Change Your Image
titley-02065
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
Challengers (2024)
Bad dialogue with too much tennis
Wow, I'm so surprised at all the good reviews here, I found it almost unwatchable. I stuck it out to the end but my friend who I went with left after about forty minutes. And ultimately I wished I had done the same; it was over two hours of bad acting, terrible dialogue, clunky time jumps, and way too much tennis that served no purpose (they're tennis players, I get it, matches affect them, I don't need this reinforced ten times). Zendaya was the only redeeming feature of this film, without her it would have been unwatchable. I'm a big fan of Luca Guadagnino, having loved both Call Me By Your Name and Bones and All, so I was really surprised by the stock standard direction and how much this felt like a bad teen drama.
Perfect Days (2023)
Starts slow, finishes superbly
Perfect Days is the best film I've seen for a while, Wim Wenders is in form with a unique film that has very little dialogue but a lasting impact. Don't be put off by the slow-paced first half, it is too long by about fifteen minutes but in the end, it all makes sense. Everything that happens in that first half adds up to eventually create one of the most arresting endings of any film I've seen. I came away quite affected by Perfect Days, it is a beautiful film. The cinematography is superb as Wenders makes use of a static frame for much of the film, which concentrates the viewer on Koji Yakusho, who is brilliant in the lead role. To top it all off there's a killer soundtrack that binds the film together. Go see it.
The Zone of Interest (2023)
More like a meditation on evil than a traditional drama
Zone of Interest is an unusual film in that it's more a meditation on evil than a traditional feature film drama.
As a traditional feature film it's a bit slow, lacks character development (outside the main character), is a tad self-consciously arty, and repetitive - early on I found myself thinking, "yeah, I get it, let's move it along".
But taken as a piece of art or a meditation, it's original, chilling, immersive, harrowing, and darkly beautiful. Those initial concerns about pacing soon disappeared as I found myself horrified by the juxtaposition of the uncaring, brutal mundanity of the Commandant's family life just outside the camp, and the unimaginable, unseen horrors that were happening literally metres away inside the camp. This is one of those rare films that has me still thinking about it a week after I saw it.
Worth seeing so you can make up your own mind.
All of Us Strangers (2023)
Pretentious and turgid
Omg I can't believe the number of good reviews for this film! From the very beginning it is obvious the film makers thought they were creating a masterpiece, from the languid editing to the heavy handed music score, to the sheer number of visual metaphors that screamed, 'look at me, how fantastic and clever is this film!'.
The sex scenes were gratuitous and the script and art direction were out of whack - the scenes with the parents were (according to the film's timeline) in the early 2000s yet the design and attitudes were as if it were the early eighties.
I felt like everything was dealt with such a heavy hand. With heavy editing it would have made a decent short film, but for some reason this movie has sucked people into thinking it's meaningful when really it's just a thought bubble.
Chevalier (2022)
Good but not great
I enjoyed this movie, superb sets and costume, good acting and interesting story. Unfortunately the script is okay but not great and if anywhere, this is where it fell down. It felt like they didn't know how to end the film and maybe this is because they were trying to paint Chevalier (at the end) as being sympathetic to the revolution when in fact the only reason he got to that point was because he was turned down for a job. I came away feeling he was slightly amoral, which I doubt is what was intended. But overall I enjoyed the film, it's better than most and a great trip into eighteenth century Paris. Definitely worth a look.
The Whale (2022)
Honest and confronting
I went into this film expecting the worst having seen Women Talking the week before and being bored out of my brain, but The Whale surprised me with its unflinching honesty and confronting visuals. I was surprised by how much this film affected me and how it kept in my head for days afterwards. This is really solid film making. The acting is fantastic all round, particularly Fraser, whose performance raises the entire film a couple of notches.
The Whale misses out on a higher score due to it being (like just about every film this year) 10-15 minutes too long, and also because I found some of the blocking of scenes too stagey, where characters would go to leave then pause at the door, back to camera, before finally (and dramatically) turning and reentering the scene - people just don't do that in real life and it drives me nuts, very surprising from Aronofsky.
Aftersun (2022)
a nice little journey but ultimately unrewarding.
So apparently this film is about a woman looking back many years later on a trip she took as an eleven year oldwith her father, though the only time you ever see the woman is in a single scene where she gets out of bed on her birthday, and pretty much all the rest of the film is the actual trip.
Sure, there are some great scenes in this film and the two lead performances are top notch but really... there's so little plot that when some finally appears towards the end it's really annoying that it feels like a cop out thrown in to create a bit of drama. And on top of that you have endless self aware, arty shots that do nothing to drive the story or anything else forward (if there was one more reflection shot I was going to scream).
I went with someone who makes a living from the arts and she was as equally underwhelmed as I was. If it wasn't for the unbelievable charisma of the young girl I would have given this 4 stars. It's a nice little journey but ultimately unrewarding.
Women Talking (2022)
More a play than a film
The title says it all, this film is just women sitting around discussing their options. It might have made a great play but as a film I found it strangely lacking in drama given how dramatic their story was. This is partly to do with us never being told anything about the people who did these unspeakable things to the women while they were drugged. For most of the film they are just referred to as 'the men' and yes, this is because the women themselves don't know who exactly it was that attacked them, but regardless, for me it stripped away the drama and left me wanting to know more.
Truthfully, I was bored after about half an hour, arguments went round and round in circles, and for most of the film there was very little progression. It was like we were watching the discussion in real time with all the boring bits left in... no thanks, I've gone to a film, not a court room, I want drama, progression and structure, most of which were missing for the majority of the film.
On the upside, it was beautifully photographed, the acting was superb, and shot wise, the directing was very good.
Tár (2022)
Long and strangely lacking in drama
Tar is a beautifully made film in almost every respect... with the exception of script and structure. Yes the cinematography is great, yes all the acting is brilliant, and yes the production design is stunning.
But it's slow and long. The opening scene feels like it goes on for about two days when it could have easilybeen handled in five minutes, and the following scene is not much better. By now we're around the 35 minute mark with no discernible plot.
The lack of drama is also very odd, it's almost like the director went out of his way to strip the drama out of the story. There are little insinuations that Tar has a problem with how she deals with pretty young members of the orchestra and there's one scene of her being mean to a student, but if I hadn't read about the film beforehand, I wouldn't have had any idea as to what the crux of the story was until about halfway through. You also have weird choices like her assistant disappearing midway through the film and never returning even though it appears she is most likely integral to Tar's downfall.
And as for the denouement, I looked at the friend I went with and we both went, 'this is odd' (and a bit silly).
I gave it a six because it's beautiful to look at and not a terrible film, but I'm at a loss as to why this film has got so many rave reviews.
Heojil kyolshim (2022)
An extremely well crafted movie
I loved pretty much everything about this film, the script, acting and casting were fantastic, and the direction, superb.
It presents itself as a murder mystery/detective story but once it gets going you realise it's actually a love story. The way Chan-wook creates scenes is utterly magic yet without the flashiness and conceit of some other 'master' directors (the final scene is stunning!). The cast were as good as you could possibly hope for and managed to continually convey so much without saying a word, while the camera lingered on the right person every time even if they were not the person speaking.
For me it was right at the top of the films I've seen this year.
Joker (2019)
Almost a great movie... but not
There's no doubt the design, photography and direction are superb, and the beginning and end of the film are great, but seriously, there's an entire hour in the middle of this film where very little happens. I have three main problems with The Joker: 1) whilst Phoenix is very good it feels to me like he reaches ´full joker' way too early, leaving him nowhere to go and hence, his character arc is quite flat, 2) the Joker's mother is integral to his descent into mania yet she's given no meaningful screen time, with perhaps a dozen lines in the entire film. It would have been a much better film if their relationship was more fully explored. And 3) We know The Joker ends up being an arch nemesis of Batman as it's alluded to in the film, yet here he's portrayed as a bit of simpleton loser who it would be hard to believe could go on to be a master criminal. To me it didn't feel right.
Those three things plus an imaginary relationship, which in essence ended up being an, "... and then I woke up" device that was more annoying than clever, made The Joker not the great cinema experience it could have been. A pity really.