central star, no romance subplot (infact there are no women in the film at all), Hill preferred the title 'The Geronimo War' which would've been more accurate to this ensemble war film, a TV movie on the same subject aired the week before and 'Dances with Wolves' and 'The Last of the Mohicans' (both of which also featured Wes Studi) had set high expectations for this type of thing a couple of years before. It's certainly not a biopic of Geronimo specifically, although he features heavily and is played with grave authority by Studi. It's more a serious attempt to depict the final act of the "Apache Wars" through the eyes of several real historical figures. They're proud men of good conscience, obliged to carry out orders they privately find unconscionable. The tone is best summed up with a line spoken by Robert Duvall's Chief Scout Al Sieber, to Jason Patric's Lt. Gatewood: "You're a real sad case. You don't love who you're fightin' for and you don't hate who you're fightin' against". Patric is an impressive horseman, pulling several complicated battle moves, clearly without a stuntman. Ry Cooder's score is composed to the tune of the old folk standard 'Poor Wayfaring Stranger' making it seem like music from the period the film takes place. There is a hint of John Ford's 'The Searchers' about Hill's film, it's also about a group of men tracking the wilderness and the iconic doorway shot is recreated.

(I watched this on Netflix which looked terrific but unfortunately there were no default English subtitles, when at least a third of the film is in Apache. So I had to switch on the CC which subtitles everything, including sound FX. Hopefully they fix this error.)

 

IlFanEditore

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Ah, I see a man of culture here, hahaha!
Investigation is amazing. Among the others you haven't seen, C'eravamo tanto amati is by far the best. The acting is phenomenal.
All the others are also among my favourites. I just rewatched Umberto D some days ago, and Mastroianni in La Dolce Vita is the embodiment of charm.
From Petri I'd recommend also La Decima Vittima, and I really enjoyed the claustrophobic Todo Modo.
 
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Hymie

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Just to add to the Italian film discussion, I'd like to add a few of my favorites

A Special Day
This film sees legends Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni flexing some serious acting chops set in the backdrop of two very different people dealing with Italy's plunge into fascism during WW2 and the growing friendship that builds among these two over the course of a day. Great film dealing with a lot of heavy subjects that's a far cry from the more comedic fare the two were known for when working together.

Divorce, Italian Style
This screwball-esque comedy sees Mastroianni desperate to leave his wife for a younger woman and tries to set up his wife to have an affair so he can bump her off and get with his much younger love. Hilarity ensues and is a fun time at the movies, with some pretty nice eye candy as well.

Time to Kill
In a rare Italian made movie from Academy award winner Nicolas Cage,this film sees Cage as an Italian soldier in Zimbabwe in the lead-up to WW2. Having to deal with a medical issue, Cage makes his way across the foreign landscape with many a crazy adventures along the way (many of which are a fabrication in his head due to his own paranoia). This film showcases an early example of Cage playing the usual unhinged and crazed character that his is more known for today by general audiences, though its hardly his best work its a performance worth seeing to see his evolution as an actor against the backdrop unseen in the rest of his career. A great score by Ennio Morricone makes this one to watch, if only to see the beginning of Cage.
 

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No Country for Old Men (2007)
It's taken me quite a while to get round to this acclaimed Coen Brothers film and yeah it's worth the praise, not "the 10th best film of the 21st century" but very good. The three co-leads are sensational. Tommy Lee Jones plays gravel-voiced thoughtful Texas Sheriff Bell on the trail of a headstrong hunter Moss (Josh Brolin) who has absconded with a bag of cartel money he found, while he's also being pursued by psychopathic hitman Chigurh (Javier Bardem). Chigurh is really terrifying because he kills for a reason, or kills for no reason and other times lets people live or die on the toss of a coin. His use of an air pressurised cattle bolt gun and a squealing silenced shotgun are also intimidating due to their unique sounds. The cat and mouse game between the three men is thrilling, especially when Moss turns out to be a more formidable opponent than the usually unstoppable Chigurh anticipates. The one problem I had with the film was with the last act. At a random point in the gripping chase it suddenly concludes (off screen) and then we spend the last 20-minutes with the characters sitting around ruminating on what has transpired. The theme of fate which is discussed in the last portion is present in the whole film but it had other things going on up to that point. As far as I can tell it's the same in Cormac McCarthy's novel. Maybe it's a fault of the Coen's film-making skills, they made the chase too damned exciting, unbalancing the tone of the story. Perhaps on a second viewing, when I know what to expect, I'll find the conclusion less of a let-down.





Miller's Crossing (1990)
The Coen Brothers create a rather wonderful, wryly comic Prohibition Gangster Noir. Gabriel Byrne plays the right-hand man to Albert Finney's Irish mob boss When Byrne's advice in a conflict against a "pretender to the crown" is ignored he begins to play both sides against each other, drifting through the carnage he unleashes. It's got all the convoluted "triple cross" plotting you expect from the Noir genre. If the humorous tone and more eccentric characterisations and performances had been reduced, I wondered whether this could've been a truly great and weighty crime saga on the level of 'The Godfather', instead of just a darn good yarn, that occasionally shows some real menace. Carter Burwell's Irish folk score (built around the traditional balled 'Lament for Limerick') is graceful and emotional. The twist ending (which has been compared to 'The Third Man') invites a rewatch, when you'll have a different view of the complex character motivations.


 
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Rogue Trader (1999)
I re-watched this soon after the Adam Curtis documentary on Nick Leeson, so I could see it stuck very close to the facts, which is commendable. It's an amazing true-life story, so it would be difficult to not make the movie interesting too. Ewan McGregor does a decent impression of Leeson's Hertfordshire accent and a brilliant job of playing somebody imploding under immense pressure. Unfortunately the style feels very late-90s including trying to ape the 'Trainspotting' vibe, using dated music and dropping in lazy sexism. Anna Friel has a thankless task playing Leeson's wife Lisa. Nick was in jail for his crimes while the film was being shot (and based on his own book) but his wife was never implicated with anything, so perhaps they had to tread very carefully around the portrayal of Lisa Leeson. They can't imply she knew what was going on and it's difficult to portray her suspecting nothing, so they mostly resort to have her doing as little as possible. The supporting cast (playing real people) do an excellent job of conveying a mixture of greed, hubris, negligence and arrogance.


The whole movie is on youtube:




Every Day Is Like Sunday (2011)
A rough cut of an unfinished Adam Curtis documentary (which he released on his blog) about British Newspaper chairman Cecil King and his attempts to plan a coup against the Harold Wilson UK government. I'm not sure why the doc wasn't finished, or why Curtis decided to release it as was. It's mostly complete but there a couple of spots where the voice-over is missing (replaced by on-screen text), at least one mistake where the words "four votes" are used instead of "four seats" (quite an important detail!), all the "behind the scenes" footage of Fleet Street is interesting but needed way more trimming and the incredible direct link between the fall of King and the rise of Rupert Murdoch could have been explored in more depth.

 

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Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014)
The latest film incarnation of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan is the weakest but it still develops into an entertaining espionage action thriller. Unfortunately it opts to portray Ryan's backstory (which clearly wasn't required for the first four films) wasting a quarter of the movie's runtime before the actual plot begins. I like Chris Pine a lot but he brings nothing to the role apart from his own personality and his chemistry with Keira Knightley is nil. Kenneth Branagh does a decent job of directing the action, also playing the Russian villain with a Bond baddie swagger, plus a little depth to his motivations. Kevin Costner adds a real touch of a class as Ryan's mentor figure, but it does make you want the movie to be about him instead. The constant protestations of Ryan that "I'm just an analyst?!" wear a bit thin by the 10th car-chase/fist-fight/gun-battle/bike-chase he's involved in. The other Jack Ryan films at least made an attempt to make it look like the desk-bound bean-counter was being forced into dangerous situations and not just "he's a super spy, he can do anything!". Branagh's usual composer Patrick Doyle does a cracking score and I kinda liked the way it went into a techno version of the main theme for the credits like a throwback to the 90s.



Living in an Unreal World (2016)
A short Vice-Media film directed by Adam Curtis which also comprises a trailer for his 'HyperNormalisation' film. This was 5-years ago but still sounds like it's talking about our present and future, a future which we seem to have collectively decided is unavoidable.

 
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Fellini: A Director's Notebook (1969)
It seems incredible that something this odd was made and broadcast by NBC in 1969. Federico Fellini creates an experimental "documentary" about the past, present and future of Rome and his abandoned project 'The Voyage of G. Mastorna' and the filming of his latest film 'Satyricon'. I become aware at one point that he's filming a documentary about him pretending to film a documentary about him pretending to make a film that he's really making (if that makes sense?). It's a lot of fun! I suspect Orson Welles might have seen this before embarking on his 1973 film 'F for Fake' because I detected some stylistic DNA. I watched the version included on the bonus features to Criterion's blu-ray of '8 1/2' but the transfer looks terrible, sounds terrible and lacks optional subtitles.




Being Frank: The Chris Sievey Story (2018)
A really wonderful documentary about the life of Chris Sievey, the man inside the papier-mâché mask of his character Frank Sidebottom, who was the inspiration for the fictional 2014 Michael Fassbender film 'Frank' (co-written by a member of Sievey's band). He was obviously an endlessly creative and inventive Punk musician, artist, programmer/coder, animator and comedian. But I just knew him as the Sidebottom character who I'd see on children's TV when I was about 10. I loved the bit about Sievey releasing a 1983 7" with the single on the A-side, then electronic audio code (plus a game he'd written) on the flip side which could be loaded into a Sinclair ZX81 computer to play the video. I really need to explore the music of this strange lost genius.



A youtube video of a guy loading and syncing Sievey's single 'Camouflage' on to a real Sinclair ZX81 (and doing a scratch mix at the end). So awesome!:

 

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The Trap (2007)
In 'The Trap' Adam Curtis documents various attempts to define and shape human behaviour for the better, which always seems to turn out for the worse. It also explores the idea that if you think you have a plan for making the world a perfect paradise, you'll permit any atrocity in order to attain it. The ends will always justify the means. The documentary looks into the theories of John Nash, the RAND corporation, R.D. Laing, Friedrich von Hayek, Isaiah Berlin etc and their influence on Thatcher, Reagan, Clinton, Blair, the "free market", performance targets in the NHS, the fall of Communism and "regime change" in Iraq. The soundtrack again uses music from John Carpenter films, including the beautiful orchestral version of the 'Starman' theme. I noticed this is the first Curtis film in the then "new" widescreen format, unfortunate for all the old archive 4:3 footage that gets cropped.


One of the all-time best pieces of film music IMO:

 

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The Power of Nightmares (2004)
'The Power of Nightmares'
was the first Adam Curtis film I watched and although it's speaking very specifically from and to the post-911 years it's still an amazing documentary. The overall theme is about fear being used as a tool of political influence, which is like the "stick" to the "carrot" he explored in 'The Century of the Self'. Curtis contrasts and compares the development of the US Neocon movement, alongside the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and discuses the intertwined history that they and the Soviets had in Afghanistan during the Cold War, as well as the Clinton sex scandals and the increasing political power of US Christians. The most interesting argument he makes is that the 1944 pop song 'Baby, It's Cold Outside' is in an odd way partly responsible for al-Qaeda. Curtis' claim that the threat of organised international terrorism was greatly exaggerated post-911 was probably true but the subsequent organised power of IS in the years after this documentary make his statements sound a little short sighted in retrospect. The soundtrack again uses John Carpenter music which I loved.

 

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51TypicWK7L._AC_[1].jpg


Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films (2014)
This documentary history of schlock maestros Cannon Films and it's two head honchos Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus is as entertaining as all the reviews say. It's edited together with the energy and pace of the films they are talking about, moving from film to film with only enough time to discuss the juiciest of anecdotes, reveal the wackiest ideas and show the biggest of explosions. It's obvious this retrospective was put together 3, or 4 years before #metoo because it's produced by Brett Ratner, it makes light of Michael Winner's totally unacceptable onset behaviour (although it does make clear what a horrible sh*t he was) and in the summing up somebody favourably compares the Golan/Globus way of operating to the Weinstein brothers. It's perhaps fortunate that this was made when it was because now you'd have to spend half the runtime (quite rightly) discussing the rampant sexism, lax employment practices and shady financial dealings, instead of just showing some fun movie clips. The film also suggests that 'Masters of the Universe' wasn't a good film, which is clearly a wrong opinion! ;)


Machete Maidens Unleashed! (2010)
An earlier documentary by Mark Hartley, maker of 'Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films' in a similar vein about the exploitation films of the 70s/80s Philippines. The rapid editing of clips and anecdotes is just as fun but the fact that I hadn't heard of a single one of the B-movies being discussed took away from my enjoyment a tiny bit in comparison. The brilliant interviews are with the crème de la crème of genre cinema including Roger Corman, Joe Dante, Pam Grier, Sid Haig, John Landis and Dick Miller. Dante (who cut trailers for Corman) is brilliant value, describing the crazy times he had like an cheeky schoolboy. Despite the total lack of health and safety, disreputable material and cockroach infested sets, the cast and crew seem to have enjoyed themselves and are fairly proud of what they achieved.

NSFW trailer:


The double-bill blu-ray is highly reccomend since it also features nearly 3-hour of vintage trailers, plus all kinds of other extras I haven't scratched the surface of yet.
 
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Imagine (1972)
A 70-minute film made by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, which is an elaborate home video and a visual companion to Lennon's 1971 'Imagine' album, edited in the same track order. Unfortunately it's interrupted by 3 or 4 tracks/videos for Ono's 1971 avant-garde album 'Fly', it's not my taste. Sometimes the videos are absolutely beautiful, sometimes they are quirky and funny but sometimes they are self-indulgent and patience-testing, the kind of thing you can only get away with when the music is this good and the two people are as fascinating as "Joko" (the combined name the film is credited to). The sequence where the same door opens again and again and again to reveal different people and different mood music really made me giggle.

 

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Bambi (1942)
'Bambi'
is the only early Disney film I'd never seen but I was familiar with many elements anyway. I didn't really enjoy it, it feels more like a technical exercise in accurately animating the body movements and characteristics of animals and portraying the life cycle of a deer, rather than an eventful story with engaging characters, conflict and adventure. The animation is beautifully observed, with twitching ears, snuffling noses and hesitant neck movements but the vague painted backgrounds are a bit basic. Perhaps I needed to see this first as a nipper to have been swept up with the magic. 'Bambi' felt way longer than it's 65-minute runtime.

 

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The Bank Job (2008)
The blandly descriptive title of 'The Bank Job' doesn't help distinguish this terrific heist-movie from a plethora of post-'Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels' cockney-gangster B-movies. The clever script brings together several real historical events (with some of "The names changed to protect the guilty") like the 1971 "Baker Street robbery", the chequered story of black-power activist Michael X (involving murder, extortion and John Lennon) and rumoured sex scandals involving Princess Margaret's society friends and government ministers. It's got just the right mix of believable period atmosphere and specific details from the real cases, combined with heist movie and spy caper fun. The robbers aren't professionals so they have to solve problems in the moment which they hadn't anticipated, adding much to the drama. Plus they are really likeable and honourable (in their way) low-level chancers, surrounded by a world of corrupt cops, violent underworld kingpins, powerful upper class figures and ruthless spies, so in comparison it's easy to see the gang as Robin Hood heroes. Sir David Suchet always adds a touch a class but he also adds real menace.

 

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Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
I didn't much 'Blade Runner 2049'. For me it failed on almost every level to recapture what I liked about the 82' original. It trotted out some superficial similarities, like "he's got a spinner but not the same spinner!", "he's got a raincoat but not the same raincoat!", "he's got a gun but not the same gun!" and "the new Tyrell also lives in a vast building but this time it's biggerer!" but that's not what 'Blade Runner' was about. It was the Neo-Noir atmosphere, the romance, the sound, the music, the beautiful visuals and the enigmatic quality of it all. 2049 is included on Amazon Prime in 4K at the moment, so I decided to give it another chance. This time I could see more of the positives, the overall drive of the mystery story is good (even if it has some dumb plot holes), the relationship between Joy and K is beautifully played and fascinating on an intellectual level, that Elvis fist fight looks/sounds cool and in the added detail of 4K, some of the visuals actually look half decent. However, the CGI still looks poor compared to the FX from 3-decades earlier, the film-making is still visually bland, the editing is ludicrously slow, Harrison Ford is phoning it in and Hans Zimmer's score has none of the soul of Vangelis. The dialogue sounded even worse than I remembered it. I thought it was just Jared Leto's character that talked in cod-philosophical tones but it's everyone in the film reading from books of teenage poetry. Roy Batty got poetic because he knew he was dying, it was for a narrative and emotional reason. Again it's recreating something from the original, without actually understanding it. This time I also noticed the way the camera moved, it's very static in the dialogue scenes but endlessly moving in the FX shots. This is the opposite of the way Ridley Scott shot 'Blade Runner', which to me seems like Denis Villeneuve didn't think further than "It's got rain and neon. Job done". So in conclusion, I'm still the only person in the world that doesn't like 'Blade Runner 2049' but I'll concede my first 1.5 out of 5 review score was a bit harsh.


 

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All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (2011)
BBC documentarian Adam Curtis ponders the changing relationship between man and machine and how different groups have tried to understand humanity by imposing computer logic on our actions. He discusses the work of Ayn Rand, Dian Fossey, Alan Greenspan and Buckminster Fuller, parallels between the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the 2007 sub-prime crisis in the US, geodesic domes and hippy communes, then the Rwandan genocide and the theory of the "selfish gene". It got me thinking up a couple of variations on Arthur C. Clarke's famous adage "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic": "Any sufficiently advanced machine is indistinguishable from life" and "Any sufficiently complicated system is indistinguishable from chaos". The soundtrack features Kraftwerk's 'Radioactivity', Bernard Herrman's 'Vertigo' and Ennio Morricone's 'Once Upon a Time in the West'... so basically all my favourite things! This series was a pleasure to rewatch and feels like highly nutritious brain food.

 

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I'm going to assume anybody reading this already knows the real-life 2000 story of the Kursk submarine, if not spoilers ahead...

Kursk: The Last Mission (2018)
Thomas Vinterberg's 'Kursk'
is a bit like a horribly tragic version of 'Apollo 13' (the stricken submarine might as well be orbiting the moon) except you know none of the determined efforts of the crew to stay alive are going to save them because everything has and will go wrong, the equipment is broken and/or missing and the post-Soviet bureaucracy is much less interested in rescuing them, than with saving face. That last element would make this an interesting double-bill with 2019's 'Chernobyl' miniseries. Matthias Schoenaerts gives a terrific performance as the main protagonist, the scene at the end where he sees a vision of his son swimming in the darkness is a heartbreaking touch. Max von Sydow's small role is the personification of cold self-serving evil. Vladimir Putin's role in the affair (who was newly the President at the time) was controversially written out of the film. His reaction to the incident is arguably a pivitol moment in recent Russian history, so it's a shame that aspect is not explored. Still, what is here is powerful and dramatic, one of the best in the submarine movie genre.

 

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My local library recently re-opened so I've been devouring their selection.

Love and Monsters (2020)
I discovered this one when I was browsing through the nominees for the 2021 Oscars and it was one of the only ones that didn't seem like garbage. Plot: all cold blooded animals have been horribly mutated into giant monsters. Guy with no survival skills decides to leave his bunker colony to trek 85 miles to find his old girlfriend's colony. I would say it's loosely following the Zombieland formula decently done. Guy makes too many goofy/comedic comments but not so much that it's overly annoying.

Sound of Metal (2020 - Amazon Prime)
This one also got nominated for a bunch of Oscars but I can't understand why. Broke metal drummer suddenly goes deaf and he struggles with accepting it. The only interesting thing I found with it was how they compare his need to hear again with his previous drug addiction but it's developed so little that it's almost like that was a throw away line. Also the movie was at least 30 minutes too long.

Chernobyl (2019 HBO miniseries)
Pretty well done except for the typical Hollywood treatment of KGB behavior. The inaccuracy of how they treated the supposed danger of being around people with radiation sickness was also annoying, as was the general lack of any scientific explanations that might confuse people with above a 3rd grade education. Too much time was spent with the guys hunting dogs.

Lost in Translation (2003)
Yes, I know but I had never seen it. Bill Murray is great and actually seems to be having fun in the role, for a change. Scarlett Johansson is also great and easy on the eyes. Soundtrack is great and got Kevin Shields to make some new music. However, the movie meanders along and while certain scenes are entertaining, overall I didn't much enjoy it.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (1990)
Tom Stoppard directs this adaptation of his play of the same name. The two leads attempt to understand the plot they've been thrust into (Hamlet) with little success. As this was a play, the dialogue heavy bits are frequently hilarious, but it's too heavily interspersed with segments of characters going from place to place to get to more witty dialogue. It does make me want to see it on stage though.

Only the Brave (2017)
Biopic about the Granite Mountain Hotshots as they grow from a backline wildfire support crew to frontline hotshots and then tragedy strikes. It's a well done and serviceable biopic but not mindblowing either. The painful political aftermath of the widows trying to secure benefits is entirely left out.

Rick and Morty - Season 1 (2013)
What if the Doc from Back to the Future was a crazed alcoholic who dragged his timid nephew along on his adventures across different dimensions? To me, this show is what you get when you take Futurama, Phineas and Ferb, and Superjail! and throw them in a blender. It's bizarre, frequently amusing, and sometimes very funny. I thought the character Rick would get annoying, but the show has enough manic energy and insane plotting that everything turned out fine.

My Life as a Courgette/ My Life as a Zucchini (2016)
A lovely stop motion animated movie about a young boy who is sent to an orphanage after his single mother dies. It's sweet and touching and sometimes very funny, like when the kids talk about sex. A wonderful way to spend 65 minutes.

A Silent Voice (2016)
Anime movie about a boy that bullied a deaf girl in his elementary school class. He becomes an outcast because of his bullying and tries to make amends with the girl now that they're both in high school. I thought it was very good and quite emotional, but I kept hoping it would go for more of a romance angle while it mostly sticks to the guy trying not to screw things up and kind of meanders. This came out the same year as, and was compared to, the excellent anime Your Name and the two were both very successful and well received critically. I enjoyed Your Name more but I think this one is worth seeing also for the feels.
 

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Rocks (2019)
I was unimpressed by Sarah Gavron's last movie 'Suffragette' but her latest 'Rocks' is deserving of all the Bafta nominations. The cast of teenage first-time actors is incredible, the highlights being the main two Bukky Bakray and Kosar Ali, playing schoolgirls "Rocks" and her best friend Sumaya. Apparently the cast were encouraged to come up with their own dialogue so it really sounds authentic. It looks fantastic and the film-making style had the feel of Céline Sciamma, mixed with the Safdie brothers. The empathetic intimacy of the former and that feeling of a person struggling so hard to keep their head above water of the latter.

 

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Wild Search (1989)
I first watched Ringo Lam's 'Wild Search' a year ago and thought it was a great action/drama/comedy, despite a very poor DVD transfer. I recently saw an import blu-ray on eBay for a low price and was pleased to discover a beautiful HD transfer on the disc (with 5.1 Cantonese and Mandarin mixes). However, the English subtitles are clearly auto-translated. I could always combine the good DVD subtitles with the HD video. The relationship between Chow Yun-fat's tough cop and the adorable little girl Ka-ka who he is protecting is the best part, although there are enough gun battles and explosions to keep 80s Hong Kong action fans satisfied.

I did some frame comparisons of the video quality and the subtitles: http://www.framecompare.com/screenshotcomparison/FEC1MNNU

Dammit, while looking for the trailer I notice Eureka just announced a blu-ray release:

 
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