accies1874

We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011) - Cinema My favourite film from my favourite working director. Probably my favourite film from the 2010s. Probably my favourite actor/actress around at the moment. Projected in 35mm. Delightful. Actually, maybe “delightful” is the wrong word for this… A calling card of Lynne Ramsay’s work is her silent protagonists. They create a sense of mystery around them, particularly their relationships with other characters, which then draws me into their actions and the filmmaking even more. It must be difficult being the lead performer in one of her films due to the lack of dialogue you have to work with, but they pull it off every single time. In this, we see Tilda Swinton’s Eva at different points in her life, but that all needs to build to what we see in the most ‘present’ of the timelines. The film is about her reflecting on her behaviour as a mother, so she needs to convey liberation prior to having kids, anxieties while pregnant, frustration when her life grinds to a halt, apprehension when she begins to believe that her son might not be so good. These emotions all pretty much disappear after The Incident, so Tilda Swinton’s performance needs to help the audience understand her vacantness in the present day. The casting of Ezra Miller has also aged impeccably well. I’ve never read the book so don’t know how the story is told in that, but what I find interesting about the non-linear aspect of the film is that could also, to a certain extent, be perceived linearly. Like I said, it’s all about Eva’s reflection on her own behaviour, so you could consider all of the non-linear aspects to be the memories that she is struggling to escape from. That’s also conveyed by the red that permeates so much of this: red lights her face in many scenes, her house and car are vandalised with red paint, she gets that paint in her hair, there are flashbacks to her at a tomato festival, and continuing the tomato theme there’s also a shot of her hiding behind shelves of tomato soup. This gives a sense of her inability to escape what happened in the past (both her and Kevin’s actions) and could also be a way to draw attention to the idea of what parents pass down to their kids (blood is thicker than water). Parallels are drawn between Eva and Kevin like showing one of them dunk their head in water before turning into the other, or where they both comment on the other’s unforgiving way with words. In a certain sense, it could be comforting to Eva that there was nothing she could do to raise a better child, but then there’s a nihilism to that which is perhaps even worse due to her blood resulting in such trauma in the town. The subjective point of view of the film means that you wrestle with Eva’s regrets just as she does, but there’s a psychological ambiguity that comes from her being an unreliable narrator. Sometimes Kevin’s demeanour will change within a shot or an edit (the latter I’d put down to an editing mistake if it were a lesser film) and the Cool Dad, played by John C. Reilly, doesn’t see or believe some of the shit Kevin gets up to (bringing to mind domestic horror like Rosemary’s Baby). Guilt makes her mind play tricks on her and you feel that as a viewer. I suppose what is also interesting is why she’s reflecting. She didn’t want to have the kid, she didn’t want to be the one to raise the kid, she didn’t want to move out of New York – yet she’s the one who has to live with all of this regret, not the Cool Dad who encouraged Kevin’s archery, watched him angrily kill folk in games and turned a blind eye to his troubling behaviour from afar while the mother at home had to deal with it. All that pressure piled onto someone non-consensually. The way Tilda Swinton’s and John C. Reilly’s performances contrast is perfect; her in full-on starey mode and him in full-on friendly John C. Reilly mode. To provoke all of these thoughts and ideas without much dialogue is why Lynne Ramsay is my favourite director currently working, though her gap between releases is not good. She makes films that remind you why people make films as opposed to any other medium. It’s just class to have someone so great hail from Scotland. I also doubled this up with a showing of Ratcatcher which means that I’ve now seen all of her features on the big screen after seeing Morvern Callar a few weeks ago. Think Greta Gerwig is the only other director with 3+ films that I’ve seen all in the cinema.

Think I'm gonna end up missing this in the cinema but it's one that I'll likely seek out when it comes to streaming. The trailer definitely seemed up my street.

Someone on here said that Alexander-Arnold was the worst right-back in the league - it's best to just ignore their opinions on him.

Threatened to be a bit like a few other Everton games this season where they started excellently but gradually lost any attacking threat before eventually conceding, however they seemed to get their act together after half-time and put in a really effective counter-attacking performance.

Sorry, is this your best experience or worst?

Each one has been worse than the last

Despite not being very good, I did think that we had two or three really nice passages of play in the first half and Scott Martin's 45 minutes on the park was a joy to watch. Henderson was a lot better in the second half when he moved inside and Lewis Smith was impressive. Everything else? Not much fun.

35. Silver Haze - Cinema Weird one. There are plenty of touching moments between Franky (a poor nurse who was burned in a fire when she was young) and Florence (one of Franky's patients with severe mental health issues) as they start their relationship and Franky begins to get introduced into her life, but both women's pasts result in outbursts of anger either at each other or at the supporting cast who drop in and out on a whim. Their relationship goes from tender to toxic without you really noticing, which makes sense for each of them but combined with the flitting between characters or stories I'd forgotten about it meant that it felt quite unstructured to me. That said, the focus never left Franky and her place among these stories, so I never quite lost interest but it wasn't as impactful as it could have been. 37. And the King Said, What a Fantastic Machine - Cinema Quite funny watching this the day after I watched Civil War as it touches on a lot of similar themes regarding information and visual reporting, including alternative angles of photos taken from war zones or disaster zones which show photographers swarming round 'natural' events, often horrific ones, to show the world something that is very real but the different perspectives make seem very fake. I wasn't just reminded of Civil War though... It's a documentary about photography/videography, pretty much the entire history of the camera which is of course wedded to the past ~150 years of history itself. That's a lot to take on for a 90-minute film, though does make for an engaging journey through society's relationship with consuming and sharing images. I think it's somewhat helped by the fact that the many questions posed are explored in greater depth in other films, so I was quite happy being reminded of more interesting stuff - even if that was unintentional. There is a voice-over but it really just relies on showing us the development of social networking, entertainment and news (and entertainment-news) through archive footage and modern videos you might recognise, including the brilliant Guy Goma BBC interview which got a big pop out of me - maybe even the most I've ever laughed in a cinema. Those viral videos will provide laughs, but it is very much a removed observation of society.

I wrote about my Worst Ever Cinema Experience last year. Now that @CraigFowler is One of Us it would be good to know if he remembers this: I'm tempted to say that the best ever was the second time I saw Past Lives last year as I watched a wonderful film in the cinema with no one else there, but I'm gonna go with when I saw The Lighthouse in 2020. It just seemed to be everything I love about cinema wrapped up in one screening where I forgot where I even was for a couple of hours. You Were Never Really Here in 2018 was also a brilliant experience, but I think I'll be speaking about that film soon so I'll leave it for another time...

Will have a couple of others to post later, but just wanted to get Civil War out there... 36. Civil War - Cinema God I loved this. So much of the cinematography resembles the photographs being taken by Lee and Jessie with a lot of still, though not necessarily stationary, shots that are perfectly framed to observe the USA that has gone to shit. Whether that's depicting innocuous that shouldn't be there or something horrific, it's a great way to give you an insight into this world as well as the characters and themes. It has the crisper look that Men did (Rob Hardy has shot all of Alex Garland's films) which still looks a bit funny to me, especially with greenery, however what I find interesting about Garland is that he's someone who went from a writer to also directing yet his last three films* have all had a distinctive aesthetic that have served the story. Annihilation recreates the otherworldliness of the shimmer, Men resembles a fairytale and now Civil War has that photojournalist look. *I don't remember it being quite as noticeable in Ex Machina but it's been a while since I've seen that. I think there's been a lot of chat about how Civil War is "apolitical", and yeah that's true to a certain extent as the "sides" are left relatively vague, but I absolutely don't think it's a film devoid of any commentary, particularly on apathy, action and ignorance. That first came to my mind when a gun-toting screwball takes Jessie to see a couple of looters he's got tied up. Jessie is given a choice to get the screwball to let them go or to shoot them, however, weirdly, the scene doesn't really come to anything. That made me realise that Jessie's inaction and us as viewers not seeing the consequences meant that we could remain ignorant to the outcome, but the looters will almost certainly die (which is later referenced by one of the other reporters, Joel) so they're almost like Schrodinger's Prisoners. Shortly after, the four of them travel through a picture-perfect suburb seemingly unaffected by the civil war. When they ask a shopkeeper if she realises that the country's gone to shit, it's not really any surprise when she says that it's easier to just not get involved. She's fine, her business is fine, where she lives is fine - why should she get involved? There are a few instances where questions are posed and we don't get the answers, similar to how Lee says that she views her job as a war photographer: document and let others ask questions. That reflects Lee and Jessie and their struggles with grasping the role of a photojournalist. Lee says that she thought her previous work in other countries would have served as a warning to those back home, so she watches missiles fly overhead with dismay rather than horror. Why should she subject herself to all of this pain? Why does she? Her warnings weren't heeded. "The information-action ratio" as said by some mark named Neil Postman and quoted by Alex Turner. Jessie is the other side of the coin. She's younger, more enthusiastic and feels "alive" when she's on the frontline, but you get a sense of her terror too. I thought of her as the vehicle for the audience, which makes the path she goes down all the more compelling. I was initially worried about the mentor-protégé relationship between them being a bit trite, but it's key to the whole film and goes in interesting directions. Morality in war - does it exist? Do we believe it exists? What about morality in war correspondence? Or war films? It's got these ideas within an exciting and tense mid-budget film. I thought it flew past. It's a road movie, kind of a hangout movie, but in the same vein as a lot of other post-apocalyptic films (which this essentially is - especially zombie flicks) where moving from moment to moment with a group of characters ratchets up the tension with every interaction. There's a constant sense of dread which comes to a head in the final act. The sound is unbelievable. I don't think that it uses music in its big set-pieces, instead opting for natural sound effects or silence which makes it all the tenser. The sound of bullets cut through the silence similar to how a horror would use a jump scare to startle you, but where they often feel cheap in that genre this feels completely earned and in-keeping with the film's paranoia. The final big scene then bombards you with all of the sound of gunfire that was previously isolated, but it manages to remain focused on Lee and Jessie among the chaos. I shouldn't really be surprised that I liked it so much given how much I loved Annihilation and Ex Machina, but Men, while I thought there was plenty of good in that film, did show worrying signs of a filmmaker beginning to sniff his own farts. Civil War is a true return to form for Alex Garland.

Glad to know me and Grado aren't the only ones to mix you up with Michael Stewart

Are BBC journalists reading my posts? https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/68845131

Think it was four or five years ago that Guardiola first teased us with the prospect of an Ederson penalty. You can only imagine the buzz I got when I saw him about to take it. That was Bernardo Silva's fourth penalty for City and the third to go down the middle, Foden had hit two and both went to the goalkeeper's left (which was where Lunin went) and Kovacic had hit one (low to goalkeeper's right). Real Madrid had clearly done as much homework as me - or I work for them...

Worst case scenario, I'd go with Ralston and Fraser as the RWB options. I suppose Johnston could be a "bring him along" selection if the squad size gets increased, but I've not been a huge fan of him from the admittedly little I've seen.

Have the play-off dates been announced yet? Had a quick Google but nothing's coming up for our division.

33. Mothers' Instinct - Cinema Had the screening all to myself for this which made a fairly trashy film more enjoyable. Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway are obviously two great actresses and they get given free rein in their lead performances as two friends and neighbours whose relationship turns sour after the death of Anne Hathaway's son. The whole thing is pretty schlocky which is reflected in their performances, but I suppose the challenge for them was to have fun with that tone while also having their ulterior motives bubbling underneath. Disappointingly, it's thin on the ground when it comes to those underlying tensions. What you see is mostly what you get, so things ultimately fizzle out a bit in the conclusion. That's a shame as there are good things in the film. I know the Utopic American Suburb with a Dark Secret is overplayed at this point (though I still like it), but the costuming, production design and cinematography do a good job of depicting that setting. There's an artificiality to the pastel colours of the costumes or sets, something that also reflects the conflict between Celine and Alice. It could have easily fallen into the Crazy Mother/Wife trope, but it's established in a pretty ham-fisted argument early on that the whole thing is about a loss of purpose when your environment forces you to exist as an extension of other people (your husband and son). 34. Close Your Eyes - Cinema Almost three hours long, but I found it to be completely mesmerising, despite the fact that it's pretty much just the main character, Miguel, talking to other people. It loves its dialogue and performances and is happy for the audience to just drink them in. I knew nothing about it going in, so I wondered at first if it was gonna be a mystery as it establishes that an actor went missing while shooting a film directed by Miguel, and starts with a scene from that film set in a 20th century country estate, however that setting is then replaced by a bus stop in modern day Madrid which encapsulates the film's perception of the past and present. Despite it being clear early on that how we access the past is gonna be a cornerstone of the story, it manages to take that idea in interesting directions across the near-3-hour runtime which also results in a lot of questions about identity too. Scenes fade black on a regular basis, almost like someone is closing their eyes to access a new memory. Music is used incredibly sparingly, though, as is often the case with films light on score, the music played by the characters becomes more effective. That lack of score adds a sense of immersion to those dialogue scenes, making the Now feel even more genuine in a world full of artistry and entertainment.

Yesterday was one of the best performances I've seen from him. It's just a shame he didn't take his chance to score, as he's apparently the Premier League player to take the most shots without a goal (according to the Totally Football Show on Thursday, anyway).

I'd replace Williamson with Hewitt just so we can swap the worst hair with the best.

Wouldn't be surprised if Norm MacDonald passed his cancer onto OJ when he died.

31. Evil Does Not Exist - Cinema Loved the opening as the camera tracks through a forest while pointing towards the sky with music that's epic, sombre and a tiny bit menacing. That then cuts out and is replaced by a brief moment of silence before the ugly sound of a chainsaw takes over. I reckon that set up the film's ideas brilliantly, but, as the title suggests, things aren't that black and white. You'd be mistaken for thinking that the film is going for a single-minded take during the scene where the village's residents meet with the out-of-town representatives for those planning to build a glamping site in the forest. The representatives are clearly out of their depth, their answers are rehearsed and empty, and one of them, Takahashi, uses the microphone as a defence mechanism when fielding questions. There's a brilliant shot that frames all of the residents in the meeting up against Takahashi which could both be seen as threatening for him but also alludes to the absurdity of an outside individual being able to disrupt the lives of those embedded in society. However, it then takes an interesting decision to show that Takahashi and his colleague Mayuzumi aren't just outsiders looking to disrupt the lives of the village people, they're individuals in their own right who have been hung out to dry by the corporate machine (their advisor speaks to them over video call to provide a further sense of detachment). We begin to learn more about them as people after such a frosty introduction which develops their characters while also still critiquing the developers. That extra layer is necessary to avoid it being too preachy. There's a dreamlike feeling about the whole thing, but the ending is pretty damn abstract. I think it earned an ambiguous ending, but I'm still confused by it - slightly in a literal sense, certainly in a metaphorical sense. 32. Robot Dreams - Cinema A lot of this reminded me of when I was at T in the Park and had a dream that I was at the campsite having a whale of a time only to wake up in a portaloo miles away from my tent. I felt you, Robot. It's an animated Spanish film set in Manhattan, but there's no language barrier because there's no dialogue. There are no humans either. The main character is a dog named Dog who we first meet in its apartment eating a shit microwaved macaroni cheese. When it catches a glimpse of its pathetic reflection on the TV screen, it turns the TV on to be met with an advert that promises to cure loneliness - that cure is a robot named Robot. It's a film about loneliness, connection and longing, but, unlike All of Us Strangers, has a more hopeful overtly hopeful outlook due to the determination of Dog and Robot, plus the fact that it's purely platonic adds an interesting and arguably more universal dynamic. The film starts quickly and maintains that pace. Ironically, that can at times make it feel like a bit of a drag. I wondered early on how they were going to fill the 100-minute runtime and that feeling never really left me, as while there is an overarching story with a goal - Robot gets stranded at the beach which is closed until the summer, so he and Dog need to reunite - structurally it can feel like a series of short films or episodes of a kids' TV show. While Robot is stranded at the beach, it dreams of its escape which results in scenes that always start out entertaining but descend into melancholy. The film's set-pieces are inventive as are the use of all of the different animals that make up Manhattan, but the sense of longing and loneliness always punctuated the fun and I'll admit that it almost had me in tears at points. I probably laughed as much as I felt low, though, and the high point was a wonderfully absurd scene involving a laughing ice cream cone and a snowman bowling with his own head. That reminded me quite a bit of David Lynch's funnier absurd stuff and there are quite a few references to other films (and products, weirdly) which can feel a bit indulgent, though I do think there might be something else going on there in terms of escapism. Why I think Robot Dreams works as a dialogue-free film where last year's No One Will Save You faltered a wee bit was because it felt a lot less contrived in a world filled with animals, robots and laughing ice cream cones. It never felt like a gimmick, and the film found inventive ways to get away from dialogue by taking different perspectives which served their own purpose. I was really interested to see its resolution as it set up the kind of conflict that could be difficult to resolve in a satisfactory way, however I don't think that it quite stuck the landing despite the third act having me hooked up until that point. I felt a wee bit hollow after such a strong buildup to the conclusion. That said, I really loved how poignant and inventive I found it, so I'm more than happy to overlook its shortcomings. Messy but effective. Finally, with it being set in Manhattan there are animated takes on landmarks as you'd expect. What I didn't expect to see was the Twin Towers, and I certainly didn't expect them to have a strategically placed cloud which had a striking resemblance to plumes of smoke emanating from one of the towers. Even stranger was the fact that the song September was playing at this point (as it does in many scenes) and I'm pretty sure that I could hear sirens in the background. Not quite sure what this was all about, but I hope it's not a Love, Actually situation in that it was trying to make a point about love and connection by using 9/11.

30. Yannick - MUBI A very good hour-long film set entirely in a theatre (well with one or two exterior shots) and specifically the seating area and stage where three actors are interrupted by one of the attendees, Yannick, who thinks that their play is shite. That anger is exacerbated by the fact that he's taken the day off from his seven-days-a-week job to see the production. Yannick's a Travis Bickle-type character, clearly unstable and feels empowered to act in a way unfitting of social norms. Raphael Quenard captures that instability really well simply due to the way he laughs and stares down his fellow attendees while doing so. There's a dangerously volatile ego wrapped up in anger and frustration at society and that's mostly conveyed through his performance. Despite being set in the theatre, the film alludes to his past, including his failed relationship, which again adds to that Travis Bickle comparison in terms of being a man trying to vent at the world. That also plays into the overarching conflict between artist and attendee. Yannick is a whack job, but you can kind of understand why someone so dissatisfied with life would want to find escape in art, so why not take it up with the artists when you think that your time is being wasted? Folk write scathing reviews on Letterboxd and harass actors/directors/writers on social media, so what's the difference between that and interrupting a play that you feel is a waste of your time and money and can actually affect change? Obviously there's a big difference as doing so ruins the experience of other people who could be responding differently to a subjective piece of art - which Yannick doesn't understand - plus there's a different power dynamic here with part-time performers that, again, Yannick can't quite grasp. Shifting power dynamics are another interesting part of the film, especially when Yannick wields a gun which speaks to the idea of this uncharismatic guy getting people on side just because he's loud and dangerous. Once again, Quenard's performance sells these interactions perfectly. Another example of power dynamics is when the female actor offers sex to her co-performer if he can take down Yannick, as she doesn't have any money so can only offer sex. It's a funny interaction in a film laced with them, but I found it a lot more interesting than I did funny.

Macheda-esque

Ended up really enjoying the second half, mostly because the wind just made it a daft 45 minutes. The first half was brutal, but it was just a case of which team could make the most of having the wind behind them. Delighted to finally get to see Latona play for the first team and already get an assist. Nice that Jamie Hamilton could finally get back too.

29. The Origin of Evil - Cinema You'll be reminded of a lot of other films (naming most of them would spoil the film's twists and turns, but its messaging isn't all that original), but the twisting narrative, early ambiguity and interesting characters more than make up for any lack of thematic originality. We first meet Stephane working at a fish packing factory before arranging to meet her estranged (and loaded) father at his lavish French mansion. A lavish mansion and a clash of class, it's not dissimilar to the Eat the Rich films that almost everyone is sick of now, but it very much feels like its own thing when it comes to execution. There's a great deal of paranoia when Stephane is at the mansion, as the family she's walked into are suspicious of her, there are peering eyes from the stuffed animals dotted around, her father's granddaughter is a budding photographer who's always taking pictures, and the housemaid hides behind doors to listen in. Boundaries are pretty much non-existent. One of the very first scenes with family has them all sitting eating dinner, but rather than cutting between them having a conversation it instead splits the screen initially into three and then finally five - Stephane always remains in the centre screen though. Visual touches like these are sparse but effective. It can sometimes look quite bland but then hits you with a split screen or a funky zoom. There's also the overdone use of beiges/yellows and blues which I think relates to water and land (the fish packer, the family's boat, plus... other things) and whatever that represents. The split screen gives a sense of oppressiveness, like she is being bombarded by these mad people, but also allows us to focus on Laure Calamy's adaptable performance. It's clear early on that she changes as a person depending on the different situations she finds finds herself in, which is initially endearing as you get a sense of her discomfort, but then you begin to wonder about her authenticity when questions start getting asked of her. Her father says at one point that "there's only one truth" and the film plays with that idea throughout, contrasting the truth in the minds of certain characters with the truth in the minds of others, and how their relationship with the truth changes throughout the film. It's really interesting to watch play out. While that sounds like it'll be very ambiguous - and it initially is - the big questions get answers and that made for some really fun reveals. It's one of those that had me smiling throughout just due to the playfulness of the narrative. Even the title, The Origin of Evil, sort of changes meaning as the plot progresses. I would recommend seeing it with an audience because of the laughs and gasps, though the audience I saw it with were a bunch of annoying old folk. It also didn't help that Dune 2 was playing next door so, because Dune 2 is the loudest film of all time, there was a lot of thumping during this which I'm still not sure was coming from The Origin of Evil or Dune (though I could hazard a guess).

Gonna be my first game since the 0-0 with Stirling Albion. Fully expecting the weather to make it a miserable experience.