I went to the cinema club at our local fleapit, Reflexen, yesterday to see the French film, Girlhood.
Modern cinema bears a closer resemblance to a home cinema system than you’d think. Long gone are the days of tins full of celluloid. They were showing the film off a USB stick! There were a few problems getting the film started and once it had, they couldn’t get the subtitles to work!
Giving up, the club announced they would be showing Pride instead.
Yippee ! DuCool had recommended it very warmly and his film tips are always worth listening to. My only reservation was that he does have a fondness for rather glum films. Not many frothy romcoms or preposterous monster movies on his best of the year!
Gay activists and miners. What would this be like? An agit-prop Full Monty? Brassed Off without any music?
I needn’t have worried. A great script by Stephen Beresford and some stupendous performances: I haven’t laughed so much in a cinema for yonks.
A tremendous, feel-good film with an important message. See it!!
Based on a true story too.
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/aug/31/pride-film-gay-activists-miners-strike-interview
FWIIW, Pride was my favourite film of 2014. I agree with all you say KFD, a tremendously uplifting funny, feelgood film.
Oooh, I didn’t like it, I’m afraid. Too many stereotypes + warm and cuddly feelgood = not for me, no siree. Using lazy-review-speak I’d describe it as “a watered down Billy Elliot meets The Full Monty”.
I can see where your coming from, Gary. But I felt the pace of the story and the constant funny lines allowed me to ignore all that.
I suspect It may be a marmite film.
Pride was my favorite film last year as well. Funny, well observed and actually true. That was what clinched it for me, I had no idea that that actually happened.
Plus at the end I was sobbing tears of actual joy. A film about the miner’s strike had a happy ending? Again which actually happened?
Loved it.
Another shout for top film of 2014. It got multiple showings in my small market town, so shows how things have moved on. Neither gays nor the miners would have got a look in down my local cinema in 1984.
That people liked it is fair enough (though personally I really wish filmmakers could get over simple-mindedly portraying gay as ‘camp’. A real bugbear of mine). But “best film of 2014”? Really? In a year that produced Boyhood, Birdman, Grand Budapest Hotel, Mr Turner, The Theory of Everything, Locke and Starred Up (besides some films I wasn’t particularly fond of, but which I’d still consider markedly better than Pride, such as Whiplash, Selma and Theory Of Everything)?
Rotten Tomatoes place it 48th best film of the year (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/top/bestofrt/?year=2014). I’d say that’s more realistic.
48th or 38th? These sort of numbers aren’t something that bothers me too much.
I was very entertained and got a valuable history lesson. That will do me fine. And more importantly, the younger generation learnt something about modern history.
I agree about the cuddliness. And some some scenes, like Dominic West’s disco dancing, were well over the top. But it worked brilliantly. But this wasn’t a documentary. It was a fable in many ways with Thatch as the wicked witch.
I didn’t think the gay characters were all camp at all. The political firebrand, the bloke who fancied him, the young photographer, the bookshop owner, none of them were camp. Dominic West’s was, but there was a bit of depth there, (and this applied to the miners to). Everyone had room to develop and make a wee splash, it was a generous film, full of good stuff. I also loved how the female characters just grew as the film went on as well.
Pride was a film aimed at a popular audience but which didn’t have an obvious populist bent to it. I agree that perhaps it wasn’t “the best” film of last year, but it was my favorite.
Quite so. It’s interesting that so much of the focus is on the gay angle. To me, it was as much about trade unionism.