Monday 26 February 2018

The Phantom Thread (2017)

I didn't think I was going to watch The Phantom Thread. I detested the trailer for it - a loathing born from the awful piece of music that accompanied it. I know that trailer music is not the same as the music used in the film, but I expect it to be representative of mood - and the mood this music represented was not one I cared to experience.

However. a few people have mentioned how much they liked the film, so I thought I'd give it a punt.

The opening of the film didn't inspire much hope in me. The characters were cold, the action overly finickity, and lacking engagement.

Then the film introduces Alma (Vicky Krieps) and the whole mood (and my engagement) shifted.

The story lies somewhere between Gothic Romance and fairy tale in the relationship between the characters. Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) remains a difficult character to like throughout, but still manages to elicit enough sympathy that I was rooting for Alma to win him over.

The story also managed to completely wrong-foot me. Its ending was both unexpected and completely in keeping with the previous actions of the characters.

It's not a film that I'm likely to rewatch in the near future, but it is one that's stuck with me since I saw it.

Oh, and I had no problem at all with the music.

Tuesday 20 February 2018

The Mercy (2018)

To say that I found the end Title Card the most moving thing about The Mercy might be doing the film something of an injustice, but it's true.

I walked in to see the film without any knowledge of the true-life events behind the story, aside from those that I had gleaned from the trailer, which were quite a few.

The story is engagingly told for the first half. Sadly the at sea parts offered very little novelty and felt very much like movie-making-by-the-numbers to me. At this point I was more engaged with the story of what was going on back on dry land.

The acting is fine. Colin Firth gives a slightly less sympathetic performance than usual - in fact it's only his presence that elevates the part into being more than someone you would quite happily want to be lost at sea. Rachel Weisz is the real star turn - unfortunately her part doesn't give her enough to do and I spent much of my time wishing that someone would give her a role that really made use of her abilities.

It's not a bad a film. It's one that shows promise with certain scenes - and perhaps if the trailer hadn't tried to tell the entire story, it's one that might have offered a few more surprises. Ultimately, what it was lacking was the mystery. We only know glimpses of what really happened with Donald Crowhurst's voyage, and a little more mystery might have taken the film a lot further.

Monday 19 February 2018

The Shape of Water (2017)

I'm not convinced The Shape of Water should have been eligible for this year's BAFTAs, considering it was only released the Friday before the ceremony. I think it's one thing for the film industry to award themselves as many prizes as they want (wasn't there something about how only monkeys and the incumbent US President claps themselves?), but if BAFTA seriously wants to engage with cinema-goers, it would help if it wasn't so elitist and gave folk the chance to make up their own minds before telling them which films are good and which aren't.

To be fair, the reason I imagine that BAFTA is pushing films that only scrape a release before the ceremony is that the delay between the US release and the UK release means that BAFTA is worried that compared with the Oscars, it's going to look like last year's news. Perhaps they need reminding that the 'B' does not stand for America.

With that off my chest, on Friday I took a day off work to see the film (well that and and Lady Bird, another prematurely BAFTA'd film) and found myself sitting in a cinema with a sinking feeling of deja vu.

A couple of weeks before, I had been sitting in the same cinema (Curzon Aldgate, I'm looking at you) waiting for Early Man to begin. Only it wasn't so much a case of Early Man, as Delayed Man and then Didn't Bother to Show Up At All Man.

It all started with a lack of adverts, which wouldn't bother most people (and as long as the lights are up, I spend those ten minutes reading), but it's an indicator that the the wonderful state-of-the-art digital projection service, where you don't need actual projectionists had failed to start.

As the rest of the audience was content to sit there (occasionally asking each other if the programme should have started by now), I went off in search of someone to do something. I don't know how I ended up in the position of being the person who always goes off whenever there's something wrong in the cinema as I've always considered myself as the person least likely to cause a fuss, but I guess that's what comes with getting old(er).

By the time I return to my seat, someone has kindly turned it into a shrine to their shopping - proof that no good deed goes unpunished.

Unlike with Couldn't Get Out Of Bed Man, the cinema staff managed to start the film (might have been a case of turning it off and turning it on again), the upside to the issue being that they skipped all the adverts and went straight to the trailers (often the best part).

I had been prepared for The Shape of Water to disappoint me hugely. I remember the fuss made about Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim, which I though was okay, but not the masterpiece that some friends were making it out to be. I liked his Hellboy, but not so much Hellboy 2, and the rest of his films have been interesting, but unlikely to make it to the top of my favourite films list.

I'd also been coming across a bit of a backlash about the film from certain folk - yes it looked pretty, but it didn't engage them.

I was captivated for almost all of the film's running time. There's one sequence (the musical one, if you go see it) that felt out of place to me, but other than that I absolutely loved it.

It won't work for everyone (that's proven), and it requires a pretty huge suspension of disbelief, but if you can get over the unlikely romance (and there are big fat clues about how not unlikely it might be), then there's a lot to like.

It's been accused of being derivative, but for me that was one of the strengths of the film. del Toro has taken inspiration from dozens of sources and mashed them into something that worked on multiple levels for me.

The Alexandre Desplat score is possibly the best work he has done - I've been listening to it a lot and have found myself humming bars of it when waking up (yes, I wake up humming film scores, what of it?). The Production design is beautiful, and the directing shows del Toro at the top of his game.

In short, all of the BAFTAs that The Shape of Water won are properly deserved in my book.

Even if it was a a year too soon.







Thursday 15 February 2018

Ocean Liners: Speed and Style (3 Feb 2018 – 10 Jun 2018)

The V&A  is rapidly becoming one of my favourite museums. Aside from the sheer amount of interesting material they have on permanent display throughout their buildings (V&A also run the Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green), their temporary exhibitions are incredibly well mounted - and they have four running simultaneously.

The latest one to open is Ocean Liners: Speed and Style, which should appeal to transport-philes, lovers of art deco, people nostalgic for the golden age of Hollywood-style glamour, and frankly anyone whose artistic soul hasn't withered and died.



The exhibition prides itself as a comprehensive look at Ocean Liners, at it certainly works at meeting that claim. Handsomely mounted, with the room design and soundtrack creating the right mood, it provides an almost embarrassingly rich collection of liner-related material.

Like a number of the V&A's exhibitions, the exhibition starts strong and builds from there.

The first room starts with a look at the booking office. Posters and brochures advertise a number of different ships and routes.





Calling this a brochure might be a bit of a misnomer, as a number of  Lines used hardback books for their advertising - at least for the first class experience.

Might not want to book this particular voyage
The exhibition then moves on board, with furnishings and fittings from a number of different lines




Speed and Progress by Maurice Lambert. Relief panel from the Queen Mary.

A Torah Ark from the Queen Mary's synagogue

Panel from the first-class smoking room on the Normandie.

Bronze plaques from the Normandie depicting wheat and grapes.

Dancer with Three Seagulls by Marcello Mascherini

Panels from the first-class ballroom, and cocktail table from the SS United States, which was fitted-out with fireproof fixtures as the result of a fire on the SS Normandie when it was being refitted as a troopship during World War II.

A trip below-decks looks at the engineering and ship-building side, as well as including a look at liners during wartime.


Pattern for the casing of a steam turbine on the QE2.
Propaganda after the sinking of the Lusitania.



The exhibition continues onto the promenade deck.




Leisure is covered with the history of swimming pools on board ships, as well as details of various other entertainments.

Semaphore flags as they would have been displayed by a ship-board swimming pool. They read: come on in the water's fine.

Deckchair from the Titanic.


First class travelers would show off their glamorous evening wear coming down the ship's Grand Staircase before dinner in a ritual known as la grande descente, which is reflected in a visual display looking like something from a 1930s Hollywood musical.




The exhibition finishes with the cultural impact of ocean liners with excerpts of films such as The Poseidon Adventure, The Man with the Golden Gun, and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and art inspired by the great ships.

The end of the exhibition also includes a reminder that not all ocean voyages end well.

Flotsam from the Titanic.

Wednesday 14 February 2018

Black Panther (2018)

Black Cinema (by which I mean films usually with a predominantly black cast, that in some shape or form reflect or interpret the experience, history, culture or social issues of black people) has often felt a bit lacking to me.

I think there are some great movies that fall into this category. I think there are some important movies that fall into this category. However, in my potentially limited experience, the films I've seen have predominantly been small films that wouldn't connect with a large audience. Even the attempts to produce something that might have mainstream appeal have tended to hamper themselves with exploitative plots involving foul-mouthed drug dealing pimps  engaged in gang wars in an American inner city.

And the films that do have more potential for a broader appeal (from the last couple of years Queen of Katwe and Step spring to mind as being particularly good) are generally smaller scale dramas than the big releases you get from the studios.

What I've been missing is the truly great black action movie, the big budget black science fiction film, but something that properly belongs to Black Cinema rather than being a low-budget, exploitative version of Star Wars.

The fault lies not with the black filmmakers, as I'm sure there are plenty (and I've  met some) who want to write those films - but generally the studios have not put their money where they should have been putting it.

For me, Black Panther had a lot riding on it, and before I went to see it, I was sure that it couldn't live up to that expectation.

I saw it yesterday.

My immediate experience of it was not brilliant. I was surrounded by people who seemed to want to talk and rustle and munch popcorn as loudly as possible (they all seemed to be French tourists, so thanks a lot France), which meant that until I managed to move seats, I was only half-watching the film and my enjoyment was muted by my rising annoyance.

Even after I moved seats, one of the popcorn munchers walked past the screen about six times (might have been more) - I think to get more popcorn.

Back to the film though.

The trailer gives away a bit too much of the action scenes, but even with foreknowledge of what we were going to get, they still worked extremely well. Fight choreography was well mounted, avoiding the incoherent editing that can be found in a lot of big budget action films.

The characters were well-drawn, well motivated, appropriately flawed. Funny too - in all the right ways. It's treatment of its female characters impressed me too - continuing a trend that Disney is largely getting right in its films.

The music score was great, borrowing a lot of African motifs to create some very nice music. Songs didn't really do anything for me one way or the other - although I appreciate there's a lot of fuss about the soundtrack.

Special effects looked great - particularly with the realisation of Wakanda, which I definitely want to visit (my ultimate accolade for a fictional locale).

The storytelling itself shows a definite sense of experience. The movie is neatly plotted - some obvious moments, some not so obvious - but the plot points I could predict were handled with such deftness that it didn't matter.

Also, very importantly, the story is not something that could have been easily race swapped, translated into a version with white actors. It is buried within African history, it shows a view of the world that offers something aspirational, rather than being a mere critique of white treatment of blacks (although in offering its hopeful view, it holds up a mirror to colonialism that is as much a critique of the white imperial rampage through Africa).

In the end, this is the film for which I have been waiting for a long time. I'll definitely be seeing it again very soon - hopefully this time without the French popcorn munchers.


Tuesday 6 February 2018

Last Flag Flying / Early Man / Roman J Israel, Esq

Some days I hit the cinema running. Three different cinema locations, three different films and reliance on the London Underground to get me to my destinations.

Last Flag Flying was showing at the Curzon Bloomsbury. Located in The Brunswick Centre, a retail  arcade just north of Russell Square Tube Station, the cinema includes the sizeable 'Renoir' screen (the name inherited from the cinema's previous branding); the Bertha DocHouse, a screen devoted to documentaries; and several other small screens (Lumiere, Plaza, Phoenix and Minema (where the film was being shown)).

The film wins Brownie points with me for having a substantial sequence playing out on a train journey. Aside from that, it's an often amusing, intelligent piece of drama. It's a film where the most substantial female character is deceased and only seen on screen in photographs, so it's not exactly balanced in gender allocation for its roles, but for all its abundant masculine presence, it isn't overdosing on testosterone. It's a film about men and in this case it's wholly appropriate.

Made in partnership with Amazon Studios, so this will probably hit the streaming service in about a year (unlike Netflix where it would be day-and-date release).

From the Curzon Bloomsbury, I had about 40-50 minutes to make it to the Curzon Aldgate for the screening of Early Man. It's a reasonably easy trip - a 5-10 minute walk to King's Cross and then take the Metropolitan or Circle Line to either Aldgate or Aldgate East (about 10 minutes) - from either station it's little more than 5 minutes to the cinema.

So plenty of time to buy popcorn.

Only, thanks to London Underground's never-ending engineering works, no Metropolitan or Circle Line trains.

At this point I have to go by instinct and head for the Northern Line, figuring that it will take me somewhere closer to the cinema than King's Cross.

Fortunately, it turns out that I picked the right choice, as I can change for the Circle Line at Moorgate (the site of London Underground's worst peacetime accident for the trivia-philes).

I made it to the cinema in time for the adverts, and even have time for popcorn.

Aldgate Curzon is one of the newer Curzon cinemas and apparently one of the lesser-used ones, based on the size of its audiences (although perhaps it picks up in the evening). The four screens are all of a decent size (in the spirit of the Bloomsbury cinema, they've been imaginatively named 1,2,3 and 4). The seats aren't up to Curzon's best, but better than 1970s fleapit style chairs of the Soho branch.

The film, Early Man, is the latest from Aardman Studios. Going back to Aardman's roots with Plasticine animation, it's a film that couldn't be more British if it had the Union Jack stamped on every frame.

The story can be summed up as the Stone Age versus the Bronze Age at football. It's a brilliantly inventive film that is frequently amusing, but seldom laugh-out-loud funny. It probably bears repeat viewing, if only to catch all the details that were missed on the first watch.

My final film for the day was being shown at the Curzon Victoria (about 30 minutes away on the District Line from Aldgate East), but as the film wasn't showing until late in the evening, I took the long way around.

Curzon Victoria used to be the new cinema in town, until the Aldgate branch opened. The screens alternate between the premiere screens (odd numbers), which have arguably the best seats in any London Curzon (although I haven't tried out Wimbledon's yet), although some of them are getting a bit squeaky when reclined; and the cheap(er) seats in the evenly numbered screens, which don't recline, don't have a lot of legroom, and don't have drinks trays (meaning that anyone bringing in a glass of wine from the cinema's bar has to perform contortionist manoeuvres when trying to take off their coat.

For some reason, Curzon hasn't really put much effort behind showing Roman J Israel, Esq . Screened in only one of its cinemas, once per day, late in the evening, it's not the most accessible film, which seems a little odd, given all of Denzel Washington's award nominations. It's certainly a lot worse treatment than they gave Fences last year (which for my money was a less interesting film).

Roman J Israel, Esq is an odd sort of film. It's a character piece dressed up in the trappings of a legal drama. It plays about the idea of seesawing redemption (one character rises as another falls), and almost plays out as a tragedy, but sort of drops the ball on that towards the end of the film. It's both satisfying and unsatisfying at the same time. It's watchable, but I don't think it's entirely successful.

Hong Kong Railway Museum

For a little bit of context, I've been fascinated by trains for most of my life. I can't make any claim to being a true fanatic - my...