Saltburn

[C_Larence]

Not that I'm saying PYW was faultlessly brilliant (I still liked it) but I really didn't see the ending as saying that. What it said to me was the police never act until its too late, and the main character used this as a back-up. A last chance at justice.

There are a couple of letterboxd reviews which expound on how insulting and tone deaf the ending (and whole movie) is far better than I can.

https://boxd.it/1JrHx5

https://boxd.it/1yth9h

[neveragain]

Thanks, I'll have a look at those. As I say, I don't love the film but think it was decent enough.

[Blinder Data]

Mubi Go?

Does the new film they show every week stay for just a week or have you longer to watch it?

mubi is arthouse netflix. there's a few competitors about though (bfi player, klassiki, Curzon). there's been a few threads on here about it.

mubi go costs a bit extra and gives you a ticket for a film per week. if you don't care too much about what you see and like going to the cinema, it works well. wouldn't want to use it if you don't have an arthouse cinema nearby though (they give you a replacement but it could be anything).

I've not been disappointed yet by the films I've used it for. I have decided to pay the annual fee though which makes it cheaper and due to the sunk cost means I am motivated to use it as often as possible for the next 12 months (perhaps less pressure than the rolling monthly fee)

[Wacky Homemade Badges]

LuckyChap agreed to produce Promising Young Woman at the pitch stage, before the script was even written. Them getting involved made Fennell change the setting from London to the US when she began writing it.

Oh well, I was wrong to say she had it easy. It must have taken a lot of hard graft and sweat to make friends with Margot Robbie.

[buzby]

Oh well, I was wrong to say she had it easy. It must have taken a lot of hard graft and sweat to make friends with Margot Robbie.

I don't think they knew each other before Promising Young Woman. The LuckyChap lot probably knew of her from Killing Eve though, and although Acklerley and McNamara didn't go to Marlborough like Fennell, they do seem to come from similar 'stock'.

Ackerley and McNamara became friends from working together in various behind the camera roles in the British film industry, and were sharing a (quite nice) house in Clapham. Sophia Kerr is Robbie's best friend from back home and is employed as her assistant.

When Ackerley and Robbie got together, Robbie and Kerr moved into the house in Clapham and they set up two production companies, presumably to invest Robbie's income. One was End Of The Line Films (with British producer David Barron and American producer Molly Hassell), specifically to make the 2018 film Terminal (called End Of The Line during production) which Robbie also starred in, and the other was LuckyChap, which is aimed towards producing female-centric projects, and is how Fennell was presumably brought onboard.

They have all moved to LA now, and after the success of Barbie are probably set for life.

[Wacky Homemade Badges]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect

[Petey Pate]

This was 2/3 of a decent film that completely goes off the rails. Making Barry Keoghan's character

Spoiler alert

a murderer

[close]

was so boring, they could have gone in a far more interesting direction once his

Spoiler alert

lies about his parents were revealed.

[close]

What they did do was nonsensical and felt unearned.

Rosamund Pike was very funny and easily the highlight.

[madhair60]

just went and looked at the Promising Young Woman thread and fucking lol at the sheer lack of women

[Icehaven]

Despite the promise of Bridesheadyness drawing me in I'm probably not going to bother with this as everyone keeps going on about bits with revolting bodily fluids splashing about so that's not for me. Also I had to laugh at how apparently there's a bit where they show how posh a woman is because she says she doesn't know where Liverpool is. I'm pretty sure you could find plenty of poor people who don't know where Liverpool is either, albeit for different reasons. Being incurious/ignorant of the world outside your own bubble isn't the preserve of the rich, deliberately or otherwise.

[Mr Vegetables]

By coincidence I found out where Liverpool was about ten minutes ago; I'd always got the coast it was on wrong

[cromby]

This was nonsense but very compelling. Agree with this though:

I know, but it's not that which I have trouble separating, so much as the knowledge of how easy already rich and gilded people find it to get their projects off the ground compared to others.

Very interesting interpretation of Prescot, too.

Spoiler alert

Making him a murderer was stupid, though. How would they not find poison in Jacob Elordi's system in a postmortem, which would definitely be carried out?

[close]

[Junglist]

On the old high seas this is

[Norton Canes]

Nice to see Reece turn up in this, as what I assume was a favour for giving Emerald Fennel a rejected script from Inside No. 9

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I saw this the other night and thought it was pretty decent, if unoriginal. It's basically just

Spoiler alert

The talented Mr Ripley, with a dash of Kind Hearts and Coronets.

[close]

I can live with that though. Some tonal shakiness would be my main criticism. I've not spent time around the ultra posh, but Pike, Grant and Mulligan all felt slightly too OTT compared to what was going on in the rest of the film.

Very nice cinematography. It looked better than films that are an order of magnitude more expensive.

Barry Keoghan could probably play the role in his sleep at this point, but that's just because he's so good at it. The dude hangs dong.

Why was it set in 2006-7? The waitress in the cafe wearing a mask implies that the closing scenes take place in the last few years, but none of the main characters appear to have aged enough for that.

[Schnapple]

Didn't like PYW and Fennel is a big posho whom it's easy to resent. Nonetheless, really enjoyed almost everything in this up until the big party sequence, at which point the film goes completely off the rails, checking out almost completely after the sequence with Keoghan's character and some freshly-dug earth. Still, I laughed a lot at Rosamund Pike's performance and the film looks absolutely spectacular, especially when watched in the depths of winter.

[Icehaven]

Why was it set in 2006-7? The waitress in the cafe wearing a mask implies that the closing scenes take place in the last few years, but none of the main characters appear to have aged enough for that.

I think because that's when Emerald Fennell was at Oxford herself. Write what you know and all that.

[jamiefairlie]

Despite the promise of Bridesheadyness drawing me in I'm probably not going to bother with this as everyone keeps going on about bits with revolting bodily fluids splashing about so that's not for me. Also I had to laugh at how apparently there's a bit where they show how posh a woman is because she says she doesn't know where Liverpool is. I'm pretty sure you could find plenty of poor people who don't know where Liverpool is either, albeit for different reasons. Being incurious/ignorant of the world outside your own bubble isn't the preserve of the rich, deliberately or otherwise.

I was going to try it for the Brideshead comparisons too but won't bother now.

Do they know Liverpool is in England at least? I'd have thought that the minimum acceptable knowledge 

[Bartholomew J Krishna]

Watched it last night. One of the worst films I've ever seen, and also one of the biggest discrepancies between how good a film looks and how bad it is.
Smug, self-satisfied, vacuous horse-shit.
Imagine what could have been done with that cast, budget, and location by someone with talent or vision.

[Mister Six]

Didn't like PYW and Fennel is a big posho whom it's easy to resent. Nonetheless, really enjoyed almost everything in this up until the big party sequence, at which point the film goes completely off the rails, checking out almost completely after the sequence with Keoghan's character and some freshly-dug earth

Yeah, I had the same reaction although for me it collapsed a bit earlier.

Spoiler alert

Thought it was funny and compelling, and beautifully shot and edited, but the moment Oliver's lie about his mum and dad was revealed, all the weird energy and malevolence dissipated, and it turned (albeit briefly) into a much more mundane film than the one I'd been enjoying.

Obviously that's supposed to be a fake-out, and the lovelorn loser schtick is a cover for his more malevolent plans, but my interest had completely faded by the time they started ramping up Oliver's nastiness again, and the rest played out so predictably - "Oh, she's 'slit her wrists', eh? He's killing them all, I suppose, then?" - that there wasn't much there for me other than the cinematography (although Keoghan's arse did inspire me to get back in the gym in the new year, so that's nice).

I think part of the problem is that I'd rewatched Joseph Losey's The Servant recently, and read that Saltburn tagline "We're all going to lose our minds," and thought this was going to get weirder and more intense than it ever did.

I'll still watch PYW, which I missed the first time around, and check out Fennell's next film, because she's a fantastic director and a talented writer. I just wish this one had the balls to really get as fucked up as it seemed it would do early on.

[close]

[selectivememory]

I fully expected to hate this, but honestly, I really quite liked it in the end. Very entertaining at the very least, and pretty funny throughout, even if it doesn't hold together and comes flying off the rails after the reveal about Oliver's background. I mean, it was a bit weird the way the end of film is sort of presented as if it's some kind of shocking plot twist that recontextualises everything you've seen up until that point, when I can't imagine any viewer will have been surprised by it. If anything, it was mildly insulting to the intelligence of the audience.

Love Barry Keoghan. He always improves anything he's in, I think.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I fully expected to hate this, but honestly, I really quite liked it in the end. Very entertaining at the very least, and pretty funny throughout, even if it doesn't hold together and comes flying off the rails after the reveal about Oliver's background. I mean, it was a bit weird the way the end of film is sort of presented as if it's some kind of shocking plot twist that recontextualises everything you've seen up until that point, when I can't imagine any viewer will have been surprised by it. If anything, it was mildly insulting to the intelligence of the audience.

Love Barry Keoghan. He always improves anything he's in, I think.

I think this is more or less my take. And yeah Keoghan is a proper baller. Have you seen Calm With Horses?

[selectivememory]

Nope. Will have a look though, cheers.

[neveragain]

I mean, it was a bit weird the way the end of film is sort of presented as if it's some kind of shocking plot twist that recontextualises everything you've seen up until that point, when I can't imagine any viewer will have been surprised by it. If anything, it was mildly insulting to the intelligence of the audience.

Yeah, if they'd held back on some of the weird stuff until then it might have worked. Also, it may have helped for the film to be a bit shorter. But apart from that (and it all being quite daft), I enjoyed it.

[George White]

To be honest, 'Oliver Quick' doesn't have a ring of the working classes.
He's definitely an 'R Cilla' or a Tarby, pretending to be more working class than he is. And if he had working class friends, they'd have called him either Cilla or Tarby.

[Icehaven]

Watched this yesterday, wasn't very good, also has the one of the most egregious examples I've ever seen of someone who's blatantly 30 playing an 18 year old.


Also it's not so much written by Fennell as adapted from Waugh and Highsmith. I mean I knew it was meant to be inspired by them but it's literally Brideshead and Ripley combined, and no amount of sticking it in 2006 can cover that up.

[imitationleather]

A perfume commercial rips off Brideshead Revisited.

[Icehaven]

I was going to try it for the Brideshead comparisons too but won't bother now.

Do they know Liverpool is in England at least? I'd have thought that the minimum acceptable knowledge 

I think so. It's actually more of a minor throwaway moment than I'd expected, it just got picked up on by a few reviews for some reason (also Helena Bonham Carter's character says it and she's supposed to be hatstand anyway.)

[dontpaintyourteeth]

I expected better things from Topaz Parsley

[checkoutgirl]

I'm not attacking her for her looks. I'm attacking her for being able to make a film because she has friends who run hedge funds, and using that opportunity to make a film about the sort of people she went to Marlborough with. It's a microcosm of the problems with the arts on the UK right now.

Write what you know. She has an academy award.

[Mister Six]

(also Helena Bonham Carter's character says it and she's supposed to be hatstand anyway.)

That's Carey Mulligan! And very good she is too.

I'm not attacking her for her looks. I'm attacking her for being able to make a film because she has friends who run hedge funds, and using that opportunity to make a film about the sort of people she went to Marlborough with. It's a microcosm of the problems with the arts on the UK right now.

I think it's a bit daft to attack her for being a symptom of something she has no control over. What's she meant to do? Make a film about struggling working class people? Just not direct anything at all? The more I think about Saltburn the less I like it, but I can't blame her for using the connections she has to get the art she wants to make made (even if it's a bit crap).