Frank, we did all we could for the man ~ Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
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20 December

To be watching for 207 mins in a venue that I didn't know before (my first time at @RoystonPictureP - not my last !), I tried to make sure of booking an aisle-seat (only to find that I mistook the layout...) :

It really was no endurance for me whatever, as Scorsese knows pacing.

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 27, 2019

The scenes when Frank Sheeran (De Niro) is being honoured at a testimonial, and Jimmy Hoffa (Pacino) presents him with his award, may not be the chronological centre of The Irishman (2019), but – placing those scenes, on a re-watch – the rest of the film spirals out from there...

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 7, 2020

With much hindsight, this is where Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci) sees that tempers and tensions spiralled out of control - for the film, it's where the Bufalinos' and Sheerans' road-trip and this other narrative converge, and the long haul of De Niro's performance richly pays off.

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 8, 2020

¹ Although reacquiring the means to get there was just before @camfilmfest (agonizingly too close not to be thoroughly exhausted by then...)

² First seen at @RoystonPictureP, now run and programmed by Saffron S.

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 7, 2020

Need we really consider Joker (2019) as some sort of Scorsese film – or The Irishman (2019) as Scorsese’s contribution to the film universe of Marvel ? :

Todd Phillips, in 122 mins, outstays his welcome and wastes his chances in Joker (2019), whereas Martin Scorsese (in his film-adaption of Charles Brandt's book) stays the course in the 209 mins of The Irishman (2019) (another film with Robert De Niro), and makes the run-time tell

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 21, 2019

Meanwhile, in some other universe (when it is Phillips who grossly steals from Scorsese's films, but not in any way to justify the theft), does someone seriously suggest that the indebtedness is the other way around, in 'Why 'The Irishman' Is Scorsese's MCU Movie' !


[...]


Postlude :

'Kathrine Narducci, Kevin O'Rourke, Jesse Plemons, Welker White, Stephanie Kurtzuba, Gino Cafarelli, Marin Ireland, Michele Cannon, and Robin Kerbis in The Irishman (2019)'

Their agents must have been working over time to secure such a pointless accreditation ! ;)

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 27, 2019

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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Don't get too close

This is a Festival review of Intouchables (Untouchable) (2011)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
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17 September

This is a Festival review of Intouchables (Untouchable) (2011)

An unlikely relationship, this one a real-life friendship taken as the basis for Untouchable (2011) (curiously, as Intouchables, plural in the French), has seen many a feature through as its underlying theme, whether DeVito and Schwarzenegger, Withnail and I (1987), or, as someone was overheard saying in relation to this film, Scent of a Woman (1992).


For all the difference in age, though, there is more of a sharing in both directions between François Cluzet as Philippe and Omay Sy as Driss, and that is what makes for broad fun, even if it does lead to the implausibility of one's first painting being sold for 11,000 euros by the other: Al Pacino is very much (pun intended) in the driving-seat for all his need for help from Chris O'Donnell.


Cluzet, looking at times like Dustin Hoffman, has a wickedly engaging smile (I cannot, surely, be remembering him from as far back as French Kiss (1995)) with which Philippe disarms any tension, more often than not when Driss has fooled him, rather than the other way. Sy has one, too, but broader, and Driss keeps a straight face to fool Philippe, although, with judgements that are quick to get to the heart of things, sometimes there is joke behind what he has said.

The selling of the painting is, if I remember right, an almost exact steal from Conversations with my Gardener (2007), but I do not mind that (although it has taken me an age to think where I have seen this done before), but what I cannot overlook, because I could not overlook it in the screening (overhear would mean something else), is the music. Not the classical music that Philippe has played to Driss on his birthday, or the number to which Driss dances so fabulously and gets everone on their feet, but the incidental music when it is not from songs:

It grated with me, in thinking that it was making me edgy without my noticing simply by playing on the piano with the same note or a few adjacent ones, rather than being a decent piece of film score and not drawing attention to itself with its limited range. That said, when it converted its skeletal self into an emotional theme near the end, it did work, despite the overtly romantic character, with the scene, and not against it.

The story remains, of course, a heartening one, as is the extent to which Driss shows not only that he has a better understanding of Philippe's psychology, but also that he is able to learn from Philippe and for the two men to find a common ground in fun, sex and flight.

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The Cabin in the Woods - with whom?

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
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12 April

Are young(er) people just supposed to be (more) naive, or why else is it that they people horror films?*

I say this as a response to reading what Darryl Griffiths has written about (or not written about) in an on-line review for New Empress Magazine, because it seems to be taken for granted either that Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, Al Pacino and Meryl Streep do not get frightened, or that the cinema-going public does not want to witness it happening when they go away for a relaxing break together in a cosy holiday apartment at Tombstone Mansions.

Which is, in a way, why it is a pity that Guillermo del Toro's Don't be Afraid of the Dark (2010), a vehicle for Katie Holmes and Guy Pearce, is such a dud: I determined so in my review at Cambridge Film Festival, and imdb.com confirms it, with a rating of 5.6.

Never mind: I have insider knowledge, in the form of seeing what appeared to be rushes, that Meg and Tom are going full out for gore this year!


End-notes

* And, although that is not my typical choice of viewing, how did we, since - and probably well before - Scream (1996) or The Blair Witch Porject (1999), get where we are from the worlds of Vincent Price, Boris Karloff and Anthony Perkins?


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