STARTED: 12th November 2022
FINISHED: 7th January 2023
Over a period of up to three months watch at least five of the following and write a review of each one.
✅ 01 - A MUSICAL FILM
I was struggling to find a musical to watch because I love musicals and have seen so many, and I wanted to watch something new. Then I saw an advert for Prince Andrew: The Musical on Channel 4 and thought this would be worth watching.
I know this is Channel 4, and they like to push the envelope, but I don't know how they got away with this. It starts with actual footage of Emily Maitlis interviewing Prince Andrew about his inability to sweat. It then cuts to the musical - satire in its highest form - where Andrew reflects on his life, claiming to being his mother's favourite child. We see Andrew join the navy, meet Sarah Ferguson, get divorced, meet Jeffrey Epstein, and the unravelling of their friendship.
This film has all the elements of a good musical. The songs are lyrically clever and musically typical of other films in this genre. Throughout the story, "Andrew" commentates on real footage of Andrew. Although only about an hour long, this is worth watching. It's funny but could have been longer. However, I feel the main drive behind this was controversy rather than art. A musical was made about the life of Diana, and that was well constructed as well as controversial. I just kind of wish the writers had developed the Andrew story.
✅ 02 - AN ANIMATION
While browsing Netlflix (looking for a Christmas film to watch) I noticed The House and the list of amazing (voice) actors - Jarvis Cocker, Helena Bonham Carter, Mark Heap, Paul Kaye - so I thought this was worth watching.
It is a stop motion animation film, and the characters look like they've been made out of felt and fur. The film is made up of three stories, all set in different worlds but inside the same house. And it is weird!
The first story is about a family who are offered the opportunity to move from their humble home into a purpose built mansion. The parents jump at the chance, but Mable isn't too sure. She wants to stay in her family home with all the treasures she holds dear. When they move into the house, Mabel notices strange things happening and wants to leave, but the house seems like a maze with no way of escape.
Jarvis Cocker voices the character of a house developer who is also a rat. To save money, he renovates the house himself, but discovers that he has a beetle infestation. He tries to get rid of them, but nothing seems to work. On the day that he opens the house to potential buyers, two rats decide that it's already their house, and move in to the show room. They refuse to leave, so he tries to get rid of them, but his plan backfires and he ends up in hospital.
And finally, in a post-apocalyptic world, Rosa, an anthropomorphic cat, lives in a house surrounded by water. As the landlord, she tries and fails to get monetary rent from her tenants. When Cosmos turns up, he is tasked with working on and improving the house, but ends up ripping up floorboards in order to make a boat.
All three stories are weird and dark and interesting and disturbing, but I enjoyed them. The simplicity of the animated characters adds to the disturbing nature of the stories. And although this is an animation, and has a 12 rating, I feel this is aimed mainly at adults as this was scary in parts and some of the imagery is still floating around in my head.
And as the credits scroll, Jarvis Cocker sings a haunting song about The House, saying that a house is nothing but a collection of bricks. The song is great, but I think I would disagree.
✅ 03 - A SUBTITLED MOVIE
A bit like with the silent movie, I thought this would be another clause to this badge that I would struggle with. I tend to do other things (scroll my phone, crochet, close my eyes!) while watching films, so by watching a film in another language, and having to read the dialogue, I knew I would need to focus more. I scrolled through the foreign films section on Kanopy, and found The Dinner Game, which is a French film inspired by the play of the same name. The film didn't have subtitles, but I added English subtitles so that it fitted in with this clause.
Pierre attends weekly dinners with friends. Each person must find an 'idiot' to bring along, for the group to mock. The 'idiot' should have an unusual or nerdy hobby that they are passionate about, that they're willing to talk about in front of the group. Pierre meets Francois on a train, and discovers that he enjoys making structural models out of matchsticks. Pierre has found his 'idiot'. He invites Francois to his house so that he can properly talk to him and learn about his hobby, before going to the dinner. However, Pierre hurts his back and is unable to go to the dinner, so he and Francois spend the time talking. During this time, many things go wrong, mainly because Francois keeps saying or doing stupid things.
This film mainly takes place in Pierre's apartment, which is situated right next to the Eiffel Tower, as we can see it through every window! And the cast is minimal. The story is funny. It had me laughing out loud at various points, but it also has a moral undertone.
I can't lie; I did struggle to focus and read the whole thing - but I put that partially down to being extremely tired. But the premise was sad and funny and well worth watching. When I'm a bit more focussed, I'll try something else with subtitles.
✅ 04 - A DOCUMENTARY
JONESTOWN: THE WOMEN BEHIND THE MASSACRE (2018)
I have to be in the right mood for a documentary, but I do watch them fairly often. I've always been a bit fascinated by cults and what makes people lead them and join them. I've watched a few things about Jim Jones and the Jonestown massacre, and when I saw Jonestown: The Women Behind The Massacre on Kanopy, I knew I needed to watch it!
Jim Jones was a charismatic preacher and set up the Peoples Temple. Ultimately, he convinced hundreds of people to leave their lives and move to Jonestown in Guyana, and set up a commune there. When people decided to leave the commune and Jones' cultish leadership, he encouraged those left behind to kill themselves by drinking a concoction of Kool-Aid and cyanide.
In this documentary, the focus is on the women who helped Jim Jones to lead over 900 people to commit suicide. Although he was married to Marceline, he managed to seduce other women within the cult who became part of his inner circle, deciding what would happen to the cult members.
This documentary shows footage of the aftermath of the suicide massacre in Jonestown, along with sound recordings of Jim Jones telling people to drink the Kool-Aid. Interviews also take places with ex members of the cult, and one of Jim's sons who would have been caught up in the massacre if it hadn't been for the fact that he was playing on the Jonestown basketball team away that day. One person interviews was the sister of two women in the cult who were infatuated by Jim Jones, and most certainly instigated the whole ordeal. Actors read out letters and passages from these women's dairies, making this whole thing more real.
Naively, I thought Jim Jones did it all. But it's obvious that he would have needed help. It was just shocking to find out that so many women were behind the horrors. This film added a new dimension to something that I already knew a fair bit about.
✅ 05 - AN INDEPENDENT FILM
I do watch a fair few independent films, and I found Baghead on Kanopy, which seemed like something I would enjoy.
This film starts out with four friends visiting an independent film viewing, and they want to make a film but without spending too much money. They all go to a cabin in the woods - surely they know that's not a good idea, nothing good ever happens at a cabin in the woods! - in order to come up with ideas for what they should make a film about. The come up with the idea of a character who wears a bag on his head, after one of the characters thinks she has a dream where she sees a scary person with a bag on their head, and this character would become the basis of a horror film. But when Baghead seems to be real rather than just an idea, things start to get scary.
I don't know if this is a necessary part of independent films, an identifier that makes these films different from big-budget Hollywood films, but I can't always get on board with the shaky camera work and bad acting that I've seen. It's almost as though most of the dialogue is unscripted and the actors ad lib their lines around what should be happening in the scene. I do quite like this approach because it makes conversations more 'real'. In real life, there are awkward pauses and muddled up words, so I can understand this approach, but it can also come across as unrehearsed and a bit sloppy. The way the camera judders and moves about jerkily is also something that adds to the raw and 'real' nature of the film (possibly because the cameras are handheld rather than on wheels - I don't know much about film making so the terminology is not my strong point!), but again it can feel sloppy and unpolished.
I liked the idea more than I enjoyed the film. It could have been scarier. It could have been funnier. It didn't quite hit the mark for me.
✅ 06 - AN ACTION MOVIE
BULLET TRAIN (2022)
I'm not a fan of action films. I know I've seen some, but I don't overly enjoy them. But I saw Bullet Train in the library, and I quite like Brad Pitt, so I thought I'd give it a watch.
Well ... I don't know where to start with this. It is advertised as an action comedy film, and it has got quite a few laugh out loud moments, but I can't say that I loved it. I really wasn't sure what was going on, because there was a lot going on all at once, and it doesn't take much to confuse me! It had a suitable amount of violence and death for an action film. Guns, fist fighting, and an escaped snake are the reasons for a lot of bloodshed in this film.
Brad Pitt's character, Ladybird, gets on a bullet train in Japan to retrieve a briefcase containing money. The briefcase belongs to two assassins, Tangerine and Lemon, who are on the train with a man who they rescued from a kidnapper, and will be delivering the man and the briefcase to the man's father, known as The White Death. Also on the train is Yuichi Kimura who is avenging his son, who is currently in hospital after being pushed off a building. He is looking for the person who did it, and finds her in The Prince, a young British woman, who lured him onto the train in the hope he would kill The White Death. (See, I told you it was confusing!) During this time, because of a lot of crossed and confusing connections, people are shot, people accidentally shoot themselves, and other bit-part assassins do a bit of attacking for what seems like no real reason. And all of this is going on while other passengers are on the train, yet no-one else seems to notice.
The comedy bits are very funny, and the action bits are very actiony. But for me, there was too much going on.
✅ 07 - AN ARTHOUSE MOVIE
TASTE OF CHERRY (1997)
I wasn't really sure what an arthouse movie was, so did a bit of Googling and found that I've watched a few arthouse movies without even knowing it! (Midsommar, The Platform, The Lobster, It Follows, Parasite, Black Swan, The Babadook ... and more). So I did a bit more research to try and find something suitable, and stumbled across Taste of Cherry on Kanopy.
This is an Iranian film, with English subtitles. It's about a man, Mr Badii, who spends his time driving around, looking for someone who is willing to help him. He meets a number of different people, and he takes them all to the same place and asks them all the same thing. He wants someone to come back to that spot at 6am the next morning and call his name. If he answers, he wants help getting out of the makeshift grave he has already dug for himself. If he doesn't answer, he wants them to shovel soil over him and bury him there. They will be paid regardless of the outcome.
This is a very slow moving film. Not much happens. But it's extremely deep and dark. It poses a lot of questions but doesn't necessarily answer them.
The set up of the film is extremely basic, and at points it even feels unscripted. The dialogue, even though I don't understand it, feels awkward and uncomfortable in some places, almost reflecting the general storyline. I want to say I enjoyed this film, but because of the subject matter the word enjoy doesn't feel right. But this was certainly a film that made me think and will probably live in my head for a while.
✅ 08 - A COMEDY
I watch a lot of comedies, so I thought this clause of the challenge would be easy. But I was wrong. When I was searching Netflix and Amazon for comedies, I could only find things that I'd seen before. But People We Hate at the Wedding jumped out at me, as it was advertised as a 'hilariously raunchy comedy', so it had a lot to live up to.
I'll say from the off, it did not disappoint. It wasn't as hilarious as initially described, but it did have me laughing out loud throughout. Paul (Ben Platt) and Alice (Kristen Bell) are siblings, living in America. They have a half-sibling, Eloise, who lives in England. When children, they all got on really well, but as they got older, Paul and Alice became estranged from Eloise. When Eloise gets in touch to invite them to her wedding, they reluctantly go to please their mother. Eloise is extremely rich, and they feel that she lauds this over them.
This film shows a typical dysfunctional family trying to get through an awkward situation. There are funny one liners, some slapstick humour, bits of awkwardness that make you laugh uncomfortably, and it all works together. I really enjoyed it, and was impressed that it made me laugh out loud, as the world seems to have lost its sense of humour. Although none of the characters were overly likeable - they all had their own annoying quirks that would have irritated me if I knew these people in real life - I did enjoy Paul and Alice's relationship and their quite obvious love/hate feelings towards each other. It's something I'd definitely watch again.
✅ 09 - A BIOGRAPHY
FRIDA KAHLO (1982)
I don't often watch biographies. I've watched biopics, which may be considered the same thing, but I don't tend to watch documentary biographies. But I found Frida Kahlo on Kanopy and I do like Frida Kahlo's paintings so decided to watch this one.
This was an interesting take on a biography, as the narrator took us through Frida's life story through her paintings. Frida Kahlo is well known for her self portraits, and recognisable because of her monobrow. What I didn't realise is that when she painted portraits of herself as a baby and a child with the same familiar monobrow.
Sadly, when she was young, she was involved in a bus accident and ended up with a broken spine and loads of other injuries, resulting in months in hospital and recuperation. During this time she painted her self-portraits. She then got into a relationship with fellow artist, Diego Rivera, who was about 20 years older than her. She now started including him in her paintings. He then had an affair with her sister, and her paintings reflected this. Frida later formed an unusual friendship with Leon Trotsky, and later ended up having an affair with him. Even though Frida and Diego divorced, they married again years later. And as Frida got older, her injuries affected her more and more, and she painted her trauma.
I enjoyed this film as it wasn't like anything I'd seen before. It was interesting to see someone's life through their own paintings, looking at how she felt during all the different stages of her life.
✅ 10 - A SILENT MOVIE
THE CAT AND THE CANARY (1927)
I can't say that I have ever watched a silent movie, so I wanted to start this badge with this type of film. I searched Kanopy for 'silent films', and The Cat and The Canary seemed like the kind of film I would enjoy. It certainly did not disappoint.
Set in a scary looking, possible haunted mansion, 6 people are brought together to discover who will inherit from the will of Cyrus West, a millionaire and the owner of the house. When the heir is announced, strange things start to happen. Perhaps the house is haunted by the ghost of Cyrus! People disappear, secret passages in the walls are found, a random man from the local asylum appears looking for an escaped lunatic, and no-one seems to know what's going on.
I am surprised that I enjoyed this film. I was expecting to be bored and struggle to watch 80 minutes of silence. When watching anything now, I find myself being distracted by my phone or my crochet, and I tend to listen rather than watch. But I had to watch this film because I'd miss something vital if I wasn't paying attention. The film was interspersed with the occasional intertitles, giving pieces of dialogue.
Because we couldn't hear what the characters were saying, the acting needed to be over dramatic. The facial expressions were extreme - ultra wide eyes for surprise, deep deep furrowed brows for anger, the broadest smiles for happiness. Arms were flung about wildly in fear, and body movements were repeated to ensure the viewer understood what was going on. The music was dramatic from the start, but changed depending on the sense the scene needed to portray.
The plot was intriguing and kept you guessing, there were some funny scenes, and some scary scenes. But without sound, it was difficult for the character development to be successful. It was almost as though the characters had to be stereotypes or caricatures in order for the audience to understand their personality. For the time (1920s) the special effects were brilliant. I don't understand filmography, nor do I know the proper terminology, but there were some scenes where it was as though the film was overlaid with another film. It was very clever and gave the film another dimension.
I did enjoy it. And I enjoyed being 'forced' to watch it with my complete attention. After this, I may even watch more silent movies!
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