TV/Movies Megathread

[viper37]

I really liked her in Love and Friendship, which suggests to me she has been done a disservice by the vampire chic silly movies.

Hey, they're not all silly movies.
The first one was really good.

[Syt]

Black Mirror S02E01: Be Right Back.

Agent Carter of SHIELD is struggling to come to terms with the death of her spouse, General Hux. Good episode.

It came out in 2013, and it  feels like the first half is not too far fetched anymore - train an AI chatbot on all available correspondence, social media posts, online videos etc. of a deceased person to create a simulation of them you can chat/talk to. Even the voice simulation doesn't sound too crazy; Skyrim modders are using AI to voice NPC lines these days (with mixed results, but it's getting there). The full sized android replica is probably still a few years off, but creating a deepfake animated avatar of the person is not impossible, I suppose.

[Savonarola]

Seven Year Itch (1955)

I don't think this was one of Billy Wilder's better movies; a lot of the problems come from the production code and a number of the lines from the play had to be changed.  (One line that they did keep was the sarcastic "And I've got Marilyn Monroe in the kitchen."  In the film he does, in fact, have Marilyn Monroe in the kitchen.)

I hadn't seen this before, and I was surprised that the iconic shot of Marilyn Monroe's skirt billowing up as she stands a subway grate is actually not in the film; all we see are her legs.

[viper37]

That made me laugh

[Sheilbh]

Scrapper.

Brilliant film about a 12 year old girl resourcefully living on her own after her mum has died and her dad who comes into her life for the first time. There's more than a few echoes of Aftersun but they were actually being made at the same time so touch on similar themes distinctly. Like Aftersun really good performances from the child actors and also with a young buzzy actor as the dad (Paul Mescal there and Harris Dickinson here).

Separately there is something really exciting going on in British film at the minute. There's been a number of really good debut films in recent years, particularly by women directors: Scrapper, Aftersun, Rye Lane, After Love.

From non debutantes there's also been Ali and Ava from Clio Barnard plus Joanna Hogg () in my opinion doing some of her best work in recent years - and we've got a new Andrea Arnold movie coming out next year (starring Barry Keoghan and Franz Rogowski).

One feature I love with almost all of those films is that there's no twee period dramas but there's also not much social realist misery palette - the two normal strands of British cinema This may be why they're mainly small indie films that maybe aren't selling well overseas. But there's really good films coming out at the minute, they don't shy from difficult subjects but seem a bit more like actual existing Britain.

Also Afire.

I enjoyed this but I don't think it's for everyone. Basically about a writer and aspiring art student going to a holiday home on the coast to do some work and find that a young woman, Nadja, is already staying there. Then the settling of those characters working on their novel, or portfolio or just going for a swim while, 30km to the west, a forest fire is blazing.

It's an accident of timing that this film came out in the UK this summer when forest fires have been in the news so much. But it is brilliant on that and feels, perhaps, like one of the first climate change films. It's also a great character study in self-absorption and a writer who isn't capable of observing the world.

[Darth Wagtaros]

Reservation Dogs has been good, its a good way to send it off.

Only Murders in the Building has been pretty good as well.

[Sheilbh]

Saw a few films over the bank holiday weekend (last till Christmas ).

Theater Camp. Hadn't really heard of this but enjoyed it a lot - I think it's terrific. It's a bit too on the nose to be a Christopher Guest style mockumentary but it's in the same neighbourhood.

Also a film that made me wonder again about the big Hollywood studios blowing up their profitable business model - because I don't think this will find it's audience in cinemas, but I think it would with TV and DVD. It strikes me as the sort of film that would become a cult hit with the theatre kids it's affectionately mocking. As it is it probably won't make money in the box office and will then end up just languishing on a streamer - neither driving subscriptions or causing people not to cancel.

The Innocent. I loved this film. I think it's great and I recommend going in without reading any reviews or watching the trailer because it is fun.

A very fun French romance, screwball comedy, heist - I'd be amazed if this doesn't get remade by Hollywood. Always enjoy Louis Garrel and Noemie Merlant of Portrait of a Lady on Fire is also on great form.

Blue Beetle. I went into this knowing nothing - I'd only seen the posters. And it was a pleasant surprise. I don't watch them all but I think this is the best superhero film I've seen in ages - it is still about half an hour too long and it hits some of its beats, then keeps hitting them.

But I think it's got a very charismatic central performance by Xolo Mariduena. The superhero story itself has a bit of a Spiderman vibe (who is my favourite of the superheroes). The action sequences are clean - you're able to follow what's happening to who at all points which is not the norm. Some lovely shots and I really liked the score which has some solid synths which move a little bit beyond the Inception horn. Although there are sections, particularly in the start, which are a little bit too televisual.

I hope it does well - my lack of any idea that it was coming out or what it was until I saw the posters suggests it might not. But who knows.

[Josquius]

Blue Beetle just seems designed to be a flop. I saw a poster near my house and had no idea it was a DC film or anything about it. It just sounds so.... Shit. Like a sort of half arsed film within a film fictional superhero film.
But interesting to hear its good.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah. Honestly I sort of thought that from the poster too. But I quite enjoyed it.

It's too long, there's bits that look like a TV show not a film - but it's got a lightness of touch (not one, but two erection jokes ), charismatic performances and it wasn't carrying the weight of twenty different spinning plates from whatever extended universe it's in (there's a few mentions of Batman - "a fascist" - Superman etc but that's it).

It reminded me of just an enjoyable light fun superhero film which feels like something I've not seen in a very long time.

[Syt]

Saw on the weekend that the actress who played the general's daughter in Deutschland '83 was born in the same town as me. Went to look up if any other known actors/actresses were born there or in Schleswig-Holstein in general.

"Allison Mack? Huh. Oh, her American parents were working in Germany when she was born, fair enough. Haven't seen her in much lately. Wonder what she's been up to."

*checks IMDB*

"Oh."

*checks Wiki*

"Oh no."

 

[HVC]

Blue Beetle just seems designed to be a flop. I saw a poster near my house and had no idea it was a DC film or anything about it. It just sounds so.... Shit. Like a sort of half arsed film within a film fictional superhero film.
But interesting to hear its good.

For a hot minute it was plugged as the Hispanic black panther. But then it all stopped. Don't know if it was the strike or bad screening reactions or what.

[Sheilbh]

For a hot minute it was plugged as the Hispanic black panther. But then it all stopped. Don't know if it was the strike or bad screening reactions or what.

I think that would be very, very bad marketing. As I say tonally it reminds me more of Spiderman than Black Panther. There are gestures at politics - gentrification, inequality and I think it's the first superhero film to mention the School of the Americas.

But - and I enjoyed Black Panther a lot - it's not that. It's a big bad (Susan Sarandon chewing the scenery) and a local neighbourhood kid who ends up with a superpower.

[HVC]

More so culturally rather than thematically a Hispanic black panther. Ie it'd get the Hispanic audience hyped up.

[Grey Fox]

Saw on the weekend that the actress who played the general's daughter in Deutschland '83 was born in the same town as me. Went to look up if any other known actors/actresses were born there or in Schleswig-Holstein in general.

"Allison Mack? Huh. Oh, her American parents were working in Germany when she was born, fair enough. Haven't seen her in much lately. Wonder what she's been up to."

*checks IMDB*

"Oh."

*checks Wiki*

"Oh no."

 

  

[HVC]

She's out already, isn't she?