Film Shapes

First film in a NZ cinema. Check. Good price at a tenner and no complaints with the premises (aside from an electrical ticking noise in my left ear and, in fairness, that may have only been in MY left ear). OK. X-Men: Apocalypse now. Honestly, I've seen so many of these kinds of films at the cinema in the past decade or so, that I'm feeling a bit jaded about writing this up. No reflection on the film itself, it's a perfectly fine super hero/mutant/special powers blockbuster type thingy. I don't know, maybe I need to watch something less....less....ostentatious? Less ubiquitous? I'll sort that out soonish. So, notes then, eh? And these are the notes I made right after watching the film (except for the last one). Possible spoilery notes, please beware. Psylocke big winner - slinks away not joining the victorious xmen. Nice way El Sabah Nur recruited - not magic, just promises of power and revenge. Of course, Jean Grey is the match winner using the Phoenix...

First film in Australia for a few years, so let me get this off my chest. Here are some things Japanese (multiplex) cinemas  don't  have that Australian ones do: Dirty screens. That seems to be the simplest thing to sort out. Clean the fucking stains off the screen or disable the cockends that are lobbing stuff at it.  Twats talking on their mobiles during the film. Same twats fiddling with their BRIGHT mobiles during the film. Little kids talking to mummy about scenes in the film. Loudly. Big kids showing off loudly (admittedly during the credits, but still, grow up fuck-knuckles). Pronto, onto the film proper. This is the third Captain America film by my reckoning but it actually operates as a pseudo-Avengers film. This isn't a bad thing. The first two C.A. films were quite dissimilar in my opinion; a boring, patriotic origin story, followed by a 1970s style, paranoia-filled thriller. You can guess which I preferred. A third o...

Short review, this one. For no real reason, other than I saw it more than a month ago and it's kind of drifted from the house of fog inside my brain. It has the distinction of being the last film I saw in Japan (possibly last in both senses of the word). I reckon I'll miss the Japanese cinema-going experience, but more of that in future entries. So, The Martian . Not brilliant, but comfortably watchable. Light and simple with some sombre moments. And some funny ones, mainly from Damon, who holds it together (and he has to as he's on screen for huge chunks of the running time). The procedural stuff on the planet and at NASA was quite cool. It lent a little faux authenticity (oxymoron?) to the film. There was one show-stopper. A great passage to Bowie's 'Starman' - basically a music video with a stonking budget and more than a little poignant coming so soon after his death. One more thing to note. The 'language of cinema' showed it's weary fe...