Ammonite

You know I’m a huge advocate for good wlw films, sadly this isn’t one of them. Both Winslet and Ronan aren’t very convincing. There’s only two or three short scenes where Kate’s character can be seen going through internal turmoil connected with hiding her sexuality, which is why I’m giving this 5/10 stars. Do yourself a favour and rewatch Disobedience instead.

5/10

Honest Thief

Kate Walsh finally getting her second break in a film with a worldwide cinema release and starring opposite Liam Neeson makes me so happy.

7/10

Pixie

Olivia Cooke has been in some awesome movies since her time on Bates Motel and this is probably the weakest one, but it’s still quite enjoyable.

6/10

A Year of The Quiet Sun

It’s sad to think that younger generations of cinema goers have forgotten about Krzysztof Zanussi. When you hear about Polish directors, only three surnames are usually mentioned, Andrzej Wajda, Krzysztof Kieslowski and Roman Polanski. I remember watching special features on my The Double Life of Veronique DVD and there Kieslowski acknowledges how much he’d learned from Zanussi. A Year of the Quiet Sun is leaving Netflix tomorrow, along with The Spiral. Go see them.

7.5/10

I’m Thinking of Ending Things

And she’s off. The US has officially acquired Jessie Buckley. We won’t be seeing her in many British productions now. She’s officially a star. Every time she repeats she’s thinking of ending things I’m taken back to my teen years. It’s a great psychological drama with beautiful, relatable monologues. Take a look at a few of them.

‘I’m thinking of ending things. Once this thought arrives, it stays. IIt sticks, it lingers, it dominates. There’s not much I can do about it, trust me. It doesn’t go away. It’s there whether I like it or not. It’s there when I eat, when I go to bed. It’s there when I sleep. It’s there when I wake up. It’s always there. Always. I haven’t been thinking about it for long. The idea’s new. But it feels old at the same time. When did it start? What if this thought wasn’t conceived by me, but planted in my mind, pre-developed? Is an spoken idea unoriginal? Maybe I’ve actually known all along. Maybe this is how it was always going to end. Jake once said, “Sometimes the thought is closer to the truth, to reality, than an action. You can say anything, you can do anything, but you can’t fake a thought.’

‘Other animals live in the present. Humans cannot, so they invented hope.’

‘It’s tragic how few people possess their souls before they die. Nothing is more rare in any man, says Emerson, than an act of his own. And it’s quite true. Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. That’s an Oscar Wilde quote.’

‘Coming home is terrible whether the dogs lick your face or not; whether you have a wife or just a wife-shaped loneliness waiting for you. Coming home is terribly lonely, so that you think of the oppressive barometric pressure back where you have just come from with fondness, because everything’s worse once you’re home. You think of the vermin clinging to the grass stalks, long hours on the road, roadside assistance and ice creams, and the peculiar shapes of certain clouds and silences with longing because you did not want to return. Coming home is just awful. And the home-style silences and clouds contribute to nothing but the general malaise. Clouds, such as they are, are in fact suspect, and made from a different material than those you left behind. You yourself were cut from a different cloudy cloth, returned, remaindered, ill-met by moonlight, unhappy to be back, slack in all the wrong spots, seamy suit of clothes dishrag-ratty, worn. You return home moon-landed, foreign; the Earth’s gravitational pull an effort now redoubled, dragging your shoelaces loose and your shoulders etching deeper the stanza of worry on your forehead. You return home deepened, a parched well linked to tomorrow by a frail strand of… Anyway… You sigh into the onslaught of identical days. One might as well, at a time… Well… Anyway… You’re back. The sun goes up and down like a tired whore, the weather immobile like a broken limb while you just keep getting older. Nothing moves but the shifting tides of salt in your body. Your vision blears. You carry your weather with you, the big blue whale, a skeletal darkness. You come back with X-ray vision. Your eyes have become a hunger. You come home with your mutant gifts to a house of bone. Everything you see now, all of it: bone.’

‘It’s hard to describe people. It was so long ago, I barely remember. I mean… We never even talked, is the truth. I’m not even sure I registered him. There’s a lot of people. I was there with my girlfriend… We were celebrating our anniversary, stopped in for a drink, and then this guy kept looking at me. It’s a nuisance. The occupational hazard of… of being a female. You can’t even go for a drink. Always being looked at. He was a creeper! You know? And I remember thinking, I wish my boyfriend was here. Which is… That’s sort of sad, that being a woman, the only way a guy leaves you alone is if you’re with another guy. Like, if… like… like you’ve been claimed. Like you’re property, even then. Anyway, I can’t… I can’t remember what he looks like. Why would I? Nothing happened. Maybe it was just… I think it was just… Just one of thousands of such non-interactions in my life. It’s like asking me to describe a mosquito that bit me on an evening 40 years ago. Well, you haven’t seen anyone fitting that description, have you?’

‘Everything wants to live, Jake. Viruses are just one more example of everything. Even fake, crappy movie ideas want to live. Like, they grow in your brain, replacing real ideas. That’s what makes them dangerous.’

8/10

Enola Holmes

A few scenes were shot at Hatfield House (where The Favourite was filmed among many others), which is even prettier in person. I watched this as part of a uni social thing. We were supposed to watch The Greatest Showman, which I’ve seen, so I guess it worked out for the best? The film could have used more Helena Bonham Carter though. I still cannot believe how much Millie Bobby Brown looks like a teenage Natalie Portman. It surely helped her career.

6/10

The Ground Beneath My Feet

I loved the fact that these two successful women had to hide their relationship. If this was an American film they wouldn’t be hiding, but let’s not forget not everyone is or can be out.

7/10

Valley of Love

There are eight Isabelle Huppert films on Mubi right now and I’m ashamed to say I haven’t seen any of them, so I’m fixing that now. I’ve already missed two, just because I assumed everything they show on Mubi goes into the Mubi Library. I was proven wrong.

7/10

Gay USA

I really needed this today. At the beginning of the film one 70 yr old lady said that when she was young there were no gays and she doesn’t understand where did they all come from. A used to say the exact same hurtful thing regularly, which is why I’m still in the closet. There is another film by the same director that I also watched on Mubi called Buddies. It’s the first film about AIDS and it’s equally wonderful.

‘I can’t go on being miserable all my life, so I left my husband. I loved my husband, but I wasn’t in love with him.’

‘Ok, I’m gay, so what?’

8/10