What was the last film you watched?

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

Please explain why you got the impression I think it is about me?

By bringing "what about the men?" into it, being a man, you made it about you - generically, if not specifically.

To put it simply, it's just inappropriate to discuss the merits of a film about women's struggle for equality in terms of whether or not it addresses men's struggle for equality. If you don't get that, fine, but this isn't the place to discuss it further, so for that reason, ah'm oot.

OK, I'll buy that.


   

[Redlight]

Sherpa. Documentary, in competition in the London film festival. First attempt to the show the climbing Everest industry from the sherpa point of view.
Powerful and fascinating documentary. Shows the risks the sherpas have to take, just to keep Westerners supplied on their various ascents. Showed the 2014 disaster and subsequent industrial action from the Sherpa point of view and the view from the Westerners.  Needless to say the audience was 100%  behind the sherpas.

Everest - a dramatised account of the awful 1996 expedition in which 8 climbers died.  Years ago, I saw the Imax film that had gone to the mountain to make a really uplifting film but ended up recording the tragedy and I've read the book by the reporter who was on the expedition and lucky enough to survive. Bearing in mind the need to make the events understandable and accessible and the fact that it is aimed predominately at a US audience, it's not a bad film. But it falls short of showing the chaos that was on the mountain that night and some of the secondary characters are either reduced to stereotypes or too poorly sketched to contribute to the narrative.

The special effects are vey good, though.  However, not a patch on  the real thing, as seen in the IMAX original.

[Ruthie]

The Martian.

It's good!

[mrcharly-YHT]

Mad Max Fury Road

Hmm that was good, that was. Standout performance by Nicholas hoult. Chalize theron did her job but Hoult's role had more scope.

[spindrift]

The Martian.

It's a bit infantile. quite early on you realise it's going to be a nice cuddly film with Mild Peril. The ground control scenes are lame and not very dramatic. Kate Mara gets lines like "Make you sure you're not nearby when the bomb goes off".

[citoyen]

St Vincent

Amusing but mawkishly trite - if I didn't know otherwise, I'd suspect the involvement of Richard Curtis. I went along with it while I was watching it, but the more I think about it, the more problems I have with it.

[hillbilly]

Margin Call

Wasn't sure what to expect from this, as it was one of those films that was recommended by Amazon on the back of a LoveFilm movie that I thought was so so.  But glad I took a punt as it is an interesting (fictional) insight into the 2008 financial collapse. Despite being about complicated financial products, it plays off of the decisions that individuals need to make in the face of a corporate desire to survive.  The film is full of top calibre talent and they are mostly on top form.

Well worth watching.

[ian]

San Andreas.

Sort of enjoyably awful, pure 70s disaster b-movie that seems to have stumbled, intentionally or I suspect otherwise, into 2015. You will at some point utter the sentence 'where the fuck is Ernest Borgnine?' OK, according to my wife, he's dead. Break it me gently dear, why don't you. I invested significant emotional time in Airwolf. I swear in every episode that damn helicopter broke down.

Probably no spoiler required when I tell you the Golden Gate Bridge gets it. That gets trashed as often as the Brooklyn Bridge.

Make sure you have something soft to throw at the screen at the end, there's a moment of pure congealed schmaltz.

[mrcharly-YHT]

The Signal

I don't think that film knows what it is.

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

Sicario

Very violent thriller about the narcotics industry in the US and Mexico.  To be fair, it's probably not possible to make a film about the narcotics industry in the US and Mexico with any less violence.

[hillbilly]

Was Sicario any good?  I was thinking about going to see it.

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

Yes, I would rate it worth going to see.  Found the accents a little hard to pick up in places but didn't lose the plot. Quite believable unfortunately.

[T42]

I read in the Trib that the residents of Ciudad Juarez are mightily pissed off about it because the place has calmed down since 2666.

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

They were the most violent place  in  the  world  in between 2007 and 2012 now 37th.

Explanations for the rapid decline in violence include the effectiveness of government policing and the success of the Sinaloa Cartel in defeating its rivals

Take your pick.

It was interesting to read a bit of background to the film and to find it is not an unreasonable portrayal of what life is like in those parts!

[Ruthie]

Under The Skin.

How very Kubrick it is.  Spacey weird visual pieces with scratchy sound effect music.  Robotty plotline.  General unsettling weirdness.  I liked that it was set in Scotland though,  it reminded me of my holidays.  One particular piece with snow falling on a lake was just beautiful.

[ian]

I has my Star Wars Imax tickets. Punch it, Chewie!

Have to wait till the 28th December though.

Gah, if there's an Ewok, that fucking Jar-Jar Binks, or Ewan bloody MacGregor, or any half-witted and instantly forgettable teenage actors I shall duly run amok on the South Bank.

[Chris S]

I has my Star Wars Imax tickets. Punch it, Chewie!

Have to wait till the 28th December though.

Gah, if there's an Ewok, that fucking Jar-Jar Binks, or Ewan bloody MacGregor, or any half-witted and instantly forgettable teenage actors I shall duly run amok on the South Bank.

Nah - just some wrinkly, incontinent old fucker who, if you squint your eyes up real tight, might look a bit like Harrison Ford.

[L CC]

The Intern
Every bit as shit as the trailer implies. I watched so you don't have to.
I understand way back when that Mr De Niro was in some good films. This sure as fuck isn't one of them.

[Pickled Onion]

I watched so you don't have to.

It seems to be highly rated elsewhere, despite sounding like a heap of shit. I'm feel the need to watch it to see if I agree with you.

[TimO]

The Martian.

It's a bit infantile. quite early on you realise it's going to be a nice cuddly film with Mild Peril. The ground control scenes are lame and not very dramatic. Kate Mara gets lines like "Make you sure you're not nearby when the bomb goes off".

Fun to watch with a bunch of spacecraft engineers, and we all laughed at the expressions when told they had to knock x days off of the schedule!

The red lights all coming on, on Pathfinder when plugged in was somewhat amusing.  The likelihood of the equipment even having compatible power connectors is somewhere between low and zero (although they would probably all use 28V DC on their main buses, which is very common on spacecraft).  Lights on an unmanned spacecraft are as plausible as a countdown display on a bomb.  Even if used on engineering or qualification models, they'd be removed on flight equipment, to minimise weight, power use, and the risk of a failure having knock on effects.

I also could't understand why they needed the prototype spacecraft on the Earth, mirroring the spacecraft on Mars.  You would want the EGSE (Electronic Ground Support Equipment), and you may plug into a prototype spacecraft to test it was working, but having both the real spacecraft and a engineering model both talking to the EGSE would be a recipe for confusion and probable failure!

Still, overall it seemed to be a fairly realistic representation of spacecraft operations and engineering, even as far as the behaviour of the more political elements of NASA!

[Wascally Weasel]

I also couldn't understand why they needed the prototype spacecraft on the Earth, mirroring the spacecraft on Mars.  You would want the EGSE (Electronic Ground Support Equipment), and you may plug into a prototype spacecraft to test it was working, but having both the real spacecraft and a engineering model both talking to the EGSE would be a recipe for confusion and probable failure!

For storytelling purposes to the non-technical earth based cinema audience I 'spect.

[Redlight]

Took the 8 year old to see Pan, which is a billed as a prequel to the Peter Pan story that we all know and love.

What a complete mess of a film it is.  Many of the scenes seem to have been written simply to provide opportunities to play with 3D (I saw it in normal vision). If they had spent a bit more on the writing and less on the special effects, they might have produced something that made a bit more sense.

To give him his due, Hugh Jackman does his best as Blackbeard, whom he plays as a cross between Edmund Blackadder and Cruella de Ville, and the young boy playing Peter makes a fair stab at it, despite his accent slipping from mock Cockney to Australian at random.  However, the rest of the case are dismal. Hook is portrayed as a kind of poundstore Indiana Jones while Princess Tigerlily can't make up her mind whether she's a knife-throwing, kick-boxing renegade from a Cyndi Lauper video or someone who failed the audition for a Bananarama tribute act. 

Of course, the 8yo loved it 

[Wascally Weasel]

Took the 8 year old to see Pan, which is a billed as a prequel to the Peter Pan story that we all know and love.

What a complete mess of a film it is.  Many of the scenes seem to have been written simply to provide opportunities to play with 3D (I saw it in normal vision). If they had spent a bit more on the writing and less on the special effects, they might have produced something that made a bit more sense.

To give him his due, Hugh Jackman does his best as Blackbeard, whom he plays as a cross between Edmund Blackadder and Cruella de Ville, and the young boy playing Peter makes a fair stab at it, despite his accent slipping from mock Cockney to Australian at random.  However, the rest of the case are dismal. Hook is portrayed as a kind of poundstore Indiana Jones while Princess Tigerlily can't make up her mind whether she's a knife-throwing, kick-boxing renegade from a Cyndi Lauper video or someone who failed the audition for a Bananarama tribute act. 

Of course, the 8yo loved it 

You've made that film sound way better than I expect it probably is.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Took the 8 year old to see Pan, which is a billed as a prequel to the Peter Pan story that we all know and love.

What a complete mess of a film it is.  Many of the scenes seem to have been written simply to provide opportunities to play with 3D (I saw it in normal vision). If they had spent a bit more on the writing and less on the special effects, they might have produced something that made a bit more sense.

To give him his due, Hugh Jackman does his best as Blackbeard, whom he plays as a cross between Edmund Blackadder and Cruella de Ville, and the young boy playing Peter makes a fair stab at it, despite his accent slipping from mock Cockney to Australian at random.  However, the rest of the case are dismal. Hook is portrayed as a kind of poundstore Indiana Jones while Princess Tigerlily can't make up her mind whether she's a knife-throwing, kick-boxing renegade from a Cyndi Lauper video or someone who failed the audition for a Bananarama tribute act. 

Of course, the 8yo loved it 

So it's a panto?

[Wascally Weasel]

Took the 8 year old to see Pan, which is a billed as a prequel to the Peter Pan story that we all know and love.

What a complete mess of a film it is.  Many of the scenes seem to have been written simply to provide opportunities to play with 3D (I saw it in normal vision). If they had spent a bit more on the writing and less on the special effects, they might have produced something that made a bit more sense.

To give him his due, Hugh Jackman does his best as Blackbeard, whom he plays as a cross between Edmund Blackadder and Cruella de Ville, and the young boy playing Peter makes a fair stab at it, despite his accent slipping from mock Cockney to Australian at random.  However, the rest of the case are dismal. Hook is portrayed as a kind of poundstore Indiana Jones while Princess Tigerlily can't make up her mind whether she's a knife-throwing, kick-boxing renegade from a Cyndi Lauper video or someone who failed the audition for a Bananarama tribute act. 

Of course, the 8yo loved it 

So it's a panto?

Oh no it isn't!