Irish Film Trivia – St Patrick’s Day 2021 Special

I hope you are enjoying St. Patrick’s Day 2021!

Here is an Irish Film/Movie trivia quiz I made for my family during Lockdown 1! 

Hope you enjoy! 

Questions

Picture round (Guess the Irish Movie)

Answers!

Picture Round Answers

Thanks for playing!

Follow me on twitter @beanmimo if you like!

It’s A Wonderful Life Quiz

 

20 Questions about the much loved movie It’s A Wonderful Life (1946) directed by Frank Capra and starring James Stewart.

My first time testing this online software for a film quiz and haven’t worked out how to embed it onto my website!

If anyone has any guidance in this direction please let me know! 

So you’ll have to go to their website to play it.

Apologies for the extra click.

My It’s A Wonderful Life Quiz on www.quiz-maker.com

‘Isn’t It Romantic’ – Film Review

I’ve been promising myself that I would revive my regular blog posting and then promptly breaking that promise.

Sorry blog, it’s not you, it’s me.

So, I am easing my way back into my blog’s favour with a straightforward film review.

When I saw the ad for Isn’t it Romantic I was afraid that it would turn out to be a one joke film with only enough laughs to fill a trailer nevertheless I remained intrigued. I was both wrong and right on both counts.

The trend of parodying well-worn comedy tropes is not a new concept. On television you may have seen it executed in the latter stages of the slick and always funny 30 Rock, more recently (and still being done) in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, the genre hopping Community parodied sit-coms and almost every variety of film plot types it could lay it’s hands on, and, to a certain degree, the art of the comedy parody has ‘died and gone to heaven’ in elements of The Good Place.

But this is the first romantic comedy parody film I have watched.  Natalie (Rebel Wilson), a frustrated, put upon architect and outspoken a romantic comedy cynic, gets a bump on the head and wakes from her humdrum existence finding her life has turned into a Romantic Comedy hell, where with her as the unwilling centre of interest.

Wilson is charmingly brash and carries the lead effortlessly, Adam Devine, (as Josh, Natalie’s best friend) seems to be channeling a Jack Lemon/Jason Bateman crossover, which works perfectly in the parameters of the parody,  Liam Hemsworth and Priyanka Chopra pull off their easy roles as the narcissistic and beautiful vying suitors.

With heavy references to Pretty Woman and other classics of the genre, the plot demands to be very obvious and because of the nature of the parody this works to a point but does becomes tired before the end.  Nonetheless, for me, the aspect that helps the one joke film from exhausting itself completely is the charming attention to detail the writers and production have put into the transformation not just of the personalities in Natalie’s life but into the sets of her home, her office, her New York suburbs, down to the different styles of direction for the film’s extra actors. This amount of effort put into the makeover of Natalie’s world was just enough to get me to the end and, yet, it still manages to become a parody of itself.

While this film isn’t aimed at a 48 year old single Irish male, still, it was a fun 70 minutes or so and has a nice message about self-worth that my impressionable teenage persona could have done with. One for staunch fans of romantic comedies as you may imagine.

6/10 

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A late ‘Arrival’ – Film Review

The most notable cinematic aliens to visit Monatana (since the Star Trekkers brought the Borg) have landed there and in eleven other global locations.  Linguist, Dr. Louise Banks, (Amy Adams) and Theoretical Physicist, Ian Donnelly, (Jeremy Renner) are sent to work out what they want. All global locations are on high alert as they try to work together in the race for a breakthrough. The U.S. Military is represented by a benign Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker) while intelligence is served by an obtuse Agent Halpern (Michael Stuhlbarg).

Director Denis Villeneuve delivers the action at a slow and steady rate; his sense of apprehension-building makes the film seem to have more pace than it actually does.  The majority of scenes are interiors; mixed with the apprehension, this gives the film an appropriately claustrophobic and tense quality. The Sci-fi elements are set into a more grounded world to which we can relate. It follows more in the vein of Interstellar, Moon or Contact rather than the spectacles and high ideals of Star Wars and Star Trek. It is refreshingly subdued and contained for the sci fi genre.

All performances are appropriately understated; Amy Adams gives a subtle, thoughtful and retro-reflective performance as a bereaved mother and we are given a series of somewhat disconnected yet touching memories of her relationship with her daughter as she battles to understand the Alien dialect.  Jeremy Renner does his Jeremy Renner thing, with glasses because he is a mathematician, but does not feel out of place while doing it. Forest Whitaker brings an almost too benign and understanding quality to his Army Colonel and following with the film’s muted tone Stuhlbarg’s spiteful investigator is wonderfully snide rather than brash and loud.

There is an already contentious feature spliced into the plot which is no more bizarre than Interstellar and already some people are finding silly. While it could have dug deeper into an explanation of a few of these plot devices I still found it to be gentle, cozy and delivered endearingly despite its simplicity. It would sit comfortably beside “A.I.” in a sci-fi collection.

I came away with a warm content monies-worth feeling. Overall it worked for me.

7/10

Arrival on IMDB

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Tomorrowland – Directed by Brad Bird for Disney

A few months ago I saw one trailer for “Tomorrowland” and managed to avoid everything about it since. That one trailer promised to transport us to the futuristic world of the title and the film does just that but not in the way I imagined. For a sci-fi movie the grounded atmosphere, in one sense, follows in the the legacy of Spielberg’s “Close Encounter of a Third Kind” and “ET – The Extra Terrestrial” and in another sense it pays many sweet homages to the U.S.’s view of the future as it was imagined up to and in the 1960s and sci-fi films since.

George Clooney’s Frank Walker, coming from a long line of Disney’s disillusioned inventors, has been kicked out of Tomorrowland (for spoiler reasons I will not go into) and is persuaded to return by two of the films real stars Britt Robertson as Casey and Raffey Cassidy’s Athena. Robertson is one of the coolest rebel girls-next-door characters you could meet and you root for her all the way while Cassidy plays Athena with a curious grown-up mix of charm and underlying agenda.

There are nods to “Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang”, “The Jetsons”, even “The Matrix” and more. In one scene there is an entire shop full of homages. It is plain to see that Brad Bird had dealt mostly with animated entertainment up to now as the action is directed very much with that kind of an eye, for instance, there is a lovely moment with Clooney’s guard dog that is straight out of a Tom and Jerry cartoon. More of the movie’s style come’s from his animation backgrounds, the chases, the set design’s, the humour (one character nods directly to his earlier movie “The Iron Giant”). Bird infuses the story with his always unsentimental warmth, packed it full of great gadgets, and lots of universally accessible humour.

While I would recommend it and the clear message it delivers to children (and adults) about holding onto your early dreams and being overwhelmingly positive, there is something lacking in the movie as a whole. Perhaps the evil threat (while all encompassing) wasn’t delivered with the impact it deserved, or the baddies, while entertaining, were a little to distant and even somewhat benign. Or Perhaps Bird was making a film about ‘chasing your dreams and not giving up’ for his own generation and somewhere along the way today’s children were a little obscured from the vision.

The verdict… it is lovely, entertaining and funny but not as consistently so as three of his previous film which I have adored, “The Iron Giant”, “The Incredibles” and “Ratatouille”.

Tomorrowland is in cinemas now  7/10

At A Glance – 2015 Best Picture Nominations in The Academy Awards – the Oscars!

American Sniper
Directed by Clint Eastwood

Eastwood has fine-tuned the harrowing journey. Here he has a beefed up Bradley Cooper giving an intimate glimpse of how real-life Navy Seal sniper Chris Kyle’s successful military career emotionally affected his domestic life back in the U.S. between his many tours. Eastwood balances the conflict and domestic scenes with skill. While both sides of Kyle’s life are well crafted and full of different types of tensions I never fully warmed to the characters and the film left me exhausted.

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Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu

A dizzyingly shot story of the fictitious, once famous, superhero actor Riggan (Michael Keaton) and his quest to be taken seriously by his audiences, friends and family. This is a highly enjoyable and dark romp, a great supporting cast and cracking dialogue. Shot mostly with interiors gives the atmosphere a claustrophobic quality reflecting Riggan’s struggles as he attempts to put on a broadway play and juggle the different parts of his fractured life. The cinematography and CGI is excellent at creating the impression that the film is almost one continuous shot. But ultimately the journey is better than the destination.

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Boyhood
Directed by Richard Linklater

Linklater charts the growth of his main character Mason (Ellar Coletrane) and the story of his family in a brave approach by shooting and basing the film in bursts over a 12 year period (2002-2013). It is filled with natural story arcs and great period music with such subtle year changes that you can sometimes it takes more than a few moments to realise that we have moved into the next phase of their lives. The ensemble cast is perfect (in particular Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke). Linklater delivers a slice-of-life movie that leaves others in the genre like crumbs on a plate. Eat your heart out reality T.V.

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The Grand Budapest Hotel
Directed by Wes Anderson

Back to his best since “The Royal Tennenbaums” Anderson has put together my favourite film of the eight. It centres on the morally questionable exploits of, Gustav H (Ralph Feinnes), the manager of the imaginary hotel in question. In Fiennes he has found a lead actor who wears Anderson’s quick fire dialogue like an old glove. Each frame is a visual masterpiece the zany humour and adventures do not let up until the credits start to roll. My full review here.

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The Imitation Game
Directed by Morten Tyldum

Benedict Cumberbatch pours much of his Sherlock character and then some into his portrayal of the brilliant and fragile character of the Father of Computer Science Alan Turing. The narrative jumps between three parts of his life focusing mainly on Turing’s code-breaking time during the Second World War in Bletchley Park. Tyldum puts together the film much like a code dropping clues here and there that will all eventually slot together into an unexpectedly emotional final bow. There are some wonderful examples of dialogue subtext in Turing’s interrogations. Of all the nominated films based on real events this is my personal favourite. My full review here.

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Selma
Directed by Ava DuVernay

A powerful drama based on the defining battle in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement between Martin Luther King Junior (an excellent David Oyelowo) and President Lyndon B. Johnson ( the wonderful Tom Wilkinson) in the town of Selma. The film manages to deal with the national politics of the day down to minutae of small personal battles of minor characters without overcrowding the narrative or confusing the audience. While the film has been criticised for some historical inaccuracies it is still a powerful drama with excellent performances.

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The Theory of Everything
Directed by James Marsh

Eddie Redmayne looks like he was born to play Professor Stephen Hawking. Marsh focuses on the relationship between Hawking and his first wife Jane Wilde. Remayne is astounding not only in his physical resemblance to the brilliant Professor but in the portrayal of the particular and well known way the physical decline of Motor Neuron Disease has left Professor Hawking. The main emphasis of the film lies in the emotional impact of the disease had mainly on his wife Jane (a touching performance by felicity Jones) as she struggled to raise their children. Though Hawking’s brilliance is evident his mathematical work in Cosmology is more of a supporting ‘character’.

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Whiplash
Directed by Damien Chazelle

Andrew, young drummer, (Miles Teller) with hopes to impress Fletcher, a ruthless college orchestra conductor, at all costs. Chazelle has sculpted a compelling battle between mentor and student, so much so that the scenes when the two are not together seem flat. Teller, looking like a buffed up Wil Wheaton, is convincing the talented drummer whose hero worship of the greats compels him to make poor life choices. J K Simmons is stand out as the brutal mentor. I have never been so excited to see someone take to the drums. His makes for a compelling drama with a wonderful finale.

My top films here for overall performances, filmmaking and enjoyment levels are The Imitation Game, The Grand Budapest Hotel and I feel the Oscar for Best Picture should land firmly land in the magnificent Boyhood.

Follow @Beanmimo

The Imitation Game – Film Review

A biopic of Alan Turing, the British mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, early computer scientist, ultra distance runner, and much more.  It focuses on his schooldays, his time during the Second World War at Bletchley Park and the last few years of his life.

If you have ever chuckled at the joke “Military Intelligence is a contradiction in terms.” then this film will partially wipe the smile from your face. While the Second World War is part of the reason Turing came to prominence this is not a war movie. This is an in depth character study of a man whose impact not just on code breaking during the war but subsequently on the foundation of modern computer science and Artificial intelligence theory was written out of history for decades because of an outdated law.

Benedict Cumberbatch gives a touching performance as Turning the brilliant and fragile genius. The character of Turing is not a million miles away from Cumberbatch’s Sherlock. We are given hints to Turing’s almost autistic habits and clearly see how his frank genius repelled and intimidated the people around him. Cumberbatch executes this mostly with understatement and his rare bursts of emotion which are mostly tied to his research. Kiera Knightley seems to be best playing Kiera Knightly in many of her roles and here she does not disappoint. Charles Dance is impressively commanding as the cold military face of the operations in Bletchley Park while Mark Strong subtly impresses as the shadowy M16 intermediary.

Apart from some artistic license, which gives Turing only marginally more credit for his part in the Bletchley Park success, the screenplay/editing is a true masterpiece. We are given three story arcs from Turing’s life, his schooldays,  Bletchley Park and the last years of his life all in a skillful non linear fashion. Naturally the War years would have attracted most people to this story but the filmmakers have made the other two sections as compelling. Good screenwriters (and good story tellers) drip feed information about character and plot to us but here they have gone a step further. Besides many passages of dialogue cleverly written with a code-like subtext it is the presentation of the different phases throughout Turing’s life is in a suitably puzzle-like manner which makes the build-up fascinating and compelling while the climax of the film is deceptively emotional.

While the action mostly takes place inside different buildings the director, Morten Tyldum, makes excellent use of the interior spaces which adds to the atmosphere of the film. It is worth a trip to the cinema. Even more so for admirers of Turing.

Alan Turing had an even more fascinating (and tragically short) existence than the film captures but they have made a gripping story about a mathematician and the delivered interwoven slices are a fitting testament to the incredible man’s life.

9/10

 The Imitation Game is in Irish Cinemas now.

Check your local Irish Cinema here

Follow @Beanmimo

Interstellar – Film Review

A few generations from now the Earth’s soil is losing the ability to grow enough food to sustain the Human Race. A slim chance for survival rests in a space trip to another galaxy for a group of brave scientists piloted by Cooper (Matthew McConaughey).

The words ‘spectacle’ or ‘epic’ are not used lightly when talking about many of director Christopher Nolan’s films. He burst onto the scene with his second feature “Memento” and then seduced us with his Batman trilogy and delightfully confused us  with “The Prestige” and “Inception”.

Through these films he has explored memory loss, time lapsing dreams, magicians, and the nocturnal crime fighting habits of a deeply disturbed millionaire and all with a sweep of a cape embedded with a grand style and neatly stitched with misdirection.

With “Interstellar” Nolan revisits many of these themes and creates an atmosphere we last saw in Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of a Third Kind” while borrowing from a Twilight Zone episode which deals with what the effects of Interstellar space travel may have on humans. The first hour and half is well-crafted. We are drawn into the world of pilot-turned-farmer-Cooper, his family, in particular the relationship with his daughter Murph and the plans to save the Human race from a crumbling Earth. Once his incredible journey had begun Nolan asks the audience to make a number of small leaps of faith. They are just about forgivable because we are hooked.

McConaughey is still playing his usual role (I confess to not having seen his Oscar winning turn in the Dallas Buyers club yet) and it fits in here as the suave and commanding pilot turned family man.  Anne Hathaway is perfectly sharp as the physicist who accompanies his on the journey. Michael Caine gives a grandfatherly performance as Hathaway’s father (also a physicist). There is a lovely injection of comic relief delivered by the clever artificially intelligent mechatronic robots who lumber about with their own peculiar and charming style.

It is long and it is as sentimental as his Batman trilogy was stirring. There are passages of dialogue in the second half of the film that are almost unnaturally verbose especially when dealing with the themes of love versus science and survival. Romantic love is not a theme that Nolan seems to gravitate toward and instead he pours all of his sentimentality on the relationship between Cooper and his daughter and does not spill one drop.

There are breathtaking moments and some nice little plot diversions that will pique your attention. While the graphics are incredibly stunning, making the film a visual feast, it is the final, and massive, leap of faith makes the film good but not great science fiction and yet still very enjoyable.

As with “Memento” and “Inception” he uses an innovative Time device in the plot like a vendor infuses a whipped ice cream with a delicious syrupy sauce.

If you can watch it in a screen like the Omniplex MAXX in Rathmines! 

8/10

Interstellar is in Irish cinemas now.

Irish Film Trivia Round 10

Care of my monthly newsletters from MovieExtras.ie  test your random Irish Film Trivia here…

Which Irish writer born on February 2^nd was the subject of a biopic in 2000 starring Ewan McGregor?

Which Irish Actor plays Jim Moriarty in the current BBC series Sherlock?

The character Mrs. Brown, famously portrayed by Brendan O’Carroll, has also been played by which actress?

Which 2003 Irish film is as follows… “A hapless civil servant gets more than he bargained for when he moves into an apartment with a gay fashion student and finds himself on the catwalk.”

Which multi-award winning actor is quoted as saying “Interviews are God’s great joke on me.”?

Which Irish Actor had purchased the rights to Gerry Conlon’s book “Proved Innocent” and had intended to play Gerry himself but decided to let Daniel Day-Lewis play the part and just serve as executive producer instead?

My debut was in The Commitments, I have appeared in Father Ted, Dexter, The Tudors Albert Nobbs, Byzantium and more. Which Irish Actress am I?

Which 2014 movie release was shot in Ireland, Afghanistan and Morocco?

The First and Second series of which recent BBC television show employed 5,000 Irish cast, extras and crew and contributed €20m in total to the Irish economy?

Which Irish actor has played Guy Fawkes, a German POW, a character with an interest in Lawrence of Arabia, Carl Jung and a mutant?

The Answers

James Joyce was played by Ewan McGregor

Andrew Scott played Moriarty

Angelica Houston also played the character of Mrs. Browne

Cowboys & Angels was the 2003 film

Daniel Day-Lewis has that attitude to interviews.

Gabriel Byrne was first going to play Gerry Conlon

Maria Doyle Kennedy (the Commitments etc.)

A Thousand Times Goodnight (shot in Afghanistan & Morocco).

Ripper Street contributed 20million to the irish Economy.

Michael Fassbender has played Guy Fawkes etc.

Follow me on Twitter @Beanmimo

Thank you for reading!

If you enjoyed those here are more rounds…

Irish Film Trivia

Irish Film Trivia Round 2

Irish Film Trivia Round 3

Irish Film Trivia Round 4

Irish Film Trivia Round 5

Irish Film Trivia Round 6

Irish Film Trivia Round 7

Irish Film Trivia Round 8

Irish Film Trivia Round 9

The Dawn of the Planet of the Apes – Film Review

The growing colony of genetically enhanced apes is pitted against the human survivors of the virus which has more than decimated the earth’s population.

Shouldn’t the ‘Rise’ have come after the ‘Dawn’? In my book events like the Sun rising, an idea, or any urge you may happen to have will have a dawn before they begin to rise. I just wanted to get that out of the way.

I was expecting an ‘Empire Strikes Back’ or ‘Back to the Future II’ sort of darkness from ‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes’ and it delivered this to a point but, disappointingly, only to a point. The first half an hour is gripping and had me on the edge of my seat. But before I knew it I has slumped back, weighed down by a sudden rush of sentimentality – an emotion I did not expect too much of in this chapter.

It is not necessary to have seen the first film in the Apes franchise to appreciate the events in this chapter as they fill you in with a now tried and trusted ‘news’ montage in the opening scene. You will, however, have to put up with subtitles in the first half of the film because the apes use a combination of sign language, grunts and the odd English word to communicate. Personally subtitles don’t bother me and the story does warrant the as the apes only begin to speak more when faced with the human survivors.

The look and feel of the film is excellent. The home of the ape colony and their embryonic evolution with regard to hunting and family values is treated with equal amounts of thrilling and touching respect. The human characters are as two dimensional as they were in the first episode but I feel this is a choice rather than a weakness as this, after all, is the story of the Apes. Without giving too much away the overgrown look of San Francisco reminds me of ‘I am Legend’ in the slick detail they provide.

The battle scenes are tense and the rising politics in the ape colony are believable as the different apes have different motivations about how humans should be treated. The filmmakers have infused the apes politics with the hallmarks of the Roman Empire far beyond the main character’s name of Caesar.

But all this does not help that about an hour of the film is achingly slow and sentimental. It is as if they had an hour of plot and then split it in half and filled it with rice cakes. Whatever they have planned for the next instalment they should have dumped 50% of the sentimental parts here and taken the first half an hour of the next movie’s plot and used it in this one.

While overall it disappointed me the final sequence leaves you wanting more and so it manages to entertain by the skin of its grubby fingernails. I will be in the cinema for the first day of the final part (whatever they decide to call it, “The Brunch of the Planet of the Apes” perhaps) to see how they conclude this reboot.

6/10

In cinemas now!