Current Watching

[Reed John]

Current Watching

I saw Greenberg written and directed by by Noah Baumbach. As with the previous films of his I've seen, this one is about weird and miserable people acting weird and miserable, but in a fairly naturalistic way.

I liked his autobiographical The Squid and The Whale, but thought Margot at the Wedding was dull and the characters were just so unlikeable that the whole thing just grated.

Greenberg stars Ben Stiller and Greta Gerwig, who was in all of those super-low-budget "mumblecore" films, so this suits here well.

I'm sorry to say that Sex in the City 2 will probably be a huge hit, actually. It looks mindbogglingly horrible, but it will do well in the US, I think.

[ian.64]

Current Watching

Got around to seeing Avatar a day or so ago - without the benefits of 3D. I tip my hat to the technological triumph that it is and can only marvel - even in 2D - at the detail and photorealistic world that James Cameron's CGI bods have created, both in surroundings and character detail. As a visual experience, it's hugely impressive.

And it's as boring as fuck when attempting to draw away from the visuals to focus on story and characters. Simplistic and vacuous, only Stephen Lang's crazed sergeant and Sigourney Weaver's hard-ass science head try to stir up interest in what's going on. As a lead, Sam Worthington is passable but dull - qualities that found no variation in Terminator: Savlon.

And as for the script, well, if you took the cuss-words out of it, it's exactly what you'd get from a Saturday morning television kids' cartoon. Completely banal and unsurprising - which is what the film is beneath all that eye candy.

And I suggest that a ban be put on all ethnic wailing on film scores. It's meant to denote tragedy in a movie, but, fuck, it's annoying - Murray Gold tried this in Who and it was like a chainsaw to the senses - and it caused me to mutter 'fuck off' in the sequence where the Naaa'aaa'''vi'ii's hometree is attacked. Stop it. Stop it, now.

[Guest]

Current Watching

Interesting, LL. Quite a few people I know are convinced that Dogtooth is the best film of the year. I felt a bit like it must have been my fault that I didn't quite get it, because I was hearing such effusive praise.

The people in the cinema were awful too - the sort of people that say in loud voices 'Eoh yah it's just like Haneke isn't it?' For me, apart from the cat scene, no not so much. OK, I saw their point more towards the end, the menacing atmosphere created from 'normality' - but in fact that's something you see done so well in so many European films that I think of it almost as a generic characteristic, part of a blending of genres & tropes... Eh, digression. But anyway overall it had more of a Dogme feel to it I thought. And normally I like that. I can be fine with 'let's laugh at the retards', Idioterne style. But there needs to be something else underneath it, a warmth or humanity or humour, to make it come alive. And this lacked that, and now I actually agree much more with the person in the cinema, as this lack, this creepy emptiness, for me is a defining characteristic of Haneke. Well what do you know? Sorry, annoying man in cinema. You're more perceptive than I gave you credit for.

I'm not sure it's quite true that we get the worst European films though. Having spent many years watching screeners & festival fare I'm fairly confident that we do OK. Yeah, I've seen some beautiful gems that haven't been distributed here because of commercial considerations - more so since the decline in funding/closure of important London cinemas/commercialisation & chainification of the rest -but I also think we as an audience get better than our loyalties actually deserve.

[Lucia Lanigan]

Current Watching

I'll definitely bow to your judgement on that one. It's just that I've tended to have bad experiences whenever I've followed five-star Time Out reviews of European films into the cinema in recent years (the fantastic Gomorrah excepted). I've never been overly drawn to Dogme or Haneke films, to be fair, but this one did feel particularly wooden and poorly conceived to me.

I've probably also been spoilt by virtually moving into the BFI/NFT during a spell of unemployment this year. That's partly a "greatest films ever made" vs "what came out this week" issue I guess, but it is difficult to be impressed with something like Dogtooth when you saw Agnes Varda's 1984 short 7p., cuis., s. de b., .. à saisir earlier in the week. It's a terrific, surreal take on aging and family life, set in one house, with a 10-year jump forward midway through; I can't imagine anyone making a film that packs so much in with such lightness of touch right now. It was shown in a double bill with her portrait of Jane Birkin, which involved lots of imaginitive pissing about. (Birkin's face in 1987 was exactly 50 percent Mick Jagger's and 50 per cent David Bowie's, funnily enough.)

And Cleo from 5 to 7 is fantastic, right up there with the best nouvelle vague films. I hadn’t even heard of her until that self-portrait film came out last year, but she’s an incredible talent I think. It’s a fascinating film, and it’s kind of hard to put your finger on why. Amazing shots of the city, particularly the cab's-eye-view that puts you more in the action than you ever are in real life; deft characterisation, particularly of the central, child-like brat who you can't fully like or dislike; wonderful images of mirrors, glass and reflective surfaces; humourous mixing of reality and fiction, and a keen sense of mortality. It's on for another week - everyone should see it if they get the chance.

[hobbes]

Current Watching

As a lead, Sam Worthington is passable but dull - qualities that found no variation in Terminator: Savlon

It was Sam Worthington? Shit I thought it was Xabi Alonso!

[Amor de Cosmos]

Current Watching

And Cleo from 5 to 7 is fantastic, right up there with the best nouvelle vague films. I hadn’t even heard of her until that self-portrait film came out last year, but she’s an incredible talent I think.

I've always had problems with Varda's films — at least those of them I've seen. She is, as you say a superb technician who's able to use the camera not only to paint beautiful pictures but also to structure engaging sequences. The trouble is her work lacks sensibility, which makes her movies either offensive or ludicrous. For example, I haven't seen it in decades but the overt, non-ironic, occasionally violent, sexism of Le Bonheur was repellent to me at the time. Made more so by the male and female leads walking off together into an soft-focus autumnal afternoon, hand in hand, wearing Jaegar twin sets of appropriate hues.

In Lions Love, Varda's first (only?) American film, Viva — looking like a gorgeous, wasted, pre-Raphaelite model — lies in bed between two hairy dudes watching Bobby Kennedy's assassination on TV. She muses vacantly about what will happen to his children. The overall effect is more beautiful than Antonioni and more decadent than Kenneth Anger, the combination of the two quite nauseating.

However, as I said, I haven't seen anything by her in a long time and recontextualisation can work miracles. If I was, like yourself, to come across her today I may well feel quite differently.

[hobbes]

Current Watching

I'm still loving Fringe. The overarching story is edging along but it's also giving good stand-alone episodes too.
Just been renewed for a 3rd season, which is nice.
Oh and Anna Torv looks just great in HD.

[Crusoe]

Current Watching

Anna Torv has always made me feel uneasy. It's like she has an incomplete surname. There's a syllable missing somewhere.

[Guest]

Current Watching

She is curiously lovely.

I saw Date Night. It's patchy but there are some laughs.

[Guest]

Current Watching

I have had to be watching the Ricky Gervais show. It's funny in bits but even 23 min episodes feel tedious towards the end.

[Guest]

Current Watching

OK so I caved and went to see Iron Man 2. And it was a lot more interesting than I thought it would be.
Now I don't know a lot about comics and I'm not competent to spot the Captain America jokes and so on and so forth. So I probably missed quite a bit. And I only watched the original film in b&w on a tiny screen in a tearing hurry, so probably missed most of its subtleties and all.

But I still found it really interesting just as a film about modern fascistic attitudes to war and technology and as a reception of genre classics like Robocop, Terminator etc. It's played so straight all the way through that I was constantly switching between admiration of its audacity and worry that it was on the level. But like some of the best satire, it's so OTT that the only humane reading of it is as subversive, and I think there's enough in there to support it. The most similar thing I can think of is Starship Troopers, maybe. So Tony Stark himself, while taking credit for world peace, glorifies authoritarianism, capitalism and nationalism, just as badly as the evil arms-dealer character, just with an ostensibly different motivation. of course you could say that that's the vital difference, and the film questions the wisdom of his decisions to keep his technology to himself all the time, but only in context of the arms superiority of the US. We're left to understand it in a wider global context for ourselves, but that's OK, it would probably be much less effective if we were presented with one morally uncomplicated character telling us how to read the subtexts. The actual displays of weapons and militarism are revoltingly fetishitic and fascistic and show anime-esque levels of glorying in destructiveness. So you have to gawp at the show while you feel despair for the human race at the same time. This provocation of a complex response is effectively done. And the horrible capitalist politics, the explicitly vile nature of corporations, nothing new there as such, but it bears repeating. The evil arms company here is the equal of the ones in Aliens or Robocop, or of Skynet, &c &c.

I was also interested in the body fascist themes, these suits, structures that make the people inside them into cyborg-like beings, the bolting on of weaponry to the actual human frame. All very Tetsuo, &c. The choice of the destroyed looking Mickey Rourke as the villain is inspired in these terms, the OTT bodybuilding, the crossovers with body adornment, tattoos, ridiculous watches, whatever, the quest to make fragile flesh into hard metal. And this melded nicely with the technology themes - the elegant, beautiful, substanceless complexity of the software and the controlling brain, and the brutal, sledgehammer-moulded tons of hardware outside. Hardware. There's a film I've not thought about in years. Anyway it's not quite that straightforward, of course, and it's a thoughtful enough take on this theme.

The design is gorgeous, all the way through, the graphics are beautiful, all curving lines of light. Mechanisms and atoms are rendered as perfect ideas. It's kind of lovely to look at.

RDJ is not bad at all, and Scarlett Johannsson has never looked more fabulous. Even Gwynnie is fine, as the role is actually that of a prissy, annoying type. Both are horrible stereotypes of course, but that's the genre, right?

[RobW]

Current Watching

I finally saw Kick Ass this weekend. Enjoyed it immensely. Very funny. Yes, there is bad language from 11 year old (but then there is Fish Tank, which I also saw this weekend)and yes there's lots of bloody violence. If anything, i'm surprised it wasn't made an 18 certificate, but I can't understand the criticism from Roger Ebert. Nic Cage is really good too.

[Guest]

Current Watching

Ostrov (The Island). Oh dear God, what a tearjerker. Slow and bleak and also funny and a bit mad. Beautiful pictures. Crazily sad story. I'd recommend it.

[hobbes]

Current Watching

I KNEW IT! HAHAHAH! I KNEW IT! I figured out who the ultimate baddy in Fringe was WEEKS ago!
And I was right! I am the reaper!

[Guest]

Current Watching

NO SPOILERS allowed hobbes I'm warning you.

[hobbes]

Current Watching

Fear not, dear girl. I shan't be spoilering up anyone.

[Guest]

Current Watching

It's Friday. What terrible blockbuster should I waste my time & cash on later? Robin Hood? The Persian thing with Donnie Darko? Nightmare on Elm St?

[erwin]

Current Watching

I saw this evening Le Trou ('The Hole'), a prison 'escape' film from 1960. Wonderful.

This scene is fantastic: they dig a hole. That's it.

Highly, but highly recommended (if you haven't seen it already).

(I think you can watch it from here).

[Gerontophile]

Current Watching

I think I may have seen this, one stoned evening early eighties... and there is another one which is nipping my sweety: a Hungarian film where the last scene is a lot of orange trees, and some sort of denouement which I cant remember, but I do remember crying. (ooo thread alert.)

[Reed John]

Current Watching

I saw City Island and so should you.

[Guest]

Current Watching

The Girl on the Train Yes. A very classic style of French film; comforting, classy, fascinating, well-rounded, socially intelligent, sedate, conflicted, etc. You've seen it before, but, if you find yourself in the mood, it does the job.

[Ek weet nie]

Current Watching

I saw The Girl on the Train at the French Film Festival here in November. It was the best of a disappointing week's viewing (I didnt get a ticket for A Prophet as it was sold out). I can remember it being beautifully shot but it didn't quite hang together - I remember having a few issues with how the relationship with the boyfriend was protrayed.

[spoiler]What actually happened when they spent the night together in the hut beside the lake? It struck me as very weird at the time but did I just misinterpret what was going on?[/spoiler]

edit - Apologies for the hideous smiley - is it possible to get rid of that part of the spoiler tag?

[Guest]

Current Watching

I just saw She's Out of my League. It was OK. Kind of average romcom in some ways but it was interesting in others. Stuff about self-esteem and the part it plays in relationships and all that. And there were a few laughs & so on.

[Guest]

Current Watching

I also saw Robin Hood. It was total bobbins of course but also very absorbing and entertaining; Crowe was brilliant, as usual. One of those glossy, well-made, expensive films that holds the attention while you watch it, is in no way bad, takes its daft story exactly seriously enough and so on, but has no rough edges to catch the imagination; it just glides off the surface of the brain like thin honey, leaving behind no substance, just the merest hint of sticky shame that you rather enjoyed it.

Other than that I have been watching the usual parade of telly. Summer is horrid for many reasons and a big one is lack of telly. Thank goodness they've brought back Lie to Me. I love Lie to Me. I also have been watching Gravity which on the face of it, is everything I find most annoying about HBO - irritatingly twee opening credits in the Six Feet Under or Nurse Jackie style, horrendous plinky music, ludicrous characters - Ving Rhames in a wheelchair. Rachel Hunter, for fucksake. And by far the worst of all, an excruciatingly awful comedy pervy policeman. But I keep watching it anyway. Next I'm going to try The Gates because the description had the words 'supernatural' and 'crime' in it. Which reminds me, maybe one day I'll get round to watching Supernatural. Oh and Happy Town seems OK and I will probably continue with that too.

[Guest]

Current Watching

Black Death. Gothicky-Dark Ages thriller about plague and martyrdom. Very gruesome and dark, but also quite dreamy; sickening hand-held camerawork (almost as sickening as the grisly violence) set among soothing dank green spaces and shadowy churches. The atmosphere of the thing put me in mind most of all of The Passion of Darkly Noon, for some reason. I liked the controlled use of the grotesque and the way the narrative played out - martyrdom is portrayed as simple political brutality, but the questioning of faith is interesting and sincere.