The 21st Century Film

craner

craner

Beast of Burden
WashYourHands said:
neorealism? to some extent, aye ah but …. deleted

on a munch break and trying to think through Grim Britannia themed selections without the thread converging on ‘Britain is Grim’, hence crime, insipidity, dross, wands and bonnets

Human Traffic, ‘99 but jfc could it get any worse, a clear sign of things to come
Sexy Beast, you move to Spain to get away from the grime, soot and patina but Britannia comes calling
Snatch
Essex Boys
Gangster No 1
Bridget Jones’s Diary
Last Orders
Bend it Like Beckham
Triads, Yardies and Onion Bhajees, did no-one look at the title and think “wait a sec, we have a problem”
Mike Bassett: England Manager
Churchill: The Hollywood Years
28 Days Later
King Arthur
Layer Cake
24 Hour Party People
Dirty Pretty Things
Hot Fuzz, fuck off Simon Pegg you utter cunt
Dog Soldiers
Harry fuckin Potter Everything
Johnny English
Love Actually, how did Alan Rickman aka Hans Gruber sign up to this Christmas soaked bile?
Dead Man’s Shoes
This is England
A Good Year
Vera Drake
Kevin and Perry Go Large
The League of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse
Basic Instinct 2, lol
The Queen
Revolver
Wimbledon
A Good Year, nightmare garbage but France sells itself
Rise of the Footsoldier, technically a documentary about how not to order pizza
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
Under the Skin, okay but a heads up about the perils of dogging in Glasgow’s east end
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - quadruple distilled excrement and possibly the worst film of all time (look, sometimes you call on a friend and they’re mid divorce trying to “show willing” with partner present so you have to play wing man for an hour)

Didn’t have time to explore further but you get the drift - Britwank with Sexy Beast one of the few worth going near, maybe add Dead Man’s Shoes and Under the Skin too
Click to expand...

This could be a category called British Kitsch.

The King's Speech and Atonement fit into this too. Strangely exportable.
 
WashYourHands

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
craner said:
This could be a category called Britkitsch
Click to expand...

A lament of a kind too compared, say, to your o.p or the infinitude of talents within the Powell and Pressb range (v different era) or even Nic Roeg who was never less than enthralling with editing, illustrating Cammell as an imp in Roeg’s shadow

version said:
Therapeutic Horror

Basically any of the recent wave where the real monster's grief or trauma or whatever. Pop psychology wearing a bed sheet.
Click to expand...

Masses of it, almost too many to list. A Dark Song has admirers through to Hereditary, just add a twist of dissociation or folkloric menhirs or nut allergies

What’s intriguing was how S Meadows went right off the boil with film, post-therapy, or at least seemed to choose television instead. The Virtues was as solid a depiction of contrition as anything but the coin clippers with horned gods in woods? Get tae fuck, not to tangent. Tbf Dead Man’s Shoes is 20 years old this year and still wallops. You Were Never Really Here and Waltz With Bashir made unique arcs with traumatic dissociation - no bed sheets or Gaspar Noe required - while Gozu in 2003 simply smashes through your screen (need to rewatch)

Commercial slop filtering all the heft and delicacy out of productions is a given but in Britain we can’t seem to make mid-range garbage and even fail at adequate. Ben Wheatley’s slide from mid/middling to abject despair, Jenkin doing woohoo folk snore horror, don’t think Strickland ever had any chops so cue lesbians into piss, I mean where’s the ambition gone?

To counter, Bait is a personal favourite because of its uniquely creaky, damp harboured, Brexity/galley-sinked play on shifting coastal lives. Loved the sound overdubbing, dislocating you at subtle levels. Not really comparable to much, more its own groove as an outlier
 
WashYourHands

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
Embrace of the Serpent’s depiction of inter generational laments, monstrous pasts and presents bleeding into one another, b&w, zero green until the finale - societal and environmental collapse as art-horror

couldn’t compare to Herzog as it surpasses his jungle hellscapes and not pulp apocalypse like The Road either
 
sus

sus

Moderator
Phantom Thread, Mulholland Drive, Skin I Live In, New World, Apocalypto, and Punch Drunk Love are my real best of 00s/10s films FWIW

Tho Attack of Clones is indeed fabulous and important and I am proud to be associated with its defense
 
linebaugh

linebaugh

Well-known member
craner said:
In what way?
Click to expand...
Superhero movies stopped being ‘dark and gritty’ and became light and ironic right after the Nolan Batman movies.

the social network is told like it’s a movie about a guy who invented lightbulbs or something. that lined up with the general public’s view of the internet at the time but very soon after I think it was realized it was something else and choosing to do an internet movie the way it’s done in social network even just 5 years later I think would have been received as quaint and naive
 
linebaugh

linebaugh

Well-known member
Also the biopic doesn’t really exist in that way anymore. Now the move is to make biopics technically flashy in a sort of experimental way- Oppenheimer, Elvis, blonde, that Leonard Bernstein one, though this doesn’t exactly apply to my point that it would make the social network look dated not long after the aughts
 
sus

sus

Moderator
linebaugh said:
The fact that the millennial identity/relatability thing has largely avoided films despite being so huge in everything else is its own conversation probably
Click to expand...
It's because all the Netflix Originals seized that niche instead. If you want a political sermon preaching romantic values of selfexpression masquerading as a film
 
craner

craner

Beast of Burden
I guess the TV/film separation is needless given the high production values of TV shows these days. Succession could easily fit in alongside the Business movies, Big Little Lies with the neo-neonoirs, Downton Abbey is a giant of British Kitsch, Squid Game and Three Body Problem are New Dystopias, etc.
 
Clinamenic

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
I'd like to hear Craner's take on Hundreds of Beavers. I just rewatched it a couple days ago, after having first seen it two weeks ago.

 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I never would cos I understand that beneath their bravado they're the softest most love hungry of people
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top