The Last Film You Saw

[Madeleine]

Downton Abbey - A New Era - enjoyable as ever, in that rather rushed Downton way! 

Spoiler

But sad to see Violet passing away, though she still had a great final line.

 

[poppy]

Watched 'Where the Crawdads Sing', enjoyed it but do think the book is better.

[Madeleine]

Saw it in the cinema, superb. 

 

Not sure why I posted this, as I haven't seen Crawdads! Maybe it refers to an earlier post?

Edited June 17, 2023 by Madeleine

[poppy]

Watched Mr Holmes today, Holmes in his 90's and his last case. Ian McKellen, always excellent, as Holmes and stellar performance by Milo Parker ( young Gerald in The Durrells). Rather poignant but thoroughly enjoyable.

[Chrissy]

3 hours ago, poppy said:

Watched Mr Holmes today, Holmes in his 90's and his last case. Ian McKellen, always excellent, as Holmes and stellar performance by Milo Parker ( young Gerald in The Durrells). Rather poignant but thoroughly enjoyable.

 

I saw that a few years ago, and loved it! 

[itsmeagain]

Watched a couple of good drama series on Channel 5 this weekend. Both surrounding death in a

river or the sea. One UK, one Australia. 

Edited June 18, 2023 by itsmeagain

[poppy]

On 6/18/2023 at 1:16 AM, Chrissy said:

 

I saw that a few years ago, and loved it! 

 

Wasn't it good! I love this era and the cinematography was beautiful.

[Brian.]

I watched Grave of the Fireflies on Sunday night as it is one of the Studio Ghibli films I hadn't seen. I knew nothing about it before sitting down to watch it so expected something relatively happy with a but of Japanese whimsy thrown in for good measure. I couldn't have been more wrong and the movie has been in my head since I watched it.

 

Last night we went to our local cinema to see Gladiator II. I thought it was ok but not a patch on the first movie. It all felt a little bit of a mess and relies heavily on the action scenes. Movies typically need the viewer to suspend belief but there are a few scenes which are outright ridiculous when you take a second to think about them. I really like Paul Mescal as an actor, he is fantastic in Aftersun, but I'm not sure he quite pulls it off here. Denzel Washington steals the movie. He plays his character perfectly and looks like he really had fun with the role.

[Madeleine]

As I'm not interested in sport I've been catching up with some films over the last couple of weeks:

 

Where the Crawdads Sing - I was, overall, underwhelmed by the book, the film looks great but rushes through a lot of the book's elements, eg how Kya becomes a successful author, how she finds "modern life" when she goes into town to visit her publisher etc, though generally I think it stuck fairly closely to the book, but like a lot of film versions it felt very rushed. 7/10

 

La La Land - finally got round to seeing this, after a shaky start I found it very enjoyable, loved the 80s music and the music in general, whimsical but sweet. 8/10

 

Gladiator II - works as a spectacular blockbuster, Ridley Scott still has the knack for awesome set pieces, even if some of them were a bit far-fetched and not totally convincing (the baboons!) but Paul Mescal is no Russell Crowe, and it was hard to really invest in any of the characters, except possibly Lucilla (from the first film) and parts of it were so camp I felt it almost teetered into parody, the 2 emperors reminded me too much of Joffrey from Game of Thrones, and were so idiotic I couldn't believe in them for one single second. I liked the way they tried to reference the first film, but generally they seemed to be trying too hard to concoct a different plot to the first film.  8/10 for spectacle, 6/10 for casting (Matt Lucas!), 7/10 overall for entertainment/popcorn value.