No. I’ve had it. This film is bullshit. The List is bullshit. Everything is awful and this film is the worst.
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India Song
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Author Archives: jaycluitt
Jeanne Dielman
A widowed homemaker lives in her apartment with her teenage son. She spends her days cleaning and cooking her modest abode, and sleeping with men for money to pay for her lifestyle. As it turns out, this lifestyle is incredibly, torturously dull to watch.
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My Week in Movies, 2016 Week 51
This has been a busy and exhausting week. I’m struggling to keep my eyes open right now, and that’s still with an evening of present-wrapping ahead of me! As such I’ll keep it brief and get straight into what I watched recently:
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My Week in Movies, 2016 Week 50
Christmas is just a week away, but this year, and for the first time in as long as I can remember, I’m feeling relatively calm about it – I think I’m almost looking forward to it! I’ve got every present bought and am just waiting for one to be delivered, I’ve earmarked tomorrow to get started on the wrapping, everything is in place food-wise, and Christmas Eve is on a Saturday, so I definitely won’t have to work, and any last minute errands that need running won’t be a problem. The only downside is that so far this year the closest I’ve come to watching a Christmas movie is Batman Returns! Ah well, I guess that’s something I’ll be catching up on this week to come!
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Batman Returns
33 years after being dumped into the sewers as a baby by his horrified parents, Oswald Cobblepot (Danny DeVito), a disfigured, disgusting man, wants to surface and claim his rights as a human. Meanwhile, shy secretary Selina Kyle (Michelle Pfeiffer) works for business tycoon Max Shreck (Christopher Walken), who constantly belittles her. When she discovers his plans for a power station will actually drain and store Gotham’s surplus energy, he tries to kill her but fails, causing her to seek revenge. Also, there’s a bloke going around dressed as a bat, but clearly, he’s not as important.
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Archangel
In 1919, the Russian village of Archangel continued to fight a war they didn’t know was over. Grief-stricken Canadian soldier Lt. Boles (Kyle McCulloch) arrives at the village and assists a family with an injured child, only to see a vision of his dead wife. This vision turns out to be field nurse Veronkha (Kathy Marykuca), who happens to look exactly like Boles’ wife. Veronkha has her own problems though, her husband, Lt. Philbin (Ari Cohen) has suffered a brain injury that makes him think he is always experiencing his wedding night, despite the fact that Veronkha is no longer in love with him.
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My Fortnight in Film, 2016 Weeks 48 & 49
Parks and Recreation is rapidly becoming one of my favourite sitcoms. I’m a few episodes into series six (of seven) and all the actors have really settled into their respective grooves and know exactly what they’re doing, and for the most part the writers know how to handle them too. Of the main cast it’s too difficult to pick a best character or actor, as they are all great in their own ways, although for me one of the funniest moments so far is Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman) attempting to do the unthinkable and eat a banana. I will be sad when I get to the end of this show.
I’ve also watched all of Westworld recently (no spoilers, don’t worry) and whilst I enjoyed the premise and a lot of the set-up, I’ve been disappointed and feel let-down by how the series ended, as little happened that I didn’t see coming a long way off, and the parts I did find surprising felt like a disservice to the characters effected. I wasn’t expecting everything to be wrapped up neatly, and things have been put into an interesting point from which season 2 will have to start, but this has yet to join the pantheon of all-time greats like Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones. There’s potential – as long as they keep giving Jeffrey Wright and Thandie Newton killer scenes to chomp on – but it’s not there yet. Anyway, enough about TV, what have I been watching recently movie-wise?
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November 2016 Update
I have been trying to write this post for over a week! And it’s such a simple one to do, just ramble a little about what I got up to in the past month, put some links to the posts I’ve written, bemoan my lack of productivity and how much I’ve still got to do, and move on! And given how unproductive I was in November, this should have taken no time at all. I think I’ve been putting it off because this is the month where I finally admit defeat. Even if I’d got this post out as planned on the 1st of December, I still wouldn’t have had a chance, as I’m over 40 films away from my target, and that’s more days then there are in December. Now, one week later, I’ve written little new and watched even less, so consider my towel well and truly thrown in. “Wait!” I hear you cry, “what about the week after Christmas, when you’re job is closed down until after New Year? Surely you could watch and review lots of films then?” My response would be a firm and resolute “Maybe” were it not for the numerous family-based activities occurring during that week, which will severely hinder my film-watching and film-reviewing abilities. So don’t expect a repeat performance of last December, wherein the final week was spent valiantly catching up on the goals I’d fallen behind on. This year I’m taking the much easier, more sensible and less stressful option of just plain giving up. Not entirely, I might add. I’ve got no hope of achieving my 100 films from the 1001 List goal, but there are others. I only need to watch-and-review one Blind Spot pick and I hit that target, so A Matter of Life and Death is in my imminent future, which is more than OK with me. Similarly, I’m three “Bad” movies away from that goal, and I’ve already watched one and started the review, so that should be relatively straight forward. The Film-Makers challenge is trickier, given I’m 9 away from completing that. Granted I’ve already watched at least two eligible films, but it’d be difficult to see that one through. If I achieve it though, and somehow make all the Film-Makers movies to also be from the 1001 List, then along with the Blind Spot and “Bad” movies, and maybe even a few pending review, I could perhaps get my 1001 goal up to 70. That’s my target, let’s see how I do.
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The Maltese Falcon (1941)
It looks like just another day at the detective agency for Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) when Miss Wonderly (Mary Astor) walks in requesting his assistance in tailing a man believed to have run off with her sister, but when Spade’s partner Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan) is shot and another body shows up later that night, Sam soon finds himself under question by the police. His gift of the gab can only talk himself out of so many predicaments, as he becomes entwined in a desperate search for a priceless artefact that everyone seems to crave.
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My Week in Movies, 2016 Week 47
Within this year’s major blockbusters there seems to be at least a small theme of damage control. The likes of Batman V Superman and Captain America: Civil War have had their plots propelled from the outset by a need to atone for past destructive sins, and others, such as X-Men: Apocalypse, Doctor Strange and more recently Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them have at least made an effort to rectify the destruction wrought within their time-scales. This is fine, I’ve got no problem with it at all, but when I came home from seeing Arrival the other week and I saw my partner had made the mistake of renting X-Men: Apocalypse it got me thinking of the final scene, [mild spoilers, but not really if you’ve seen Days of Future Past] which sees Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) rebuilding the mansion after it was destroyed in an explosion. Visually it’s a cool-looking scene, but from an engineering perspective it makes zero sense as the two mutants use their powers of telekinesis and magnetism to rebuild a structure as though it were made of Lego bricks, instead of actual mechanically bonded components. There are bricks that are just placed on top of one another with seemingly no concern for any kind of cement between them. Similarly metal structures are erected but not welded together, as I’m fairly certain that’s outside of the power-range of either of these mutants. At this point a mild bout of rough-housing between two of the smaller students, one being knocked into a wall by the other, will cause the majority of the building to collapse. Hell some areas probably wouldn’t stand up to a strong wind. So yes, whilst it’s good that film franchises are taking it upon themselves to not abandon their wanton destruction of the world, they should at least attempt to rebuild them using registered and recommended contractors instead of making piss-poor attempts to do it themselves.
This is all a failed attempt to hide the fact that I didn’t do a lot this week. I finally got around to starting WestWorld, and it got me more than a little hooked (I’m five episodes in, in just as many days), so my watching and reviewing has taken a significant downward turn once again. Anyway, here’s what I did watch this past week:
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Life Vs Film 