Watching "The Platform".
How the Hell does this pile of crap have a decent rating?

The acting is atrocious.
The plot is already razor thin and the development is infuriatingly mundane.

Repetition might be a form of comedy, but it makes for extremely lazy dialogue.
It's also guilty of shoe horning in a very dreary and childish political ideology which is likely the root cause of its rating.
A damning indictment of any critic would be any acknowledgement of this as a positive in their review.

Political

It's like a writer accidentally turned in his ten year old's social studies homework instead of a script and they just worked around it.

The Platform - 0/4

Like being patronised by a Spanish imbecile for 90 minutes.
Appalling rubbish.

I disagree Seanny but I still love you

It was Communist propaganda dressed up as a parody of Communist propaganda.
If Vincent Canby got his hands on this thing he would have ripped it to shreds.

1917

8/10

1917 is phenomenal. The technical achievements of that film are ground breaking and mind blowing

I'm currently watching Uncut Gems.
Very early on it sets up a lot of connected situations to be anxious about as the film progresses.
I don't gamble and I don't trust people with my money so this film is torturous.

I am enjoying the performances, I just can't see any way it ends happily.

Hope you had a pot of coffee before the viewing cuz it's great but exhausting

Actually I drank 2 tall cans of Relentless energy drink and nearly had a fucking panic attack. That isn't a joke.
That film is a painful exercise in the unparalleled pace of the highs and lows of high roller gambling addiction.

I saw a Mark Kermode review that said it invoked Bad Lieutenant the old Abel Ferrara film and I would agree if not for the fact that the newer Bad Lieutenant is actually more frenetic and a better example of addiction as a whole.

Uncut Gems was an incredible film though, one I will not forget anytime soon. No matter who says what, that ending was world class. Completely perfect as a story, the realism could cause every viewer to hate themselves a little more.

As for performances it was all beautiful. Not one aspect was misused or misappropriated in any way. The absurdity of it was so close to real life I would bet good money that a substantial amount of improvisation was allowed.

Adam Sandler is one of my heroes. I realise how unpopular that opinion is and I totally understand it. I just see the world class actor hiding in between silly comedies and I imagine how much more he has to offer.

I honestly think he will win an Oscar one day. He has it in him.

4/4 by the way

I forgot to say how good the woman that played his girlfriend was, Julia Fox.
She was about as realistic as a person can be on camera and her contribution made the whole film much more upsetting in so many ways.

I hope she gets to work with more directors that actually know what acting looks like. She was equal to Sandler in this.

I think the Safdie brothers are reinventing what thrillers actually are.
I bet their magnum opus kills people.

American Sniper 7.5/10

Love & Basketball.

I enjoyed it.

7/10

Bad Therapy - 6/10 - Odd, but I did not hate it
Fantasy Island -7/10 - Pretty good, a few twists I did not see coming
I Hate Kids - 6.5/10 - Very odd, but I enjoyed it. Starring Titus from Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

I'm finally watching my copy of Seven Samurai. I bought it last year and it has sat there intimidating me ever since. Three and a half hours is a long time.

Anyway I'm 75 minutes in and so far it's very funny. I wasn't expecting the comic element to be so prevalent and it has worked a charm in warming me up to the Samurai themselves.

This opening act is the archetype for all films that build teams early on by introducing each member individually.
It's sets the social/political climate in rural Japan firmly against the Samurai as a preferred defence and establishes a "hero we need rather than the hero we want" attitude to the townspeople.

It's extremely enjoyable storytelling at its heart. The aspect I am most enamoured with is how easily the tone adapts as the imagery flits from sombre stoicism to jovial comedy and immaculate violence.

This is shaping up to be every bit the classic I was promised.

The second act is the Seven Samurai preparing the farming village to defend themselves against the bandits.
It's around an hour of more intense, revealing social commentary driven by the Samurai's integration with the villagers who's perceptions of them are at odds with their reasons for being there.

It's all moving along nicely, the wit and charm are still in full effect though there are a couple of scenes involving women that are vividly unsettling and I still don't understand one of them in the slightest.
It threw me off.

Oh man, just as I wrote that something happened that made me realise how hard going this last hour is going to be.
Bodies are going to rack up fast.

There's the world famous solo mission trope where a character proposes an insanely daring act of war and them re-emerges later after cutting a swathe of unseen destruction.

Respect for keeping it realistic though. It wasn't one against a hundred and nothing blew up.

That's where Hollywood goes wrong with the adaptations. It tries to one up common sense too often. You can see this film was written not to be like 300. It's not the story of insurmountable odds, it's the story of a carefully plotted strategic defence.
You're getting a whole hour to resolve this issue where nowadays it's all told in an epic final showdown.

If you take anything from this it's that bamboo spears actually look scary as shit when wielded even by the caring hand of a film extra told not to poke anybody important.

The villagers in this are ruthless and well coordinated. Everyone is much more defenceless in Hollywood. These guys catch a bandit coming off his horse? 20 different bamboo poles go up his ass.

There's a bloke in this with a sword almost as big as he is. In battle it should leave him comically unbalanced, much as his mind is, however he is an artist with that big bastard.

He's also fucking hilarious.

Seven Samurai - 4/4

This film is rightfully a treasure trove from which film makers still take the shiniest pieces.
It's extremely reassuring to see a film with a perfect score that actually deserves it.

JoJo Rabbit. 8.5/10. What a wonderfully weird movie.

JoJo might be 2020 film of the year

Had to turn down the volume a bit because my neighbour downstairs is Jewish. Lol too many "Heil Hitlers", especially when the Gestapo go looking through JoJo's home

A Hidden Life 8/10

A film about Austrian conscientious objector, Franz Jägerstätter, and his refusal to swear an oath to Hitler.

It is a (very) slow, quiet and intimate film; full of Austrian scenery porn. If you are looking for action, you will not find it here, but for the patient it is a lovely (wrong word to use), if sad, experience.

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I'm probably going to watch some other films by Terrence Malick.

Terrence Malick is a dreary bastard

X-Men: Dark Phoenix - 7.5/10

Dunno... after the turd that was X-Men: Apocalypse, was not expecting much from this... especially with, y'know, all the bad reviews and reception it got..... but.... I didn't mind it. I was entertained.

I sincerely hope Sophie Turner retires to pump out bairns for Harpo Jonas or whatever his name is.
She has had more than a fair chance at acting and she can't do it.

The lad Joffrey was the one we wanted to become a star. Now he's a dentist or something.

After a quick Google it looks like he's lined up to act in a couple of projects. One this year.

Good lad.

Just read that in the comics, Cyclops/Wolverine/Jean Grey are in a 3-way relationship now. Disney should make a movie about that.

Weren't they always?

Unless you mean like that film with Lara Flynn Boyle and Stephen Baldwin

They were in a "love triangle" before, but they were never all consentually banging each other.

Cyclops loves getting fingered up the bum by Wolverine.

Why are you reading erotica?

Have not read any Marvel comics in a long time..... Just briefly skimmed an article about it....

Kinky get