Last watched in uni, I think*? Devastating to watch a film set at University of Bristol be so consistently actually filmed not in Bristol, but here we are. A thrill, having recently also rewatched The History Boys, to find James Corden and Dominic Cooper playing school mates.
(* I did, though, go to see the musical adaptation of Starter For 10 at the Bristol Old Vic last year, starring Mel Giedroyc of all people, where the opening song contains the chorus “woah-oh-oh University Challenge! Woah-oh-oh, which team’s gonna win?”)
Really worked for me (as ever for Anderson, to be fair) - he’s growing up, and the cynicism is sneaking in more and more each film. You love to see it. You also love to see Michael Cera doing a Norwegian accent. Maybe goes up a star on reflection, we’ll see.
Sidney Lumet walked so Kenneth Brannagh could… eventually cast Russell Brand in a sequel?! Maybe don’t!
I liked this! But it had been a stressful day! Maybe I just needed comforting! George Clooney is still very much an actor’s director. The third act reveal of “oh Hitler’s in this!” was, admittedly, a curveball.
I liked this! But it had been a stressful day! Maybe I just needed comforting! George Clooney is still very much an actor’s director. The third act reveal of “oh Hitler’s in this!” was, admittedly, a curveball.
Fun enough, definitely runs out of steam towards the end. The multiple endings are a fun gimmick, especially run together at the end. More films should end on the line “I’m going to go home and sleep with my wife!”
The people complaining about AI in this are really falling on their face given how much it’s, you know, not AI generated.
Watched on the plane back, which probably contributed an extra half-star or so to the rating. Hard not to compare it unfavourably to Paddington 2, but a fun enough romp to pass the time in a vacuum (so to speak).
Had the first third of this on in the hotel room getting ready to leave for the day. Came back at the end of the day to find that the same channel was showing the film again, so caught the final third. That is enough to log it here. American television is dreadful, you cannot believe. Not very good, but Stephen Root is in it!
Something something two nickels about a film about a star of the music industry having a film made about them but with a twist. I like the notion of making a documentary about someone but in LEGO, but why did it have to be Pharrell? Much like Better Man, the chronology is all over the place, but it’s at least oddly frank about him running on autopilot and churning out blandness for a while.
An odd one, but the platonic ideal of a plane movie. Didn’t make as much of the admittedly batshit conceit of having Robbie Williams played by a CGI monkey, other than an on-the-nose joke about it every half an hour or so. The chronology bothered me, an admittedly not Robbie Williams superfan (Rock DJ coming up as a musical number in the Take That era? Come on now). Loses a star for not having CGI monkey Robbie Williams go to a UFO convention with Jon Ronson.
Oh boy. I think if I watched it again, it could easily go up two stars. But for now, this is maybe a bridge too far away from cohesion for me.
Second time seeing this, second time in the Watershed. Quite possibly his non-Twin Peaks peak (sorry, no, really, sorry), the perfect level of bleakness and levity and sense and nonsense. Silencio.
We’ve been on something of a kick on the Lonely Islands-associated stuff. This doesn’t hit the heights or have the consistency of Seven Days In Hell, but there’s enough fun moments throughout to keep it fun.
A film designed to be watched accidentally on Film4 at two in the afternoon on a bank holiday with frequent commercial interruptions. But we watched it deliberately on Plex with no ads at all. And, you know what, it actually is quite a lot of fun.
A film in which, within the first five minutes, my secondary school is lauded as a bastion of academic excellence and my university is derided as barely worthy of Oxbridge’s castoffs. But oh how brilliant.
David Lynch season at the Watershed, having just finished a rewatch of Twin Peaks S1 & S2 (and Alasdair’s first watch through). The underlying horror of the series dialled up to 11, with very little in the way of comic relief (minus David Bowie’s brief Louisiana accent). I realise now in retrospect that I should have watched this before The Return, but here we are.
Too much seeing them now, not enough don’t.
Watched as a palate cleanser after Blue Velvet - undiluted Lynchian nonsense in the most fun way.
The first in a series of David Lynch films at the Watershed. They’re all so young it’s like watching Muppet Babies. A masterclass in having to just roll with the dream logic of it all.
I’d forgotten literally everything about this, and it’s an absolute delight from start to finish. Occasionally dips into the sadly prevalent American thing of “let’s not bother writing this, let’s just improv”, but obviously with a lot of the musical elements, it has to be quite tightly written for the most part. As with Seven Days In Hell and Tour De Pharmacy, I don’t inherently care for “fun celebrity cameos!” but the sheer number and quality of them is overwhelming, so crack on.
Oddly without viewpoint (I mean, other than “man shooting other man is bad”) or motivation.
A bafflingly low production value documentary that somehow seems to have taken pride of place in the Netflix algorithm. It’s not uninteresting, and I suppose it is to the film’s credit that it doesn’t drag the narrative out beyond stretching point. And, you know what, sure, why not, I’m happy believing that’s a real portrait of Shakespeare, screw it. Just, yeah. How did it achieve such prominence?
Last watched, as I recall correctly, on the tail end of a bad cold quite late at night at the Showcase a couple of days before the end of my last proper term of uni, 9 years ago. It holds up, even accounting for the deep pang of nostalgia for my peak months. The push and pull of what’s actually going on is played beautifully, the casting is bang on, and even if the tension is not necessarily the same on the sofa as it is on the big screen, it’s still formidable.
This was fine! Things happened, the occasional competent joke was made, the music was good enough!
God I cannot wait to be back up at the Fringe again. This is a lot of fun - it captures well a lot of the ups and downs of the Fringe, and the five comics that Laws follows here span a range of familiarity for me, from “never heard of” to “have been drinking with until 2 in the morning”, so it’s lovely to see a bit more of that.
More to the point - just, go to the Fringe. Go to the Fringe and see five shows a day and give generously to the Free Fringe buckets and find just how much is out there that you didn’t know existed. It is the best thing i the world.
Also, of course my friend Morgan turns up for one scene and manages in that time to get his shirt off. Fair play to the lad.
Ok, but why?
Consistently funny throughout, but I forgot we only lasted one film in the LEGO Movie franchise before the stop motion realism was dropped.
The dog was a very good boy, yes he was, yes he was.
A lot of time for this - quietly understated, and Ronan is as good as ever. Love the hair colour as chronology device, whilst still leaving a decent amount of ambiguity up to interpretation.
Does not feel its runtime (a compliment!). It’s a whole load of stuff thrown at the screen and a good amount of it sticks.
Rewatched for the first time in quite a while - still a big fan of a lot of it, even if maybe not as enamoured as back in 2014.
Hmm. Was hoping for more, but fun in its own way.
Rewatched at the Watershed post its big win, with Alasdair. I think the way it bifurcates is beautifully done and adds a remarkable amount of heft to the final scene. Ruined by George Ferguson’s wife sat next to me talking all the way through it.
Watched at the end of a very long, stressful week, and felt all the better for it.
Kind of dramatically inert for a lot of it, as you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. It doesn’t, not really, but maybe?
Won me over eventually, at the point at which I just decided to stop caring to try to track every bit of detail and just let it wash over me instead.
Inevitably remarkably one-sided, but a perfectly serviceable mid-budget drama.
Really liked this for the majority of its runtime until the epilogue which really rather soured me on the whole thing. Unlike the rest of it, it was showy for showiness’s sake, and completely self indulgent, which you’d almost be able to get away with if it wasn’t after 3 hours of the rest of the film.
You know what, I enjoyed this more than I thought I would. It’s fun to look at, but it’s all empty calories.
Solidly good fun, moreso when it’s just enjoying the premise rather than getting bogged down in the details.
Suffers a little from “The Zone Of Interest syndrome” - it feels like a lot of the rapturous reviews (and just look at the distribution of ratings on Letterboxd) are conflating being good and being important. It is at least more narratively compelling than Zone, but come on, this is not the 100th best film ever made just because it deals with a historic atrocity.
Sue me, I like Sorkinesque harried backstage “before the big show” drama
Having absolutely no particular interest in the veracity of this as a representation of Bob Dylan’s life story, I enjoyed this. It left me wanting to actually go and listen to his music, so that’s a win, and Chalamet is typically strong. Elle Fanning takes the cake, though.
Not as bad as everyone else says - if you think this is the worst film you’ve ever seen, you need to watch more films. But! That doesn’t mean it’s good! Or should be nominated for Best Picture! Quite the surprise to me that the least explicable musical moment in a film where a song about gender reaffirming surgery is performed in a Bangkok clinic with the lyrics “from penis to vagina” is that, at one point, a swing version of Supreme by Robbie Williams features heavily.
As someone who actively avoids looking in a mirror if they can help it, this.. this was a difficult watch at times. Profoundly affecting, and a real measure of Lynch’s ability for self-restraint.
It’s fun, in retrospect, watching the three of Coogan, Bryson, and Winterbottom figure out what would become the cornerstone of The Trip in realtime.
(Absolutely no recollection of having watched this for a second time in like the third week of uni, according to Letterboxd)
Suitably interesting, if mostly for the guided but light touch questioning that prompts the direct narration from John himself. I love how much he loves new acts, to be fair. A really interesting moment where he takes against, instinctively, an artist self-describing as “queer”, and watching David Furnish explain it is, hmm. Yeah. Fascinating.
So preoccupied with how to stop Donald Trump and the far right from stealing an election, they forgot to consider that people might just vote them in anyway.
Rewatched as a light thing to have on in the evening with a bad cold, and this was just the thing. It’s adorable, and it’s such a shame that Pixar’s three-film late resurgent period coincided with a global pandemic and thus shunted straight to streaming. This, Soul, and (to a slightly lesser extent) Turning Red deserve more credit.
I wouldn’t change it, lord no, but my god the score is so hilariously 90s.
Incredibly horny, to the extent that I don’t think it really does what it wants to do.
Surprisingly charming, given how much the trailer for Memoir Of A Snail has rankled me.
I know they’re obviously distinct things, affecting different people, but oddly I think Nickel Boys did this more effectively.
Just as bad as 7 years ago! Baffling at every single possible opportunity. Alasdair asked me to pause it at 30 minutes in because he was convinced it must somehow nearly be over. But no.
Fair enough, I was tearing up at the doorman phonecall. It is not, in the scheme of things, much consolation, but it is still nonetheless a relief that through him and the unseen veteran reporter, there are men here who, y’know, care. Shouldn’t have to be noteworthy in 2025, but here we are.
If this had been made 10 years ago, everyone would be describing it as Allenesque and I do find that funny. A really lovely set of performances, in various levels of subtlety and broadness, bringing the most out of a strong script and inspired direction. That last shot!
It’s fun and not without its charms, but it never quite clicks in.
It’s fun and not without its charms, but it never quite clicks in.
The perfect film to watch on a TV with motion smoothing turned on and your boyfriend’s mum talking over.
Big fan of having them see The Importance Of Being Earnest at the theatre. Otherwise, wonderfully Wilde.
Feel like I got scammed when I realised Them There were completely uninvolved in this. Some good gags dotted throughout.
Complicated feelings about this one! About pretty much everything other than the cancer. Does at times feel like the trailer existed first and someone thought “that looks great, flesh that out another 1h45 and we could have a film on our hands”.
Complicated feelings about this one! About pretty much everything other than the cancer. Does at times feel like the trailer existed first and someone thought “that looks great, flesh that out another 1h45 and we could have a film on our hands”.
Begrudgingly, I quite enjoyed this. Amiable Sunday afternoon fare, and honestly amazed it wasn’t longer, which is a higher compliment than it might seem.
Maybe I’m getting soft in my old age (31) but while the writing is still absolute dross, I didn’t mind it so much? I mean, still terrible.
Really liked this. The use of first person POV is handled incredibly deftly, with the right level of subtle and unsubtle cues to indicate transition in viewpoint. Some really fascinating choices in service of deeper story telling (older Elwood’s “perspective” being more removed and how that came to be, the use of doubling up moments without cutting but with different outcomes) that I’ll be thinking about for a while.
There’s a moment in Hollywoodgate where the Taliban laments that if they had had all these resources that the Americans had had, they would be ruling the world right now. The remaining 90 minutes somewhat casts that into doubt.
Watched in 35mm at the Watershed. Gorgeously shot, fascinatingly monochrome throughout in different ways.
I miss when Letterboxd wasn’t overrun by gen z
Happy new year indeed. Tell me more of the man who just had half a phone handed to him. 6 years ago I apparently wrote that this might be PTA’s most ambiguous film, and I think I stand by that.