MSU

021 El Conde -- Pablo Larrain's surreal satire that sees Pinochet as a centuries-old vampire ready to die is certainly ambitious and, more than anything, beautifully shot. It seems to be aiming for territory that Armando Iannucci is able to occupy with ease, and maybe it's because the subject matter here isn't all that well-known that the humor flies under my radar. The Thatcher narration for this child of the 70s is unmistakable, though. Edward Lachman's Oscar nom for cinematography is well-earned and the real star of the show. Shot in a luscious black-and-white, the shots of a flying Pinochet as a bizarrely appropriate bat man are breathtaking and contrast very well with some more brutal images. Overall, the depiction of a monstrous dictator as an actual monster fell a bit flat for me but that might say more about my ignorance of Chilean politics than anything else. 5/10 022 Society of the Snow -- The story of the Uruguayan rugby team whose plane crashes in the Andes has, of course, been told already in 1993's Alive. While I saw that at the time, I think, I don't remember much of it but I recall enough for this version to feel like it covers old ground. That said, the setpieces of the crash and the avalanche are done exceptionally well here and the make-up and effects do a marvelously convincing job. It's a dark tale of human survival and the determination to live and although I knew how it was going to end, and arguably it took a bit long to get there, I was emotionally connected enough to have to flick a tear or two away. 7/10 023 They Called Him Mostly Harmless -- It's an intriguing tale of a mystery man found dead in a tent on a Floridian hiking trail and no one knows who he is, and then years later when someone figures it out, the story takes a turn. Patricia E. Gillespie's documentary maintains the intrigue through its runtime, partly through the distraction of how bitchy the online sleuth community can be to each other, and it manages to subtlely ask questions of ourselves, of who gets to see the real us, how long it would take for us to be identified, and who would miss us if we just packed up one day and never came back. 7/10 024 Upgraded -- I threw this on just as something to have in the background and ended up enjoying it much more than I expected to. It's a typical Cinderella-style rom-com that sees lowly auction house worker, Ana, get upgraded on a flight to London to help her boss in an emergency and in the hype of traveling first class, she inadvertently pretends to be the boss of the company to impress the cute guy, Will, she's sat beside. When it transpires that Will's mother intends to sell her fabulously expensive art collection through Ana's company, she finds that her deceit is likely to come back to bite her. Camila Mendes and Archie Renaux have a cute chemistry together, although he's a bit wet, but Marisa Tomei as Ana's ball-busting boss steals every scene she's in. It goes absolutely nowhere new but it covers a familiar track pretty well and throws in a few chuckles for good measure along the way. Not bad at all. 6/10 025 How to Have Sex -- Never, ever go on vacation as part of a trio. Someone always ends up getting sidelined and you're lucky if you all go home still friends. The odd one out here is sixteen-year-old Tara, who finds herself on presumably her first holiday without parents, instead going with Skye and Em, and it's difficult to decide which one to hate the most as they obnoxiously drink and smoke their way around Malia while looking for fun and a hookup. And therein lies the only real drama in the movie when Tara finds herself alone with the wrong boy. The movie plays more as a series of repetitive vignettes, although I found a few laughs in the familiarity of Brits abroad, before the heartbreaking finale. Molly Manning Walker writes, directs, and draws from personal experience here, and there were enough uses of reflections to make me think of After Sun here and there, and although the comparisons don't begin or end there, After Sun was a far better film. Mia McKenna-Bruce stole the show for me with a pretty rounded performance, but in the end, I wanted to be left with more than a few hints that everyone knew that the wrong 'un was a wrong 'un, as unsettling as that was, and as much as it demands more from those witnesses maybe the movie could've done the same itself. Rape is bad. The movie should have more to say about things than that, I'd suggest, and a closing sequence where all seems to have been forgotten in favor of chips. Extra half-star for the subtitles. I may have scoffed at them to begin with, but they were definitely useful. 5/10 026 Lisa Frankenstein -- The irony that this (sort of) take on Frankenstein feels like it's stitched together of so many different parts may just be the cleverest part of the movie. The 80s setting gives us a stonkingly good soundtrack but little else as Diablo Cody's story brings romance, horror, and comedy together but doesn't quite hit the mark on either component. I like Kathryn Newton and she does a good enough job here, and I like Diablo Cody's writing, but a lot of the jokes fell a bit flat, tried too hard, and landed awkwardly for me, particularly in the uneven first act, and when proceedings took a murderous turn, I felt like I checked out a little, which was a shame as on paper this had an awful lot going for it. For me, it just failed to deliver on that promise. 4/10

More catching up with Oscar-nominated movies this week. That's 25/53 now, and all of the noms for Best Picture done. 015 20 Days in Mariupol -- I don't know if there's a difference between a documentary and a historical record, so let's call Mstyslav Chernov's film both. Either way, it's an unrelenting and depressing view of the first 20 days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, detailing the atrocities and war crimes committed against a civilian population just looking to live in peace and quiet. You kinda get the idea after the first twenty minutes, but it doesn't let up. It's bleak and upsetting and a struggle to watch at times, but utterly vital. 8/10 016 Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse -- I don't remember all that much from the first Spider-Verse movie except that there were lots of Spider-Mans in it. There's lots in this too. Maybe too many. The artwork and the animation is very slick and impressive, the soundtrack is perfect, and I enjoyed lots of the clever dialogue but it just seemed to me that there was far too much going on and it took far too long to get going, and when that combined to deliver, after 140 minutes, a cliffhanger ending, it left me pretty frustrated. I really love Miles and Gwen as characters so I hope whenever they get around to finishing this seven-hour story, there's a bit more focus on them, less on all the others, and someone somewhere in whatever universe has figured out how to finish something that they've started. 7/10 017 Rustin -- I didn't know much about Bayard Rustin before this movie, which is extraordinary given his position in the civil rights movement as an out gay man, and the discrimination, hatred and violence he endured to make the March on Washington happen and, eventually, make a change in the world. This biopic of his weeks leading up to the march doesn't quite do the man or the movement justice as it's bogged down in a gloopy mess of exposition for long parts of it, but Colman Domingo's performance is quite incredible nonetheless while still not posing much of a threat in picking up Best Actor at the Oscars. Chris Rock also appears with a bit of salt and pepper and I'm still not sure what I think about that. It's fine, but when the march is over and the clean-up begins, it's hard not to feel the same way about the movie itself. 6/10 018 Golda -- It's bewildering that this is nominated for Best Make-Up Oscar, presumably for the prosthetics attached to Helen Mirren's face, because she looks like she's made of sponge. Luckily that sponge wasn't flammable because this is another biopic nomination and another nomination seemingly sponsored by Philip Morris and it's difficult not to be utterly distracted by the amount of smoking that goes on, and the reluctance not to be smoking at all times. The subject matter, the Yom Kippur War of 1973, was a diplomatic tightrope where were led to understand that not just winning, but winning just enough was of paramount importance, but the movie fails to attach any tension to the proceedings and we're left with the impression that Golda just marched on regardless while shouting at Henry Kissinger a bit. So very dull. So very much a movie that gets an Oscar nomination. 3/10 019 American Symphony -- I really like Jon Batiste, and the music in this documentary is amazing and heart-felt and overwhelming with emotion and history and heritage as it follows his work on a symphony while his wife, Suleika Jaouad, is undergoing treatment for her cancer. These famous creative types are a weird breed as I'm not sure many of us would be able to work on such a project in similar circumstances, but I get the feeling that this is how they work through their pain and suffering. From the outside, it can look a bit cold and that's really my main gripe with the documentary. As interesting as Batiste's symphony is, the main story is Suleika's cancer and maybe it would've been better told from that perspective. 7/10 020 The Zone of Interest -- The banality of evil, as it turns out, is pretty banal and therein lies the constant terror of Jonathan Glazer's adaptation of a Martin Amis novel that very deliberately focuses on Rudolph Höss and family and their beautiful home and not the extermination camp that sits right next door. You can hear it, though, which makes this maybe one of the most terrifying PG-13 movies ever made. Christian Friedel and Sandra Hüller star as Mr and Mrs Höss but this doesn't seem like a movie that requires a huge amount of acting chops. It's very much a case of pretending everything is normal while horror happens off-camera. The movie, though, looks perfectly framed throughout with bright vivid colors and flowerbeds that make the subject matter even more affecting. And it is affecting. When your eye finally lands on the wall at the bottom of the garden, and then the barbed wire that runs along it, and then the sentry tower, it does hit you, and when you realize the origin of the lovely fur coat Mrs Höss is trying on, that hits you too. Less effective, perhaps, were the moments where Glazer took some artistic license. There are lengthy scenes shot in negative, extended shots of a single color on screen that made me think of Mark Rothko, although the whole movie was making me think of Mark Rothko, and these didn't really work for me, and by the end, the banality of evil was getting pretty banal. There is a reminder, though, in a modern-day sting in the tail, that perhaps it doesn't take all that much effort to turn a blind eye, to look at things without seeing them, and maybe more of us are capable of that than we'd like to think. 8/10

The insistence on carrying on with the dancing while half a dozen glum and hungry people watched on, and then asking for a tip was beautiful.

...googles "frotting"...

Doing my best to see all the movies nominated for an Oscar. Going into this week, I'm 14 out of 53. 010 NYAD -- Aquatic-based true-story sports movies continue, following George Clooney's attempts to get us interested in historic rowing. This is better than The Boys in the Boat, but not a whole lot better. A woman in her sixties, Diane Nyad, wants to swim a ridiculous distance through open water from Cuba to the US, and she has a few attempts at doing so. The subject matter didn't grab me all that much -- and in fact swimming in those conditions is my worst nightmare -- but the performances from Annette Bening and Jodie Foster, the latter in particular, are what makes this an enjoyable couple of hours. I don't remember seeing Foster so at ease in a role as she is here, playing the friend, coach, and old flame to Diane, and she is incredibly cool in doing so, so much so that Bening's performance as Nyad kinda takes a back seat for long periods. I imagine Da'Vine Joy Randolph will win Best Supporting Actress, but if she doesn't, it had better go Jodie Foster's way. It's a good movie to watch at home on a Sunday, curled up in a comfy chair, preferably when it's raining outside. 6/10 011 Elemental -- Pixar's Obvious Metaphor department does it again. The animation outside of the actual characters is amazing but the story is so bland and the humor very juvenile, which, yes, it's a kids' movie but does Pixar not throw in any jokes for the parents anymore? I dunno, despite the actual point of the movie, I found it quite hard to connect with. 4/10 012 Nimona -- I loved this, and not just because of Metric featuring in the soundtrack. What a fresh piece of storytelling that was cute, sassy, delivered its message far more effectively than Elemental and was genuinely funny. I adored the science-fantasy setting which made sure that pretty much every frame was interesting to look at and the animation itself was just perfect. And how refreshing to have two gay knights whose sexuality has no real influence on proceedings. They're gay, just because, like people are straight, just because. My only complaint is the path the story took was a little predictable in places, but I'm nit-picking. Brilliant stuff. Nominated for Best Animated Feature. 9/10 013 Flamin' Hot -- Okay, so it's clawingly overly sentimental. And okay, so large sections of it may or may not have been made up. And okay, so it paints a rather optimistic rags-to-riches story that hopes to cover up its corporate, commercial, capitalist angle, but goddamit, Richard Montañez's story of inventing the Flamin' Hot Cheeto flavor while working as a janitor in a Frito-Lay factory still managed to tug on these old heartstrings and it's funny enough frequently enough for me to nod along and say, yep, this feelgood movie did, in fact, make me feel good. Nominated for Original Song at 2024 Oscars. Can't say I noticed it specifically, but the soundtrack was spot on. 7/10 014 American Fiction -- Cord Jefferson's debut is a sharp and assured social satire that focuses on a talented but underappreciated Black writer who resorts to a pseudonym and a parody of the racial poverty porn that invigorates the white masses, only for the joke to go over everyone's head, and the money and movie offers to come in. Which is lucky, as his mother's Altzheimers demands expensive, round-the-clock treatment. Jeffery Wright is as captivating as ever in the role of Thelonious “Monk” Ellison and he's supported by talented actors who deliver Jefferson's hilarious script brilliantly. As the conceit progresses, though, it loses prominence to the family drama aspect of the story, meanders through some obvious detours, and then has a few attempts at finding a decent ending, none of which really land as a worthy resolution. It's nominated at the Oscars for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Original Score, Best Original Screenplay, and a Best Supporting Actor for Sterling K Brown. I doubt that it'll convert any of those to a win, but it's still entertaining, funny, and knows how to get you in the feels from time to time. It'll be interesting, and probably fun, to see where Cord Jefferson goes from here. 7/10

Exactly! Jaz was so obviously faithful but just left it too late to air his suspicions of Harry. Hard to time that well, though. The pressure was getting to Harry right at the end, but he put in the effort at the start and he was a worthy winner overall.

009 All of Us Strangers -- There's a thing about movies that feature Paul Mescal that break me. When he teams up with Andrew Scott, turns out I'm essentially reduced to rubble. Scott plays Adam, a writer who occupies one of two apartments in an otherwise empty London tower block. The other flat belongs to Harry, Paul Mescal, and the two of them meet, don't exactly hit it off, and then meet up later and hit it off rather better. In the meantime, Adam is trying to write about his parents who died when he was 12. He goes to visit their old home and is surprised to meet them as they were when they died, round about the age he is now. This sets up a longing aspect of the movie that will be felt by anyone who has lost a loved one, and especially so if there were things left unsaid. Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal's chemistry is crazy good here, as is the relationship between Adam and his parents played by Claire Foy and Jamie Bell. Everything about it is so real, and so heartbreaking, as Adam has the chance to come out to his folks and be his full self with them. Added to the mix are so many touchpoints of my childhood; Frankie Goes to Hollywood and The Power of Love play an important role, Now That's What I Call Music 10 (which I somehow had three copies of) features, all there to bring it all even closer to home. Andrew Haigh's writing and direction is tender and sweet and beautifully done without being overly sentimental. There's an overt twist in the tail, and there may well be a covert one too depending on your interpretation. All in all, just like After Sun, it's a movie that broke me down into pieces and when I put myself back together again, hopefully, it was in a better order. Also like After Sun, it's the sort of movie you want other people to watch, and want to hear what they think. For me, it's an absolute triumph. 10/10

So funny, tho. Her wee jump of glee when she came into the room each morning for breakfast made me chuckle. But aye. Thick as shite in the neck of a bottle, definitely.

Harry says fateful instead of faithful.

Best episode of the series in a run of really great episodes. Fair play to Harry. He saw a chance and he took it but I've got to wonder if he's spaffed his load a little too quickly. Talking of which, another great Charlotte bath scene as well. What a show.

One of Charlotte's boobs is a traitor. The other one is a faithful.

Decided to opt for an easy life this year and just log new movies / movies I saw at the cinema, mostly because I've been off work and watched a ton of shite I can't be bothered going through. So... The Beekeeper -- I saw a review on Letterboxd where the reviewer said that if they'd woken up from a years-long coma and someone had shown them The Beekeeper right after they'd woken up, they might not be able to tell exactly what year it was, but they'd know within five minutes that it was the second week in January. As such, as a January movie, I think this compares pretty well with January movies of old. This time last year I was watching The 355 and this is much better than that. Generally, I thought this was an awful lot of stupid fun that wasted no time in explaining much to anyone, just got in, got the job done, and fucked off, and that's pretty much what I'm looking for in tower attack style action movies. The CGI is ropey, swathes of it make little sense, it affords scammers with far too much sophistication, but it made me laugh, made me punch the air a couple of times, and you can't say fairer than that. Ready for the inevitable sequel in the second week of January 2025. 7/10 Role Play -- Haven't we done this already, where the beautiful woman is secretly an assassin? In fact, hasn't Kaley Cuoco done this already? Either way, when Chat GPT is asked to write a romantic comedy script from now on, it should really be programmed to stay away from this trope otherwise five years from now, every single movie released is going to be about a beautiful woman who is secretly an assassin. 2/10 Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire -- I don't think it's as bad as a lot of reviews would have you believe, but holy shit does Zack Snyder -- let's be generous and say "riffs" rather than "steals" -- from pretty much every IP you can name. Aside from the very obvious -- again, let's be generous -- "tip of the hat" to Star Wars, there are -- generously -- "homages" to Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, The Hobbit, Gladiator, Dune, District 9, The Matrix, and others. I spent a decent amount of the runtime waiting for a depressed robot to appear and claim his brain was the size of a planet. And of course, from borrowing from so many other things, it ends up not being as good as any of them and makes about as much sense as any jumbled mess can. It is, though, fairly pretty and I guess it's ambitious, and it gets an extra half point by being 15 minutes shorter than I was expecting thanks to a lengthy end credits sequence. 4/10

About time, her breests were fucking filthy.

001 The Boys in the Boat -- It's hard to imagine George Clooney sitting up late at night, desperate to direct the story of a rowing crew from 1930s Seattle and their attempts to reach Olympic glory, and I feel that shows. The Boys in the Boat is such a lackluster, by-the-numbers sporting movie that it must've just been something for him to do. I'm not at all au fait with the story of these young go-getters who go up against the establishment, wealthy rivals, and, dare I say, *themselves* in their pursuit of success but there wasn't a single beat that came as a surprise. Performances are contained and stereotypical for this sort of movie, a love interest is introduced for absolutely no storytelling purpose whatsoever, and oddly placed threats in the final act are brushed aside as though they never existed. All this said, one determined viewer behind me in the cinema gave it a determined solo standing ovation which was pretty much the most interesting thing that happened in the previous couple of hours. 5/10 002 Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget -- Sumptuous as ever animation from Aardman which ends up being the best thing about this unnecessary egg of a sequel. A few laugh-out moments aside, this is a pretty dull affair that fails to hold the attention. 5/10 003 The Hateful Eight -- The story construction here is somewhere between a Glass Onion movie, Red Dead Redemption, The Thing, and a real-life version of Among Us, and it works really well with, perhaps, the best cast list Tarantino has ever assembled. But bloody hell, at nearly three hours, it's so long, and the first half is so slow. It's a testament to how good the second half is that it finishes without feeling like a slog. The lighting is incredible and Ennio Morricone's score rounds the film off wonderfully. If only there was a two-hour version. 8/10 004 Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones -- I haven't been all that interested in the Paranormal Activity franchise since the first one, which I quite enjoyed, and the second one, which I didn't, and I only watched this to see what Christopher Landon would come up with. Generally, I'm a fan of Landon's writing and directing and I think he does a pretty good job here. It's not terribly scary or all that eerie, but I liked the characters and I enjoyed the set-up which did a better job of explaining the permanently present camera than I would've imagined. Added to the three-dimensional characters, Landon also adds a decent plot into the mix as well. It's like he knows how to tell a story. Crazy! Perfectly serviceable, just about the right length, well-paced, and a sequel that does a better-than-average job with the limitations of the franchise. I don't know why it attracts so much hate. 7/10 005 Wonka -- I'd quite like to be subjective here and spend some time complaining that the sound mix was a bit weird in places and I found myself having to lean in to hear the lines and the lyrics, but really I'd be setting myself up as trying to conceal the obvious. I was fucking enchanted, and my leaning forward had nothing to do with the sound levels. I adored this from the start and was more in love with it by the end, and as someone not exactly fond of musicals, this says a lot. But the songs were great and imaginative and clever and infectious and dazzling, which pretty much jives with the story and the aesthetic and some beautiful set-pieces. Everything about it gave the feel of being a kid in a candy store. I love the worlds that Paul King and Simon Farnaby create, and I love the universe that dictates that Farnaby has to play a bumbling security guard. A triumph.

I started watching it again after Matthew Perry died and even the earlier seasons were much funnier than I remember them being.

Episode 3 is a cracker. I've enjoyed all the different versions of The Traitors to a greater or lesser degree, but the UK one is just so obviously the best.

The final batch of movies in 2023 although I may watch Bottoms again tonight. Or Paddington 2. Or both. Quite happy to see around 75 new releases this year and more than get my money's worth out of the equivalent of the Cineworld Unlimited card they have over here. It's been a fun year reading everyone else's reviews and getting tips on some class films I wouldn't otherwise have known about. Happy New Year to everyone on the thread! 262 Poor Things -- I've been a fan of Yorgos Lanthimos's work since The Lobster so I was looking forward to this quite a bit, not hindered in any way by Emma Stone who I think I've enjoyed in most movies of hers I've seen. But for a couple of hours after the opening frames, I sat with a really quizzical look on my face as the story unraveled and as the end credits rolled, I don't think my expression flinched. Bella, Emma Stone, is the creation of Willem Dafoe's Godwin Baxter, who rescued her dead body from a river and, seeing she was pregnant, replaced her brain with that of the unborn baby and reanimated her and then continued to experiment as he raised her. As you do. Overall, there's plenty to like and admire about it. The costumes and set design and overall steampunk presentation are all wonderful, and I don't think there's a bad performance in it. I just don't know that the movie is saying what it thinks it's saying. It works far better as a statement of how men are uniformly shit rather than it being some feminist anthem. I do think there's a segment of movie-goers who think a movie is a testament to feminism when the character goes into prostitution "for her own reasons" or as a declaration of "empowerment", or where the leading lady spends long periods of the movie naked -- (TBF the lot, btw). I'm absolutely no expert on feminism and don't claim to be, but this seems to fall a bit short for me and I'm not sure what's supposed to be empowering about this. Despite all this, Emma Stone deserves a tip of the hat for putting herself through this and she unquestionably went all-in, and she's a bit of a tour de force here. Special praise also to the sound design and Jerskin Fendrix's discordant score which came pretty close to giving me a panic attack, which I hope it was trying to do. 4/10 263 The Boy and the Heron -- During World War II, teenaged Mahito is still haunted by the loss of his mother in a bombing raid while his father relocates him to the country to introduce him to his new step-mother, with the two women bearing a resemblance to each other. His world is already upside down when he starts to notice the presence of a heron with a grotesque voice who insists Mahito's arrival has been long-awaited. What follows is a tale of fantasy, magic realism, and dream logic as Mahito is lured into a mysterious tower where timelines are inexact, budgies are lethal, and the heron insists that his mother is not dead after all. It's a beautifully imagined story of loss and guilt and while I won't pretend to have picked up everything that Miyazaki presented, it was more than enough to be invested and moved. The hand-drawn animation strikes an interesting balance where it can be remarkable in one moment -- a scene where Mahito takes a sip from a glass bottle is just exquisite -- while appearing fairly rudimentary in others, and the soundtrack is sparse and gentle so in a warm movie theater, especially where the story dips in the middle, it might be necessary to go get another coffee to avoid being lulled to sleep by the gentleness of it all. 8/10 264 Ferrari -- Motor racing is boring. Motor racing movies are usually boring. Michael Mann's biopic of Enzo Ferrari mercifully doesn't linger too much on the motor racing side of things. This isn't, much to my surprise, another Ford vs Ferrari (which I loved and is the exception to the rule) and instead it's a bit of an examination of a man fighting against the relentless devastating threats to his legacy. On the track, he struggles to produce a winning team with drivers that keep dying on him, in the boardroom he struggles to keep his company from falling into bankruptcy, and outside he struggles to cope with the loss of his son, Dino, the distance this has created with his wife, Laura, and his mistress who wants their son to adopt his rightful last name. Adam Driver is pretty good once your brain works out to handle Adam Driver putting on an Italian accent. Penélope Cruz, though, is as excellent as you'd imagine as Laura. It's a ponderous affair that has the feel of a European soap opera and it's only in the last act, curiously during the 1957 Mille Miglia race round Italy, where thanks to my lack of knowledge or interest in men racing cars meant that I was able to find something to raise the pulse. From now on, any movie about motor racing that uses more than one shot of a gearbox or a clutch being depressed will automatically be docked a point. 6/10 265 May December -- There's something just beautifully surreal about this black comedy about sexual abuse and grooming, and I think it all starts with the over-the-top score that deliberately makes everything feel like it's the most dramatic thing you're ever likely to see, like Julianne Moore's character realizing she's run out of hot dogs. Natalie Portman plays Elizabeth, a movie actor who will be the lead in a movie about woman who, when she was in her thirties, had a relationship with a thirteen-year-old boy, the scandal that surrounded it, and the relationship which remains to this day. Elizabeth visits the couple and their surrounding friends and family in the lead-up to their children graduating from High School in an attempt to understand them better. This does lead to the rather odd moment where Julianne Moore, in character of course, is in awe of Natalie Portman. They're both very good in their roles. Moore's Gracie is an odd, naive kind of character who doesn't see what she did wrong all those years ago, but she's careful to keep some cards close to her chest. Elizabeth, on the other hand, will have nothing to do with these people in a few weeks so has no issue learning what she can from whoever she can as she researches the damage this this affair caused and continues to cause. At the side of all this is Chris Melton as Joe, the boy in the affair who is now a man, the age that his wife was back at the start and he plods a rather sad path through the movie. Elizabeth speaks to him like a child and with his own children about to leave home for college, he finds himself at a terrifying crossroads in his life. A lovely metaphor to this is in the butterflies he raises, much to Elizabeth's continuing disgust. It's a very funny movie in places, not always score-dependent, but the questions it asks really are fascinating, and the power that this crime and this abuse from twenty years ago still holds very much proves that in a small community, nothing is ever truly forgotten. 9/10 266 Anatomy of a Fall -- I think if I hear the steel drum version of Fifty Cent's P.I.M.P. one more time in my life, it'll already be too soon. The song, though, plays a pivotal role in the start of this movie as Sandra Hüller -- who one of the performances of the year -- stars as writer Sandra who in her Grenoble ski lodge is being interviewed but her writer husband, Samuel, is being a dick renovating the attic as noisily as possible while listening to the steel drum version of PIMP at a ridiculous volume. The interview is suspended, the interviewer departs, and later that day Sandra's visually impaired son, Daniel, finds his father lying dead in the snow, seemingly having fallen from a third-floor window. After the initial investigation, Samuel's head wound suggests that this was more than a simple accident and Sandra is quickly arrested. The rest of the movie, more or less, deals with her trial for her husband's murder. A simple-sounding story transcends thanks to weaving threads and details and some incredible performances from Hüller and Milo Machado-Graner, who plays Daniel, along with a great supporting cast. It's difficult not to hate the prosecuting lawyer and have sympathy and pride with his equivalent on the defense side, and it's hard not to wonder how much director Justine Triet is playing on this. Plus if there was an Oscar for best dog-acting, I'd put the mortgage on Messi as Snoop picking it up. If this is anything like how French trials are conducted then holy shit, and for a courtroom drama and a film that's mostly people talking in rooms, I found it utterly captivating. It won the Palme D'Or this year and it's hard not to imagine it being nominated, unlike poor Messi, for a bucket of Oscars in a few weeks' time. Definitely one of the best movies of the year. 10/10 267 Asterix & Obelix: The Middle Kingdom -- I used to love the old Asterix books and even the newer ones aren't too bad, but I've never been much of a fan of the movies, particularly the live-action ones. This one doesn't even have the common sense to have Gérard Depardieu as Obelix. It does, however, look amazing. The sets and the costumes are pretty much perfect, but that's about all it has going for it. The storyline -- something about a Chinese empress coming to the little Gaulish village because reasons -- may be original but lacks the charm and humor of even the worst book (Asterix and the Falling Sky, without doubt) and long, long, LONG before it's two-hour runtime, it's something to be endured rather than enjoyed. 3/10

Cheers, ser! Quite weird that between this, Radio 1 and 2, some shite on Talk TV and all the views on social media, the wee clip has millions of impressions. And I don't get a fucking penny for it. Belter!

Which reminds me, I forgot to put my score on it. I don't think it's a bad movie, it's just not a great movie to watch on Christmas Day. Solid 6 on 10 for me.

257 Death Proof -- For a while it was so bad it was kinda funny as QT shoehorns easter egg after easter egg into this messy and rambling story about a psychopathic stuntman who kills women because that's how the movie can happen. There are some impressive stunts, the car crash in the middle of the movie is probably the best part of the thing, but so much of it is just tedious and the lengthy exchanges in the second half just drag on, like watching two hours of NASCAR. Not for me, and a definite lowlight of the QT movie catalog. 3/10 258 Road House -- Road House is of those demonstrably terrible movies that is difficult not to love. The premise that I never seemed to get far beyond is that lots of people in the movie have heard of two nightclub bouncers, because they're *that* good, unless of course, the plot dictates that they haven't heard of them. Bye-bye realism. Patrick Swayze is one of them who is hired to clean up the Double Deuce bar somewhere in Kansas (maybe), and he upsets the local hoodlums while winning the affections of the town doctor. It's nonsense. It tells you more than I probably care to share when I admit that I don't really remember much of the last twenty minutes from my teenage years as my interest kinda waned after Denise's little dance. I didn't miss much as all sense seems to be thrown aggressively out of the window by that point. But it's fun, and it's enjoyable, and not everything has to make sense. Right? 6/10 259 Inglourious Basterds -- Watching this for the first time since 2009, I expected it to come in high, which after Death Proof couldn't have come quickly enough, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that I totally love this movie. The opening is an absolute masterclass in tension building from Denis Ménochet and, at the time, relative unknown Christoph Waltz. Incredible dialogue, beautifully lit and shot, edited perfectly, and still heartbreaking to watch. From there Tarantino gets star turns from Brad Pitt, Mélanie Laurent, Diane Kruger, and Michael Fassbender, as several threads eventually combine at the brutal Paris premiere of Nation's Pride, and while it's a pretty long movie, it never seems to drag and each segment pulls its weight. I thought this in 2009 and I thought it again during the rewatch that the appearance of Mike Myers was a distraction and I think I'd rather have not sat waiting for him to ask Michael Fassbender's character if he was horny, but this slightly weird bit of casting isn't enough to knock a half-star off. Brilliant stuff. 10/10 260 Paddington -- It's a perfect, charming wee movie that is only made less perfect because the sequel is even better. A delightful combination of fantastic CGI, a brilliant supporting cast, and a genuinely funny and heartfelt script. No matter how many times I see it, when Paddington is waiting outside the Lost & Found at the station, and the lights on Found are broken, then Mary Brown sees him and the word FOUND lights up again, it will always melt my heart. Just a beautiful movie that does its best to remind you that the world can be a lovely place. Even in That London. 9/10 261 The Iron Claw -- Why on earth did I think this was going to be a light-hearted comedy? Because spoiler alert: it isn't. I watched this on Christmas Day and for two hours it sucked all remaining dregs of the spirit of the season from me. The story of the Von Erich wrestling brothers is a true one. I'm only a somewhat casual fan of the 2000-ish era of WWE so I don't beat myself up too much for not knowing their story, but simply put, their domineering, ex-wrestler father barks orders and demands the best from them, and in return a series of the worst possible things imaginable is delivered. It's really hard to see beyond the terribly depressing story, but I think I'm done now with movies in 2023 that pretend to be filmed a few decades ago. The grainy stock (or maybe it was the crappy screen I watched it on) is becoming as overused as rich people being p***ks in a place was last year. I'm seeing lots of praise for the movie, and for Zac Effron's performance in particular which I have to admit felt workmanlike at best for me, and maybe I was in the wrong mood to see it, but I'd be amazed if this troubled any end of year lists except perhaps Best Depressing Movies About Wrestling and Toxic Masculinity of 2023, where it surely must have a chance. 6/10

253 Kill Bill: Vol. 1 -- As much as this is style over substance, and as much as it's overblown and long, I don't think Uma Thurman has been as cool as this and the last half-hour or so in the House of Blue Leaves up there with the most impressive scenes in martial arts movies. Sonny Chiba is excellent, the anime scene beautifully bloody, but the Kill Bill project suffers from being filmed as one movie and then split in two which allowed a laissez-faire approach to editing. It's still a great watch, full of quotable moments, and a soundtrack as sharp as any Hattori Hanzo steel. 8/10 254 Leave the World Behind -- I typically enjoy movies that serve up a broad concept in intimate surroundings; Coherence would be a great example. Here, we're looking at the end of the world from the perspective of a beach house in Long Island, which is where Amanda, Julia Roberts, decides to take her husband Clay, Ethan Hawke, and kids on a whimsical vacation. Once there, they enjoy their plush surroundings until an incident at the beach leaves them unsettled, and they return to the house to find the power out and the wi-fi and cell service down, which upsets their daughter who was looking forward to seeing the series finale of Friends. This is a plot point that comes up way too often. When the owner of the house, GH, Mahershala Ali, shows up in the middle of the night with his daughter seeking shelter, Amanda is very suspicious and quite racist, as this wider ensemble discovers more and more about what is causing this sudden outage. First up, at 140 minutes, it's at least half an hour too long, and one character holds on to more information for much longer than they really should if they were concerned about anything other than serving the plot, and oh for the love of God, can the camera maybe stop swinging about the place for just one second, but there really is quite a bit to enjoy while the mystery slowly unravels. As it finally approaches the big reveal, though, less of it makes sense or seems credible, and it feels more like a David Copperfield special that ends with him pulling a dead rabbit out of a hat, and the very end of it is so astonishingly misplaced it made me a little angry. 6/10 255 Kill Bill: Vol. 2 -- As a whole, mostly everything is a little less satisfying than the first one, with the trademark dialogue being oddly clunky in places. The fight in the trailer is awesome and still worth a rewatch. I dunno, I just don't really care for David Carradine in the role of Bill -- at all -- and some of the sequences are a bit tougher to watch knowing Uma Thurman's experience on set. Out of the two Bills, I definitely have seen this one less, and now I remember why. 7/10 256 Maestro -- Bradley Cooper may be a better director than he is an actor, but unfortunately I don’t know that he’s all that good a director. His chain-smoking, cold-ridden performance in this Leonard Bernstein biopic leaves a lot to be desired, like a generous dab of some Vick's VapoRub, as the movie skims over aspects of Bernstein’s life while remaining oddly obsessed with others. Alright, Bradley. He liked men too. We get it. The one thing that Cooper does with his director hat on is get a brilliant performance out of Carey Mulligan who is always the most interesting thing on screen. Choices between color and black and white, and aspect ratio were confusing, and there’s a clear exit point around ten minutes before the end that, had they taken it, would’ve spared us pointless clips from REM and Tears for Fears’ back catalogue. The Oscars love biopics so maybe this will get some love from them next year, hopefully exclusively in the direction of Ms Mulligan. 4/10

245 National Treasure -- Ah, my attempt to find a Nic Cage movie I like was successful. There was a time in the 2000s when it seemed either this or its sequel was on a Sky Movie channel and whenever I happened upon them, I'd invariably watch to the end. It took around five goes to see the first ten minutes of this movie as I never sat down to watch it on purpose. It's all so ridiculous. I don't understand why treasure requires puzzles to direct people to it, and I don't understand why people don't just happen upon the treasure by accident, but I'm happy to go along with it. It's a stupid fun movie where everyone seems to keep their tongue pressed up against their cheek. I'm all for it, Cage is great fun, the supporting cast all do well, and it makes me smile. And I can't not go watch the sequel now. 7/10 246 National Treasure: Book of Secrets -- Same deal as the first one really, except this one wastes no time in introducing Ed Harris with a sob story about his grandpappy which makes Thomas Gates appear to be a traitor and there’s only one way to clear his name: find treasure! Another enjoyable romp with fun set pieces and a great dynamic between Cage and Kruger. I might even prefer this one, but not so much to give it another point. 7/10 247 Terrifier 2 -- The things I disliked about the original have, for the most part, been resolved here. There's a story for a start, and there's character development, and there's even a character to root for. The practical effects are brutal in places but there's an occasional Evil Dead 2 style lightheartedness to how over-the-top everything is. We're meant to be laughing through the disgust. Tell me the laundromat scene isn't ripping off the Nick Kamen Levi commercial at least a little bit. That said, there is a scene in a bedroom that goes on far too long, and the movie in general wades through its 140-minute runtime. It's probably purposefully bloated as Damien Leone asks how much of this we can take, but I think the optimal answer is probably somewhere nearer the 90-minute mark, thanks. 6/10 248 Reservoir Dogs -- Starting a festive stroll through the back catalog of Quentin Tarantino, and this one really takes me back. I refused to jump on the Tarantino bandwagon until I was more or less forced to watch Pulp Fiction, so I saw this one second. And now, 31 years later, the influences are far more apparent but this is still a captivating watch, even if QT started his own trend of casting himself in his movies where he's obviously a weak link, and it showcases his sometimes inexplicable fascination with the N word. So notwithstanding all that, it still stands out, it still impresses, and the dialogue and approach to storytelling, along with compelling characters, keep this part of an essential early collection. 9/10 249 EXmas -- Two fairly attractive people who became famous on The CW play Ali and Graham. Despite their recent, bitter estrangement as a couple, when Graham is too busy with work to visit his parents at Christmas, they invite Ali instead and because she always loved his parents, she agrees. So imagine the chaos that could ensue if he then changes his mind and flies out to Minnesota to show up for the festive period after all. Now imagine that lasting for an hour and a half. Congratulations, you've just imagined the entire movie. It's not a great movie, and it's not even a good movie, but it's a decent movie that is better than you'd expect, and funnier than you'd expect, despite 75% of the comedy coming from passive-aggressive quips between the couple, a perpetually missing Baby Jesus, and the constant wonder of why anyone would want to keep in touch with this family in the first place. It's not something I could ever see me recommending, but if you did happen to watch it, I reckon I'd be interested to know what you thought of it, and how closely it mirrors your festive period. 4/10 250 Pulp Fiction -- Just a beautifully constructed movie. I remember chatting with friends after seeing it as we pieced together where chronologically the movie started and ended and where the bookends in the diner feature in that timeline. Nearly thirty years later I'm sure everyone who's interested has long figured that out, but it speaks to the complexity of the movie that it took a bit of effort back in the day. I don't know if I'm more concerned about the racist language now, or the fact that I wasn't concerned about it in the 90s, but I wouldn't miss it if it was gone or at least toned down. What I do believe is that this is how these characters talk, and the way it is presented feels true, which is at least something. A thrilling watch still, despite the familiarity that allows me to quote along with Ezekiel 25:17, or Christopher Walken's soliloquy, or the discussion around the differences between a motorcycle and a chopper. 10/10 251 Jackie Brown -- The first time I watched this, I remember being bored titless through the first half hour or so, and then the next I checked in with myself, the movie had somehow tricked me into becoming 100% invested. By the end I was in love with it. And I still am. Pam Greer is just superb in the lead role, Robert DeNiro surprises in what is a more background performance, and Samuel L Jackson was hired to say the n-word a lot but still manages to bring some additional style and cool to proceedings that wasn't already delivered by Elmore Leonard's source material. So many twists and turns that all decide to double and triple-cross themselves but it all comes together beautifully in the end. I don't know how controversial this is -- perhaps not at all -- but I reckon this might be my favorite Tarantino movie and by diverting from type, I think this proves how great a director he can be. 10/10 252 Godzilla Minus One -- There's so much about this that's interesting from a human point of view. I don't think I've seen much that tells the Japanese story in the immediate aftermath of the war, of how the people made their peace with what happened, so it felt almost a shame to stick a massive prehistoric lizard into the mix and distract from that. The human story is pretty compelling stuff as cowardly kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima tries to put the war and his own shame behind him and focus on a family he seems to be reluctant to accept. The Godzilla effects, for the most part, are incredible. There are still a few moments where it looks like he lacks heft and weight, but when he rises out of the water, it's breathtaking. And he doesn't take any shit neither. In later scenes where he makes landfall and destroys a city, that city is staying destroyed. There are a few highly telegraphed twists in the tale, and I'm not convinced the subtitles show the dialogue in the best light, but it's a very good movie that balances the action and the characters surprisingly well. And on reflection, of course Godzilla appears in a story about post-war Japanese guilt and loss; that's the entire point. 8/10

I have a probably false memory of Cilla Black saying that she would give up show business when her husband, Bobby, died. So when Bobby died, I thought thank f**k for that, now we'll get our Saturday night TV back. But did she quit? Did she f**k. She kept going for years, churning out the same old shite week after week. And while this memory of Cilla Black may be false, and there's a fairly decent chance she said no such thing, I think it still tells us a lot about the sort of person she was. A liar, pure and simple.

Yer on!