Change Your Image
prd-10
Reviews
The Death of Stalin (2017)
A Marmite film?
Judging by the other reviews here, this seems to be a Marmite film. And that carried over to the showing I went to. It was a lunchtime showing so there weren't that many in the cinema, maybe a dozen, but often I found myself the only one laughing at the jokes. Not sure what that says about my sense of humour. But the jokes are very black. Excellent cast and performances too.
Into the Woods (2014)
A pleasant surprise
I saw the premier London staging of the musical 25 years ago, and another staging since, and I put this in my top three Sondheim musicals. I have the London cast recording. I avoided seeing the film when it came out partly because I rarely find time to go to the cinema these days, and partly because I thought the film version of Sweeney Todd was a bit of a mess.
But it's turned up on Sky Movies so I just watched it. It works remarkably well. Don't think they dropped any songs and all my favourite lines were there. It seemed fairly faithful to the stage show, although the princes and Snow White and Sleeping Beauty sub-plot was dropped. The ensemble cast seems to work well together. Definitely a film to see again.
Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel (2009)
More fun than I expected
I recall that when this came out last year, it got decidedly mediocre reviews, but I thought I'd give it a try when it turned up on TV last night. A lot more fun than I expected. The writer had a sure understanding of the genre - the written genre, not the usual film or TV genre. It didn't rely on blockbuster special effects. It was plot driven, and although not a stunningly original plot, they handled it well. OK, they couldn't really decide how to end it, and the final scenes got a bit silly (or sillier) but it worked up to them finally leaving the pub.
I could see this as a short story in a British SF anthology.
Waterloo (1929)
History and Romance
Some thirty years ago, the composer Carl Davis produced a score for the silent film Napoleon, which led to him doing a sequence of silent scores presented with orchestra in London. For his latest, he has gone back to another film concerning Napoleon, the 1929 German film of Waterloo.
I notice in the movie connections for this film the suggestion that the 1971 film Waterloo was a remake. Apart from the historical events of the battle, there is very little similarity between the films. This is a very German view of the battle, centring around Blücher, who barely features in the 1971 film (or in English school history), and the Congress of Vienna.
Blücher is played as a randy old goat with an eye for the ladies, but still very much in love with his wife. He has decided not to attend the congress and tenders his resignation. But Napoleon leaves Elba and his services are needed.
Added to this is a plot involving a Polish countess acting as a spy for Napoleon attempting to seduce Reutlingen, Blücher's adjutant, and intercepting a message from Blücher to Wellington telling him he's on his way to help at Waterloo.
The battle is about the last half hour of a film over two hours long with little attempt to show the progress of the battle. The battle has long started by the time the action moves to the battlefield.
The battle is not depicted with any of the attempt at realism you'd see today, but I imagine trying to have a sword fight in a group of people on horseback must be difficult without injuring each other. In one scene, a group of highlanders march off and one manages to knock the hat off the soldier in front with his bayonet.
Incidentally, the highlanders' kilts seem rather short - above the knee - compared to kilts one sees nowadays. I don't know if this is historically accurate.
The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (1970)
Good to see this again
I remember being in an hotel room sometime in 1979 and switching on the TV and seeing the second half of this film. I was captivated, but I hadn't seen it in 30 years until it turned up recently on a satellite channel in the UK. It's not a laugh-a-minute film, but it is amusing and worth seeing. I imagine the satire of the party leaders, the Labour leader a pipe-smoking Yorkshireman who likes appearing on TV and a Tory who plays the piano, would have been blindingly obvious in 1970 as parodies of Wilson and Heath.
Some of the humour doesn't work, or seems a bit dated nowadays. The Arthur Lowe character is a bit lame and the scene where John Cleese is trying to convince pollster Ronnie Corbett that Nuneaton is predominantly Buddhist looks like it might be a left-over sketch from The Frost Report.
Zítra vstanu a oparím se cajem (1977)
Still fun after all these years
Like many people here, I first saw this film when the BBC showed it back in the eighties. It also turned up at an SF convention in England in the early nineties when one of their guests was Josef Nesvadba who wrote the original story. Then last year I found out it was available on DVD in the Czech Republic and found someone who knew someone that was going there for Christmas. I saw it again last night, and it is still fun.
The special effects might not be very special, but it handles the time paradoxes very well, in a way that appeals to me as a fan primarily of written SF. The scenes in the corridors of the time travel company where the tour guides are all done up in historical costumes are hilarious. The best time travel farce I've ever seen.
Incidentally, Josef Nesvadba died in 2005. Isn't about time his date of death was added to his page?