Scribbler here. Only two films this week, but at least they were both good.
We saw Ripley’s Game at the cinema, and thought it was pretty good. This is based on book three in the series of Ripley books, and is set a good few years after The Talented Mr Ripley, made a few years ago with Matt Damon as the murdering conman. The title character is now well off, living in Northern Italy and entertains himself here by manipulating a terminally ill picture-framer who happened to diss him. John Malkovich is ideally suited to the crook with (almost) no conscience, but criticisms that he walks the part ignore his considerable talent. Does it really matter if it’s not a “stretch” for him? As usual he a joy to watch, and I found the film very entertaining. As Anne predicted, Four stars.
Also seen this week - X Men, which was on TV when we returned from our trip to The Blue Mountains. This was shown to capitalise on the release of the sequel this week. I’ve only seen this once before, at the flicks when it was released, and thoroughly enjoyed it the second time. I’ve not read the X Men comics at all, so can’t comment on its translation to the screen, but as a newcomer I can say that it works as a movie. The number of characters and amount of explanation needed means that some of the characters don’t get enough screen time and the film leaves you wanting to see more of most of the characters. (Except, that is, for a couple of the baddies, who were a bit rubbish. I think they died at the end and so will hopefully not be in the new film.) Let’s hope the new film gives us more and bigger – I hope to see it within the next week. Four stars.