![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Things what I have watched this weekend
I actually managed three films in one weekend! Gosh. Very impressed with myself, lol.
Saturday Crishna and I finally went to see Super 8, which I LOVED until the last five minutes, which were shit. Spoilery rambling below the cut, but in non-spoilery terms: Kyle Chandler <3, Alice yay, storyline yay, big action sequences KABOOM yay.
Oh, and the trailer for Colombiana looked awesome (LENNIE JAMES IS IN IT! As if I wasn’t interested enough already)
So there were a couple of things that were disappointing. A) that it wasn’t a straight Cloverfield prequel (I know Abrams had said it wasn’t, but I was hoping for wriggle room), because the alien was different B) there were so few women/girls (I had read beforehand about how it was standard Spielberg stuff, and that got it about right) and they didn’t get all that much to do (Alice was great, though), and C) the ENDING. Jesus. So schmaltzy that it damn near ruined the rest of the film.
(and I say this as someone who cried at the dead mother bits in Love, Actually)
I also didn’t like that the kid, whose name I have forgotten already, was so willing to let go of the main reminder of his mother four months after she died. Not any kid, mind you, but this one and the way he’d been portrayed in the film up until that point. Yes, I get it was a visual metaphor for growing up and moving on, blah de blah, but I just don’t think it was the right conclusion for all the set up.
And then on Sunday I watched The Losers, which started off as a fun action movie and lost its way somewhere, becoming a collection of set pieces that really didn’t follow on from one another (the best comparison I can think of at the moment is Transporter 3 – yes, that bad). It was a graphic novel adaptation, and it showed. A couple of scenes (particularly near the end) probably looked good as big comic panels, but when you actually had to show how they got to that point, it looked ridiculous.
Some of it was funny, though, and Chris Evans and Zoe Saldana were particularly good. I did spend most of it wishing I had Rocknrolla/Luther Series 2/Takers to watch again (i.e. something where Idris Elba gets to use his actual accent)
Sunday evening I watched Glorious 39, which the BBC are including as part of their Original British Drama season. Confusingly enough, it’s a film that had a proper cinematic release, so I think that’s cheating a little (according to standards that…no-one has set).
I thought before it was on that it was a bit of a misfire to schedule it while The Hour was on, as i. both star Romola Garai, and ii. Both have a very similar plot at their core.
I think I am just a bit weird, but I don’t like similar things being scheduled against each other – it’s like last year when Luther and Sherlock both had episodes with murderous taxi drivers. Neither comes out looking particularly original or creative (and I know neither set of writers/producers would have known about the other), and the plotlines have less impact (case in point: I struggle to remember the details of the taxi driver killings in Luther, but I damn well remember Nicola Walker).
Having said all that, in the end, it didn’t really matter. It really is just one of my many, many quibbles with TV scheduling, and I’m glad they’ve shown it.
The film focuses on Ann, an adopted child of an MP who stumbles across a plot to stop the second world war by appeasing Hitler and paying him off, basically. It was great, not that most of Twitter agreed.
Favourite thing: Jeremy Northam was in this, playing some shady government type (and not looking any older than he did in Enigma), and seeing as he didn’t die at the end, I am considering this an unofficial prequel to Enigma \o/.
Romola Garai was fantastic, and she just looks lovely. I really liked Ann’s character as well – she was independent, and intelligent, and starts off looking like just another product of the time, but then it turns out she has this absolute core of steel, and well, fuck anyone who gets in her way.
The creeping sense of menace is very well done. By the end of it was so tense I just wanted it to be over. And I was so, so grateful that Ann finally got away (I kept looking at the clock to see if this setback would be the final one or if there was time for her to get out of this only to come up against another problem.
The clues were there as to what was really going on. I could have picked up on them sooner – I spent far too much time thinking that Bill Nighy was just a clueless old duffer – but in hindsight it seems remarkably clear, and the symbolism of it (the upper classes being more inclined to wanting to appease Hitler, Ann being of gypsy stock) is pretty obvious.
I wasn’t entirely convinced that Walter was always there when Ann would suddenly turn round and see him, so it was interesting to find that Ann’s family had done that intentionally.
Quibbles: bit too much of people standing around waiting for something to happen. Ralph looked like a teenager but seemed to be much older as he very quickly ended up in a job where he was influencing the plot. And again, someone who suddenly knows that anyone could be a suspect continues trusting exactly the same people as before (see Freddie in The Hour). And I’m glad Ann’s fiancé wasn’t a baddie, but her lack of caution (after the death of Gilbert) did sort of get him killed (well, that and the massive conspiracy).
Saturday Crishna and I finally went to see Super 8, which I LOVED until the last five minutes, which were shit. Spoilery rambling below the cut, but in non-spoilery terms: Kyle Chandler <3, Alice yay, storyline yay, big action sequences KABOOM yay.
Oh, and the trailer for Colombiana looked awesome (LENNIE JAMES IS IN IT! As if I wasn’t interested enough already)
So there were a couple of things that were disappointing. A) that it wasn’t a straight Cloverfield prequel (I know Abrams had said it wasn’t, but I was hoping for wriggle room), because the alien was different B) there were so few women/girls (I had read beforehand about how it was standard Spielberg stuff, and that got it about right) and they didn’t get all that much to do (Alice was great, though), and C) the ENDING. Jesus. So schmaltzy that it damn near ruined the rest of the film.
(and I say this as someone who cried at the dead mother bits in Love, Actually)
I also didn’t like that the kid, whose name I have forgotten already, was so willing to let go of the main reminder of his mother four months after she died. Not any kid, mind you, but this one and the way he’d been portrayed in the film up until that point. Yes, I get it was a visual metaphor for growing up and moving on, blah de blah, but I just don’t think it was the right conclusion for all the set up.
And then on Sunday I watched The Losers, which started off as a fun action movie and lost its way somewhere, becoming a collection of set pieces that really didn’t follow on from one another (the best comparison I can think of at the moment is Transporter 3 – yes, that bad). It was a graphic novel adaptation, and it showed. A couple of scenes (particularly near the end) probably looked good as big comic panels, but when you actually had to show how they got to that point, it looked ridiculous.
Some of it was funny, though, and Chris Evans and Zoe Saldana were particularly good. I did spend most of it wishing I had Rocknrolla/Luther Series 2/Takers to watch again (i.e. something where Idris Elba gets to use his actual accent)
Sunday evening I watched Glorious 39, which the BBC are including as part of their Original British Drama season. Confusingly enough, it’s a film that had a proper cinematic release, so I think that’s cheating a little (according to standards that…no-one has set).
I thought before it was on that it was a bit of a misfire to schedule it while The Hour was on, as i. both star Romola Garai, and ii. Both have a very similar plot at their core.
I think I am just a bit weird, but I don’t like similar things being scheduled against each other – it’s like last year when Luther and Sherlock both had episodes with murderous taxi drivers. Neither comes out looking particularly original or creative (and I know neither set of writers/producers would have known about the other), and the plotlines have less impact (case in point: I struggle to remember the details of the taxi driver killings in Luther, but I damn well remember Nicola Walker).
Having said all that, in the end, it didn’t really matter. It really is just one of my many, many quibbles with TV scheduling, and I’m glad they’ve shown it.
The film focuses on Ann, an adopted child of an MP who stumbles across a plot to stop the second world war by appeasing Hitler and paying him off, basically. It was great, not that most of Twitter agreed.
Favourite thing: Jeremy Northam was in this, playing some shady government type (and not looking any older than he did in Enigma), and seeing as he didn’t die at the end, I am considering this an unofficial prequel to Enigma \o/.
Romola Garai was fantastic, and she just looks lovely. I really liked Ann’s character as well – she was independent, and intelligent, and starts off looking like just another product of the time, but then it turns out she has this absolute core of steel, and well, fuck anyone who gets in her way.
The creeping sense of menace is very well done. By the end of it was so tense I just wanted it to be over. And I was so, so grateful that Ann finally got away (I kept looking at the clock to see if this setback would be the final one or if there was time for her to get out of this only to come up against another problem.
The clues were there as to what was really going on. I could have picked up on them sooner – I spent far too much time thinking that Bill Nighy was just a clueless old duffer – but in hindsight it seems remarkably clear, and the symbolism of it (the upper classes being more inclined to wanting to appease Hitler, Ann being of gypsy stock) is pretty obvious.
I wasn’t entirely convinced that Walter was always there when Ann would suddenly turn round and see him, so it was interesting to find that Ann’s family had done that intentionally.
Quibbles: bit too much of people standing around waiting for something to happen. Ralph looked like a teenager but seemed to be much older as he very quickly ended up in a job where he was influencing the plot. And again, someone who suddenly knows that anyone could be a suspect continues trusting exactly the same people as before (see Freddie in The Hour). And I’m glad Ann’s fiancé wasn’t a baddie, but her lack of caution (after the death of Gilbert) did sort of get him killed (well, that and the massive conspiracy).