Film Shapes

Reading Cinemas Belmont with Merv, Roly and Bryony. Busiest screening I've been to in a while, I reckon. This may have been because  Black Panther  had only opened a few days before. The general consensus among the group was positive. Now, I'll try to include fewer spoilers than in the podcast at the bottom of the entry. If you want to hear more spoilery details, have a listen. Black Panther  is astutely directed by Ryan Coogler, who's proven himself with a couple of decent-sized films prior to this. I thought the film buzzed with energy and it really revelled in its own world building (the country of Wakanda, in this case). For me though, it took a little while to get going, perhaps due to the relative 'newness' of the players, people we kind of needed to get to know. At the time of watching, I thought the ceremonial challenges to King T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman) were a bit naff but I'm starting to think they act as a kind of bluff for the film to cha...

Following on from the best, here are the ten worst films I saw in 2017. Safe travels. 1. Assassin's Creed (2016)  Why? 2. Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016) Tom, Tom, look at the subtitle! Mug-handed tripe with a cringingly mawkish ending. 3.  Crying Out Love in the Centre of the World (2004) Boring piffle that may have played well to the teen angst market but not for this jaded old curmudgeon. 4. The Dark Tower (2017) Still don't know what the fuck was going on in this boring mess. 5. The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015) Too many things wrong here to mention but lowlights are the cardboard stars. Daikon for dinner, anyone? 6. Kong: Skull Island (2017) A massive ape. Tom Hiddleston. Samuel L. Jackson. Brie Larson. John Goodman. And yet..... 7. Allied (2016) Star wattage with Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard but a wet fizzler nonetheless. 8. The Mummy (2017) Another Cruise vehicle driving on nonsense fumes. Seems like the wheels have fallen off Universal...

Time for the best films of 2017 (which may or may not have been made or released in 2017). Ere we go. 1. Dunkirk (2017) Almost impossibly tense depiction of a pivotal point in history, told with ingenious time layering by the master, Christopher Nolan. 2. Logan (2017) Hard-edged, warm and poignant with great 'closing' performances by Jackman and Stewart. And probably the best comic book film ever made. 3. Blade Runner 2049 (2017) Deliberately slow-paced, atmospheric child of Scott's original that teems with the DNA of its predecessor. Denis Villeneuve an inspired choice to direct. 4. Sing Street (2016) Joyful, funny, with a great soundtrack and some real kitchen sink stuff going on in the background. 5. Rogue One (2016) Great stand-alone Star Wars film. A lesson for other directors on how to make a gripping, bleak and worthy film within that universe. 6. Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) Bristling with rage and energy and some really co...

Saw this little gem at the Moonlight Outdoor Cinema in Kings Park with sister, Mandy and fly-by-nighter, Liam (free tickets courtesy of sis - cheers!). Not the ideal way to watch a film, what with the picnic folk popping up to empty their chardonnay bladders and the food stall people cleaning grills around half-way through, but these piffles didn't detract from the film itself. This is only Martin McDonagh's third feature, following In Bruges from 2008 and Seven Psychopaths in 2012. Prolific is not a word to describe his output. Pretty bloody excellent is. Well, that's three words. In fairness, I didn't love Psycopaths as much as Bruges , which is brilliant, but Billboards may just pip it. I'd say this is a black comedy but that seems too flip. While there are some lines and situations designed to draw laughs, most of the real chuckles are reactions to barbarity and apparent hopelessness. And these are not belly laughs. The film revolves around Frances M...

Well. Episode VIII.  The Last Jedi . I went to the Orana Cinemas in Busselton with Merv to catch this and his first word to me as we were leaving was 'underwhelming?' (it was said as a question). I usually need a few hours to ruminate on films but I had to nod. Here's why I nodded. First, and most importantly, it seems unsure of what it wants to be.  The Force Awakens  was an unashamedly nostalgic retread, great as it was.  Rogue One  was a brilliant, dark cracker, eschewing the sentiment of its forebears. For me,  The Last Jedi  had a cheek on both stools. I know that  Rogue One  was a stand-alone film but it still showed what a 'new' Star Wars film could be. Kylo Ren's recurring directive of killing everything old and beginning again has merit but the film took its time to realise this (in fact, it didn't quite and maybe won't until the future trilogy). Speaking of Ren, the central theme of  TLJ  is neat and workable. K...

Thor: Ragnarok is the 17th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Yep, 17. Considering they started with Iron Man only 9 years ago, that's quite a pace. And this third Thor film is one of the best. It's certainly the most straight-out comedic in tone, even though it deals with death and destruction - 'The Fate of the Gods' in old Norse mythology. The constant subversion of the super-heroic moments are great (though Shane Black did something similar in  Iron Man 3 ). For the most part, Earth is a minor player here with the action split between Asgard and a planet called Sakaar - familiar to comic readers as the setting of 'Planet Hulk'. Two of that comic's characters, Korg and Miek pop up in very different roles. Korg is basically a rock man voiced by the director Taika Waititi, and Miek is a non-speaking insect, obviously. The film doesn't drag at all and things knit neatly, and kind of unexpectedly, at the end but I could have done with more of...

SPOILERS!!! STAY AWAY IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN YET!! It's been a week since I saw Blade Runner 2049 and it's proving to be a tricky one to chew over. Initially, I was very impressed by its grandeur and ambition. Then I was slightly numbed by the languid pacing. Finally, I found myself appreciating the links between this and Ridley Scott's original masterpiece from 1982 (or later depending on which cut suits). All this while adjusting my ginger cheeks in the cinema. 2 hours and 45 minutes of adjusting. In the preceding seven days, my brain has been catching snatches of film and replaying it to me - of both films. And I think this is one of the key points. Many sequels of well-known films pale in comparison to their forebears (lets say Crystal Skull and Prometheus as examples - though I didn't hate the latter) but 2049 has done something that these others didn't achieve. It's successfully fused the DNA of its predecessor into its structure and done so with ...

It's been a while since I saw this but I reckon I've made up my mind about it. It shouldn't have taken so long to decide that it's not bad, but there you have it. Of the trilogy, it's probably the weakest in my opinion. None of the character building of ROTPOTA (apes, of course, not humans) and none of the power struggle between Caeser and Koba in DOTPOTA . And for all its nicely shot vistas and the odd battle here and there, the Golden Gate Bridge sequence in Rise is still the best thing across the trilogy. One of the best action sequences ever, I'd venture. But I said this was not bad so some credit must be given. It goes without saying the CGI is first class, improved yet again from the previous two films. As seen in  Rogue One , getting humans out of the 'uncanny valley' is still a hefty task but they've got the apes sorted with this one. There's an interesting way of getting to the Charlton Heston Planet of the Apes. Corneliu...