More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
16 January
Maybe Branagh's 'most personal film', but it's unclear that what should have won Belfast (2021) a Golden Globe was his screenplay :
— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 17, 2022
Stagey speeches, two given to Caitríona Balfe (Ma), and one to Ciarán Hinds (Pop), are most out of place in what isn't Meet Me in St. Louis (1944).
That, and without (despite Hill's best) enough to maintain interest in Buddy's life at school or in love, using films (on t.v., or at the cinema) is meant to function as in Radio Days (1987), whereas Belfast has Van Morrison tracks around which to cohere - and not a Judy Garland.
— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 17, 2022
Cute though Jude's naive Buddy¹ was *meant* to be, too often it just set up Norman-Wisdom-type mishaps / misunderstandings, and I heard very much laughter for some weak jokes².
— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 18, 2022
¹ Once I heard that he wasn't called Billy, I guessed why - if not at a song sung so sentimentally...
Jamie Dornan's Pa also rather too closely physically evokes Sir K. ?
— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 18, 2022
² There are two, maybe three, unforced laughs in the whole film, and a whole lotta schlock to soften The Troubles - Benigni's La vita è bella (1997) worked, where this doesn't, plus it's no Jojo Rabbit (2019).
'[W]hich unfolds on a terraced-street set knocked up on an exhibition-centre car park in Hampshire, and looking every bit of it.'
— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 23, 2022
Along with much else in the review, sadly accurate, e.g. the word 'speechifying', and on 'slip[ping] in footage from Zinnemann’s High Noon' !
2 / 2
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
