What was the last film you watched?

[Angela Channing]

Big George Foreman (2023)

This biopic about the life of former world heavyweight boxing champion George Foreman is a real cracker. His life is like a Hollywood plot anyway so it always going to be an interesting film. In some ways the story is more fantastic than fiction in how he regained the heavyweight title at the relatively old age of 45 and after retiring from boxing 10 years previously, it's something that Stallone didn't dare do with Rocky Balboa because he thought it wasn't believable (although this ending was filmed and made the DVD extras).

What I particularly liked about this film was how it was straightforward and non-gimmicky, a bit like George himself. The plot is told in a linear fashion and there are no flashbacks and flash forwards which seems to be overused in many biopics these days. The cast is excellent and the boxing scenes have energy and excitement. I absolutely loved this film.

 

[Angela Channing]

The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023)

I've never played The Super Mario Bros. video game so the references to its source material were completely lost on me. However, you don't need to know anything about the video game franchise to enjoy this film. It's about brothers Mario and Luigi, Italian-American plumbers who are transported to an alternate world and become involved in a battle between the Mushroom Kingdom, led by Princess Peach, and the Koopas, led by Bowser. The genius of the film is that it is not just about the characters from game but it is a film of the game that feels both like a video game and a motion picture. For example, there a scene early in the film when the brothers are running to a plumbing job and they jump over fences, run along fire escapes and dodge objects and visually it looks a lot like video game play. Later on, the brothers have to navigate various tasks and when they complete them the narrative of the story takes them to another challenge which feels a bit like another level of the game play.

I thought it was a entertaining and enjoyable film and was a great example of how to produce a successful video game adaptation that works on its own terms and delivers a satisfying film experience. It will appeal even more strongly to fans of the Super Mario games but people like me, who have no prior knowledge of the game, will still appreciate its humour, its quirky style, its originality and the and the adventure in the storyline.

 

[Biggie]

The Perfect Catch.

Based on the book Fever Pitch and a remake of the eponymous movie. A movie I've seen and rather enjoyed.

That said The Perfect Catch was really rather enjoyable. Drew Barrymore turned out a worthy performance.

No new ground was broken here, but a decent rom-com none the less.

The star of the show...the baseball that caught our Drew in the face.

 

[Seaviewer]

Morning Glory (2010)
I'm not sure how to categorise this film. I suppose it could be called a workplace comedy, but that's not really the point. It's not really a rom-com, although it has the trappings of one. There's not really a word for it as far as I know, but when the real connection becomes obvious, the ending is surprisingly emotional.

 

[Angela Channing]

Polite Society (2023)

This film starts out promisingly telling a story of 2 British South Asian girls who have dreams of being and artist and a stunt women only for the older sister to abandon her plans after her parents and the parents of a young doctor arrange for their children to meet with the aim of getting married. This sets up various lines of conflict in the family which would have been interesting to explore but the film then takes and unexpected swerve and becomes almost surreal and totally unbelievable. There is no build up to this so the change in direction is quite jarring It is a comedy so I wouldn't have minded this twist had it been funny or lead to humorous events later on in the film but that didn't happen. It has a Bollywood feel at times but even that can't save this film. It is silly and ridiculous but also sweet and touching so it's not all bad.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Brighton (2019)

This was a spontaneous watch, based only on it popping up as a suggestion and knowing only a little from the partial description I read (that it was about two couples who return to Brighton 40 years after... something).

Having watched it, I'm not sure I'm any the wiser. It's not a film that can be easily summed up. It might help to know (which I didn't) it's adapted from a Steven Berkoff play called Brighton Beach Scumbags, which perhaps gives more of an idea. A review in The Guardian I read this morning had nothing but bad to say about the film, but then the reviewer also called the characters "potty mouthed" and it's hard to take any adult seriously after that.

Without overthinking or overanalysing it, I thoroughly enjoyed it. The characters speak and behave in objectionable ways at times, so it's impressive that I still found them engaging and funny. Racist, homophobic characters (who of course insist that they're neither) are usually antagonists rather than the central characters, so I found this an interesting persepective. My stomach would sink if this group sat anywhere near me in a public space so it's a credit to all that I found myself feeling some kind of connection to them at times. It's not a life-changing film, but it tackled some uncomfortable subjects in a way that's both accessible and entertaining. I'm glad I watched it.

 

[Seaviewer]

Hope Springs (2012)
Basically two hours of couple therapy. It should be more moving than it is, but I never forgot that they were acting. Meryl Streep is undeniably technically proficient, but too studied for my liking, and Tommy Lee Jones and Steve Carell seemed to take their cues from her.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Yesterday I had a matinee and an evening film, starting with...

Five Corners (1987)

This came up in my Prime suggestions, with a contemporary-looking image (the top half of the one above) and was listed as being made in 2022. Excited at the thought of watching a new Jodie Foster film, I dived straight in and spent ten or fifteen minutes marvelling at how authentically vintage it looked (my partner and I actually discussed what cinematographers might have done to make it look less sharp and the use of coloured filters, etc. Then a very youthful Jodie Foster appeared on screen and the penny finally dropped that "2022" was a listing error.

The pacing is leisurely to say the least. It feels rather like dropping in on an episode of a serial where the characters just hang out and don't do very much. All of which makes the occasional burst of violence or threat seem more surprising (and in turn more effective). If The Kids From Degrassi Street had crossbow executions, matricide and animal abuse, Five Corners is probably what we'd get.

In common with my evening film, Five Corners feels like several seemingly unrelated stories that converge as the film goes along (like the guy who pays a pair of random men $5 to take his his fiancée and her friend off his hands. The two women are essentially glue-sniffing versions of Laverne and Shirley).

It's a curious mix of bizarre and heavy, but the performances are excellent, it's refreshingly naturalistic and there's a thick vein of genuine darkness running through it. Five Corners is very clearly nothing like I could have anticipated, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.​

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Last night's film was...

13 Minutes (2021)

The disaster genre is one for which I have a fairly low tolerance. I have to be in the right mood to watch one. This one lured me in when I hovered over the thumbnail and it opened with thunder and lightning in an atmospheric sky.

Fortunately, this is my kind of disaster flick, because there's barely any disaster in it. This film's all about the characters' soapy dramas. Very much like Five Corners, we visit various characters in turn and witness their unrelated lives with little in common but that they all have "issues" and seem to live in a permanent state of crisis and high drama. There's the pregnant teen whose married babydaddy wants her to have an abortion. The gay son afraid of coming out to fundamentalist Christian farmers while taking out his insecurities on his lover - who also happens to be an employee. There is the illegal immigrant couple on the verge of buying a home after saving for a long time.... the list goes on.

We probably get about 78 minutes of introspective drama and another 8 or so of carnage. I can understand this would have disappointed genre fans, but for me this made the film more accessible and interesting than if the ratios had been reversed and we got 78 minutes of CGI cars and cows flying noisily through the air (I watched Twister back in 1997 but remember nothing about it other than all of us falling about laughing whenever someone called out "debris", the American pronunciation of which conjured up images of an invasion of French cheese).

While it does feel a rather "made for TV", the performances are mostly excellent. Thora Birch was a standout (oh my. The annoying little girl from Hocus Pocus now on the verge of potentially becoming a grandmother. How did that happen?). Anne Heche, too, gave a wonderful part as the cold hearted woman judging everyone else while hypocritically espousing Christian values. There are two incredibly ugly moments that made her unforgettable: Early in the film the pregnant girl comes to the clinic where she works, ostensibly to discuss abortion, but Heche's character gives her a scan, forces her to look at the foetus and starts verbally hammering her to keep the baby. Her reaction upon learning of her son's homosexuality is colder still.

While not the most profound film-watching experience, I found this an entertaining enough film. It's a little corny in places and your mileage may vary when it comes to the soapy dramas, but the performances sold me on this one. Rather like Five Corners, this could have been an episode of an ongoing series (as someone currently heavily immersed in Crossroads, another drama with a motel at its centre seems entirely feasible to me), and I'd have been up for revisiting many of these. At risk of spoiling the entire film, pretty much everyone gets away very lightly, which is a little anticlimactic. But the emotional consequences of the non-disaster "stories" are what hang in the air. While arcs come to an end, there's also a sense that much is still unresolved which I found refreshing.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

I never forgot that they were acting. Meryl Streep is undeniably technically proficient, but too studied for my liking,

It's refreshing to read this, and I've had this experience with Streep a few times before now. Most recently when I watched The Iron Lady:

While the performances in The Iron Lady are great, many of them do nonetheless feel like performances.

This is a Streep vehicle, so one is naturally expected to marvel at how she embodies yet another persona so very different from anything she's done before. It is a great performance, of course, and it's impossible not to see this. And that's the thing: with The Iron Lady, I never quite felt I was permitted to forget this is a Meryl Streep performance. It felt as though it was expected that I should always be mindful of this in order to appreciate it.

I do feel she can be quite overrated, not through anything she's done, but because her name has become so synonymous with greatness that it raises expectations, often to an unrealistic degree. The greatness can almost always be found - and people from critics to casual viewers invariably seem to want to find it, which is nice. But it seems to have become sacrilegious to question whether other actresses could play "x" role as well as Meryl did. And sometimes I can't help feeling not only that they could, but that a less over-hyped actress would be preferable.

 

[Angela Channing]

I do feel she can be quite overrated, not through anything she's done, but because her name has become so synonymous with greatness that it raises expectations, often to an unrealistic degree. The greatness can almost always be found - and people from critics to casual viewers invariably seem to want to find it, which is nice. But it seems to have become sacrilegious to question whether other actresses could play "x" role as well as Meryl did. And sometimes I can't help feeling not only that they could, but that a less over-hyped actress would be preferable.

I broadly agree with a lot of this although I probably rate Meryl Streep more highly than you do. I think she is a great combination of being both a great film star and a great film actress. Someone like Glen Close or Susan Sarandon, maybe great actresses but not really great stars in the sense that she doesn't have a profile as high as some of their peers nor have as large a fan base. By contrast, someone like Sandra Bullock or Julia Roberts have big followings, and are good actresses, but are not really the very best in their field. You can put Meryl Streep in a wide range of roles and know she is going to deliver an accomplished performance and attract an audience. Cate Blanchette is another actress I would say shares those characteristics.

The Iron Lady is an interesting example. I have no doubt that many actresses could have played that role better but part of the Meryl Streep appeal is seeing how she would play the role.

 

[Luke_Krebbs_Ewing]

Ask a Policeman starring Will Hay, Moore Marriott and Graham Moffat.

Very funny film. I watched it last week on one of my days off work, thanks to a boxset I got off eBay.

Anybody else like Will Hay's films?

 

[Willie Oleson]

actually discussed what cinematographers might have done to make it look less sharp and the use of coloured filters, etc.

Oh the schadenfreude.
For what it's worth, I make these kind of mistakes more often than you do.

if the ratios had been reversed and we got 78 minutes of CGI cars and cows flying noisily through the air

Dante's Peak! The disaster sequence felt like the 250 missing hours from Apocalypse Now.

And sometimes I can't help feeling not only that they could, but that a less over-hyped actress would be preferable.

But I don't know if Meryl Streep asked to be over-hyped or overrated and I wouldn't expect her to pass on a role like this.

In this day and age of social media wherein over-hyping and over-profiling seems to be THE thing to get ahead I've become a bit a wary of attributing a similar "quality" to those who have earned their fame by natural talent or professionalism.
That being said, variety is always welcome and when it comes my entertainment there is very little room for loyalty. I think what I'm trying to say is that we all have good reasons to be selfish. And on that optimistic note I'm going to end this day on tellytalk.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

I think she is a great combination of being both a great film star and a great film actress.

Oh, I completely agree.

The Iron Lady is an interesting example. I have no doubt that many actresses could have played that role better but part of the Meryl Streep appeal is seeing how she would play the role.

Yes, that's it really. She did it, and it's not that she was wrong for the role, but it could be a tad indulgent of someone, somewhere to possibly pass over an actress who would have been just that bit more "right" in order to see this huge star put their spin on it. That's showbiz, and of course she's one of the biggest names which is going to add pedigree to any vehicle, as well as pretty much guaranteeing a great performance. Logic says they're going to opt for that kind of security.

As you say, there's a novel kind of appeal in seeing someone take on a new persona in this way. But, as I commented when watching The Iron Lady, I never forgot it was Meryl, and so she never completely became Thatcher for me, and I have to accept that this is a different experience from watching someone I don't know as well inhabit the role. It may not have been a better experience, but equally there's a possibility it would have been.

But I don't know if Meryl Streep asked to be over-hyped or overrated and I wouldn't expect her to pass on a role like this.

Oh, absolutely. Like I said, it's nothing she did. It's the reputation. She may not want it, and it probably makes her challenges even more daunting because of the way expectations raise when her name becomes attached to something.

Oh the schadenfreude.
For what it's worth, I make these kind of mistakes more often than you do.

Oh, thanks Willie. This mistake certainly added some different layers to my viewing experience.

Dante's Peak! The disaster sequence felt like the 250 missing hours from Apocalypse Now.

I've never seen either, but thanks to your warning I now know I can safely rule out Dante's Peak.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Horrible Bosses (2011)

I watched this one only because I had no idea what I was in the mood for and it was due to fall off Prime today.

I've never particularly felt inclined to watch any of these frat/lad type films. Fortunately, this one's at the milder end. There is some of the requisite insecure laddy stuff (a gay joke here. Trivialising sexual harassment on males there), but there's very little gross-out stuff, a reasonable (albeit uninspired) plot and some decent performances. The supporting cast is pretty impressive (Jennifer Aniston in particular is really funny). There are lots of little cameos from names like Ioan Gruffudd (as a sex worker specialising in pee fetishism) and Donald Sutherland. Oh, and there's also a tiny role from someone nobody would have heard of at the time... Princess Meghan (later accused of being a Horrible Boss herself).

On a shallower note, Jason Bateman was a childhood crush of mine and he's ageing well. There's something about the Ted Shackelford to him these days. Jason Sudeikis's delivery reminded me quite a bit of Doug Savant at times. And the third guy put me in mind of an American Andrew Lincoln. None of which are bad things.

​

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Horrible Bosses 2 (2014)

Watching off the back of the first, I pretty much knew what to expect, and I got it.

The sequel's USP is that, rather than being inept murderers, the leads are now inept kidnappers. Focussing on just the one target means the plot is much simpler than before. This means it feels a little less twisty than the first, but the leaner plot works in its favour, giving the audience time to appreciate Sean Anders's sometimes deliberately showy direction. Subtle it's not, but there are some moments that really make one sit up and take notice... most notably the "fantasy" version of the perfect plot as the characters plan it out loud and we see how it's meant to play out. Christopher Lennertz's score is a great fit as well.

All the key faces from the first are back, from Jennifer Aniston to Kevin Spacey to Jamie Foxx. Chris Pine to all intents and purposes replaces Colin Farrell as the boss's sleazy son.

As mentioned, I got pretty much what was expected. A few cheap laughs and an entertaining, instantly forgettable film.

 

[Angela Channing]

A Good Person (2023)

My reason for watching this film was pretty weak. The main character is addicted to the prescription drug oxytocin, which was the subject the TV series Dopesick which I thought was one of the best limited TV dramas in recent years. For that reason alone, I thought this might be a good watch but I was wrong.

Florence Pugh plays Allison who survives a car accident in which two people are killed, including her fiancé's sister. She is driving one of the cars involved in the smash which occurs when she briefly looks at her phone to check Google Maps. The subsequent trauma and guilt that she feels leads to her getting addicted to oxytocin and the film follows how she deals with her problem. She meets Daniel (Morgan Freeman) at a Alcoholics/Narcotics Anonymous meeting (he's a reformed heavy drinking ex-cop) whose daughter was one of the passengers in the car she was driving when she got in the accident. He's also struggling to bring up his granddaughter alone after her mother was killed and he is also estranged from his son. Allison and Daniel develop an unlikely friendship even though he still holds deep resentment over Allison role in the car crash. The film to slow, meandering, too many sub-plots, overly sentimental, a bit preachy and a bit contrived. However, it's well made and the performances were good but overall, it wasn't really for me.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

The Usual Suspects (1995)

This has been on my viewing bucket list for well over twenty years... probably since X-Men came out. It's nicely shot, written and played, but I don't feel it was as clever as I'd imagined it would be.

However, the only thing I really knew about this film was the twist reveal from the very end (ruined by Will & Grace's Jack McFarland) which no doubt influenced the way I viewed the film. Had I not known, I'd possibly have looked forward to rewatching a with my newfound knowledge. As it is, I feel I can brush my hands, say I've watched it and leave it behind.​

 

[Angela Channing]

I don't feel it was as clever as I'd imagined it would be.

I completely agree. I first watched it shortly after if was first released and thought it was ok but nowhere a good as the hype around it suggested it would be. Over the years the film seems to have grown in reputation and is often featured in greatest films lists, so around 5 years ago I thought I would rewatch it thinking I must have missed something the first time around. My opinion didn't change. Yes, the twist is clever but that's about the best thing I can say about the film, the previous hour and a half before the surprise is decidedly very average. Sadly, because of the scandal around Kevin Spacey, the film currently isn't as highly regarded as it was 10 years ago.

 

[Angela Channing]

Reality (2023)

This film is about a true story of which I hadn't previously heard. Reality Winner (yes that's her real name) is a USA Air Force translator who was convicted of leaking a classified report which showed that Russian hackers had accessed voter registration rolls and may have interfered in the USA Presidential election. The film is a verbatim retelling of her questioning by the FBI while they were searching her home. The film isn't showy, in fact it's quite stripped back in that the story is told in a straight-forward, non-gimmicky way with the entirety of the action taking place in one location and it's totally gripping. Sydney Sweeney gives an incredible performance in the lead role. She is on screen and is the focus of almost every frame of the film and completely holds your attention. The film poster uses a quote saying it's "a brilliant piece of work" and I would agree with that comment.