Review of 'Y tu Mama Tambien'

An odd mixture of frat/fart movie and social-political critique...is this the way to get a political movie made in Mexico, or is it an attempt to add a layer of 'quality' content on to what's essentially a film about two teenage boys fucking their girlfriends, an older woman, and each other?

I'm not sure. Some of the bolted on social critique is heavy handed - the voice-overs that tell us how the poor family the boys encounter will have a dire future - but in other places it's done with a good deal of subtlety - the checkpoints on the road that the relatively affluent boys just cruise through but where poorer Mexicans are being given a hard time. And the illustration of the class differences between the boys, despite their friendship and common interests (fucking, drugs, and masturbation) is very well done.

One scene puzzled me...eventually the boys have a gay experience, when the older woman takes them both to bed and then sort of slips away. In the morning they awake to find themselves entwined and are shocked. Soon after their friendship ends. But is this homosexual dimension to their friendship hinted at in the scene in which they wank together from the diving board at a deserted luxurious swimming pool? I have read that teenage boys of all sexual orientations, not just gay ones, engage in collective wanking, but it never formed part of my experience.

Watched in the Common House at Springhill via laptop and cable to projector, having obtained the film via informal distribution.

Review of 'Carrie Pilby'

A film that turned out to be better than expected...about a young woman living alone in New York who is extremely intelligent (and a bit of a prig about other people's morals) and therefore finds life difficult and unhappy. Her therapist gives her tasks to complete (acquire a pet, etc) and she resists then complies, and so ends up engaging with life and people. Reconciliation with absent dad, closure on near-abusive episode with college professor, etc.

I note in passing that in this film, as in most others, that it depicts everyone living in apartments that they could only afford if they were millionaires. I also note that the lead, Bel Powley, reminds me very much of the way Alexandra Shulman looked when she was the flatmate of a friend at Sussex University in the late 1970s.

Watched via Netflix and Chromecast - the first almost good film I've watched on Netflix for ages.

Review of 'Arrival'

A rather good science fiction movie, with most of the emphasis on plot and character rather than special effects. It's about the difficulties posed by first contact with a clearly superior species...and there is a time-travel/time-perception dimension to it that is really rather well done. Some of the early parts linger a bit on the military preparations, which are supposed to be tense but I found a bit slow, but this is more than made up for by an intellectual female lead who doesn't have to do some special 'female' version of clever - she is just cleverer than most of the male characters around her. Extra points too for an internationalist dimension (humans need to overcome their national differences to solve a big problem) and for acknowledging the value of expertise rather than celebrating some ordinary guy who just happens to...

And extra points too for at least mentioning, and even trying to explain, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which actually becomes an important plot element. Don't remember hearing about that since my undergraduate days, so hooray.

Watched on TV via Chromecast, having been obtained via informal distribution network.