Monthly culture, May 2025
Friday, June 27th, 2025 06:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tamaranth01MAY25: The Vampyr (Dreyer, 1932) -- Netflix
Minimal dialogue, many shadows, no ambient sound (it was shot without sound, the voices were dubbed later). The frequent cuts made it feel oddly modern. Deeply weird but very interesting.
02MAY25: Thunderbolts* (Schreier, 2025) -- Greenwich PictureHouse
I enjoyed this more than any of the other Marvel films since Endgame, with the possible exception of Black Widow. Florence Pugh delightful as Yelena Belova (I love how solid she is) -- but Yelena is suffering burnout. ("The light inside you is dim... even by eastern European standards," says Red Guardian, who is also a delight.) Bucky quotes Kierkegaard and Valentina says the 'Thunderbolts' (named after Yelena's childhood baseball team... but that asterisk!) are 'defective losers': I bristled on their behalf, and on the behalf of defective losers everywhere. Some dark aspects ("There's no death here: the pain only gets worse") but this is ultimately a film about healing, about found family and friendship. Plus post-credits scene, set well after the main events, heralding the Fantastic Four ...
Yes, I saw this again later in the month. It was still good.
04MAY25: Sinners (Coogler, 2025) -- Greenwich PictureHouse
I might not have seen this if I'd known it was a vampire film, but I'm glad I did see it. Set in the Black community in rural Mississippi, 1932. Michael B Jordan plays twin brothers (Smoke and Stack) with a criminal past who open a juke joint. Their cousin Sammy plays the opening night (with spectral visions of future stars). Outside, Irish vampire Reddick is lurking, ready to envamp anyone leaving the joint.
Splendid soundtrack, very atmospheric: lots of period-typical racism (women who can 'pass', the KKK), and quite a bit of violence. Stunning, though not always an easy watch.
08MAY25: Aftersun (Wells, 2022) -- Netflix
Set in 1999. 11-year-old Sophie is on holiday in Turkey with her dad Calum, who's separated from her mum. Sophie has a camcorder and a lot of this film is presented as her holiday diary. Nice father-daughter interactions, but Calum is obviously very depressed, and Sophie doesn't really know how to deal with that. I didn't really engage with the film, and it seemed to just stop rather than finish.
14MAY25: Arcade Fire -- Royal Albert Hall
Wear pink, they said, so I did -- unlike quite a lot of the audience. We started in the 1871 bar which has Emma Shipley decor: very pleasant! No support band: the first set was the new AF album, 'Pink Elephant' (which I don't yet love), and the second set was old favourites (though they skipped some of my favourites). Highlight was 'Intervention' with Regine playing the RAH organ -- to be honest, it's not as impressive against a rock band as against an orchestra. A grand night out, though we missed the outdoor 'encore' which was mostly drumming and a big crowd.
15MAY25: Dead Talents Society (Hsu, 2024) -- Netflix
Taiwanese horror-comedy where ghosts (with haunting licenses) compete to haunt humans. There is stiff (sorry) competition to be the scariest, and ghosts begin to disintegrate when they're forgotten. Loser friends, big-name ghosts with trademark tricks, cheesy muzak, found family, vengeance from beyond the grave, pratfalls. This was an unexpected and absolute delight, and a reminder that Chinese / East Asian ghosts are quite different to the European variety.
excellent comment in film group: "I realise why I get scared in horror films -- because it's always from the POV of the victims. From the point of view of ghosts: not scary!"
23MAY25: The Phoenician Scheme (Wes Anderson, 2025) -- Greenwich PictureHouse
Completely batshit and thoroughly enjoyable spy comedy with a lot of black humour. Do not ask me about the plot.
The great advantage of having a degree of face-blindness (I spent quite a bit of the film thinking that Scarlett Johansson was looking extremely young, until Scarlet Johansson appeared...) is that I didn't recognise all the famous names! del Toro, Murray, Abraham, Dafoe, Gainsbourg... okay, I recognised some. (Benedict Cumberbatch is hard for anyone to miss.) I was super-impressed by Mia Threapleton, who is (a) Kate Winslet's daughter (b) not Scarlett Johansson (c) awesome as Sister Liesl, daughter of ruthless-yet-charismatic tycoon Korda. Stylised, complex, often very funny: I liked it a lot.
29MAY25: Coriolanus (Fiennes, 2011) -- BBC iPlayer
Ralph Fiennes as Coriolanus, Gerard Butler as his nemesis Aufidius: modern, Balkanesque setting. Butler is really good in this, and so is Fiennes. Vanessa Redgrave as Coriolanus' mother Volumnia relishes his wounds rather creepily. Brian Cox (Menenius) manages to make iambic pentameter sound colloquial. Coriolanus is a warrior but no politician. Watched with film group: we all found it very topical. "I will fight against my canker'd country with the spleen of all the underfiends" should be on American t-shirts. Kudos to Jon Snow for newsreader appearances. Also, a good edit of the original play (which I saw live with Hiddleston in the title role ... over a decade ago). Lots of violence, unsurprisingly and historically accurately. This edit ends very abruptly, but then it's Coriolanus' story, and so does he.
31MAY25: Rhys Darby, Alexandra Palace
Mr Darby does a great robot! I'm not generally enthused by comedy gigs but this was entertaining, and I laughed.
Minimal dialogue, many shadows, no ambient sound (it was shot without sound, the voices were dubbed later). The frequent cuts made it feel oddly modern. Deeply weird but very interesting.
02MAY25: Thunderbolts* (Schreier, 2025) -- Greenwich PictureHouse
I enjoyed this more than any of the other Marvel films since Endgame, with the possible exception of Black Widow. Florence Pugh delightful as Yelena Belova (I love how solid she is) -- but Yelena is suffering burnout. ("The light inside you is dim... even by eastern European standards," says Red Guardian, who is also a delight.) Bucky quotes Kierkegaard and Valentina says the 'Thunderbolts' (named after Yelena's childhood baseball team... but that asterisk!) are 'defective losers': I bristled on their behalf, and on the behalf of defective losers everywhere. Some dark aspects ("There's no death here: the pain only gets worse") but this is ultimately a film about healing, about found family and friendship. Plus post-credits scene, set well after the main events, heralding the Fantastic Four ...
Yes, I saw this again later in the month. It was still good.
04MAY25: Sinners (Coogler, 2025) -- Greenwich PictureHouse
I might not have seen this if I'd known it was a vampire film, but I'm glad I did see it. Set in the Black community in rural Mississippi, 1932. Michael B Jordan plays twin brothers (Smoke and Stack) with a criminal past who open a juke joint. Their cousin Sammy plays the opening night (with spectral visions of future stars). Outside, Irish vampire Reddick is lurking, ready to envamp anyone leaving the joint.
Splendid soundtrack, very atmospheric: lots of period-typical racism (women who can 'pass', the KKK), and quite a bit of violence. Stunning, though not always an easy watch.
08MAY25: Aftersun (Wells, 2022) -- Netflix
Set in 1999. 11-year-old Sophie is on holiday in Turkey with her dad Calum, who's separated from her mum. Sophie has a camcorder and a lot of this film is presented as her holiday diary. Nice father-daughter interactions, but Calum is obviously very depressed, and Sophie doesn't really know how to deal with that. I didn't really engage with the film, and it seemed to just stop rather than finish.
14MAY25: Arcade Fire -- Royal Albert Hall
Wear pink, they said, so I did -- unlike quite a lot of the audience. We started in the 1871 bar which has Emma Shipley decor: very pleasant! No support band: the first set was the new AF album, 'Pink Elephant' (which I don't yet love), and the second set was old favourites (though they skipped some of my favourites). Highlight was 'Intervention' with Regine playing the RAH organ -- to be honest, it's not as impressive against a rock band as against an orchestra. A grand night out, though we missed the outdoor 'encore' which was mostly drumming and a big crowd.
15MAY25: Dead Talents Society (Hsu, 2024) -- Netflix
Taiwanese horror-comedy where ghosts (with haunting licenses) compete to haunt humans. There is stiff (sorry) competition to be the scariest, and ghosts begin to disintegrate when they're forgotten. Loser friends, big-name ghosts with trademark tricks, cheesy muzak, found family, vengeance from beyond the grave, pratfalls. This was an unexpected and absolute delight, and a reminder that Chinese / East Asian ghosts are quite different to the European variety.
excellent comment in film group: "I realise why I get scared in horror films -- because it's always from the POV of the victims. From the point of view of ghosts: not scary!"
23MAY25: The Phoenician Scheme (Wes Anderson, 2025) -- Greenwich PictureHouse
Completely batshit and thoroughly enjoyable spy comedy with a lot of black humour. Do not ask me about the plot.
The great advantage of having a degree of face-blindness (I spent quite a bit of the film thinking that Scarlett Johansson was looking extremely young, until Scarlet Johansson appeared...) is that I didn't recognise all the famous names! del Toro, Murray, Abraham, Dafoe, Gainsbourg... okay, I recognised some. (Benedict Cumberbatch is hard for anyone to miss.) I was super-impressed by Mia Threapleton, who is (a) Kate Winslet's daughter (b) not Scarlett Johansson (c) awesome as Sister Liesl, daughter of ruthless-yet-charismatic tycoon Korda. Stylised, complex, often very funny: I liked it a lot.
29MAY25: Coriolanus (Fiennes, 2011) -- BBC iPlayer
Ralph Fiennes as Coriolanus, Gerard Butler as his nemesis Aufidius: modern, Balkanesque setting. Butler is really good in this, and so is Fiennes. Vanessa Redgrave as Coriolanus' mother Volumnia relishes his wounds rather creepily. Brian Cox (Menenius) manages to make iambic pentameter sound colloquial. Coriolanus is a warrior but no politician. Watched with film group: we all found it very topical. "I will fight against my canker'd country with the spleen of all the underfiends" should be on American t-shirts. Kudos to Jon Snow for newsreader appearances. Also, a good edit of the original play (which I saw live with Hiddleston in the title role ... over a decade ago). Lots of violence, unsurprisingly and historically accurately. This edit ends very abruptly, but then it's Coriolanus' story, and so does he.
31MAY25: Rhys Darby, Alexandra Palace
Mr Darby does a great robot! I'm not generally enthused by comedy gigs but this was entertaining, and I laughed.
