Tag: cinema

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Alien: Covenant

On such a lovely weathered day I thought the best place to be was in the dark, air conditioned atmosphere of a cinema. I did have a lovely run earlier today and managed 7 miles or so.

So, off to Rochester cinema I went. Worriedly. The last film I saw I walked out of. I’m not sure if that was because the film was truly terrible or maybe I was just having a minor head-fuck moment. It was with trepidation that I entered the theatre this time. I was also worried because Ridley Scott’s last foray into the Alien series had distressed me so much.

This film was largely OK. Hence I rated it a 6 on IMDB.

So, in more detail here’s some thoughts after I steal quotations from some source. If you read my Prometheus Arrrgh communication you will understand what I was worried about. I have since heard people say that Ridley Scott makes gorgeous films, but when he’s been given a shit script, it’s still a shit script.

Finally we have much more involvement of the synthetic human and he has gone mad. This pleased me because the entire series should have been about the relationship that humans have with the alien within their system, within humanity itself.

There were still some issues with this film. You don’t land on a new planet without surveying it THOROUGHLY. You’d also check toxicology reports etc. Humans are quite fragile really!

Now, if I ignore all that, I will admit that the rest of this film was pretty darn good. Really it was an horror film and an awful lot of it was filmed in the dark. Don’t wear sunglasses in the cinema, you won’t see a thing! There was gore and the Alien and stuff.

In all honesty, this film is nowhere near as good as Alien. It’s almost a cross between Alien and Aliens. I fully recommend that you go out and buy Alien and watch that instead.

Oh, and how to kill an Alien? Blast them out into space. EVERY TIME.

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The Fate Of The Furious

I sauntered to the Cineworld cinema at Rochester last night and I should have left home earlier as parking is really busy on a Friday night. You circle the car park waiting to see people walking away from the cinema to their car and then you hope to get to the lane where they are parked before another circling car does. It’s like vultures and carrion. It doesn’t really help the there are plenty of people who can’t park and leave gaps way in excess of necessary.

I went to see F8, or Fast and Furious 8, or The Fate Of The Furious. I expected it to be shit. I rated it on IMDB but I had to refer back to this communication to look up what this score should be. I tweeted this opinion too:

I think this film was utter shit. I physically left the cinema before thirty minutes was up. Emotionally I think I’m still in there, I can’t believe how shit this was. I was mentally prepared for a slickly filmed, well written piece of crap which would have garnered a reasonable review but this was . . . . . not that film.

I have watched the first and possibly second second film in this franchise. I can’t remember. I do know that while the first film was not a good film it was watchable and a good piece of entertainment. F8 was a far cry from watchable. Maybe I’m a film snob? Bollocks to that, I am a film snob. I do expect films to at least put some effort into the script and characters. Maybe I shouldn’t have gone to see this particular film? But I am able to like these films and see them for what they are. Why this one made me leave the showing I don’t know.

I have now walked out of two films at the cinema and considered walking out of only one other. Van Helsing was so bad I thought about leaving but I didn’t want to disturb the other guy sitting in the row of seats. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe was the other film I actually left. I wasn’t enjoying it but hadn’t considered leaving it until my guest asked me if I was enjoying it. “No” I replied. “Shall we leave?” came the response. This was a startling revelation, I had never really considered leaving before. We left.

F8 started out with a red car driving along what looked like the Florida Keys and then we were in Cuba. I don’t know if there’s a road like that in Cuba but there definitely isn’t a land link between the Keys and Cuba. Oh well, I can chill out. Havana looked lovely, even if it was in fraternity house party mode. I doubt it’s like that really. We start with a car race along a “Cuban Mile”. Whether that is like a Cornish mile I don’t know. It did seem to be quite a distance. Apparently you can take any old piece of shit car and race it against the best on the island, break it, set it on fire, perform a J turn and reverse FASTER than a fast car going forward and win a race. Just before you are going to launch into the sea you jump out of the broken car and roll along the floor with no injuries. Fuck you movie.

I did like the CGI waves that crashed into the sea wall as the cars came on to the promenade. But it must have been a freak wave because there were no more large waves crashing and in all the other shots the sea was rather calm. Maybe the intended audience isn’t expected to notice these things. Am I too snobby about movies? Up until now I hadn’t thought about leaving. Even Vin Diesel’s dumbstruck stupid acting face didn’t make me want to leave.

The following dialogue made me want to puke, it went a little something like this:

“Hey, you really won the race in that heap of shit car. You must be awesome.”

V.D. wry smile [no actual face movement]

“You can have the keys to my car and my respect.”

V.D. “I don’t want your car, your respect is enough.”

INSERT RED ALERT WARNING SOUND

Who wrote this shit? It’s utter machismo bullshit. This film should have been named “Bullshit cars and bullshit stereotypical hard men who are real men, none of that namby-pamby emotional stuff that was made for girls”. Maybe I have anger issues?

Now, I’m not sure what happened next but at some point there was an association football match between two girl teams and one of them was managed by The Rock. God, this film was lazy. The Rock’s team performed a version of the Haka before playing their match and the other team looked on as though they had never seen this or known about it. Now, if a team has rituals you would KNOW about it. You would be prepared and you would have measures in place to counter the rituals. One of the girls in pink [because hard teams are in red with a dragon and soft pussy girly teams play in pink] says “I don’t want to play anymore”. Did they employ a ten year old to write this script. Screw you movie!

We need to steal an EMP from some place in Germany. Quick, call a group of people who can drive really fast! This movie was so lazy they didn’t even want to attempt a heist sequence. We join the knobs as they are running away having already stolen the EMP. Oh and for information EMP stands for Electro-Magnetic Pulse. You have to add bomb or weapon to the end of EMP for it to make sense in terms of the movie. Also, obviously if you design an EMP weapon it can be lifted by a single person and has EMP written in massive font over its surface.

All of the chasing police are wiped out by a demolition ball swinging from what must be the world’s tallest infinite crane in the world as the bottom arc was perfectly parallel to the road. Perhaps this movie wasn’t for me. Perhaps I need to chill. I am writing this about twelve hours after starting to watch this movie and it is STILL annoying me intensely. I need to get out and have a run.

Somewhere in the thirty minutes I watched there was a car that ACCELERATED from 200mph to enter the back of an aeroplane while it was flying along a run way with the rear ramp down. Note to the producers and script writer. Some cargo planes could fly along a runway at 120 knots with a headwind. Also, how do cars somehow enter a run way on an airport in modern Germany? I thought we had tightened up things like fucking airport fences since all the bad people in the world keep trying to put bombs on planes.

All I needed now was a final trigger to make me walk out of this movie. I even had to disturb two people in my row. I actually considered their viewing pleasure but I reached a point where I couldn’t cope with the shit any more.

The Rock ends up in a bizzarre prison in a cell opposite cockney hard man Jason Statham. So, there followed a load of bullshit “I’m harder than you” dialogue and, surprise surprise, all the locks in the prison suddenly fail and all the prisoners break out and start fighting. I got up, gathered my coat and left. Best decision that day.

I am sad I didn’t see the submarine chasing cars over sea ice, but I’ll stream just that bit another time. This film was terrible. I’m trying to go meta and work out why I reacted so badly to it. The length of this communication worries me. Is something wrong? Normally I can end these reviews in a few paragraphs. “Fucking bullshit” would have worked for this film but it annoyed me. The utter laziness of the script and the machismo crap that reinforces all the stereotypes that modern liberal society is trying to remove. This is a film for reassuring the masses that it’s ok to be an arsehole. It’s ok to be a twat. It’s ok to fight. Pink is a girly colour only for pussies and muscles win over.

I hold out hope that towards the end of this movie the style changed and it reflected upon itself and had a different message. The world should be ashamed of this shit.

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Monster Trucks

I went to see Monster Trucks at Rochester Cineworld Cinema. It’s a kids film. I rated it (surprisingly high) on IMDB and you should read this before taking my ratings seriously.

You know what? This film was alright. It was a bit like an earthly version of Transformers. There was a young man who was obsessed with trucks but also quite intelligent and a young woman trying to impress him. I’m not really sure. There was also some step-dad stuff along the way with Danny Glover playing a scrap metal merchant in a wheelchair.

There were monsters. But, of course, they were mostly friendly. Apart from the physics of crashing down a hill and crushing your vertebrae this film was mostly good fun.

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Ghost In The Shell

I went to see Ghost In The Shell this afternoon. I booked a 14:30 showing. As is custom I went to the Cineworld at Rochester. Maybe one day I’ll change my “usual”.

So, the thing with the ratings is that you should read this communication.

I enjoyed what I saw of this film and I thought it was good. I recently watched the original anime version and thought that was brilliant. I don’t care for comparing across the genres. The only film I would get touchy about is that tour de force Akira.

I did “rest my eyes” a few times during this film and so I think it would be sensible for me to go again sometime when I am feeling more awake. A short and sweet review this time!

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Life

I took a break from building the Lego monster to visit Rochester cinema and watch the film Life. I rated this film on IMDB and you can see a guide to my ratings within this communication.

I spent a lot of this film wondering what to write. I’m still not sure. One of the ways I interact with films is to consider what I write here. It allows me to collect my thoughts and experience the film as something more than just a cinema trip. I am nearly at the point when I am going to take a pad and pen into a film to note down my thoughts as the film rolls. What is written here is normally a collection of illiterate thoughts after the fact. My musings are filtered through the cold process of entropy increasing. Occasionally I add an extra thought here or there when I realise I’ve missed an important point I wanted to make, hence a note pad would be a good idea. I don’t want to write notes on my phone because that’s likely to get me kicked out or would, at the very least, be quite anti-social in the darkened environment of the cinema.

You know what? I’m still not sure what to write. There are some science issues and orbital mechanics things that annoyed me a little but I don’t think they spoiled the film for me. Overall it was quite a good watch. This was essentially Alien but on the International Space Station. It wasn’t really as suspenseful as Alien, but then I do love Alien and Aliens. I did find this ultimately quite not-frightening.

Right [collects thoughts]. This film was fine. I like space stuff and this film had space stuff. Yep, that’s it. Fine.

Now, some bits a pieces with potential SPOILERS.

The ISS had to “catch” the mars probe? Not going to happen.

The life form was very aggressive, I don’t think this type of life form could exists on a planet. It would have to compete for food and resources and it would use them all very soon. Oh, shit, like humans on Earth. Wow! perhaps I missed that metaphor.

The Martian soil didn’t float about.

They found a single microscopic cell out of all the junk they brought in from the probe.

The Soyuz launched to boost the ISS to “deep space” would not have enough fuel. The film mentioned “deep space” a few times as though it’s easy to get there. It’s not. The energy required is immense. We have never, so far, sent a human to deep space. We haven’t even sent a human out of the Earth’s gravity well. We have sent some probes out beyond Earth’s grip but nothing that could sustain human life. I guess the film was set in the future so maybe they can have that one.

The Soyuz docked at a closing velocity that would have destroyed both machines.

There are probably other issues but I don’t want to come across as petty or pedantic. I am both. This film was largely: fine.

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Kong: Skull Island

I took a birthday trip to see Kong: Skull Island at the Rochester Cineworld Cinema. If you don’t know me by now, then you’ll never, ever know that I rate my movies on the IMDB website, but there’s a catch. I explained my rating system here, but I think scores have been creeping recently so I may have to redefine the system. Watch this space. When I decide my score I tweet it, which leads to a quite nice embedded format:

I had originally scored this as a 6, but upon reflection it didn’t deserve to be rated that highly, hence my change of mind.

Because, this film, was, shit.

SPOILERS ahead.

The script was appalling, lazy, stereotypical bullshit. Samuel L Jackson’s eyes got too much screen time. The film makers can’t count helicopters.

The monsters looked brilliant. I’m not really aware of the mythology around the Kong character but in this film he seemed to be more of an accidental benevolent monster type thing rather like Godzilla than all out terrible monster. I guess it’s OK because he fell in love with Brie Larson, who didn’t get smashed to death inside Kong’s hand while he ripped the brain out of a two legged lizard thing. It was irritating that Brie Larson seemed to spend all her time with a bag strap over her chest to enhance her breasts, this wasn’t needed, it seemed sexist to me.

The characters were terrible. War mad generals, smooth calm SAS member, crazy scientist with stupid theories, tribe who don’t speak. It was lazy terrible bullshit.

I can suspend my disbelief for gigantic monsters on an island surrounded by a perpetual storm. That bit was fine. The rest of this was bollocks.

It’s the little things. Little things that shouldn’t be things I have to write about. Like helicopters that materialise from nowhere. On the ship travelling to Skull Island there were, quite clearly, one Chinook, one Sea Stallion and four Hueys. All of a sudden when they take off to head to Skull Island the Hueys had babies and there were eight of them!! I have no idea where they came from. I also don’t know where the helos at the end of the film came from unless the US Navy had a task force nearby.

Oh, the Hueys had tape players and speakers. I can’t quite decide if this was an homage to Apocalypse Now! or just a plain bullshit rip off. The shots were almost exactly the same.

If you want a film with rebellious music, at least make the music decent. There was a ton of decent stuff around in the 1973 setting.

The two chaps who had crashed on Skull Island in the opening sequence made a boat out of aircraft parts. The team spent about a day turning this hulk of 29 year old metal into a working boat by turning some bolts and waggling some leavers. They made a metal thing work smoothly after 29 years in a humid environment. They must be geniuses. Oh and then, when they get the engine running it pops away smoothly and quietly in the background. Let me tell you that there are NO aero engines that run “quietly” in the background. That engine would have been producing in excess of 900bhp and no silencing. The makeshift boat would have torn itself apart.

According to the Wikipedia page I missed the post-credits scene where other monsters are revealed to the viewer. I don’t care.

If I wanted to be very extremely generous I could claim that the film was a complete metaphor for the USA’s battle against terrorism with Kong representing the terrorists. But I don’t want to be generous with this film.

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Logan

In an unusual move I went to the cinema this morning to an 11:00 showing! I’d already had a run so I figured why not? I won’t embed that here, you can search my Twitter timeline if you want to see that. As is usual I rated the film on IMDB and for an explanation of the rating system you should read this communication.

So, I enjoyed the film. It was pretty violent and very well done. It wasn’t that violent given what I have seen in the past but I guess for a 15 it was impressive.

 

WARNING there are SPOILERS from HERE.

 

I don’t like superhero films. Or mutant films. Most of them are rubbish. This one was good but not brilliant. I’ve seen people raving about it and I think that’s mostly the rubbish they’ve been fed over the years colouring their view. 

I need to add that the whole idea that the kids would be safe once they “crossed the border” was odd given that the company chasing them was perfectly happy to blow shit up in Mexico and the USA and so probably wouldn’t mind popping into Canada. 

It was lovely to see Richard E Grant being evil.

This film was going to be rated 6/10 but I have given it 8/10 because of the major deaths that take place in the film. I though it was important to give those characters some honour.

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Hidden Figures

Last night I went to see Hidden Figures. It has been a while since I’ve been to the cinema as things are just a little busy at the moment. I’m sure I’ll catch up in the next month or so. I’ve had a recommendation to see Logan and given my general dislike of superhero films it will be interesting to see it.

I went to see Hidden Figures. It is customary for me to rate films on IMDB and I did so.

Perhaps you should read my reasoning behind my ratings, although I have to admit the logic is shifting slowly over time, as should be expected I guess.

Hidden Figures was a good film. It was about some of my favourite topics; space, rockets, maths, civil rights, humanity.

Quite a broad range of topics there, but this film managed them all. This was the story of three mathematicians at NASA. That doesn’t sound particularly impressive until you suddenly say BLACK FEMALE mathematicians at NASA in the early 1960s. Everyone should see this film, it has the right amount of everything, really worth while.

It stuns me to see how different people were treated. God, people can be fucking assholes.

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Hacksaw Ridge

I went to the cinema by the river Medway [Rochester] and watched Hacksaw Ridge. I rated it on the IMDB website and as ever you should read this communication about my rating system.

My general overview is that I won’t watch this film again. I enjoyed it but I am thoroughly depressed at man’s ability to kill and destroy each other. I do understand that at times it is necessary to do these things but I wish it wasn’t.

If you want to see a boot camp sequence then you only need watch Full Metal Jacket. There was a lot of soap opera joyness about the USA scenes. I will say that Hugo Weaving was fantastic as the father, he really showed the horror of coping with war. I am not sure that his friends would have been buried in the hometown but I could be wrong.

When we get into battle this film blows you away and I almost cowered waiting for the calm. The noise and assault was impressive. The battle scenes are brilliantly horrific and scary. Fuck war.

This was a “true story” and the interviews at then end played out some of what we saw. This is worth a watch.

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The LEGO Batman Movie

I tried to coast the car as far as possible to Rochester cinema today, but there are too many uphills in the way and I had to use a fair bit of fuel. I do tell myself that all journeys that start and end at home are potential energy neutral [given particular losses for downhill and energy conversion] but still, hills annoy me. I also don’t want to be a particularly sad Prius driver, I do like power mode. I went to see Lego Batman and I rated the film on IMDB, perhaps I could trouble you to read this communication about the rating system.

Well, overall I would say I was largely not affected by this film. The opening was good, I liked the Batman character and his voice-over. but I think I’m too old for these films now. It all seemed just a little too busy. There was always so much going on in the film and on the screen it was hard to keep up with the characters and potential jokes that were happening. I am positive it was funnier than I thought, but I only smiled a couple of times.

While I guess this film was inevitable after the Lego Movie, I think Batman has been done to death. Putting it in Lego didn’t change or improve it. If anything it possibly messed up the Lego brand a bit. This film could have just as easily been live action or animated [not Lego] and it would have been the same. There wasn’t any reason for it to be Lego.

I didn’t leave the cinema amazed with what I had just seen, I left feeling “huh”, or whatever letters spell the equivalent of a “shoulder shrug”. It is quite possible that I just don’t like Batman. I remember seeing the Tim Burton version and thinking “whatever”, I do now recognise it as great though. All versions since have left me cold and irritated. I’m just not made for Batman.

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T2 Trainspotting

18. It was a proper 18 film. These are quite a delight because you get proper violence and language and sex. These films are grittier and more interesting than those certified below 18. When I think about it, you don’t get many horror films that hit the 18 mark anymore, I wonder if that’s because the market for those types of films is really teenagers. I’m pretty sure that some films change certification over time. Alien was an X on release [over 18] but is now a 15 on DVD release, people’s sensitivities get less as society evolves.

So, I went to the cinema at Royal Tunbridge Wells, it’s an Odeon, or the one I went to is, there may be other cinemas available. The cinema has an Italian restaurant on the mezzanine floor, which was nice and saved having to go to a big-chain-edge-of-town restaurant. Here is my rating which I score on IMDB and you should read this communication if you don’t get how my system works.

I really enjoyed this film. It was funny, touching and terrifying at the same time. I thoroughly liked the original and this is a good follow on. T2 shows how films can be sequels without just re-running the original film. There were plot points that were similar but you can watch this without knowing the original.

The film looked great and the soundtrack was excellent as expected.

It is quite scary just how much the actors have changed while also looking exactly the same, the cutting from one film into another deals with this brilliantly. There is liberal use of the word “cunt” by Begbie and at times I almost needed subtitles for him.

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An IMDB Ratings Update

Many of the communications within this domain are based on films I have seen or television episodes. Whenever I go to the cinema I rate the film on the IMDB website. You should see this communication which will explain my scoring rationale. A good thing about the IMDB site is that you can download your data.

So, here’s an idea of what how many times I have used each score.

Now, the odd scored films are a worry and definitely against my general rules. The film that scored 9 was The Imitation Game and the shittiest film that scored a 1 was God’s Not Dead 2.

The mean score of my ratings is 6.36 and this compares to an IMDB rating mean score of 7.05. I don’t know what this tells us.

The top of the table is here:

I’m not convinced that the TV Episode and TV Series scores should be in there, but can’t be bothered to remove those rows from my spreadsheet. Now, I know you want the list of the bottom films so here they are:

A couple of religious films at the bottom, possibly not a surprise, but then maybe they could have made good religious films instead. I’m not against religious films, they are just badly made. And then there’s the Sci-Fi. It’s a shame that some Sci-Fi is terrible, but terrible exists in all genres.

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Silence

I sauntered out to Rochester cinema last night to see Silence. I have, of course, rated this film on IMDB and you should read this communication about my rating scale. I went to see a showing that had the programme start at 20:40. This was a late night for me!

So, this was a long film, but didn’t actually feel that long. I enjoyed it a lot. I would recommend you see it. I am not sure I would watch it again, but it deserves an 8 on my scale. It is a thoughtful, slow, beautiful film with lots of torture and suffering.

I was mildly amused at the beginning of the film as right at the point that its name glares across the screen SILENCE there is no audio from the film but the doors to the auditorium were open and the noise of people outside in the foyer filled our room.

Having done a little Wikipediaring I have found that this is based on an historical fiction novel about the treatment of Roman Catholics in Japan during the 17th century. You will not be surprised to find that I do not understand that people would rather die through torture than recant their belief in a [possibly mythical] Jew from the middle-east who was likely a naughty boy. However, this is what they did and they died for their faith. As have many before and since. This, I can’t compute.

This film is worth watching. I will be watching Ghost In The Shell today because there is a live action version out soon!

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Passengers

I’m a sucker for a space film. I love the possibilities, the stars, the tech. It just can look sooooo cool. Quite often these films leave something lacking and aren’t that good. I saw Rogue One and yesterday I watched Earthrise from Amazon Prime.

Because I watched this at home it doesn’t get an Official Parish Rating. So it was with a nerdy interest in tech and space that I went to see Passengers, I wanted to see stunning vistas and how the film-makers had dealt with the ravages of space travel. As is custom I rated this film on IMDB and you should read my guide to the rating system.

It was a perfectly enjoyable film and worth seeing, it had just the right amount of humour but I do feel that the moral issues could be covered more comprehensively in a separate film. This wasn’t a film about morals though. It was a space action thriller and as such it functioned perfectly well. Now, after here, there be dragons.

I had some minor issues with it, but not as many as with this film. So, if we allow hibernation, then we just need to look at the rest of the film to see what liberties they have taken. Mind you, coming out of hibernation looks a lot like CPR, so the travellers were more dead than deep sleeping.

The artificial gravity system seemed to be based mostly on centrifugal force [YES, I KNOW – this is why I don’t allow comments on this site]. The idea that a spinning thing in space would stop spinning when the power is switched off doesn’t quite ring true, momentum and inertia etc. But, then this does allow some pretty good visuals.

Why would little things go wrong if the spaceship was dealing with a big problem in the reactor core? I’m not sure this part of the film rings true. It bothered me a little. But, I was willing to let this go.

The swimming pool. I’m pretty sure that if the gravity was provided by the rotation of the ship then the stars outside the window were rotating the wrong way. I’ll probably have to take a few more looks at this scene but it upset something in my head and I spent a while moving my hands around in the air trying to get rotations correct. The hemispherical window was an awesome idea though.

Only one medi-pod for a ship that size? Bullshit.

When gravity suddenly turns off (?) most things will just stay where they are unless there is an impulse to them. The water in the swimming pool would have rode up the sides of the room when the spinning stopped. The sleeping characters would have moved very slowly if at all as they don’t have any forces acting on them. I refer you to Newton’s First Law Of Motion.

There are other bits and pieces but they are largely inconsequential and do not show off my understanding of sciencey shit. I do think that a film covering the morals of “living murder” would be very interesting if written by someone talented.

Oh, Arcturus. The space ship sling-shots around Arcturus. I don’t have a problem with that per se, but the ship did seem pretty close to the star. It would have fried to a crisp and everyone would have been killed by the intense radiation. While this allowed for pretty visuals [based on the SOHO observations of our own sun] the radiation shielding would need to be metres thick. Arcturus is a pretty darn big star coming in at 25.7 times the diameter of our piddly little star The Sun. It’s also 36.7 ly away and the spaceship in the film had been travelling for 30 years and had just reached 0.5c so the film makers could have done some better sums here I feel although we don’t know if the time measurement is absolute [physicists would laugh at that concept] or relative.

Last thing: The company that owns the starship made x quadrillion profit we are told. I am pretty sure that Aurora [!] then explains that a quadrillion is “a thousand billion”. I may have misheard this but a quadrillion is a million million using the US naming system. Aurora was talking about a trillion which is a LOT less money.

Quadrillion [US] – 10^12
Quadrillion [UK, but not common] – 10^24

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Arrival

I sauntered out to the old haunt of the Cineworld at Rochester. I watched Arrival and, of course, I rated it on IMDB after watching it. You can see my scoring system explained in this communication.

This film was very good. I think the trailer somewhat over played the thriller aspect, but then that’s largely what sells I think. It’s nice to see an intelligent science fiction film. Something that makes you think and wonder. There’s too much dross and simple stuff out there at the moment. I’m not entirely sure I like the premise of this movie but it was a good watch anyway. It was the second film I had seen with a child’s death in it and I don’t like that kind of stuff, I’d rather not have those possibilities exposed.

The main thing we know about contact is how to communicate. What form or style of language will we use. This is important. For the best treatment of this read Contact.

Overall, this film is worth watching.

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One More Time With Feeling

Last night I went to Canterbury to the Curzon independent cinema there. I find Canterbury an odd place. The centre, where the shops are, is cut off by a Roman wall and a ring road from the reality of the rest of the town.

I’d not been to the Curzon cinema there before although I probably have been to those cinemas but too long ago to remember or be specific. The cinema was off a back street near the Marlowe Theatre. Inside it was quirky with an old fashioned book shop feel to it. People were drinking coffee and playing scrabble in the foyer area. The screen room itself was wide but not deep and the seats were quite comfortable with some being sofa style!

I went to see One More Time With Feeling. A documentary film about Nick Cave creating and recording music since the death of his son.

It was mostly shot in black and white and it was a very touching movie. I know nothing about Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and I’m not sure I know much now. The interviews were interesting and partly an insight into the music making process but on reflection I’m not convinced they were very revealing. The film seemed to contain about 6 or 7 music videos. I’m not sure if the band were actually recording while they played in these scenes, I would like to think so but it looked a little too staged. The scenes and interviews in between the set-piece song videos were dark, amusing and pretty much what you would expect.

I was utterly compelled for most of the film. As a terrible song writer and someone who probably should spend more time using his creative side it was interesting to hear a musician talk about the process, but I’m not at all sure it was a major revelation.

To hear someone talk about the death of a child is horrible.

Anyway, this is worth a watch. It’s musically interesting and lyrically haunting. It’s a good film.

Judge for yourself:

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Nocturnal Animals

Last night I moseyed to the Cineworld cinema at Rochester. I went to the Nocturnal Animals. When I booked this film I didn’t know anything about the film, I hadn’t seen a trailer and so took a punt with this one. There were two possible options for a film to see, Nocturnal Animals and The Accountant, upon inspecting the IMDB critics scores I decided to see the better one. I pay no attention to the scores given by cinema goers, oh the irony, it is clear that the public have no idea what is good for them as recent events will attest. Whenever the shout for power to the people is raised you just have to remember that Mr Blobby was christmas number one once. So, here’s my IMDB rating:

As is expected you should see this communication for an explanation of how my scoring system works.

I enjoyed this film. It was the second recent film to be set in West Texas and I’m now not sure if it is a place I would want to visit. Everyone out there seems strange. The opening of this film was interesting especially as I didn’t know a thing about it. The film was billed as a stylish and absorbing psychological noir thriller. I’m not entirely sure it was all that. It seemed more to be about a very sad woman who hates her life. The film was clever but not brilliantly so and the book that the main character reads comes to life in the film we see.

I’m going to do my best to not give any spoilers as I write this. There wasn’t any particular part of the film where I thought it was stupid or wanted to moan about it so that’s a good thing. I need to try and see real films more often, I think I have seen too many action or super hero films and they are a strange distortion of the cinema world. I don’t mind science fiction so much but they often do too much, they bend the rules so far [fine] and then SF films tend to do something silly and break the rules. I’m not sure that makes sense, whoops.

I probably would watch this film again. Amy Adams is pretty good and manages to show emotion without a great deal of verbal communication. The naked bum was a major motif throughout the film and the graphic matches were well done. It was a well made and constructed movie. I would like to think I would spot more “clever” stuff the second time around. Assuming there is a lot of clever stuff.

At one time the writer says that all writers write about themselves, what else can they know. It turns out this film director, Tom Ford, used to be a fashion designer. The film clearly states that this world and the world of art is superficial and bollocks. That seems perfectly reasonable to me.

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Doctor Strange

I sauntered out to Rochester cinema last night to see Doctor Strange. I have to admit the trailer didn’t really fill me with anticipation but it was recommended at work. Of course I rated this film on the IMDB and tweeted the result. You should probably read this communication about the rating system.

So, what did I think? It was alright. OK. Nothing special. Better than the trailer set out.

There were moments of humour.

I have some advice for film makers though. Just because your special effects can kaleidoscope a city that doesn’t mean you have to. I say that having never read any of the comics.

The fighting scenes were a little “Paul Greengrass” and could have been filmed better.

Oh, and the “mystic east” infuriates me. It just adds extra credence to those fools who peddle bullshit in the real world.

There, it was OK.

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Storks

Drove the short distance to the Cineworld cinema at Rochester. As it’s half term it was time to see Storks. Below is my rating on IMDB, but it is traditional that you first read the scoring system placed in a communication here.

So, it was a kids film. Not a great one at that. A touch annoying in places. The wolves were the coolest part of the film.

 

So, the main bird touches the girl [I don’t do character names] and sees her future. We see her at school, learning, getting a degree and it bloody well ends with her getting MARRIED. The film seemed to imply that the ultimate goal for a girl was to be MARRIED. Since when do women have to be married to be valid members of society? Perhaps she could have been president? Perhaps she could have been winning a Fields Medal? This little section of the film irritated me. It stereotyped women. I was possibly wound up by the trailers for Disney films which reinforce the feudal ideal where you have to be *born* to the right family to have worth. Fuck them all.

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Deepwater Horizon

Popped over the river last night to see Deepwater Horizon. Use the new bridge. As is customary I rated this film on IMDB and you should see my guide to the rating system to get an idea of what the numbers mean. Otherwise you have no relative scale.

This film was quite enjoyable (?). While travelling to the cinema I was hoping that they would explain the mechanisms of oil exploration and also the culture of poor safety that lead to the explosion. I also wanted a cunning thriller with footage of inquiries mixed with the main story that I had seen in the trailers which was an action film. I just didn’t want a simple action film.

The film started with an explanation of why rigs get blowouts and some audio from the actual inquiry. This was a good start. The majority of the film was the action part of the film with some lovely shots of the Bristow helicopters flying out to the rig. The film showed the interplay between the BP officials and the workers of the people who owned the rig.

bristol copter

There was quite a bit of tension building with plenty of build up of the explosion that didn’t come. Then finally it happened and the race to escape the rig commenced. The action sequences were pretty good and the fire safety while filming must have been quite impressive.

Once the main action thrust of the film was over there was some short footage of the inquiry and a roll call of those who died in the explosion. Overall this film was ok. It could have been so much better by turning it into an investigation film with the action intercut with people figuring out what happened. I guess those films aren’t as exciting to modern audiences and probably don’t get made that often.

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