Twenty One
Hamnet
Sometimes you can say too much about a film that left you pretty much speechless, so I won't do that. I won't blather on about the stunning visuals, the aching beauty of English woodland, and the captivating woman that belongs there.
I won't bleat about the selfish man who captures her heart but is the epitome of wanting different things, deserting her when heavily pregnant, compelled by nothing more than ambition and the feeling of being caged by a world that is for his wife infinite and unbounded.
Until it becomes bounded. It's not a spoiler to say that Hamnet dies since that's the whole of the film. It's a film that's all about how things happen, not about what happens.
Where it's most convincing is in Agnes. What a part! Chloe Zhao and Maggie O'Farrell have created peak "strong female lead" without in any way sliding into the cliche. Amazingly real, earthy, passionate, deep. It's a role that needs a woman to rise to meet it head on. And does Jessie Buckley do that?
Polish Ms Buckley's Oscar. She is so good. As we walked out, Zenita said to me, It's like she wasn't acting. I knew exactly what she meant. You feel right along with her. The shy smiles, the love for her kids, the bare torment of her grief.
If you have a heart-- Well, if a film can make you cry, take tissues. (For me, of course it was very close to the bone. I'm the father of twins. My Zenita sobbed when the twins were lying together on the deathbed. And I could understand and appreciate in a very real way the pain Agnes felt, how desperately she tried to keep her son alive by sheer will alone. And we felt it all the more, me and Zenita, because Judith was born not breathing, just like Zenita, and I think we were both willing her to live. But you don't have to be even a parent to feel along with this.)
Not everyone will love Hamnet. They'll dislike the contrivance, slow pace and the sentimentalilty. But those are all the reasons I have it as a five-star movie. It's only pretending after all to be about a play or even about a child who dies. It's about a woman, about motherhood and about the deep tides of humanity that rise and fall and carry us with them.
Nineteen One
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
So I enjoyed Ralph Fiennes of course -- absolutely astonishing, especially the Iron Maiden segment; I enjoyed Jack O'Connell -- brilliant as a psychopath who patterns himself on Jimmy Saville; I loved the reflective tone; the visuals; the worldbuilding; the humour. Yet...
So why do I have reservations? Well, the one thing you'll notice is missing is plot. Not that plot is missing. There are two big plotlines. But they don't intersect. One is very slow, and perhaps not entirely plausible -- no zombie film ever thrived by suggesting a road out. The other is brutal, and the characters among the Jimmies were too low flame to play against Lord Sir Jimmy Crystal.
And the reflectiveness wasn't *about* anything. It just slowed the film down. There was no question asked or answered. In such a low-tension film, you need there to be.
So is it any good? Yes. And if you like the franchise, you'll like it. You might even love it. You'll certainly love Fiennes. Maybe even Oscar-level good.
Distress
I don't know what it is about Greg Egan. It's like he builds this cool setting: future Australia, leaning towards post-scarcity but not quite there; organic seastead grown by anarchists; scientists fighting over the Theory of Everything; a digital journalist who's part-cyborg.
Then he gets bogged down in a plot that disappears up its own arse so hard that although the world was (just) enough to follow it, you get that sinking feeling, like you will not arrive at anything worth reading. And really, you don't.
It's far too talky and far too "clever". The idea doesn't even really make sense. Probably. I wasn't paying enough attention to quite follow it. I wish he'd had more cool science fiction and half the science. He set the scene for it and then just ugh, didn't bother.
If you like hard scifi, you might like it. You could probably pass it off as "cerebral", in which case you might go as high as three and a half, four, but I couldn't, so two and a half, three at the very most.
Eight One
The Mote In God's Eye
Like most fans of science fiction, the one thing I've always loved is worldbuilding. The skilled writer transports you to a world of their imagination, which has rich detail and surprises for you to enjoy.
Or it's like someone dropped the 1950s into space. In fact, in some respects the 1950s is generous since this often reads as though it's the 1750s. For instance, it sticks in my mind that people trade letters for mail. Even though they have "personal computers". Yes, it's a civilisation that has invented interstellar travel but still has mail packets.
It also has a sneaky Muslim, a woman who considers other women sluts if they use birth control and marries the "hero" without ever having any interaction in the book beyond thinking he's a hunk and when on a mission to discover an alien civilisation, thinks wistfully of how much she misses "girl talk". About cooking and dresses and shit, Scots who do comedy Scots accents, commoners who are grateful that the nobility do all the thinking for them, the scion of warlike people who is stiff and humourless, a Russky who is even stiffer and murdered tens of millions of people to teach them that communism sucks.
There are also some aliens. Who are comically deceptive, yet the humans prove unable to notice that they're nefarious.
It's readable in a sense but the sexism, racism, madarse conservatism, bootlicking and craziness of a space empire backed by religion, but not a new religion but basically if not exactly Catholicism (it wasn't clear). It's like the opposite of worldbuilding. These are writers who just could not be bothered to build anything. They simply transferred their own fondly remembered past into the future.
What's infuriating is that this is one of the best-loved books in scifi. But the story is as limp as the setting. I'd give it maybe two because it's easy going but shameful in how lazy and ineffective it is even so. Proof, were any needed, that rightwingers simply cannot do art worth anything.
Four One
History of Sound
There's not that many films where you find yourself saying, they need to gay this up a bit. After all, the obtrusive gay is a feature of modern films. What I mean is, characters that are gay for no reason. Because, look, in real life we aren't all just announcing to each other, oh btw, I'm queer, or yah, I'm pandemisexugenderal or whatever the fuck. It might come up but it doesn't feature that heavily in our lives. In fact, probably there are a lot more queers in your life than you think.
But History of Sound really did need a lot more gay. It was a gay romance with only negligible romance and not much gayness. Perhaps they felt that it would be difficult for the audience or for the actors, who as I understand it were not gay. Although now I think of it, Josh O'Connor plays queers in literally every film he's in.
For my money though, the film needed a stronger romance. So much hinged on it that it felt a bit lacking because there was not enough feeling. It didn't help too that Paul Mescal phoned it in. He can be really good but he can also be really bad. Compare Aftersun with Gladiator 2, for instance. O'Connor was just so much better, but he's one of the most watchable men in cinema at the moment for my money.
It was all a bit ho hum. Maybe two, two and a half stars. It was supposed to be slow but slow can be intimate, moving, replete. Or it can just be slow and this was sloooooow.
Fire Upon the Deep
I'm still reading science fiction and I thought I'd try an old "classic". I'd heard really good things about Fire Upon the Deep, and look, there's good things about it. The worldbuilding was excellent and there were plenty of ideas kicking around. But the plot was thin, and I found it plodded a fair bit.
There's also a couple of "twists", which I won't spoil, but one is a characters get fooled and the other is the ending. And both are horribly mishandled. The first just doesn't play out at all, and the second you're left wondering how that worked.
It was worth reading all in all but maybe only three stars when I was promised it was a banger, which wasn't really the case. I'd persevere with the author though, and the ebook I got hold of has the sequel and prequel so we'll do that too in due course.
The Housemaid
Now the stars of The Housemaid are very obviously Sydney Sweeney's tits. And by god, did the director know it. They were featured throughout, straining against Sydney's top, overflowing her clothing, and unsheathed at one point. It's kind of unfortunate, I suppose, that when they write the story of Sweeney, that's what they'll write about. What they won't write about is her acting talent, because it's not really existing. She's fine if you give her a role where "I'm bored" works but that really is all she does. Even when the action hots up, she looks like she'd rather be doing something else.
It doesn't help that she's cast opposite Amanda Seyfried, who acts her off the screen at every opportunity, and is frankly hotter too. She does have a much better-written role though, which requires and gets a wide range.
It's a decent thriller in the old mode, nice and twisty. It's maybe a bit long and you won't be surprised, even if you can't quite pick how it will turn out. But I think that a twist that is credible is a good thing, so it was none the worse for being a bit oh, right... Shout out too for Brandon Sklenar, who does the smirking male lead perfectly. He has a nice bit of edge and he's really fuck off gorgeous so you won't hate watching a nicely made, well-shot film. Maybe three stars or a bit better.
