Film review: SPIONE (Fritz Lang, 1928)

A criminal mastermind, Haghi, wishes to get his hand on some Japanese government secrets. In order to do so, he enlists the talents of the Russian spy Sonja Baranikowa, who must use her feminine wiles to procure information from a debonair young spy, known only as his number, 326. Haghi's immoral plans are considerably complicated, however, when Sonja falls for the man she is supposed to be manipulating.

No Country for Young Men

Dunkirk 2: The Frenchman Rises - where Tommy goes back for Gibson, rescues him, and the two celebrate being evacuated by going to a LA Dodgers game. Absolutely love that Barnard is wearing Ray-bans in this photo!

Over the Easter weekend, when I wasn't watching my club lose miserably to Spurs, I was making the most of the poll function on Instagram, to investigate one of life's most important, unanswered questions:

Just who is the hottest actor in Dunkirk?

The Worst Acting Performances of 2017 [5 to 1]

Emma’s shade-throwing at bad acting continues! Read 10 to 6 here. I like to think I was relatively measured in my snark before. As we’re now onto the bottom five, I can’t promise to be so kind! Ehehe.

05. Johnny Depp, Murder on the Orient Express

As the sketchy art dealer Ratchett, Depp’s character is killed off early on, leaving Kenneth Branagh’s sleuth the rest of the film to piece together whodunit. The Johnny Depp of old, the Depp we saw in Pirates of the Caribbean (the first one, not the 34897 laboured sequels after), Ed Wood and Edward Scissorhands would have seized this role with aplomb and made an indelible impression in his limited screen time.

The Worst Acting Performances of 2017 [10 - 6]

Now that awards season is all wrapped up, it’s time for this blog to slowly wave goodbye to 2017 and start looking ahead to the 2018 cinematic year! As part of that slow wave goodbye, I will celebrate the best and worst of 2017 according to me! 

We shall start with the worst acting performances. Here was 2016’s worst performances list for reference. I unfortunately had to throw shade at Jesse Eisenberg, one of my favourite actors, in last year's Hall of Shame. I'm glad to report he reined his Lux Luthor in a lot in Justice League, and thus, avoids making the list a second year running. Phew!

10. Daisy Ridley, Murder on the Orient Express

Although the Star Wars actress is very pretty, has a nice screen presence and seems like a lovely person, she was far too lightweight in the role of Mary Debenham. The film is set in the 30s, and Ridley’s character is secretly having a relationship with Dr. Arbuthnot (Hamilton’s Leslie Odom, Jr). Such are the outdated attitudes of the time towards inter-racial dating, that Debenham and Arbuthnot have to keep this, as well as their involvement with the murder of Johnny Depp’s character on the train, under wraps.

Red Sparrow's 15 Rating Should Never Really Have Been Here

The only positive thing I can say about Red Sparrow is that Charlotte Rampling and Jeremy Irons were in. Although, after this, Batman v Superman and High-Rise, Jezza might want to find himself a new agent...

I watched Red Sparrow on Thursday (don't worry, I used my Limitless card to book a ticket to Kenneth Branagh's vanity project so I didn't contribute to JLaw's Box Office, then sneaked in). It was, as I expected, dreadful. After Passengers and mother!, I daresay a film this bad is the last thing Jennifer Lawrence needs, but there you go.

Bit of an oversight...

Dunkirk has released its third For Your Consideration advert, and, just like last time, I noticed an omission in who they were campaigning for. Except unlike in Harry Styles' case, this snub is for one of the best, if not the best element of the film, and thus, totally unacceptable:

They've asked for consideration in all categories and outlined the ones that are most relevant to Dunkirk. Yet there's no mention of Hans Zimmer's incredible score!! Given that the music in the film was so tension-amplifying, that the BBFC even mentioned it in their extended information, that really is quite the oversight.

The only possible explanation is that Warner Brothers thought the score was so good, it didn't need highlighting; the quality spoke for itself. Which it does. After all, Zimmer's collaborations with two other single-word-titled Christopher Nolan movies, Inception and Interstellar, were both nominated in the Best Original Score category at the Oscars, and both those films had less Best Picture momentum than Dunkirk has.

But, still, it would have been nice to pinpoint it anyway, just to be on the safe side.

Being beady-eyed when it comes to nerdy film things, I also noticed that whoever made the ad has rejigged the order of two of the actors:

To jog your memory, this was the order of actors in the previous FYC:

The poster creator obviously didn't like this film that much, then!

Nobody's gonna drag Harry down.

I was perusing Awards Daily's FYC gallery when I noticed this ad Warner Brothers put out for Dunkirk:

In case that shade was a little too nuanced, here's a list of actors who WB are campaigning for:

It's of trifling importance as bar Mark Rylance, none of the cast really have a shot at an Oscar nomination (and even for Rylance, with no show at the Golden Globes, SAGs or even the London Film Critics' Circle, that's an uphill battle), but I couldn't help thinking that Warner Brothers are shading Harry Styles somewhat by not listing him here.

I wasn't bowled over or anything by Harry Styles in Dunkirk (he did what he had to do, no more, no less, but was definitely more successful transitioning into acting than his former beardgirlfriend Cara Delevingne), but given he got to act 'angry' and Christopher Nolan used both of his PG-13-mandated allowances of the f-word on Styles, it seems somewhat amiss not to at list him here. It certainly couldn't hurt, IMO, and bar Rylance, who was the standout performer, the gulf in acting quality between Styles and the rest of his co-stars certainly wasn't that palpable.

So it's a bit harsh for Warner Brothers to be tacitly saying 'young Fionn Whitehead is worth the adspace... but you? Nah.'

As a side note, back when Dunkirk first hit UK cinemas in July, I was tickled by this e-mail we got from the Odeon:

Interesting that here, they've focused on the two Peaky Blinders and Inception/Dark Knight Rises actors, Cillian Murphy and Tom Hardy (who British audiences would more likely to be familiar with), thesp Kenneth Branagh and of course, the pretty boy Styles himself, yet omitted Oscar-winner Mark Rylance as a result.

It reminded me of what Nolan said about casting Styles in his movie, 'I saw thousands of young men, but Harry just had something that the rest didn't.'

I believe that 'something' in question is the ability to draw in randy teenage girls by their droves. ;)

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I saw this pun in The Sun, and I kind of loved it:

Some movies I has seen recently.

Practically sentence-long reviews, because I’m not feeling too articulate.

- Wanted
Angelina. James. Lotsa guns. Kinda sexy. Kinda fun.

- Sex and the City Movie
Yeah, so it was shallow. Yeah, so it was predictable. Yeah, so there were a lot of labels. But I like all those things. Anyone who willingly chooses to sit through SATC will enjoy it.

- Dear Frankie
So underrated and beautiful, with some amazing acting from Emily Mortimer, Gerard Butler, and mostly, the young lad in the movie. And they played Spiegel im Spiegel! ♥

- Evita
Entertaining. I like musicals now.

- Bigga than Ben
Ironically, my problem with the film is that it wasn’t “big” or overblown enough. But it’s a sweet little black comedy in its own right with an amazing soundtrack. One of the better films of 2008 thus far.

- Fantasia 200
Pretty, but I prefer the original.

- Peter’s Friends
Brannagh! Laurie! Fry! Thompson! Staunton! And the result is, thankfully, equal to the sum of its parts, a thoroughly charming and witty Britcom. ♥