A lovely few days over in Ireland for Christmas, and a quiet new year trying to keep Marcus calm, but there have been a good few films along the way.
I’m still smarting over Cats – it’s not so much the content or lack of a plot – lord knows Company or Chorus Line have minimal plot as such, but it’s just so badly edited, interrupting the dance every second, and the world of the cats is just so inconsistent. As always, give me the stage version.
The aeronauts – I would have loved to have seen this in the cinema, but I enjoyed it enormously, and loved the design that had the suggestion of a hand tinted postcard. Yes it was certainly thrilling, but it was undermined by the fact that the central sparring relationship was invented, and the incident took place over Wolverhampton, not London. I can understand why Wolverhampton is less than pleased, as is the family of the man who was actually in the basket. Too woke!
The Two Popes – sort of came across by accident and we nearly turned off as the first chunk is all in Italian and we feared we were missing something crucial, but slowly it segued into English, and oh what joy was this film. Huge questions were being raised as two elderly men sat in the Sistine chapel, superficially chatting about pizza. One of the warmest films I’ve seen, and Hopkins and Pryce seemed barely to be acting – they simply were. And the recreation of the Cistine Chapel was somewhat breathtaking.
Gladiator was watched, and yes that’s a masterpiece in every way – such good plotting. OK the CG does look a little clumsy now, and it’s a film totally devoid of sex, which I suspect is not doing a gladiator’s life justice.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Nah, I didn’t get on with this. Every frame bombarded me with unsubtle, blatant retro references – so in your face, and what the hell was that extended scene at the ranch and with George about. Like everything in the film, it was indulgence over storytelling. But for all the detail about the time, and and the process of film making, it was still playing with you. several sequences purported to be a western being shot, and the characters came out of character, but then the film simply would not have been shot like that. fake film making.
The BBC’s Christmas carol looked gorgeously bleak, but Dickens played second fiddle to some extent. I must check if dickens had scrooge meeting Ali Baba. Andy Serkis was busy acting a lot.
i’m looking forward to watch a ballet of Romeo and Juliet tonight, filmed in the streets of Italy, hoping that it will work. It did for West side story. Am excited about this.
And so this year, please let me contribute to something, and not have been discarded.