Yep, I’m still behind on everything. Nope, it doesn’t look like I’ll be catching up any time soon. Yep, it’s starting to annoy me. Here’s what I watched this week:
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My Week in Movies, 2016 Week 15
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Three Brothers
This review was originally written for Blueprint: Review.
When their mother passes away, three very different brothers return to their family home to pay their respects, but their opposing lifestyles and outlooks on life cause them to clash.
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My Week in Movies, 2016 Week 14
Watching so many films I sometimes find myself going through completely unintentional themed periods, often discovered after the fact. For example, a lot of films I’ve watched recently have featured Italian or Italian-American families with lots of brothers in, and these all arrived to me through different means. Brooklyn cropped up on my LoveFilm list and got dispatched immediately. Then Rocco and His Brothers needed reviewing for Blueprint: Review. And this past week I’ve watched Three Brothers, also for Blueprint: Review, and I watched The Godfather for this weekend’s Lambcast. Even more bizarrely, the past few weeks have seen not one but two films in which someone submerges themselves in a large quantity of grain (Three Brothers and The Dressmaker). Weird. Anyway, here’s what I watched this week:
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Cléo from 5 to 7
Two days ago, singer Cléo (Corinne Marchand) underwent some tests to determine if she has stomach cancer, and how bad it is. She is scheduled to visit the hospital at 7pm, in two hours time, so whiles away the inbetween hours wandering the streets, first having her fortune told before going to a cafe with her maid (Dominique Davray), having a meeting with two musical collaborators (Serge Korber and Michel Legrand) spending time with a friend (Dorothée Blanck) before meeting a soldier (Antoine Bourseiller) in the park and eventually making her way to the hospital to receive her results.
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March 2016 Update
Three months into the year and I’m already a solid month behind on my progress through the 1001 Movies list. At least in March I was able to catch up to where I should have been at the end of February, but I didn’t exceed that target. And even more annoyingly, March featured the glory of Easter’s 4-day weekend, only for it to be squandered on spending time with family and recording podcasts. Over that whole weekend I watched one feature-length film (Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice) and one animated short on TV one evening (Wallace and Gromit: The Wrong Trousers). One of those things is infinitely better than the other, but regardless of how much I love Aardman’s stop motion hilarity, it didn’t make up for a frittered away expanse that should have been spent watching movies. Anyway, here’s the tally for the month:
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My Week in Movies, 2016 Weeks 12 & 13
The problem with having goals is my time gets spent trying to achieve them, and I often find myself striving to fulfil these predetermined tasks instead of doing something I want to do now. Thus, most of the movies I watch are ones I need to for the task at hand – be it to meet a goal, or in preparation for a podcast. And so it was that this past week I found myself longingly looking at a LoveFilm DVD of Robin Hood: Men In Tights, a film I’ve never seen but would probably enjoy, but which I did not have the time to watch. My partner had no interest, though to be fair she’d already sat through two Robin Hood movies in recent weeks and doesn’t much care for parodies or musicals, and my time to watch films outside of her presence is filled with the ones I’ve yet to cross off my many numerous lists. All was not lost though, as some unplanned and unlisted movie watching was accomplished this week, and of a film I’d owned for years without ever popping into the player. What film was that exactly? Well read on to find out.
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Pulp Fiction
Jules and Vincent (Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta) are hitmen working for a gangster by the name of Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames). They are tasked with retrieving a suitcase containing something belonging to Wallace from some low level associates. Later, Vincent is supposed to escort Marsellus’ wife Mia (Uma Thurman) for the evening. Meanwhile, Marsellus has recruited boxer Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis) to take a dive in an upcoming boxing match. When Butch fails to do so, he finds himself needing to leave town as quickly as possible, or face Marsellus’ wrath.
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The Adventures of Robin Hood
When King Richard is taken captive in Europe in 1191, his villainous brother Prince John usurps the throne, raising taxes dramatically and forcing many of his subjects into poverty. Enter Sir Robin of Locksley (Errol Flynn), the self-proclaimed greatest archer in the land, who amasses an army of townsfolk and loyal followers, with the intention of righting Prince John’s misdeeds, and winning the heart of Lady Marian (Olivia DeHavilland), who is to be wed to John’s right hand man, Sir Guy of Gisbourne (Basil Rathbone).
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Rocco and His Brothers
This review was originally written for Blueprint: Review.
After the death of her husband, Rosario Parondi (Paxinou) takes her four youngest sons Simone (Salvatori), Rocco (Delon), Ciro (Cartier) and Luca (Vidolazzi) to stay with their oldest brother Vincenzo (Focás) in Milan. However, Vincenzo is trying to build his own life there, having just celebrated his engagement to Ginetta (Cardinale). The family are forced to stay in very humble lodgings, all sharing one room and not enough beds, whilst the boys struggle to find work in the city. Eventually the multitude of vices commonplace to city life begin to drive the brothers apart, especially by the beautiful yet troubled Nadia (Girardot).
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The Lovely Bones
Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) is an ordinary 14-year old girl. She has a younger sister Lindsey (Rose McIver), an even younger brother Buckley (Christian Ashdale), a perfectionist father obsessed with building model ships in bottles (Mark Wahlberg), a stressed out mother (Rachel Weiz) who knits terrible headwear, an alcoholic grandmother (Susan Sarandon) and is developing her first crush on fellow schoolmate Ray Singh (Reece Ritchie). One day, however, Susia doesn’t make it all the way home from school. Whilst crossing a field near her family home she is lured into an underground bunker by her creepy neighbour George Harvey (Stanley Tucci), Harvey kills Susie, and the ramifications of this will throw her family into turmoil.
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Life Vs Film 