The Roses

Until Thursday, The Roses has Amsterdam. It has a starry cast, including Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Washington, Mike Myers, Chris Rock, Andrea Riseborough, Taylor Swift Matthias Schoenaerts and the voice of Robert De Niro. It is directed by David O. Russell. Or, ‘acclaimed director David 0. Russell,’ according to The Roses’s website. Not for this one , he wasn’t.

Here’s Wikipedia: ‘Filmed in Los Angeles from January to March 2021, it is Russell’s first film since Joy (2015). It received mixed reviews from critics, most of whom praised the production design and the cast’s performances, but criticized Russell’s screenplay and direction. It was also a box office bomb, with estimated losses for the studio reaching $97 million.’

As well as talent bloat, the film appears to have genre inflammation, being described as a period comedy thriller. It weaves together fact and fiction and appears to be a riff on an actual 1933 plot involving the murder of a retired US general. The three leads are friends who somehow get caught up in it, becoming suspect. Spoiler: the villains appear to be a group of business leaders with fascist tendencies. I’m guessing Walt Disney, Henry Ford and Joe Kennedy, but oddly they don’t seem to get a mention.

On Tuesday there’s a screening of Stephen King’s IT and on Friday there’s Cabin In the Woods. These are apparently the result of The Roses’s efforts to excite young film fans by letting them choose a few horror films.

The Tivoli

Well, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever a Marvel epic carrying some spurious racial controversy; Living, starring Bill Nighy, apparently based on a Kurosawa film, so both art-house cred and wrinkly appeal; The Lost King, the British feelgood comedy about an amateur finding the crookback bones of Richard III in a car park; Clooney and Roberts in Ticket to Paradise (they don’t even look interested on the poster); The Banshees of Inisheren, by the less interesting London Irish McDonagh brother (the one who did Bruges and the thing about the billboards); Mrs Harris Goes to Paris, Leslie Manville’s big break after a career as a brilliant character actress; and Black Adam, some super-hero franchise thing even comic-book fans have barely heard of. I’d have been more interested if it was Mac Adam. Not enough features have been made about asphalt.

The Sherborne

OK, they have The Lost King, Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile, Living etc. But tonight at 18:00 and Wednesday at 14:30, there is something or real interest. It’s Severn and Somme, a 51 minute micro-budget documentary about Ivor Gurney (1890-1937), Gloucester’s composer and poet, who was shell-shocked in the First World War and spent the rest of his life in institutional care. He was prodigiously gifted and badly treated. I’ve not seen the film, which was made by a Bristol company for the cultural DVD market, but I hope to get there. The neglect of poor Ivor is a disgrace.

The Cineworlds

Cineworld has more random stuff, as usual, and the ‘VIP menu’ is still enticingly crap. The whole operation is on life support. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I know, I’ll laugh.

The Eclectic Cinema

Andrew has a film on at The Playhouse, Bacurau. It’s pretty good, a kind of magical realist colonialism story from Brazil. Click the link to find a page he’s done about it. Warning: contains a link to buy tickets from the venue, which charges a booking fee. Why do we have to pay for their convenience?