The Cinephile’s Lounge: Week 17

Hey everyone! I’m pretty tired after this long, irregular week and could use a red wine to cool down, and where better than in a beautiful cinema?

Let’s go to the UK this week.

This is The Rex Cinema in Berkhamsted, UK. Quite fancy, no? Sets the mood, perfectly. I can see the refined cinephiles we are sipping our wines (or Cosmopolitans) right there.

I hope everyone’s had a very pleasant Easter? My partner had been gone on a business trip the week before, and he got back on Easter – and had the week after off, too! It’s been a bit hectic here, for us. Since we moved to Australia in January, finally got our furniture in late March, we hadn’t really had the time to really unpack stuff and organize the house. We still had a room full of unpacked boxes and the most random things were in the most random places. So the whole week was about organizing the house and we really got quite far – we finally got rid of most of the boxes! It feels so much better when the house is a bit more tidy.

Since the last lounge, I’ve watched a whole bunch of movies. I still have to review quite a few of them, I haven’t really had the time – I’ve about three or four reviews coming up next week O_O.

Anyway, the movies I watched – you’ll notice there’s quite a few 2014 Oscar winners/nominees among these, I’m still catching up on them:

• Blue Jasmine
• Nebraska
• Snowpiercer (review coming up next week)
• Fading Gigolo (review coming up next week)
• Transcendence (review coming up next week)
• The Counsellor (oof, what a massive disappointment)
• Pacific Rim
• The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
• Saving Mr. Banks
• Alien
• Last Vegas
• The Other Woman
• The Family
• The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (which I already reviewed!)

Yeah, it’s quite the list! I think the one I enjoyed most of these was … probably Pacific Rim and Alien. The best, I’d say, is Snowpiercer, along with Blue Jasmine. Cate Blanchett is a goddess, she’s simply amazing.

I also watched the first two episodes of Fargo, which so far looks amazingly promising. I love the dark absurdism of the original Fargo movie and despite it being a very different story, it seems like they are recapturing that essence perfectly. Fargo, the movie, andThe Big Lebowski are definitely my favorite of the Coen Brothers, and have seen both many times. I always think their movies covering absurd crimes are their best. I have yet to see Inside Llewyn Davis, but I already know that that story is going to fascinate me a lot less. But I heard it’s good, so I shouldn’t judge too much beforehand.

On a final note, before the screening of Fading Gigolo started, we were shown the trailer of Belle, which I hadn’t seen yet. It looks so lovely, and I’m just absolutely fascinated with the costuming:

What do you think? Is  Belle a movie you’d wanna see?

And of course, here are some lovely articles I found around the web!

Great Reads

Sati did a wonderful analysis of Enemy over at The Cinematic Corner

Ryan of The Matinee discussed the Current State of Spoiler Culture – very interesting read!

At And So it Begins, Alex listed the top 10 Dual Roles, about actors that appear in more than one role in a movie.

Over at A Fistful of Films, Andrew wonders what overrated  even means, as a journalist of The Telegraph listed the ten most overrated films. It’s a good question, and the list looks and sounds more like traffic-bait than a good list, to me.

Already on Twitter, Candice of ReelTalks already kind of convinced me to start watching Veep. But then her post on Why VEEP’s Sue Wilson Throws The Best Shade convinced me even more. I’m now 3 or 4 episodes into the first season and I’m really enjoying the witty humor, and Dreyfus is just so glamorous.

So, fellow cinephiles, what have you been up to in your corner of the world? Any good movies you watched, that you’d recommend? Have any fun plans for the weekend?