Movie reviews, non-spoilerish

[petronia]

School starts tomorrow, so it's now or never. XD;

Quantum of Solace: guyz, when your sekkrit conference call is compromised in public view, don't touch your earpiece. What kind of supervillains are you anyway? XD Gunning for trilogy form, which I'm all for, but it does mean this is "the middle bit" instead of a great standalone Bond flick. My writeup for Casino Royale still holds so I'm linking it instead of retreading. Craig's Bond totters over the proverbial deep end in a pleasingly repressed fashion. As canis_m put it his connection with Camille was pedagogical at best, which left all the sexual tension for Dame Judy Dench. It was nice to see Siena as I missed it on my trip; can't remember if that coastal highway was in the right place tho. XD

St. Trinian's: intentionally bad movie. Actually, given the uhh boarding school setting and the involvement of various esteemed thespians, sort of plays out like a sendup of the whole concept of "quality British movie" in the first place. Another country... Watched on YTube while procrastinating over essay - twice. XD; And now you can as well! It'd make a great SSBB special, what can I say.

Withnail and I: watched ages ago (again on YTube), logging it here while I'm reminded. Cult British comedy of the type that starts off hilarious and becomes less funny the more one thinks about it. Highly quotable and something of a psychological template, though one doubts it had any influence on filmmaking thereafter(?). Would make a good "Yuletide fandom" if it isn't one already. Not recommended to those unable to cope with alternate visions of Uncle Vernon out of Harry Potter.

Michael Clayton: has that Soderbergh feel (produced by, not directed by). No geopolitics, though, so the amount of information presented doesn't overwhelm the elegance of the narrative structure. The last twenty minutes are combustible but only because the first ninety set up the fireworks right: some real action sequence tension as well as brilliant rants. OTOH both sororial unit and I found it difficult to shake the impression that there would be a follow-up class discussion. XD;

Once: again, watched ages ago and logging here. Real-time immersion indie flick about Dublin musicians who meet up, have not-quite romance, and record a Damien Rice-ish demo tape - basically, Take Away Shows: The Feature Film. If it speaks to you, it speaks to you.

Comments

[elsevita.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on the earpiece thing in Bond XD

"...which left all the sexual tension for Dame Judy Dench."

Ugh, I feel slightly mentally scarred, like the way I felt when I had a dream about my female friend crushing on the Queen Mother XD

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Have you not read astolat's rather famous Bond/M fic? XD

[elsevita.livejournal.com]

Found and read. Wow, all of a sudden it doesn't seem so implausible after all...

[uminohikari.livejournal.com]

when your sekkrit conference call is compromised in public view, don't touch your earpiece

...wait, seriously? I didn't see it yet, but um. That's pretty special

[supplanter.livejournal.com]

Don't touch earpiece, much less get up and leave—they did that too, didn't they?  I thought that was considerably worse. XD;;

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Someone pointed out that it was daft of them to have their meeting in a public location to begin with - the only reason you would do that is so you could exchange physical messages/goods without saying anything, if you're going over a network you may as well teleconference!

[supplanter.livejournal.com]

Maybe they really wanted to see that opera!

[chibaraki.livejournal.com]

I have a huge soft spot for Once because it was the first real movie my (Irish) boyfriend and I went to see together. He got me the DVD for valentine's day.

Also, we were supposed to see the band the guy is from the day my brother died. So I have no idea how that movie could possibly become more of an emotional thing for me than it already is, really.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Aw! Well, it's a beautifully immersive movie, and soundtrack (which I imagine you have).

second attempt

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

Bond and Camille had no sexual tension, plus the Girl Friday was a Bond Girl of the use-and-discard type, so nothing to contradict any laterent-homosexuality theories there either. But Craig's Bond had real chemistry with Vesper. (And with Solange, who was supposed to be use-and-discard, except they ended up using each other instead.)

On the other hand, if we want to do psuedo-psychoanalysis, I can see a situation like: your first girlfriend or boyfriend is the opposite sex; he or she dies or goes away before either of you can figure out that it would never have lasted; for mysterious reasons you never again become deeply attached to a girl/boy. But I'm not sure where Bond's one night stands before Vesper came along fit in here, because I think that part of what allows you to fall in love with someone of the opposite sex despite (subconscious) preference for you own is not having any basis of comparison. Or maybe raging teenage hormones making it all feel pretty much the same, XD.

Michael Clayton: oh man, I know /exactly/ what you mean! In addition to the anti-corporate rants, I thought that the characterizations -- acting-wise and dialog-wise -- were really good. Though I was irritated when Twilda Swinton won Best Supporting Actress for playing the insecure female COO. Not that she wasn't great, but did the female COO have to be insecure? Also, the neatness of the ending didn't match the un-neatness of the topic.

(And now I'm going to take a nap.)

Re: second attempt

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Bond: I can see it, but I don't really sense latent homosexuality there. XD Not in Craig's Bond, that is... and probably not in the character of "James Bond" globally speaking. Ex and I were talking with Brosnan's Bond in mind, who could well be bisexual, but only with a certain type of male partner. If Craig's Bond... it would be a different type of male partner. Analogous to how the "Bond Girls" have diverged in type as well. And the different class signals given off by Craig's Bond, which I'm too obtuse to read in full but seem to signify to British viewers via his performance and screen presence.

Clayton: it's got everything XD - professional ethics, corporate responsibility, M&A, compensation, even branding. (That bit where Arthur rewinds U-North's TV ad over and over!)

The greatness of the ending resided in the fact that you (or at least I XD;) thought Clayton meant it until the last. And then I looked at it retroactively and thought, well, the script was trying to push the Road to Damascus moment with the horses but actually the game changed right there even insofar as it pertained to pure self-interest, because his life will be at risk forever.

Swinton's character was queasy precisely because there's something very true-to-life there that's specifically female, i.e. one of the root causes of her actions is that she's a woman trying to prove herself in a man's world, and one doesn't like to think of that as potentially leading to total moral downfall, even though it leads to other RL quagmires quite easily. Not PC, in other words. XD; IMO she deserved the award because the character was pretty underwritten, so it's all performance - what I wrote just now is what I derived from looking at Swinton, not the dialogue.