Film 2016

For a variety of reasons (including but not limited to a new job and an effort to go to the cinema every weekend) I've not been visiting NSC as often, and pretty much not posting on NSC for a while, which means I've neglected this thread. The last film I mentioned on here was Gods of Egypt. Since then I've seen:


The Secret Life of Pets 2D - Not as good as the trailer
Independence Day: Resurgence 2D - The advances in special effects and the over reliance on CGI in movies over the last however many years means this film was never going to have that spectacle feel that the first did. It was an ok alien invasion/disaster movie, but not likely to stand out in film history
Central Intelligence - Quite fun, moreso than I expected it would be as I can find Kevin Hart a little irritating at times, but he was bearable in this.
The Neon Demon - Still not entirely sure what this was about. Just weird.
Now You See Me 2 - I quite enjoyed this (though like the first one, find the reliance on CG rather than physical magic a bit of a detriment), particularly Dan Radcliffe and his ability to play gentleman evil and psychotic evil.
Ghostbusters - I enjoyed this. I don't think it was great, but a decent couple of hours entertainment.
Star Trek Beyond - Some nice throwbacks to the series, but it felt quite generic
The BFG - As a kid I loved Roald Dahl books, I'm not sure that there has been a great movie version of any of his books, except Willy Wonka, which by all accounts, Dahl hated. This didn't change that trend. It was ok, but not much better than that.
Jason Bourne - Bourne by numbers. It was too formulaic for me to really enjoy but even a formulaic Bourne movies is a passable movie.
Finding Dory 3D - I want to have enjoyed this more than I did. It was good, but not a patch on Finding Nemo.
Suicide Squad - I went to see this several times. I thought it was poorly put together. I think even without the prior knowledge that there had been more than one cut of the movie, it would have felt like there had been too much interference. Characters introduced three times, the main hook of the film explained a couple of times. The emotional centre of the finale relies on
The Purge: Election Year - I've only seen parts of the first movie, but I don't think that mattered. While the first seemed like an original idea with a clever gimmick at its heart, it feels like that has been eschewed in favour of generic horror/thriller/action. It was ok in a generic sense.
Mechanic: Resurrection - Probably a decent direct to DVD movie, not really deserving of a theatrical release, but Tommy Lee Jones was almost as fun as he was in Under Siege
Sausage Party - Once the humorous novelty of adult content in animated form wears off (quite early for me) the film didn't stand up.
Morgan - Not as deep or philosophical as it wanted to be.
Kubo and the Two Strings - I quite liked this, though thought it was a little too dark for its target audience.
Don't Breathe - Really good for the first two thirds. The final third would have worked better if it was less explicit in its execution, by showing what was happening, it ventured into gross out teen comedy territory, rather than sticking to horror/thriller.
Anthropoid - I quite liked this.
Captain Fantastic - I also quite liked this, though felt I didn't like it as much as some critics. It wasn't as funny or whimsical as the promotional material made it seem.
Hell or High Water - Really liked this, though there was something distractingly perfect about Chris Pine's face.
Hunt for the Wilderpeople - I think this may be my favourite film of the year so far. Loved it.
The Girl With All The Gifts - I quite liked this, again, not as much as the critics but a good film.
The Magnificent Seven - It was ok. I'm not a big fan of westerns, this didn't change my mind, but the charm of some of the actors carried it a long way, and it was fun to see some western cliches.
Swiss Army Man - Mildly disappointing. I expected a bit more to it. But Again props to Dan Radcliffe. I think he, Emma Watson and Tom Felton have all made great choices post-Harry Potter to not be overshadowed by it, each with different paths.
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children - One of Burton's better films of late, but still missing something. Like consistent internal logic.
The Greasy Strangler - There are no words to adequately describe this film. I went to the duke of york's for a special preview screening with a Q&A with the director, the producer and the executive producer. It was way out there. Reminiscent of early Peter Jackson, John Walters, Troma, Napolean Dynamite.
War on Everyone - I wanted to like this more than I did. I like the director's previous work, but this seemed to not fully click.
Girl on the Train - I didn't like this. I had a lot of issues with it; I didn't find Blunt sympathetic, which is kind of important. The point of the story is that we don't really know the other people, we have a false idea through Blunt's chatacter, as such we don't actually know them, so don't care. Then it felt like the resolution was a lazy cliche.
American Honey - This was a decent uneventful indie type movie, but did feel quite long and I was looking at my watch a few times.

Acker79 said:

Yup. There was about six or seven of them with individual pizzas. In fairness, I didn't actually smell them, even though I was quite close. It just surprised me because it was the Duke of York's. I wouldn't be surprised if it happened at the odeon or cineworld, but DOY isn't that sort of cinema.

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Just an update to this; it turns out the DoY and Komedia actually sell the Pizzas themselves.

The final weekend of the festival came to a decent end. As real life takes over again, one's memories wilt, but I shall do what I can to recall. The Saturday had just one flick, and that didn't seem right. So, of course, Fulham Road cineworld came a calling. It's about an hour's cycle, and has a few screens of general bobbins, so it merged my wish for exercise and time consuming irrelevance. Inferno - thanks to channel 5, I have the feeling that I watched bits, or even all of, at least 2 - I don't know if there've been more or not - of these religious detective tales. Ron Howard was at the helm, and whilst it bobbled along with Tom Hanks as as the memory-effected professor, it did so without a great sense of thrill. Hanks's performance for the most part wasn't good, but he does what he's paid for. Amusingly, the evil fiend of it all, had plans for the world that my manager actually spoke of a couple of days before. I've told her to watch the film and feel delight that she's finally represented on screen.

Safari - this was the festival film, and was a horrifying watch. A documentary about Austrians who travel to Namibia to go on hunting holidays. Told in a deadpan way, the main set of parents and their two late-teened children, who rejoice at the likelihood of flooring a white gnu from a distance. At times when interviewed they showed their humanity, of both the adrenalin rush and high emotion of that moment of slaughter, but they are very much portrayed as dated and unnecessarily brutal. There are other more comical couples there - the film starts with aged pair of lookalike bloaters applying sun screen to their bulging bodies - who talk endlessly of the price of each creature, and fall asleep drinking beer in one of the hides. I won't forget the awfulness of seeing a giraffe shot and limp and squirm from life, followed by it being skinned and sawn back at the lodge. Horrid. Very well made doc though. Colour and class derided and the barbarism exposed to sicken.


Sunday was a 4-film farewell to it.

Prevenge - this is listed as a black comedy, and there were funny moments, but disturbed more than tickled. Directed by and starring Alice Lowe,from Sightseers, she plays a pregnant woman persuaded to kill by the voice of her unborn child. Her victims are pretty funny, and what reminded me of Polanski in the controlled mania of it was effective, but I expected a bit more and became a bit disconnected toward the end. Good stuff though.

The Ghoul - this also had Alice Lowe in, for a short while, but was a real low budget psychological drama, about a man who fantasises about being a policeman, and solving cases. He needs care, but this sends him down another tangent aided by a madcap psychologist and nights out on narcotics. The q&a after was great, and the film itself wasn't bad.

The Salesman - top film. Asghar Farhardi makes beautifully layered and unfolding emotional and social thrillers in which there are downsides to everyone. This is about a media teacher in Iran who is putting on a version of Death of a Salesman with his wife. The couple move into a new flat and the wife is attacked. The teacher's aim to find out what happened is gripping, as countless questions are raised and tones of Iranian society bared with how each can be answered. It's particularly about the position of women. Great film. I'll see it again when it's out.

Aquarius - I turned down the big Ben Wheatley film to finish the festival with this very human Brazilian tale of memory and development and standing up for yourself. 2 and a half hours, but emotionally rich and honest and playful. Pretty good finale.

Outside of the festival I went yesterday to see Ethel and Ernest, a loving ode by Raymond Briggs of his parents and their full relationship. Simple people, as is explained from the very start, but their romance is so true from the 1920s onwards, and their lives are shaken horrendously by the war. Was rather moving animation. A lady at Komedia told me to take in hankie and prepare to shed a tear. I didnae, if course, being a rock hard geezer, but was moved indeed.

I'm sure you cinemaphiles would have seen better, but Queen of Katwe goes right to the very top of my, albeit limited, list of best films 2016.
It would also rate high in my all time list, too.

Who would have thought chess could be so exciting.

Stat Brother said:

I'm sure you cinemaphiles would have seen better, but Queen of Katwe goes right to the very top of my, albeit limited, list of best films 2016.
It would also rate high in my all time list, too.

Who would have thought chess could be so exciting.

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I enjoyed it, albeit I wouldn't put it that high on my list. About 20 minutes longer than it needed to be. But the acting was excellent.

sussex_guy2k2 said:

I enjoyed it, albeit I wouldn't put it that high on my list. About 20 minutes longer than it needed to be. But the acting was excellent.

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I took my preteen kids to see it.
We don't go to the cinema that often hence caveating my glowing review.
But nevertheless I thought it was excellent and totally agree about the acting, I just found myself so involved with the story time wasn't an issue for me or the kids, who were also raving about it..

Stat Brother said:

I took my preteen kids to see it.
We don't go to the cinema that often hence caveating my glowing review.
But nevertheless I thought it was excellent and totally agree about the acting, I just found myself so involved with the story time wasn't an issue for me or the kids, who were also raving about it..

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That's fair enough. I'm one of those with an unlimited card, so I've seen a lot of films - that tends to lead to over analysis. I agree, though, it was good and I'd recommend it.

Giving this a go later, like the subject matter.

The Visit

Two young kids, a sister and her little brother, go away to a remote farmhouse and spend a week with the grandparents they had never met, as their single mum has been estranged from them for years since she left home. But all is not as it seems…

I don’t particularly like M Night Shyamalan. Much like James Wilson, he impressed at the beginning but then rapidly descended into complete bobbins before disappearing up his own arse. And I don’t much care for hand-held camera movies either, so I really didn’t have high hopes for this flick at all. But I actually ended up enjoying this muchly. For once, the hand-held aspect isn’t shaky or distracting, in fact I barely noticed. The two child actors are excellent – very believable as brother and sister, well written and they manage not to be annoying, which is certainly not easy for any american child. And I didn’t see the twist coming. A decent little chiller, unsettling in parts, filmed against a beautifully bleak backdrop. Recommended.

Prince Monolulu said:

Giving this a go later, like the subject matter.

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Oh bloody hell, don't let Tyrone-Biggums know or you won't hear the end of it.

I love the Lee Child series of books featuring Jack Reacher and have read them all.
They are all basically the same sort of plot and are all highly entertaining (to me anyway)

I was disappointed in the first of the movies to be transferred to the big screen, but not this latest one.

Jack Reacher - Never Go back was excellent. Strongly recommended

8.5/10

Down to see Daniel Blake at the Connaught on Sunday....£4 ticket leaves plenty of money for refreshments

I also enjoyed the Dan Brown series of books, and was looking forward to Inferno

Unfortunately this film didn't do the book justice. The sound was poor, the continuity was amateurish and the characters unconvincing.

I'm sorry that I couldn't manage to give this more than 4/10

Just saw Arrival. A well acted film that has a decent twist until you realise that it makes absolutely no logical sense (and yes, I do understand the concepts that are being discussed). It has a very slow second Act which will stop a lot of people enjoying the film I'd imagine, but it asks a lot of big questions and generally answers them well enough without relying on big action sequences to pad out the film. Certainly a sci-fi for adults rather than children. 7/10 for me, although I'd love to hear other people's' opinions.

sussex_guy2k2 said:

Just saw Arrival. A well acted film that has a decent twist until you realise that it makes absolutely no logical sense (and yes, I do understand the concepts that are being discussed). It has a very slow second Act which will stop a lot of people enjoying the film I'd imagine, but it asks a lot of big questions and generally answers them well enough without relying on big action sequences to pad out the film. Certainly a sci-fi for adults rather than children. 7/10 for me, although I'd love to hear other people's' opinions.

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Aiming to go and see Arrival this week. Tho with limited expectations. With very few exceptions, movies that make it into your local cinema turn out to be invariably TRITE. Picturehouses chain are far from exempt from that sweeping generalisation. IMHO, like.

A couple of flicks seen this week, in a relatively new venue to me, made most wonderful that for one of the films the only other viewer was a woman with an umbrella. She'd taken up home on a sofa seat, and fully lay down. I sat 3 rows behind her to avoid seeing her at all, although i sometimes saw her twitching feet spilling over the armrest to her left.

Anywhat, the first i saw was Nocturnal Animals. It opens provocatively with an array of obese women individually dancing nakedly to camera in slow motion. It certainly creates a sense of mixed emotions, ones that are befuddled as the film then progresses. It's edited excellently, with the layers of our lead, Amy Adams, reading the story sent to her by her ex husband, inspired by her fiendish departure from their union which is shown in bits via flashback, and her going through a crisis now over the meaninglessness of the art world she is in and the rich comforts she's surrounded by. The music to it all had a Hitchcockian feel to it and the suspense was finely weaved. Some of the dialogue in parts was not as potent as it might have been, but it was a good and gripping film that raised a number of questions in amongst the snippets of emotional and physical violence. Well worth a view.

The other film, accompanied by the woman's twitching foot, was The Accountant. Ben Affleck is best when he prevents his face from attempting to move and emit what might be character. In this, he does so, but that stillness in itself is meant to be a message for who his character, an autistic mathematical genius with kung fu skills and a sometime wish to kill, was. His "acting" was amusing, but it helped the film be fun. It also tickled me how in films no one's hair ever changes. In this one, from the age of around 9. Overall, it felt similar to the film Salt from a few years ago. Action and gunfire and childhood flashbacks to training. It was alright, aided by Affleck's as ever dodgy performance.

Tom Hark said:

Aiming to go and see Arrival this week. Tho with limited expectations. With very few exceptions, movies that make it into your local cinema turn out to be invariably TRITE. Picturehouses chain are far from exempt from that sweeping generalisation. IMHO, like.

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I wouldn't bother Tom, as you and Meade confirm EVERY single film made from hollywood and mainstream uk studios is without exception complete and utter Trite and I am sure Arrival will be no different. It is film making for pea brains. I have seen about 20 films at the multiplex this year and they were all Rubbish. Stick to the Duke of Yorks and Komedia as they will show independent films that are ALL superb and for people with a higher intellect.

I worry at the moment NSC is about to disappear up it's own backside. What with this and the X Factor thread and many others, rampant SNOBBERY

Save your tenner mate

Barry Izbak said:

I love the Lee Child series of books featuring Jack Reacher and have read them all.
They are all basically the same sort of plot and are all highly entertaining (to me anyway)

I was disappointed in the first of the movies to be transferred to the big screen, but not this latest one.

Jack Reacher - Never Go back was excellent. Strongly recommended

8.5/10

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Im a big fan of the books too, easy to read and cant go wrong with a good over comes bad etc..

I did however prefer the first film to this one, again the story was messed about with a bit much to my annoyance

Uncle Spielberg said:

I wouldn't bother Tom, as you and Meade confirm EVERY single film made from hollywood and mainstream uk studios is without exception complete and utter Trite and I am sure Arrival will be no different. It is film making for pea brains. I have seen about 20 films at the multiplex this year and they were all Rubbish. Stick to the Duke of Yorks and Komedia as they will show independent films that are ALL superb and for people with a higher intellect.

I worry at the moment NSC is about to disappear up it's own backside. What with this and the X Factor thread and many others, rampant SNOBBERY

Save your tenner mate

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I did see Arrival , but it was on at the Komedia , but I enjoyed it : I'm confused.

Eric Potts said:

I did see Arrival , but it was on at the Komedia , but I enjoyed it : I'm confused.

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Just back from the matinee of Arrival at Komedia. Though I seem to be pretty much in the minority on this one, I found it strictly B Movie. Where to start? Complete set of stock military and media cut-outs and sub-Independence Day graphic depiction of an alien spaceship. Amy Adams did her level best to drag you into the position where you cared about her character. Forest Whitaker and Jeremy Renner? Not so much. Let's just say they won't be troubling the judges come the awards season. The soundtrack had it's moments, and the film makers had an adequate stab at the central premise of how do you communicate with an alien entity - why are they here? - but other than that, can't really find many other positives apart from it killed a wet November afternoon in an entertaininment-neutral way. I guess it would probably seem OK for anyone who had not been previously fully-engaged both emotionally and intellectually by the magnificent Interstellar. On the plus side, it was better than Gravity. 5/10.

Tom Hark said:

Just back from the matinee of Arrival at Komedia. Though I seem to be pretty much in the minority on this one, I found it strictly B Movie. Where to start? Complete set of stock military and media cut-outs and sub-Independence Day graphic depiction of an alien spaceship. Amy Adams did her level best to drag you into the position where you cared about her character. Forest Whitaker and Jeremy Renner? Not so much. Let's just say they won't be troubling the judges come the awards season. The soundtrack had it's moments, and the film makers had an adequate stab at the central premise of how do you communicate with an alien entity - why are they here? - but other than that, can't really find many other positives apart from it killed a wet November afternoon in an entertaininment-neutral way. I guess it would probably seem OK for anyone who had not been previously fully-engaged both emotionally and intellectually by the magnificent Interstellar. On the plus side, it was better than Gravity. 5/10.

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I can totally see where you're coming from. I'm yet to see Interstellar, but Gravity was one of the worst films I've ever seen, so totally in agreement with you there!