Documentary, with retro camcorder 1970s style family footage, about a family who discover more about their late mother, who died of cancer. Absorbing, but some iffy speculation about whether some of the camcorder footage is faked or restaged (what's the word?) so not really authentic.
Also saw Superman: The Movie with Christopher Reeve at Prince Charles, will do that review when less pissed but it's on next week anyone want to see it, highly recommended, even sound on film is better than on digital, very affecting.
Or to be exact, Lee Daniels' The Butler, due to some silly compromise over supposed name infringment of a silent film called The Butler made in 1916. 8-)
Anyway, this film follows the long career of a White House butler serving every US President from Eisenhower to Reagan. Cecil Gaines is born a sharecropper in racist rural Georgia. After some horrific early life events, he leaves the farm and ends up as a waiter/bartender in a Washington DC hotel, where he is noticed by a White House staffer in 1957. Cecil is well-practiced in the art of seeming invisible when he is in a room, the perfect quality for a butler, but he also has an easy manner about him that makes those he serves (well-off white people, always) feel comfortable, or at least non-threatened.
Cecil's career is shown through vignettes among the various administrations as they deal with (or don't deal with) civil rights issues -- forced school segregation in Little Rock, lunch counter sit-ins, passage of the Civil Rights Act, the influence of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, the Black Panther movement, and South African apartheid. Cecil's way is to defer to white authority (even when he disagrees with it) and accept incremental progress. Meanwhile, his oldest son Louis is more strident in his approach, participating in the Freedom Rides and hanging with Dr. King in Memphis. The relationship between Cecil and Louis serves as the movie's central conflict.
The cast is studded with bold-faced names. Forrest Whitaker is fine as Cecil, while Oprah Winfrey is amazing as his sometimes troubled but always loving wife. Cuba Gooding Jr. and Lenny Kravitz are fellow White House butlers who become Cecil's closest friends over time. Stunt casting abounds when it comes to the Presidents -- John Cusack, James Marsden, Alan Rickman, Liev Schreiber, Robin Williams -- with some more effective than others.
Anyone who has seen Lee Daniels' films (e.g., Precious, The Paperboy) knows that he sprinkles in amounts of fantasy and humor, so anyone looking for a documentary here will be disappointed. White people in The Butler are almost always portrayed as either racist or clueless or both. Having read a few reviews before seeing the film, I knew that coming in, which helped me appreciate how Daniels' approach serves the story quite well. The Butler is not the masterpiece some are making it out to be, but I personally enjoyed it much more than I thought I would, and I recommend it to anyone looking to see a well-told, well-acted story.
Bravaura film making, lots of great camera angles to compensate for the (intentionally) hollow story about the American self-made man. It's about half an hour before Welles really appears in the movie; until then he is seen in fake news footage, which dates the film since those news shots were released in the cinema back in the day before TV of course.
When Welles appears, all youthful, you realise that the likes of Larry Hagman as JR Ewing and Jack Nicholson modelled their personas on him, and latterly Leonardo DiCaprio in Gatsby.
The final shot of Kane's pickled foreskin in a glass bottle labelled 'Rosebud' will long haunt me.
I enjoyed this because I watched it with zero expectations.
It has its moments and the finish is entertaining but it mostly plays out as Call Of Duty meets Taken.
Also, the lack of a "yipee-ki-yay motherfucker" and dialogue in general makes it rather dull.
Still much better than Die Hard 4.0(Live Free Or Die Hard)
“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to a better understanding of ourselves.” - Carl Jung
Commando. A great Arnie film. He plays a retired commando who is forced back into action when his daughter is kidnapped by an exiled South American dictator and an Aussie Freddie Mercury lookalike. Arnie's character is being blackmailed into starting a revolution which will get the dictator back into power.
Have you ever heard of the Emancipation Proclamation?"
Commando. A great Arnie film. He plays a retired commando who is forced back into action when his daughter is kidnapped by an exiled South American dictator and an Aussie Freddie Mercury lookalike. Arnie's character is being blackmailed into starting a revolution which will get the dictator back into power.
Great film, love the bit where Arnie dangles the little bloke over the cliff edge
also the Aussie Freddie bloke is non other than Vernon Wells ,who I hear you cry?
he is mighty Wez the Mohican biker in Mad Max 2
Commando. A great Arnie film. He plays a retired commando who is forced back into action when his daughter is kidnapped by an exiled South American dictator and an Aussie Freddie Mercury lookalike. Arnie's character is being blackmailed into starting a revolution which will get the dictator back into power.
also the Aussie Freddie bloke is non other than Vernon Wells ,who I hear you cry?
he is mighty Wez the Mohican biker in Mad Max 2
I'll have to watch that sometime
Have you ever heard of the Emancipation Proclamation?"
Watched Precious last night, an amazing film, now if you was in blockbuster choosing your Saturday night film
and Precious was on the shelf next to a Jason Statham film ,you would go for Jason WRONG,
this film does not tick all the bloke film requirements , there are no ,fast cars guns,glamorous women exciting film locations
explosions, luxury branded watches ect ect, what you have is a film about a poor Harlem girl who lives with her (I cant swear) mum ,in a projects rat hole . To make things worse ,she has 2 babies ,by her dad,one of the children is disabled too,
she wants and needs to get an education, but mum needs her to collect welfare (sound familiar)
this is one of the most harrowing but yet one of great human emotion films too hit the silver screen, this is a riveting film
not the usual film I would watch ,but yet I was held in place by this masterpiece of human devastation,to the point where this
big ex rugy playing seen it all cop cried ,The biggest shock is Miss Wiess a very plain Jane social worker ,who takes on her case
(no make up greasy hair) is played by Mariah Carey ,now im not and never have been a MC fan ,her music doesn't appeal to me
but now I just love her xxxx ,if you don't watch this film you will be missing out on this excellent film I urge you too watch it
I just got back from Gravity, it was excellent...the photography, everything was well done...it's worth seeing...
BTW, I did not see it in 3-D.
"I don't know if the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or imbeciles who mean it."-Mark Twain
'Just because nobody complains doesn't mean all parachutes are perfect.'- Benny Hill (1924-1992)
Sandra Bullock and George Clooney play a pair of astronauts struggling to survive in orbit above Earth after a catastrophic event destroys their ride home.
Director Alfonso Cuaron takes a relatively simple and straighforward premise and uses it to completely change the rules when it comes to how films are made. Gravity's plot holds your attention and the trials the characters go thru are more a concession trying to rein in a wider audience but this film, much like 2001: A Space Odyssey, is more an experience and exercise in avant garde filmmaking than a sprawling narrative.
Cuaron employs all sorts of tricks, like a 15 minute long opening sequence that appears to have been short in one, long continuous take to draw you into the world on display. Visually, the film is overwhelming, especially if you view it on one of the larger Imax screens. The majestic vistas of Earth and various orbiting structures are breathtaking and once you focus and block out the edges of the screen you really feel like you're up there.
Unless 3D physically makes you ill, you really owe it to yourself to experience this one in 3D. The film was designed with 3D in mind and the stereoscopic imagery is an integral part of the experience: a space shuttle grows from a tiny dot in the distance to a massive vehicle hovering below you; an astronaut lunges their hand out at you in a desperate attempt to survive; you float over the International Space Station as a terrifying wave of debris flies towards and then past you at hypersonic speed. The incredible moments just go on and on.
Gravity is one of those rare movies that really does transcend the medium; it doesn't worry about overly complicated narratives or characters; it just takes you on an awe-inspiring trip.
Immortal Beloved-
Using the Citizen Kane format, Jerome Krabbe's character tries to find Beethoven's secret lover. Good solid performance by Gary Oldman and it really opened me up to Beethoven's life going from his 20's to him going deaf and his death.
“The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning. "
-Casino Royale, Ian Fleming
watched skyline last night not bad,but there seems to be a lot of alien invading earth films lately
are the powers that be trying to warn us /let us down gentley 8-)
By the way, did I tell you, I was "Mad"?
Mr MartiniThat nice house in the sky.Posts: 2,700MI6 Agent
Metallica: Through the Never
If you're a fan of Metallica, drop what you're doing and go see this movie right now. It's mostly a concert movie, but has a nice little story weaved into it.
A roadie is sent on a mission during the concert. Trip (the roadie) has to take gas to a disabled truck owned by Metallica. The contents of the truck is a satchel and the band needs the satchel before the end of the show. As the concert is playing, they'll show small parts of Trips adventure. Most of the time, the style of music playing, goes well with what part of the mission Trip is on. The best part is when Cyanide is being played.
This is a must see for all Metallica fans and fans of Heavy Metal music. The only way to see this is in 3-D and it enhances the experience. 5 stars out of 5.
Qucik edit, sit through the credits to hear an awesome version of Orion.
Some people would complain even if you hang them with a new rope
Rush, Ron Howard's bio about the rivalry between F1 drivers Niki Lauder and James Hunt.
Got better as it went on; it needed to. Very broadly drawn at the start, with Hunt and his posh boy pals like something out of an advert for Pimms. The ace in the pack is the casting of the two, great lookalikes and very good actors; that said Hunt himself, seen in footage at the end, was a real star and had that rangy look Hemsworth doesn't quite have, he looked pretty old too, perhaps due to his lifestyle.
A very funny hitchhiker scene in it, and from thereon the film gets better but too much exposition, not in terms of the plot (which is very simple) but the themes, which get hauled out in dialogue. Some of the chats between the two protagonists put me in mind of the imaginary chats between Frost and Nixon, and of course I was reminded at the end that Peter Morgan was indeed the writer. If he'd done Skyfall, it would have been M saying 'You do understand that the reason you're bringing me here is so you can confront your past and move on, plus if I die then you can get over the deaths of your parents blah blah blah...'
Still it's gripping and moving at times, and you get to hear sexy women go 'Oh James...' In some ways Danny Boyle might have been a better choice to do all the sex and danger stuff.
Yet another 'return to form' for Woody Allen. Not bad. He reminds me a bit of Paul McCartney, still hanging in there, still knocking them out, tends to get praise when he doesn't screw up to bad but still... Much of the film is not that enjoyable, you're hanging out with folk you don't like too much, the central character played by Cate Blanchett, modelled on Kim Catrell off Sex and the City and also Sheldon off Big Bang Theory, with a dash of campy Kenneth Williams. She's a self-obsessed narcissist who has fallen on bad times since her rich hubby's fall from grace. Credit to Allen for portraying the type who talks incessantly about herself, rarely do we see this type on film, also for that thing where a stray comment from a stranger can transport you back to a bad memory from the past.
The drama of the film is mainly car crashing unfolding before you, you see characters (mainly Jasmine) digging herself into a hole. But there's enough to hold attention, it's good just there's the sense it's dealing with a theme Allen wishes to explore, he doesn't fall in love with the characters ever.
The Way with Martin Sheen, it was directed and produced by his son Emilio Estevez who appears in the film...it was excellent...I highly recommend it..
"I don't know if the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or imbeciles who mean it."-Mark Twain
'Just because nobody complains doesn't mean all parachutes are perfect.'- Benny Hill (1924-1992)
switched the idiot box on last night,there in all his cool and sauve-ness was our man Sean Connery,
now must admit ,have had one too many that night ,went for a curry behind Canary wharf
so any way watched Sir Sean and thinks ,cant work out wich Bond film this is
Turns out it was a 1964 film by Hitchcock called Marnie not bad film though
The Living Daylights. I haven't seen it for ages. i like the film but the Afghanistan scenes drag on a bit compared to the Bratislava and Vienna scenes.
Have you ever heard of the Emancipation Proclamation?"
CR, last Saturday I watched LTK, TWINE and CR, a little Bond-afternoon.
Don't confuse me with the other DutchBondFan, but be sure to follow his YouTube account. You can read my articles on James Bond Nederland: www.jamesbond.nl/author/gosse/
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 26,761Chief of Staff
Watched Django Unchained last night...you gotta admire Tarantino, he sure makes a great film !
Watched " The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen ", Haven't seen it in Years.
Still not a great film ( sad it's Connery's last ) but better than I'd remembered.
"I've been informed that there ARE a couple of QAnon supporters who are fairly regular posters in AJB."
Comments
Documentary, with retro camcorder 1970s style family footage, about a family who discover more about their late mother, who died of cancer. Absorbing, but some iffy speculation about whether some of the camcorder footage is faked or restaged (what's the word?) so not really authentic.
Also saw Superman: The Movie with Christopher Reeve at Prince Charles, will do that review when less pissed but it's on next week anyone want to see it, highly recommended, even sound on film is better than on digital, very affecting.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Or to be exact, Lee Daniels' The Butler, due to some silly compromise over supposed name infringment of a silent film called The Butler made in 1916. 8-)
Anyway, this film follows the long career of a White House butler serving every US President from Eisenhower to Reagan. Cecil Gaines is born a sharecropper in racist rural Georgia. After some horrific early life events, he leaves the farm and ends up as a waiter/bartender in a Washington DC hotel, where he is noticed by a White House staffer in 1957. Cecil is well-practiced in the art of seeming invisible when he is in a room, the perfect quality for a butler, but he also has an easy manner about him that makes those he serves (well-off white people, always) feel comfortable, or at least non-threatened.
Cecil's career is shown through vignettes among the various administrations as they deal with (or don't deal with) civil rights issues -- forced school segregation in Little Rock, lunch counter sit-ins, passage of the Civil Rights Act, the influence of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, the Black Panther movement, and South African apartheid. Cecil's way is to defer to white authority (even when he disagrees with it) and accept incremental progress. Meanwhile, his oldest son Louis is more strident in his approach, participating in the Freedom Rides and hanging with Dr. King in Memphis. The relationship between Cecil and Louis serves as the movie's central conflict.
The cast is studded with bold-faced names. Forrest Whitaker is fine as Cecil, while Oprah Winfrey is amazing as his sometimes troubled but always loving wife. Cuba Gooding Jr. and Lenny Kravitz are fellow White House butlers who become Cecil's closest friends over time. Stunt casting abounds when it comes to the Presidents -- John Cusack, James Marsden, Alan Rickman, Liev Schreiber, Robin Williams -- with some more effective than others.
Anyone who has seen Lee Daniels' films (e.g., Precious, The Paperboy) knows that he sprinkles in amounts of fantasy and humor, so anyone looking for a documentary here will be disappointed. White people in The Butler are almost always portrayed as either racist or clueless or both. Having read a few reviews before seeing the film, I knew that coming in, which helped me appreciate how Daniels' approach serves the story quite well. The Butler is not the masterpiece some are making it out to be, but I personally enjoyed it much more than I thought I would, and I recommend it to anyone looking to see a well-told, well-acted story.
Christ they used a lot of fake blood in that
Bravaura film making, lots of great camera angles to compensate for the (intentionally) hollow story about the American self-made man. It's about half an hour before Welles really appears in the movie; until then he is seen in fake news footage, which dates the film since those news shots were released in the cinema back in the day before TV of course.
When Welles appears, all youthful, you realise that the likes of Larry Hagman as JR Ewing and Jack Nicholson modelled their personas on him, and latterly Leonardo DiCaprio in Gatsby.
The final shot of Kane's pickled foreskin in a glass bottle labelled 'Rosebud' will long haunt me.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I enjoyed this because I watched it with zero expectations.
It has its moments and the finish is entertaining but it mostly plays out as Call Of Duty meets Taken.
Also, the lack of a "yipee-ki-yay motherfucker" and dialogue in general makes it rather dull.
Still much better than Die Hard 4.0(Live Free Or Die Hard)
" I don't listen to hip hop!"
Great film, love the bit where Arnie dangles the little bloke over the cliff edge
also the Aussie Freddie bloke is non other than Vernon Wells ,who I hear you cry?
he is mighty Wez the Mohican biker in Mad Max 2
I'll have to watch that sometime
" I don't listen to hip hop!"
and Precious was on the shelf next to a Jason Statham film ,you would go for Jason WRONG,
this film does not tick all the bloke film requirements , there are no ,fast cars guns,glamorous women exciting film locations
explosions, luxury branded watches ect ect, what you have is a film about a poor Harlem girl who lives with her (I cant swear) mum ,in a projects rat hole . To make things worse ,she has 2 babies ,by her dad,one of the children is disabled too,
she wants and needs to get an education, but mum needs her to collect welfare (sound familiar)
this is one of the most harrowing but yet one of great human emotion films too hit the silver screen, this is a riveting film
not the usual film I would watch ,but yet I was held in place by this masterpiece of human devastation,to the point where this
big ex rugy playing seen it all cop cried ,The biggest shock is Miss Wiess a very plain Jane social worker ,who takes on her case
(no make up greasy hair) is played by Mariah Carey ,now im not and never have been a MC fan ,her music doesn't appeal to me
but now I just love her xxxx ,if you don't watch this film you will be missing out on this excellent film I urge you too watch it
BTW, I did not see it in 3-D.
'Just because nobody complains doesn't mean all parachutes are perfect.'- Benny Hill (1924-1992)
Sandra Bullock and George Clooney play a pair of astronauts struggling to survive in orbit above Earth after a catastrophic event destroys their ride home.
Director Alfonso Cuaron takes a relatively simple and straighforward premise and uses it to completely change the rules when it comes to how films are made. Gravity's plot holds your attention and the trials the characters go thru are more a concession trying to rein in a wider audience but this film, much like 2001: A Space Odyssey, is more an experience and exercise in avant garde filmmaking than a sprawling narrative.
Cuaron employs all sorts of tricks, like a 15 minute long opening sequence that appears to have been short in one, long continuous take to draw you into the world on display. Visually, the film is overwhelming, especially if you view it on one of the larger Imax screens. The majestic vistas of Earth and various orbiting structures are breathtaking and once you focus and block out the edges of the screen you really feel like you're up there.
Unless 3D physically makes you ill, you really owe it to yourself to experience this one in 3D. The film was designed with 3D in mind and the stereoscopic imagery is an integral part of the experience: a space shuttle grows from a tiny dot in the distance to a massive vehicle hovering below you; an astronaut lunges their hand out at you in a desperate attempt to survive; you float over the International Space Station as a terrifying wave of debris flies towards and then past you at hypersonic speed. The incredible moments just go on and on.
Gravity is one of those rare movies that really does transcend the medium; it doesn't worry about overly complicated narratives or characters; it just takes you on an awe-inspiring trip.
Using the Citizen Kane format, Jerome Krabbe's character tries to find Beethoven's secret lover. Good solid performance by Gary Oldman and it really opened me up to Beethoven's life going from his 20's to him going deaf and his death.
-Casino Royale, Ian Fleming
are the powers that be trying to warn us /let us down gentley 8-)
If you're a fan of Metallica, drop what you're doing and go see this movie right now. It's mostly a concert movie, but has a nice little story weaved into it.
A roadie is sent on a mission during the concert. Trip (the roadie) has to take gas to a disabled truck owned by Metallica. The contents of the truck is a satchel and the band needs the satchel before the end of the show. As the concert is playing, they'll show small parts of Trips adventure. Most of the time, the style of music playing, goes well with what part of the mission Trip is on. The best part is when Cyanide is being played.
This is a must see for all Metallica fans and fans of Heavy Metal music. The only way to see this is in 3-D and it enhances the experience. 5 stars out of 5.
Qucik edit, sit through the credits to hear an awesome version of Orion.
Got better as it went on; it needed to. Very broadly drawn at the start, with Hunt and his posh boy pals like something out of an advert for Pimms. The ace in the pack is the casting of the two, great lookalikes and very good actors; that said Hunt himself, seen in footage at the end, was a real star and had that rangy look Hemsworth doesn't quite have, he looked pretty old too, perhaps due to his lifestyle.
A very funny hitchhiker scene in it, and from thereon the film gets better but too much exposition, not in terms of the plot (which is very simple) but the themes, which get hauled out in dialogue. Some of the chats between the two protagonists put me in mind of the imaginary chats between Frost and Nixon, and of course I was reminded at the end that Peter Morgan was indeed the writer. If he'd done Skyfall, it would have been M saying 'You do understand that the reason you're bringing me here is so you can confront your past and move on, plus if I die then you can get over the deaths of your parents blah blah blah...'
Still it's gripping and moving at times, and you get to hear sexy women go 'Oh James...' In some ways Danny Boyle might have been a better choice to do all the sex and danger stuff.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Yet another 'return to form' for Woody Allen. Not bad. He reminds me a bit of Paul McCartney, still hanging in there, still knocking them out, tends to get praise when he doesn't screw up to bad but still... Much of the film is not that enjoyable, you're hanging out with folk you don't like too much, the central character played by Cate Blanchett, modelled on Kim Catrell off Sex and the City and also Sheldon off Big Bang Theory, with a dash of campy Kenneth Williams. She's a self-obsessed narcissist who has fallen on bad times since her rich hubby's fall from grace. Credit to Allen for portraying the type who talks incessantly about herself, rarely do we see this type on film, also for that thing where a stray comment from a stranger can transport you back to a bad memory from the past.
The drama of the film is mainly car crashing unfolding before you, you see characters (mainly Jasmine) digging herself into a hole. But there's enough to hold attention, it's good just there's the sense it's dealing with a theme Allen wishes to explore, he doesn't fall in love with the characters ever.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
'Just because nobody complains doesn't mean all parachutes are perfect.'- Benny Hill (1924-1992)
now must admit ,have had one too many that night ,went for a curry behind Canary wharf
so any way watched Sir Sean and thinks ,cant work out wich Bond film this is
Turns out it was a 1964 film by Hitchcock called Marnie not bad film though
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Ahhhh.......such a good time! :007)
our old friend John Barry.
http://youtu.be/UIxCQwduTzE
" I don't listen to hip hop!"
It's an amazing movie. -{
Still not a great film ( sad it's Connery's last ) but better than I'd remembered.