Now Screening - What Are You Watching Right Now?

[Roy S]

Its next on my list,
will probably wait till all episodes are available then binge over a weekend as a treat.

Loved the first series, 2nd not so much as it focused less on Reacher and more on his Team.
3rd one apparantly back to what made first one good, so look forward to it.

Enjoyed the first three episodes but got the impression they’re working with a smaller budget, see what you think.

[Gazjam]

Ah ha..

Interesting, cheers Roy.

[Barry]

'The Conversation' 1974

Chosen as it is one of my favourite films starring the, sadly, late Gene Hackman.

Francis Ford Coppola’s provoking mystery-thriller stars Gene Hackman as Harry Caul, an expert surveillance man. A routine wiretapping job turns into a nightmare when Harry hears something disturbing in his recording of a young couple in a park. His investigation of the tape and how it might be used sends Harry spiraling into a web of secrecy, murder and paranoia. Set against the backdrop of San Francisco, THE CONVERSATION is a harrowing psychological thriller that costars Cindy Williams, Frederic Forrest and Harrison Ford and symbolizes the uneasy line where technology and privacy cross.

For full breakdown of the plot see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conversation, but beware of the spoiler alert!

Following on from the french film 'Diva' I posted here recently and pertinent to an audio formum, Members might like to try and identify the items of audio gear featured in the film.

[Alex_UK]

Thanks to Macca, now totally invested in watching Lovejoy from the very beginning…

(It’s not a soap opera, Barry! )

[Barry]

I think we're splitting hairs here. If it's not a soap opera then it is a TV series as is: Bergerac; Murder in Paradise; M.A.S.H.; Doc Martin; Miss Marple and Lovejoy.

[Alex_UK]

I think we're splitting hairs here. If it's not a soap opera then it is a TV series as is: Bergerac; Murder in Paradise; M.A.S.H.; Doc Martin; Miss Marple and Lovejoy.

Indeed.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Macca]

Thanks to Macca, now totally invested in watching Lovejoy from the very beginning…

(It’s not a soap opera, Barry! )

I watched a lot of them a couple of years back while I was 'working from home'.

Very productive period, I also got through the entirety of 'Dempsey & Makepeace' most of which I'd missed first time due to being at university.

[Barry]

Delicatessen 1991

Perhaps you will come to Delicatessen by way of the very popular Amelie, starring Audrey Tautou? Bien. But, and this may shock you, so hold on tight: Delicatessen is the better film. Indeed, Amelie's preposterous story details become more bothersome the more often you watch it, whereas Delicatessen's fable never ceases to charm, despite its grotesquerie.

Both movies feature some of the same actors, and this one foregrounds the actor who played the jealous guy in Amelie. And what a talent he has! He plays a circus performer, deprived of work, who accepts the position of an odd job man at a residence above a butcher's shop. In return he gets room and board. There's just one problem. The butcher is feeding customers with his luckless tenants, the ones he can catch at any rate. And he has his cleaver aimed at the little clown from the circus. Only the love of a good woman, plus a little ingenuity and luck, could save the poor soul from a grisly (gristle-ly?) ending. This all takes in post-apocalypse France. A dark place full of colourful, eccentric characters, and where there is an undercurrent of deranged erotic longing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delicatessen_(1991_film)

Delicatessen is a 1991 French post-apocalyptic science fiction black comedy film directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro, starring Dominique Pinon, Marie-Laure Dougnac, and Jean-Claude Dreyfus. It was released in North America as "presented by Terry Gilliam."


In a dilapidated apartment building in post-apocalyptic France, food is in short supply and grain is used as currency. On the ground floor is a butcher's shop, run by the landlord, Clapet, who posts job opportunities in the newspaper to lure victims to the building, whom he murders and butchers as a cheap source of meat to sell to his tenants.

Following the murder of the last worker, unemployed circus clown Louison applies for the vacant position. Louison proves to be a superb worker with a spectacular trick knife, and the butcher is reluctant to kill him too quickly. During Louison's routine maintenance, he acquires a package dropped by a mailman. Louison delivers the package to Clapet's daughter, Julie, who says the package contains confections and invites him to join her that evening. Louison and Julie's relationship blossoms into romance. At the same time, several of the tenants fall under Louison's boyish charms, worrying others who are more anxious for their own safety should they require meat.

Clapet tells apartment tenant Marcel Tapioca that his rent is late and he must give up his mother-in-law as payment. That evening, Julie begs her father to let Louison go, knowing that Clapet is killing tenants for meat. She goes to her apartment, unwraps a newspaper in her refrigerator and sees an article about the Troglodistes, a group of vegetarian rebels who live underground. Julie descends into the sewers to make contact with the feared Troglodistes, whom she persuades to help rescue Louison.

Following the apparent butchering of Tapioca's mother-in-law, the Troglodistes go through the sewer pipes and attempt to capture Louison, but end up mistakenly capturing tenant Mademoiselle Plusse instead. Meanwhile, as Julie and Louison watch television, Clapet ascends to the roof, shaking the television antenna to lure Louison into going up to fix it. Attacking Louison with a cleaver, Clapet's attempt to kill him is foiled by an unexpected electrical explosion in one of the apartments.

Clapet, along with some tenants, storms Louison's room in another attempt to murder him. Louison and Julie take refuge in a bathroom and flood it, floor to ceiling, until Clapet opens the door, releasing the flood and washing the attackers away. Mademoiselle Plusse escapes the sewers, finds Louison's boomerang knife, and gives it to Clapet. Clapet throws the knife towards Louison, but inadvertently kills himself.

Louison and Julie play music together on the roof of the now peaceful apartment building, and the butcher's shop closed for good.

[Barry]

The Death of Stalin 2017

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Stalin

The Death of Stalin is a 2017 political satire black comedy film written and directed by Armando Iannucci and co-written by David Schneider and Ian Martin with Peter Fellows. Based on the French graphic novel La Mort de Staline (2010–2012), the film depicts the internal social and political power struggle among the members of the Soviet Politburo following the death of leader Joseph Stalin in 1953. The French-British-Belgian co-production stars an ensemble cast that includes Steve Buscemi, Simon Russell Beale, Paddy Considine, Rupert Friend, Jason Isaacs, Olga Kurylenko, Michael Palin, Andrea Riseborough, Dermot Crowley, Paul Chahidi, Adrian McLoughlin, Paul Whitehouse, and Jeffrey Tambor.

The film premiered on 8 September 2017 at the Toronto International Film Festival. It was released theatrically in the United Kingdom by Entertainment One Films on 20 October 2017, in France by Gaumont on 4 April 2018, and in Belgium by September Film Distribution on 18 April 2018. It received critical acclaim and various accolades, including nominations for two British Academy Film Awards, one of which was for Outstanding British Film, and 13 British Independent Film Awards, four of which it won. There was fierce opposition to the film in Russia, where it was seen as "anti-Russian propaganda", and it was banned there, as well as in Kyrgyzstan, for allegedly mocking the Soviet Union and its past.

Plot

On the night of 1 March 1953, Joseph Stalin calls the Radio Moscow director to demand a recording of the just-concluded live recital of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23. The performance was not recorded; not wanting to anger Stalin, the director hurriedly refills the now-half-empty auditorium, fetches a new conductor to replace the original one, who has passed out, and orders the orchestra to play again. Pianist Maria Yudina initially refuses to perform for the cruel dictator, but ultimately is bribed to comply.

Meanwhile, Stalin is hosting a tense, but rowdy, gathering of Central Committee members at his home, the Kuntsevo Dacha. As Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov leaves, NKVD-head Lavrentiy Beria reveals to Nikita Khrushchev and Deputy Chairman Georgy Malenkov that Molotov is to be part of the latest purge. When the concert recording arrives, Stalin finds a note Maria slipped in the record sleeve, admonishing Stalin and expressing hope for his death. He reads it, laughs, and suffers a cerebral haemorrhage. Despite hearing him fall, Stalin's guards, fearful of being punished for disturbing him, do not enter his office.

Stalin's housemaid discovers him unconscious the next morning. The members of the Central Committee each learn about the situation through their own networks and rush to the dacha. Beria, the first to arrive, finds Maria's note. Once Malenkov, Khrushchev, Lazar Kaganovich, Anastas Mikoyan, and Nikolai Bulganin arrive, the Committee finally decides to send for a team of doctors. Most of the best doctors in Moscow have been arrested for being part of an alleged plot, thus the doctors who can be found are not impressive. After a brief bout of terminal lucidity, Stalin dies. While the members of the Committee return to Moscow, Beria orders the NKVD to take over the city's security posts held by the Soviet Army.

Beria and Khrushchev vie for the support of Molotov and Stalin's children, Svetlana and her unstable, alcoholic brother Vasily. Beria has Molotov removed from the list of those to be rounded up, and has Molotov's wife released from prison. The Committee names Malenkov chairman. Essentially a puppet of Beria, Malenkov further exerts control by hijacking Khrushchev's proposed reforms, such as releasing political prisoners and loosening clerical restrictions. Khrushchev is relegated to planning Stalin's funeral.

After Beria learns Khrushchev and Maria are casually acquainted, he threatens Khrushchev with Maria's note. To create problems for the NKVD, Khrushchev reverses Beria's order to halt all transportation into Moscow. When 1,500 arriving mourners are killed, the Committee wants to blame junior NKVD officers. Beria angrily dissents, believing that would amount to blaming him, and threatens his colleagues with documents detailing their involvement in various purges.

Irate over the supplanting of the military by the NKVD, Marshal Georgy Zhukov agrees to support Khrushchev in a coup against Beria, provided it occurs after Stalin's funeral the next day and Khrushchev can get the rest of the Committee on board. With time running out, Khrushchev cannot get Malenkov to discuss his plan, but he tells everyone else that the decision is unanimous, and they commit themselves. Khrushchev gives Zhukov the greenlight, and the Soviet Army reclaims its posts from the NKVD. Zhukov, assisted by a group of soldiers led by Kiril Moskalenko, storms into a meeting of the Committee and arrests Beria.

Malenkov does not intervene and reluctantly signs Beria's death warrant, horrified at what he had done to his victims. At Beria's emergency trial, Khrushchev accuses him of counter-revolutionary activities, sexual assault, and pedophilia, and immediately declares him guilty after evidence of the final accusation is delivered by the Soviet army. Beria begs for his life but is summarily shot in the head, and Zhukov has his body burned in the courtyard. Despite Svetlana's protests, Khrushchev sends her to Soviet-occupied Vienna, while keeping Vasily in Russia, where he can be watched. He concurs with Kaganovich that Malenkov is too weak to lead.

In 1956, Maria is the soloist at another performance of Concerto No. 23. Having triumphed over other members of the Committee to become the new leader of the Soviet Union, Khrushchev attends. Leonid Brezhnev, who will succeed Khrushchev in 1964, eyes Khrushchev from his seat.

[Macca]

'Danger Close - The Battle Of Long Tan' (2019)

A company of Australians in Vietnam, most of them youngsters doing National Service, bite off more than they can chew when they run into an NVA battalion whilst out on patrol.

True story and - a bit of over-dramatization aside - the film sticks very close to the historical events. Criticised for not exploring the wider context/morality of the war as a whole but not sure why since the film is just about one battle. Good production values, well worth a watch.