Bloodshot. Dave Wilson. 2020. ⚃

[ten minutes pass]

This is pretty disgusting. On-screen fridging just to motivate the hero. Such a cliché. Pathetic.

[forty minutes pass]

Ooh! Twist! I didn’t see that coming. Now I just sound stupid. If only there were a delete key on this keyboard.

I’ve slowly started to enjoy this movie. It’s got a bunch of actors that are entertaining to watch there on the screen, and it’s got a weird, loping rhythm. It’s choppy, but in a good way.

[the end]

By the end of this movie, I was totally into it. Sure, the movie doesn’t make that much sense (the premise is pretty silly), but it’s just so… likeable. Lamorne Morris as the computer nerd is outstanding, and the elevator fight scene was so much fun.

I’d totally be up for watching Bloodshot 2, but is there going to be one?

But that’s Covid figures, so… er… is that good? That many people risked their lives to see this? I guess that’s a vote of confidence.

Well!

My problem with this movie is really the first three quarters of an hour: The movie leans really hard into being a standard, dopey, stupid example of its genre… and does that so that when the twist comes, it makes all the more impact. That’s great! But it means that we have to suffer through forty-five minutes of a standard, dopey, stupid example of its genre first, and that’s not fun.

The Tales of Hoffman. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. 1951. ⚃

[five minutes pass]

Oh, this is really the opera? I kinda assumed that this was going to be an adaptation of the story (such as it is) or something. But, no, this looks like it’s going to be a pretty traditional filmed opera?

I mean, it’s not a filmed stage production — it’s very filmic, but very… stagey…?

OK, that’s fine by me.

[the end]

All the choons seem very familiar, so I’m guessing people use Offenbach’s music out of context all over the place?

Anyway, I couldn’t get into this. It’s technically very well made; it’s full of these amazing tricks and bits and bobs, and I’m guessing that if you’re really into the opera, you’d really be into this, but… I’m not and I’m not.

A Matter of Life and Death. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger. 1946. ⚂

[half an hour passes]

This is an … odd movie. It’s a fantasia of what could have happened to people dying in the war that was just over? So we have David Niven (playing a very geriatric 27-year-old) escaping death, but agents of Heaven trying to entice him back to where he was supposed to be.

Powell & Pressburger were always very commercially-minded, and they thought this was just the thing to show a traumatised British audience? In the US, they handled this by Just Not Mentioning The War for a decade or something?

[twenty minutes pass]

Wat:

In 1999, A Matter of Life and Death was placed 20th on the British Film Institute’s list of Best 100 British films. In 2004, a poll by the magazine Total Film of 25 film critics named A Matter of Life and Death the second greatest British film ever made, behind Get Carter. It ranked 90th among critics, and 322nd among directors, in the 2012 Sight & Sound polls of the greatest films ever made.

Wat.

I do not get it.

[twenty minutes pass]

OH OH OH

Ever since that doctor guy appeared here, I though “his voice sounds awfully familiar… Is that… it that… the guy from the Wolfgang Press song?”

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89ZOrHYpsvw]

IT IS!

*phew*

I wasn’t going insane after all.

[the end]

I love the matte paintings and the special effects, but… I still don’t get it. This is a tedious movie, among Powell & Pressburger’s worst (and they have made some stinkers).

Is this a sentimental favourite in the UK, a la It’s A Wonderful Life? Shown every Xmas? I don’t understand the attraction otherwise.

I mean, the end of the trial scene is moving and stuff, but it’s mostly just so .. ham-handed… and the trial itself, which is all about… how great Britain is? is…

Well.