We watched the documentary. Excellent if problematic, it was basically a morality play: a bunch of old white powerful men in a self-designed and policed echo chamber are eventually brought low by a scrappy band of diverse (gasp) women. And so immediately after the film there was to be a discussion. And a bunch of... Continue Reading →
Film Review: The Mummy
"The horror, the horror" said Kurtz. He may have been talking about this film, which as a horror movie is a horror. Tom Cruise is some sort of US army Indiana Jones (I'd love to see his job description) who stumbles on a tomb in Iraq of an Egyptian naughty daddy-killing and inevitably not-quite-dead princess,... Continue Reading →
Film Review: Love and Friendship
Not a huge Austen fan (that says more about me than her, perhaps?) but there were quite a few laugh-out-loud moments in this film, based on a novella that wasn’t published until 50 years after she’d snuffed it (there IS a novella of hers called Love and Friendship, but the film is based on another... Continue Reading →
Film Review: Nice Guys finish first, but a bit too slowly…
The film is worth your time. You won’t emerge a better person, but there are some laughs, some excellent performances and nostalgia for “The Rockford Files”. That’s a pretty good deal, I’d say. Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe are two men stumbling down mean streets in the ever-more-confusing and gritty (thanks to the pollution, both literal... Continue Reading →
Film Review: Hail “Hail Caesar”!!! Up there with LA Confidential, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Chinatown
Films about the film industry, eh? So arch, so damn knowing. You know the ones I mean. The Coen Brothers dance very very close, but as the numerous choreographed choreography scenes in this show - if you know EXACTLY what you are doing, and you hire the bets talent available, and you're lucky, you might... Continue Reading →
Film Review: “The Big Short” and the air-brushed women
My brilliant friend (he really is) and I went to see "The Big Short" on Saturday. We both really liked it. It's clever without being tricksy, its well-paced and brilliantly acted. We noted the maleness of it, but weren't particularly concerned (though alarm bells should have been ringing for me, since I've seen "Inside Job".... Continue Reading →
Star Wars non-review. Good links
I was going to review Star Wars The Farce Awakens. Actually can't be bothered. Here below are the links I had accumulated that were pretty cool. The wife liked it, but then she has had years of practice at keeping her expectations reaaaallllly low. Retro-futures and lack of imagination On the gender dynamic and here.... Continue Reading →
The spectre of Tom Cruise hangs over the latest Bond film
A taped message. An agent forced to go rogue in his battle against a secretive globe-spanning violent criminal gang. His boss initially pursuing him, but by the end getting out from behind the desk and getting his hands dirty. Confused talk about democracy. An extremely beautiful and much younger European woman at his side, potentially... Continue Reading →
The Martian – From Whitey on the Moon to Whatney on the Mars….
In July 1969 Richard Nixon didn’t give a speech. It would have gone, in part, like this: Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace. These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their... Continue Reading →
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