Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

List the films you've seen at the cinema: 2019

I'd watch Avengers out of that lot but only if you've seen the two dozen other movies in the MCU. Red Joan has been poorly received and Pet Sematary has been unfavourably compared with the first version
 
Eighth Grade. Follows Kayla (who's 13 or 14 I guess?) through her last week of eighth grade. She's smart and awkward and doesn't fit in and has to suffer the excrutiating horror of a pool party at the house of the most popular and cool girl in her class. Her dad worries that she's sad and unhappy but has no idea what to do or say to try and make things better. God, who'd be a teenager, especially in the days of social media and mobile phones. This is funny and sad and makes you glad you're past -- well mainly at least -- all that stuff that felt so important and heartbreaking at the time. Highly recommended.
 
Eighth Grade. Follows Kayla (who's 13 or 14 I guess?) through her last week of eighth grade. She's smart and awkward and doesn't fit in and has to suffer the excrutiating horror of a pool party at the house of the most popular and cool girl in her class. Her dad worries that she's sad and unhappy but has no idea what to do or say to try and make things better. God, who'd be a teenager, especially in the days of social media and mobile phones. This is funny and sad and makes you glad you're past -- well mainly at least -- all that stuff that felt so important and heartbreaking at the time. Highly recommended.
Seeing this at the weekend - can't wait!
 
Pity the poor Tolkien movie. Released at the same time as Endgame and word of mouth says it's shit. No one's pirated it, (Pirate Bay search for Tolkien 2019 video = no hits). And the IMDB trivia page for it has 5 items. Even the Tolkien estate wants nothing to do with it.
 
I have read nothing great about the Tolkien film. A shame given his contribution to the arts.
 
I have read nothing great about the Tolkien film. A shame given his contribution to the arts.
I read an autobiography. He was a fairly boring bloke who sat in a lot of dark rooms reading. Okay, he was at the Somme, so I'm sure they could spin that out, but otherwise.....no reason at all he would make an interesting film subject without some wild exaggerations and speculations.
 
I read an autobiography. He was a fairly boring bloke who sat in a lot of dark rooms reading. Okay, he was at the Somme, so I'm sure they could spin that out, but otherwise.....no reason at all he would make an interesting film subject without some wild exaggerations and speculations.

You could probably make something out of his relationship with CS Lewis, but still not an easy sell.
 
Vox Lux. Follows a young girl's rise to superstardom after experiencing tragedy. The start -- the horrific event that precipitates her rise to fame -- is well done but it loses it after that. Real lack of sympathetic characters meant I didn't care what happened and it was all just quite dull really (even the concert scenes felt quite remote and lacking in atmosphere). Meh.
 
Loro.
Paulo Sorrentino's biopic of Silvio Berlusconi. Didn't think I'd enjoy this I knew nothing about the subject, but it zips along nicely despite its running time and despite the fact that it's been cut down from two movies, it's narratively coherent. Also, I'd never seen a Sorrentino movie, but was aware of his sumptuous sets and costumes - this doesn't disappoint as such, but at times comes over as empty and superficial as a Pirelli photoshoot and as Berlusconi himself (which may be the entire point). The script is excellent and delivered with verve by the two leads especially. Some wonderful surreal moments mitigate against some of the more on-the-nose visual metaphors that occasionally grate. 3 temperature-sensitive sheep out of 5
 
Dragged Across Concrete
S Craig Zahler's brutal thriller starring Mel Gibson and Vince Vaughn as racist pigs doing very bad things with criminals. It's a hideous conservotrolling exploitation film that thinks it's Tarantino but is more like Michael Winner.
 
Dragged Across Concrete
S Craig Zahler's brutal thriller starring Mel Gibson and Vince Vaughn as racist pigs doing very bad things with criminals. It's a hideous conservotrolling exploitation film that thinks it's Tarantino but is more like Michael Winner.
saw this on download as I noticed it was the same director from Brawl in Cell 99, I literally thought 'hey, Mel Gibson, haven't seen him in anything for ages' and then remembered why. It could have been shorter and the politics were gleefully awful, even including a little 'you can't tell who is a chick and who is a guy' conversation.
 
This morning's cinema options are
  • The curse of La Llorona
  • Red Joan
  • Fisherman's friends
  • Dogs journey home
  • Shazam!
Any suggestions?
 
Last edited:
3 Faces
Iranian film, made in secret, as director Jafar Panahin is banned from making them, this is a no-budget film about a film director and film star trying to locate a young girl who wants to become an actress, to the consternation and ire of the local community. It's warmer and funnier than it sounds, and I need to watch more Iranian cinema. 3 faces out of 5
 
Wild Rose
Jessie Buckley plays a Glaswegian mum of two, newly released from jail, who wants to follow her dreams of becoming a country singer. Her accent is a bit wobbly, but Buckley is a revelation here, making us root for a character who is at times difficult to feel sympathy for. The plot tends towards the melodramatic but my cynicism was eroded by the performances and by the excellent music (which normally would make me run to the hills) 4 country but not westerns out of 5
 
High Life.

A group of criminals inhabit a spaceship on it's way to a black hole as an alternative to the death penalty. At the same time one of them is a doctor/mad scientist and they're subjected to some weird experiments involving reproduction. It's quite confusing and I probably need to see it again but I do like Robert Pattinson. In fact the performances are great all round.
 
The Kid Who Would Be King
Joe Cornish's homage to British Film Foundation films of the 70s and 80s. The kid actors in it are brilliant, especially Louis Ashbourne Serkis (the spit of his dad) and there's never a dull moment but it falls a bit flat - the middling CGI doesn't help and the monsters are too scary to appeal to younger kids. Its saving grace is the treatment and outcome of the young hero's quest to reconnect with his long lost father. I'm not surprised it bombed in the US with audiences expecting another Harry Potter. 3 once and future kings out of 5
 
Avengers End Game
Confession: I have only seen a handful of the 21 other films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and have only seen two of them (Black Panther and Captain Marvel) at the cinema. I am also a 46 year old white man who is not the target audience of such films.
BUT: I thought it was a honking bag of shit. I have to confess that I nodded off five times so lost the plot a bit, but the action sequences were underlit and boring, so failed to wake me up from my slumber even with the loudest of crashes and bangs. I thought the MUC was supposed to be a bunch of films all about freaks and misfits finding a way of being accepted but by being themselves, so why did they ruin it with a bunch of lazy shit fat jokes? So much for inclusion and diversity. 1 uneaten salad out of 5
 
Eighth Grade.
Bo Burnham's astonishing debut featuring Elsie Fisher as Kayla, a shy 13 year old making cringy unwatched inspirational YouTube videos and trying to navigate the usual bullshit of being an adolescent. I may not have grown up with social media and the constant need for online validation, but Kayla is no more or less self-conscious than anyone growing up at any other time, so I completely identified with her excruciatingly embarrassing trials and tribulations. Absolutely loved this. The whole cast is brilliant, but Josh Hamilton deserves mention as Kayla's loving but blundering (and embarrassingly inconvenient) dad. 5 bananas out of 5
 
Amazing Grace. Basically Aretha Franklin singing with a Gospel choir for an hour and a half. That voice.

Beats. It's 1994 and protests are underway against the Criminal Justice Bill, even in West Lothian, and two teenagers end up at their first rave. I really liked this and for once, it captures the party scenes really well. By coincidence, saw a play a few weeks back by the same writer and with one of the actors from this in it. That was excellent.

Madeline's Madeline. Unstable 16 year-old gets into acting, clashes with her mother and hero worships her acting teacher. The actor playing Madeline is great but the film itself is meh -- lots of it's about the process of developing an immersive play and found that pretty uninteresting tbh.
 
Beats
Can't recommend this enough. It's the best film to depict rave culture I've ever seen - portraying the joyous intensity, the ecstasy and the camaraderie of dancing with mates in a mucky warehouse. The soundtrack is perfect - all banging techno and rave with some ambient and happy house chucked in - no cheesy commercial shite, just big tunes such as Gravitational Arch of 10 that caused euphoria on dancefloors in the 90s without bothering the charts. Not only do we have all that but, being contextualised by being framed around the introduction of the Criminal Justice Act which banned illegal raves (there's even a discussion of the weird repetitive beats clause prompted by the radio playing Autechre's Flutter) we also have a canny political streak with acute observations on class and a touching and rare portrayal of male friendship/platonic love that you just don't see on screens often enough. Go see it if you can, I don't think it'll be around for long, though I hope does really well. 5 sweaty hugs out of 5
 
Back
Top Bottom