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Brixton Ritzy - upcoming films, reviews and opinions

Went there today and bought a couple of portions of pop corn for the film. Unfortunately one of them consisted largely of dregs, which we discovered half way though the film. They
offered us a free replacement but would not give us a refund, which I thought was a bit shitty, especially as by the time we could tell them the film had ended.

The film was Spectre btw. It's okay but not as good as Skyfall.
 
T & P said:
Went there today and bought a couple of portions of pop corn for the film. Unfortunately one of them consisted largely of dregs, which we discovered half way though the film. They
offered us a free replacement but would not give us a refund, which I thought was a bit shitty, especially as by the time we could tell them the film had ended.

The film was Spectre btw. It's okay but not as good as Skyfall.
Click to expand...
I hate popcorn and the eating of popcorn near me in the cinema.

As if it wasn't enough to pay West End Prices for Hollywood shit in a former arthouse community cinema on my doorstep, there is a trial of endurance watching 20-30 minutes of glamorous adverts for various expensive cars before the film even starts.

I've seen the most interesting films on BBC Four in the last couple of years. The Ritzy's offering is pathetic in cultural terms. They have betrayed everything the original founders (late 1970s) set out to do.
 
Went to see Spectre today and I could hear someone eating popcorn 5 seats away in row behind me. Felt sorry for the people right in front of popcorn eater :D
 
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Saw Carol today. Well it was at the new revamped Renoir. But its still on at Ritzy. I got chatting to a what turned up to be a high up in Curzon cinemas in a lift a few weeks ago. Was lamenting the loss of the cut price " Early Bird" tickets at Curzon and that me and my cinephile friends were increasingly unable to see films in cinema due to cost. He took this on board ( saying he didn’t understand why the "Early Bird" cut price tickets ended) and gave me two complimentary tickets.

So went to the new Renoir/ Bloomsbury to see Carol on the big screen the "Renoir". Which is good screen. But a staggering £18 if I had not had complimentary ticket.

Was it worth seeing. Yes. Pretty well flawless imo. Wonderfully shot. Wonderfully as the screen appears to glow and come alive when watching it. Only way to describe it. Rare to see a film that does this. The opposite of the digital hard edged Hollywood film that now is dominant.

Based on a Patricia Highsmith novel about a relationship between two women. So its very much psychological take.

Its set in repressive 50s US. But I found it , in a quiet way, quite surreal. Cate Blanchett is mesmerizing as the ( and I must say stunning) older women who starts a relationship with a shop girl. Surreal in the sense that Carol is ridiculously wealthy and privileged. Where the money comes from is not gone into. Partly why I think the film has a surreal ( and also magical / fairytale) feel to it.

So its also about class. The shop girl Therese is on the edge of the 50s bohemians which were starting to come to the fore in the 50s. I would say the class issue has been overlooked in reviews.

As its Highsmith the twists and turns draw one in. Its like thriller but much cleverer than one might think. And more subtle than say a film Thelma and Louise - this film has a road movie section in middle that does not end in way that I thought it would.

Talking of Thelma and Lousie this film is way more erotic. The eroticism is based around looks and glances. However Cate does get down to it with Therese later in the film. This not simply a pastiche of a 50s melodrama.

Haynes the director is said to be influenced by 50s directors like Sirk who made "womens pictures". I have not seen Sirk so not sure how accurate this is.

Another aspect of the film is the place of men. They arent all portrayed as awful. However in the film there place is peripheral to women. Kind of interesting to see a film where women , without making it an issue, are foregrounded in a film.

Is it a political film saying how terrible it was in 50s US? Not really. The film is about the relationship. About the unknowable attraction that two people can have without fully understanding it. The film begins and ends with two people looking at each other across crowded rooms. Just seeing each other in wordless way.
 
Last edited:
CH1 said:
I hate popcorn and the eating of popcorn near me in the cinema.

As if it wasn't enough to pay West End Prices for Hollywood shit in a former arthouse community cinema on my doorstep, there is a trial of endurance watching 20-30 minutes of glamorous adverts for various expensive cars before the film even starts.

I've seen the most interesting films on BBC Four in the last couple of years. The Ritzy's offering is pathetic in cultural terms. They have betrayed everything the original founders (late 1970s) set out to do.
Click to expand...

I agree.

What is more and more winding me up is that culture is now becoming the preserve of the well off.

My free ticket to the old Renoir showed me the change in clientele. Back when I first started to go to cinema regularly the Renoir was full of the old timers who weren’t well off but who liked cinema.

Now its much more upmarket clientele. I felt a bit of an interloper there now. I really resent it.

Read an article about Brit director Peter Strickland. Here he is on Scala.

Strickland's own route into the movies was some way from the usual path of film school and advertising agency. It began with a trip to London at 16, his first visit to the capital alone – one that took him to the fabled Scala cinema in then-perilous King's Cross. That night, previously limited to "watching Cocktail at the Reading ABC", he saw David Lynch's Eraserhead. If the film proved predictably formative – it ripples through Berberian Sound Studio – the venue was still more so.

"There was something magical about that space, how it felt so illicit. And the films they screened had this sense of everything being up for grabs, Tarkovsky one night, a Russ Meyer triple-bill the next. For me, it was feverish. I can still trace the urge to make films back there."
Click to expand...

Spot on. Remember seeing Pasolini "Salo" then banned , Herzogs "Aguirre Wrath of God" and "Scarface" as well as sleazy films. They even had a copy of the banned "Clockwork Orange" .All cheap. Its was so cheap the resident "Bag Lady" was often there all day. And you could buy a ticket and basically stay all day. Even had a cinema cat who kept rodents at bay and wandered around the auditorium.

Kings Cross was not that perilous. But different. Walk past the sex shops, street walkers and druggies to get to Scala. But perfectly safe area imo.
 
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Gramsci said:
Saw Carol today. Well it was at the new revamped Renoir. But its still on at Ritzy. I got chatting to a what turned up to be a high up in Curzon cinemas in a lift a few weeks ago. Was lamenting the loss of the cut price " Early Bird" tickets at Curzon and that me and my cinephile friends were increasingly unable to see films in cinema due to cost. He took this on board ( saying he didn’t understand why the "Early Bird" cut price tickets ended) and gave me two complimentary tickets.

So went to the new Renoir/ Bloomsbury to see Carol on the big screen the "Renoir". Which is good screen. But a staggering £18 if I had not had complimentary ticket.

Was it worth seeing. Yes. Pretty well flawless imo. Wonderfully shot. Wonderfully as the screen appears to glow and come alive when watching it. Only way to describe it. Rare to see a film that does this. The opposite of the digital hard edged Hollywood film that now is dominant.

Based on a Patricia Highsmith novel about a relationship between two women. So its very much psychological take.

Its set in repressive 50s US. But I found it , in a quiet way, quite surreal. Cate Blanchett is mesmerizing as the ( and I must say stunning) older women who starts a relationship with a shop girl. Surreal in the sense that Carol is ridiculously wealthy and privileged. Where the money comes from is not gone into. Partly why I think the film has a surreal ( and also magical / fairytale) feel to it.

So its also about class. The shop girl Therese is on the edge of the 50s bohemians which were starting to come to the fore in the 50s. I would say the class issue has been overlooked in reviews.

As its Highsmith the twists and turns draw one in. Its like thriller but much cleverer than one might think. And more subtle than say a film Thelma and Louise - this film has a road movie section in middle that does not end in way that I thought it would.

Talking of Thelma and Lousie this film is way more erotic. The eroticism is based around looks and glances. However Cate does get down to it with Therese later in the film. This not simply a pastiche of a 50s melodrama.

Haynes the director is said to be influenced by 50s directors like Sirk who made "womens pictures". I have not seen Sirk so not sure how accurate this is.

Another aspect of the film is the place of men. They arent all portrayed as awful. However in the film there place is peripheral to women. Kind of interesting to see a film where women , without making it an issue, are foregrounded in a film.

Is it a political film saying how terrible it was in 50s US? Not really. The film is about the relationship. About the unknowable attraction that two people can have without fully understanding it. The film begins and ends with two people looking at each other across crowded rooms. Just seeing each other in wordless way.
Click to expand...
That sounds so much better than I would have imagined having read the book and a few reviews. When mentioning that Carol was a film now to some dykey friends the consensus was 'what? that miserable novel? oh.'
 
friendofdorothy said:
That sounds so much better than I would have imagined having read the book and a few reviews. When mentioning that Carol was a film now to some dykey friends the consensus was 'what? that miserable novel? oh.'
Click to expand...

Filmmakers will take an existing novel as a starting point then alter it. I have not read the novel so do not know how much Haynes has changed the existing story.

My one criticism of it could be that its , unintentionally , reinforcing stereotypes. As I said the men in film are not portrayed in a bad way. But there is subtext that women are much more in touch with deep emotions whilst men try but are clumsy and hamfisted in there attempts. Implying that relationships between two women somehow are more "natural" even if frowned on by society.

Highsmith work does write of the darker side - Ripley for example. So its not just this novel thats miserable.

Googled articles on the novel and this is interesting look at how the novel has been portrayed and a more positive appraisal of it.
 
From what I've seen of the advance hype I'm definitely not going to waste £14 on "The Hateful Eight".

Reservoir Dogs sent me to sleep - it was too gross to pay attention to.

Now we have what seems to be a satire on spaghetti westerns, complete with Morricone music.

There is only one perfect spaghetti western - "Once upon a time in the West".

Tributes/worthy antecedents such as "The good the bad and the ugly", "For a few dollars more", "My name is nobody" abound - all with genuine star quality actors used to the milieu, and with the authentic music and direction.

Frankly Tarantino is here inviting us to a Methodist year-end service, whilst pretending it is a Tridentine Mass.
 
Saw the revenant today. Wow. Go and see it soon as it's in screen 1. The acting, actors, story just take second place to the landscapes, beautifully shot in amazing light.
 
I also saw the Revenant


Not surprising it looks stunning as the cinematography is by Emmanuel Lubezki who has worked with the director Terrence Malick. This film has been compared to the work of Malick in the way it looks. His film The New World covers some of the same issues. Europeans taking Indian land for example.

This film compares well with Werner Herzogs film Aguirre Wrath of God and Fitzcarroldo. People who are pushed to the limit and dwarfed by the natural world.

Its a long film but as my friend said does not feel like it. Just heard the director Alejandro González Iñárritu on radio talking about. He wanted to make the film a cinematic experience. Film it for real. (like Herzog imo). He succeeds.

All the men in the film are desperate with nothing to lose. Driven by vengence or wracked by guilt. The most unlikeable character Fitzgerald ( Tom Hardy putting in a great performance) is telling it how it is. No one has the moral high ground. Even Glass is making his living helping those colonise Indian land.

There are different levels in the film. Its also about Fathers and sons. Glass ( Di Caprio) the good father and Fitzgerald the bad one. Revenant means someone who has come back from the dead. Glass is barely alive throughout the film driven by revenge. Like Herzog again its about mans relationship with nature. Glass is a spiritual one influenced by living with the Indians. Fitzgerald is cynical (?). There is no God no redemption out in the wilds.

The film really started to have its effect in the second half. Unrelenting grim existential nightmare as Glass struggles to stay alive for one reason only.

The director has said the performance of Leonardo DiCaprio is going back to the acting of the silent era- Buster Keaton is the example he used. The actor not using words but his whole body. I agree. Its an outstanding performance from Leonardo. And the film has whole stretches with little dialogue.
 
Great review gramsci!
It was amazing really that the main character did not much more than grunt.... And what he could convey through this.
I didn't even recognise tom hardy! Found out after and need to look at some stills to see if I can recognise him ;)
 
Saw the Room on Saturday. Extraordinary film. Don't see if you're doing a dry January - we needed a stiff drink afterwards.
 
Hmm, I'm put off the room as I really found the book annoying.... But maybe that's coz I don't have kids?
Or, as one of my book group suggested 'a heart either' ;)
 
sparkybird said:
Hmm, I'm put off the room as I really found the book annoying.... But maybe that's coz I don't have kids?
Or, as one of my book group suggested 'a heart either' ;)
Click to expand...
This could be an insoluble artisic paradox.

I don't read books much, but have on occasion been disappointed by the film version of a book.

Sometimes though it is possible to appreciate the film and the book as alternative interpretation in a parallel universe.

Classic disappointments for me - having read a book, then seen the film later on

1. Bonfire of the Vanities

2. The Da Vinci Code

Another example would be The Naked Lunch - where the film is nothing like the book at all. In fatc IMHO it appropriates a snappy seductive title to a film which is actually a gimmicky biography of the author William S Bourroughs.

The film The Room doesn't even look my cup of tea, so your decision in this case.

I guess the alternative problem could be this - it can be possible to love a dramatisation so much that you may never get to know the book at all. In this category I would put the 1985 BBC TV adaption of Bleak House starring Diana Rigg and Denholme Eliott. Apparently whole chunks of the plot are missing, but it made such an impression on me I simply could not even watch the 2005 remake - which was apparently equally incomplete.

I guess I should have been a good boy at school and read the book.
 
Saw Brookyn today. Completely different film from the one I saw last week (The Revenant).
Liked it. But then I did like the book
The scenes with the girls round the table in Julie Walters' Irish boarding house were brilliant
 
Saw Youth there last night; highly recommended if you've liked Sorrentino's previous stuff, explores a lot of similar themes to La Grande Bellezza and with a similar "upliftingly depressing" mood and a somewhat sprawling structure. Really nice seeing Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel playing grumpy old men together, lots of wryly observed humour. Very much not everyone's cuppa tea though, and I seem to be the only person on the planet to not know WTF the left-handed joke was all about.
 
Not nearly as half as good as the great beauty though.. . apparently the director wanted the same lead for youth, but got Michael Caine instead :(
 
Indeed not as good... I think he's still trying to find his feet in english a little. The Great Beauty felt very confident, Youth much less so (especially in terms of the dialogue), and I did get the impression the role could well have been written with Tony Servillo in mind. Still liked it though :)
 
Tony Servillo, yes him. I did suggest to a few male friends and Mr SB that they should be aiming for this look as there approached old age, not hoodies, jeans and trainers . hilarity ensued...
 
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