Review of 'In the Heart of the Sea'

A visually stunning sea-faring movie, with lots of sails ripping, masts splintering and so on. It's based on the true story that inspired Herman Melville's Moby Dick, about a Nantucket whaling ship called the Essex that was sunk by a white whale bent on revenge. Melville appears in the film, interviewing the now-older sailor who was one of the survivors of the disaster, and helping him to resolve his torments via a talking cure of telling his story.

The film wasn't on release for long, which is a bit of a surprise because it's very well made. The cinematography is really striking...it really felt like I was on the ship, in the storms and out on the whaling boats.

Of course no-one has much sympathy with whaling now, but it's impossible not to be struck by the bravery of the men involved; it was brave and physically demanding for anyone to put to sea in tiny fragile boats, but the demands of whaling were so much more - going out in tiny boats, being dragged across the rough seas by huge whales, fires on deck to boil down blubber...

It does make it clear just how significant the discovery of oil in the ground was - it gets a mention towards the end of the film. For the northern world whale oil was an industrially significant source of fuel for lamps. Only the non-availability of other sources in sufficient quantities could have justified the effort and risk to which the whalers subjected themselves; only the absence of other sources of employment could have compelled men to take up such work.

Watched on TV via Chromecast, PC, Chromestream - and informal distribution.

Some things I particularly liked in 'Sharing Cities: A Case for Truly Smart and Sustainable Cities'

Some things I particularly liked in 'Sharing Cities: A Case for Truly Smart and Sustainable Cities'

Most of them are from Seoul, where I once spent a day and a half on the gruelling Ovum Asia-Pacific tour, but nevertheless have positive memories.

• Kozaza and Lobo Korea – local alternatives to Airbnb
• Woozoo – a house-sharing platform and social enterprise
• Wonderlend and Billi – platforms for sharing goods.
• Socar – car sharing
• Kiple – for exchanging children’s clothes
• Zipbob – a meal sharing platform

 Sadly, few of them have anything much to read in English.

Review of Run Lola Run

A German film from 1998 which illustrates the contingency of events. Lola's drug-dealer boyfriend is in trouble, and she has twenty minutes to come up with DM100,000 to pay off his boss. We see the same story play out three times, in which small changes (whether she trips on the stairs leaving her flat) have consequences as to what happens thereafter. (BTW It's not a patch on Hal Hartley's Flirt, in which we see three different films with exactly the same dialogue).

It's a nice idea, but the film isn't really satisfying. Unlike say Sliding Doors it doesn't play by its own rules - we don't really see the consequences of a single action because other new elements are introduced into the three versions of the story line. And the film looks really dated - not just in the big red landline phone that Lola uses, and the payphone from which the boyfriend calls, but also in the annoying jump cuts and animation inserts.

Watched on TV from a usb drive, the film having been earlier obtained via informal distribution network.

Review of 'People First Economics'

Too bad Amazon doesn't let me give this three-and-a-half stars, because that's what I think it deserves. I've only just read it, which seems a bit unfair because it was published in 2009. Some of it feels very dated (lots of hope and expectation about Obama in some of the chapters); I think a contemporary version would be sharper about the way in which not just 'neoliberalism' but also mainstream liberals abandoned the inhabitants of their countries' rust belts, and how this led to Trump and Brexit, and the rise of right-wing populism across Europe.

There isn't much about the economics of migration, or about 'platform capitalism' either - not surprising, but a warning that it's easy to miss what's coming. On the other hand, there is quite a lot about the Commons, which illustrates how long ideas about that have been swilling about...to no particular end?

Some very good essays - I was particularly impressed by Susan George and Naomi Klein, but also by Walden Bello (who I had never heard of) on emerging global social democracy and Danny Chivers on Climate Choices - the latter was really good and still valid eight years on.

I'd still like a primer on progressive economics that was definitively, robustly argued but easy to read. This is easy to read but despite the variety of authors and scope doesn't cover everything. On the other hand, I think it has persuaded me to re-subscribe to New Internationalist.

Review of 'Sharing Cities: A Case for Truly Smart and Sustainable Cities'

I loved and hated this. There's so much in terms of examples and analysis of the sharing economy, but I found the structure (an example of a city and the way it demonstrates particular aspects of sharing, and then a general discussion of those aspects...which touches on the cities in the other chapters) confusing, and the language downright impenetrable. It's hard to believe that I could once read and write the language of academic social science - now I find it impossible to engage with. I really have to fight to engage with content that's written like this. I notice it particularly in the sentence structure, which could easily be fixed either by the authors or by a tougher editor - but also in the choice of words, and in particular in the use of everyday words in special meanings.

A real shame, because the authors have a superb depth of knowledge and understanding, and the book is full of links and references that make it a great gateway...I hope that they write another, more accessible one soon, perhaps with more of a handbook for activists and cities feel.

Review of 'Mudbound'

Well-crafted period drama about racism and poverty set in post-war Mississipi, and focusing on the relationships between a relatively poor family of white farmers and their extremely poor black tenant-neighbours. It's a Netflix original, and rather well made, though nothing terribly innovative in terms of narrative or cinematography - does Netflix specify that its original-made content has to work on a range of devices?

It becomes generally harder to watch as it sinks from casual racism to the muderous kind, driven by the way in which the young returning ex-soldier son from the black family no longer properly knows his place in the white-dominated order; his 'crime' is compounded by the unlikely friendship he develops with the white farmer's returning brother, since neither of them can get over the undigested experience of the war and the death of comrades alongside them.

Worth watching, and what I thought was a good performance from Carey Mulligan as the farmer's wife - would be interested to hear from friends who know better how she did with the accent.

Watched at home on TV via Netflix on phone and Chromecast.

Review of 'A Little Life'

A brilliant and terrible book which has haunted me for the last six weeks. Not at all the sort of thing I usually read - I'm more a person for genre fiction that provides me with a light and slightly dull escape in the evenings, rather than something that offers intense emotional catharsis. But I couldn't stop reading, in part because it's very well written, and also because it would have felt too much like cowardice and betrayal.

This starts of as a sort of multiple life story - four friends who had met at Harvard and their continuing lives threaded together. They are living cool lives in Manhattan and they are bourgeois-bohemian poor (a bit) but marked for success. Gradually it begins to focus on the life of one of the young men, who is a brilliant but damaged lawyer.

Most of the book is about how he got to be that damaged and how it plays out into his life and those of the others. It's very hard to read - lots of abuse, child-rape, unspeakable violence, self-harm, mental and physical disease. I'm glad I read it, and I appreciate what a superb work it is, but I am really relieved that it's over.

Review of Effie Gray

Standard period drama about the unhappy marriage (imdb calls it a love triangle, but there is nothing of the kind going on here) between John Ruskin and his wife Euphemia Gray. Written by and starring Emma Thompson, and her partner Greg Wise as Ruskin. A bit slow, a bit Merchant-Ivory when they get to Venice, and generally rather old-fashioned looking...in general period dramas have moved on a bit, but this look tired and made-for-TV.

Ruskin comes across as a damaged and nasty person who is under the thumb of his dominating parents, Effie is more or less a doormat who is suddenly empowered by the advice of Emma Thompson's character into seeking a scandalous annulment for impotence and non-consummation. Ruskin's suspected pedophilia is hinted at.

I thought it didn't entirely convey how important a cultural figure Ruskin was; his reactionary ideas about art and aesthetics really set the tone for the second half of the Victorian period and have arguably plagued Britain's sense of itself and its place in the world ever since.

Watched on BBC iPlayer, now built in to our new Samsung TV so no need to use Chromecast.

Review of 'Primer'

Watched this confusing film about start-up geeks who invent a time machine by mistake. I really didn't understand or follow it - not just the technology, but the plot. I managed fine with other time travel films, so I think the problem here was that the narrative hooks that are meant to show what is going on were absent; as with so much you don't realise how much work these do until they aren't there. Impressive that a film which looks OK could be made for so little money ($7k I think) and it would have been interesting to see whether a less complex plot and subject material could have made a more mainstream film for the same money.

Watched on our TV via Chomestream (on Linux PC) and Chromecast. That worked fine at least.

Review of 'The Death of Stalin'

A well-made British 'comedy', with all of your favourite character actors, about the last days of Stalin and the aftermath. Ought to be required watching for anyone still a bit soppy about the USSR. Not many laughs, though the couple next to us seemed to find lots of it very funny; even the absurdities of the dictatorship and the bureaucracy can't be very funny against a background of so many juidicial and extra-judicial murders.

A few odd things; what seems to take a few days in the film (death of Stalin to fall of Beria) actually took a year. Almost no mention of anti-semitism, though of course it pervaded everything - even the references to the Doctors' Plot are without a mention of Jews, though that's what it was about.  And I didn't much like the depiction of Nikita Kruschev as a wise-cracking New Yorker - I much preferred the way Bob Hoskins played him in Enemy at the Gates, as a rather coarse USSR native.

But these are quibbles, and it's a really good film. Ruth and I couldn't help but think about our grandfathers who had so loved Stalin.

Watched at the Everyman Cinema in Muswell Hill.

Review of 'The Other Side of Hope'

Pleasantly quirky and uplifiting film about a Syrian refugee who ends up in Helsinki. We see the wheels of bureaucracy preparing to deport him to a situation it deems safe even as the news reports the massacres, some Fascists who try to kill him, but also lots of nice ordinary decent Finns (and some desperate down-and-outs too) who rally to his support. It's a lot like Le Havre, but in Finland.

Some visual jokes, notably that though it's contemporary everything looks like it's in the 1950s or some other recent-history period. The restaurant where the refugee ends up working is stuck in a time-warp in terms of decor and cuisine (a reminder of the time when Finnish food was considered the worst in the world), the restaurant owner drives a 1950s car, and the truck driver who smuggles in the sister has a vintage mobile transportable from the early 1980s - which wouldn't even work now, the network on which it ran having long been closed down. Not entirely sure why any of this - I've noticed it in other Kaurismäki films, notably the noire Hamlet that we saw at the Sydney Film festival in the early 1990s, which was all Soviet-style plumbing and industrial locations.

Watched in the Middle Floor at Springhill via laptop and projector, having been obtained via informal distribution.

Review of 'Weiner'

A rather sad political fly-on-the-wall documentary about the unsuccessful run for New York mayor of Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner. Why people allow fly-on-the-wall documentaries I'll never understand; perhaps the answer is that although he's not too bad for an American politician, with decent enough views and policies, and a focus on the interests of what he calls the 'middle class' (by which he means the working class), he is still a narcissist. He can sit on the phone making call after call to rich friends and acquaintances, asking for money, without flinching. There are several Bulworth-type moments in the film, where he repeats the same speech over and over again, to camera or to an empty room, practicing. Normal people can't do that without being self-concious, but politicians can.

The thing about Weiner is that he's disgraced and fails because of a character flaw, and by the standards of American political life it's a small one. He 'sexts' pictures of his bulging underwear to a young woman that he's never met, and she senses the opportunity for celebrity and feeds him to the media. He didn't touch her, he didn't hurt anyone - they never even met, except online. He didn't embezzle, he didn't cheat on his wife, who by the way is a bigger political operator than him and close to Hillary. At one point in the film she's apparently faced with the choice of dumping him or losing her own political career, and it's not clear which way she is going to go.

Ultimately he's a big loser, the more so because his insight into his situation is lost in the face of innappropriately dogged resolution to go on no matter what. It's an over-used metaphor, but it is a bit like watching a car crash in slow motion. As the audience we know how this is going to go, but he can't or won't.

Watched via Chromestream and Chromecast, shortly before a Windows 10 update trashed my laptop.

Review of 'Paddington'

A very liberal film which makes much of Paddington's status as an immigrant...he's not really a refugee or an asylum seeker, but parallels are drawn between him and Mr Gruber's experience as a Kindertransport kid, and there's a lot about the need for people to be generous to the displaced and homeless. There's not much about what actually happens to people (or presumably bears) who enter the country illegally; the Brown family just adopts him, and that's that.

Pretty much every British comedy or character actor you can think of is in it, and seem to be having fun. There are lots of cinematic jokes and parodies of other films. I rather thought that Nicole Kidman as the wicked museum curator was reprising her role as Mrs Coulter in The Golden Compass, though she's not quite as menacing here.

Watched in two halves: in the Middle Floor at Springhill via legitimate iTunes download on someone else's laptop and the Springhill projector, and then at home via informally obtained download and Chromestream from my Linux laptop to the Chromecast in our TV. The second of these turned out to be much easier than the first - it took about 40 minutes to get the legitimate version working...first two DVDs didn't work in any of the available DVD players, and then there were issues with getting the mac laptop to talk to the projector.

Review of 'The Corruption of Capitalism'

A bit of a disappointment, in that the ideas in the book are better than the book itself.  I've heard Guy Standing talking about the ideas on the radio, and he was very good. It rather feels like the publisher told him to make it longer, so he crow barred in some other stuff about how shit everything is - how the political system is broken, how platform capitalism is turning lots of people into pure labour-for-hire...I don't disagree with any of it, and he makes his points well with lots of examples; but it distracts from the main argument, which is about how 'free' markets are anything but.

Capital isn't interested in free markets or competition, and does everything it can to structure and seek out markets where competition is weak or non-existent - through licensed monopolies from the state and/or through patents and copyright. Indeed, I think too many people on the left believe the neo-Liberalism is about rolling back the state, as it pretends to be, when actually the state is crucial for assembling the markets (think the NHS or benefits system) so that they can be exploited, and for enforcing and protecting the monopolies.

There is also a sense in which the relentless barrage of numbers become a bit wearing - an infographic or two to break up the page might have been nice.

Overall this is a good and important book, buried inside a slightly less good one.

Review of 'Blade Runner 2049'

Except not really a review, just a note about my personal impressions. Other people have done so much reviewing, and I think I couldn't do this properly unless I read all their reviews, and I don't have the time or the energy.

I quite liked it, or at least I quite liked the way it looked. It was a visual treat, and continued the combination of science fiction and noir that the first film pioneered. Others have said that the plot was flimsy, and I rather think the opposite - there was too much plot, including some elements that felt crowbarred in for the next sequel. I suspect the plot had holes or inconsistencies in it (like, either replicants can have children or they can't, but either way it's not a religious miracle, it's a designed-in feature that ought to be in the documentation), but again I can't be bothered to list or work them out...it wasn't really about the plot. Some others have commented on Ryan Gosling's acting - not much too say here; he has one fewer expression than Harrison Ford, I'd say. I liked the performances of the other actors, particularly the women.

I noted a few bits of product placement...we had a corporate logo for Diageo, and Deckart is drinking Johnnie Walker whisky; Black Label, which presumably he's been drinking for thirty years while holed up in the decaying hotel in Vegas. And Sony, and some others.

Oh, and the baddie who makes the robots that go wrong is called Wallace - wouldn't it be great if this was a homage to the Wallace who hangs out with Gromit? He also made robots that went wrong, more than once.

I noted that the urban dystopia is now aligned to a rural dystopia - we see a truly horrendous 'farm' early on the film. Hating cities (except perhaps New York) is a mainstream trope of American cinema, and often nature and rurality is counterposed to this. Not here.

I also noted some cyrillic writing early on, and also an add that seemed to feature 'Product of CCCP' - has the USSR been revived by 2049? In any case this made me realise that for Americans, part of what was dystopian about the original Blade Runner was the presence of so many different nationalities in the future LA, especially Asians - Neo LA looks a lot like Neo-Tokyo. Well, by 2017 the presence of Russian script is further evidence that everything has gone to the dogs.

Finally, the ruined Vegas hotel where Deckart is hiding out looked a lot like some of the actual derelict hotels featured in some 'ruin porn' movies about Detroit.

Ultimately a good experience, though 'enjoyable' doesn't seem quite right.

Watched at the Vue Cinema in Stroud...worth doing for the volume and depth of the sound!

Review of 'Paterson'

A strong candidate for the most boring film I have ever seen. Very little happens. There are few 'quirky' touches but mainly it's just everyday life, work, breakfast, walking the not-very-nice dog. Everybody in the film is quite nice, from girlfriend who imagines herself to be talented and turns out to be quite talented, and co-workers, and guys down at the bar...

The central character is a bus-driver poet, quirkily called Paterson which is the same name as the town. We see him writing some poems, all of which seemed so awful to me that I thought his lack of talent was the point of the film...but it wasn't, they are actual poems written by an actual poet. The one good poem in the film, attributed to a little girl that the bus driver meets, was actually written by director Jim Jarmusch.

Watched at Landsdown film club in Stroud.

Review of Blade Runner (Final Cut)

I watched this again after a long interval in preparation for the new sequel. Surprised to find how little I remembered, though some of this may have been due to the fact that I'd previously watched a different 'cut' - at least that's what I kept telling myself as unfamiliar scenes unfolded, but I may have just forgotten.

The plot turned out to be much simpler than I remembered, despite the subtleties about androids who may not know that they are (possibly including Deckard himself), but I don't recall it being quite so violent. I later watched the 'deleted scenes' available on YouTube, and found that most of it was voiceover explaining what was going on to presumed dopier US cinema audiences.

Anyway, it was still enjoyable, though much slower than a comparable film would be nowadays. Made in 1982, the future still looks credible, despite the Prestel-like screens (no web in 1982) and phone booths. Very atmospheric, largely delivered via constant drizzle, a largely Asian Los Angeles and lots of derelict and deserted buildings, including some that look like they were straight from the actually-derelict Detroit.

Watched in the Midde Floor at Springhill via laptop and informal distribution.

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.