Film Shapes

A weekend trip to Busselton enabled me and the wife to pop over to Orana Cinema to see Doctor Strange . This is apparently Marvel's 14th film and I reckon I'd place it mid-table - Everton or Liverpool. Pretty good but not great. It began with a nice surprise. Mads Mikkelsen pulling a mean glower. Didn't know he was going to be in it, innit? From there, the film sets up Cumberbatch as a proper twat, a personality level that he doesn't quite shake by the end of proceedings. He's quite good here, though his accent took some time to grow on me. I think I just prefer his English one. Parts of this film are like Inception on crack. The VFX teams (I counted more than 10 companies in the credits) have done a fine job stretching the city-scape folding stuff. And the scene where the Ancient One sends Strange on a magical mushroom tour is nice and trippy. Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One is top notch, flirting with winking panto one moment and almost eliciting...

Across the channel now. I'd planned to do a top ten but so many belters would miss out if that were the format. So here are my favourite twenty French films. Again, ordering was extremely tough. 20. Buffet froid  (Bertrand Blier - 1979) Proper bonkers this is. Depardieu when he was a powerhouse, compared to just a house. I remember watching this with my face all screwed up, thinking "Can they even make films like this?" but loving it all the same. 19. Baxter (Jerome Boivin - 1989) Another odd'un. Narrated by Baxter himself, a malevolent or maybe just dog-like bull terrier, this film follows his efforts to find a suitable home. Co-written by Jacques Audiard, who will appear later in this list. 18. Entre les murs [The Class] (Laurent Cantet - 2008) A great slice of Parisian life, almost a documentary as it's based on the experiences of Francois Begaudeau, who wrote the novel, co-wrote the film AND bloody well starred in it and al...