Recently Watched Films

One of those movies I'd been aware of for years, somehow never seen. Finally watched it yesterday.

It sucked. Didn't laugh once. 

Been meaning to watch this for ages. Got to say I'm disappointed. I found it a really patchy movie veering between brilliance and boring, but mostly being just okay, yet bloated. It really didn't feel to me that it made the most of its near three hour running time. 

This was a great British comedy from the people behind the series Outnumbered. They did fall back on a similar setup (parents, three kids, though the parents are divorcing here) but it touches on some darker themes (handled humorously but not really in a true black comedy way) and the cast is pretty great: David Tennant, Rosamund Pike, Billy Connolly & Ben Miller, though it's often the child actors who are scene stealers. Great film. 

Excellent 1930s crime movie. 

A giallo. Hadn't seen a new one lately having already gone through most of the well known titles. A very good one I thought from the same director that did What Have They Done to Solange? which is also a recommendable film for giallo lovers ready to move beyond the groundwork of Argento and Bava. 

Liked this more on the second viewing. For some reason it didn't click the first time, but I loved it this go around.

Now that was a crazy movie. 

This is very well made for a 50s movie in this genre. Great underwater shots and the monster costume is very good - I'm sure there's many modern horror movies that have done much worse than this production crew did in the 50s. 

I have some mixed feelings about this one. 

As a movie I thought it was very good. Entertaining, well shot, I could really feel the neighbourhood coming to life through it's characters. 

As a movie that supposedly has a strong message against racism and the killing of black people by cops in the US (which is even more poignant in 2020 due to George Floyd), I found it to have some big problems though. Such as the long and the short of it (sorry, spoilers but can't be helped) being that everything that happens is because one black man walks into an Italian-American's pizzeria and takes umbrage over the Italian-American wall of fame and can't let it go and another one took umbrage over being told to switch Public Enemy off while on the premises. I found that character really arrogant over the assumption that he could just walk in and show such disrespect to the owner while still expecting to get served actually. 

If those two characters had just shown some respect the events that led to the riot wouldn't have happened. No, the death of one of those men at the hands of cops wasn't right and the movie raises awareness that George Floyd's death proved is still much needed over 30 years later, but I felt that the movie would have been more effective if those same people hadn't been the direct cause of events. For me that weakened the message. Some manners cost nothing and if Buggin Out really had a problem with the wall of fame he could have gone about trying to change Sal's mind in much better ways instead of demands and threats of getting the community to boycott the place. One thing I felt the movie got right was that most of the black community didn't have issue with Sal's wall - it wasn't racist, but got made about race unnecessarily. I think a lot of things today get made about race when they don't need to be too. So that resonated for me. Especially as if you reversed the roles of Buggin Out and Sal taking umbrage with a black wall of fame would be seen as racist, especially if it happened in 2020 and it's SJW climate. You don't end racism by reversing it. So I'm going to say it and be damned for it if I have to be: Buggin Out and Radio Raheem were the villains of this movie.