Seen in July
Just two nice kids but only one is a horse, in My Lady Jane
Sometimes I realize that I subscribe to too many services, but occasionally there is a month when I actually do use every one of those services, which is sad when you find that there is no one service that gives you what you want. I can only hope you don't have this problem.
My Lady Jane
Prime
Sometimes history sucks, especially for women in the 16th century. Lady Jane Grey should never have died. It just wasn't fair. She was executed for high treason at the age of 17 for accepting the crown she never wanted. Yet what if it didn't have to be that way? What if magic existed and you could use great pop and rock music in a show set 500 years ago? Also, this fictional period comedy is a lot of fun and you should watch it.
Michael Fassbender in The Killer
The Killer
Netflix
David Fincher explores a weirdly common theme here. An assassin (Michael Fassbender) slips up, which brings consequences to his home life, and initiates a revenge plot similar to
John Wick et al. My only criticism of this plot is that the killer is introduced as precise, patient and calculating, yet makes a dumb mistake, and then launches into a well-planned and executed escape route. When he realizes that someone has come and invaded his super secret hideaway (apparently not so super secret), he puts in motion a series of acts of revenge to ensure it doesn't happen again. If he was as clever as we're told, how did it happen in the first place? Never mind the details of the minimal plot. It is as Hitchcock said a "MacGuffin", a detail necessary for the story to move forward but irrelevant to the story. For some, they may find the patient pace of this stylish film too slow, but for me, it reinforced exactly what our protagonist tells us at the beginning, "If you are unable to endure boredom, this work is not for you.", likewise, this may not be the film for you. In the end, this film owes more to Jean-Pierre Melville's
Le Samouraï and Jim Jarmusch's
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai than to John Wick or A History of Violence (though it does share that the story originated as a comic book). Also notable is the use of the music of The Smiths as the primary music of the film (I'm assuming Fincher is a Smiths fan).
The charming Time Bandits
Time Bandits
Criterion Channel
Best described by a reviewer, as having a "creaky charm". It's now a series on Apple TV+, this 1981 film from Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam is one of my favourites though rewatching it was hard to say why. Funny lines? Yes. Funny performances? Definitely. Yet, maybe it is the "creaky charm" of the simple effects and uneven story plus the appearances of Sean Connery and Ralph Richardson as the besuited "Supreme Being" that stick in my memory.
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