Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 28, 2024, 09:12:41 PM

Login with username, password and session length

Last Train To Christmas (2021, Sky Cinema)

Started by Pink Gregory, December 25, 2021, 05:04:55 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Pink Gregory

alternative title - Martin Sheen's Amazing Causality Express

Ms. Gregory's Dad recommended this out of nowhere, and it might be the booze talking but this is really, really good.

Martin Sheen is an ageing nighclub owner, meeting his brother on the train to see their parents for christmas.  Martin Sheen subsequently discovers that, moving between carriages, he moves forwards and backwards in time, changing events in his life for better and for worse.

This really impressed me, it's set entirely on a train, Martin Sheen is predictably incredible, it's really emotionally effecting without being sentimental; it also does that thing where different periods of time are filmed with the contemporary techniques which is nice.


Pink Gregory

Also he looks bizarrely like Simon Pegg in a lot of this.

jamiefairlie

Quote from: Pink Gregory on December 25, 2021, 05:08:01 PMAlso he looks bizarrely like Simon Pegg in a lot of this.

He also looks a lot like his namesake Michael.

dead-ced-dead

Is this a Christmas remake of Train to Busan?

Replies From View

Quote from: Pink Gregory on December 25, 2021, 05:04:55 PMMartin Sheen is an ageing nighclub owner, meeting his brother on the train to see their parents for christmas.  Martin Sheen subsequently discovers that, moving between carriages, he moves forwards and backwards in time, changing events in his life for better and for worse.

So part Quantum Leap, part Forever Young.

George White

Quote from: Pink Gregory on December 25, 2021, 05:08:01 PMAlso he looks bizarrely like Simon Pegg in a lot of this.
The lad playing him as a youth, ex-Peter Beale Thomas Law played Pegg's young form in The World's End.

Cary Elwes was the surprise here. Hasn't made a film this intrinsically British since his first, 1979's Yesterday's Hero (Jackie Collins-written bonkbuster starring Ian McShane as not-George Best, plus Adam Faith, Paul Nicholas, Alan Lake, Paul J. Medford off EastEnders and John Motson as himself, with Suzanne Somers as the token American love interest, which still failed to get US theatrical play)
Seemingly channeling Reece Shearsmith too.  I do wonder what he thought of the script with its references to Don Estelle, Aztec bars, Biggins, Slade, etc. He moved to the US in his twenties, but I've listened to interviews and he is very clearly a film buff (his stepdad's ELliot Kastner, who produced Yesterday's Hero, plus everything from most of the Alastair Maclean adaps to The Medusa Touch and Black Joy) and has spoken of his love of British comedy like the Carry Ons.

BritishHobo

Elwes pulling double time this Christmas as well, playing a surly Scottish duke who is forced to sell his castle to a heartbroken American romance novelist in A Castle for Christmas.

Loved this. Great premise, really well-structured, engaging way to tell the story and feed you information. It looked great, the different visual styles were such a nice touch, and with all the references make it nostalgic to a number of different generations. Just good fun watching it zip along, with some strong central performances, and a lovely ending.

Small Man Big Horse

I just watched this today but while I enjoyed it for the most part, I thought the ending was really awful.

Last Train To Christmas (2021) - Rather cheesy comedy drama where Michael Sheen's Tony Towers is on a train just prior to Christmas and finds when he walks forwards in to a carriage he's suddenly in the future, and when he walks backwards in to a different carriage he's in the past, and the conversations he has with loved ones alter the course of their lives. The main aspect is his attempts to save his pop singer brother's life and it's largely a daft but fun affair, but towards the end
Spoiler alert
it gets way too silly and melodramatic, including a child version of Sheen jumping off a speeding train, almost getting hit by about five others, before falling on top of an unexploded World War II bomb but somehow surviving it going off. Then he weirdly ends up in a horrifying alternative present day (where Michael Portillo is only now finally resigning as PM) as a very old man, and so missed out on at least two decades of his life, and the ending is mawkish shit.
[close]
I'd kind of been enjoying it until the final twenty minutes, but the way it ended made me think much, much less of the whole thing. 5.4/10

bakabaka

Quote from: Small Man Big Horse on January 12, 2022, 04:13:53 PMI'd kind of been enjoying it until the final twenty minutes, but the way it ended made me think much, much less of the whole thing. 5.4/10

Same here. I don't often talk during films, but the sequence after he jumped off the train was totally redundant and made me ask out loud "Why are they doing this?" Just jumping off the train was jeopardy enough, Shirley? And the last shot...

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: bakabaka on January 13, 2022, 07:00:38 PMSame here. I don't often talk during films, but the sequence after he jumped off the train was totally redundant and made me ask out loud "Why are they doing this?" Just jumping off the train was jeopardy enough, Shirley? And the last shot...

I'm glad I'm not alone,
Spoiler alert
I mean the chances of so many trains all passing each other so quickly was one thing, but for an old World War 2 bomb to explode was madness, and I just can't understand why it suddenly went so far over the top.
[close]
I'm with you on the last shot too, and it's all such a shame as beforehand it had been quite fun in a knowing kind of way.

Pink Gregory

In my defense, we thought our cat was ill, and we were drunk

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: Pink Gregory on January 15, 2022, 10:13:48 AMIn my defense, we thought our cat was ill, and we were drunk

Heh, but it's not a bad film, in fact there some points where I was really enjoying it, but the choice of ending was so odd that I couldn't make head nor tail of it.

Pink Gregory

Quote from: Small Man Big Horse on January 15, 2022, 12:53:54 PMHeh, but it's not a bad film, in fact there some points where I was really enjoying it, but the choice of ending was so odd that I couldn't make head nor tail of it.

You're right though, the sudden burst of action at the end undermined all the conversational drama beforehand.