Letterboxd: *changes a specific poster to a much blander one just because it's a thousand pixels bigger*

Also Letterboxd: Uh oh, we have gremlins in the control room… Letterboxd is down due to an unscheduled technical outage. We’ll be back soon!


everybody migrate to until letterboxd realises what rubbish their management is

I honestly don't know what people see in this and it's only just starting. This is a movie that celebrates an asshole, for Christ's sake. Oh god, why did I pay for this? I know it's going to be dreadful! I usually know a flawed Hollywood movie when I see one, I just know I can't like this any more than Shape of Water. That would be ludicrous! CG everywhere, why the High School Musical pop?! No doubt about it, this is gonna be crap crap crap crap crap cr-

"Ladies and gents, this is the moment you've waited for..."


.............oh, HELL

"But to be clear, "Lady Bird" is far from a perfect film, it's just not the mumblecore disaster you'd expect from Greta Gerwig — one of the mumblecore movement's prime progenitors. There are dozens of coming-of-age films that far outweigh this lightweight contender. Think "Kes" or "Murmur of the Heart." Greta Gerwig has a long way to go as a filmmaker before she can pretend to approach a Mike Leigh or a Louis Malle."
- Cole Smithey, The Smartest Film Critic in the World


Kes was directed by Ken Loach.

To those who say this doesn't deserve to be played before Coco:
You have no idea how it feels to live in a country that was already rewarded with Paddington 2 and is too small and concerned about the success of Star Wars to make room for Coco and save this miserable year for animation, rather than just put Coco a week before Star Wars so that people can worry less about spoilers and boot Ferdinand into January where it belongs, so because nobody outside the faith demographic's likely to bother with The Star they make recompense for this loss by turning it into a two-day event including Frozen itself, so that means having to walk into a full house on a Saturday morning and put up with children in the back screaming every character's names at the top of their lungs, while families have no clue where they're supposed to be seated or came in a day earlier than they were supposed to with your seat booked.

This review was written after a screening on day 9 of my London Film Festival experience, which included 25 films and a Curzon preview of The Square, and you can read the rest of my coverage on my Tumblr. Keep in mind this premiered on Friday the 13th.

Downsizing was a nightmarish experience. The couple in front kept stretching their arms out and lighting up their phones, the bloke next to me guffawed like someone who’s just discovered comedy for the first time, and because of the supposedly limited availability of the Circle, we get to suffer down here in the Stalls watching each other take piss breaks every two fucking minutes because there’s a bog in each corner of the room. And it didn’t help that I was one of the few not laughing at this overlong, overindulgent and horribly meddled excuse for satire from a director I once had confidence in (even when he was an asshole).

A 135-minute-long comedy that could very well have been the first six episodes of a sci-fi sitcom ala The Last Man on Earth, which Kristen Wiig was killer in during her limited presence, Downsizing is the kind of film that boasts “Look at me, I’m so intelligent! Overpopulation! You’re all gonna die someday!” but tries too hard to live up to its promise, never making use of the time it has to build on the relations between its two worlds after three slightly amusing time skips and getting so lost in its fantasy concept that it loses immersion by the dozen. When I first heard of this film I imagined it wouldn’t be nearly as invested in CG or any other Hollywood stain as this. Good lord almighty, was I wrong.

To construct its social satire it dabbles in stereotypes which are practically embodied in poor Hong Chau’s misdirected character performance, that is supposed to convey a complimentary message on immigration but what she spouts is a gobsmackingly outdated combination of Engrish and a hamfisted Vietnamese accent. Now, this is not played for a joke like what Paramount could tolerate in 1961 or 2009 and she committed her character with self-awareness, yet despite the accent she must be a sympathetic character, right? I guess? As an immigrant without children forced into a position by an overbearing government, I can’t see why she wouldn’t resonate, but the smugness and blatancy of Payne’s satire, the poor man’s Idiocracy if you will, outweigh her character’s potential and this specific trait distracts from what matters most about her. Chau comments on the matter:

“All of these people who have this vague feeling that they have a problem with this character, they have no problem going and getting a mani-pedi from some cheap nail salon, they have no problem buying mass-produced clothes from child workers in Bangladesh, they have no problem with a bunch of other stuff, but they have a problem with my character, who is so multifaceted and complex and well-written — they have a problem with her because she has an accent.”

I call bullshit on this movie’s twisted ego. Since her character is more distractingly annoying than she should be, this does not excuse anything. Why not just drop the English? It would make the chemistry between her and Matt Damon a ton more poignant. Chau, I hate to say this, but you deserve better.

Small person jokes and all, it’s not even funny most of the time Matt Damon spends as a tiny person away from Kristen Wiig whose future is uncertain but definitely should have been explored to some extent. Not even Christoph Waltz can redeem it. I can’t believe this was built by Alexander Payne, because it feels like nothing more than a stock director’s stereotype of the Charlie Kaufmans of our time. 2017’s most cynical and misguided execution of an undoubtedly intriguing sci-fi concept for humanist satire since Netflix’s The Discovery, and the worst film I have seen in all seven years I’ve attended this festival. I wish I didn’t type more about Hong Chau than anything else in this review, I wish I could look past that quibble and appreciate her character for who she really is, but this is what’s wrong with the white man’s Oscar cinema in 2017. Honey, this shrunk my temper.

If Matthew Vaughn’s intent was to stay as far away from Trump references as possible, then he failed because the stock president is a careless white man who doesn’t give two shits about his First Lady, binge-watches Fox News to oblivion and is eventually impeached in a flash.









And while you’re still here, the CG in this film goes as far as a plot point in which Eggsy has to shag to save the world or something, and uses a condom with a microscopic tracking device attached. He sticks it on his finger during his shag and the camera follows it all the way, zooming through the fabric in this woman’s panties and the audience is taken on a 3D journey into her vaginal stream, as he sticks the device into her pussy so that Statesman knows their target.

This was released in IMAX and had a sponsorship deal with Compare the Meerkat.

...yeah, you're just better off watching this in a nearly-empty space on a weekday afternoon, without any friends beside you and seated close enough to the screen.

Few people come to my favourite shopping centre's IMAX screen at that time. Unruly scoundrels fill up the room on a Sunday afternoon at that rotten Bexleyheath cinema that used to guide my childish self into the world of film.

Fuck you, Stephen King.

IRL friends will ruin you.

Loneliness is bliss.



Anyway, you'll float too.

Me: Why was Trey Parker in this?

Trey: You see I'm a parent now and kids like my precious little 4-year-old angel love cartoons and I think we can both agree that cartoons shouldn't always be filled to the brim with heartbreak and edge and that's why Illumination is so damn good because it's full of life and carefree energy and cartoony animation and it's not the usual crybaby American trash or as I'd like to call it Ameritrash you see from those Pixar tools because there are no tears to be shed except from laughter the minions are comedy gold


Me:


Trey:


Me: Why was Trey Parker in this?

In This Corner of the World:
Bunch of teenagers in front do everything you should not do in a cinema including text with their phones lit up, laugh at each other's chatter when it's least appropriate, rustle through and drop popcorn bags and take repeated toilet breaks

Baby Driver:
Guy in front vapes three times

Despicable Me 3:
People laugh

It Comes at Night:
Couple to my right acts the same as the ITCOTW crowd, but are even worse with their phone, and the girl takes a break the very moment the movie starts


The real bacteria is cinemagoers

Tip for Disney on helping a modern audience feel better about themselves and doing it right and not singularly for profit:
TELL YOUR ANIMATION DIVISION TO CREATE A CHUBBY/GAY PRINCESS.
Don't use a camera to reimagine a chubby comic relief of theirs as gay.
Thank you.






AND BRING BACK HAND-DRAWN ANIMATION.
Thank you again.