Films
The Tree, the Mayor and the Mediatheque, 1993 - ★★½
After watching Call My Agent! on Netflix, we wanted to watch some French films, and maybe with some of the actors and/or directors who were in the series. So we started with this.
It's described as a comedy. It's mildly funny in places, but it's mainly a kind of social commentary thing about land use in rural France. Enjoyable enough.
Pretend It's a City, 2021 - ★★★½
Date is approximate, and anyway we watched the various parts over two or three weeks.
Really good, though annoying in places. Fran Lebowitz is great on many things, misanthropic on many things, and would be fun to talk to. Scorsese is a great interviewer, but he doesn’t have to laugh at everything she says.
Rocks, 2019 - ★★★★
Great, moving film about a teenaged girl whose mother leaves — it’s never stated why, but most likely because of mental health problems — who tries to keep life going normally for herself and her little brother. Inevitably there are problems, with school, with social workers.
It’s set and filmed in and around Hackney, so I feel like these could be people I see on the streets, people my kids went to school with.
Refreshingly, many clichés are avoided: the problems are not about drugs or gangs, or even race.
A top piece of work.
Walker, 1987 - ★★★½
I really thought I’d seen this before, but remembered nothing about it. Having watched it now, I doubt that I ever actually did see it, because none of it was familiar.
I have the soundtrack album, of course, cos the music was written by Joe Strummer.
It’s a weird film, but it may actually be Alex Cox’s best apart from Repo Man, given that Sid & Nancy wasn’t as good as I remembered, and Straight To Hell is... its own thing.
Arrival, 2016 - ★★★★ (contains spoilers)
This review may contain spoilers.
This is glorious. I'd give it five stars if it wasn't for the fact that I don't think they had to have Hannah die. They could have misdirected us at the start a different way.
Plus, that first few minutes means we start off feeling sad. It's a serious film, but it doesn't have to be sad.
Not that there's anything automatically wrong with sadness ("Happiness for deep people." -- Sally Sparrow). Still, I think effectively fridging a little girl -- or not, but that's how it appears at first -- weakens the whole piece.
Great to see a complex problem resolved with communication and compromise though.
And! Sequel, please: I want to see what the heptapods need from humanity on 3000 years.
When Harry Met Sally..., 1989 - ★★★★
Somehow I’d gone this long without ever seeing this. I’m glad I put it right now. The dialogue is glorious! Nora Ephron may be my favourite screenwriter after Aaron Sorkin, where dialogue is concerned.
The ending flops a bit. In fact, I think I’d have enjoyed it more if they hadn’t got together, but hey, what can you do?
Ayoade On Top by Richard Ayoade (Books 2020, 6)
This is Richard Ayoade’s detailed analysis of the 2003 film View From the Top, directed by Bruno Barreto and starring Gwyneth Paltrow. It is, by all accounts, a masterwork.
By Ayoade’s account, at least. I haven’t seen it. Ayoade is a comedian. The book is pretty funny. The film, I suspect, is quite bad.
Misbehaviour, 2020 - ★★★½
Good wee film about the women who protested at the 1970 Miss World show. Based on what actually happened.
Surprising to learn that the phrase “Women’s Liberation” only originated then.
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, 1988 - ★★★
Well this is a lot funnier than the title would suggest. I think I had always thought it would be kind of bleak, but it’s not at all. There’s betrayal, attempted suicide, attempted murder, and a lot of property damage; but it’s very lighthearted.
Sunset Boulevard, 1950 - ★★★½
Good to watch an old movie for a strange. Great example of starting with the end and telling the whole story in flashback. The voiceover gets a bit wearing, especially when it’s telling you things you can see perfectly well happening on screen.
It’s quite a strange film, and another example of Hollywood telling stories about itself.
Howl's Moving Castle, 2004 - ★★★★½
I read the book to the kids years ago, but I wasn’t sure whether I’d seen this. Turns out I hadn’t, though I must’ve seen a few scenes, because I was familiar with the imagery.
Anyway, this is wonderful. Right up there with the best of the Studio Ghibli fims.
Erin Brockovich, 2000 - ★★★★
I wouldn’t have expected that a film about someone fighting an evil corporation that is poisoning people could be so feelgood. But this achieves it.