I didn’t watch the Academy Awards (because we don’t have Sky Movies, and I can make do with the highlights) but I did watch And the Oscar Goes To…:
This history-of-the-Oscars doc is clearly a puff piece (it’s only very lightly skewering, like trying to roast someone who can’t take a joke) but I’m a sucker for these kinds of things. Still, there’s room for a real warts-and-all, behind-the-scenes take on what it takes to put on the show, from the screeners to the stage techs to the politics and all points between.
Sticking with the documentary theme, I finally sat down for the whole three-and-a-half hours of Dangerous Days:
This exhaustive record of the production and legacy of the 1982 sci-fi noir classic Blade Runner isn’t necessarily for the diehards, but it does require some appreciation for the people beyond the actors, directors and writers who make movies happen. They’re the ones who really get their due here.
Low-budget horror Honeymoon, starring Game of Thrones‘ Rose Leslie, was a bit of a letdown:
Leigh Janiak’s debut feature takes its risks in using some of the more obvious horror tropes, though it plays more like an Antichrist without Von Trier’s cod philosophical bullshit. That’s a good thing, as in its best moments, the awareness that something is truly, horribly amiss between newlyweds Bea (Rose Leslie) and Paul (Harry Treadaway) cultivates a tense, grim atmosphere. But the script could have used a better edit to solve some serious problems in plot logic and character behaviour that renders the idea as a whole, as interesting as it is, fundamentally flawed.
Hanna also left me underwhelmed, but for different reasons:
There’s something very British about this Bourne-esque, vaguely sci-fi action thriller, which has something to do with it those cheeky, almost soap-opera interludes, and that odd fairy tale undercurrent. There’s clearly some vision here, and I can get behind that. Alas, it’s missing that certain something to take it to the next level, something the sterile, over-rehearsed fight scenes make fairly tangible.