Last movie watched...

[Tiplodocus]

To be fair to Hollywood, a lot of Britain is happy to rewrite this bit of history.

[Professor Bear]

I forgot to say "more like Shitest Hour".

I have failed you all.

[Smith]

Im kinda afraid to comment it here,but here it goes...Michael Collins.A good biopic.Neeson delivers a great performance,but Rickman steals the show whenever he shows up.And you have to give the movie credit for not even pretending to be objective.

[Tiplodocus]

I forgot to say "more like Shitest Hour".

I have failed you all.

I'd have gone for DARKEST SHITE myself.

Ps: and it was Cosh who came up with it.

[Keef Monkey]

Colossal - Brilliant. Not at all the screwball wacky comedy that the trailers marketed it as, which might be why it has a pretty low rating on Prime Video (must be pulling in people looking for a different experience entirely). It's occasionally quite funny for sure, and the big conceptual hook seems tailor-made for gags, but it uses the big monster idea as a way to explore different, darker themes entirely, and in a really powerful way.

Totally took me by surprise, fantastic.

[TordelBack]

And you have to give the movie credit for not even pretending to be objective.

Or historically accurate in even the vaguest of ways.  At least William Wallace was actually executed in 1305, unlike (the Stephen Rea character) Ned Broy, who died in 1972 as a retired Garda commissioner and former President of the Olympic Council, and thus probably wasn't tortured and killed in 1920, after burning files  in Dublin Castle, a place he'd never worked.  Ditto Harry Boland (Adian Quinn) , who was wounded at a hotel in Skerries and died in hospital several days later, and not while running away in a suspiciously Harry Lime-esque shootout in a Dublin sewer.

(Nor was Collins 'Minister for Intelligence' (he was Finance), nor was he head of the Treaty delegation, nor was the 1916 surrender outside the GPO etc etc etc).

Wind that Shakes the Barley remains by far the better film of these events, even if it has it own biases to parade, at least it tries to clothe them in facts.

[manwithnoname]

A terrible politician who couldn't even win an election in the UK against bolsheviks mere months after winning WW2, Winston Churchill is fetishised uncritically in Darkest Hour, and with almost supernatural synchronicity, I checked Twitter after seeing the film and and some Irish guy was doing a poll about what people thought of Winston Churchill, and obviously the usual minor incidents blown up out of all proportions were being tossed about, like his founding the Black And Tans, his Indian genocide, deploying tanks against Scottish strikers, "I hate Indians they are a beastly people with a beastly religion", the Bengal famine being the fault of Indians for "breeding like rabbits", his military campaign against Afghan civilians including women and children, his targeting civilians during the war, his internment and rape and torture and murder of Kenyans - you know, the usual Trot whataboutery and fake news, but Darkest Hour is having none of that, it shows the real Churchill: man of the people, salt of the Earth, misunderstood by his own party who wanted to kowtow to the Nazis and undermined by socialists of the Labour Party, including the literally frothing-at-the-mouth Atlee.
Darkest Hour is basically 2 hours of Churchill being wanked off in front of you in an embarrassingly unironic way to the point that even if you know absolutely nothing of what Churchill did to non-English subjects of the British Empire - especially the ones that come in darker hues - this is borderline parody stuff, the first few minutes alone making me think of Churchill: The Hollywood Years, only this is arguably funnier as long as you never remind yourself it's supposed to be taken seriously.

Would you have preferred a nicer war-time PM, but ended up losing the war?

[manwithnoname]

Im kinda afraid to comment it here,but here it goes...Michael Collins.A good biopic.Neeson delivers a great performance,but Rickman steals the show whenever he shows up.And you have to give the movie credit for not even pretending to be objective.

Hmmm, I haven't seen Michael Collins because I have zero interest in the subject matter, beyond the historical facts, but it would have to go some to get anywhere near the (surely undisputed?) champion of totally made-up historical bollocks, "Braveheart".

A film so far removed from "things that actually happened" it managed to provide Stewart Lee with about 20 minutes of top quality material.

[JamesC]

A terrible politician who couldn't even win an election in the UK against bolsheviks mere months after winning WW2, Winston Churchill is fetishised uncritically in Darkest Hour, and with almost supernatural synchronicity, I checked Twitter after seeing the film and and some Irish guy was doing a poll about what people thought of Winston Churchill, and obviously the usual minor incidents blown up out of all proportions were being tossed about, like his founding the Black And Tans, his Indian genocide, deploying tanks against Scottish strikers, "I hate Indians they are a beastly people with a beastly religion", the Bengal famine being the fault of Indians for "breeding like rabbits", his military campaign against Afghan civilians including women and children, his targeting civilians during the war, his internment and rape and torture and murder of Kenyans - you know, the usual Trot whataboutery and fake news, but Darkest Hour is having none of that, it shows the real Churchill: man of the people, salt of the Earth, misunderstood by his own party who wanted to kowtow to the Nazis and undermined by socialists of the Labour Party, including the literally frothing-at-the-mouth Atlee.
Darkest Hour is basically 2 hours of Churchill being wanked off in front of you in an embarrassingly unironic way to the point that even if you know absolutely nothing of what Churchill did to non-English subjects of the British Empire - especially the ones that come in darker hues - this is borderline parody stuff, the first few minutes alone making me think of Churchill: The Hollywood Years, only this is arguably funnier as long as you never remind yourself it's supposed to be taken seriously.

Would you have preferred a nicer war-time PM, but ended up losing the war?

^^^Achtung! - Ridiculous flame-bait question - 

[manwithnoname]

A terrible politician who couldn't even win an election in the UK against bolsheviks mere months after winning WW2, Winston Churchill is fetishised uncritically in Darkest Hour, and with almost supernatural synchronicity, I checked Twitter after seeing the film and and some Irish guy was doing a poll about what people thought of Winston Churchill, and obviously the usual minor incidents blown up out of all proportions were being tossed about, like his founding the Black And Tans, his Indian genocide, deploying tanks against Scottish strikers, "I hate Indians they are a beastly people with a beastly religion", the Bengal famine being the fault of Indians for "breeding like rabbits", his military campaign against Afghan civilians including women and children, his targeting civilians during the war, his internment and rape and torture and murder of Kenyans - you know, the usual Trot whataboutery and fake news, but Darkest Hour is having none of that, it shows the real Churchill: man of the people, salt of the Earth, misunderstood by his own party who wanted to kowtow to the Nazis and undermined by socialists of the Labour Party, including the literally frothing-at-the-mouth Atlee.
Darkest Hour is basically 2 hours of Churchill being wanked off in front of you in an embarrassingly unironic way to the point that even if you know absolutely nothing of what Churchill did to non-English subjects of the British Empire - especially the ones that come in darker hues - this is borderline parody stuff, the first few minutes alone making me think of Churchill: The Hollywood Years, only this is arguably funnier as long as you never remind yourself it's supposed to be taken seriously.

Would you have preferred a nicer war-time PM, but ended up losing the war?

^^^Achtung! - Ridiculous flame-bait question - 

"It would have been a price worth paying"

[NapalmKev]

Bhaag Milkha Bhaag!

The story of Indian Olympic runner, Milkha Singh. I'm not really into biopics of Sports personalties and have very little interest in sports in general but I enjoyed this. There's a scene where [spoiler]Milkha is running on the track and his coach is shouting "Bhaag" (Run): cue flashback to the past and a Village under attack, and a young Milkha running for his life. Then we return to the present and the bandages are falling from his feet as he races to the win.[/spoiler] This probably sounds like a massive wedge of cheddar but it was actually quite a touching moment. Worth a watch!


Pixels

Pig Shit more like! Jokeless Turdfest about aliens attacking Earth using 1980's computer game sprites. Less funny than Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, which isn't even a comedy!


Cheers

[TordelBack]

Would you have preferred a nicer war-time PM, but ended up losing the war?

^^^Achtung! - Ridiculous flame-bait question - 

The 'useful monster' defense has a lot of merit, but I think most of us who exist outside the UK's group-think hegemony would just be happier if Churchill was viewed with any kind of nuance at all, and that just maybe the experiences of non-English non-white people might be worth including somewhere in the non-stop hagiography .  It is possible to acknowledge, even revere, his critical contribution to defeating the embodiment of evil, and also view him as a prime example of blinkered imperialist thug. (Of course many narratives start from the position that the Empire was a universally good thing, selflessly bringing enlightenment and democracy to the fuzzy wuzzies and muck savages, so there is quite a hill to climb there).

[manwithnoname]

Bhaag Milkha Bhaag!

The story of Indian Olympic runner, Milkha Singh. I'm not really into biopics of Sports personalties and have very little interest in sports in general but I enjoyed this. There's a scene where [spoiler]Milkha is running on the track and his coach is shouting "Bhaag" (Run): cue flashback to the past and a Village under attack, and a young Milkjha running for his life. Then we return to the present and the bandages are falling from his feet as he races to the win.[/spoiler] This probably sounds like a massive wedge of cheddar but it was actually quite a touching moment. Worth a watch!


Pixels

Pig Shit more like! Jokeless Turdfest about aliens attacking Earth using 1980's computer game sprites. Less funny than Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, which isn't even a comedy!


Cheers

Pixels was on telly at the weekend, so I watched it for 15 minutes or so, at least until Dinklage came on.

I quite liked his dwarf Billy Mitchell impression, but not enough to continue watching.

A perfect example of a totally awful, creatively bankrupt piece of shite, machine-tooled to appeal to less discerning foreign audiences such as China, and rightly destroyed by domestic critics, and largely ignored by domestic audiences.

[manwithnoname]

Would you have preferred a nicer war-time PM, but ended up losing the war?

^^^Achtung! - Ridiculous flame-bait question - 

The 'useful monster' defense has a lot of merit, but I think most of us who exist outside the UK's group-think hegemony would just be happier if Churchill was viewed with any kind of nuance at all, and that just maybe the experiences of non-English non-white people might be worth including somewhere in the non-stop hagiography .  It is possible to acknowledge, even revere, his critical contribution to defeating the embodiment of evil, and also view him as a prime example of blinkered imperialist thug. (Of course many narratives start from the position that the Empire was a universally good thing, selflessly bringing enlightenment and democracy to the fuzzy wuzzies and muck savages, so there is quite a hill to climb there).

The Darkest Hour is a film about Churchill during a specific time period in World War 2, so it was probably rather hard - and also fucking pointless - to shoe-horn any kind of "blinkered imperialist thug" messages, or hand-wringing "But hey, just wait a minute, man" narrative about the British Empire into the film.

And, happily, they didn't.

[Smith]

@Tordel Maybe its not much of a defence,but its a movie,not a documentary.Some things were changed for the sake of drama.And as you said,some characters were fused.
But I wouldnt quite say its worst then Braveheart in that regard.