Well a lot more streaming has been consumed over the past week or so. I had intended to get out more but rail engineering works and then flooding/trees /landslides on tracks meant I gave up my intended trips into London. And I still haven’t managed to get tickets for Paul Mescal in Streetcar at The Almeida. So, instead I have found myself subscribing to two more streaming services (BFI and MUBI - both trials at the moment but I am terrible at cancelling subscriptions).
Little Joe
Strangely gripping slow burn sci-fi thriller with hints of Day of the Triffids. Looks great, all red and green colours, a scratchy, eerie soundtrack and sense of something looming. With Ben Whishaw, Emily Beecham, Kerry Fox and Kit Connor, Little Joe is a genetically engineered plant named after its creator’s son, and designed to respond to human care. As the adolescent human son is increasingly left to his own devices, the plant baby, a potential cuckoo in the nest, is given all it needs to thrive, giving us an opportunity to think about relationships between parents and children, adolescence and paranoia, as well as a little nudge towards the ethics of genetic engineering - is it fair to take away a living being’s ability to reproduce naturally, and how might it get around that problem?
Parallel Mothers
A Pedro Almodóvarmovie, so of course starring Penelope Cruz, this time as one of two single mothers who meet in a maternity ward, one older, one younger but they form a friendship. This turns out to be a much closer relationship than either anticipate, and there is a family melodrama here, particularly for the first half of the movie, but intertwined is a story about the history of the Spanish Civil War, what happens when you hide or lie about the past, and the risks and benefits of uncovering and facing your history. I enjoyed the history strand a little bit more than the family drama, but they were both well done, and I particularly liked the way it took us in some different and much darker directions than is usual for this sort of film. It reminded me of an interesting conversation we had with a tour guide in Barcelona a couple of years ago. Nobody else turned up for the English speaking tour so we had him to ourselves and it was sad but fascinating listening to him explain that in his own family nobody talked about the war for fear of opening up old wounds. Worth putting on the watchlist if you haven't already,.
Decision to Leave
This was a detour when I signed up for MUBI, intending to watch Aftersun again . I did that too by the way but I ended up watching this first. It's a stylish looking thing, with a dark slant to the relationships that detective Hae-jun has with his wife and increasing obsession with Seo-rae, a recent widow and potential murder suspect. It took me a while to get engaged and I think that might be because at first I thought it was going to be a standard detective/buddy thriller, but by about a third of the way in I was hooked. Very Rear Window-ish, the weird and wonderful framing of the shots was a bit disorientating at first, but it kept me on edge, and the last 15 minutes or so as we hurtled towards the dénouement was very tense and moving. It looked gorgeous too, with mountains, forests and then seascapes. I'd be amazed if it didn't win at least a few awards.
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