THE CONCRETE ROUNDABOUT (TCR)

Catching up from the year 2000 eh? Welcome to the new millennium and thank God the Y2K bug was ln't an issue

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Warnes World, Warnes World. Party time. Excellent

The Day Of The Jackal

My annual watch of one of the greatest films ever made. Also in preparation for the upcoming telly adaptation.

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They say don't kick a man when he's down. Show me a better time.

Nefarious.
Amazon Prime.
Excellent. Very philosophical.

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Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment

Planet Of The Apes

The 1968 original starring Big Chuck Heston, which is yet another film I must've watched countless times. I guess everyone knows the plot. Astronaut lands on an unknown planet populated by feral humans, ruled by sentient apes, before discovering that he's actually been on earth all along.

The first 30 minutes of this really is a weird prospect. The actual apes don't appear until well over the first half an hour, and all we get is Heston and his buddies wandering around the desert before discovering the aforementioned feral humans in an idyllic grove. Obviously it all goes a tad downhill from there, but it's difficult to argue that Chuck is a fantastic actor. And the soundtrack! What can only be described as atonal noise played on a ram's horn. Really odd, and fits perfectly in with the opening first act.

Get your paws off me you damn dirty ape.

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They say don't kick a man when he's down. Show me a better time.

Lee

Decent enough biopic of acclaimed WWII photographer Lee Miller, starring Kate Winslet in the eponymous role.

Trots along at a fair old pace, but only really gets going once the war starts, where having fled France she finds herself in London where she manages to land herself a job with British Vogue photographing the results of the luftwaffe's nightly raids on the capital. The action moves back to Paris, where she manages, by sheer force of her personality, to end up at the front, before becoming one of the first photographers to document the horrors of the concentration camps.

There’s a decent cast backing up a quite remarkable Winslet. Alexander Skarsgård as her husband, the artist Roland Penrose, Marion Cotillard, Angela Riseborough, Andy Samberg, who apart from Winslet, was the outstanding player, Josh O’Conner, amongst many other vaguely recognizable faces.

There was a nice little twist at the end which I didn't see coming. Nothing spectacular, just a nice little moment.

If there’s one issue I’d take with then it was Winslet’s constant nudity. Always willing to disrobe at the drop of a hat so to speak. I’d taken the day off work simply because I’m exhausted, so watched this mid-morning. I really didn’t require her repeated topless scenes at half ten on a Friday morning. But that minor gripe aside, it’s a good enough watch, but not something you want to watch again..

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They say don't kick a man when he's down. Show me a better time.

Does it show her retreat into domestic conformity and depression post-war?

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I don't need your ill-informed, half-baked, idiotic opinions. I have plenty of those myself.

It does indeed. Which is the whole narrative. It starts off with a poolside party, topless of course, featuring Man Ray, Picasso etc, then cuts to her being interviewed in 1977. Which is the twist I was alluding to.

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They say don't kick a man when he's down. Show me a better time.

Heretic....the new Hugh Grant horrory one

Very very slow and rubbish generally .....

We chose this over Smile 2 and think we made a big mistake

Can't believe it got it over 7/10 on IMDB.....Grant is actually very good in it but it has little to no real story, pay off.....the little ending it has is so not what the film promises it could be

Avoid

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Warnes World, Warnes World. Party time. Excellent

Perfect Days

A German-Japanese co-production directed and co-written by Wim Wenders (of Paris Texas fame), starring Koji Yakusho. It's unashamedly an art-house movie and it unfolds slowly and uneventfully over two hours. John Wick it ain't, and I'm guessing many of you will find it dull and pointless. Well, if you do, you're wrong.

It's a beautiful, existential film, that doesn't spoon-feed you a story line but instead asks questions about how to live your life in the face of loneliness, disappointment and drudgery. Yakusho stars as Hirayama, a single, late middle-aged man living in a down-at-heel Tokyo suburb in a scruffy apartment with no bathroom. He works as a toilet cleaner, leaving home every day at dawn to clean some really fancy public toilets across town in an affluent district. He is highly dedicated to his cleaning tasks at which he is meticulous. His life is one of simple routine, which Wenders is not afraid to demonstrate by shooting the routines over and over. However, Hirayama has a rich inner life, with a passion for trees (which he both grows at home, and photographs during his lunch break every day). He also loves literature (including Western writers such as William Faulkner) and Western music which he listens to on cassette in his van.

As an aside, the soundtrack is great, including tracks by the Velvet Underground and Pattie Smith.

Outside of work, Hirayama frequents the same restaurants, bars, laundromats and bath-houses in a well-ordered routine. However, a few interactions shake his routine a little. One is caused by his young and boisterous assistant cleaner who needs Hirayama's help to try and win over a girlfriend. Next, his teenage niece arrives, having run away from home, having argued with her mother, Hirayama's sister. This episode gives some hints at a previous and very different life and what may have led to the life Hirayama now leads. Finally, a random interaction with the ex-husband of the bar-keeper who runs the bar Hirayama goes to also raises some existential questions.

Through it all, Hirayama exhibits a serene happiness (or, at least, contentedness), although the interactions above shake that temporarily. We finally see Hirayama driving his van, listening to Nina Simone singing "Feeling Good" and exhibiting a wide range of emotions.

And that's it. I found it quite profound and thought provoking and also very moving. Give it a try.

8/10

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I don't need your ill-informed, half-baked, idiotic opinions. I have plenty of those myself.

You've enticed me to rewatch Wenders' greatest piece of work in Wings Of Desire. Expect a glowing review in the coming days, and I really like the sound of Perfect Days. Sounds right up my street.

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They say don't kick a man when he's down. Show me a better time.