Am I doing something wrong? Probably. I’m usually doing something wrong.
But at the moment, all I’m trying to do is promote film, particularly Russian film, yet no one wants to tell me about their lovely new Russian film festivals until it’s almost too late. Guys! I can help! I really can! Just let me know that you’re doing a Russian film festival and I’ll tell everyone else! I might even buy tickets and turn up!
The BFI was the previous “let’s not tell the Russian film girl about our Russian film festival” culprit, just before Christmas. Now it’s the Institut Français who’ve taken against me. To be honest, scanning their web site, they don’t seem to want to publicise it very much at all, so maybe it’s not personal — I actually found out about it through Russian Art & Culture. Maybe I’m being just a little bit paranoid? What do you think?
Anyway, I’ve got you intrigued now, haven’t I? Want to know more about it? I do hope so.
Soviet 60s: A Turning Point in Cinema
This will be a monthly film series at the Ciné Lumière (in association with Russian language film charity Kino Klassika) that runs from 18 January to 30 June and that spotlights “a selection of films from the decade that changed both cinema and the world: from beloved Soviet comedies to rarely-screened New Wave classics”.
Here’s the programme
After the jump, I’ll give you full details of all the films, as well as trailers and even a short TV programme about one of them. As you can probably guess, the trailers are all in Russian (and there’s an even an Armenian one!) so you might have to turn auto subtitles on.
Time for my new feature. Ooh! Do I need a drum roll? Probably not.
So, the idea with this is that every week, new films come onto the streaming services. I try to review them all, I really do, but that’s way too hard now – there’s just so many! But rather than leave them unmentioned here, I thought I’d at least register them for your attention. Even if I don’t actually review them, at least you know they’re there and if I do review them, maybe you’ll have watched them, too, and be able to share your thoughts with us?
I do have a silly big list of subscription to streaming services, including BFI Player, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Marquee TV (more for the ballet and the Broadway classics than any movies, admittedly), Klassiki (“The only place in the world where you can stream and explore films from Russia, the Caucasus and Central Asia”) and Apple TV+, and there’s all the free services, too (All 4, iPlayer, Pluto TV, My 5), so I’m bound to miss some, so please point them out if I do!
Anyway, here’s this week’s list of things I added to my streaming queues, hoping to watch them at some point. Some have been on the services for a while, but I’ve only just noticed them, so that counts, right?
The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)
Netflix
The Lost Daughter (2021): A woman’s beach vacation takes a dark turn when she begins to confront the troubles of her past. Maggie Gyllenhaal directs (Trailer)
She’s the Man (2006): Teenage Viola tries to convince the students at her twin brother’s school that she’s actually him in this twist on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Vinnie Jones co-stars as a football coach! (Trailer)
Good on Paper (2021): After years of putting her career first, a stand-up comic meets a guy who seems perfect: smart, nice, successful… and possibly too good to be true. Written by and starring Iliza Schlesinger, based on a true story! (Trailer)
The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017): A surgeon’s carefully curated life edges toward disaster when a trouble teenage boy with mysterious motives begins to impose himself on his family. Yorgos Lanthimos does Ancient Greek myth in the modern day (Trailer)
Amazon Prime
The Good Boy (Хороший Мальчик) (2016): The life of a schoolboy Kolya changes when he falls in love with his teacher and someone burns down an outbuilding. And the principal’s daughter thinks that he is an arsonist and falls in love with him… (Trailer)
The Tender Bar (2022): From director George Clooney and based on the best-selling memoir, The Tender Bar follows an aspiring writer (Tye Sheridan) pursuing his romantic and professional dreams. From a stool in his uncle’s (Ben Affleck) bard, he learns what it means to grow up from a colourful group of local characters. (Trailer)
The Protégé (2021): As a child, Anna watched her family brutalised and murdered in Saigon. When the man that saved her from the killers and trained her as a soldier of fortune is murdered, Anna is determined to have her revenge. She uncovers a 40-year old case her mentor had been looking into, and in so doing becomes the hunted as well as the hunter of a very powerful force that wanted the past left alone. With Maggie Q, Samuel L Jackson, Michael Keaton. (Trailer)
Being the Ricardos (2021): During one production week of I Love Lucy – from Monday table read through Friday audience taping – Lucille Ball (Nicole Kidman) and Desi Arnaz (Javier Bardem) face a series of personal and professional crises that threaten their show, their careers and their marriage, in writer-director Aaron Sorkin’s behind-the-scenes drama. (Trailer)
The Love Witch (2016)
MUBI
Red Road (2008): This dramatic tale of city surveillance and a woman’s obsession with a man from her past was Andrea Arnold’s stunning debut after winning an Oscar for Best Short Film. (Trailer)
The Blue Angel (1930): Respected schoolteacher Rath learns of his pupils’ infatuation with postcards depicting a nightclub songstress. To investigate the source of indecency, Rath goes to the Blue Angel nightclub and is fatefully seduced by the smouldering Lola-Lola, triggering the downward spiral of his life and fortune. (Trailer)
The Love Witch (2016): At once a vibrant pastiche of 1960s horror and a contemporary corrective to the era’s – and the genre’s – sexual politics, The Love Witch is, at heart, a warm treatise on loneliness and love. Written, directed and scored by Anna Biller, this vivid ode to cult Technicolor treasures is simply magic. (Trailer)
In which Nat talks briefly about the movies she’s been watching this week for no particular reason and that probably don’t warrant proper reviews, but hey? Wouldn’t it be nice if we all chatted about them anyway?
Happy New Year, everyone! It’s so good to be back! Sorry I was so rubbish last year, but hopefully I can get my schedule back into shape this year – it’s not the only thing on a diet, thanks to Christmas – and treat you to some movie reviews. Yay!
I even have a new idea for a feature that I’m going to unveil tomorrow. I hope you all like it!
Anyway, I digress. How have you all been? Job okay? Did you get the Christmas Covid like me and all my family? Ugh. I’m so sorry. At least it was Omicron, hey? Hope you’re feeling better?
Let’s talk about some movies to cheer ourselves up then and take our minds off our coughs. This is going to be a slightly brief rundown of all the movies I’ve watched in the cinema in the past month. I’ve watched many more movies than that but let’s save something for next week, hey?
That’s how they’re billing it and look! I think he’s acting again! Kind of! I can remember when Nicolas Cage used to act in his movies and now he’s doing something that really, really looks like acting again.
It’s The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent and it’s out in April. Who’s in?
In which Nat talks briefly about the movies she’s been watching this week for no particular reason and that probably don’t warrant proper reviews, but hey? Wouldn’t it be nice if we all chatted about them anyway?
I’m back! Yay! I finally managed to find time to write some movie reviews.
Silly, isn’t it? Rob takes me on because he’s too busy to write as much as he used to. “At least one of us will be writing something, even if the other can’t.” But rather than doubling the output, I’ve just doubled the number of people not writing anything. I suck.
I’m hoping that at least this week and next week, I’ll make up for that since although I’ve not been writing anything, I have been watching movies and plan on watching even more. Maybe my new year’s resolution should be try to write more before I forget how to.
I don’t think I’ve got much to add to what I wrote about The Harder They Fall (2021), Red Notice (2021), Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021) and Маша (Masha) (2021). But here are some trailers this time.
Screens 3-12: Classic movies
My regular weekly movie night has been continuing and I’ve now got such a backlog of old movies that I’ve rewatched to review, there’s no way I can do anything more than bulletpoint them and still go to this afternoon’s Christmas party.
Party comes first, obviously – I don’t want to live down to stereotypes, but there’ll be vodka, and not that scary Polish bison one made with grass that my sister bought me and gives me headaches, so I’ll be going, no matter what.
I’ve linked to the trailers for each one, BTW.
Fight Club (1999)🌪: David Fincher at his finest, with an adaptation that’s better than the book and ultimately sends up silly ideas of revolution and anti-capitalism. I thoroughly enjoyed rewatching because every single scene plays two different ways, once you know what’s going on, and Helena Bonham-Carter’s character suddenly becomes completely sympathetic, once you realise she’s being dicked around by a guy.
The Princess Bride(1987): Always delightful, even if it takes forever for the Dread Pirate Roberts to show up.
The Sixth Sense (1999)🌪: Still M Night Shyamalan’s and Bruce Willis’ best work. Thoroughly engrossing and beautiful to watch. In common with Helena Bonham-Carter, Olivia Williams’ character does a complete U-turn by the end, which is fascinating to watch.
Unbreakable (2000)🌪: M Night Shyamalan’s and Bruce Willis’ second best work in a movie about comic books that uses its calm, matter-of-factness to camouflage what it’s doing.
The Game (1997)🌪: David Fincher on a roll after Se7en with a completely implausible but thoroughly entertaining roller-coaster where every theory you have about what’s going on is flipped by the next scene, with only the ending eventually showing what’s truly been going on. You can’t take it literally, of course, only metaphorically and as part of the experience, but it’s still fun trying to believe it could happen.
Se7en (1995)🌪: Still hard-hitting, even if its depiction of New York is so mid-90s and Brad Pitt and Kevin Spacey’s stars have dimmed since then. Plus tracking people through their use of the library and what books they borrow? So pre-internet! Whether it’s still the classic the BFI thinks it is, I’m not sure. It’s clearly pitched at people who think they’re intellectuals and are correspondingly cynical and misanthropic, so plays up to that in a slightly obvious way. It’s also a bit misogynistic, too. But David Fincher and Darius Khondji’s direction and cinematography are immaculate, even if streaming can’t really take advantage of Khondji’s silver nitrate retention process.
Planet of the Apes (1968)🌪: As much poetry as science-fiction, this is still a wonderful musing on culture, society, racism, religion and politics. The Jerry Goldsmith music is wonderful discordant, the Gaudi-inspired set designs are amazing and Franklin J Schaffner’s direction manages to make the planet of the apes remarkably alien.
The Mummy (1999): A smart bit of silliness that’s just so much fun to watch. I loved how, while not 100% authentic (perhaps not even 50% authentic), enough efforts had been made to have some real ancient Egyptian qualities to the movie that it feels part of the story, rather than just the background. Plus there’s Brendan Fraser and Oded Fehr.
The Mummy Returns (2001): Almost unwatchably dull sequel to The Mummy. Such an annoying kid and Rachel Weisz isn’t much better.
Field of Dreams (1989)🌪: It’s easy to be snooty about American earnestness and there’s no movie more lacking in cynicism than Field of Dreams. But it works. You’ve a hard heart if you’re not crying by the time Burt Lancaster turns up, and one made of stainless steel if you’re not crying by the end. Yet it’s all about possibly the dullest sport in the world after cricket – baseball! Just lovely and magical.
You’ll notice that all the movies with a 🌪 had a twist at the end, something that wasn’t deliberate on my part but which my friend had no idea about. So it was really fun both trying to hide the fact there was a twist and then seeing his reaction when the twist was revealed! Even Planet of the Apes! It’s actually really gratifying to see not only that they still worked and that classic cinema still has real power, but that memes and popular culture haven’t ruined those classic movies for those who haven’t yet seen them.
This week’s movies, the BFI Player and the Russian Film Festival
After the jump, though, I’ll be talking about one new movie – Guy Ritchie’s The Wrath of Man (2021) – and one of the movies from the BFI Player’s recent Russian film festival, Большой (Bolshoi) (2017). I’d have watched more from that festival already, BTW, if the BFI Player weren’t the worst streaming player yet devised. It’s just awful! It doesn’t even remember your playback position and if you’re watching on an iPad, you have to buy the movie in your web browser (not Safari – it has to be Chrome, too) then it launches a separate player app. Oh, and the BFI Player is separate from the BFI Player channel you can get in Amazon Prime and on your Apple TV, so has different movies and doesn’t share your subscription. That makes sense, doesn’t it?
Incidentally, if you want a bit more detail about the BFI’s Russian film festival, the Girls on Film podcast recently did a great rundown on both Маша (Masha) (2021) and Доктор Лиза (Doctor Lisa) (2020) (the latter of which I’m currently watching, BTW). Hopefully, I’ll be back to talk about that next week!
