Ooh, if I hadn't had to use the last of my Tesco Cineworld vouchers last night, I wouldn't have gone out. Brr, it was cold! I had both hail and snow on the way home from work. Anyway, forewarned, I wore a nice warm coat as I waited at the bus stop. Still jiggled up and down as I waited for the bus, but I timed it better this time and didn't have to wait so long. I was pretty much the only person on it all the way to the bus station, which is en route - I suspect most people had more sense than to venture out. My phone said it was 3 degrees - I think that was an optimistic estimate. Felt more like -3.
Handily, it was in Screen 2, like last night - so I knew to ask for Row E. The screen was pretty empty when I arrived - ended up maybe a third full. I finally got to see the trailer for Jupiter Ascending - it looks as terrible as the poster, and cast list, would suggest.
And so to Kingsman: the Secret Service. I rarely give things a bad review - I do like to find what's good about them, or what was intended. Here, I find myself in a different situation - I find it impossible to say anything bad about it at all! Film of the year so far - although that's not saying much. We are still in January, after all. But you'll go a long way to find something as clever, as funny, and as entertaining all at once. Which is a joy, because I didn't pick it up from the trailer.
Basically, it's a spy comedy, with Michael Caine as the head of Kingsman Secret Service, based behind an exclusive tailor's on Savile Row. A very genteel secret service, then - cue lots of ads for exclusive men's products, as endorsed by the stars of this film. Colin Firth plays a longstanding agent, who recruits a young tearaway to be the newest member. Mark Strong is Merlin, equivalent to M from the Bond films. Samuel L. Jackson plays the megalomaniac villain (with an hilarious lisp, and a squeamishness for violence) and Mark Hamill shows up as a hapless academic that he has kidnapped.
There isn't a cliche they don't play with, and there are some really memorable one-liners. This is quite violent, but it's stylish as anything, and it's clever! And once they've set up the action sequences, it all proceeds to merry mayhem. Helluvan entertaining film, with a brain. Very highly recommended!
As I scurried home in the icy cold, I noted that our local fox wasn't about - I guess he had more sense, although I saw him at roughly the same time the night before. I did notice something I haven't seen before, though - remember those hail showers I had on the way home from work? I saw something funny as I passed the parked cars. I looked closer - the hail that had fallen earlier hadn't melted, the cars were coated in it. Never did actually see that before.
Back to Ireland tonight, hoping to stay warm! Back to London on Sunday, and on Monday I'm off to the Opera House for the ballet of Onegin, and on Tuesday to the Print Room in Notting Hill for a play called Title & Deed..
Showing posts with label Tesco Cineworld vouchers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tesco Cineworld vouchers. Show all posts
Friday, 30 January 2015
Wednesday, 28 January 2015
Film: The Theory of Everything
Two down, one to go! So, tonight was #2 of my three Tesco Cineworld vouchers, and off I went to Cineworld Hammersmith again. Tonight, it was The Theory of Everything, and a later show, so I ate at home first.
Bus both ways this time, and a perishing wait at the bus stop - warmer coat tomorrow, methinks. I checked with Google Maps where exactly to get off, and was reminded that they have a funny theory about that. I have said it to them, but of course to no avail. Point is, they want you to stay on until the stop after the cinema, which the bus goes right past. But the cinema is about exactly equidistant between that stop and the one before it, so I think it makes more sense to get off at the first of the two, when you can already see the cinema. So, Hammersmith Town Hall it was, and a brisk trot to the cinema, and boy was I glad to get inside.
This time, I was in Screen 2, upstairs. They have a wide aisle running behind the fifth row of seats, so I chose a seat in that one. I didn't realise how far back it was, i.e. how small the screen was. Also, there was a slightly loud group right behind my row, with coats and feet on the seats in front of them, right where I was supposed to be sitting. I sat further along the row, and finally decamped to the next row down. Luckily, I didn't seem to have taken anyone's place - there was plenty of room. And row E was sufficiently close to the screen.
So, as you probably know, this is the story of Stephen Hawking, played by Eddie Redmayne, and his first wife. Emily Watson plays her mother. Do bear in mind, first of all, that this is based on Mrs. Hawking's book, not on Stephen Hawking's books - so the science is brief and high-level. Apart from some pretty basic calculus equations that we get a glimpse of, and some brief speeches to summarise what he's working on, the science takes a back seat. This is the story of his first marriage, which followed hard on the heels of his diagnosis with motor neurone disease.
In the beginning of the film, he's a fairly normal, if abnormally bright, and extremely geeky, postgraduate physics student at Cambridge. Gets a fancy for this young arts student. I must say, from what I know of geeky guys' conversations, this is pretty on the money. Then, in short, one day he stumbles and falls rather badly, and knocks himself out. When he comes to, he's told he has two years to live. Crikey! Undaunted, and despite his desperate attempts to avoid her, the young lassie declares that she'll take what time she can get, and they're hitched.
That, of course, is only the beginning, as child follows on child, and she finds herself doing everything, and putting her own life second..
It's quite moving. Of course, we know the basics of the story anyway. It is interesting to see flesh put on the bones of it, and as the disease progresses, it's shocking to see just what an effect it has on their everyday life. Redmayne plays a credible Hawking, and I can only imagine how uncomfortable it was for him, slouched over in that chair all day at an unnatural angle - very similar to what it's like for real. The girl who plays his wife does a wonderful job of transforming from the wide-eyed student bride to the weary-eyed frustrated wife.
You can only wish them all well.
Tomorrow, the last of my vouchers will serve to pay for me to see Kingsman: the Secret Service - same time, same place. Stars Colin Firth, Michael Caine, Samuel L. Jackson, Mark Strong, and lordy - Mark Hamill! Didn't know he was still acting.
Then it's back to Ireland for the weekend - glad my flu has cleared, flights are miserable when you're sick! On Monday, I'm headed to Onegin at the Opera House, and on Tuesday to Title & Deed at the Print Room, Notting Hill.
Bus both ways this time, and a perishing wait at the bus stop - warmer coat tomorrow, methinks. I checked with Google Maps where exactly to get off, and was reminded that they have a funny theory about that. I have said it to them, but of course to no avail. Point is, they want you to stay on until the stop after the cinema, which the bus goes right past. But the cinema is about exactly equidistant between that stop and the one before it, so I think it makes more sense to get off at the first of the two, when you can already see the cinema. So, Hammersmith Town Hall it was, and a brisk trot to the cinema, and boy was I glad to get inside.
This time, I was in Screen 2, upstairs. They have a wide aisle running behind the fifth row of seats, so I chose a seat in that one. I didn't realise how far back it was, i.e. how small the screen was. Also, there was a slightly loud group right behind my row, with coats and feet on the seats in front of them, right where I was supposed to be sitting. I sat further along the row, and finally decamped to the next row down. Luckily, I didn't seem to have taken anyone's place - there was plenty of room. And row E was sufficiently close to the screen.
So, as you probably know, this is the story of Stephen Hawking, played by Eddie Redmayne, and his first wife. Emily Watson plays her mother. Do bear in mind, first of all, that this is based on Mrs. Hawking's book, not on Stephen Hawking's books - so the science is brief and high-level. Apart from some pretty basic calculus equations that we get a glimpse of, and some brief speeches to summarise what he's working on, the science takes a back seat. This is the story of his first marriage, which followed hard on the heels of his diagnosis with motor neurone disease.
In the beginning of the film, he's a fairly normal, if abnormally bright, and extremely geeky, postgraduate physics student at Cambridge. Gets a fancy for this young arts student. I must say, from what I know of geeky guys' conversations, this is pretty on the money. Then, in short, one day he stumbles and falls rather badly, and knocks himself out. When he comes to, he's told he has two years to live. Crikey! Undaunted, and despite his desperate attempts to avoid her, the young lassie declares that she'll take what time she can get, and they're hitched.
That, of course, is only the beginning, as child follows on child, and she finds herself doing everything, and putting her own life second..
It's quite moving. Of course, we know the basics of the story anyway. It is interesting to see flesh put on the bones of it, and as the disease progresses, it's shocking to see just what an effect it has on their everyday life. Redmayne plays a credible Hawking, and I can only imagine how uncomfortable it was for him, slouched over in that chair all day at an unnatural angle - very similar to what it's like for real. The girl who plays his wife does a wonderful job of transforming from the wide-eyed student bride to the weary-eyed frustrated wife.
You can only wish them all well.
Tomorrow, the last of my vouchers will serve to pay for me to see Kingsman: the Secret Service - same time, same place. Stars Colin Firth, Michael Caine, Samuel L. Jackson, Mark Strong, and lordy - Mark Hamill! Didn't know he was still acting.
Then it's back to Ireland for the weekend - glad my flu has cleared, flights are miserable when you're sick! On Monday, I'm headed to Onegin at the Opera House, and on Tuesday to Title & Deed at the Print Room, Notting Hill.
Tuesday, 27 January 2015
Film: Ex Machina
It's very nearly gone, thank goodness. My flu, that is. And I have these three Tesco vouchers for Cineworld that will have expired by next week, so I had to get them used - and what with flying back to Ireland at the weekend, that means these three nights are it, starting tonight. Otherwise, I might have stayed in. Unfortunately, the things aren't valid at my local Cineworld - funny definition of a "West End" cinema - so I have to take transport to the nearest cinemas where I can use them. So they're not as cheap as they might have been - but still represent a saving. Still, I probably won't buy them again.
The nearest to work is Cineworld Hammersmith, which is, hopefully, where I'll be able to use them for the rest of the week. Looking at the IMDB ratings, the highest rated Cineworld film for today is Baby, an Indian thriller. However, upon reflection - I'm so sick of Indian thrillers full of gratuitous violence. Specifically, the scenes in the trailer that put me off were those with interrogations that involved beatings. Now, it might be a good film - and I can handle violence in film - but the implicit condonement of that behaviour bothers me. Plus, I find Indian films generally overrated. So I'm skipping it.
Which, led me, delightfully, to Ex Machina tonight. I've been intrigued by this since someone mentioned it at work, and was glad to get a chance to see it. So off I went, straight from work, to the early evening showing. It's ages since I got the Tube at rush hour, and I'm glad of that - also glad I wasn't in a hurry, considering how long it took to arrive! Thirdly, I was glad to see the crush of people that got off at West Kensington, just in time for me to get on. Truly, I don't think I'd have managed to squeeze on further down the track. Getting off at Ravenscourt Park was interesting, as I was at the opposite side of the carriage to the door that opened..
I used to live around there, but it's been a long while now since I got off at that stop, and I'd had to look it up on Google Maps earlier today. So it wasn't surprising that I failed to find the fastest way onto King Street. Still, I had no problem finding the street, just not by the very fastest route. There's a zebra crossing right in front of the cinema (oh, the feeling of power!) and I was shortly inside and smugly watching the guy at the till say "of course you can!" to my question as to whether I could get a ticket with this voucher. Screen 3 was just to the side, and seating there is in one block. I picked a seat in the middle - what's nice about this cinema is the seating plan is on a printed sheet in front of you.
Saw a couple of interesting trailers - one for Kingsman: the Secret Service, which previews on Thursday and is currently top of my list for then, and one for Fifty Shades of Grey. Which isn't on my list at all - I daresay it'll be useless, like the book on which it's based. As someone remarked today, the film would have to be pornographic to make anything of the story watchable. Unlikely.
And so to tonight's film. I hadn't even seen the trailer, so it was a surprise to me to be confronted almost immediately with one of the Gleesons. "Gosh," I thought, "isn't that..?" Red-haired, Irish acting family. Can't mistake them. Unfortunately, I couldn't remember this guy's name (it's Domhnall). Anyway, turns out he's a programmer for a major software company, and as the film opens, he's won the company lottery. The prize is a week at the CEO's exclusive estate!
So in no time at all, he's whisked off in a private helicopter to this vast estate, looking like the wilds of Scotland really. The house itself is practically a bunker, and it's some time before he can even find his host. And they're the only ones there - apart from a taciturn, Japanese-looking maid, and Alicia Vikander. Who hardly counts as a house guest.. you see, the purpose of this little trip is really to conduct a Turing test between Gleeson and Vikander. Because she's absolutely the last word in AI, a humanoid robot that is kept in a glass-walled room for the purposes of questioning.
The film looks and sounds absolutely beautiful. It's all clean lines, the swish of automatic doors, and classical music playing softly. Kind of like a modern hotel - with no windows. (This guy wants to keep his research private - although any potential thief would have some trek across that estate!) And, as with the best science fiction, it's extremely thought-provoking. How do you define intelligence? How do you figure out whether an entity is lying? And what do you do with an intelligent being you've created?
Hats off to Alicia Vikander. She's the hot starlet of the moment, and she plays a blinder here as the ingénue robot. I can't give any more away, but the ending is brilliantly thought out. It's a stylish, thought-provoking, and gripping film. Very highly recommended. About the trailer though - having watched it since, it does occur to me that you could go into this expecting a straightforward thriller about a rogue robot. Not at all what's going on here.
I just missed a bus across the road - irony is, I'd have caught it if there hadn't been another in front of it that blocked the driver's view. So I had a cold ten-minute wait for the next one. Decided to hop off one stop early and head to my local Chinese - I hadn't had a chance to eat after work. It so happened that I was sat beside a businessman staying in a local hotel, who had decided that venturing out to eat was the better option, and was very pleasantly surprised by what he found there. Well yes, I agree!
Tomorrow night, next on the list is The Theory of Everything - then, as I say, Kingsman the day after. Both also in Cineworld Hammersmith, but later in the evening, so I can eat at home. At least I'm getting to see some of the big releases.. next Monday, when I'm back from Ireland, I've got a ticket to the ballet Onegin, at the Opera House. Nice and far forward in the Amphitheatre, too. I'm delighted about that - sounds lovely. And on Tuesday, I'm heading to the Print Room in Notting Hill for the first time in ages - the show is called Title and Deed, and is a monologue about being an outsider. Oh, and I think getting out and about has done my flu a power of good!
The nearest to work is Cineworld Hammersmith, which is, hopefully, where I'll be able to use them for the rest of the week. Looking at the IMDB ratings, the highest rated Cineworld film for today is Baby, an Indian thriller. However, upon reflection - I'm so sick of Indian thrillers full of gratuitous violence. Specifically, the scenes in the trailer that put me off were those with interrogations that involved beatings. Now, it might be a good film - and I can handle violence in film - but the implicit condonement of that behaviour bothers me. Plus, I find Indian films generally overrated. So I'm skipping it.
Which, led me, delightfully, to Ex Machina tonight. I've been intrigued by this since someone mentioned it at work, and was glad to get a chance to see it. So off I went, straight from work, to the early evening showing. It's ages since I got the Tube at rush hour, and I'm glad of that - also glad I wasn't in a hurry, considering how long it took to arrive! Thirdly, I was glad to see the crush of people that got off at West Kensington, just in time for me to get on. Truly, I don't think I'd have managed to squeeze on further down the track. Getting off at Ravenscourt Park was interesting, as I was at the opposite side of the carriage to the door that opened..
I used to live around there, but it's been a long while now since I got off at that stop, and I'd had to look it up on Google Maps earlier today. So it wasn't surprising that I failed to find the fastest way onto King Street. Still, I had no problem finding the street, just not by the very fastest route. There's a zebra crossing right in front of the cinema (oh, the feeling of power!) and I was shortly inside and smugly watching the guy at the till say "of course you can!" to my question as to whether I could get a ticket with this voucher. Screen 3 was just to the side, and seating there is in one block. I picked a seat in the middle - what's nice about this cinema is the seating plan is on a printed sheet in front of you.
Saw a couple of interesting trailers - one for Kingsman: the Secret Service, which previews on Thursday and is currently top of my list for then, and one for Fifty Shades of Grey. Which isn't on my list at all - I daresay it'll be useless, like the book on which it's based. As someone remarked today, the film would have to be pornographic to make anything of the story watchable. Unlikely.
And so to tonight's film. I hadn't even seen the trailer, so it was a surprise to me to be confronted almost immediately with one of the Gleesons. "Gosh," I thought, "isn't that..?" Red-haired, Irish acting family. Can't mistake them. Unfortunately, I couldn't remember this guy's name (it's Domhnall). Anyway, turns out he's a programmer for a major software company, and as the film opens, he's won the company lottery. The prize is a week at the CEO's exclusive estate!
So in no time at all, he's whisked off in a private helicopter to this vast estate, looking like the wilds of Scotland really. The house itself is practically a bunker, and it's some time before he can even find his host. And they're the only ones there - apart from a taciturn, Japanese-looking maid, and Alicia Vikander. Who hardly counts as a house guest.. you see, the purpose of this little trip is really to conduct a Turing test between Gleeson and Vikander. Because she's absolutely the last word in AI, a humanoid robot that is kept in a glass-walled room for the purposes of questioning.
The film looks and sounds absolutely beautiful. It's all clean lines, the swish of automatic doors, and classical music playing softly. Kind of like a modern hotel - with no windows. (This guy wants to keep his research private - although any potential thief would have some trek across that estate!) And, as with the best science fiction, it's extremely thought-provoking. How do you define intelligence? How do you figure out whether an entity is lying? And what do you do with an intelligent being you've created?
Hats off to Alicia Vikander. She's the hot starlet of the moment, and she plays a blinder here as the ingénue robot. I can't give any more away, but the ending is brilliantly thought out. It's a stylish, thought-provoking, and gripping film. Very highly recommended. About the trailer though - having watched it since, it does occur to me that you could go into this expecting a straightforward thriller about a rogue robot. Not at all what's going on here.
I just missed a bus across the road - irony is, I'd have caught it if there hadn't been another in front of it that blocked the driver's view. So I had a cold ten-minute wait for the next one. Decided to hop off one stop early and head to my local Chinese - I hadn't had a chance to eat after work. It so happened that I was sat beside a businessman staying in a local hotel, who had decided that venturing out to eat was the better option, and was very pleasantly surprised by what he found there. Well yes, I agree!
Tomorrow night, next on the list is The Theory of Everything - then, as I say, Kingsman the day after. Both also in Cineworld Hammersmith, but later in the evening, so I can eat at home. At least I'm getting to see some of the big releases.. next Monday, when I'm back from Ireland, I've got a ticket to the ballet Onegin, at the Opera House. Nice and far forward in the Amphitheatre, too. I'm delighted about that - sounds lovely. And on Tuesday, I'm heading to the Print Room in Notting Hill for the first time in ages - the show is called Title and Deed, and is a monologue about being an outsider. Oh, and I think getting out and about has done my flu a power of good!
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