April's

April

1. Charlie's Angels - Me: "Well... that was even shitter than I was expecting..." No 2 Daughter (aged 10): "Yep."
2. X-Men First Class - That was fun! I really liked this. It had one "err... hang on!" moment when I was thrown out of the narrative. (The moment where Mystique appears in the guise of Sebastian Shaw wearing the soon-to-be-Magnito-helmet made me wonder how she knew about the helmet when she had never seen him in it and, as far as we knew, didn't even know of it's existence.) It jarred at the time but was explained to my satisfaction in the post-match analysis by my ten year old daughter: "The brain readery guy told her about it!" Makes sense.
3. How to Train Your Dragon (2010) - Friday night with the kids.
4. Roma (1972) - I love Fellini. This wasn't his best but I do like his films. I don't understand them - there was little or no narrative structure in Roma just a series of seemingly unconnected impressionistic scenes which jump about in time from the early 1930s the present day. Fellini throws everything at the screen: breaks the fourth wall, has inbuilt critical insults - there's a moment where a young hippy type attacks the director for making the same old film over and over again and he does keep the camera moving moving moving: there's not a still moment. I liked the verve of it and the dreamlike qualities. I have a friend who is visiting Rome at the moment. I think I may have seen more of it than he will. I know if ever I go I will be vastly disappointed in the real thing.
5. Speed of Thought (aka Scopers 2011) - talky little low budget SF about telepaths and nasty government abuse of them that nearly works. No explosions or stupid car chases just semi-credible what iffery. There are a couple of moments where you have to suspend your disbelief but they are character and plot moments not 'How the hell did he walk out of THAT without a scratch?' moments.
6. Gregory's Girl - Watched as a Friday Night Family film. My 12 year old loved it.
7. Shogun Assassin - two of the Lone Wolf series (about a wandering rōnin and his 4 year old son) chopped into one blood-filled slaughterhouse of a film. The back of the case described this film as "Astonishingly violent". For once the blurb writers weren't overselling the product.
8. Quantum Apocalypse Sci-fi channel TV movie and a poor one at that notable only as a wee nexus for sad geeky Kevin Bacon moves. It featured turns from Gigi (Farscape) Edgley, Peter (Tron, Babylon 5) Jurasik, and Stephanie (Battlestar Galactica) Jacobsen. It's shite.
9. First Men in the Moon (1964) - Friday night with the kids. Mildly entertaining.
10. Quatermass and the Pit (1967) - prompted by the discussion we had after last night's movie (when I noted Nigel Neale's name on the writing credits) I introduce Daughter Number One to Professor Bernard Quatermass. She is less than overwhelmed - but is polite about it.
11. Images (1972) - 100 minutes of Susannah York going bonkers in Ireland. Overly-arty twaddle but even second string Altman is better than 90% of the stuff I watch.
12. X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Whiz! Bish! Bang! Kaboom! - which was all very fine but looked so obviously shot in some form of High Def format. I know this is the norm these days but usually, with big budget productions, the show is filmized (horrible word) before we get to see it. The video cut video footage is made to look like it was shot on film. I can't understand how and why they spent so much money on this and have great chunks of it look like it came from a Sci-Fi Channel, straight to DVD movie. I'm not talking about the SFX, which were incredibly well done, but those parts of the show where the special effects guys weren't needed. A lot of simple dialogue scenes and close ups were so obviously shot on video it hurt.