Film Shapes

Popped down to the Luna in Leederville this morning to catch Mike Leigh's latest film, Peterloo . This is a seemingly accurate retelling of the 1819 massacre that took place in St. Peter's Field in Manchester, where the constabulary and the army waded into a crowd of thousands with sabres and bayonets. The people were there to hear a famous orator, Henry Hunt, call for national suffrage and to put pressure on the government and the royals. 18 of the crowd were killed and hundreds of others wounded. The knock-on effects of this catastrophe on the reform movement appear negligible, though it did bring about the creation of The Guardian newspaper. History 101 over. Onto the film itself. It's around 2 and a half hours long and it feels every minute of that. The build-up to the massacre involves an awful lot of piss and wind with politicians spewing interminable chunks all over the shop, in the (presumably) wanky vernacular of the day. Oh do tell, sir. On the other ...

Caught this gem at the Innaloo Event Cinemas Hollywood Classics season. I think it was the first time to see it on the big screen but I might be mistaken.  Bullitt  really holds up as a tight, mean 'police vs mafia vs politicians' crime drama with one of the best car chases in cinema history and the best actor in cinema history. Steve McQueen moves through this film like a handsome, cool as fuck shark, slightly hungry but mostly just dealing with minnows and plankton and wherever else I can take this analogy. Directed by Peter Yates in 1968,  Bullitt  follows the story of a botched protection assignment given to Lieutenant Frank Bullitt at the behest of slimy polly, Walter Chalmers, played by Robert Vaughn (his second of three films with McQueen). Set in San Francisco, it uses the street scenes to great effect, especially in the famous Mustang car chase. McQueen did most of his own driving in this and many other films, as he was a notorious rev-head and pretty a...

Wacko, here it is. The final installment of the silly-money earning, big screen, long-form TV series that is Marvel's  Avengers . This is the  End (of the) game . But is it really? Lots of stuff to say here, mostly positive, some negative, but I reckon it's nigh on impossible to write about this without blabbing plot points so I'll save the nitty gritty for the podcast. Instead, let me just tell you the 3 hour run-time pretty much flew past, I teared up three times (once unashamedly), there's a nice little nod to an episode of  Star Trek: The Next Generation  and another to  The Big Lebowski ! Regarding the film itself, the central plan of how to undo the  Infinity War  damage is crowd-pleasingly clever and the six original Avengers get their moment to shine, being completely 'dust-free' at the end of the previous film. The final act of the film is fairly epic as these things go - extremely well balanced between pathos and bluster. A...