Now Screening - What Are You Watching Right Now?

[walpurgis]

Brilliant film. Bogart was always a class act.

[Macca]

Titan AE

Animated film i.e a cartoon about a youth who turns out to be the last hope for humanity after aliens destroy the earth in the third millennium.

Wanted to see this since it came out in 2000 but never got round to it. Not a bad film, Matt Damon and Drew Barrymore star, but it is hard to see 15 years on where the estimated $90 million budget went. Some beautiful graphics and some not so good as the CGI was outsourced to multiple different studios.

I'm not big on cartoons pretending to be films but this is a good attempt at it, if you like sci-fi.

[RichB]

Evil Dead (2013)

Not a patch on the schloky original

[struth]

from 1987; Blackadder the 3rd, just finished





and now



the 4th from 1989.... super stuff this time from my digital library

[Roy S]

The Comic Strip Presents 'Red Top'

All very clever but it seems they've forgotten it's supposed to be funny

[Barry]

The Reader



Quoted from Amazon:

Product Description

The Reader opens in post-WWII Germany when teenager Michael Berg becomes ill and is helped home by Hanna, a stranger twice his age. Michael recovers from scarlet fever and seeks out Hanna to thank her. The two are quickly drawn into a passionate but secretive affair. Michael discovers that Hanna loves being read to and their physical relationship deepens. Hanna is enthralled as Michael reads to her from The Odyssey, Huck Finn and The Lady with the Little Dog. Despite their intense bond, Hanna mysteriously disappears one day and Michael is left confused and heartbroken. Eight years later, while Michael is a law student observing the Nazi war crime trials, he is stunned to find Hanna back in his life - this time as a defendant in the courtroom. As Hanna's past is revealed, Michael uncovers a deep secret that will impact both of their lives. The Reader is a story about truth and reconciliation, about how one generation comes to terms with the crimes of another.

From Amazon.co.uk

What is the nature of guilt--and how can the human spirit survive when confronted with deep and horrifying truths? The Reader, a hushed and haunting meditation on these knotty questions, is sorrowful and shocking, yet leavened by a deep love story that is its heart. In postwar Germany, young schoolboy Michael (German actor David Cross) meets and begins a tender romance with the older, mysterious Hanna (Kate Winslet, whose performance is a revelation). The two make love hungrily in Hanna's shabby apartment, yet their true intimacy comes as Michael reads aloud to Hanna in bed, from his school assignments, textbooks, even comic books. Hanna delights in the readings, and Michael delights in Hanna. Years later, the two cross paths again, and Michael (played as an adult by Ralph Fiennes) learns, slowly, horrifyingly, of acts that Hanna may have been involved in during the war. There is a war crimes trial, and the accused at one point asks the panel of prosecutors: "Well, what would you have done?" It is that question--as one German professor says later: "How can the next generation of Germans come to terms with the Holocaust?"--that is both heartbreaking and unanswerable. Winslet plays every shade of gray in her portrayal of Hanna, and Fiennes is riveting as the man who must rewrite history--his own and his country's--as he learns daily, hourly, of deeds that defy categorization, and morality. "No matter how much washing and scrubbing," one character says matter of factly, "some sins don't wash away." The Reader (with nods to similar films like Sophie's Choice and The English Patient dares to present that unnerving premise, without offering an easy solution. --A.T. Hurley

[struth]

[struth]

and now

with Jeremy Brett of course.

[Barry]

The Good German



Taken from Amazon.com:

Product Description

War drama based on the novel by Joseph Kanon. The film takes place in the ruins of post-WWII Berlin, where U.S. Army war correspondent Jake Geismar (George Clooney) becomes embroiled with Lena Brandt (Cate Blanchett), his former lover, whose missing husband is the object of a manhunt by both the American and Russian armies. Intrigue mounts as Jake tries to uncover the secrets Lena may be hiding in her desperation to get herself and her husband out of Berlin. Tully (Tobey Maguire), a soldier in the American army motor pool assigned to drive Jake around Berlin, has black market connections that may be Lena's way out - or lead them all into even darker territory.

From Amazon.co.uk

Despite its flaws, The Good German is a welcome gift for every film lover who laments "they don't make 'em like they used to." Steven Soderbergh's affectionate, knowing tribute to the black-and-white melodramas of Hollywood's golden age may lack the emotional depth and romantic passion of Michael Curtiz's Casablanca--the 1946 classic it intentionally emulates--but as Soderbergh approximates Curtiz's studio style, he delivers a shimmering, shadowy reminder that movies can be enjoyed for the sheer pleasure of their craftsmanship. Once again serving as his own cinematographer (credited as "Peter Andrews"), Soderbergh went to great lengths to technically and aesthetically re-create the look and feel of a Curtiz production, and Joseph Kanon's source novel (adapted by Quiz Show screenwriter Paul Attanasio) provides a twisting plot set around the historical Potsdam conference in post-World War II Germany. An American military journalist, Capt. Jake Geismer (George Clooney) is in rubble-strewn Berlin to cover the event, and is quickly drawn into a murder plot involving his appointed driver (Tobey Maguire), an old flame-turned-wartime prostitute (Cate Blanchett) and her missing husband, a scientist who possesses pivotal secrets coveted by Americans and Russians in a pre-Cold War bid for power.

Violence, sexual content, and salty dialogue make it clear that this drama is a brashly contemporary homage to films of a bygone era, and not a slavish attempt to copy the past. This yields mixed results in terms of the film's overall appeal; it's gorgeous to look at, but the plot and performances exist in a vacuum, and the entire film feels oddly disengaged from any sense of genuine human emotion. It's probably fair to say that Soderbergh had more fun making the film than most people will have watching it. And yet, as Clooney's character is repeatedly beaten and deceived on his path to cynical enlightenment, The Good German has many qualities that make it recommendable, not the least being the pleasure of following a talented director as he indulges his penchant for bold experimentation. --Jeff Shannon


I very much agree with the second sentence of the second paragraph of Shannon’s summary. 6/10 from me.

[struth]

The Password Is Courage (1962) starring Dirk Bogarde as sgt maj Coward...a lighter hearted version of the book but very enjoyable too. Some nice wartime songs too


Hard if not impossible to find now but i have a legit copy from rare films