Chyp's Movee Mousings

Please do, you should at least have one less barrier to enjoying it than I did

I love The Boondock Saints, although I haven't seen it in about 5 years. The first half hour is brilliant, and like you say, it's Dafoe who makes the movie with his hilarious performance.

Peter Sarsgaard is always worth watching.

Slice-of-life drama that centres on a Bangladeshi woman who in her teens was subject to an arranged marriage which necessitated her leaving her native country behind and starting a new life in the Brick Lane area of London in the mid-80's. Now aged thirty-three and having had three children the film examines over a period of months how her life has worked out and what the future may possibly hold for her.

I've very little knowledge of Bangladeshi life in Britain but most of the situations portrayed feel believable even if at the same time many of them do also feel a little stereotypical (there are certain similarities with East Is East for example). The central character is very well played by Tannishtha Chatterjee and performances all round are decent.

It's a slowly paced affair in the main which is perfectly fitting and certainly manages to hold interest all the way through. Unfortunately though I think the film ultimately tries to have a voice on a few too many issues (arranged marriage, gender (in)equality, race relations, cultural identity, radicalisation), alongside universal human matters, to really say much effectively about most of them.

Overall imo it is a decent enough slice of human drama for those like me that enjoy such things.

I watched this one in school once and I agree that it's your basic slice of life in many ways but it kept my interest and wasn't straight up bad or anything. I think it could have delivered more though with a better focus and a stronger story...

__________________
/watching movies for mark f/
MovieMeditation's Cinema Reviews // Film Diary 2015 // Letterboxd Profile // MovieMeditation's Top 50 Horror

Yep, I think it just tries to touch on too many peripheral aspects instead of concentrating more on the familial interplay. It's certainly not bad, just could have been better.

Low-budget Korean drama split into three parts that all take place in the same setting with repeating elements and characters though all are intrinsically different.

The focal point of all three segments is Isabelle Huppert who seemingly plays the same character but in what I presume are supposed to be either three differing stages of her life or alternate realities. Personally I found both her character and the film in general slowly growing on me as each different act was presented, though I should state that the baseline from which the film started was low for me as the 'introduction' by which all three segments are joined is unsatisfying and the initial scenes of the first segment are poorly written, acted and staged.

If I had to describe the film in one word it would be inconsistent - some of the character interactions are delightful and feel natural but others feel fake and forced; some of the dialogue is incredibly stilted and unrealistic yet elsewhere it flows easily and doesn't feel at all scripted.

As a whole it felt like there must be hidden depths and meanings to what transpires but tbh although it gradually grew on me as it progressed I still didn't really care enough for it to dwell on what those might be.

Too high a rating but that's OK... for now.

__________________
It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page

To be honest I hummed and hawed over whether or not to drop it another half a popcorn.

Sang-Soo Hong is overrated IMO. Haven't seen the film you reviewed but I'm sure I'll get a similar reaction.

I saw it long ago, but I remember it being this crazy black comedy where everything that could possibly go wrong for him, it does. I don't think it's easy to come up with that sort of humor. It's been too long, but I think I'd give it 4/5, too. I really like your review, too.

Haven't seen the majority of the films but like your take on them.
VERY nicely done!

Thank you very much for the kind words peeps, appreciated.

No frills English drama/thriller that immerses itself in the underbelly of society from the very outset and never really bothers to come up for air. That the central characters are a tart, a runaway, a pimp and a gangster respectively should be enough to inform that this is not going to be a film about sweetness and light and it certainly doesn't lie.

Most of the talk in terms of acting in this film was about Georgia Groome who plays the underage runaway and it has to be said she does put in a good shift for the most part (only really showing her lack of experience when it comes to one or two more dramatic scenes) but for me that sadly meant less was said about the performance of Lorraine Stanley who imo perfectly embodies her character the prostitute and knocked it out of the park here (she did at least deservedly win the Critics Circle Actress of the Year award) . I should also add that Johnny Harris also performs well as her pimp.

That the subject matter is seedy should come as no surprise given the roles being played and it is to the film's credit that it manages to create such a pervasive air of grime and desperation even though visually it is actually quite tame and reserved. The script is down-to-earth and realistic in the main whilst the camerawork is suitably unshowy and the use of flashbacks to slowly reveal what even the average viewer should have already worked out has transpired is actually done quite well and is not as redundant as it may sound.

It's not a film to be brought out and aired at parties that's for sure but it is both gritty and realistic and worth a viewing as long as you don't mind stepping into the gutter for a while.

Late fifties b&w horror 'b'-movie that due to the cheap nature of the special effects simply cannot be taken seriously in the latter stages (not really a criticism as for many, including myself, that is actually the charm of such affairs and tbh when the film starts with a disclaimer that due to the nature of the film the producers offer to pay for any burials directly as a result of viewing you immediately kind of know the quality to expect) but up to that point manages to create and utilise atmosphere quite effectively.

There's really nothing new on offer - an isolated house, a previous resident that died unexpectedly, an odd employee, things that go bump in the night, a woman in fear of her sanity - but it's all put together well enough to create a whole that at just under 70 minutes is perfectly watchable without feeling overly stale. It should be mentioned that though the print quality is very good in the uncut version I watched (Timeless Media Group dvd) the lip-synch is sadly a little off meaning it lost the chance of a "+" on the rating.

Never heard of The Screaming Skull. Added to watchlist.
Nice reviews Chyp.

__________________
Too weird to live, and too rare to die.

Horror movie concerning the after effects for a man that is bitten by a bat. There really isn't much to be said in favour of this film, whilst the premise may be perfectly acceptable, if very much unoriginal, the execution is lacking in pretty much all departments.

The script is pretty poor, there is overuse of stock footage and much of the acting is of a low quality (it comes as no surprise to note afterwards that the major members of the cast all predominantly had careers in television rather than film). The soundtrack is mixed, being ok in parts but ineffective in others, and even though poor lighting and camerawork are employed to mask as much as possible the effects are still clearly sub-standard.

Even the title is misleading, avoid this one unless you have a particular penchant for so-bad-it's-still-bad movies.

I ordered it on impulse the other day as part of a cheapo 4-pack (around $7) that also included The Bat People, The Vampire and The Vampire Lovers. I plan on watching all four this week (possibly even all four as a marathon session today), two down so far, two to go

Decent b&w horror/thriller that although it walks the already well-worn vampire bat path manages to put it's own more unique spin on proceedings.

Pretty much everything is solid here, acting, script, production values with only the make-up/effects department really relegating this down to 'b'-movie status imo (again not a complaint, it's part of the charm of these types of movies imo). The pace is relatively sedate for the majority of the running time and what little action there is is mainly handled off-camera (making it feel more like a procedural at times) but that's not altogether unusual for this type of fare and it does allow events to eventually build to what feels like more of a frenetic and dramatic climax, albeit one that is over perhaps a little too quickly.