NWR What films have you been watching?

Watched a brilliant film last night - Sweet Country. Beautifully shot film in the Northern Territories in Oz. Brutal film. If Cormac McCarthy had written a story based in Australia.....

Its available on Channel 4 for anyone who is interested.
 
I lasted through a couple of episodes of "The Crown" Series 4 but found it just as tedious as the original soap opera which was all around us in the 80s. My republican leanings don't need stoking up any further...

I also watched "Whiplash" last night, hmm. not sure about that one, but Queen's Gambit is the best thing I've watched on TV for a while. Very stylish and brings out perfectly the nerdy, misogynist culture of the chess world (it may have improved since I stopped playing school and club chess fifty years ago but I doubt it). You certainly don't need to play chess to enjoy it.

On Sky, I watched "The Announcer" ("Speakerine") about an aging female TV announcer in 1963 Paris - French VO with subtitles. The plot is all over the place compounded by a ridiculous sub-plot (typically French in other words!), and the last two episodes are fairly melodramatic, but it's worth watching IMO for its depiction of bourgeois Parisian life and attitudes in the 60s, the State's stranglehold on the media with all the corruption that entails; and the effect of the Algerian problem and OAS on day to day life. Period cars, clothes, cigarettes, and hairstyles - great! After nearly vomiting through half an episode of "Emily in Paris" I enjoyed this much more.

Other stuff -
Ozark/Schitts Creek - must watches on Netflix
The Good Liar - two good performances by Mirren/McKellen
"Why women kill" - 10 episodes on Sky. Follows three couples living in the same house a couple of decades apart in each case. Inconsequential but great fun..
 
At a time when we were all locked down, it was nice, light hearted fare that did a good job reminding us what a beautiful place Paris is. Sometimes, I just want pizza, not tournedos rossini...
 
I see Thom’s North by Northwest and you a Citizen Kane, watch for the first time a couple of days ago. Disturbingly modern.
Citizen Kane was a practice run for Orson's masterwork - A Touch of Evil. It's hard to top the greatest movie of all time, but I invite everyone to try. If the word didn't exist beforehand, Baroque would have been created to describe this movie.
 
The last few Years at this time I have started a thread on the latest blockbuster, but Wonder Woman 1984 is not really up there with End Game or even Sywalker.

it’s a nice film, but it way too long and it never really grips. The first WW film was almost a classic (the final battle scene was a bit lame), while this is merely average. Nice to visit a cinema again after a long break, but the next Marvel or Bond film will truely test how ready we all are to go back indoors with each other.
 
Absolutely, I usually find film music an irritation but here it is completely integral, almost as though Wagner had lived into the 1950s. The Tristanesque 'love scene' in the railway carriage is shocking in its profoundly allusive way. It is the light hand hand with clearly infinite resources and the use of silence that impresses so deeply.

The scene at the rural bus stop reminded me vividly of many of my own foreign adventures.
 
If you like a good, brutal, seat-of-your-pants war movie, Mosul on Netflix is surprisngly good. Based on a New Yorker story about an Iraqi SWAT team mopping up the remnants of ISIS in Mosul.
 
Cocteau's La Belle Et La Bête - obviously highly mannered but amazing (1946) effects, and suffused with the most remarkable emotional currents and suggestions. Moments of genuine strangeness.

My Neighbour Totoro - with the kids (8&10) an hour and a half of pure joy. The classic story about nothing and everything. Plus the unforgettable 12-legged Cat Bus.
 
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