Review of 'Harold and Maude'

I can't believe I've never got round to seeing this before. It's a classic, and though it's old it's really funny and also quite thoughtful...about the relationship between an unhappy young man and a bonkers older woman, who meet because their mutual hobby is to go to strangers' funerals (which rather reminded me of Fight Club, where the Brad Pitt and Helena Bonham-Carter characters meet because they go to support groups for conditions that they don't have).

Hard to say much more without spoilers, but well worth seeing; a soundtrack by Cat Stevens that made me really nostalgic too.

Watched via Chromecast and Chromestream, having obtained via informal distribution.

Review of 'The Breaker Upperers'

A fish and chip supper of a film - you know it's really not very good for you, but it's still enjoyable. Or rather, since this is a New Zealand comedy, perhaps it's a fsh and chp spper.

The idea is that two women run an agency that helps people break up from their partners when they don't have the guts to do it themselves - sort of a bit like the agency in the stupid French romcom Heartbreaker.

But this is funnier than that was. It's quite on racism/antiracism and bi/sexuality, and there are some really quite good jokes here and there.

Watched on Netflix, because it's a Netflix original. Which is funny, because though NZ seems to be turning out quite a few decent quirky comedies lately, this is surely of most interest to kiwis, which is a sort of limited market.

Review of 'Ex Machina'

I've been meaning to watch this for a long time - what with being 'Ex Machina' myself - but somehow never quite managed to get round to it, perhaps because I thought Ruth wouldn't want to watch it and we mainly watch films together.

In fact she would have liked it. It's science fiction, but it's slow but interesting and thoughtful, with a claustrophobic feel despite the beautiful landscapes and modernist interiors. Lots of plot twists and revelations, and interesting emotional and intellectual elements.

Watched via USB stick and informal distribution on new clever TV.

Review of The Hunting Rug by Gabor Gorgey

Quite a difficult book, with a narrative that darts about in time and lots of Hungarian history - not all that many novels have footnotes, do they?

Good though - moody and thoughtful, with lots of understated descriptions of the post-war Communist regime.

Reading it I became aware, once again, how distinct and different Hungary seems; I'm pretty good on European history and yet most of the history in it is completely unfamiliar. I didn't even know about the siege of Budapest or the fighting in the city. I was also confused about the description of Romanian soldiers in the siege - I hadn't realised that Romania had swapped sides during 1944.

Review of 'The Whole Wide World'

A film about the love affair between Novalyne Price Ellis and Robert E Howard, the author of the Conan books.

Sort of long and slow, set in 1930s Texas with little context about what was going on in the US or the wider world at that time. The young Renee Zellwegger is good, but the film is a bit dull.

Watched on Amazon Prime.

Review of 'Merivel' by Rose Tremain (sorry, spoiler alert)

A rather different book from 'Restoration', even though it continues with the same first-person narrator as is obviously a sequel. Much of it is enjoyably dull - it contrives not to leave the reader in suspense for any length of time as any plot elements that might cause tension seem to be very swiftly resolved. I didn't much mind that...it's nice to have a break from the emotional rollercoaster, and the writing is still beautiful.

The last 50 pages completely confound that, though. There is a very sad and bleak ending, with everything that has been restored to Merivel, and everything that gives him happiness, being taken away. Not the worse for that, but an abrupt change of tone.

Review of 'Wajib'

Palestinian film, set in Nazareth (i.e. within the 'Green Line' of pre-1967 Israel), depicting the relationship between a father and an emigre architect son who has returned briefly for his sister's wedding and is now helping his father to hand-deliver the invitations.

Lots going on in the film - fathers and sons, diaspora Palestinians vs those who stayed put, traditional obligations and how they appear to those who've left. It's not an explicitly political film, but there are lots of signs of the petty humiliations and constraints to which Palestinians in Israel are subject, despite their apparent 'full citizenship'.

Slow and claustrophobic, but very well made - interesting that the two main actors actually are father and son.

Watched at Stroud Film Club.

Review of 'Eye In The Sky'

A well-made film intended to illustrate that 'we' (the good guys, the West) don't just carry out a massive program of long-distance targeted assassination but that we think very hard about each killing, and that it really pains us when there is collateral damage, and there is more than sufficient democratic oversight of the program.

The film worked dramatically (it spins out the decision-making about one killing for more than 90 minutes without dragging) but I was not convinced. The moral dilemma presented (is it OK to allow one sweet little girl to die in order to save many more lives?) was not a very hard one, and the fabulous technology shown in the film (some of which doesn't actually exist, though it is presented as contemporary) means that the decision-makers have all the information that they need - arguably too much information to make their choices easy.

Also didn't like the way that the military figures are presented as both clear-headed and caring but the politicians are all to varying degrees cowardly and vile, and only concerned about how this will look.

Watched on live terrestrial TV (Film4) as it was broadcast - first time I've done that for a while.

Review of 'Green Book'

An enjoyable liberal anti-racist film, in which a working-class Italian man with prejudices against Black people (in an early scene we see him subtly throwing away two glasses that Black maintenance men have drunk from) is contracted to be a driver to a patrician Black musician on a tour of the early 1960s Deep South. Their personal relationship develops, the stuck-up Black guy lets down his hair a bit (this is a film that's a little bit about class as well as race) and they end up buddies. The Italian guy sticks up for the Black musician in the face of Southern Racism, and they become friends.

A feel-good film that's about something important, even though it doesn't actually say much that's important.

Watched at the Everyman Cinema in Muswell Hill, where they gave us free cocktails at the beginning of the film. Wish they'd turn the heating up a bit though.

Review of 'A Tall Man in a Low Land' by Harry Pearson

Surprisingly enjoyable book about a couple's holiday in Belgium. Pearson is very interested in sport (and I'm not) but he still manages to make the book really interesting. There are some self-consciously 'funny' bits that I'd have edited out, but overall it is actually quite funny and makes Belgium seem interesting, even exotic. He did rather make me want to take a trip.

Review of 'Greenfingers'

Nice British comedy about prisoners who take up gardening with the encouragement of a TV celebrity gardener played by Helen Mirren. Redemption through growing plants, that sort of thing. No surprises but quite watchable.

Watched on Netflix.

Review of "Even When I Fall"

Film about children trafficked from Nepal to Indian circuses - a big thing, it turns out, mainly sold by their parents in the belief that they are doing the right thing. The early part of the film is quite confusing; the children are 'rescued' by Indian social workers/NGO staff (it wasn't clear to me which) and police, and returned to Nepal to be re-united with their families. The families mainly say that they've regretted selling their children south ever since, though I couldn't help feeling that's what they would say to a documentarist's camera.

After that the film takes off as the kids - who miss their circus life - establish their own Nepalese circus with a purpose, to provide a role for the formerly-trafficked and to make anti-trafficking propaganda. The children themselves, and the young adults they grow into during the course of the film, and very beautiful, and so are the shots of them doing their acts.

Watched from Amazon Prime via laptop and new projector in the Common House at Springhill Cohousing.

Review of 'Io'

Bleak and sometimes beautiful dystopian film, set on an earth which has become inhospitable to life as a result of some unexplained change in the atmosphere...and from which most humans have departed to a space station in orbit round Jupiter's moon IO as part of an 'exodus' programme.

Lots of it looks like 'Life After People' - ruined cities overtaken by plants, and so on. The action centres round whether a surviving young woman scientist, and a slightly older man who arrives by Helium balloon, should leave Earth on the last rocket shuttle or stay behind - she's the daughter of a scientist who advised that Earth could be made habitable again.

So there's not actually much action at all - some talking, a lot of silences, and some dream and memory sequences. It does drag a bit in places, and I did have the odd little doze without apparently missing much. It's quite effective, although I would have preferred it if the disaster that has happened was related to the one that we are actually facing - runaway climate change.

Watched on Netflix - another Netflix Original.

Review of "Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened"

A slightly over-long but fascinating documentary, spent in the company of some of the most obnoxious people you will ever meet. 'Entrepreneur' Billy McFarland is setting up some soft of artist-booking app, and decides to launch a parallel co-branded exclusive luxury festival. He promotes the festival by getting loathsome pointless celebrities (supermodels, rappers, etc) to have a party on the designated festival site and then using the celebrity-party shoot footage to get wannabe-celebrities drooling.

This works really well, only Billy doesn't really organise the festival. The site is unsuitable, the artists aren't really coming, there isn't nearly enough accommodation on the island (promoted as Pablo Escobar's Bahamian hide-out), or enough water or sewerage capacity. The pics of the site are photoshopped so that it looks like an uninhabited island, even though it's actually right next door to the Sandals resort. Whenever the hapless minions point out to Billy that things aren't working out, he hops on his jetski/quad bike and goes really fast, and then tells them to bring him solutions, not problems. Some of the minions walk, but most don't, and some kick in their own money in an effort to keep the festival show on the road a bit longer.

There is footage of the miserable millenials arriving at the site, where they are plied with tequila so that by the time they discover that there are no luxury villas (and not even food or water) it's dark and they are all drunk and confused. They begin to fight over the tents and bedding, because there aren't enough of either. And the next day they get airlifted out like refugees, their dreams of partying with supermodels crushed.

Along the way we discover that Billy is even more of a scumbag, because he's defrauded investors to the tune of $27m, telling them that the festival had many more punters than it ever could have, and that they were all paying even more money than the ludicrous amounts he had actually extorted from the suckers.

Eventually the FBI turn up and Billy is indited, though while he is out on bail he starts a whole new scam selling tickets to events that he doesn't have, through a young front-man.

It's tempting to conclude that all the idiots who were motivated to go to a festival on the strength of some supermodel tweets got what they deserved, and that people who invested in trash like this also...but plenty of others were also burned, including the day labourers on the island who worked for a month trying to prepare the site and never got paid. And the poor sods who were working on the app, who weren't even fired - Billy just tells them they won't get paid any more after he pulls the plug.

Billy got six years, but he'll probably only serve two, and that in a country club prison.

Watched on Netflix - it's a Netflix Original.

Review of 'The Underground Railroad'

Absolutely amazing alternative-history novel about slavery in the US, including a fantasy that the 'underground railroad', the smuggling route by which escaping slaves were assisted to reach freedom in the North (and eventually in Canada, after the Fugitive Slaves Act made escape to the northern US impossible) is a real railroad that runs underground from South to North, with tunnels and trains and secret stations...

Because I'm not as familiar with the details of American racism, slavery, lynch law and so on, it's sometimes hard to tell which aspects of the story form part of real history and which are part of the alternate narrative. I'd have quite liked a sort of guide to that for the less well informed reader - which I suspect includes most Americans as well as non-Americans.

None of that detracts from the book, which is terrifying and beautifully written. Looking forward to reading more by Colson Whitehead.

Review of 'The Breadwinner'

Beautiful, interesting animated film about a girl growing up in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Good script, very striking to look at, and manages to give the lie to the view that this somehow what's "natural" and "traditional" for Afghanistan. And also conveys that 'The Handmaiden's Tale' is not just a dystopian fantasy but also real life for women in some places right row.

Watched on Netflix.

Review of 'The Favourite'

Well that's what period drama ought to be like! Not obsessed with historical accuracy - the dance scene was hilarious - but fabulous to look at...great sets, super costumes, and wonderful cinematography; I don't remember the last time I saw montage used like that.

Also really good acting, and a great script. Really enjoyable to see a film with three strong women leads - not at all obvious who was the 'star' and who the 'supporting actress'. I loved all three of them, and didn't notice a trace of a wrong accent in Emma Stone's performance.

The certification at the beginning said 'Very Strong Language and Strong Sex', but this mainly boils down to the repeated use of the word 'Cunt', a few light lesbian scenes, and a jerk-off scene more or less off camera.

Watched at the Vue Cinema in Stroud.

Review of 'Don't Think Twice'

A film about a troupe of improvisational comedians who have been doing the same act for years, and then one of their number makes it to prime time TV. Some interesting stuff about how the other members of the group deals with this - some really good observations about what failure, and mediocrity, feel like.

Somewhat undermined by the fact that the comedy is really not very funny at all, and also by the implausible happy ending in which the troupe is all reconciled and friends again, despite how horrible they've all been to each other.

Watched on Netflix.

Review of 'Colette'

Ok-ish period drama set in fin-de-siecle Paris, with nice costumes and locations, but not much sizzle - despite the fact that plot contains a sort of love triangle and some lesbian sex. There's some overlap with the plot of The Wife (author's wife actually writes his books, he's not actually a writer at all) but there's no suspense or tension about this - we know from the beginning that he doesn't actually write his books. It's about half an hour too long (I had a little snooze towards the end, despite the fact that the Everyman Cinema in Muswell Hill was freezing), and too hard to care about the characters or what happens to them.

Although it covers about fifteen years in time the characters don't seem to age much, and nothing else changes either; a new outfit becomes fashionable as a result of the success of the author's books, and one of the salons gets electric lighting. No feeling for anything else that is happening at the time.

Watched at the Everyman Cinema.

Review of 'Swimming with Men'

Nice British film about mid-life crises for men and how a group responds by forming a men's synchronized swimming team - only to find out that it's an actual thing and that there's a world championship competition. In which they end up representing Britain, because they are the only ones doing it.

Lots of great character acting, some really good visual jokes that flash by so quickly that they are easy to miss, a good script. Time well spent. I particularly liked the depictions of swimming as something calming and head-clearing.

Watched on Netflix via Chromecast.