Fun with chalk and blackboards at the Odeon Covent Garden.

The Odeon Covent Garden has always had terrific film introduction game. Usually, a screen is devoted to one film only, but I've noticed they've recently mixed it up a bit more, so there's more variety in the films they show.

Here are two introductions that tickled me, whether it be for the font, wording used, or in the latter case, the creative way they squeezed five film titles onto one board!

Of course, this BBFC nerd's eye was drawn to how, coincidentally, all five of these films were 15-rated! Although one of them really ought not to be.

A ranking exercise (part 1)

I gave an R class on Thursday, where I showed how you can sort a dataset by more than one criteria. Here, it's sorted by BBFC rating, then IFCO rating, then alphabetically to give a rough outline of all the films I watched on my Odeon Limitless card (over two subscription years) from childish to most adult

My challenge to you: within the blocks of where the BBFC and IFCO ratings are the same (so for example, the first three films in the table), re-rank them so that the list of most childish to most adult is more accurate. Obviously this is a totally subjective exercise, but, give it a go!

Professor Marston and the Small Screen.

I'm very excited about Professor Marston and the Wonder Women. Luke Evans aka Gaston plays the title character, a psych professor who created the Wonder Woman character, who was inspired by two women: his wife, and his wife's girlfriend. 

His missus is played by the fierce Cambridge alumni Rebecca Hall, and their lover is played by Bella Heathcote, who's striking good looks were one of the few redeeming factors of that trashy The Neon Demon.

The film opens in UK cinemas this Friday, and in booking my seat, at one of Leicester Square Odeon's studios, I was struck by how tiny the cinema (and thus, the screen) was!

5 x 6 = 30, + 3 = 33.

A cinema which seats merely 33 people!

Is that the smallest cinema you've seen, or can you go even lower?

Happy Questionnaire Day.

Before I saw Happy Death Day on Saturday, representatives from Universal presented me with this survey which is, er, comprehensive, to say the least:

Needless to say, I didn't fill the whole thing in, but, Universal reps, if you're reading, I gave your film a 7/10. I thought it was nonsense, but unchallenging, enjoyable nonsense, anchored by a fine comedic turn from Jessica Rothe (the one in the green dress dancing behind Bugeyes in La La Land) and I also enjoyed the presence of Ruby Modine (aka Matthew Modine's daughter), who is very pretty, a decent actress, and testament to the good kind of nepotism (the bad kind being Cokehead Delevingne, naturally).

Also at the cinema, I saw this rather striking poster for My Little Pony: The Movie.

Statistical Analysis of Usage of My Odeon Limitless Card

I went on a 4-hour R course last year, and since then, I’ve just been fixated with adapting the code they gave us to draw pretty graphs with, in order to nerd out over my personal interests (chiefly, films and football).

This post will be much like the one I did six months ago when I analysed my film-watching habit of 2016 across all mediums, only here, I’m just analysing the 69 titles I saw on my Odeon Limitless card with some attempts at ~science behind the graphs I present.

Review: ODEON LIMITLESS CARD

After being underwhelmed by the limited range of films offered by the (ironically named) Cineworld Unlimited card, I voted with my wallet and defected to the Odeon Limitless card as a means of watching as many films as I wanted to in the year instead.

In terms of cinemas, the venues ranged from plush, comfortable and state-of-the-art (the newly renovated Orpington Odeon is as luxurious as any cinema I’ve been to, and one of the finest things about my otherwise fairly humdrum hometown) to scummy and very badly maintained (Birmingham, where I saw Lights Out, had muck all over the floor, as well as brats watching the film who were clearly under-15).

Is this, the start of something wonderful and new?

Or one more dream that I cannot make true?

Pious BAFTA grandstanding is exactly why I won't be watching the Oscars this year.

I didn't do too well in my BAFTA predictions, although at least I beat my performance last year, where I barely got anything right (as it was on Valentines Day last year, I took it as a sign that Carol would win the categories it deserved to win. That delusion).

Fantastic Virtue-Signallers and Where to Find Them. I heard JK Rowling is retrospectively writing yet another Harry Potter spin-off, about Professor McGonagall's uncharted secret past, where she had a Chinese girlfriend. Emma Stone is favourite to get the role of said Chinese girlfriend. 

What I go to school for.

I went on an R course recently just so I could produce this rather fabulous graph, of the certificates of films I've seen, and at which cinemas, since procuring my Odeon Limitless card in July.

Statistics can be fun sometimes!

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Level 4 of my BBFC game, by the way, is purposely very very tricky. Match the film to the film which has the identical rating and short insight as it.

(Note: the short insight of the pairs don't have to be in identical order, for example, one might say 'strong language, violence, sex' and the other 'strong language, sex, violence'. That would still count as a match. Also, because the BBFC are inconsistent with 'ands', some might have an 'and' linking the reasons and others won't).

Your Misname.

Another one of these 'times the Irish rated a film lower than the BBFC did' posts (on average when the two awards bodies disagree, the IFCO tend to rate higher).

Your Name, which has a cracking trailer and almost universal acclaim from everyone who's seen it, is bizarrely getting a very limited release in the UK. I have my ticket to see it on the 24th November, but had to settle for a slightly out-of-my-way Odeon venue, as all the central London ones were all booked up. Hopefully it will be worth it tho; I bloody love me some Anime.

Needless to say, I read the BBFC long insight as preparation for the film. That's a bit of a gamble as the long insights are laden with spoilers, but there you go. It's rated 12A over here for 'moderate language, sex references', in a classic case of a BBFC misnomer. 

The plot revolves around a small town girl living in a lonely world and a city boy exchanging bodies, Freaky Friday-style. From the report, it sounds like the main reason the film's a 12A is because the boy, in discovering he's in the body of a woman, touches his boobs.

Bit harsh to rate a film a 12A for that, given that would be a pretty natural response! I also don't think lingering on a girls' chest counts as a 'moderate sex reference', either, so major inaccuracy in its short insight, there. 

Glad to see that the Irish saw sense, and gave the film the PG it (sounds like it) deserves. Note how they also accurately classed the focus on a girls' chest as 'suggestive scenes'. That is pretty much all it is, not a sex reference. No need to make it sound seedier than it is.

Why are the BBFC so affronted by a bit of cleavage???

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I'm somewhat of a BBFC obsessive. All my other BBFC pieces are listed here.

Found Girl.

A couple of blurry / sub-par photos from the BFI London Film Festival!

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I was walking past Leicester Square on Wednesday after the disappointing The Girl on the Train and realised that all the commotion was due to the BFI film première starting!

My phone was, lamentably, on very low battery (biggest shortcoming of Samsung S4 goddamnit) and I was too far away to get good pictures, but here are the low-quality, grainy ones I was able to get!

 

Hi Draco! (sadly I didn't get to grab his hand like I did with his Harry Potter co-star five years ago!)

Jessica Oyelowo

The next few were me grappling desperately trying to get decent photos of Rosamund Pike with my phone's waning battery, all the way squealing 'ROSAMUND PIKE!!!' at the top of my voice.

This is from the next day, before my viewing of A United Kingdom: 

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And this was the Q&A with director Nicolas Pesce, after The Eyes of My Mother yesterday.

So yeah, I had an amazing time during the BFI Film festival! Love living in London. ♥♥♥♥♥

Hopefully next year, I'll a) see more than two films and b) have more battery on my phone to take better-quality photos ♥

Interesting BBFC Short Insights.

In case you thought I was done talking crap about the BBFC and Jonah Hill with my blog post on Saturday, you were quite mistaken, thank you very much.

Having the BBFC app installed on my phone means I can eat up commutes by entering my favourite film stars’ names into the search box and pedantically spot things that are amiss, such as:

I've never seen a U-rated film with strong language, just saying. Or just being a pedantic cnut. (It's not an 18-rated use of the c-word if you call yourself it).

A few other screenshots from the app I have sitting around on my phone feature short insight that was, for one reason or another, quite eye-watering:

Not everyday you see that in a line of insight!

The insight for Blue Velvet, which turns 30 this year, is a curious artefact because it shows how crucial it is to include an 'and' between the 'sex' and 'violence', else you'll get the first classification issue, something else altogether: sexual violence.

What's interesting about Blue Velvet's 18 certificate is that practically all the 18-rated content is due to Dennis Hopper's nightmarishly scary Frank Booth. He pillages, mutilates, rapes, and also, is the only character in the film to utter the f-word. And he says it a lot, especially when someone asks for an alcoholic beverage he doesn't agree with. (Spoiler alert: he's not a fan of this drink).

Although I despise this pretentious film, (it's in my bottom 10 of all-time), I think Hopper was absolutely magnificent as Frank Booth, giving an iconic performance as one of the most memorable movie villains of all time. 

I mean, you can see why I identify with him: one's a foul-mouthed, perverted psychopath.

The other's a figment of David Lynch's imagination.

Continuing with BBFC short insights of films in my bottom 10 of all time; this Bible-bashing movie be my second most despised film ever, second only to American Hustle. 

It was bloated and boring A F, and the BBFC aren't wrong with their short insight. It certainly does contain potentially dangerous behaviour: you could potentially fall asleep from boredom and never wake up as a result of watching this snorefest.

On the topic of 'potentially dangerous behaviour' as a classification issue, The Secret World of Alex Mack, which is a kid's show, getting a 15 might seem odd, especially as it has a GP (the olden version of the PG) from the MPAA. I haven't seen this show but given it's about a kid for kids, I'd imagine PG is correct, generally.

But the BBFC have one issue of contention which gets them extremely anxious and trigger-happy to up-rate, that doesn't seem to be shared with other viewing boards across the world, and that's the perilous practice of a child hiding in a tumble dryer, particularly if such an act isn't demonstrated to have negative consequences.

That's precisely why this show's a 15 (I only know this from reading around). Because Alex does exactly that in one of the episodes and the action is not only presented to be dangerous, but fun and whimsical. An impressionable kid watching this might draw the wrong conclusions from watching Alex do so and try it out from themselves.

On several of the BBFC podcasts, they've discussed how every year, some children crawl into tumble driers, their parents don't know they're in there, and the kid dies. It's not a high proportion of children, but still, a life is still a life, and as such, I completely empathise with the BBFC's justification for rating a kid's show with PG content 15. They're just being responsible. If only they exercised such responsibility when rating Sausage Party, isn't it.

There's a line between being being responsible and being a nanny-state, however. 18 for dangerous car stunts? Seems a bit harsh.

This is the extended insight for a movie called, Oliver, Stoned, which is an 18 purely for marijuana use.

This isn't just draconian but also inconsistent, given movies with some pretty graphic depictions of harder drugs have been passed 15 (off the top of my head, I'm thinking  Candy, Wild, War Dogs, Get Him to the Greek, but there's really loads of 15-rated titles with depictions of heroin or cocaine use).

It's only MJ in this movie and it got an 18! Evidently, the BBFC really don't like glamorisation of drugs, even soft ones.

This 18-rated film, a very good adaptation of my favourite novel, thoroughly earns its 18 certificate. The BBFC insight is detailed, bordering on spoilerish, though, no?

Another insight line that is detailed to the point of giving away the plot...

And again! With Nobody Knows and Cracks, I don't see why they couldn't have just used 'mature themes' in both instances.

Another short insight that is almost too prescriptive.

I'm not sure if this is more of a line of insight, or a value judgement about the quality of the film?! What one man may judge to be 'irresponsible behaviour' might seem like just good fun to a more immature individual like me.

As with Mr Bean's Holiday, this feels closer to a line you'd expect in a review rather than a description of what to expect in terms of content.

'Historical cigarette advertising', lol.

The last issue I'll talk about is a turn of phrase which, thanks to the BBFC's employment in short insights, I absolutely adore: 'emotional intensity'. I'm a fairly emotional person (I cried from beginning to end at Kubo and the Two Strings), so my default setting is 'mild emotional' intensity'...

.... although when I'm on the blob, this line is more accurate.

Not to be confused with Martin Scorsese's upcoming film, this is one extremely detailed and specific PG classification issue, eh?

'Drawings of explicit sex'. 😳

I started with a bit of BBFC bantz about one of my favourite actors, so, only fair I end with some banter about one of my least favourite actresses (if you can call her that).

This is at the Covent Garden Odeon, and suggests that some opportunist under-15 year old kids are trying to sneak in, or try their luck with fake IDs in order to see Suicide Squad.

They'd do well to pay heed to the BBFC rating for Suicide Squad, tbh. Film was traumatising.

Cara Delevingne's twerking still gives me nightmares.

Restaurant review: CREAMS CAFE (Orpington)

As part of Orpington's attempt to make itself more attractive to property buyers, the town is undergoing something of a revamp. It now has a bright, shiny new Odeon (super-handy for me as I have an Odeon Unlimited card!) as well as a whole array of recently-constructed restaurants and cafés. I decided to give the Creams Café my patronage one Saturday evening, pre-Bad Moms.

I've been to one Creams Café before, in Wembley, and in terms of quality of the dessert, I'd say the north-west and south-east London venues are comparable. You get plenty of bang for your buck at Creams Café - the bubblegum sundae pictured above was only £4.95, and in addition to being delectable, was more than even I could hope for; I wasn't able to finish it all. 

And it's not just bubblegum sundaes they do, there's a wide range of dishes offered on the menu, from waffles to sundaes, with every ice cream flavour you could possibly want. Multiple kinds of chocolate flavours, some with chips in, some without, fruit sorbets, etc. When trying to decide on a dish, I felt, quite literally, like a kid in a candy store.

So purely from a food and monetary point of view, Creams Café certainly suffices. Why anything less than an A-grade rating, then? Well, I'm sorry to report that the quality of the service was just not up to scratch. My friend ordered both mine and her choices, and for her dessert, they brought the wrong order to our table. 

What had happened was that when ordering, she had pointed to her choice on the menu, and the inattentive sales assistant had keyed in another choice. After taking the wrong order away, they insisted on seeing her receipt, which made us very anxious, because they were treating us like criminals for their mistake. They finally made the dessert she had originally ordered, which was 20p more than the dish they charged her for. My friend offered to foot the difference, but the manager said 'don't worry, it's on the house'. 

It's not really 'on the house' when she paid for 97% of it, and had been delayed in receiving it due to the sheer incompetence of the sales staff who couldn't be arsed to listen in the first place, is it? So stop pretending you're doing us a massive favour pal.

Creams Café do a bomb sweet treat. This I'm not refuting. But if you go to the one in Orpington, I'd just warn you keep your eyes open and check that what you ordered is what the teenagers who work there keyed in. They don't seem to have much in the way of Quality Control at this place; you'll have to do it instead.

Grade: B

Film review: SHALLOW GRAVE (Danny Boyle, 1994)

I saw this title at the Prince Charles Cinema as part of their Summer celebrating 35 mm film. In a luxurious cinema with plush velvet curtains, there couldn't be a better way for movie buffs to spend their evening. The schedule runs until August 20th, so make sure you check out the itinerary! 

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The lesser known of Danny Boyle's Scotland-set 90s collaborations with Ewan McGregor, Shallow Grave tells the story of three housemates, the mischievous duo of a doctor, Juliet (Kerry Fox) and a reporter, Alex (Ewan McGregor), and the more by-the-book accountant David (Christopher Eccleston, as un-Doctor Who'ish as you could possibly imagine). They recruit a fourth housemate who, overnight, is found dead from a drug OD. He also happens to have left behind a suitcase full of money, and the housemates decide to dispose of his body and keep the cash for themselves.

A Kafkaesque nightmare ensues as they find themselves interrogated by probing police, targeted by an unsavoury pair of henchmen who want to know where the money went, and, as a result, the paranoia and distrust between the three escalates. David, in particular, undergoes a character transformation in their precarious circumstances, changing from a meek white collar worker to a ruthless Machiavelli with a penchant for using his hammer.

The tension is wonderfully accentuated by a sparse but effective score from Simon Boswell, with discordant piano keys mirroring the audience's growing sense of discomfort. Yet, at the same time, Shallow Grave also offers levity; when arguing over who should cut up the corps, Alex says to Juliet, 'you're a doctor, you kill people everyday!'.

As the three leads find themselves in increasingly dire straits, the bond between them is stretched thinner and thinner, which potentiates David's magnetic transition from mouse into man. McGregor and Fox are very good, but Eccleston is brilliant, those owl-like eyes peering up from his tortoiseshell glasses throughout, in a sinister, wicked, yet utterly enjoyable morality tale about dishonour among thieves. 

Film review: WHEN MARNIE WAS THERE (Hiromasa Yonebayashi, 2014)

Remember when I complained about how due to the restricted choice of films screened at Cineworld cinemas, despite watching 42 films on the Unlimited card last year, I saw a meagre 2 foreign films? Well, I’ve already seen half that number of foreign movies on my Odeon Limitless card, at Panton Street Odeon, where I saw When Marnie Was There.

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Ever since she was young, 12-year-old Anna Sasaki has been an outsider. She doesn’t fit in with the children in her year at school, feels disconnected from her foster parents and her social awkwardness is compounded by a deleterious breathing problem, which rears its head when she feels upset or stressed.

Deciding the key to Anna’s breathing attacks, and hence, her timidity, is clean air, her foster mother Yoriko (whom Anna refers to as ‘Auntie’) sends her to spend the summer with Yoriko’s relatives, in a coastal town. A few days after arrival, Anna spots a blonde girl in the window of a seemingly deserted mansion across the shore. The enigmatic girl introduces herself as Marnie, and a bond is immediately formed between the two girls.

Based on British author Joan G. Robinson’s novel of the same title, writers Masashi Andō, Keiko Niwa and Hiromasa Yonebayashi altered the location in the original story from Norfolk to the Japanese town Hokkaido. Graciously, nothing has been lost in translation. The story is simple, but told cleanly and elegantly, and the themes of bereavement and isolation, tackled with immense sensitivity.

As she embarks on her personal journey, audience members will recognise elements of themselves in the protagonist Anna, who is crippled with self-doubt, feeling she had never been loved due to her parents and grandparents having died when she was a baby. But behind those fragile Anime eyes, still waters run deep. She’s surprisingly intense for her age. The question of whether or not Marnie truly exists, or is just a figment of Anna’s imagination is soon broached. But you get so lost in the budding friendship between the two girls that it is only of secondary importance.

From the outside, Marnie seems to have an enviable life, living in a huge house with extravagant parties thrown by her parents. But inwardly, the two girls are just as alone and unhappy as each other. It is because of this similarity that Anna lets down her walls around Marnie, and we come to learn why it is that she feels so badly about herself. It is sad that a 12-year-old could feel so bad about themselves, but this just makes her blossoming friendship with Marnie ever the more rewarding. Throughout When Marnie Was There, the two characters embrace quite a few times, and it is refreshing that a film can capture the innocence behind such a sweet act.

As with all Studio Ghibli films, the film is exquisitely rendered. One shot, which taps into audience’s doubt of whether Marnie is real or of Anna is Fight Clubing us, is cleverly done without being so over-stylistic as to detract from the story. Unlike recent Disney and Pixar movies, which, for better or for worse, always feature a message, When Marnie Was There concerns itself with straightforward, unpretentious storytelling. The film is entirely about Anna, Marnie and their connection, and if anything about their relationship spoke to me, it was in an organic way, rather than feeling corny or heavy-handed. And finally, although it is by all intents and purposes a harmless U-rated film, it is not just the title that evokes memories of Hitchcock: there is a distinctly suspenseful undertone running throughout.

When Marnie Was There doesn’t reach the imaginative, pulse-racing highs of Spirited Away or the heart-shattering pathos of Grave of the Fireflies, but it is a delightful experience all the same, one which doesn't allow itself to get bogged down in the sadness to celebrate some of the richnesses of life: friendship, family and the power of memories. The hand-drawn animation is beautiful; I lost count of the number of beautiful visuals in it. At the film’s big reveal, I sobbed with abandon. Crying can be cathartic sometimes!

When Marnie Was There is said to be Studio Ghibli’s final film, although whether this is true proves to be seen. I sincerely hope that’s not the case: no-one tells delivers moving story like Studio Ghibli.

8/10