Creation (2009, Jon Amiel)

Did Darwin kill God? This seems to be a stupid question. Maybe you have to be a fundamentalist to raise such a question at all. Very stubborn creationists might believe that everything their translation (!!) of the Bible says, is undiluted word of God. They will also think that the Bible, including the accounts of creation are meant to be a cosmological manual. How would a person 4000 years ago have been able to grasp the idea of Big Bang? No, Darwin did not kill God. He explained how sapiens came into existence. Darwin gave an account on natural selection and the mechanisms of evolution. And thus he killed the idea that thw first chapters of Genesis can be interpreted as a part of natural history.
In this film Thomas Huxley says: "The Almighty can no longer claim to have authored every species in under a week. You've killed God, sir!" Of course this statement is rubbish. Those sentences are completely unrelated. Thomas Huxley appears like the modern fanatic Richard Dawkins. How can it be so difficult to grasp that? Logic for primers?
This is a kind of biopic, but I have been told that it mixes facts and fiction. This is not the way to make biopics. Either you enlighten the world or you fool it. If you are a specialist, you may know what is which, but as general audience you will be in the wild.
One focus of this movie is Annie Darwin, Charles Darwin's daughter. In this film he procrastinates the publication of his findings because of temporary madness after the death of his daughter. The sequences with visions of the child and flashbacks fill a considerable amount of time. Probably they are to show us that Darwin was a human beings with doubts and deficiencies. This could have been achieved in a les sentimental way. Sometimes you think that science made Darwin mad. (Sometimes I thought that this film was made by a creationist.)
The film is disappointing as a dramatic account on Darwin's life. If it is about a fictional character called Darwin, you will find a sentimentalized account of a man who at last learns to live with his demons. You might also find the effects of sexual oppression. You will also find brilliant acting, but this is not enough to save a failed script. Too many thumbs down.
5/10

Notes on a Scandal (2006, Richard Eyre)

It is always scandalous when a teacher starts a relationship with a pupil. This might have worked in ancient Greece, but it is definitely not a part of the present curriculum. In this film Sheba (Cate Blanchett) starts a sexual relationship with 15-year-old boy, clearly underage thus. However, in these films the younger part is always the victim. We don't see, meaning we are not interested, how this encounter affected the boy.  Actually it was the boy who started to seduce the teacher. Why did he do that? Was it an important step in his development? Did he do it to be able to blackmail his teacher? We never know. Of course there is also Sheba's side. She has an older husband and a son who needs special care. It seems that Sheba has a special lust for life and that her needs are not met at home. So her need for "young meat" could be a win-win situation, but, of course, in the world as it is she can only lose. This could hardly be a surprise for Sheba.
Barbara (Judy Dench) is in every aspect the opposite of Sheba. Living alone, a spinster. She is respected, but even more feared. We hear Barbara comment on the mental abilities of the school's students and we learn her as a cynic. Cynics often present a "hard skull", because they are not able to maintain the social contacts they want and need. Barbara's emotional target are younger women. Of course sentiments to the same sex are not really the thing in a school. The hetero-normative context thinks, that pupils might get smitten with the same desire. So Barbara is very secretive about her inclination. But when Barbara finds out about Sheba's secret affair with the boy, she sees a chance to blackmail her mentally. She almost forces her friendship on Sheba. But she overplays her card and at last loses everything. Her self-esteem lost touch with reality.
7/10

God's Own Country (2017, Francis Lee)

Love in the Time of Brexit
God's Own Country is a rather bleak and rough landscape. So are the people living there. Few words and restraint to display feelings. John Saxby (Josh O'Connor)  is one of them. He likes to binge drink. Actually the film starts with him vomiting after another trip to the city. John lives with his grandmother (Gemma Jones) and his father (Ian Hart). Father had a stroke and is not a help. Therefore they look for a farmhelp for the lambing season and get Gheorghe from Romania.
Jack has difficulty to express feelings, even to admit that he has any. Booze in the pub and casual sex with with men is enough for him.
Farmhand Gheorghe is emotionally more advanced than Jack. He fast decodes Jack's behaviour. With Gheorghe Jack learns for the first time that there is a difference between having sex and making love. Feelings sprout in him and he starts to become a more responsible person. However, to become completely mature, he needs to experience loss. Having realized that he nothing on his own, he starts to take responsiblity for the farm and his own life. (I wish them luck. It won't be easy for the two men to run a farm in God's Own Country.)
This film has often been compared to Brokeback Mountain, which might be true up to a certain point, but here we have a blunt agricultural realism that at times was too much for my sensitive urban mind. Also the intimacy between the two men is not as soft brushed as Brokeback Mountain. It's more in the tradition of British social realism. The sky has surprisngly many shades of grey, the sun is a rare sight, yet they describe it as beautiful.
The script doesn't discuss the same-sex issue. This makes it a strong script.Instead there is focus on the coming of age aspect, avoiding trite treatment of a plot that has been told before.
9/10

In Bruges (2008, Martin McDonagh)

So, I am not forgetting my Blog; only forgetting which films I have seen and forgetting t write about them some minor notes. - So, as long as I write some trivial thoughts about nothing, nothing is going to happen. But if I wrote something controversial, some data spider or crawler might pick it up and publish it. Spiders don't leave comments, but they count nevertheless as page views.
So In Bruges -- place of Die tote Stadt, Bruges la morte. That's the place where to send two hired killers, so that they can escape the police. Who would go to Bruges without outer pressure?
Bruges is a strange place indeed with a dwarf as star in a dreamlike movie production, local drug dealers who occasionally rob tourists and a Russian arms supplier. And of course the moral code of hired killers never to harm a child.
All is mixed up into a blend of comedy and noir crime drana. The film lives also by convincing performances by Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson.
This is for those who also like literature; the dialogue is brilliant and the plot has several twists and turns that give additional spice.
Started this entry several weeks ago and left it as draft -- so much to do, so much still to watch. At leasr I will remember now that I watched this some time ago.
8/10

Naked (1993, Mike Leigh)

O my orphaned blog. November went by surprisingly fast and I am thankful for that. Of course I saw films, many, but I would have liked to see even more. But time and energy are limited.
So where to start my backlog? I think, today I want to write about Naked. I saw this already some time ago and I am re-viewing it now.
Everybody says that this is an eminent film. But it's also extremely hard to watch. There is bleak all around and misery. The intellectuals say it is a fascinating portrait of British post-Thatcher society. Anything can reflect that society. even a film like Lake Eden can be made a political movie.
How does Naked work as a movie? How do I feel about it out of the context of the beginning of the 90s in the last century?
First of all, the acting is quite superb. Johnny is a thoroughly unsympathetic character, verbose and abusive, a rapist - and a character who would have become a loser even without Thatcher.
To me this is a period movie; maybe it had a certain impact when it was published, but what  does it have to say now, after 22 years. Most of al we learn, that some people then were bastards without future. So what?
4/10

Misery, Misery, Misery

The yuppie of the set

More misery

The yuppie is a bit like British Psycho

Let's have a look at a self-contented bastard

Still more misery

Evenmore misery

Limping misery