BBC Sherlock Fan Forum - Serving Sherlockians since February 2012 » Recently watched movies.

MartaSt · November 26, 2014 9:49 am

Oh yes, he played one of the best character in whole movie, I fell in love with him

tonnaree · November 26, 2014 3:43 pm

Saw Mockingjay part 1 last night. Very happy with it. I think they have done an excellent job translating the books.

This Is The Phantom Lady · November 27, 2014 10:56 pm

I watched Mockingjay pt. 1 last week too. I LOVED the film!

My friend is very upset about a few things that wasn't taken directly from the books... but honestly I think they did a fantastic job. I want to see it again!!

I have been singing 'Hanging Tree' since...

Davina · November 30, 2014 4:14 pm

I think, with films which are based on books that you have to accept that their will, inevitably, be differences. They are different mediums. I think the overall 'feel' is most important.

Davina · December 4, 2014 10:35 am

Want to see Interstellar next. Anyone seen it yet?

Davina · December 16, 2014 9:22 am

No? I watched a classic the other day: Night of the Living Dead.

Deilenn · December 17, 2014 7:22 pm

Davina wrote:
Want to see Interstellar next. Anyone seen it yet?

I have seen it and liked it very much. If you are keen on movies about the cosmos you will probably get to like Interstellar

Davina · January 6, 2015 11:27 am

Well still haven't seen Interstellar but did go to see Birdman the other evening. This is an amazing, challenging film. Not quite like anything I have ever seen before. Dark, deep, unsettling. A play within a film. Michael Keaton and Ed Norton are truly brilliant in this, as is the rest of the cast. Highly recommended but as I said it is dark although it also have some very funny parts too.mLots and lots to analyse and think about and a film that stays with you long after it ends. I shall definitely be watching this again.

Russell · January 6, 2015 4:42 pm

Davina wrote:
Well still haven't seen Interstellar but did go to see Birdman the other evening. This is an amazing, challenging film. Not quite like anything I have ever seen before. Dark, deep, unsettling. A play within a film. Michael Keaton and Ed Norton are truly brilliant in this, as is the rest of the cast. Highly recommended but as I said it is dark although it also have some very funny parts too.mLots and lots to analyse and think about and a film that stays with you long after it ends. I shall definitely be watching this again.

Neat… that sounds exactly like what I've heard of it, and would say of it myself, when I finally get to see. Very curious how they pulled it all off. I haven't really gotten to catch a whole lot of 'new' stuff lately, but mom and I did go see 'Into The Woods'! Very strange and fun… Meryl is awesome as usual, of course. Recommend if you enjoy creatively twisted tales. For various reasons, still haven't gotten to the more coveted film of a certain little Hobbit, but we're finally going out to see it today. ;P

Oh, and speaking of other favorite classics, in the Fargo thread we were talking about it's ties back to the movie, the Coen style, and dark humor suspense. After re-watching the show, my friend made me watch 'No Country For Old Men' that I had missed, but heard so much about how stark and good it was. And it is. Go see it if love all those elements about Fargo, and Javier Bardem an even creepier 'Malvo' type. Great performance from Brolin and Jones, too.

Davina · January 8, 2015 8:40 am

No Country For Old Men is just the bees knees isn't it. Javier was so disturbingly brilliant in it. I want to watch Into the Woods as well- the whole premise appeals to me. We are hoping to go and see the final Hobbit movie on Friday.

Ah-chie · January 8, 2015 5:21 pm

I have seen Interstellar and thought it was entertaining but not a film that I would say that I truly loved and would watch again. I'm not a big fan of Matthew McConaughey but he did all right in the film. It had some really interesting parts and some that just didn't hit the mark for me. But I would say it was worth going to.

We watched a really great movie last night on Netflix - A Late Quartet. I know that some would say it was glacial in its approach and it can never be considered a "crowd pleaser" but we both really enjoyed it.

Starring the late, great, and much missed by me in particular, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Christopher Walken, Catherine Keener (one of my favourite actors) as well as Mark Ivanir and Imogen Poots it follows the disintergration of a world-renowned musical quartet when their spiritual leader and cellist finds out he has Parkinson's Disease. More personal conflicts happen and it was really fascinating to see the interplay between all the characters as they react to the drama that unfolds. Not a potboiler but just utterly enveloping as it draws you into these people's llives.
The acting was superb. I adore just about any film that has Hoffman in it and this movie is no exception. And to have him act along side Keener and Walken was just about too much.

The soundtrack is pure classical (except for one bit) and when they ran the credits they continued with Beethoven's music until the end. So this one got me with both barrels!

I wasn't overwhelmed with sobbing (like I was with The Imitation Game) but I definitely did have tears in my eyes during several scenes. But it is also uplifting as well so it does run a lot of emotions by a viewer.

Highly recommend it - especially if you love classical music or great acting.

-Val

Davina · January 9, 2015 11:56 am

I will watch this on Netflix. Sounds really captivating.

Ah-chie · January 9, 2015 2:46 pm

Davina, I would be truly interested in hearing your reactions to the film after you view it.

-Val

Russell · January 9, 2015 8:43 pm

davina wrote:
No Country For Old Men is just the bees knees isn't it. Javier was so disturbingly brilliant in it. I want to watch Into the Woods as well- the whole premise appeals to me. We are hoping to go and see the final Hobbit movie on Friday.

It is! Malvo's similar character in Fargo had me delightfully disturbed, but Javier's Chigurh was just… disturbing. I told my friend that since I hadn't gotten around to 'Skyfall' yet, now would be a great time to watch that (and probably will tonight), since I'd heard just as much buzz about Javier in it as I'd heard about Craig/the darker story, and really want to see how he pulls off another 'strange villian'.

Catching up on the last couple recent Studio Ghibli/Hayao Miyazaki films I hadn't seen, watched 'The Wind Rises' last night. Gorgeous as his stuff usually is, with the interesting mix of fantastical style elements mixed with the starker story. And it is a little starker than much of the other stuff, for those of you who maybe like his films and hadn't seen this one yet. Based more historically, with a young aeronautics engineer in Japan trying to make planes for WWI during the time of their great earthquake, tuberculosis epidemic, Depression, and falling in love. Interesting reminder for me of some of the stuff going on for people in those countries, and some of the political alliances and technology differences between countries that made or broke winning the war. And tying it in with a love story… really sad! Recommend it.

Ah-chie · January 19, 2015 5:30 pm

Saw several movies in the last couple of nights...

Here's just a short rundown of my impressions of each.

Fortress (2012) - The film follows the crew of the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bomber Lucky Lass as they fly in the campaign against Italy during WWII. It was tedious to the extreme to watch this. Dan was irate at the flying scenes (he had all sorts of technical problems when they showed the group formations that could have been easy to correct - but only he would have noticed that sort of thing) but it was so much more. The acting was non-existent. The lighting was waaaay too bright when it should have been subdued. It looked like a video game. The only reason we stuck it out to the end was to see just how bad it could be. And it lived up to every expectation. The moral of the story seemed to be - get drunk and people will like you. (WTF???). Not worth a minute of anyone's time.

The Great Raid (2005) - It is a movie based in part on an absolutely fascinating book by Hampton Sides' "Ghost Soldiers", which tells the almost unbelieveable tale of the rescue mission of 500 POWs (and even more civilians) from the Japanese prison camp at Cabanatuan and the near by city. It starred James Franco (who I really like) and Benjamin Bratt. It was passable (which is really a way of saying the screwed up an incredible opportunity) and interesting enough but not one that I can say was a good movie. Franco was so distant in this role he looked like he was sleepwalking all the way through it (which could have been a possibility perhaps... ). Bratt was... obnoxious and frankly just the wrong actor for the role. There were long stretches that were almost boring (how do you do that with a story like this!!!???). The good parts were that they did give the Filipino guerrilla fighters the credit they deserved and they showed the tension well enough between the Filipinos and the Japonese occupying forces. Connie Nielsen as Margaret Utinsky, the American nurse who worked aided the Filipino resistence forces, was probably the most competent actor in her role.

The direction of John Dahl was clumsy at time and the whole movie didn't flow properly but it wasn't a complete waste of time like Fortress. Not recommended by me but if you are stuck in the house in a snowstorm you could do worse to watch it as something to do. And there is the plus that this incredible story at least did get some exposure to a wider audience.

My Week with Marilyn (2011) - The best of the lot of three movies - by far. Michelle Williams was wonderful as Marilyn Monroe with whom a young British fellow (Colin played by Eddie Redmayne) gets involved with almost completely by accident when he has to escort her around London and then just as suddenly they part after sharing a very emotional time. Kenneth Branaugh plays Sir Lawrence Olivier who is trying (very hard) to make The Prince and the Showgirl with MM. Judi Dench steals every scene she is in as Dame Sybil Thorndike - she is also wonderful!! ER - it was really interesting to see him (for the first time for me). He was good - very good, but perhaps I think he was the weakest of the cast (not hard to be since the cast had some really, really fabulous actors in it - including Derek Jacobi, who I just adore) but he didn't do a terrible job. And some scenes he got down to the nitty-gritty of his character and knocked it out of the park quite nicely. But there were other times you could see he was "acting" and that's not good.

Definitely a recommended movie and both of us really enjoyed it.

BTW: we are going to see The Theory of Everything this afternoon so I will be really interested to compare ER in this movie to the Marilyn one. See if he has improved. Should be interesting having just seen an earlier effort of his.

-Val

Ah-chie · January 20, 2015 5:20 pm

Well, we got back from seeing The Theory of Everything yesterday and I have to say I really enjoyed the movie but I don't think it even half way touches the impact that The Imitation Game had on me.

Dan, who is the least fan-ish person I know, (he enjoys Sherlock and thinks BC is a gifted actor but doesn't go in for any type of obsessiveness about actors or movies, no matter what) said that TIG was by far a more superior movie and BC deserves the BA award much more than ER. That's an outburst of really high praise for him.

What I really loved about TToE:
- the music especially near the end with Jonathan playing the piano.
- the camera work and the cinematography in general - beautiful interplay of colour and light.
- the earlier scenes of SH and Jane were really well done. The actors had a great natural chemistry.
- the physicality of ER's performance. He did an excellent job capturing the deterioration of Hawking's condition.- I loved the scene near the end where he is in the lecture and one of the audience members drops her pen and he imagines himself picking it up - really the best scene of the whole movie for me. Says so much about the character and yet leaves you with a sense of wonderment at the same time.

What I thought were weaknesses:
- Felicity Jones' overall performance. I just felt that she was too controlled. Maybe it was the writing/directing - perhaps she was doing the best with what was given her/required from her... and if that is the case then the major weakness lies there. Either way is wasn't good for the film.
- although ER was good in the role I wasn't moved by it really (and surprising for me, Dan said he wasn't either). I just couldn't feel SH through his performance. It wasn't overwhelming and I felt it should have been.
- the flow of the film was too rushed sometimes. I know it is difficult when presenting a person's life (especially someone who has lived a while) to get the entire scope into a two hour film but it might have been better to leave a few segments of the montage out and skip right to the meat of the matter (and let the audience know what happened in between by some other method). I am not a big fan of the "flipping pages" way of imparting exposition. An intelligent audience will know how to fill in the details. The way they did it, it almost seemed like a colouring book version of his life.

I do find it a bit amusing that while there has been a fair amount of criticism directed towards TIG for it's inaccuracies nothing (or virtually nothing) has been focused on all the many blurring of facts in TToE. It doesn't bother me at all that TToE has done this (that's what movies have to do to be dramatic/visual/symbolic representations of life - even real lives). But it does bother me that no one seems to think that it is unfair that movies like Selma and TIG are held to such a higher standard but TToE seems to get a free pass in the general press. Either hold everyone up to that standard or drop the matter all together and just use some common sense when judging a film that is "based on a true story" (my preference).

I have seen 4 of the 8 nominated films for best picture now (Grand Budapest Hotel, The Imitation Game, Birdman, The Theory of Everything) and will likely see at least one more (Selma) before the Oscars. I would have liked to see Boyhood and Whiplash but they aren't available to me now. I have finally decided, that based on the previews I have seen and reviews I have read, I will not be patronising the movie American Sniper (it is just something I can't align with my moral perspective and while I don't mind going to films that present differing POVs from my own, I don't go to movies I find ethically reprehensible).

Seeing TToE hasn't changed my choices in the Oscar race at all.

I think The Imitation Game is the most deserving of the Best Picture nominees (and several other Best awards) and BC is hands down the Best Actor of all the movies I have seen.

-Val

Ah-chie · February 3, 2015 2:54 pm

I watch a lot of movies so here comes another "review".

We saw Belle last night. Dan has been wanting to see this one ever since it came out in the theatres but it never came to out town so it got away.

Yesterday I saw on the internet that it was added to Netflix on February 1st so we jumped on it asap.

Belle was partially written and fully directed by Amma Asante (who so eloquently defended Benedict about his misspoken word in the Tavis Smiley interview) and premiered at the TIFF in September of 2013.

It received a number of awards (but no BAFTAs or Oscar noms) and got generally very postitive reviews.

My impressions? It was absolutely beautifully filmed, excellent acting for the most part and a terrifically stirring story.

The film stars Gugu Mbatha-Raw as a young woman of mixed race who comes to live at Kenwood the home of William Murray, the 1st Earl of Manfield and Chief Justice of England in the late 1700s and is raised as if she were a daughter of the Earl.

There are some very familiar faces to Cumberbatch fans as well in the cast - Matthew Goode (who played in TIG), Miranda Richardson (who played in Parade's End), and Emily Watson (played in War Horse). As well I recognised Penelope Wilton from Downton Abbey and Tom Wilkinson who has been in so many well known films (In the Bedroom, Michael Clayton, The Best Exotic Marilgold Hotel, Selma, and The Grand Budapest Hotel among a long list).

All of the about are excellent in the film.

Unfortunately the one actor who was a bit of a let down was the one who played the love interest to the graceful Gugu Mbatha-Raw - Sam Read whose role was John Davinier. He just didn't seem to have the emotional depth for the role and Ms. Mbatha-Raw just dominated every scene the were in together to the point of overwhelming him. I kept thinking throughout the whole of his appearance in the film what it would have been like if BC would have been cast in the role instead. Boy oh, boy! It would have been electric I think! He would have been perfect for her love interest.

But fortunately my slight let down by Mr. Read's performance didn't detract from my overall enjoyment of the film.

This period drama was exciting, beautiful, tender, positive and uplifting. What more could anyone ask for.

Highly recommended by me for sure.

-Val

Russell · February 4, 2015 8:44 am

Nice reviews! Been very curious about Belle, too… looked great.

Wow… so, finally caught up on a handful more 'older' ones on my list, and one new one been meaning to see. Let's hear it for the Thor and Captain America sequels, 'Hunger Games', 'Lucy', and… dun dun… 'Hawking'. Which I think I'll mention on it's own thread.
The Marvel sequels though were both pretty good, to share the sentiment with fellow fans here. With 'Captain' especially, sometimes it works, and really makes an impact when they tie their superhero story to pertinent modern times fears/society, like hidden corruption in organizations (like how Batman did, too). And Thor's effects and story idea of tears between dimensions was awesome (and Loki!). Seriously, how many of you loved all the great one-liner quips in both movies, and Loki/Bucky being tragically bad-ass, as they will.

'Lucy', on the other hand, was… interesting but weird? Like, really weird. Same director as 'The Fifth Element', which is great and 'out there', but Lucy takes it's filmography style even a little further, if you like that kind of thing. As long as you overlook the fact that the 'we only use 10% of our brain capacity' thing is a myth, his concept is neat - the idea that poor Lucy gets unwittingly caught up in the effects of a drug that unlocks her brain capacity higher and higher with resulting 'superpowers', a chase for survival, and Morgan Freeman playing our favorite god-like narrator/kindly older professor who helps her. Interesting, but not for everyone.

But tend to often be fascinated by a creatively done variation on the dystopian society thing, and love how 'Hunger Games' fleshes that out. Wonderful visuals from lush Capitol to poverty, idea of the Games and Katniss getting plunged into a 'role', all the actors great, pacing and filling in info for the viewer mixed sometimes, but great movie. Now to just get to the others…

SolarSystem · February 4, 2015 10:18 am

Russell wrote:
But tend to often be fascinated by a creatively done variation on the dystopian society thing, and love how 'Hunger Games' fleshes that out. Wonderful visuals from lush Capitol to poverty, idea of the Games and Katniss getting plunged into a 'role', all the actors great, pacing and filling in info for the viewer mixed sometimes, but great movie. Now to just get to the others…

This is one of those occasions where I have been highly prejudiced about a project - and then ended up loving it. I really thought this was just another one of those "Twilight"-phenomenons, but then I happened to catch it on tv and was hooked. The dystopian society depicted in this story really convinced me, and it's great how that is interwoven with also being a bit of an action movie. Of course there's your usual love story and all that, but the story manages to stay exciting and also terrifying throughout.
This also goes for parts 2 and 3, can't wait to see the final movie.

Russell · February 4, 2015 6:32 pm

Exactly. I was pretty taken with how it was all fleshed out and the world Collins had set up…
(not to mention the fact that Katniss caring for/torn between the guys isn't the main plot, but part of being a teen that gets shifted with the entire movement she awkwardly finds herself pulled into)