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My Name is Julia Ross - Pretty good 1945 B movie that Pinocchio'd it's way to near A status thanks to director Joseph H. Lewis. He concentrated his efforts on style and figured the actual subject matter could look after itself. This is never more apparent than in his 1950 followup, Gun Crazy. In that one Lewis took a pulpish sort of noir about two star crossed, gun obsessed lovers and turned it into something memorable and invigorating.

In this one Nina Foch plays the title character, a young London woman in need of work who interviews for the position of personal secretary to affluent widow Mrs. Hughes (Dame May Whitty). She's immediately hired with the stipulation that it is a live in position and she must move in that very night. She also meets Mrs. Hughes' son Ralph (George Macready). The guy radiates a subliminal sort of menace but Julia doesn't pick up on it. She settles in to her new surroundings only to wake up and find that she's lost two days and is in a seaside manor miles from London and near Cornwall. Not only that, but the household staff greet her as Marion Hughes, the wife of Ralph Hughes.

It's from this enigmatic setup that Lewis fashions a respectable brain-teaser. It's only 65 minutes long but he manages to cram quite a bit into it. And what might have been instantly forgettable or frivolous turns out to be a decent little mystery.

80/100




I forgot the opening line.

By The poster art can or could be obtained from the distributor., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49011879

Free State of Jones - (2016)

Gary Ross wants to tell the remarkable story of Newton Knight in this ambitious film, and he kind of misses what most other biopic makers aim for these days - instead spreading the story over nearly a century and scattering the second half of the film over disparate events. Ross also crosses the line into that dreaded "white saviour" trope in a very direct way. The story starts in 1862, where Knight (played by Matthew McConaughey) is a Confederate battlefield nurse, dragging wounded soldiers to tents to have their arms or legs brutally sawn off. When he witnesses his teenage nephew getting shot and slowly dying, he deserts with the body in tow and as he's being hunted joins a band of escaped slaves. The war goes badly - more deserters join Knight and they coalesce into a rebellion (pretty ironic, seeing as they've just escaped from an army of rebels.) This morphs into an actual civil war within the civil war, with Knight and his army hanging on to territory that's easy to defend. They eventually proclaim their own state. After the war Knight fights for African American rights as Mississippi tries to circumvent the emancipation proclamation, stop African Americans from voting, and resists racial change by creating Klu Klux Klan.

During all of this - a decent way into the film - we suddenly change time periods and are shown a court case taking place in 1949. Newton's great-grandson, Davis Knight has married a woman, and despite both being as white as white can be, his marriage is being annulled and he faces time in prison because Davis is one-eighth black. Yep - these two people getting married was a crime in Mississippi - and Davis was sentenced to five years in prison. His prison term was overturned on appeal because otherwise a supreme court look at the case might result in Mississippi having to repeal their marriage laws.

As you can see, there was heaps of interesting stuff in Free State of Jones - kind of too much. Any narrative drive it has part of the way in is unsettled by the insertion of the court case, and further disrupted by the loose anecdotal series of scenes which follow the end of the Civil War section of the film. The scene where Knight leads a group of frightened African Americans to a voting booth is so cringe-worthy I thought I could hear the heckling. The film isn't a total loss though, and as you can see by how much I've said about it, I found a lot that's included historically fascinating and worthy of follow-up reading. I have no idea right now how well it represents historical fact.

6/10

This is in the wrong thread, but, whatever.

I loved this documentary.
Found the right thread - I'll post docs in that one from now on.
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Latest Review : Le Circle Rouge (1970)



28 days...6 hours...42 minutes...12 seconds
MEN -


Garland's MEN has a lot to unpack, and I fully suspect the film will split audiences down the middle. Ex-Machina was a straightforward film while Annihilation asked a bit too much from its audience within the last 20 minutes. Men walks in the path of Annihilation with a bonkers final act that will have you scratching your head, hiding behind your fingers, and either rolling your eyes or nodding in approval. Men is divisive and I always appreciate something that is polarizing.

Garland is playing with two main colour schemes here. Red, which is mainly used in the flashbacks with Harper and her husband. These scenes are quite engaging and showcase some amazing talent from Jessie Buckley. The other is green, which we are bathed in with Harper's walk within nature. These scenes act as some form of healing for Harper. She is finally letting go, being herself and at peace. We even get to see a smile creep upon her face. The cinematography is quite gorgeous at times and Garland once again uses nature as a device for his films.

There are a lot of themes at play here, some subtle, some not so much. When Harper first arrives at the house, she plucks an apple from the tree and eats it. The owner of the house even mentions "forbidden fruit" to her. While we never actually see any snakes slithering around, there is a scene involving a tunnel that is shot with scale like bricks that surrounds our protagonist that the visually imagery cannot be denied. There's even a naked man who starts covering himself with leaves.

Two people walked out of my theatre when the naked man shows up at her house. This is when things start to get weird and we see Rory Kinnear play more than one role. In fact, he plays every male role in this film except for that of her husband. Harper does not react to this at all, so this is something for the audience only. All men are the same? I'm not sure, is it that obvious? Later on one of these men receives a gnarly injury. That injury is transferred to every other man in this story. It's later on that we see these injuries are actually the exact same sustained by her husband after he either jumped or fell from their building. The film doesn't answer if his death was intentional or not, but he did threaten to kill himself if she divorces him. That scene in particular stands out to me as one of the best in this movie. Stellar acting.

The film's third act becomes a home invasion type movie where we are treated to some bizarre imagery of men giving birth to themselves over and over. To say that this is all in her head or it was all a dream is a bit insulting to the writer/director. There is more at play here, which is then confirmed by the quick epilogue at the end. Though, that might raise more questions than answers for some people. Annihilation suffered from the same logical problems. Is Garland more concerned with metaphors? Maybe.

Men is a horror movie that looks gorgeous, uses sound to its creative advantage and takes a wild turn that might drive some people away completely. I'm here for it, it's fine if others are not.
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Suspect's Reviews



MEN -


Garland's MEN has a lot to unpack, and I fully suspect the film will split audiences down the middle. Ex-Machina was a straightforward film while Annihilation asked a bit too much from its audience within the last 20 minutes. Men walks in the path of Annihilation with a bonkers final act that will have you scratching your head, hiding behind your fingers, and either rolling your eyes or nodding in approval. Men is divisive and I always appreciate something that is polarizing.

Garland is playing with two main colour schemes here. Red, which is mainly used in the flashbacks with Harper and her husband. These scenes are quite engaging and showcase some amazing talent from Jessie Buckley. The other is green, which we are bathed in with Harper's walk within nature. These scenes act as some form of healing for Harper. She is finally letting go, being herself and at peace. We even get to see a smile creep upon her face. The cinematography is quite gorgeous at times and Garland once again uses nature as a device for his films.

There are a lot of themes at play here, some subtle, some not so much. When Harper first arrives at the house, she plucks an apple from the tree and eats it. The owner of the house even mentions "forbidden fruit" to her. While we never actually see any snakes slithering around, there is a scene involving a tunnel that is shot with scale like bricks that surrounds our protagonist that the visually imagery cannot be denied. There's even a naked man who starts covering himself with leaves.

Two people walked out of my theatre when the naked man shows up at her house. This is when things start to get weird and we see Rory Kinnear play more than one role. In fact, he plays every male role in this film except for that of her husband. Harper does not react to this at all, so this is something for the audience only. All men are the same? I'm not sure, is it that obvious? Later on one of these men receives a gnarly injury. That injury is transferred to every other man in this story. It's later on that we see these injuries are actually the exact same sustained by her husband after he either jumped or fell from their building. The film doesn't answer if his death was intentional or not, but he did threaten to kill himself if she divorces him. That scene in particular stands out to me as one of the best in this movie. Stellar acting.

The film's third act becomes a home invasion type movie where we are treated to some bizarre imagery of men giving birth to themselves over and over. To say that this is all in her head or it was all a dream is a bit insulting to the writer/director. There is more at play here, which is then confirmed by the quick epilogue at the end. Though, that might raise more questions than answers for some people. Annihilation suffered from the same logical problems. Is Garland more concerned with metaphors? Maybe.

Men is a horror movie that looks gorgeous, uses sound to it's creative advantage and takes a wild turn that might drive some people away completely. I'm here for it, it's fine if others are not.
Thanks for this. great write up. I'm a fan of Garland, even down to his DEVS tv stuff which was good. I had a hard time with the last 20 minutes of Annihilation because i didn't understand it. It looked lovely like all his stuff does but I feel I needed a degree in astrophysics to make sense of it and bring it together. I still feel that way after re-watching it. So I hope there is a little more on the bones of MEN which I can't wait to see.



Cardboard Gangsters (2017)

Really nothing mote than those "Lahndan" films that Craig Fairbrass always seems to be in, just set in Dublin. Predictable and unimaginative.





To Be or Not to Be (1942, Ernst Lubitsch)

Some really funny moments in this one, great dialogue too.



Cardboard Gangsters (2017)
Yep, 'tis pretty poor .... easy to pretty much completely wipe from the memory I found though



Human Capital (2019)

Interesting story about the difference between the middle class and the upper class. Jumps all over the place time-line wise, but in this case, is not the worse for it. Good performances especially Liev Schreiber and the loving but deeply faulted father.




Victim of The Night
Wow. I didn't think it was good, but I didn't think it was that bad.
I feel like Gena Rowlands and John Hurt alone are worth at least two popcorns.



I went and saw the new Firestarter movie today. This movie got some pretty bad reviews and low ratings, but I liked it. Although not as good as the original, this is still a worthwhile film with some cool moments and decent performances. My rating is
.





Tabu, 2012

Pilar (Teresa Madruga) lives in an apartment building in Lisbon, neighbor to Aurora (Laura Soveral) and Aurora's housekeeper/caretaker Santa (Isabel Cardoso). Aurora suffers from some sort of dementia and is convinced that Santa and her own daughter are out to get her. When Aurora ends up in the hospital, a mysterious man from her past appears and reveals details about Aurora's life on a farm in Africa.

This is a film that is neatly bisected into two parts: the present and the past. I have to say that at first I was not into the second half. After the interesting dynamic between Pilar, Santa, and Aurora, the sequences of Aurora's life in Africa (done entirely in narrated sequences) didn't really grip me. But as the film went on, the story sucked me in and I ended up seeing both parts as equally interesting.

The performances are good in both halves of the film, though they have very different demands. In the second half of the film, only the narrator (Miguel Gomes) speaks. The actress playing the younger Aurora (Ana Moreira) and the actor playing her lover (Carloto Cotta) must do their work through just expressions and a sounds of the natural world around them.

This is a very beautiful movie, both in the more "real" present sequences and in the vaguely more fantasized past sequences. It's a great example of contemporary black and white, and how that can add to the dreaminess of a narrative.

When it comes to the past sequences, the film treads a little uncertainly around the role that Aurora's family plays as colonizers. It seems to want to acknowledge the damage and irreversible impact they have helped have on the local people, but also can't help a bit of romanticizing of Aurora striding around shooting the local wildlife. The impact of this is softened just a bit by the fact that what we see is filtered through the subjective point of view of one of the people from this past. Still, it's the only place where the film seems a bit unsure.

A solid drama and romance, and I'd easily recommend it.




X (2022) Bought the blu ray today and rewatched it. Fantastic film with great performances, especially from Mia Goth and the gorgeous Jenna Ortega. Entertaining, sexy and satisfying, X is one of the best films of the year. I'm bumping up my rating to
.