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| bartist |
 Posted: Wed Mar 12, 2014 9:39 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
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| Me, too, Jeremy. I loved its ambition and grudgingly admired the way that the complex transmigrations were not all neatly diagrammed for us. But a viewer unfamiliar with the book would find it a very difficult narrative line to follow, on a single viewing. Basically, it would be three good metaphysical/sci-fi movies if the narrative threads were all separated and packaged for the sake of a 2 hour film. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Thu Mar 13, 2014 12:46 am |
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Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12921
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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The Angels' Share is the percentage of alcohol that is lost to evaporation as it's aged in barrels (2% per year according to the movie), but also the skimming that makes for a better life. This is my second Ken Loach movie, his second most recent, The other is his second film Kes, so I'm hitting him at both ends of his career.
The Angels' Share is a caper film and a comedy, but more substantial than that suggests. We have Robbie, a thuggish youth who has a history of violence, has inherited a feud from his father's generation, and also is a new father with the help of the lovely Leonie, and is desperate to become a worthy father. Unfortunately, this requires an occupation, which is kind of difficult to get if you have a criminal record and are sentenced to community service.
Fortunately, Robbie has a Community Service Officer who, between community service stints, takes his charges on field trips, including one to a brewery, where he discovers an unexpected talent as taste-tester of fine liquors. Which puts him in a unique position because of a legendary and extremely rare scotch that is coming up for auction. One that is so rare and so exquisite that it may well sell for over a million pounds for one barrel. And if Robbie and cohorts can manage to hijack some of it...
Okay, this is not as serious as Kes, but I really liked it. Robbie (Paul Brannigan, reminding me of a young, scruffy Robert Carlysle) and Leonie (Siobhan Reilly) make a delightful couple, and the film suffers during a long central section during which she's vanished, presumably either to nurse the baby or to avoid her pointing out all the flaws in her lover's plans. There's a tour of a brewery that I found interesting and fun (and our host very sexy), which forced me to go out and buy a bottle of scotch (at a much lower price).
And, unlike Kes, you don't need subtitles! |
Last edited by Syd on Sun Jan 24, 2016 11:06 pm; edited 1 time in total
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| Syd |
| Posted: Thu Mar 13, 2014 12:47 am |
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Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12921
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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| duplicate post |
Last edited by Syd on Thu Mar 13, 2014 7:19 am; edited 1 time in total
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Thu Mar 13, 2014 12:48 am |
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Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12921
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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| duplicate post. Too much scotch. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Thu Mar 13, 2014 1:59 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 14498
Location: Houston
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| Just watched the Tim Burton Sweeney Todd for the first time. It goes quite well for the first half hour or so, despite Depp's Bride of Frankenstein 'do and the incessant Edward Gorey look and the fact that all but one cast member (Tobias) make Richard Harris and Vanessa Redgrave look like Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald by comparison. But from Todd's breakdown after the Judge's escape on, the movie grinds pretty much to a halt, and the climax is, to me, botched. Sondheim considers this the best adaptation of his work so far. Well, yes, it's better than the movie of A Little Night Music. That's not saying much. He seems to prefer the Sam Mendes Company to the original Hal Prince staging as well. Is senility setting in? I understand cutting the reprises throughout, but couldn't we have gotten "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd" sung at least over the credits? |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Thu Mar 13, 2014 5:54 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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| Joe--About musicals you and I are almost always on the same page, and that certainly holds true for Sweeney Todd, which I thought went all the way from disappointing (first half hour) to lousy (the rest of it). Interesting theory about Sondheim and senility, and from what I've heard about some of his recent behavior you may have a point. In any case, he's all wet about ST and Sam Mendes (who you may remember is on my "most overrated" list). |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Thu Mar 13, 2014 11:52 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: Houston
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| He should be on everybody's "most overrated" list. The poster for the Cabaret revival should be placed in dictionaries next to definitions of the word. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2014 3:46 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: New York City
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Joe Vitus wrote: He should be on everybody's "most overrated" list. The poster for the Cabaret revival should be placed in dictionaries next to definitions of the word.
Totally--but with room left over for the Oscarwinning American Beauty, which was okay but nothing more than that, The Road to Perdition (which "transcends its genre" in boring style), and Revolutionary Road, (which is almost saved by Kate Winslet, who for her pains was dumped by Mendes for Rebecca Hall). Mendes is a jerk, an overrated director, and one of the luckiest men in the world. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2014 4:59 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: Houston
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The only one of those I've seen is American Beauty. And "okay" sums it up. I liked it, didn't love it, will probably never need to re-watch it. Mendes likely deserves credit for it being the only time I haven't found Annette Bening irritating and insufferable. I literally want to slap her hard in the face most of the times I see her in a movie.
That last sentence may give people the wrong impression of me... |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2014 5:10 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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| Strange as it seems, I think Bening is very talented but I totally understand your reaction. She's always herself been almost as overrated as Mendes, from the very beginning of her career on stage in NYC, and she has an entitled air about her that can be annoying. She was the best thing about The Kids Are All Right, and her performance in The Grifters has grown on me. But Bugsy...well, bugs me, and everything else she's done has been unexciting, except for American Beauty. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2014 5:29 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
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| Not a Mendes fan, either. He seems to opt for easy solutions to artistic problems. Esp. the "Road" films, esp. the whole "We should go to Paris and be Bohemian!" thing in Rev. Road. Yeah, except for lovely and amazing Future Ms. Bartist, it clanked like a bad robot. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2014 5:32 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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For some reason or other I was convinced I had seen the 2003 feature The Station Agent, but decided to "revisit" it on Netflix. Realized after a while that either I had never seen it at all or had slept through the entire thing.
Anyway, bottom line is that I absolutely adore this movie. It amazingly rides the line between humor and poignance as well as any film I've seen at least in years and years and possibly ever. A bitter loner of a dwarf (Peter Dinklage in his first starring role, and mind-alteringly great) inherits a remote New Jersey railroad station and forms an unlikely bond with a divorced women who lost her only child and a chummy motormouth hot-dog vendor. Patricia Clarkson and Bobby Cannavale match Dinklage in performance quality, and Michelle Williams chimes in with a small but delicious role.
This is quite unexpectedly and suddenly one of my very favorite films of the last 20 years. I will most definitely be seeing it again. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2014 8:18 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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Location: Black Hills
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| It's one of my favorite films. Glad you found it! |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2014 8:22 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: New York City
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bartist wrote: It's one of my favorite films. Glad you found it!
Can't believe how totally I loved this movie. Nor how I was so wrong about having seen it already. Weird. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2014 9:03 am |
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| Billy, I saw The Station Agent and loved it. I saw it again. I think I saw it thee times. I know I had written about it. Coincidentally when I was staying in Tampa (came back to Atlanta yesterday), with my friend Barry, I asked him if he saw TSA, and he hadn't. I told him to see it because it was great. He has all the movies on his TV. Coming back to Atlanta yesterday, i asked Dylan if he saw TSA. He said that he got it a long time ago but never got around to seeing it. I told him that he had to see it and he definitely will. |
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