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ragnarachael · 5 years

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Blue Moon

Pairing: Matt Murdock x Reader

Word Count: 2,273

Summary: After a rough breakup you head back to the one place that'll help you drown your impending sorrows: Josie's.

Warnings: beer and whiskey are a thing here! Matt Murdock is a life ruiner with his charm! Stop him! Please!

A Note: Matthew Murdock said that I had to write this. And so I did. This is cross posted on my AO3 account, and based off of the small excerpt from Billie Holiday’s “Blue Moon”!

MASTERLIST ! FEEDBACK !

"...you saw me standing alone

Without a dream in my heart

Without a love of my own

Blue Moon, you know just what I was there for."

— "Blue Moon" by Billie Holiday

You walked into Josie’s with what little dignity you had left after your horrendous and very public break up at the hole in the wall restaurant just a few blocks over, hands deep in your denim jacket as you smiled small at Josie, already placing an Alexander Hamilton on the clean marble bar.

“Whiskey?”

“Neat please,” you said kindly, as the woman smiled sympathetically at you, taking the cash on the counter. Part of you knew you shouldn't have whiskey on a work night or in general, but hell you've earned it after your shit day.

You took a moment to look around, noticing how empty it was. A small group of four playing at the newly replaced pool table, a happy looking middle-aged couple playing darts, small groups scattered in seating.

It was pleasant. You took a moment to note that were two men on your right conversing happily, one nursing a beer while the other had a beer and whiskey glass of his own. They both seemed somewhat dressed up and that caught you by surprise. The people that come to Josie's are usually casually dressed and nowhere near looking like they've ditched some nice business party.

However, the guy in the black button up sure did make it work, even if you could only view him from behind.

“Thank you, Josie.” Almost the second the glass was placed in front of you, you took a sip or two and ignored the sting as you took a deep breath in.

“Rough night?” She questioned softly, knowing what exactly happened, most likely.

“I guess you could say that,” you responded with a bit of venom in your tone. “I shoulda listened to you when you told me about Cameron.”

“Oh, he caused this?” Josie’s tone shifted into a motherly one as her arms crossed over her chest. You took another sip followed by a nod.

“Took me to that small Thai place a few blocks away and practically staged a play where our break up was the main plot line.”

You heard the men next to you laugh at one of their own jokes as you smiled painfully, swirling your glass around as Josie clicked her tongue.

“The second that prick walks through the door I’m giving him a piece of my mind,” she insisted.

“He’s not worth the time, Josie. Good news though,” you started, placing the glass on a coaster. “He’s never liked Hell’s Kitchen anyways. Always said it wasn’t safe due to that Daredevil guy or whatever. So, no piece of mind needs to be wasted.”

“Now that’s just horseshit! The kitchen's better with 'im in it.” Josie said sternly before letting one of her hands grab your free one near your glass. “He wasn't worth any of your time.”

You started to smile sadly now as you looked up at Josie. “Thank you. Now go tend to the other people and stop tryin’ to make me cry.”

The two of you laughed before Josie was off and walking down the length of the bar, starting to strike up conversation with other patrons while you just stared at the amber liquid in your glass, moving a hand to start swirling it around.

At least you can drown in your sorrow in peace now without feeling pathetic.

You swore that you could feel your phone going off in your jacket’s pocket, and you’re not sure why. But you were electing to ignore it and imagine it was your body buzzing from the whiskey you were drinking as you took another sip, almost draining the rest of what was in the glass.

Your eyes found the bottom of your glass through the small amount of alcohol again just as a voice came from your right.

“You can’t drown in the whiskey, y’know.”

“I can sure as hell try,” you started, turning your head to see the man next to you, suddenly taking in his features.

He wore 5 o’clock shadow well along with the fluffy looking hair he had, red circular sunglasses hiding his eyes from your own, and a few buttons of his shirt were undone and showed a small amount of chest hair. You were definitely right earlier. He did make it work in his favor.

Something in your mind made you think he could be danger with a handsome face.

"If you're really wanting to try then," the man started, shifting in his seat to face you completely now, his legs spread slightly as if you were going to slot right in-between them. Oh, would you love to, your mind echoed. "Try the Halál Angola, you'll be all set after a few sips."

You snorted and turned to face the man with your body now, your spread knees knocking gently against his. Your eyes were still locked on his sunglasses.

"Halál Angola? Is.. Is that Hungarian?" You questioned, clasping your hands loosely in your lap. The man let out a light chuckle, his head tilting up a bit as his gaze moved to look over at your left.

"Maybe. If it is, I think I might've butchered the name." He smiled. It felt like the wind was knocked out of your chest before he leaned an arm on the counter, reaching for his glass of whiskey. "Matt Murdock."

You grabbed your near empty glass from your coaster and rose your glass slightly like you were having a toast, "Y/N L/N."

Matt caught on to what you were doing and smoothly clinking his glass with yours before you knocked back what little liquid was left in your glass.

"So, Matt," you started just as you placed your glass down on the coaster, Josie wandering back to your side of the bar. "Why the glasses in a bar?"

He tried not to laugh as he swallowed the mouthful of whiskey he had before you received a small shrug. "'Cause I can."

"Alright then, Corey Hart, I can't masquerade with a guy in shades," you joked, smiling with yourself due to your reference to the song. You nodded to Josie as she reached for the whiskey glass you were drinking out of for her to give you another round.

"Oh no," Matt quipped, his voice echoing in his glass before taking another sip. You huffed out a laugh.

You thanked Josie as she topped you off, starting to lean against the counter.

"So, Y/N," Matt started just like you had a moment ago, clearing his throat slightly as his glass found its home on the coaster. "Why are you wanting to drown in whiskey on a night like this?"

You scoffed and sat up straight again while ignoring your heart beating a little faster from the way your name came from his lips, already reaching for your drink as you turned your body back to the bar.

"Long story. We'll be here all night if you get me rambling long enough."

"I've got the time."

You turned your head to look at him, your eyes narrowing slightly as he had a hint of a friendly smile on his face, his hands already resting on the tops of his thighs as he leaned against the back of the bar stool. You noted how his friend had seemed to have left him now, the beer he was drinking was gone, along with his coat that once draped over the back of the chair.

Heaving a sigh, you took a gulp of your second glass, half of the liquid gone before speaking. "Ex-boyfriend put on a show in the Thai place down the block that got him thrown out."

That answer was half true. After Cameron's outburst, it was clear to you he really only cared about himself and was overall a douche who was mad that you wouldn't give him head or anything like that in the end. Even if you'd been dating for a long period of time, you never felt comfortable enough to be intimate with him.

Now it definitely made sense why you weren't.

It did look like a long time coming for you two after you thought about how he treated you when you were together, and your heart seemed to clench at the fact that you're single again.

There was a long sigh that came from you, the tears starting to gather along your waterline as you shut your eyes tightly. You will NOT cry here. Not in front of this Matt guy, not in front of Josie, or ANYONE ELSE in this bar. You will NOT—

"Hey, you're okay," Matt gently reassured as you felt his hand fall onto your denim covered shoulder. Part of you wanted to shake off the hand. Like, really really bad and just walk out into the cold New York night.

But the buzzed part of you could feel the heat of his hand through your jacket, and you couldn't bring yourself to shake it off. Even if you've just met the guy, it felt comforting.

The heels of your hands gently pressed against your closed eyes to try and get them to stop watering with your tears as you took slow breaths, feeling Matt's hand move to rub your back now. You couldn't help but be thankful in this moment that you already had taken your makeup off at the restaurant.

It took you a bit to recover and get your emotions back to normal like they were when you first walked into Josie's. You personally blamed the whiskey, this usually happened after you've had a glass or two. This is why you steered away from most strong alcohols that you could handle, since your barriers you've made crash and cause things to happen much against your will.

Yet, Matt sat with you, still rubbing your back like a champ while you just got your shit together.

It made you feel even worse.

"I'm sorry," you said suddenly, taking in a ragged breath as your hands finally came back from your eyes to start gently tugging at your denim sleeves. "Like, really sorry. I know how awkward this probably feels for you right now and—"

"You're perfectly fine," Matt said almost sternly, his hand stilling on your back.

"We literally just met, I don't see how it's fine."

"Y/N." Matt's hand went from your back to gently grip your chin so you'd turn your head to look at him. There are those stupid sunglasses again. "It is fine. If I didn't want to try and help, I wouldn't be here, trust me."

You let out a huff and rolled your eyes, ignoring the feeling of his calloused hand under your chin still. "Your friends must think you're a saint of some kind with that attitude, huh?"

Matt snorted and let his hand fall back into his lap as his head ducked down as a small chuckle slipped out.

"I guess you could say that."

Sniffling, you gently ran your hands over your damp eyes one last time before reaching for your whiskey glass.

"Well," you started, your voice coming out a lot more choked up than before, "thank you. I really appreciate it. For someone who just met me, you're showing a lot of kindness that I don't really deserve."

Matt pulled a face as he looked back over one of your shoulders again. Why does he do that?

"We may have just met, Y/N, but I can already tell you're not a bad person."

You rose a brow. "This sounds like you're trying to tell me that you've got superpowers of some kind."

"No, I'm just a Catholic with a soft spot," Matt quipped as he started to slide off of the stool, grabbing his jacket in the process. You let out a soft laugh as you sipped at the whiskey in your glass again, your heart beating a little faster.

"Then wow am I thankful for you, Mr. Catholic With A Soft Spot. Maybe you should get that on a card."

Matt laughed as a smirk started to settle on his face while he swiftly pulled on his jacket.

You tried to hide your disappointment of him getting ready to leave. You had to remind yourself that you've only just met the man tonight, forchristsake.

"I'll think about getting it onto one if I ever have the money for it."

"Then I better be the first to get a copy," you quipped, pointing in his general direction before knocking back what was left in your whiskey glass. Matt scoffed dramatically as his hands dug around for his wallet in his pockets.

"But of course! I can't let down a potential client." Matt placed down some cash for what you could only assume was his beer before shoving his wallet back in his pocket as he kept a small smirk on his face. "I'll see you around then, Y/N?"

You turned to face him in your stool, noticing just how tall he actually was.

Jesus Christ.

You took a deep breath in before nodding probably a little too fast in response. "Y-Yeah, see you around, Matt."

Matt gave you one last smile before sidestepping to navigate his way to the door after waving to a few people and Josie.

It took you a brief moment to regain the breath you didn't know you were holding before letting out a huff.

You guess you'll have to start coming to Josie's more often then.

#matt murdock #matt murdock x reader #matt murdock imagine #daredevil #daredevil x reader #daredevil imagine #marvel imagine #marvel fanfiction #marvel writer #rachael writes

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castingdirect · 3 years

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IMMORAL PROFITS: Why Are Big Corporations Still Allowed To Profit From Rape Videos?

This article isn't about ethical pornography, it's about rape and sexual abuse and big corporations that are allowed to profit from human misery A Canadian student says: 'I've not problem with consensual adults making porn. Who cares?' but the problem is that many people in pornographic videos, especially those on user submitted content generated video tubesites. Just after she turned 14, a man had enticed Jane* to engage in sexual play over Skype, and he recorded her, and posted a clip, along with her full name, on XVideos, one of the worlds most-visited pornography tubesites. Google searches helped direct people to this illegal footage of child sexual abuse. Jane had recounted how she begged XVideos to remove the clip, but instead, said the website hosted two more copies, so hundreds of thousands of people could leer at this most mortifying moment of her life, preserved forever as if set in amber. That happens all over the world: Women and girls, men and boys, are sexually assaulted or secretly filmed, and then a video is posted on major websites like XVideos that draws traffic through search engines, while the initial video assault may be brief, the attack on dignity becomes indeterminable. 'The shame I felt was embarrassing,' Jane had said. Mr Kristof wrote in December about Pornhub, a Montreal-based website that pioneered access to free porn uploaded by anyone - so called tubesites that are like YouTube but orientated to the adult market and selling nudity and sex. Since the article was written and published, credit card companies have stopped working with the tubesite, and the site has removed more than nine million videos in response, with the Canadian and US Governments cracking down on the company's practices. However this isn't isolated to one company. It was noted at the time, that exploitation is rooted not in a single company, but in an industry that operates with some impunity and punishing one corporation may simply benefit it's rivals, after all, remove a brick, it makes a building unstable, knock enough bricks, the wall comes tumbling down. That's what is happening here because when Pornhub deleted videos, millions of outraged customers flooded to it's nemesis, XVideos, which has even fewer scruples. A veteran European Pornographer called Pierre Woodman, said that while Pornhub has been damaged financially, XVideos see Mr Kristof as a 'Santa Claus In Newsprint'. That's not a comfortable feeling and it doesn't sit right, and we need to knock more bricks out of the wall, rein in the entire rogue industry, and for now, the behemoth that is XVideos, bolstered by Google, and other search engines. 'We are the biggest adult tube in the industry, with an average of two billion daily impressions worldwide,' boats XVideos, which SimilarWeb ranks as the seventh-most-visited website in the World. Two slots behind is a sister website with almost exactly the same content, XNXX.com, and each get more visitors than Yahoo, Amazon or Netflix. XVideos and XNXX appear to be owned by mysterious French Twins and based in a nondescript office building in Prague not far from Wenceslas Square. This building is the hub of a porn empire that gets six billion impressions a day and inflicts anguish all over the world, and raises an important question - Why do they get away with this? Heather Legarde, a young woman in Alberta, felt the world crashing down on her last August, when she had discovered that her ex-husband had posted intimate videos of her online, and she said that people around the world were gazing at her naked body. 'I'm all over the internet,' she said sadly; 'Not what I wanted to be famous for.' What's worse, in one video her former husband sexually assaulted her as she lay unconscious on the bed, which Legarde had no recollection of the assault and no idea how the video was made, apart from a clue in the tag: 'Sleeping Pills.' Some 200,000 people had watched her being assaulted while she was drugged and unconscious, so on that day in August, mortified and dizzied by the betrayal, Legarde prepared to tie a noose. 'I was standing in my garage under a beam, holding a rope,' she recalled. But finally, she changed her mind: 'I said to myself, "If this is your solution, he'll do this to someone else tomorrow".' So Legarde resolved to own her story and fight back: 'So it doesn't have to happen to other girls.' That's why she agreed to be quoted by name in the Times column, but her path through the life is now paved with daily humiliations, she regularly finds herself searching for her naked videos and begs websites, sometimes successfully, to remove the ones she finds. 'How do you get your head around 200,000 guys masturbating as you're being assaulted?' she mused. A great majority of videos on XVideos and other tubesites are not of children or of unconscious women, most of the bodies are writing by choice. But it's easy to find videos where the posting or the activity wasn't consensual. A major study published by the British Journal of Criminology this year found that one in eight videos on three major tubesites - XVideos, Pornhub and XHamster - depicted sexual violence or nonconsensual conduct. Some show intoxicated or unconscious women or girls being raped, while others are from spy cams in locker rooms or breach changing rooms and show unsuspecting women or girls, (and, less often, men and boys), undressing or showering. Racist epithets and humiliation are on display; as are misogynistic videos of supposed feminists being degraded and tortured, and many of the videos depict rapists, real or fake, forcing sex on children or adults who are trying to fight back. One on XVideos was captioned with a girl's protest: 'This is not right, Daddy, stop, please.' XVideos guides viewers to videos that purport to show children: Search for 'young,' and it helpfully suggests also searching for 'tiny,' 'girl,' 'boy,' 'juvencita,' and 'youth porn.' Many of those on the screen will be young-looking adults, but some will be minors whose lives have been badly damaged. 'I think about suicide,' a Thai girl called Jenny* said, and she explained that when she was in eighth grade, a man reached out to her on Facebook and suggested that she could make money form modelling, and he advised her to send videos of herself, including naked videos to give a sense of her body; these would be kept strictly confidential, she was assured. Jenny sent him the videos, but she was never paid as promised, and said she forgot about the whole episode - until a friend had alerted her that her naked videos were on XVideos, Pornhub and at least one other site. 'I just wanted to die,' Jenny said: 'I didn't want my parents to know.' Jenny is smart and well educated, and is a beautiful singer, and she had hoped to become a music star in Thailand: 'I don't think that's possible now,' she stated: 'My dreams are going to end because I have naked pictures on the internet.' The Hug Project, a nonprofit in Thailand that works with trafficking victims, got XVideos to remove Jenny's videos, but Jenny quit school because she couldn't handle the humiliation and every day she gets messages from strange men, sometimes with photos of their genitals. Jenny is furious with herself for sending the videos: 'I had the potential to do something great, but now I can't,' she said. She agreed to be quoted, despite her shame, because she wanted other kids to understand that in the internet age, some mistakes are forever. The abusers aren't limited to obscure pornographic websites either. Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and other sites are all sprinkled with child sexual abuse imagery. One woman, Adrianna*, from Illinois, had been trafficked, and her pimp had posted naked video clips of her that had been sitting on Twitter for six years; she said Twitter had ignored her pleas to remove them. When asked to have them removed after the fact by a prominent Times writer though, and they were removed within hours. Not everyone has the opportunity to rely on Newspaper columnists to aid them though in order to get nonconsensual nudity removed, and it's not a scalable solution either. Meanwhile a web search of Adrianna were still on XVideos, despite her efforts to have them removed, and they had collectively been viewed more than 100,000 times. 'The trafficking was one thing,' Adrianna had said: 'But I feel I'm being exploited all over again.' Google is a pillar of the sleazy ecosystem, for roughly half the traffic reaching XVideos and XNXX appears to come from Google searches: 'The porn tube sites are obsessed with their Google rankings because Google is their lifeline,' said Laila Mickelwait, the president of the Justice Defense Fund, which fights against online sexual exploitation. 'Google is the primary means by which they drive traffic to their sites.' A recent search with the words 'rape unconscious girl' using Google's video tab directed people to scores of videos celebrating just that, including one in which a woman first appears to be strangled to death (presumably acting) and then her 'corpse' was violated. A google search subsequently done for 'Schoolgirl Sex' turned up video results of teenagers having sex of all kinds (on a bus, with a 'stepbrother,' etc.) on XVideos and XNXX, with most of the people in the videos possibly over 18, but no way to be verifiably sure. The Times reached out to Google to help them understand its reasons for complicity with companies that monetize from child sexual abuse, but there were no satisfactory responses. Google has it's limits though, and when the Times reporter tried to search 'How do I poison my husband,' the results were literacy or humorous, not how-to instructions. The top responses to 'How Do I Commit Suicide' were for a suicide hotline. So Goole can demonstrate responsibility, it can demonstrate and remove toxic moral materials, so why not rape videos? XVideos and XNXX appear to be owned by the twins Stéphane and Malorie Deborah Pacaud (sometimes rendered as Deborah Malorie Pacaud). The Pacauds, 42, avoid the media and didn't respond to any inquiries, but others in the industry said that Stéphane Pacaud began the business in about 2001 by copying images from pornographic magazines and putting them on a simple website that became XNXX. Fabian Thylmann, who helped build what became the Pornhub empire before selling it, described Stéphane Pacaud as a loaner who devoted himself to his websites and other solitary pursuits. 'Even when in Vegas for conventions, he was often just in his hotel room working,' Thylmann said in 2012, and when he offered to buy XVideos for $120 million, but Pacaud cut off the discussion and said he had to get back to playing a video game. 'I'm too busy,' Pacaud had said, as Thylmann remembers the conversation: 'I've no time to discuss this now. I'm playing Diablo II.' The Pacauds' empire became WGCZ Holdings, a company that appears to have been recently renamed to WebGroup Czech Republic. It controls at least 60 companies worldwide, including some in the United States. Many of us were inspired by Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution in 1989: Is it too much to ask that the heirs of that revolution not inflict rape videos on the World? The Czech police and prosecutors say that they are investigating XVideos and tis affiliated sites, and the Czech press is publishing exposés about WebGroup's practices. Under pressure, XVideos has removed some paedophile search terms over the past few months, but the clean-up doesn't go that far, with a search for 'twelve' on XVideos suggesting 'related searches' of 'training bra,' '7th grader,' and 'elementary,' according to the Times. So what can be done and how can it be done, how long will it take, and will it be effective? A starting point is going to be to recognize that the issue is not pornography or the pornography industry at all. The issue is about child exploitation, and how we can be sex positive, and exploitation negative. It's a fair objection that cracking down on illegal pornography is sometimes a game of whack-a-mike, but while oversight won't eliminate problems of the internet, it can vastly help reduce them. Copyright protection is a priority for U.S. Government, so mainstream porn companies mostly have learned not to steal content; when they do, they get sued and lose. If the United States and other Group of 7 Countries cared as much about abused children as about video piracy, maybe it can make XVideos equally vigilant about rape videos. While there are no simple solutions, there are three steps that could help. First, PayPal and Credit Card Companies should stop working with ALL companies that promote illegal videos and not just single out Pornhub. PayPal in particular props up XVideos because it used to pay for ads, Mastercard took the important step of announcing that porn websites can only carry on accepting payments if they verify age and consent of each person in sex videos; other card companies could follow suit, and should follow suit. Second, search engines should stop leading people to rape videos and stop directing people from the likes of Google, Bing and Yahoo to websites with a long record of distributing them. Third, we should create accountability in criminal and civil law, for that's the best way to incentivize companies to clean up their act. In March a girl who was trafficked at 14 and forced to appear in sexual videos filed a lawsuit against XVideos, but such a suit faces difficulties under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Bipartisan legislation before the House and the Senate would make these suits easier to pursue, which could be a gamechanger by harnessing capitalism to induce better corporate behaviour. 'There's always some enterprising lawyer waiting to pounce,' said Marc Randazza, a lawyer who has represented XVideos and also victims of nonconsensual porn: 'If you put civil remedies in, you would have a platoon of lawyers fighting to help you if you were a victim of nonconsensual porn.' Facing this privatized accountability, companies like XVideos would themselves rush to remove nonconsensual imagery, and we would have aligned the interests of porn king pins and their 14-year-old victims. Some worry that a crackdown would financially harm sex workers who sell videos of themselves, but these three steps would not kill that porn industry, or the porn industry in general. People in the adult content industry say that companies like XVideos have a perfectly good business model with just consensual adult content. Without accountability, corporations are tempted to avert their eyes, the most exploitative companies profit the most, and this creates a race to the bottom. The cost is borne by the unsuspecting children and adults who often didn't know their content is there in the first place. A 16-year-old girl in Perth, Australia, a good student and popular in school, took a naked photo of herself while standing in front of a bathroom mirror, and she sent it via Snapchat, so that it would automatically disappear in seconds, to her 17-year-old boyfriend, with the words: 'I love you. I trust you.' The boyfriend took a screenshot before it disappeared and shared it with five of his friends who in turn shared it with 47 of their friends, and within a few days, more than 200 people in the school had a copy. Someone uploaded it to a porn site and named the girl and her school; over three months, and with the help of online searches directing people to the site, the photo was downloaded 7,000 times. The family moved to a different city, but students there found the image as well, so the family fled to a different state in Australia. Paul Litherland, a former Australian police officer who worked on the case, said that the photo was posted on porn websites all over the world, and she felt she could never escape. She refused to attend school, and she self-medicated with drugs. Then at the age of 21, she took her own life. These are the stakes in which people are gambling with every day. There is more than financial and monetary gain at stake - lives are at stake! *Names changed to protect identities of victims. Read the full article

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picturesinlove · 7 years

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London Film Festival 2017 or: the real world sucks just watch films for 2 weeks

I feel like I’ve spent my entire student loan seeing things at the London Film Festival, which ran over the last few weeks.

Was worth it.

#1: MANIFESTO, directed by Julian Rosefeldt, 90 mins

- Originally a critically acclaimed multi-screen video installation in which Cate Blanchett plays 13 different characters, ranging from a school teacher to a homeless man, performing artist’s manifestos in 13 different scenarios. Part of the financing deal was Rosefeldt had to cut a 90 minute, linear version of the piece for a cinematic setting. Provides some super interesting results.

- Clearly a translation, but an interesting one. Making the viewer watch it beginning to end highlights the flaws in that translation from installation to cinematic setting (can get too much to digest sometimes), but when it works, it *really* works.

- More than anything, made me think about the cinema as a space- question the realms of it and what we’re putting on a big screen.

- CATE FUCKING BLANCHETT!!!! i am convinced no one could have pulled this off like she did. She’s running on adrenaline and pure bravery. She makes interesting choices at every twist and turn. A masterclass.

- You HAVE to be fully, super awake and willing to give this your full attention from the start. It’s slow and beautiful and wonderful... but it is slow.

- Genre hops from scenario to scenario perfectly... from Clio Banard-esque social realism to Rachel Maclean-like cartoonish sci-fi.

- Some things Julian Rosefeldt and Cate Blanchett said in the talk afterwards that seemed interesting (lots of paraphrasing): - The white cube is a prison... talking to people who already agree with you... Cinema has a bigger audience with more coincidental audience members- Cate Blanchett fans from the new Thor film mayyyy see this... - Ask ‘would anyone be interested in seeing this?’, NOT ‘will anyone like it?’ - ‘If I could say what everything means, I should stop doing art.’ - ‘Your brain attends to things differently when watched linearly’ - ‘Art’s role isn’t educative- it’s provocative.’

4/5.

Opens November 24th.

#2: BATTLE OF THE SEXES, directed by Jonathan Dayton & Valarie Faris, 121 mins

- True story of 1973 tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs.

- Rousing good fun. A real crowd pleaser. I saw the Gala screening at the Odeon in Leicester Square... the perfect way to watch- with lots of people, all feeling the Hollywood-ised, over-dramatised, over-sentimental beats together... and super enjoying it.

- It’s less subtle than MOTHER! (2017) about what it’s saying, but has a shining, naive optimism to it that you just kind of have to smile at.

- Emma Stone and Steve Carrell as King and Riggs hold all the moving pieces together. They add weight to potentially weightless, throw-away moments.

- All supporting performances great too- Sarah Silverman the MVP. Andrea Riseborough continues to be a chameleon, effortlessly embodying everything about who she’s playing, and it doesn’t even look like she’s trying. And hey! it’s super nice to Martha MacIsaac back on screen with Emma Stone! Their first time together on screen since Superbad (2007).

- The romance between Billie Jean King and Riseborough’s character Marilyn Barnett is easily the most engaging aspect of the film. The only time it leaves Hollywood feel-good territory. Something so magical watching them drive the sun-kissed California roads together listening to ‘Rocket Man’.

3.5/5.

Opens November 24th.

#3: OUR TIME WILL COME, directed by Ann Hui, 130 mins

- 1940s Japanese occupied Hong Kong. Fang Lan, a young primary school teacher, gets involved in the resistance movement and rises to become a legendary figure in the fight for freedom.

- STAKES. Really, really gets how to set up stakes for the characters. It’s a film about all the small things, the little fights in a war that will eventually add up to victory. Not assassinating all the leaders of the opposing army, just stealing a map that’s been put in a bin in an enemy outpost, hoping perhaps it helps. It’s a section of a larger painting. EVERYTHING feels dangerous. Every character is in danger at every moment, and is always punished for making the smallest mistake. Gives the sense that the oppressive State is ALWAYS watching. It demands you never become de-sensitised to the violence which leads to that immediate sense of danger.

- Had a restrained cheapness to it which I actually quite liked. Every now and then you get some goofy looking VFXs and some badly dubbed ADR, but the restraint keeps everything feeling grounded and human.

- Runs at it’s own pace/abides by it’s own structure, which may be too slow/anti-climactic for some, but I liked it for the most part. Playing by it’s own rules and truly being what it wanted to be... which sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t.

- The moments it steps out of the main story and does a docu-drama thing... just why? Came across so half-baked. Similar to the 3 time scales in Nolan’s Dunkirk (2017), there was never really a moment of release, an ‘oh! that’s a really interesting decision to do that!’ moment. Just left me kind of baffled to why?

- Genuine moments of magic that I wouldn’t dream of spoiling. Seriously some of the most creative, inspired scenes I’ve ever seen.

- Some guy (wearing a BFI lanyard??) sitting a few seats away kept repeating phrases from the film outloud in a strange voice? Why would you do this??

3.5/5.

UK release date unknown, probably some time in 2018.

#4: LAST FLAG FLYING, directed by Richard Linklater, 124 mins

- 2003. A Vietnam veteran recruits his two oldest buddies, who he served with, to accompany him on a journey no one should ever have to take.

- Richard Linklater continues to prove he can effortless hop between genres like no one else, but the film is still packed full with ideas he’s played with before.

- Performances are uniformly and predictably excellent. Bryan Cranston’s Sal is like the crazy friend of your parents who’d show up every few years in a beaten up old car and give you a pack of smokes for your birthday. Laurence Fishburne says ‘praise Jesus’ every 2 minutes and it’s amazing. Steve Carrell has a quiet dignity to him that’s really special.

- Linklater knows exactly what he’s doing with his camera (water is wet), but it kills me to say it felt visually bland like his films never have.

- Features the best ‘characters uncontrollably laughing’ scene since The Intouchables (2011).

4/5.

Opens 3rd November.

#5: THOROUGHBREDS, directed by Cory Finley, 90 minutes

- Two rich-kids from small town Connecticut hatch a plan together.

- Ugh, just.... what’s the point? It’s not boring, but every frame just had me thinking ‘why is this happening?’ So disappointingly transparent. I could see the director sitting planning the movements and cuts. Painfully ‘first-feature’ like. Should have been a rich, twisted delight, but was just so vapid and empty.

- Olivia Cooke is one of my favourite rising actresses. Has one of my favourite performances ever as Rachel in Me and Earl and The Dying Girl (2015), and dammit I cry every time I watch her in it. In this... she does a good job with what she’s given. Anya Taylor-Joy is fun too.

- Badly costumed?? So rarely actively think that.

- Music was fun but as empty and ultimately weightless as the rest of the film. Felt like an afterthought to spice things up.

- Anton Yelchin’s character was the only person in the whole film I cared about. Brings a greyness to such a black and white film. What a fucking loss to the world man.

2/5.

Opens 9th March, 2018.

#6: CALL ME BY YOUR NAME, directed by Luca Guadagnino, 130 minutes

- Somewhere in Northern Italy, Summer 1983, Elio’s life changes.

- Sun-drenched Europe, the smell of warmth and twirling cigarette smoke, deep blue sky- pure, breakfast with a glass of apricot juice and an espresso, the sound of bike spokes spinning lazily.

I wish I could live with these people.

‘Later.’

4.5/5.

Opens 27th October.

#7: THE SHAPE OF WATER, directed by Guillermo del Toro, 119 minutes

- 1962, Cold War America. A mute cleaner at a government research facility, Elisa, strikes up an unlikely relationship.

- Del Toro just *knows* what he’s doing. It’s all so effortlessly confident. So rich and fulfilled. Such commitment to everything.

- The first half is fantastical and brilliant. The second.... loses something. Still has moments of genius, but too much plot. Fizzles out in a disappointing way.

- Reminded me in a lot of ways of Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver (2017). Both are clearly projects the directors have wanted to make for a while, both have amazing first acts then don’t quite know what do with themselves. However, Shape has pure heart that carries it through any rough patches. It feels like it’s actually about something, not just an exercise in style for the director.

3.8/5.

Opens 16th February, 2018.

#8: LUCKY, directed by John Carroll Lynch, 88 minutes

- The swan song of Harry Dean Stanton. A 90-year old atheist’s life as he wanders his desert town, drinking, smoking and speaking to old friends.

- Pure magic all the way through. Plays at exactly the speed and tone it wants to play at.

- One of the most engaging ‘but nothing happens!!’ films I’ve ever seen.

- Everyone hits perfectly. David Lynch appears playing a character that has a pet tortoise called President Roosevelt for fuck sake.

- Bleak, but finds immense joy in that bleakness. Whenever I feel like I’m about to face the void- I will remember the smile of Harry Dean Stanton.

- 3.5/5.

Opens January 2018.

#9: BAD GENIUS, directed by Nattawut Poonpiriya, 130 minutes

- Thai Heist-Thriller about students cheating their exams.

- WHAT A FUCKING RIDE!! More stakes in this than most ‘end of the world’ superhero movies.

- The filmmaking is so good it makes you forget plausibility is sometimes being pushed. Amazing set-pieces. Expertly choreographed.

- Whimsical, but painful and genuinely emotional when it needs to be.

- Every character is so rich and textured in their own way. So fully realised.

- Why do the last 2 minutes of this film exist??

- 2 years time, there will almost certainly be an American remake of this... and it’ll suck so hard.

- SEE THIS FILM. SEE THIS FILM. SEE THIS FILM. SEE THIS FILM.

4/5.

Opens some time in 2018.

#10: THE FLORIDA PROJECT, directed by Sean Baker, 115 minutes

- In the shadow of Disney World, 6 year-old Moonee and her friends spend the summer playing around the Motels they live in.

- Pastel bright colours. Every person has survived a storm. Explore the wasteland of failed corporate America. Become a child again.

- Baker continues to masterfully blend fiction with reality, wrapping one in the other.

- Doesn’t ask you to like the characters. Doesn’t need to. One of the very best films of the year.

4.5/5.

Opens 10th November.

#11: INGRID GOES WEST, directed by Matt Spicer, 98 minutes

- Ingrid moves to California to become Instagram famous.

- An enjoyable, fun Saturday night film.

- Elisabeth Olsen as ‘photographer’ Taylor Sloane is note perfect. Could so easily have slept-walked through it, but didn’t. Her relationship with brother Nicky is so, so good. Idea of this Instagram famous rich girl with her crazy, pill-junkie, roid-monkey brother who she knows is terrible but loves him and is sort of as vapid as he is- just knows how to hide it better. And man, he is SO evil. Haven’t hated a character as much as I hated him in a while.

- Plaza holds it together. Her and the film trust you to realise how mentally ill she is without reminding us too much.

- 1st half is superbly played... loses it somewhere in the middle of the 2nd act but picks up again at the end.

- Music was terrible?! Suggested some weird criss-cross in tone of the film.

- I GET IT! THE INTERNET IS BAD!

3.5/5.

Opens 17th November.

#12: You Were Never Really Here, directed by Lynne Ramsey, 85 minutes

- Gulf War veteran Joe is known for the brutality he inflicts on captors of the children he’s rescuing.

- Deeply troubled. Beautiful. Precise. Scatter-brained. Focused. A violin strung too tightly, then played by a madman. How can something so stripped down and raw feel so symphonic and wholesome? I feel like I’ve been repeatedly smashed in the head with a hammer... but enjoyed it.

- Jaoquin Phoenix. Lynne Ramsey. Johnny Greenwood.

- There are things in this that will play on loop in my head for the rest of my life.

4.5/5.

Opens in early 2018.

#13: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, directed by Martin McDonagh, 115 minutes

- A mother takes desperate steps to pressure local law enforcement to find her daughter’s killer.

- Perfectly woven and layered characters. I fucking hate the phrase ‘the character arc’, but if I were teaching a class in it- I’d show this film.

- A film about relationships, and every relationship between every character or creature or inanimate object is perfect.

- McDonagh loves theatrical sensibilities. Nobody does grand, rich set-pieces quite like him... makes highly stylised situations feel real in the world he sets up.

- I could have watched hours more of these characters interacting.

4/5.

Opens 12th January 2018.

STRAY THOUGHTS:

- Felt spoilt in the audiences I had the pleasure of watching these films with. Always respectful.

- Every time Clare Stewart (head of festival) came on stage to present a film, I just couldn’t help but smile. Bumped into her after a screening and told her my student loan situation. I don’t think she knew what to say.

- DON’T WATCH THE TRAILERS OF ANY OF THESE FILMS. THEY SPOIL SO MANY OF THEM.

- I am consistently shocked by how enamoured I am with celebrities. Some weird conditioning in my brain. Am glad I didn’t queue up to get a picture with anyone. Saying that, this screenshot from a random interview I saw online where I’m juuuust to the left of Emma Stone will live on my wall forever.

ughhhhhh i’m a loser ughhhhh

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