Arrow just announced this. Finally a decent announcement:



^^Crazy black comedy from Russia from the director of Hard To Be a God. He made this before HTBAG.

I haven't yet, but it'll be available from the end of next month and so I'll definitely be giving it a go. I know a non-metaller who saw it at Sundance last year and said he actually quite enjoyed it.



As it's screener season, I've been watching a few possible Oscar contenders.

THE FAVOURITE
Comedy drama about English monarch Queen Anne. Not your usual period costume faffery, but a rather sweary and lesbian piece of strangeness from the director of The Lobster. Olivia Coleman is excellent in the lead role, and thus far my... ahem, favourite to win the little golden man next month. Rachal Weisz and Emma Stone are both very good (one of those two may well pick up a gong themselves), and the supporting cast are all decent too, but the film doesn't quite know what it wants to be and comes off as a bit awkward and distant.
3 Fists



GREEN BOOK
At this time of year, one film always stands out as total Oscar bait, and this year it's Green Book. In fact, if there was a guidebook to winning Oscars, then this film read it from back to front and back again.
A true story (ding!) about racism (ding!) in the deep south, the story, brimming with social commentary (ding!) follows a black (ding!), gay (ding!) musician (Mahershala Ali) (ding!) and his racist Italian New York (ding!) chauffeur/bodyguard/gopher Viggo Mortensen as they tour across the states, beginning the film disliking each other but becoming friends by the end (ding, ding, ding!).

The thing is, although being as utterly obvious as it sounds, it's still a damn good film, with Ali nailing one standout piece of "Oscar moment" dialogue. It's dark, racist, and harsh, but also bittersweet and funny (ding!), and just a thoroughly enjoyable film, rather surprisingly directed by Peter Farrelly (There's Something About Mary, Shallow Hal, Stuck On You, Dumb and Dumber).
4 Fists.




BLACKkKLANSMAN
The Oscar Bait train gathers pace with Spike Lee's latest joint, a film which, to no-one's surprise, is a true story about racism.

Pretending to be white, Ron Stallworth, a newly hired black cop (the first of his kind in his town) telephones the leader of a local KKK chapter and says he would like to join. Enlisting the help of Kylo Ren and two other detectives, the team set to work on bringing down David Duke, the then Grand Wizard of the KKK. With Kylo... sorry, Adam Driver - being the white face of Ron Stallworth the white-sheeted muppets can put to the voice on the phone.
After several phone calls and face to face meetings, the two detectives seamlessly become one single Ron Stallworth and the KKK are none the wiser, even promoting Driver to full blown member and wanting him to become Chapter leader, while the actual Ron Stallworth maintains a friendly telephone relationship with Duke.

Just as one final fuck you, the actual - and very black - Ron Stallworth is given the task of being Duke's bodyguard when he arrives at the town for Driver's inauguration.
As with most films these days, BkK is at least twenty minutes too long, but is also very watchable. Well acted, brutal, and often very funny, Lee only lets his political message overpower the story in a damning last few minutes where he shows how racism still hasn't changed in over forty years, that orange spunkmonkey from the US they embarrassingly call a President rightly copping it full force.
4 Fists




WHITE BOY RICK
The true story of Richard Wershe Jr., a teenager who got caught running guns by the FBI in the mid-eighties and was subsequently used to buy and sell cocaine to entrap local drug dealers. After the FBI cut him loose, Wershe decides to continue dealing cocaine on his own, gets caught and is sentenced to life in prison (mandatory sentence in Michigan for anyone selling over 8kg).

Part family drama, part gangster film, White Boy Rick fails to get the balance right, and ends up not knowing which it really wants to be. So much time is spent on his family life that the film neglects to show his rise to the top of the drug food chain. At first this just seems like an oversight by the filmmakers, but later, when the film virtually demands you sympathise with Wershe, it becomes clear that it was all part of an agenda as it tries to extract sympathy from the viewer by deliberately skewing the narrative and manipulating the audience.

A decent, but again unnecessarily long, film with good performances from Matthew McConnaughey and newcomer Richie Merritt.
2.5 Fists


VICE
Christian Bale goes method again, this time as George W Bush's Vice President Dick Cheney, a man with so little charisma and personality that he was able to slip into the background and manipulate and control much of Bush's time in the big chair.

Far too long with very little of any consequence happening for long stretches, the comedy sections - although admittedly very funny - just feel like director Adam McKay (Anchorman) was becoming bored of his own subject matter.
Bale looks great but keeps drifting into his Batman voice again, and by the end of the film, the incredible sneaky and intelligent Donald Rumsfeld is reduced to little more than a smirking Brick Tamland.

Sam Rockwell is brilliant as Dubya, and Alfred Molina is fun in his brief turn as the waiter, but (and I concede this may have been intentional) it's left unclear whether or not you are actually meant to sympathise with Cheney or just think he's a colossal self-serving dick (like the majority of Americans did at the time).
3 Fists


BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY
If Rami Malek doesn't get to stand on that stage next month and waffle and sob incoherently for five minutes about ending racism, homophobia and other bad anti-gay stuff, while also raising awareness of at least one related, applause-inducing campaign or other, not forgetting, of course, to thank a list of a thousand hanger-ons - all ready to publicly stick the knife in if he forgets - before being unceremoniously played off by an impatient orchestra director, then there's something really wrong with the world.

A superb film which takes a few historic and artistic liberties here and there, but is generally just two hours of fantastic enjoyment with a great soundtrack.
5 Fists.

BlacKkKlansman was the most overrated film of 2018 imo.

CONQUEST:



Often viewed as Fulci's answer to Conan, it is much too strange to reduce to that. Fulci's 'ability' to take a simple story and make it confusing was surely some kind of talent.He is like that kid in school who reads his story out aloud for the class, but when you look at his notes they barely resemble what you just heard. The plot is mind numbingly simple, but Fulci's emphasis on atmosphere and mood shifts the narrative co-ordinates elsewhere. Just like his horror films, the plot is merely an excuse to be indulgent and do all sorts of crazy nonsensical things.

In short, he was a 'master' of imaginative incoherence, and Conquest is a gloriously trashy testament to his outre sensibilities. It's pure 80's cheese with blurry soft focus fog drenched imagery that's almost strangely artistic, and the effects are delightfully corny. The masks are terrible and the acting is crap, which was customary for Fulci. Nothing really 'works' in the conventional sense, but it's compelling just the same, if only for how cheap and crap it is most of the time.

Rating: N/A

Black Panther by a mile. I love the MCU, and BP was a decent film, but didn't deserve half of the praise that got heaped on it. Apparently, it's another possibility for an Oscar nod, which is bullshit as it wasn't even the second best of the three Marvel films released last year.

What's your opinion on Antonioni's films Statters?

I recently saw The Passenger in the cinema and just finished watching La Notte

Haven't seen Black Panther. I avoid Marvel if I can help it.

Bad Times at the El Royale

I hadn't even heard of this until a week or so ago, but if I'd seen it last year it would have easily made my Top 5 of 2018.

Menacing, tense, mysterious, often funny and occasionally sad, it has Tarantino all over it but it was actually written and directed by Drew Goddard, the guy behind The Cabin in the Woods. It's well over two hours long but never feels it, and I can't say a word about the plot for fear of ruining something.

Unsurprisingly, Jeff Bridges is excellent yet again, but Dakota Johnson and the perpetually shirtless Chris Hemsworth actually prove they've got some genuine acting chops hidden away. Hemsworth especially. If this is anything to go by, he'll definitely have a career after avenging stuff with a big hammer.

4 Fists

Watched Bohemian Rhapsody the other day, really enjoyed it. Minor criticisms: his fake teeth seemed to change in size from scene to scene and he drawled in a way that Freddie Mercury didn't, but I suppose getting to grips with the accent and physical mannerisms might have contributed to that. The supporting characters were largely one dimensional, too (especially John Deacon, which is unsurprising, given his lack of involvement). Otherwise fantastic, particularly the Live Aid scene, which was absolutely triumphant.

He is one of the few genuine visual artists/poets in cinema. L'avventura, L'eclisse and Red Desert are visual masterpieces.

He made some lousy films though, but they can't all be winners.

Bohemian Rhapsody looks shit.

Anyone caught Black Mirror: Bandersnatch yet?

A budding computer game programmer tries to make a game based on a book. The book is one of those "Choose Your Own Adventure"-type books that were popular in the 70's and 80's. However, he starts to go mental...

True to the plot, the film is also Choose Your Own Adventure in which you can select multiple paths for how the action plays out. A lot of the 'choices' are superficial, with perhaps only a handful of ones which have any serious impact on the outcome of the story. It's not a bad idea, although some of the acting is a bit wooden.

3/5

Since my last post I've done

Badlands
Stand By Me
La Notte
The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh
Stan & Ollie
Amuck!
The Big Combo
Green Book
All The Colours of the Dark
The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
High Flying Bird
Before the Revolution.

Halfway through this - so far so good!