Monthly film update
The films I saw in cinemas in June were:
1. London Road -
An ingeniously crafted and structured unorthodox musical, London Road is a deeply moving and melancholic portrayal of a mundane village coming to terms with the murder of 5 young prostitutes. The film excels at creating incredibly realistic, relatable characters, and the performances are all-round impressive; Clare Burt fantastic in particular. Tom Hardy has a wonderfully unsettling cameo as a serial killer-enthusiast, his entrance one of the greater scenes of the film. The flick suffers from the occasional lull, where the incessant mundanity struggles to progress its largely captivating story, but overall London Road is a very innovative musical that ends on a beautiful, bittersweet note.
2. Minions -
Cynics beware, Minions is a film of irrepressible joy; the plot is inconsequential, the logic is out the window, and sight gags, puerile humour, creative character design and sumptuous animation are all in. One of the funniest films of the year so far.
3. Les Combattants -
Its slight and tonally jarring at times, but Love at First Fight (Les Combattants) revels in a romcom that strips away a large amount of the tedious stereotypes given to that particular genre. Adele Haenal and Kevin Azais both give strong performances, and the chemistry is certainly present on screen, while the flick's bizarrely charming score and array of beautiful shots create definite impact; one of the film's final scenes, that takes place in an abandoned town, surprised me in its method of creating danger.
4. Spy -
Intensely hilarious, though hardly original in its use of humour, Spy presents a return to form for McCarthy-flicks, that only loses its way once the film makes the step (or stumble) from prioritising comedy to prioritising drama.
5. Jurassic World -
Very average.
6. Listen Up Philip -
Functioning as a cheap parody of Wes Anderson, Woody Allen and Louis C.K, Listen Up Philip is irritatingly edited and so far up its own ass that it's a wonder Philip can listen to anything at all.
A consistent month (with one outlier), and July has a few films I really want to see, in the form of Terminator Genisys, Amy, Comet, Magic Mike XXL, Ted 2, Dear White People, Love & Mercy, Song of the Sea, Ant Man, Self/Less, True Story, Inside Out, Maggie, Southpaw, and MI Rogue Nation.
The other, non-2015 films I saw in June were:
The Great Gatsby -
(REWATCH)
The critics were way too harsh on this flick. They criticise the film's superfluous nature, its vapid and empty demeanour, its lack of subtlety, without realising that's the whole point.
Lost in Translation -
Surprisingly enough, this is the first time I've seen this highly-acclaimed flick. And yeah, yeah it's brilliant, as I expected; Johansson and Murray play their parts wonderfully, the mood created is one of unbridled joy, and the script is one of the best I've heard in ages.
Dr. Strangelove -
Has a few flaws in expositional problems/plot contrivances, but Dr. Strangelove is an incredibly well-scripted, iconic dark comedy that is rightly heralded as the definitive satire in film, with an exceptional final 20 minutes that produces one of the most instantly recognisable scenes in cinema, and an ending that's hilarious and horrifying in equal measure.
Bronson -
I found the whole exercise to be slightly pointless, but still terrifically executed and Tom Hardy brings his best performance to date. As with Refn, this can only grow on me.