four films

hi


so, i've watched a few more films, then. four, look you see, hence the title. actually, possibly more than four, but these are the ones i can remember.

all of these are what they call netflix endeavours, or films what i saw on this service. generally it is quite rare for me to use this; i just pay for it as the rest of the family somehow have more time available than i do to watch it quite frequently. which is no issue at all. in complete honesty, i am also one of them types what switches on netflix and seems to spend ages just browsing for something to watch, rather than committing to picking something.

with good fortune, then, at least 50% of the four what i can (mostly) recall watching were at the suggestion of a good friend who had seen them. the other 50% were, i think, picked up on from online comments, or one of them just looked interesting. and it was.

even more good fortune was that not one (or further) of the films turned out to be beneath the threshold that is "good". as in, better than "not bad", and of course well away from "a complete and utter waste of time". this is no bad thing at all. early on, netflix was notorious for making most excellent series types of things but oddly very poor films. it would seem that this has now been corrected, and "netflix original" appearing on a film credit is no longer an instant reason to be wary of what lies ahead.

provenance of some things seems to be quite an interesting thing for a few of you. well, the below are not done in any discernible order, just as the images cropped up for the nifty collage what i made for the start of this. which, granted, might be interpreted as a discernible order.

my reasons for watching some film, one that i knew just about nothing of substance about, called Girl On The Third Floor was that it kept cropping up in comments (here and there) on the internet.  generally the view was that it was quite good; that it featured some genuinely disturbing and scary moments.

once upon a time i was quite a horror film fan, but for some valid reasons had not watched all that many of late. for a start, they tend not to be suitable for all the family, and one must be mindful of young children walking into a room when an entirely inappropriate, possibly damaging, scene is on. also, the ones they make these days seem to have a, well, different focus and feel to what i watched for many years. not, maybe, better or worse, but all the same holding little appeal.

plot? a bloke called Don arrives at a run down (yet clearly intended to be great and lavish) house, intent on fixing it up so that it provides a suitable home for him, his pregnant wife and as a consequence of the latter description their (presumed to be) first child. he has some most peculiar conversations with the locals, with a number of unexpected bits of information (and odd things to ask of a stranger) cropping up. it soon becomes clear that Don is a particularly unlikable, shady sort of person with a bit of a dodgy background. that he cannot be trusted becomes quite clear when temptation is put before him and there is little resistance. but what damage shall this temptation do........

ostensibly this is all something akin to The Amityville Horror, or maybe Poltergeist, with rather more graphic visuals thrown in and all of the sensibilities of the morality warning of Fatal Attraction heavily stirred in to the plot. some of the slowly paced start feels like padding (or even waffle, maybe), but ultimately pays off when you find out why it was structured so. indeed there are some strong visuals of a(n) horrific nature, and some unsettling moments. they are not, however, ones that i would suggest particularly linger in the mind or haunt you for much after watching it all. maybe it's some who watched it and described it as profoundly disturbing had a guilty conscience, or other such reason to be troubled by what was reflected as they saw.

a lot of the praise for the film seems to centre on someone called CM Punk, who is the lead actor. i had a vague awareness of the name prior to watching, but was not too fussed with who he is. people what do all that WWE wrestling thing tend to have mixed fortunes when making the move to acting, for it is simply not so that many become The Rock, or Rowdy Roddy Piper in They Live. i would say he gives a solid enough acting performance, and it was in retrospect most impressive that a wrestler should appear in a film where his character has a marked absence of any of the "talents" or skills of that wrestling background. mostly, though, and sorry to not go into details, i would say that the even more impressive performances came from all of the female leads.

i had no idea such a thing as The Old Guard existed until a friend mentioned it to me in a way that suggested i would be aware of it, and they gave it a moderately glowing review. this prompted me looking it up, quite liking the sound of the premise presented, and opting to give it a go.

plot? a band of soldiers who are technically immortal (they have remarkable powers that let them heal quickly, or come back to life when seemingly killed by death, but can also apparently at random die and stay dead) roam the world (for hundreds of years, maybe more) as some sort of quasi guardians. every now and then they get a calling to intervene and save a life, or to make sure someone or other survives, apparently based on a future knowledge that their existence shall be of importance to the world eventually. the team, ostensibly lead by the presumed eldest of their kind, 'Andy' (Charlize Theron), are faced with a double dilemma when we are introduced to them. whilst their apparent esp abilities which let them "connect" with others who share their ability alerts them to the first "new" person of their ilk being in the world, there is someone who has worked out who (and what) they are, and seeks them out for reasons which are not immediately clear, but might probably not be all that savoury.

the above is, of course, laced with some very fancy, exceptionally gratuitous and wonderfully entertainingly excessive scenes of graphic, violent action sequences to showcase their immense prowess at doing so. at heart this is a quite thrilling, suspenseful action film, and works very well as such. one of the only issues is that, despite all of the infinite possibilities the concept would naturally make you think exist, there is a very finite and limited number of things what one can do with immortals, at least in terms of constructing a story. usually you have to undermine the premise to do so, which is to say if you are creating a threat for an immortal, the only plausible one is mortality.

not sure (to state the obvious, since i have no idea who all of you are) about you, but for me, whenever the concept of immortals is mentioned as a movie theme, it is Highlander which comes to mind. this film does indeed borrow many of the general concepts, and one or two direct scenes. a most direct example is when the latest member of the immortal fraternity (KiKi Layne) discovers that she can't quite die. her expulsion from her platoon in Afghanistan (or similar) is an almost shot for shot recreation of when McLeod got booted off of his Scottish village for coming back from the dead.

but still, if you assume that genuinely fresh and new film stories are very difficult (it is not what you steal, it is how you use it), this is wonderfully entertaining and perfectly accessible. i didn't know it was based on some sort of comic book (graphic novel) thing until after i saw it, and to be as honest as ever i simply don't care how "faithful" an adaptation it is or it is not. my interest was purely in the film being watched in itself.

a predictable (yet great) enough final comment is, of course, the star of the film. Charlize Theron is as excellent here as she has been in, well, just about any film i have watched that i can recall seeing her in. one truly talented actress, or "female actor", or "actor", whichever is the correct term of reference to use in the present time.

when scrolling through netflix, i momentarily hovered over a film called The Platform. it sounded interesting, as in the premise seemed to be exceedingly Harold Pinter, or if you will pinteresque. on watching it, the film turned out to be very Harold Pinter indeed. none more so. in fact, i would say that if it were so that Harold Pinter were still with us and had the idea for The Platform, then early on he would have abandoned writing it for being far too Harold Pinter.

if you are wondering who or what a Harold Pinter was, an incredibly gifted but seemingly perpetually angry playwright. so far as i am aware, no picture exists of him smiling, and he seemed to forever have a scowl of contempt. most, if not all, of his plays featured people being restricted or confined (often physically and in a metaphorical way), with some act of brutality, barbarism of violence being the ultimate path taken. he was not a man, it seems, who in his writing placed any great value at all in the merits, decency or reason for existing of people in general. when one gives consideration to how the world, or society, that we have all somehow managed to create or exist, well, it can be quite complex just to dismiss his apparent outlook as being more pessimistic than it is realistic.

so, anyway, The Platform. the plot concerns a mystery structure, presumed to be a prison but entirely possibly a place people bewilderingly volunteer to be. it's a vertical structure, going for an unspecified height or, rather, depth. two people occupy each floor, with each being allowed to bring one item. daily, food is placed on a platform at level zero, and moves down. so, the higher up you are, the more likely you are to get food. the lower, the more likely you may be to starve.

yes, indeed, there is a (degree of) predictability to the outcome of this. i have little doubt that you could take an educated guess at some of the incidents which happen in this premise; i did and they do. how well executed, then, it all is becomes the most important aspect. and, even apparently or seemingly dubbed into English off of the original Spanish, it is brilliant.

i am really not inclined to say too much of the detail. but, for general comments, this is incredibly well made, the acting is superb and it is a film which shall remain in mind for quite a while. this is a disturbing work, or rather more of a thought provoking one. well, some thoughts can disturb. an excellent film, then.

finally of these four, then, would be Eurovision. i wasn't going to watch this, despite my love of the tournament on which it is based, because it clocks in at north of two hours. generally speaking (or even strictly) any comedy film that stretches beyond ninety minutes is perhaps trying to be something else. once again, though, a good friend said it was really ace, and that i should give it a go.

plot? an Icelandic lad (Will Ferrell) dreams of championing the Eurovision Song Contest on behalf of his nation. he wishes to do this with his lifelong friend (Rachel McAdams) who is also possibly his sister or step-sister, for evidently his father (Pierce Brosnan) has fathered a formidable number of children in the small, remote fishing village. the dream is of course met with contempt and scorn, and he is shot down at every opportunity for a variety of reasons which may spoil the plot. but, of course, he persists in reaching for his dream.

ultimately, Eurovision or if you like Eurovision The Story Of Fire Saga is a so-called "feel good" film which genuinely has the ability to make one feel good. well, it did me, at the least. my initial concern was correct, mind - the film is too damned long. you get, say, 100 minutes of well paced entertainment, but there is a jolt for the last 20 or so and interest wanes. make the most of the first 100, then.

this film would be "not half bad" if they just had done the easy thing, which would be to stick Ferrell in silly, Icelandic themed outfits, do that thing with his face and speak with a funny accent. happily, it goes much further, and the entire cast is superb. a shout out in particular to whoever it was playing the Russian entrant for the Eurovision Song Contest. maybe i am hitting some midlife homoerotic patch, for i am not ashamed to confess i fell a little bit in love with him; he looked like he was auditioning for the part of Simon le Bon in a Duran Duran film and he would absolutely be perfect for the part.

should you be someone who has very little, or limited (as in f*** all) interest in all things Eurovision, i would suggest you might still get value out of watching. the humour is in abundance, and very little of it is reliant on an understanding (or appreciation) of the wonderful contest.

right, then, that would be that. i suppose i inadvertently watched four films from four reasonably different styles, or genres. not deliberate, more of a happy, fortunate accident. as it makes it possible that there is every chance that at least one of my sets of comments might be of interest to someone, well, happy days.

thanks as ever for reading, and enjoy whatever you elect to watch!




be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!