My Top 5 Most-Read New Posts in 2017

Posted on January 2, 2018 by badblokebob

Last year I published a Top 5 of my most-read new posts in 2016, mainly to point out that I had no idea why the post that was #1 was #1. This year there’s no such oddness, but as I found it an interesting(-ish) exercise nonetheless, here we go again…

This year, all five of my most-read posts are from my TV review column. I don’t know if the TV-reviewing blogosphere is just less saturated than the film one (I’d wager not) or if the fact I combine multiple series in each post has a massive impact on their popularity (more likely), but they’re what get the biggest numbers for new content.

But this is a film blog (it’s in the title), so this year I’m doing two top fives: the genuine top 5 most-read new posts in 2017, which is also the top 5 most-read new TV-related posts, and then the top 5 most-read new film-related posts.

Without further ado:

The Top 5 Most-Read New Posts in 2017
(aka The Top 5 Most-Read New TV-Related Posts in 2017)

5) The Past Month on TV #21
including Game of Thrones season 7 episodes 2-5, Top of the Lake: China Girl, Twin Peaks season 3 episodes 11-14, Line of Duty series 3 episodes 4-6, Peaky Blinders series 2, The Bletchley Circle series 1 and 2, The Musketeers series 3 episodes 1-3, Sherlock’s pilot, and Wallander series 4 episodes 2-3.

4) The Past Month on TV #13
including A Series of Unfortunate Events season 1, Sherlock series 4, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, Peter Pan Goes Wrong, the Arrowverse crossover Invasion!, Elementary season 5 episodes 1-3, Outnumbered’s 2016 Christmas special, and the Vicious series finale.

3) The Past Fortnight on TV #22
including Marvel’s The Defenders season 1, Game of Thrones season 7 episodes 6-7, Twin Peaks season 3 episodes 15-16, Designated Survivor season 1, and Rick and Morty season 1 episode 1.

2) The Past Month on TV #16
including Doctor Who series 10 episode 1, Marvel’s Iron Fist season 1, The Flash / Supergirl crossover episode Duet, The Crown season 1, Line of Duty series 2, Twin Peaks season 2 episodes 1-9, 24: Legacy season 1 episodes 5-8, Broadchurch series 3 episodes 4-8, and Unforgotten series 1.

1) The Past Month on TV #15
including 24: Legacy season 1 episodes 1-4, Broadchurch series 3 episodes 1-3, the 89th Academy Awards, Luther series 4, Peaky Blinders series 1, Twin Peaks season 1, Death in Paradise series 6 episodes 7-8, Elementary season 5 episodes 10-13, and Let’s Sing and Dance for Comic Relief series 1 episodes 1-2.

The Top 5 Most-Read New Film-Related Posts in 2017

In 6th to 9th place were more TV posts. The following ranked 10th to =13th overall.

=4) iBoy / Thor: Ragnarok
Netflix original iBoy was released all the way back in January, so had 11 full months to rack up hits. Marvel’s latest adventure, Thor: Ragnarok, came out just over two months ago, but quickly surpassed iBoy… only for iBoy to close the gap again in a small last-minute resurgence, weirdly. They both have hundreds of hits too, so it’s a helluva coincidence they should wind up with exactly the same total.

3) Logan
The second (and last) superhero movie in this top five. Like everything in this list, my review was posted shortly after it hit cinemas — people love new releases.

2) Dunkirk
Christopher Nolan’s almost-arthouse WW2 IMAX-shot epic is, according to most, one of the best films of the year and a frontrunner in the imminent Oscars race. Whether that explains why it got so many hits back in July, I don’t know. It might explain why it got nearly ten times as many hits in December as it did in November, though.

1) Alien: Covenant
Ridley Scott’s second attempt at launching a new trilogy in the Alien universe met with a mixed reception across the board, but excelled in this category at least. It can’t’ve hurt that I posted my review a couple of days before it even came out in the US — if there’s one thing people love more than reviews of recent releases, it’s reviews of things that aren’t even out yet. It hasn’t experienced a recent increase in interest like Dunkirk either, with 70% of those hits acquired in the first two weeks after I posted it. It’s also already my fourth most-read film review of all time. Who’d’ve thunk it?

One final observation…

Looking back at my most-viewed posts in individual months, in 2015 Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone came top in ten months and Chamber of Secrets in the other two. Then in 2016 Philosopher’s Stone was my most-viewed post every single month. But in 2017 it’s been top just four times. Fair play, that’s still far more than any other individual post (TV #15 and TV #22 are joint second with two apiece), but it’s gone from being unassailable to being regularly bested. There were even three months — a whole quarter of the year — when it didn’t make the top five.

The days of those two Harry Potter reviews accounting for an obscene proportion of visitors to this blog seem to be over… to be replaced by people looking for TV reviews. Funny old world.

The Conclusory Monthly Update for December 2017

Posted on January 1, 2018 by badblokebob

And so another year comes to an end — welcome to 2018, dear readers!

Before that, I’m going to spend the next week-ish raking over the remnants of the year just ended. First up: the month of December, and my final tally of new films watched in 2017.

#164 Murder on the Orient Express (2017)
#165 Her (2013)
#166 Atomic Blonde (2017)
#167 Men in Black 3 (2012)
#168 Your Name. (2016), aka Kimi no na wa.
#169 Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)
#170 Hidden Figures (2016)
#171 It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
#172 Forbidden Planet (1956)
#173 Elf (2003)
#174 Scrooged (1988)

11 new films this month sees me reach a final total of 174 for the year, my third highest ever behind 2015’s 200 and 2016’s 195.
But that main list total was undoubtedly decreased by putting effort into my Rewatchathon — what if I added the two totals together? Well, there’ll be more on that in my annual stats post later in the week…
Other than that, it’s a bit of an unremarkable monthly tally: it’s below the December average (previously 11.55, now 11.5), below the rolling average of the last 12 months (though it bests December 2016, so raises that from 14.42 to 14.5), and below the average for 2017 (previously 14.8, now finalised at 14.5).
Earlier this year, Empire magazine published their latest reader-voted 100 Greatest Movies list. Watching It’s a Wonderful Life means I have just 2½ to go: La La Land (yep, still not seen it), True Romance, and the film I can never remember if I saw as a kid or not, E.T.
This month’s Blindspot film: sci-fi classic Forbidden Planet, which is still impressive in its own way but has inevitably been out-sci-fi-ed in the last six decades.
This month’s WDYMYHS film was more science fiction: Her, which is basically an episode of Black Mirror. A good one, though.

The 31st Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
I watched a few Christmas films this year, which makes a change, and one of those is also my favourite film of the month. As it’s a long-fêted classic I was a little sceptical about how good It’s a Wonderful Life could actually be. Turns out, it’s magnificent.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
No real stinkers this month, but my least favourite was another Christmas film: Will Ferrell comedy Elf. It’s alright, but no classic.

Most Kick-Ass Women of the Month
Sure, Rey could get you good with a lightsaber, and whatever-Charlize-Theron’s-character-was-called-in-Atomic-Blonde could hand your arse to you in a single-take stairwell fight, but the women of Hidden Figures fought the patriarchy for real — and racism, too, while they were at it.

Favourite Porg of the Month

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
You might think the release of a new Star Wars film would walk this, but you’d be wrong: the victory goes to my monthly TV review, which this time covered The Punisher, Detectorists, The Good Place, and so on. It’s the sixth time a TV post has won this award in 2017 — that’s half the year, folks! (The Last Jedi was of course the most-viewed film review, and by a considerable margin: out of all posts it came 6th, with the next new film post at 32nd.)

I didn’t do my review advent calendar again this year, but by coincidence I did post exactly 25 new reviews.

The 39 Steps	Black Dynamite
Dances with Wolves	The Darjeeling Limited
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off	Four Lions
Gran Torino	Hidden Figures
Hotel Chevalier	Jackie Brown
John Wick: Chapter 2	The LEGO Batman Movie
Life	A Matter of Life and Death
Nashville	Planet of the Apes
Police Academy	Rurouni Kenshin
Rurouni Kenshin 2: Kyoto Inferno	Rurouni Kenshin 3: The Legend Ends
Silver Linings Playbook	Star Wars: The Last Jedi
The Terminator	Twin Peaks: The Return
Your Name.

The Past Month on TV #27	The Past Christmas on TV

My Rewatchathon goal of 52 films should’ve averaged out at 4⅓ a month, but I came into December with seven left to get through. Did I manage it?

#46 The Terminator (1984)
#47 For a Few Dollars More (1965)
#48 Star Wars: The Force Awakens 3D (2015)
#49 Home Alone (1990)
#50 Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge (2017)
#51 Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1942)
#52 Airplane! (1980)

Yes, I did — but only just: I watched Airplane on December 31st.

It’s been about 25 years since I last watched Home Alone. It’s not a bad kids’ film, is it? I’d forgotten how little of it is actually the famous stuff with the burglary and the traps.

My full review of Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon from 2008 is linked above, which I mostly stand by (I found Lionel Atwill’s Moriarty less underpowered now), but it’s also worth noting that this time I watched a colourised version. I jotted a couple of thoughts about that in my Letterboxd diary here.

Speaking of which, there are also a couple of notes on my Force Awakens rewatch here.

Everything kicks off again, for the 12th time.

Before that: all the stats and lists pertaining to my 2017 viewing.

The Past Christmas on TV

Posted on December 31, 2017 by badblokebob

Ah, Christmas — it could be called “the season of TV” here in the UK. (Apparently Christmas Day telly is Not A Thing in most/all of the rest of the world. What do they do, actually interact with their family?! Madness.) Consequently, although it’s only two weeks since my last TV overview, my list of stuff watched that could go in this post included 26 different programmes. That’s all those one-off specials for you. From that long, long list, here are the ones I felt like writing about…

Doctor Who Twice Upon a Time
Another year, another divisive Doctor Who Christmas special. It’s the third time that the Christmas Day spectacular has to serve double duty by writing out the programme’s lead actor, and it follows the format set out by David Tennant’s swan-song The End of Time and Matt Smith’s finale The Time of the Doctor by being a very inward-looking fan-focused edition. I’m not sure that’s the right tack to take on Christmas, quite frankly, when the show’s playing to a wider audience of more casual viewers than normal. Former showrunner Russell T Davies and immensely popular leading man Tennant had earnt that kind of indulgence by the time they exited, and the series was pretty much the biggest thing on British TV at the time, so most of those so-called “casual viewers” were actually regular watchers of the show anyway. I’m not convinced exiting showrunner Steven Moffat and departing Doctor Peter Capaldi are quite in the same position.

Oh, but what does it matter? Capaldi’s been brilliant, and is brilliant here again. It was great to see Pearl Mackie back as the wonderful Bill, even if her return felt like a massive fudge about. How you felt about Clara’s cameo really depends on your opinion of Clara (I wasn’t surprised she cropped up; I also wasn’t bothered). David Bradley was absolutely spectacular as a recreation of the First Doctor, originally played by William Hartnell, who Bradley managed to evoke without doing a flat impression or a disrespectful re-envisioning. I’d love him to pop up again in the future, but that would make this a bit less special. The actual plot was a bit of nothing, though it led to a lovely conclusion on the battlefields of World War One — oh, and how good was Mark Gatiss in an almost thankless little role as a WW1 soldier? His reaction to the news that there would be a World War Two was heartbreakingly understated.

And so, after Capaldi’s overwritten exit speech, we come to Jodie Whittaker’s debut as the Thirteenth Doctor. “Oh, brilliant,” was all she could say before she was kicked out of a crashing TARDIS — just as Tennant, Smith, and Capaldi all were immediately post-regeneration. We’ll have to wait until the autumn to get a proper handle on her interpretation of the role. Under the guidance of a new showrunner, Chris Chibnall, hopefully it’ll be worth the wait.

The Miniaturist
The BBC’s two-part adaptation of Jessie Burton’s 2014 bestseller promised to be a supernatural treat, though in that respect the trailers were somewhat misleading. Set in 17th century Amsterdam, it’s about a girl who marries a wealthy merchant, but finds his strict and secretive household is not all she’d hoped. He buys her a dolls house as a wedding gift and she commissions a miniaturist to produce items for it, but she soon starts to receive things she didn’t order — things which suggest the miniaturist somehow knows people’s secrets, and can possibly see the future… In actuality, The Miniaturist is more of a period drama, albeit one with lashings of Gothic that were right up my street. It was beautifully made, with a fantastic eye on the costumes and locations, and cinematography that evoked painting of the era. There were strong performances too, particularly from Anya Taylor-Joy (yes, her out of The VVitch and Split), once again brilliant as the initially delicate but increasingly confident lead, and Romola Garai as the merchant’s overbearing sister.

There were some striking revelations and twists along the way (even if we guessed a few of them), but where the narrative really struggled was as it moved towards its conclusion. Weirdly divided into ‘halves’ running 90 and 60 minutes respectively (did they accidentally make it half-an-hour too long, or half-an-hour too short?), the second episode felt like it was merely playing out the obvious repercussions from the first episode’s cliffhangers and reveals. The answers about the titular character were particularly underwhelming. Thematically, there was something there about being the master of your own destiny, but if that’s what they wanted to convey then I didn’t think it was played out as effectively as it should’ve been. A real mixed bag, then: I loved the overall style and many individual elements, but a disappointing second half failed to stick the landing.

A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong

A follow-up to last year’s magnificent Peter Pan Goes Wrong (see the “also watched” section), this sees the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society attempt to redeem themselves by gatecrashing the BBC’s new production of A Christmas Carol. Cue a parade of slapstick, farce, puns, tomfoolery, and general merriment. Last year’s production was adapted from an already successful stage show, while this is a brand-new production, which perhaps explains why it doesn’t feel as meticulously fine-tuned as Peter Pan. It’s still funny (though, as the Twitter reaction proved, this style of comedy isn’t to everyone’s taste), but it didn’t surpass last year’s instant Christmas classic.

The League of Gentlemen 20th Anniversary Specials
“Oh God, I’d forgotten,” says one character early in the first instalment for almost 15 years of BBC Two’s pitch-black comedy series. He’s been confronted with some other returning characters, but I have to say that the sentiment kind of sums up my reaction to a lot of this revival, in two ways: firstly because I had to keep rummaging in my memory to make connections back to a series I haven’t watched for a decade and a half, and secondly because the hilarious grotesquery of the League came crashing back. Revivals of once-great comedies can be a mistake — they’re often little more than an exercise in nostalgia; and this one is certainly aimed at fans, as the vast majority of it continues or riffs off stuff from before — but, in spite of that, it still felt fresh and edgy, not like a gang of middle-aged men reliving past glories (the other thing that goes wrong with revivals). So it was all really rather good, and it’s gone down very well too. Officially it’s a 20th anniversary special rather than a fourth series, but might we see more? I think it would be welcomed.

Comedy roundup
So much comedy, so much of it a passable time-killer that I have little else to say about. The highlight was probably 300 Years of French and Saunders, an excellent celebration of the comedy double act, reminding us of many of their greatest hits alongside a few nice additions. It made me want a whole highlights series repeating all their many hilarious film spoofs. Shakespearean satire Upstart Crow offered a neat riff on one of the better-remembered storylines from modern Christmas classic Love Actually, which it executed with surprising subtly (or, at least, I had to point out the references to my fellow viewers, which was followed by half-an-hour of scouring through Richard Curtis’ film for the relevant scenes). I enjoyed the pilot for Tim Vine Travels Through Time back in September, so was delighted to see a Christmas special in the schedules. It’s good clean silly fun. The same can’t quite be said of Mrs. Brown’s Boys. I only ever watch it at Christmas if I’m around other people who are, but I always laugh more than I feel I should. Other than that, I also chuckled (to one degree or another) through festive editions of Gogglebox, Have I Got News For You, Live at the Apollo, Michael McIntyre’s Big Show, QI, and Travel Man, plus the annual Big Fat Quiz of the Year, one-off Miranda Does Christmas, and a Romesh Ranganathan standup special.

Black Mirror White Christmas
Black Mirror series four was released last Friday, but I haven’t even watched series three yet. Well, I did only watch series two just before series three came out, so I guess I’m catching up at a set speed. One of the obstacles (kind of) was this, the show’s only Christmas special — you can’t watch a Christmassy Christmas special any time other than Christmas, can you? Of course, I could’ve watched it last Christmas, but shh. Originally airing at Christmas 2014 (so I’m only three years behind), the feature-length edition introduces us to a couple of blokes isolated somewhere on Christmas Day telling each other a trio of technology-inspired tales that (surprise!) turn out to be connected after all. It nails Black Mirror’s best-known qualities: future technology that’s incredibly plausible due to being just slightly more advanced than our own, the way it considers how such marvellous innovations would actually be used and affect us as human beings, and particularly how it might go horribly, horribly wrong. Merry Christmas!

Also watched…

The Dresser — This adaptation of Ronald Harwood’s superb play, starring Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Anthony Hopkins, was actually on over two years ago, we just finally got round to watching it now. Should I have counted it as a film, perhaps?

The Galaxy Britain Built — The centrepiece of BBC Four’s Star Wars Night, a new documentary on the British designers and craftsmen who contributed so much to the look and feel of a galaxy far, far away — and continue to do so today, in fact. You’re welcome, geekdom.

The Highway Rat — I normally devote a bit more time to discussing these animated specials (previous ones include The Gruffalo, Room on the Broom, and Revolting Rhymes, all brilliant), but I was a bit underwhelmed by this year’s offering. The actual animation was as beautiful as ever, but the story and writing left something to be desired. Hey-ho.

Peter Pan Goes Wrong — Sadly this highlight of last Christmas wasn’t repeated this year, but my parents still had it recorded so I got to see it again. Last year’s review is here.

Snow Bears — This was an odd one. The BBC are normally so good at nature documentaries, yet this took a bunch of different bits of footage and mixed them up into a fictionalised narrative, and did it so obviously that they had to put a disclaimer at the start. Some cute stuff with bear cubs, mind.

Things to Catch Up On
I may’ve watched 26 different programmes, but there’s still an awful lot I’ve missed. Like the BBC’s new three-part adaptation of Little Women — I’ve never read it or watched another version, so here’s my chance to get cultured. Less worthy but no less lovely, there’ve been a couple of Great British Bake Off specials featuring contestants from the BBC years even though it’s now on Channel 4. Gasp, indeed. And despite that long list up above, there’s still a handful of comedy specials I’ve got to catch up on, like Not Going Out, Would I Lie to You?, and even some not featuring Lee Mack. There’s bound to be something else I’ve forgotten — I’ll have to go through the Radio Times, again…

Next month… New Year, new shows!

Another Blindspot Review Roundup

Posted on December 29, 2017 by badblokebob

Following on from the roundup of four of my Blindspot and “What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…?” reviews the other day, here’s another quartet.

In today’s roundup:

Gran Torino (2008)

Planet of the Apes (1968)

Nashville (1975)

A Matter of Life and Death (1946)

Gran Torino
(2008)

Clint Eastwood’s modern Western (thematically speaking), about a grumpy old loner who overcomes his inherent racism to bond with the immigrants who now dominate his neighbourhood and eventually come to their defence, is a well-liked film, generally regarded as a late career highlight for the director-star. I imagine it would play very nicely as a companion piece and/or counterpoint to his earlier Oscar-winner, Unforgiven — both are stories about old men in one final fight, essentially. Here, that comes with a subtext about the price that’s paid for standing up for yourself. It may be the right thing to do, and maybe it ends up with the right result, but the good guys really suffer to get to that point.

While that aspect of the film is ultimately powerful, I was less won over by the actual filmmaking. It feels like it’s been jiggered around in the edit, with some odd bits where it just jumps into a new scene. Even before that, Nick Schenk’s screenplay occasionally features very heavy-handed dialogue, of the “explain what the character is feeling right now” variety. It’s especially bad when Eastwood just talks to himself in order to vocalise these points for the sake of the audience.

Still, if you’re immune to such niggles then it remains a potent — and timely — tale of doing what’s right for the defenceless. Such themes never die, I suppose.

Planet of the Apes
(1968)

The original instalment in the long-running franchise (it’s up to nine films across three go-rounds now, plus a couple of TV series) sees astronaut Charlton Heston land on a mysterious planet where apes have evolved to have human-like intelligence, while men are mute wild creatures dominated by their simian betters. And eventually there’s a twist that everyone knows, which is a shame because I bet it was pretty darn surprising before that.

Coming to Planet of the Apes for the first time almost 50 years after its release, there’s an unavoidable quaintness to some of it, mainly the monkey makeup. It was for a long time iconic, but it’s been abandoned in favour of hyper-realistic CGI in the new movies and therefore shows its age. That said, while the apes may not be as plausible as those produced by modern technology, the performances underlying them are still strong. It contributes to what is really a parable about dominance and oppression; colonialism inverted onto a white man, that kind of thing. All wrapped up in a sci-fi adventure narrative, of course.

Honestly, it’s not just the effects that have improved — as a piece of speculative fiction, I think it’s now been outclassed by the recent trilogy. It’s still a cracking adventure, but a bit “of its time”.

Nashville
(1975)

Robert Altman’s low-key epic about 24 characters and how their stories interact, overlap, and collide across five days in the city of Nashville, Tennessee.

The sheer scope of that makes it a tricky film to interpret. There’s a lot going on, much of it in snatched conversations and moments that leave it up to the audience to piece together what matters and why. Collision must be a theme: within the first hour there are three car crashes or near misses, and the climax is certainly a collision in its own way. I’ll be honest, this isn’t a fully-developed thought, so I’m not sure what the point of it might be. It’s a small element of the film, really — something like all the music being performed is much more obvious and therefore maybe more relevant.

I guess I’m searching for meaning because the film in general is just casually observational of a bunch of characters meandering through a few days. Maybe there doesn’t need to be meaning — maybe that is the meaning. It’s certainly one way to interpret the finale. So, I kind of liked it — or, rather, admired it, perhaps — even if I didn’t necessarily ‘get it’.

A Matter of Life and Death
(1946)

2017 #74
Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger | 100 mins | DVD | 4:3 | UK / English | U / PG

I finally get round to watching this on a ropey old DVD, and then they announce a new 4K restoration (which was released in UK cinemas earlier this month). Hopefully a Blu-ray will follow. It will be very welcome, because I imagine this film will look magnificent in properly restored HD.

It begins with an incredible opening scene, in which an entire relationship is founded and ended over the radio in about five minutes. From there it’s the story of a World War Two pilot (David Niven) who avoids death by a fluke, then properly falls in love with the voice from the other end of that radio call (Kim Hunter) before the afterlife comes a-callin’ to take him where he was meant to be. Or maybe that’s all just a vision induced by the injury he sustained. Either way, he must argue his case to remain on Earth.

It’s a grandly romantic film — it is all about the triumph of love over everything else, after all — but with a particular fantastical bent that I think remains unique. It has the wit to present a mildly irreverent stance on the afterlife, not taking the whole “life and death” thing too seriously. While the final result of the airman’s trial is never in doubt, the delight is in the journey there.

Planet of the Apes, Nashville, and A Matter of Life and Death were viewed as part of my Blindspot 2017 project, which you can read more about here.

Gran Torino was viewed as part of my What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…? 2017 project, which you can read more about here.

Blindspot Review Roundup

Posted on December 27, 2017 by badblokebob

Spoilers for my next monthly update: I’ve completed watching all 22 films on my 2017 Blindspot and “What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…?” lists. Hurrah!

What I haven’t done is reviewed them all. Indeed, 17 still languish in my review backlog — that’s 77%. (In fact, I’ve only actually reviewed one Blindspot film — The Exorcist — with the other four being from WDYMYHS.)

So, with the end of the year fast approaching — and, with the new year, a new batch of films to watch — I thought it high time I cracked on with those reviews. Here’s a quick roundup of a few, linked by all being adapted from novels, which may be the first of several such omnibus editions.

In today’s roundup:

Dances with Wolves: Special Edition (1990/1991)

Jackie Brown (1997)

Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

The 39 Steps (1935)

Dances with Wolves
Special Edition
(1990/1991)

2017 #26
Kevin Costner | 227 mins | DVD | 2.35:1 | USA & UK / English, Lakota & Pawnee | 15 / PG-13

1991 Academy Awards
12 nominations — 7 wins

Winner: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Sound, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score.
Nominated: Best Actor (Kevin Costner), Best Supporting Actor (Graham Greene), Best Supporting Actress (Mary McDonnell), Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Costume Design.

The behind-the-scenes story of Dances with Wolves is almost as grand as the movie itself. An actor turned director whose inexperience led to production delays and budget overruns, leading to rumours the film was a pending disaster like Heaven’s Gate a decade before it (some nicknamed it “Kevin’s Gate”), and the studio who wanted a 140-minute cut having to settle for the 180-minute one that director delivered. The resulting film never even reached #1 at the box office… but still went on to be the highest grossing Western of all time, and became the first Western to win the Best Picture Oscar in almost 60 years. It was so popular that a 53-minute-longer extended cut was released a year later, which Costner later denied being involved with.

Having not seen the theatrical cut I can’t offer an opinion on which is better, but the near-four-hour extended one certainly feels its length. That’s not necessarily a bad thing — this is an epic in the truest sense of the word, with a large story to tell on a grand canvass; although it’s concurrently a drama about just a couple of people from different cultures coming to interact. It’s almost too big to digest in a single go — I’m even not quite sure what I made of it. You can see why I’ve spent 10 months not writing about it.

Anyway, I admired its scope and ambition. I wouldn’t say I loved it, but it merits revisiting someday.

Jackie Brown
(1997)

1998 Academy Awards
1 nomination

Nominated: Best Supporting Actor (Robert Forster).

Jackie Brown has long been my Tarantino blindspot. I caught up with Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction after he was already established and they were regarded as modern classics, then was old enough to see the Kill Bills at the cinema and have followed his career from there. But, for some reason, his third feature has always eluded my attention. My tenth anniversary “heinous oversights” list seemed a good time to rectify that.

Some people argue that Jackie Brown is secretly Tarantino’s best movie. I add “secretly” there because it gets a lot less attention than the aforementioned movies that came either side of it. That’s not a bandwagon I’m prepared to jump on. To me, it feels a little like QT was trying to emulate what worked about Pulp Fiction without just making a rip-off of his own movie, and therefore it’s a bit of an inferior copy. That’s not to say it’s a bad movie by any means. The eponymous character is particularly interesting, as you’re never quite sure what Jackie’s up to; what her plan is. She seems to be telling everybody everything, but she has to be screwing some — or all — of them, right?

Possibly I was just approaching the film in the wrong way. Tarantino has called it “a hangout movie”, which he explained thus: “Jackie Brown is better the second time. And I think it’s even better the third. And the fourth time… Maybe even the first time we see it we go, ‘Why are we doing all this hanging out? Why can’t we get to more of the plot?’ But, now the second time you see it, and the third time you see it, you’re not thinking about the plot anymore. You’re waiting for the hangout scenes… It’s about hanging out with the characters.” Personally, I’m not in any desperate rush to hang out with these characters again. But who knows, maybe I’ll get it the second time. Or the third. Or the fourth…

Silver Linings Playbook
(2012)

2017 #61
David O. Russell | 115 mins | TV | 2.35:1 | USA / English | 15 / R

2013 Academy Awards
8 nominations — 1 win

Winner: Best Actress (Jennifer Lawrence).
Nominated: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Bradley Cooper), Best Supporting Actor (Robert De Niro), Best Supporting Actress (Jacki Weaver), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Editing.

Bradley Cooper’s performance — 3.5/5
JLaw’s performance — 4/5
JLaw’s dancing — 6/5
Direction — 2/5
Screenplay (first two acts) — 3/5
Screenplay (bit where it suddenly gets plot-heavy and all exposition-y to set up the third act) — 1/5
Screenplay (third act that seems to be from a completely different, much more conventional movie) — 2/5

Average =

The 39 Steps
(1935)

This adaptation of John Buchan’s adventure novel is one of the best-known among director Alfred Hitchcock’s early works, and for good reason.

Galloping briskly along with a running time under 90 minutes, it’s a film where mood, tone, and the wonderful execution of individual sequences are all allowed to trump plot, which is somewhere on the spectrum from unexplained to nonsensical. We follow the likeable wrong-man hero Richard Hannay (Robert Donat) as he runs away from a gang of villains who barely feature. That they have a nefarious plan is outlined early on to kickstart the action; what they were up to is explained in the final scene to give the story some resolution; and in between they’re pretty much just a force chasing our hero. It’s almost like the villains are the film’s MacGuffin: it doesn’t matter what or who they are, just that they want to catch Hannay and so he must escape them. It’s how he escapes and what happens during his escapades that matters to us; that provides our entertainment.

It almost plays like a spoof in that regard — the plot is such stock spy-thriller fare that it doesn’t need to make sense in and of itself, we just get what it’s driving at. Of course, considering the age of the film, it’s more proto-spy-thriller than neo-spy-thriller. Whatever you class it as, over 80 years since its release it remains rollicking entertainment.

Dances with Wolves, Jackie Brown, and The 39 Steps were viewed as part of my Blindspot 2017 project, which you can read more about here.

Silver Linings Playbook was viewed as part of my What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…? 2017 project, which you can read more about here. Other WDYMYHS reviews already published include Hail, Caesar!, Into the Wild, Nightcrawler, and Room.

The LEGO Batman Movie (2017)

Posted on December 24, 2017 by badblokebob

Following the somewhat surprising success of The Lego Movie, we’re to be treated to a whole slew of movies related to those little Danish bricks. The first to hit the screen was this, I guess because the eponymous hero was a standout character in the aforementioned franchise initiator, and because Batman movies are always popular (well, almost always).

The plot sees Batman (Will Arnett) have to tackle the latest nefarious scheme of the Joker (Zach Galifianakis), while also dealing with his personal issues about being a loner after he accidentally adopts teen Dick Grayson (Michael Cera). You might think the story is almost by the by, because the real point is the gags… and, fortunately, the movie is indeed consistently funny, with a Flash-like pace to keep things moving. It’s also a great one for Bat-fans, jam-packed with references to previous iterations of the hero — anyone wanting to catch them all in detail will require copious use of the pause button.

But don’t disregard the narrative out of hand, because it also summons up surprisingly effective character arcs. Who expected that, right? Well, I say “arcs”, but it’s more “arc”: this is all about Batman. He seems to enjoy his awesome crimefighting life and doesn’t mind being lonely at home — but he is lonely, so why? Can he actually connect to other people? He’ll discover there are benefits to having a family… And so on. The LEGO Batman Movie may primarily be a comedy for kids based on a toy licence, but the emotional side works with surprising effectiveness. It’s not even just that it’s well built within the film itself: it illuminates Batman as a character. And I don’t mean LEGO Batman, but Batman of any incarnation.

The film also manages to deliver exciting action sequences, especially the big opener, that aren’t undermined by the freewheeling rebuild potential of the titular toy. These scenes look even better in 3D, the quality of which is great — the scale of the action, the depth to the locations, even elements of the characters, like the clear distance between Batman’s mask and his mouth. Does the extra visual dimension make it a better movie? Probably not… but I did watch some of the opening sequence in 2D afterwards and it felt less epic. That could just be me becoming more of a 3D convert, mind.

Another aspect the movie applies well is the LEGO licence, making neat use of its scope to rope in villains from all sorts of other franchises. That said, Batman has a notably extensive rogues gallery of his own, so one wonders if they shouldn’t’ve chosen to foreground some of his own foes rather than… well, saying who else pops up might be spoilersome. And if we’re talking about flaws that I won’t go into detail about, I wasn’t too sold on the third act, with the finale in particular not really working for me. In fact, that’s about the only thing holding me back from giving it a full five stars. Maybe I’ll mind less on a rewatch.

And there will be rewatches, because the rest is brilliant. It’s as fun as The Lego Movie, but mixed with being a surprisingly good version of Batman too. In a year overloaded with superhero movies, I’d wager this is one of the best.

The LEGO Batman Movie is available on Sky Cinema from today.

Hidden Figures (2016)

Posted on December 23, 2017 by badblokebob

Based on a true story, Hidden Figures is about three black women working at NASA in the early ’60s, a time when segregation was still in force in the US.

It’s a double whammy of timely issues, then: they struggle to prove they’re clever and have scientific know-how because they’re women, and they struggle to prove they’re worth treating with respect because they’re black. How depressing that these things are still relevant over 50 years later. That said, any right-minded person watching it will still be suitably appalled that this kind of thing went on at all — even when you know about it, seeing it played out is something else.

Of course, it comes with a positive message attached: these people overcome their societally-imposed disadvantages to be awesome nonetheless, fighting everyday sexism and racism left, right and centre to eventually prove their worth. Hurrah! It’s a strong message, even more powerful thanks to it being a true story, and no doubt goes a long way to explaining the film’s success. As a movie in its own right, it’s nothing particularly special. There are good performances from a high-calibre cast, but everything else is pretty standard for a biopic — well done, but there’s a reason the film’s Oscar nominations were for acting and screenwriting.

Hidden Figures is available on Sky Cinema from today.

John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017)

Posted on December 22, 2017 by badblokebob

John Wick, the action movie in which Keanu Reeves plays a retired assassin who returns to his former life to avenge the murder of his puppy, was a surprise hit back in 2014, and so it’s no surprise that there’s now a sequel (and a burgeoning universe of spin-offs and the like in the works too, but we’ll leave that for another day).

Part of the first film’s success was undoubtedly in its elaborately choreographed action — Reeves has always taken his action roles seriously, becoming a proficient performer of combat himself rather than relying on stuntmen; co-directors Chad Stahelski and David Leitch have their background in stunt work also; and they all brought their considerable expertise to bear on a variety of incredible fight scenes. But another aspect that piqued audiences’ interest was the equally elaborate underworld the film casually introduced — a secret community of assassins and those who served them, with its own codes and rules, the extent of which was only hinted at. So, as good sequels are wont to do, the second chapter in Mr Wick’s story serves up more of both these elements.

The story picks up immediately after the first film left off: having dealt with his grievances in such a public fashion, the underworld is aware that John Wick is back in the game, and so an old friend comes to call in a favour. Reluctantly forced to accept, Wick is soon off on a mission to Italy, but things quickly become more complicated, making Wick a target himself. In a society governed by strictly enforced rules, how far can — and will — he go to protect himself?

For anyone who particularly liked the snippets of this world’s mythology from the first movie, Chapter 2 delivers what they’re after in spades. Before they were just texture — fun window-dressing to the main story of a man taking violent revenge — but here they become absolutely central. We not only get to see more of the world (when Wick travels to Italy we learn a lot more about how the network of assassin-hotels functions), but the codes and how they’re enforced kick off the plot and are central to multiple aspects of it later on. It’s a neat structure across the two films, actually. The first doesn’t throw you in at the deep end with a sudden mass of things you need to learn, but instead intrigues you with a few relatable, fundamentally unimportant titbits, so that maybe you want to know more. Then the second takes what you know and expands on it, using the knowledge that you picked up almost incidentally to lead you further down the rabbit hole, to the point where it can hinge major plot developments on the rules of its own mythology. It’s quite sophisticated, in its way.

Of course, it’s all still in service of people shooting and stabbing and punching and whatever-else-ing each other. Maybe that’s doing it a disservice. Nonetheless, there’s lots of intricately choreographed, cleanly staged action — and what more do you want from a film like this? Some sequences probably go on a tad too long (a shootout in some catacombs, for example, which doesn’t payoff a careful setup as well as it could), but others are delightfully done (the climax in a hall of mirrors, for instance). But it’s not all po-faced mythologising and macho violence, with Peter Serafinowicz turning up to add a dash of humour as an armourer. There’s also a cameo for Reeves’ Matrix co-star Laurence Fishburne, but his brief turn definitely falls under the “mythologising” bracket — I imagine he’ll have a continued role in the forthcoming threequel.

Speaking of which, this is the good kind of middle part to a trilogy. It very much grows out of Chapter 1, but then it starts and completes its own narrative, rather than only telling half a story, before ending such that a third instalment is inevitable. Put another way, it finishes on something of a cliffhanger. My point is, this is my idea of how a sequel that’s aiming for another sequel should be done, rather than one of those things where they want to do a four-hour movie and chop it in half. (Though I recently said Rurouni Kenshin 2 and 3 were fine doing just that, so I guess it’s a matter of how it’s done rather than whether it’s done at all.)

By expanding the world of the series, John Wick: Chapter 2 loses some of the elegant simplicity that drove the first instalment, while also fleshing out an alternate universe for fans to sink their teeth into. Some viewers will prefer the more straightforward nature of the first chapter; others will enjoy the added complications. Either way, in its primary role as an action-thriller, Chapter 2 is more-or-less the equal of its enjoyable predecessor.

John Wick: Chapter 2 is available on Sky Cinema from today.

* The UK theatrical release was cut by 23 seconds to get a 15. That version was also released on Blu-ray over here, but the uncut version was released on 4K Blu-ray. I watched the regular US Blu-ray, which is uncut. ^

My Continuing Adventures in the Brave New World of 4K UHD, Part 37

Posted on December 20, 2017 by badblokebob

In my ongoing adventure of “trying to work out if 4K is any good or not”, I finally got round to doing a direct comparison: some scenes from The Punisher episode one, which I compared in 4K with Dolby Vision (through my TV’s Netflix app) to 1080p (through my Amazon Fire TV Stick).

And holy moly if I didn’t really see the difference.

In 4K, The Punisher’s got gritty, grainy visuals. In 1080p, that quality all but disappeared, just smudged away. And the colours… I watched in 4K first, and during a particularly dark scene I tried to note how distinguishable different colours and shades were in shadowy areas. I needn’t have bothered: in 1080p it was all just black. So, in conclusion, the difference in both areas (resolution and colour range) was, to be honest, considerably more pronounced than I was expecting.

Now, a few caveats. This conspicuous a change is undoubtedly due in part to how much bandwidth Netflix bothers to use, and therefore how much compression is being applied. It seems that for 4K they devote about three to four times more bandwidth than for 1080p (and even that’s about half what a Blu-ray goes at). This may not have affected the colours, but it likely explains why the 1080p stream lacked so much of the fine detail seen at 4K.

Also, there’s always the potential that my TV’s settings were affecting things. HDR and Dolby Vision use a dedicated set of picture settings, which have to be setup separately from those used for regular playback. I’ve optimised both sets as best I can, but there’s always the possibility I did one better than the other. There’s also the fact that I was using different devices. Maybe the Fire TV Stick is just less good at streaming Netflix than my TV’s app? (If I could force the Netflix app to play in lower quality then I’d’ve done the entire comparison there for fairness, but I don’t think that’s possible.)

Finally, to drag a different series into the debate, I also watched Stranger Things 2 in UHD with Dolby Vision. Most of the time it looked fine, but every once in a while the colours in a shot would look completely screwy — usually too blown out, like someone had whacked the brightness up to silly levels, sometimes erasing detail in the process. Now, what Dolby Vision does is adjust the picture settings on a shot-by-shot basis to optimise every individual moment (rather than just use a blanket setting for the whole movie, which is what standard HDR does). Presumably that’s why the picture went funny on individual shots rather than for whole scenes. I’m far from an expert on these things, but I believe part of how Dolby Vision does this is to do with metadata, and apparently metadata can just go missing. Perhaps this is what happened. On the other hand, I went back and checked some of the most egregious moments on a different day and they retained the same problem. Who knows what was going on, then, but it’s obviously less than ideal. (If the same thing happened during The Punisher, I didn’t notice it.)

So, after all that, I’m still not 100% convinced about UHD and HDR… but I can’t deny there was a marked improvement when comparing The Punisher, particularly during very dark scenes. Heck, even if the difference is just a fluke of how I’ve set up my TV, it proves that paying for the 4K option on a Netflix subscription is worth it. But purchasing a 4K Blu-ray player, which I’d also need to be region free, along with the prospect of having to rebuy some films again… that’s a lotta dough.

I should probably do a Netflix UHD to 1080p Blu-ray comparison, really. Next time…

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)

Posted on December 18, 2017 by badblokebob

aka Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi

I’ve felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if a small but vocal group of fanboys suddenly cried out in terror and were unfortunately not silenced because on the internet such complaining goes on forever.

Yes, something terrible has happened: a new Star Wars movie has come out and, rather than go the Force Awakens route of appealing to nostalgia and familiarity, it’s attempted to boldly go where no Star Wars movie has gone before. Well, it’s maybe not quite that innovative, but writer and director Rian Johnson has given us an Episode VIII that eschews rehashing former glories for an attempt to push the franchise forward in interesting new ways. It’s not an unmitigated success, but it is considerably more than just “a good effort”.

Picking up exactly where Episode VII left off, The Last Jedi opens with the Resistance fleeing as the First Order strike back. With those villains in pursuit, intent on wiping out the Resistance once and for all, hot-headed pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) and former Stormtrooper Finn (John Boyega) hatch a plot to cripple the First Order’s flagship. Meanwhile, on the other side of the galaxy, Force-adept orphan Rey (Daisy Ridley) tries to persuade hermit Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), the only remaining Jedi Master, to rejoin the fight.

Two years ago, The Force Awakens set a new trilogy in motion by not only introducing us to a selection of new characters and their conflicts, but also by posing a bunch of questions and establishing a pile of mysteries. The Last Jedi has the task of either perpetuating these — essentially, putting them on hold to be answered in 2019’s finale, Episode IX — or actually (gasp!) resolving some of them. No spoilers (I imagine if you care then you’ve seen the film by now, but just in case…), but Johnson has indeed decided to furnish us with some answers, and it’s generally this that has riled up certain parts of the internet.

Frankly, it’s not a debate I want to wade into, in part because I generally think the complaints are misplaced — many of them stem from fans having expected certain things, then not got those things. They say that’s not it; that Johnson’s writing of characters and ability to tell a story is fundamentally flawed… but they’re wrong. Johnson’s answers are fine — in fact, in many cases they’re exactly the kind of thing I’d hoped for (yep, some of us did get what we wanted!) — they’re just not the kind of answers some people expected. And I think that’s a good thing. This way is more surprising. But also, it’s not surprising for surprise’s sake — it fits the story being told. Minor spoilers here for the film’s themes, which are failure and what it takes to be a hero. (That’s two of them, anyway. I’m sure there are more.) The former, as we are told, is important — you learn more from failure than from success, as they say. The latter is, at least in part, explored in terms of who gets to be a hero, and why. Both of these lead to answers that have made some people deeply unhappy, usually for the wrong reasons — as I say, an awful lot of people are blaming Johnson’s abilities as a filmmaker, when really they just don’t like the perfectly-well-built story they’ve been given.

Anyway, that’s enough harping on about other people’s issues. I do think the film had some flaws, primarily in the pacing department. I think where it goes wrong is how it emphasises the events on Ahch-To (Luke’s island) and Canto Bight (the casino planet). I get the impression the latter has been built up to give us somewhere to cut away to during the former, but it means what is a subplot aside gets too much screen time. We expect a three-act structure, and it makes that whole section feel like Act Two of Three, but it isn’t. I can imagine this plays better on a rewatch, so I’m reserving judgement slightly.

That aside, though, The Last Jedi has much to please. Every major player is granted a noteworthy arc, developing as people throughout the movie. The pay-offs to all that are particularly satisfying. Obviously I can’t talk about that without spoiling it, but everything that occurs in the throne room after it becomes clear this isn’t your typical Star Wars throne room scene is among my favourite stuff in the whole saga. And you’d have to go some way to beat the long-awaited reunion between a couple of characters, in a perfectly-written and emotionally loaded scene. This definitely contains some of the best acting in any Star Wars movie — Carrie Fisher gives one of the best performances of her career; Mark Hamill makes you wonder why his never took off like, say, Harrison Ford’s did; and the young guns get their moments too, particularly Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver, with a shoutout for the always wonderful Domhnall Gleeson.

Away from the dramatic conflicts, it also satisfies as an action movie, with some of the saga’s most incredible sequences. At times it feels like we’re watching an actual war, rather than the odd skirmish that pops up in previous films. The smaller level combat is impressive too. This is certainly not a film just about its action set pieces, but they don’t disappoint. All around this may well be the best-directed Star Wars movie, with its shot choices, editing, and some bold and original ways of staging things that give us examples of pure filmmaking never before seen in this series. Part of that is the beautiful cinematography by Johnson’s regular DP, Steve Yedlin. There’s been striking photography in previous Star Wars movies, but none so consistently as this. One bit in the second half provoked actual gasps and “wow”s from my audience — and we’re British, we don’t make noise during films.

Except laughter. People laughed, too. This is a funny film. Too funny, in some people’s estimations. Maybe they forget that Star Wars has always been amusing (on IMDb the highest-rated quote from A New Hope is Han’s chat over the intercom when they’re breaking Leia out, which is basically a comedy skit). I had mixed feelings about one extended bit at the beginning (it’s funny, but does it fit in Star Wars?), but mostly I thought the level of humour was about right. That reminds me of the most ridiculous single criticism I’ve read of the film, though: some people have claimed the film has a “vegan agenda” due to one comedy bit. I kid you not. Elsewhere, the humour is used to succinctly undercut some of the series’ pomposity, which ties back round to Johnson’s pleasantly irreverent aims that I was alluding to earlier.

One of the key lines from The Last Jedi’s trailer (and it’s also very important in the film, of course) comes from Luke: “This is not going to go the way you think.” That’s quite clearly the case between the film and its audience, too. Some of us have revelled in that; others despised it. Others still find themselves in between, stuck being drawn back and forth to two complex and opposing emotional states. Being uncertain of your feelings between the Light and the Dark — seems only appropriate for this franchise, doesn’t it?

The Last Jedi doesn’t play to the populist cheap seats in the way The Force Awakens did, which makes it a less congenial movie, but perhaps a better one. It doesn’t effortlessly entertain with nostalgic Star Wars-ness as Episode VII does, but instead takes all that familiar iconography and prods at it to push it in new directions. Like another big sci-fi sequel this year, Blade Runner 2049, it’s a film whose true appreciation may only occur over time. I didn’t like everything about it, but the stuff I liked, I loved.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi is in cinemas everywhere now. I imagine you’ve already seen it.

P.S. I loved the Porgs.

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Category Archives: 2017