hello Farewell Amor, a tender tale of immigration
Everything that happened at Flick Filosopher between Monday, December 7th, and Sunday, December 13th, in the plague year 2020.
there was an IMAX press screening of Wonder Woman 1984 in London this morning...
I was not invited, and lemme tell you, dear reader, I would not have gone even if I had been. I am not risking my health or perhaps even my life for a movie. I’ll see it on HBO Max next week (unless I can get a digital advance screener before that).
But the thing is: WW1984 was scheduled to open in UK cinemas on Wednesday, December 16th. The day after tomorrow. But with a huge chunk of the nation under strict coronavirus restrictions that mean movie theaters must stay closed, and London — it was just announced this afternoon — also moving into that tier of restrictions from 12:01am on Wednesday, I don’t see what the point of opening the movie will be. There won’t be many screens available to show it on.
All of this was entirely predictable. Everyone saw this coming. And yet the headlong rush to attempt to replicate normality went ahead anyway. I don’t see how this ultimately turns out to have been a good thing.
I don’t have anything deep to add beyond that. I’m just despairing that this year has been like watching a train wreck in slow motion, over and over again. In lots of ways, yes, but definitely from my professional perspective on The Movies. And I don’t see much improving until the middle of next year, at the absolute earliest.
Movies remain an at-home entertainment for a while still...
—MaryAnn
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new at flick filosopher, Dec 07–13
new and ongoing dvd/blu/vod releases, US/Can, Dec 08–11
get the full rundown...
new and ongoing dvd/blu/vod releases, UK/Ire, Dec 07–11
get the full rundown...
Farewell Amor movie review: family ties undone, and forged again (#LFF2020)
Achieves that rare cinematic feat of being specific and universal at the same time. A lovely film, plaintive and poignant, with exquisite performances from a beguiling cast, and ultimately hopeful.
read the review...
It’s Christmas, and we’re all in misery.
—National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
coming up this week...
really hoping to get to reviews of as many of these as I can (oiks, that’s a long list):
Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, now that it’s available on demand at home
Greenland, the Gerard Butler end-of-the-world flick
pandemic horror Songbird
rom-com Wild Mountain Thyme, starring Emily Blunt and Jamie Dornan
fossil-hunting love story Ammonite; starring Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan
Christmas crime thriller Fatman
historical drama Radium Girls
drama Luxor, starring Andrea Riseborough
The Christmas Chronicles 2, on Netflix, sequel to the cheeky 2018 Kurt Russell–as–Santa Claus flick
the Melissa McCarthy comedy Superintelligence
more London Film Festival flicks
and still on the drawing board, if perhaps slightly backburnered:
Sophia Coppola’s On the Rocks
Robert Zemeckis’s The Witches
documentary Naughty Books
Netflix’s Enola Holmes
the Charlie Kaufman mindbender I’m Thinking of Ending Things
writer-director Jon Stewart’s political dramedy Irresistible