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2 weeks ago, the Gill Man/creator of Flipper, Ricou Browning passed away at 93.
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Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris is a fun enough bit of fluff that I watched because I adore Lesley Manville (who’s great again, though with some pretty flimsy um, material – joke, because dresses play a big part, and the costume design is spectacular.)
The more interesting bit to me is that it was filmed in Hungary, where it’s a lot cheaper to make movies. I’ve done some reading around about that, but not of anything that expresses even qualms about working with a fascist government. 
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Hooray for Everything Everywhere All at Once! I can’t remember the last time the actual best movie of the previous year won the Oscar for best picture!
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Parasite has entered the chat.
And yes, hooray for Everything!
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Oh, of course, Parasite, too! For some reason, that feels like a million years ago…
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This was great! Sort an Iranian 400 Blows. Sometimes reminded me of Wages of Fear too.
It’s one of the finest films playing in this year’s Venice competition. Dedicated to “the 152m children forced into child labour”, this casts 12-year-old Roohollah Zamani as Ali, the pint-sized boss of a gang of thieves, a miniature wheel inside a much bigger machine, working for an unnamed local crime boss who skulks on the rooftop amid his pigeon coops. The boss wants Ali to retrieve a hoard of unspecified treasure, which is either buried in the local graveyard or in the drainage pipe that runs beside it.
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I too watched this. It looks great. Spain stands in for Bay City and I think that gives us an idea what is going on here. It’s a bunch of fans (like John Banville who brought the overdone literary references to it) chewing the scenery in an hommage (Cummings was great fun as Pinky in LA). Neeson who would really be a bit old to be Marlowe in the 1973 version of The Big Sleep - Marlowe was maybe mid 30s in the first novel but they at least lean in to that mostly and say it up front. I’m too old for this. And they talk about his pension and how he doesn’t have one often.
Where I encountered it online it was described as “woke rubbish”, well it’s not. It simply couldn’t be as racist as the books, it wouldn’t be allowed, but it used mechanisms to show this such as having a Black character whose sole raison d’etre in the film seems to be to show that he wasn’t racist.
Fuck that.
So I can’t in all honesty recommend it.
This I can though:
It’s an Iranian thriller, shot in Jordan, which is how it can start off with a sex worker leaving her child and doing sex work to take heroin so she can do sex work and buy heroin. It’s really sad and depressing. It’s based on the real story of a femicidal mass murderer in Iran, I guess the central characters of the main story are pretty much entirely fictional but the arc of the story is true. Gradually the maddening misogyny and violent and oppressive patriarchy make you angrier and angrier as the film goes on. The religious bigotry of the murderer and his court appearances really reminded me of the pick and choose approach to the law that the Burke family in Ireland engage in. The only difference is they lack any mainstream support. This guy, the spider killer, did in this film and I think in real life.
Was glad to see the sick fuck killed at the end (no spoiler, the guy was caught and executed over 20 years ago).
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Yeah, no surprise there to me, real-life parallel or not. The “breaking the rules doesn’t pay” ending of Sun Children got me wondering about how tightly Iranian state censors control a movie’s apparent message. After all, there is that rule that women cannot appear without most of their heads covered.
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I’m pretty sure this has never been seen in Iran and while it had Iranian creatives the money is all foreign and it was shot abroad.
I won’t talk about the end as there actually is a spoiler sub plot based on conjecture that I don’t want to ruin. It would however agree with your conjecture of a state sponsored narrative.
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Oh yay! I can see A24 doing a really good job on the restoration and re-release!
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It’s such a fun concert!
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Just finished watching this:
Honestly, the most fun I’ve had in a while. A little horror with a lot of comedy and far better written than I would have expected.
Which, actually, does the film a disservice - it’s simply well written.
It doesn’t hurt to have heavy-hitters Ray Liotta and Margo Martindale as supporting cast.
Spoiler: Watch out for the moment the bear snorts a line from a recently-severed human leg.
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“Cocaine Bear, leave Malala alone!”
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Slightly off topic but I saw this today.
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A nice cartoon. I loved the princess attitude.
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Last night the kids and I watched Scooby-Doo and Krypto Too, one of the shelved Scooby projects that was recently leaked. I’m not familiar with the many direct-to-video Scooby movies from the past 20 years, but the jokes-per-minute on this one seemed incredibly high, and my 10 year-old was dying laughing. It’s not the greatest thing ever made made. However, I think WB screwed up by not releasing it.
My favorite joke comes early in the film when Jimmy Olsen introduces Lois to Mystery Inc. After he finishes, she asks, “And who is this?” Velma is cleaning her glasses at the time, but everyone explains is Velma. After Velma puts her glasses back on, Lois says, “Oh, there’s Velma. Everyone knows Velma wears glasses.” The absolute dumbest Superman joke they could make, and they did it perfectly without his even needing to be in the film.
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Finally caught this on Amazon. I must say, the casting was impressive in comparison with the 1992 version starring Angela Lansbury. 
Also, the scenes involving the strike were…
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Right? Glad you liked it!
And those dresses! 
I’d watch anything with Lesley Manville. Have you seen the comedy series Mum? Once again, she elevates it all enormously.
Thanks for the tip on the Angela Lansbury version, I’ll be sure to miss it.
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I remember her from Phantom Thread. Haven’t seen Mum or the latest season of The Crown, but will put the former on my short list!
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