We went to see Black Panther yesterday. It was very good, and I say this as one who is not a fan of superhero films. It was beautiful of course – Afrofuturism is lush visually (I’m less fond of the novels I’ve read in the genre). And so strange and refreshing to see a big […]
Again, get out
Rewatched Get Out. What a fantastic film. This time, of course, I watched it knowing what was to come, having thought about it for many months and read other people’s thoughts, so it was interesting to see how it was all put together. I also noticed the careful, confident ratcheting up of absurdity this time, […]
Bjonk
We went to see The Last Jedi last night. I enjoyed it, though it was too long, highly episodic, poorly paced and lacked the highs of other films. I really liked how it questioned the fantasy tropes of the other Star Wars films – that bloodline isn’t necessarily all, that heroic posturing doesn’t always work, […]
Meditations on the nature of the self and memory
We went to see the sequel to Bladerunner over the weekend. Bladerunner itself is one of my favourite films. We watched it last week in preparation, and once again I was blown away by how beautiful, how intelligent, and how whole hearted it is. It has complete conviction in itself which is one of my […]
Judex
Watched the truly mystifying Judex last night. The GF put it on saying he wouldn’t tell me what it was but I had expressed an interest in watching it. Even if he had told me it would still have been a surprise as the Criterion case made it sound like a smart, stylish and occasionally […]
Malaysia Day
Yesterday was Malaysia Day, celebrating the addition to the federation of Sarawak and Sabah and not to be confused with Merdeka (independence) some weeks earlier. I gather Sarawakians and Sabahans get quite irritated by Merdeka. Interesting tensions here. We went to Hojo tea in Midvalley, a huge mall conglomeration surrounded on all sides by large […]
A third film
A film a day this weekend! This is very unusual for me. The third was Trainspotting 2, which we had started some weeks ago but there was something wrong with the print. I thought it was very good, the best film of the weekend, despite having reservations during the first 20-minute long watch. The callbacks […]
Two movies
On Friday it was Dunkirk at the imax. I find Christopher Nolan invariably lets me down. This was better than Inception, but was let down by some sentimentality and dire dialogue. As always some magnificent images though nothing to match the planetary wave in Inception. Nice to see a war film that was neither ‘war […]
You’ve got the power
We were watching Glow last night – excellent show – and came on the episode with the training montage, overlaid by the most familiar song – so familiar that my eyes glazed over and I was eight years old again, watching a video cassette of my favourite cartoon, the Transformers movie. The song was Dare […]
Get out
But the main thing I forgot to mention. We watched Get Out last night, another fantastic film which has knocked 20th Century Women as both mine and Gentleman Friend’s favourite film of the year so far (more meaningful where he’s concerned as he watches far, far more films than I do). A small, simple, hilarious, […]