Letterboxd - jwhiles

24 Hours in the Life of a Clown, 1946

jwhiles — Wed, 18 Dec 2024 05:57:11 +1300

Sort of a documentary, but all the scenes are staged.

We learn that it’s important to keep your wife in her place by complaining about being served spaghetti even when you secretly love spaghetti.

A Charlie Brown Christmas, 1965 - ★★★

jwhiles — Wed, 18 Dec 2024 05:54:56 +1300

I've wanted to watch this for a long time, since I love the soundtrack. And I think I love snoopy - despite having very little knowledge Peanuts.

This is a strange film, in that it feels like a series of ideas for three panel comic strips, and also seems to have been directed by someone who's never seen an animated film before.

The plot is roughly as follows:
* Charlie feels sad because it's Christmas but he isn't happy
* Everyone, including his dog, seems to be treating Christmas as an entirely commercial enterprise
* Another kid invites him to direct the Christmas play, hoping this will cheer him up
* Everyone ignores and criticises him
* Then someone explains that the true meaning of Christmas is that Jesus got born
* Finally everyone decides to be nice to Charlie

The Jesus stuff seems very untrue to the characters, and is a bit baffling. Keep Jesus out of my Christmas films!

In summary:

"Nickels, nickels, nickels, that beautiful sound of clinking nickels"

Berberian Sound Studio, 2012 - ★★★

jwhiles — Wed, 11 Dec 2024 10:23:23 +1300

Watched on Tuesday December 10, 2024.

Hairspray, 1988 - ★★★★

jwhiles — Sun, 8 Dec 2024 07:50:13 +1300

So I had this film mixed up in my head with Hair (1979), and as a result I spent the whole film waiting for Age of Aquarius.

Anyway, incredible film. Loved every second.

Wicked, 2024 - ★★½

jwhiles — Sun, 8 Dec 2024 04:38:10 +1300

Why is everyone at this weird aquatic school so old?!

(why was this a part 1?! How does an adaption of a ~3 hour musical end up being like 6 hours long and containing such a small amount of music)

Wasp, 2003 - ★★★★

jwhiles — Sun, 10 Nov 2024 22:46:47 +1300

Watched on Saturday November 9, 2024.

A Serious Man, 2009 - ★★★★½

jwhiles — Sun, 10 Nov 2024 10:15:29 +1300

‘Actions have consequences’
‘Yes, often’

The Substance, 2024 - ★★★½

jwhiles — Fri, 8 Nov 2024 10:27:45 +1300

Just retreading the same ground as show girls but with a bit less panache

An American Werewolf in London, 1981 - ★★★

jwhiles — Thu, 10 Oct 2024 09:04:20 +1300

I didn’t know anything about this film going in - and i took a long time trying to figure out whether it was horror or comedy or what. I’m still not totally sure. Whatever the case - it makes you long for halcyon days of the 1980s Yorkshire pub.

I think if was film was slightly different it would have been really good. But in actual fact it was just okay. The practical effects were great, the humour good, the love story unconvincing.

My absolute favourite scene was the Kermit dream sequence.

La Ceremonie, 1995

jwhiles — Sat, 5 Oct 2024 01:09:38 +1300

Watched this on criterion 24/7 - consequently I missed the start and the end.

Overall very enjoyable to watch. Great vibes. Loved the insanity of everything people were watching on tv.

Not sure what the point was - maybe a 1995 version of saltburn: ‘Don’t trust the poor and wretched. They are pernicious and murderous’

The Fly, 1986 - ★★★★

jwhiles — Wed, 2 Oct 2024 07:14:39 +1300

I expected this to be fun like videodrome or crash - But it’s actually very bleak. Turning into a fly sucks for you and for those around you.

The Martian, 2015 - ★★½

jwhiles — Thu, 19 Sep 2024 22:58:36 +1200

Every time I watch a new Ridley Scott movie I become more convinced that he actually just got lucky when he made Alien and Prometheus and Alien Covenant

Glass, 2019 - ★★

jwhiles — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 06:48:00 +1200

Why does a secret society dedicated to suppressing knowledge of superheroes allow three witnesses who are extremely motivated to talk about what they’ve seen just walk away?

Some good acting and nice scenes, but as a whole this was a really remarkably bad and stupid film

Mission: Impossible II, 2000 - ★★

jwhiles — Sun, 8 Sep 2024 22:56:58 +1200

I liked the motorbike scene

Notting Hill, 1999 - ★★★

jwhiles — Fri, 16 Aug 2024 09:02:05 +1200

Watched on Thursday August 15, 2024.

Kingsman: The Secret Service, 2014 - ★★★½

jwhiles — Thu, 15 Aug 2024 19:29:10 +1200

You can always tell the villain because they have a disability. This time it’s a lisp.

Went in knowing nothing about the film other than it was something to do with spies. I was expecting either a light hearted Johnny English style caper, or a self serious Le Carré rip off. What I got wasn’t really either of those.

After watching the film I read up on it a bit and it’s based on a comic by Mark Millar and directed by the Matthew Vaughan who also directed kickass - which makes sense because this film felt a lot like kick ass for better and worse.

I liked
* Colin Firth
* the bizarre way the scenes were shot
* the church massacre

Disliked
* parkour
* dizzee rascal’s bonkers
* all the sub guy ritchie gangster stuff

Gladiator, 2000 - ★★½

jwhiles — Thu, 15 Aug 2024 19:10:26 +1200

I am baffled by the cultural impact this move had. It is not a good movie.

My favourite bit is when he rides a horse from Germany to Spain in two days

Color Out of Space, 2019 - ★★★

jwhiles — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 19:26:53 +1200

Watched on Saturday July 27, 2024.

Cure, 1997 - ★★★★

jwhiles — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 22:30:58 +1200

Watched this with my mum

Longlegs, 2024 - ★★★½

jwhiles — Tue, 23 Jul 2024 03:49:02 +1200

I enjoyed this.

Great collection of Noguchi lamps in her a house. But what does it mean?!

Madame Web, 2024 - ★★

jwhiles — Fri, 19 Jul 2024 10:23:34 +1200

Crazy taxi the movie

Hereditary, 2018 - ★★★★★

jwhiles — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 00:15:36 +1200

I watched this on ‘the uk’s biggest screen’!

I was extremely on edge throughout. It’s just constantly rising tension - which is punctuated by horrible climaxes that aren’t followed by any release of tension.

What’s the film about? I guess it’s about how sometimes you can be closer to your cult family than your real family.

Mad Max: Fury Road, 2015 - ★★★★½

jwhiles — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 09:06:25 +1200

Saw the black and chrome version at the imax lol.

Kind of seemed like this wasn’t actually shot for imax though? Felt like I could see the pixels at times.

Anyway the black and white was cool. Looked great. Moody

Godzilla Minus One, 2023 - ★★ (contains spoilers)

jwhiles — Fri, 7 Jun 2024 09:23:30 +1200

This review may contain spoilers.

I heard that this was an unusually good Japanese Godzilla film, which had broken through to a Western audience. It's getting good reviews from relatively serious critics and doing gangbusters on Netflix.

After watching I feel baffled at how positive the reception is. Why is this the breakout Godzilla film rather than the vastly superior Shin Godzilla (for which I am retrospectively increasing my rating).

This film was cheesy, visually uninteresting, and frankly pretty boring. The Kamikaze pilot subplot was the most interesting part of the film - it's a topic I know nothing about, and I'd have liked it to dig into how these pilots were viewed during/after the war more.

But yeah, the end result is that our protagonist gets over his trauma, and everything turns out fine. For me the film would have been better if Noriko had stayed dead.

The verisimilitude is lacking. Can you imagine how long it would actually take to attach 30 small tugs to a giant cruiser - definitely it long enough for Godzilla to decompress and swim off somewhere else.
And can you imagine what a hospital would actually look like in 1947 Tokyo after a Godzilla attack? I don't think there would be a private room with a vase of flowers by the bed.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, 2024 - ★★★★★

jwhiles — Tue, 4 Jun 2024 09:50:53 +1200

Yes yes yes

Enys Men, 2022 - ★★★★

jwhiles — Mon, 3 Jun 2024 08:42:09 +1200

Essentially the same film as perfect days. A worker diligently performs their job day after day, appreciates their surroundings, gets a knocked bit off the level by events out of their control.

Babysitter, 2022 - ★★★½

jwhiles — Mon, 27 May 2024 20:21:48 +1200

Watched on Monday May 27, 2024.

Love Lies Bleeding, 2024 - ★★★★

jwhiles — Tue, 7 May 2024 09:20:05 +1200

Normal sized woman is surrounded by lilliputians and has to fight her way out

Panic Room, 2002 - ★★★½

jwhiles — Fri, 3 May 2024 09:33:55 +1200

Ironically all the panic happened because they had a panic room!

Enjoyable romp. Basically the same as home alone.

Who did call the police in the end?

Perfect Days, 2023 - ★★★★½

jwhiles — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 08:28:25 +1200

Wanted more details about the food he was eating

Otherwise heart warming. The happiest moments of my life have also been when I look at a tree on a sunny day.

Past Lives, 2023 - ★★★★

jwhiles — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 08:26:43 +1200

Sleep talking is creepy as fuck

Killers of the Flower Moon, 2023 - ★★★½ (contains spoilers)

jwhiles — Tue, 2 Apr 2024 19:40:22 +1300

This review may contain spoilers.

I liked this quite a lot. Maybe it's more interesting to say what I didn't like since it already has a million 5 star reviews.

* The use of footage with old timey instagram filters was AWFUL. I can't believe someone decided that shit looked okay to put in a cinema
* A lot of the music was bad. especially in the first twenty minutes of the film the slide guitar almost made me turn it off.
* Brendan Fraser's performance

I wanted to know more about Mollie. I was perplexed that she seemed willing to continue her marriage with someone who killed half her family as long as he admitted to poisoning her.

Natural Born Killers, 1994 - ★★★★

jwhiles — Sun, 31 Mar 2024 12:08:26 +1300

Wilder at heart

The Boss of It All, 2006 - ★★★★½

jwhiles — Sat, 30 Mar 2024 10:25:33 +1300

Lars Von Trier made comedy about a small software company.

"...the 80/20 rule, agile development. That's just part of the terms necessary to define IT at an acceptable level"

Only God Forgives, 2013 - ★★★★

jwhiles — Sun, 24 Mar 2024 11:42:40 +1300

exactly the right amount of exposition

American Psycho, 2000 - ★★★★½

jwhiles — Mon, 18 Mar 2024 08:16:51 +1300

It slaps.

Dune: Part Two, 2024 - ★★★½

jwhiles — Wed, 6 Mar 2024 10:31:17 +1300

At the screening we went to a bald Harkonnen looking guy, with no eyebrows, stood up before the film started and declared that he had worked on the film and would be answering questions about it after the screening. When we spoke to him he claimed that he had gotten a bit part on account of being bald, and that he had also done some unspecified small jobs on set.

The biggest question raised by Dune: Part Two, was whether this guy was genuine, pulling a weird prank, or delusional. We shall never know.

Anyway, the film. It has a big central problem, which is that it's not interesting to follow an omniscient princeling who has been trained from birth to be good at everything. There's no tension in the film because Paul knows what's going to happen, and so do we. Any challenge that he is faced with he will overcome without breaking a sweat.

I can imagine an alternative film where we just focus on the Emperor, and whatever the fuck is happening on Geidi Primes, and that is a film I would LOVE to watch. Because the scenes that do focus on these things are by far the best part of the film. I want to know what the day to day life of a pale bald serf is.

It's a shame that this was split into two films, because the multi year break kind of obscures the central arc of Paul going from being nice and principled to being a total psycho. Oh well.

The Terminal, 2004 - ½

jwhiles — Sat, 2 Mar 2024 22:37:41 +1300

Steven Spielberg's 'The Terminal' is the worst film I've ever watched. We rented it from the library of 64 DVDs that are available at Tokyo's Hundred Stay hotel. We chose this film because we had somehow come to believe that it was a film about a number of spies, counterspies and criminals trapped in a train terminal. That sounded fun and stupid. Unfortunately 'The Terminal' is actually not fun, and much stupider than I'd hoped.

What the terminal is about

'The Terminal' is a film about a stateless person who gets trapped in an airport departures lounge and is slowly ground to dust beneath the heels of American bureaucracy.

The film which is OVER TWO HOURS LONG, stars Tom Hanks who puts on an entirely incomprehensible faux Russian accent. You can never tell what he's saying, but it doesn't matter anyway because all of his lines in the film consist of the words 'Krakozhia', 'Unacceptable', or 'payless shoes' re-arranged randomly. If the writers ever let him say anything else, it's so they can have him amusingly conjugate a verb incorrectly.

The film is as structureless as a deboned chicken. Our man, Tom, has a reason to visit New York - but this reason is only revealed to us in the last twenty minutes of the film, and is then immediately resolved. For the rest of the running time he just wanders around an airport because, as far as we know, he really wants to go to New York.

There is a subplot to the film where Tom Hanks helps one of the workers in the airport seduce another one. He does this by asking them one question every day, and eventually delivers a wedding ring for them. As far as the audience knows, the two characters involved in the romance never speak to each other until the marriage proposal - despite working in the same building every day for years. They decide to get married because it turns out they both like Star Trek.

Is Tom Hanks actually bad?

Before watching this film I vaguely thought that I liked Tom Hanks as an actor, but on reflection I realise that I've not seen anything he's in besides Forest Gump, which I don't remember, and this, in which he is awful.

The wider context

The film is somewhat inspired by the real life of Mehran Karimi Nasseri. I knew this watching the film and having a quite disturbing story turned turned into a 'heartwarming romantic comedy' feels somewhat icky to me. Here are some interesting things about the real events that this film was based on which I learnt from Wikipedia:

The Ostensible reason that Mehran had to remain in Charles De Gaule airport for 18 years was that he was expelled from Iran. However it appears that he was never expelled from the country.

France and Belgium both offered Mehran residency 'but he refused to sign the papers as they listed him as being Iranian (rather than British) and did not show his preferred name, "Sir Alfred Mehran".'

Steven Spielberg's production company paid him something like 275,000 dollars to make a film of his life, and then decided to make this film, which is a bit like his life, instead.

His autobiography is called 'The Terminal Man'. There is a 1974 novel with the same title by Michael Crichton, which Crichton described as being his 'least favourite work'.

After 18 years Mehran left the airport because of a medical emergency.

At some point he became homeless. In 2022 he returned to living in the airport terminal, where he died.

Originally posted on my website

Saltburn, 2023 - ★★ (contains spoilers)

jwhiles — Sat, 2 Mar 2024 08:22:48 +1300

This review may contain spoilers.

I enjoyed watching this film more than I expected to. Moment to moment I was entertained for most (but not all) of the runtime. Some very talented people were clearly involved in the production, the actors are great, and there are some lovely shots.

BUT, there is a massive gaping hole where the heart of this film should be. I’ve been trying to imagine what Emerald Fennell was hoping to achieve when she sat down to write this script. Was it ”A film about a middle class boy who worms his way into the affections of a rich family and then kills them all?”? ”An allegory about how social striving is evil”? ”A film set during what I perceive as the best time of my life, which I will shoot in a massive house?”.

I can't come up with a way of describing ”what the film is about” that doesn’t sound like a joke.

What We Do in the Shadows, 2014 - ★★★

jwhiles — Tue, 27 Feb 2024 09:39:47 +1300

Watched on Monday February 26, 2024.

The Great Phuket, 2024 - ★★★½

jwhiles — Sun, 25 Feb 2024 06:25:29 +1300

Life’s hard when you’re a teenage boy. This film depicted what I believe Salford was like in the 70s

Unlike everyone else I did not watch this with Mark Kermode.

I Saw the TV Glow, 2024 - ★★★★ (contains spoilers)

jwhiles — Thu, 22 Feb 2024 20:15:27 +1300

This review may contain spoilers.

I really liked this, even if it wasn’t as videodromey as I hoped. It’s a colourful fun horror film. I’d probably have liked it more if my parents had let me watch Buffy when I was a kid.

The film is mostly about being trapped in the wrong body, but also seems interested in the danger of letting fiction fill all the holes in your life, expressed by one character who understand all her problems through her obsession with a tv show, and who then decides to bury herself alive to solve it. These ideas didn’t feel like they fit together perfectly though. Because if the main character is really trapped in the wrong body then that means that Maddy is not insane, and that her obsession with tv shows and burying herself alive is justified. I guess one of the risks of making a film that’s so pointedly allegorical is that it becomes hard to separate plot and message.

The scariest part of the film where the main character tries to lower a tv to the ground outside his house. Chilling

Decision to Leave, 2022 - ★★★★★

jwhiles — Tue, 20 Feb 2024 08:40:01 +1300

Every time I watch one of his films I just feel so very sad

Poor Things, 2023 - ★★★★½

jwhiles — Tue, 13 Feb 2024 07:07:38 +1300

Much like crash, this movie is literally just a soft core porno film. Beautiful stuff, no notes.

May December, 2023 - ★★★★

jwhiles — Sun, 11 Feb 2024 10:48:37 +1300

I like the bit where she opens the fridge, and there's a orchestra hit as if she's discovered a severed head, but really there's just not enough hot dogs.

Natalie Portman has a fetish for acting. Doesn’t care about who gets hurt along the way, and in fact seems happy to alienate everyone just to get more sweet juice for her acting practice.

I don't understand how someone who makes cakes + a nurse can afford to live in a giant mansion.

The Iron Claw, 2023 - ★★★★

jwhiles — Sat, 10 Feb 2024 12:25:58 +1300

Man I love wrestling

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, 1985 - ★★

jwhiles — Tue, 30 Jan 2024 22:28:00 +1300

No one drives a car or motorbike for the majority of this film. The closest we get is a car being pulled by a bunch of camels. Sick.

The first part of this film is really good! And then it gets really bad, boring and confusing. Max seems to have changed into Han Solo, the one scene with cars is toothless and boring. Why does the psychotic dwarf called “The Master” start wearing a suit and a hat and become a jovial old man?

This was really bad, I wish I had turned it off as soon as it went beyond the thunderdome.

Mad Max 2, 1981 - ★★★★

jwhiles — Tue, 30 Jan 2024 22:23:42 +1300

This starts by retroactively trying to explain the background for the first film. A big war happened, and burned all the gas (I think), so now people drive around the desert in muscle cars and fight over any 'guzzoline' they can find.

Max is on the road, just doing his thing. He finds a man who he'll bully for the rest of the film, until he starts to like it. There's a town, which is actively pumping gas (despite it all being burned up? Is there gas still in the ground? Why?) and then the rest of the film is essentially the same plot as the land before time. All the ~~dinosaurs~~ people want to get out of the horrible wasteland and to a nice ~~oasis~~ beach with water and sunshine.

The film maintains the bleak tone of the first one, but with more assless chaps. If I could change one thing, it would be to excise the small child with a magic boomerang from the film.

Mad Max, 1979 - ★★★★

jwhiles — Wed, 24 Jan 2024 11:25:48 +1300

Much bleaker than I remembered it being! The biker gang have a clockwork orange vibe - and I’d love to know more about them. But the film seems very committed to not explaining anything about the world in which it is set.

Crash, 1996 - ★★★★½

jwhiles — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 11:09:43 +1300

Will Toledo sang

“all my life, I've been waiting for some real good porn.
Something with meaning, something fulfilling”

Well here it is Will

Song	Artist	Plays this week
The Dean And I	10cc	3
The Things We Do For Love	10cc	3
I Never Play Basketball Now	Prefab Sprout	3
Dreadlock Holiday	10cc	2
All The World Loves Lovers	Prefab Sprout	2
Ghost Town Blues	Prefab Sprout	2
Jesse James Bolero	Prefab Sprout	2
Moon Dog	Prefab Sprout	2
Fantasia on Christmas Carols	Ralph Vaughan Williams	2
Buried in the Snow ...My Mind	Slughole	2

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