Movies seen in the rest of August
Sep. 1st, 2025 08:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessTwo out of the three films I saw did that all too rare thing: being a film that foregrounds female experience from a female perspective (admittedly, that phrase came more to mind for the second film than the first.) Should also note that two female scriptwriters were involved in adapting film no. 3, which has an equal number of female and male main characters, at least.
Materialists is well worth seeing, but it’s no Past Lives is its problem. Nailing down what it is is also tricky, because calling it a romantic comedy doesn’t quite cut it. Although it shares something with Nora Ephron’s work and is in dialogue with some of Jane Austen’s concerns, it feels like something separate to the New York-set romcoms I’ve watched for decades. I found some of the talk about dating and matchmaking darkly funny, but it has dramatic elements and romantic fantasy elements. For my tastes, it was sometimes too didactic - who talks like that, even allowing for a financier using the language of business deals, and a stage actor being influenced by the plays he’s performed? It has dialogue that would have worked in a stage play, but then it’s as beautifully shot as Past Lives was – follow Johnson’s Lucy’s outfits.
I think this is the first thing I’ve seen Johnson in, and she was good as the materialist Lucy, working out what she wants; Pedro Pascal is having quite the summer being in this, F4 and Eddington, although maybe those films are all just released so closely in the UK, playing ‘unicorn’ Harry; while Chris Evans is a joy on screen (though I snorted at his John claiming to be 37. Wrong side of 40, sir.)
Sorry, Baby has been given a 15 certificate in the UK and the BBFC’s reasoning for that should be a good guide as to whether it’s triggering, which it might be. It’s a drama, but also mordantly and absurdly funny, about a young woman, Agnes, to whom a bad thing (her words, mine would be more trenchant) happened. Her most important relationship is with her best friend, who makes different choices to hers and moves away. It feels authentic. It’s non-chronological and the choices about what to show or not and when, and how to use dialogue from another time over silent scenes is judicious. Eva Victor wrote, directed and played the lead, and I hope gets a chance at a second feature, because there were so many smart details in this. Naomi Ackie is good as supportive BFF Liddy.
Naomi Ackie also appears in The Thursday Murder Club, which I saw at my local arthouse cinema, as it’s doing/had a brief limited run in cinemas, which may just be in the UK, before dropping on Netflix. The upside of watching it in a cinema was the communal chuckling, because it is amusing until it remembers it’s about murder. The audience skewed older, and some of them clearly hadn’t been in the cinema for a while, complaining about all the adverts, trailers, reminders not to talk and BBFC thing (which may be why a film like this has a limited cinema run.) It’s professionally made and features lots of big names, some things have been dropped or tweaked for the running time, and maybe some of the characters flattened, but that’s what you have to expect with adaptations, and overall it was entertaining.
Materialists is well worth seeing, but it’s no Past Lives is its problem. Nailing down what it is is also tricky, because calling it a romantic comedy doesn’t quite cut it. Although it shares something with Nora Ephron’s work and is in dialogue with some of Jane Austen’s concerns, it feels like something separate to the New York-set romcoms I’ve watched for decades. I found some of the talk about dating and matchmaking darkly funny, but it has dramatic elements and romantic fantasy elements. For my tastes, it was sometimes too didactic - who talks like that, even allowing for a financier using the language of business deals, and a stage actor being influenced by the plays he’s performed? It has dialogue that would have worked in a stage play, but then it’s as beautifully shot as Past Lives was – follow Johnson’s Lucy’s outfits.
I think this is the first thing I’ve seen Johnson in, and she was good as the materialist Lucy, working out what she wants; Pedro Pascal is having quite the summer being in this, F4 and Eddington, although maybe those films are all just released so closely in the UK, playing ‘unicorn’ Harry; while Chris Evans is a joy on screen (though I snorted at his John claiming to be 37. Wrong side of 40, sir.)
Sorry, Baby has been given a 15 certificate in the UK and the BBFC’s reasoning for that should be a good guide as to whether it’s triggering, which it might be. It’s a drama, but also mordantly and absurdly funny, about a young woman, Agnes, to whom a bad thing (her words, mine would be more trenchant) happened. Her most important relationship is with her best friend, who makes different choices to hers and moves away. It feels authentic. It’s non-chronological and the choices about what to show or not and when, and how to use dialogue from another time over silent scenes is judicious. Eva Victor wrote, directed and played the lead, and I hope gets a chance at a second feature, because there were so many smart details in this. Naomi Ackie is good as supportive BFF Liddy.
Naomi Ackie also appears in The Thursday Murder Club, which I saw at my local arthouse cinema, as it’s doing/had a brief limited run in cinemas, which may just be in the UK, before dropping on Netflix. The upside of watching it in a cinema was the communal chuckling, because it is amusing until it remembers it’s about murder. The audience skewed older, and some of them clearly hadn’t been in the cinema for a while, complaining about all the adverts, trailers, reminders not to talk and BBFC thing (which may be why a film like this has a limited cinema run.) It’s professionally made and features lots of big names, some things have been dropped or tweaked for the running time, and maybe some of the characters flattened, but that’s what you have to expect with adaptations, and overall it was entertaining.
