77

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• So many tiny quirky things — it felt like flicking through a well curated set of Instagram reels. We laughed, we happy cried. It was a truly fantastic film.

• Can I rate this six stars please? What a roller coaster. Bonkers and brilliant. Also, some of the best dancing on screen I have ever seen!

• After a not terribly promising start, Hellzapoppin’ becomes a mostly enjoyable romp with overacting and sight gags galore, obviously inspiring later comedy classics – I would not have been surprised if Leslie Nielson showed up part way through to wish us all good luck. Definitely of its era though, with easily excised black dancing (incredible, and a definite highlight) and the treatment of women… well. Always appreciate being exposed to these through the Society, so thank you again!

• Brilliantly mad and way ahead of its time in terms of comedy, the movie brought heaps of laughter to the Embassy. Often surreal, breaking the third wall the movie reminded me of the Marx Brothers, Abbot & Costello and Will Hay. A cornucopia of delight!

• Wonderfully crazy!!! In my case, it turned out to be the perfect way to round off my 81st birthday. 🤡🥳😂

82

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• WE SOBBED.

• Heartbreak and Joy and the heaviness of saying goodbye to someone you love has never been presented with more empathy and beauty.

• Assured, honest and sad. Pulls you in immediately and never lets go.

• A disconcerting film that seems to imbue everyday living and normal family friction with horror movie-like suspense and dread. The slow realisation that being a child in an adult world, facing adult things like death, is scarier than any ghost.

• I loved the naturalism and how it captured the messiness of everyday life, the strange mixture laughter and mourning. The empty room at the end was a real gut punch.

82

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• What a wonderful camera Agnes Varda wields! It’s so curious and lively, taking equal pleasure in sculptors’ models and frog-swallowing street performers – the perfect cure for Cleo’s self-obsession. What an excellent pairing this made with last week’s Ikiru.

• I know it was beautiful but it felt twice as long as it was.

• Elegant clothes, stunning lead, and wonderfully atmospheric Parisian locations (we can almost smell the cafe-au-lait, croissants, garlic and Gauloises) but like a delightfully mistimed souffle, it rises and then collapses under its own steam.

• It was wonderfully mysterious watching Varda transform Cleo. And great scenes of real people, some catching the camera’s eye as they went about their lives.

• Once you’ve seen one of Varda’s films multiple times, you start to realise how cutting and sarcastic she can be. The first time around, you’re stuck in Cleo’s mind for a couple of hours. The second time, you start to notice all that’s going on around her. Cleo’s health scare is genuinely upsetting but Varda can’t help but remind you that the man she’s flirting with is being sent to crush the Algerian Revolution. History continues around the edges of the frame like kittens tugging at her dress.

88

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• A little long perhaps, but nonetheless imbued with the stunning visuals, understated acting, and deeply-felt humanism that sadly disappeared from most movies many moons ago.

• So beautiful. So tragic. Yet, even when bearing the soul crushing weight of the human condition, Kurosawa manages to find warmth, humour, wit and tenderness in the midst of such existentially rich material. Profoundly beautiful. So glad I got to experience this for the first time in a theatre.

• The times may change but bureaucracy is eternal.

• I liked how for a really sad story, it has a lot of joy in it. Admittedly, parts of it were a little bit too familiar as a public servant at times.

• A couple of hours hanging with Watanabe and Kurosawa – total bliss. Ikiru is from now on my umbrella-in-a-rainstorm film.

90

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• Eschewing generic biopic narrative of becoming a successful artist in favour of a painfully vulnerable personal story of trauma and community is incredibly moving. The anti-Sackler activist thread not only blends surprisingly well, but the two contextualise each other brilliantly.

• Good – but the film slightly struggled to live up to the complexities and wondrous beauty of Goldin’s art and activism.

• Went home through the rain and lit a candle.

• Beautiful, moving and well-crafted biography which at first feels wide ranging as it explores different aspects of Goldin’s life, work, and activism, but the connections become increasingly apparent. When the Conrad quote appears, about “a crop of inextinguishable regrets” the strands come together with devastating effect.

• I was bursting to talk to someone afterwards about the themes of this film. The power and influence of money — distortion of wealth, to that degree, really is unnatural without the gross exploitation of people. Also, Nan Goldin’s photos are absolutely captivating. Stunning, stunning portraiture.