Saltburn

This looks like a blend of Brideshead Revisited, The Talented Mr. Ripley and Donna Tartt's novel The Secret History and I can't wait!

This is the first time I can recall the following on a movie page on IMDB:

• Sex & Nudity: Severe
• Violence & Gore: Severe
• Profanity: Severe
• Alcohol, Drugs & Smoking: Severe
• Frightening & Intense Scenes: Severe

Blimey!

I saw this last night. Enjoyed the first half or two thirds, but I really felt this was a mess of a movie once once you get to the end. I had only seen trailers leading up to this, and liked Promising Young Woman except for the ending. Emerald Fennell dropped the ball there, and I think she does it again here, but in a different way. Her direction is solid, and the visuals are great, but I would like to see her work on something that is better written, or at least a better planned story. There are plenty of laughs throughout the first half of the film, but as the tone shifts and it delves into it's obsessive elements, it wasn't set up well enough to get there, and the characters end up more 2-D than when it started.

I once again can't go without mentioning another excruciating time at Cineworld for this preview. The audio of the adverts were extremely loud, manageable to a point until their own new advert came on that was near five minutes long, with two annoying yank twins at ear-splitting volume. The film was then much lower. At some point midway someone must have asked staff to turn it up and it went back up to the ear-splitting volume again. People around me were covering their ears, myself included at times with how loud it would get. I go to concerts all the time, so my ears are well used to loud, but deafening an audience because they are too lazy to sort out their levels if a joke.

Shout out to the man beside us who took off his shoes and stank up the place. Let me know next time you're going to the cinema and I'll make sure to avoid.

"murder on the dance floor" will never sound the same again !!🤣😂

Saltburn – 9/10

My local had a member only screening, so the wife and I popped along with little to no anticipation or excitement. Hoping for a nice surprise. We got just that.

About a year ago we had a spat of films that tackled class structure such as Triangle of Sadness, Glass Onion and the near-unanimously popular The Menu. Saltburn very much keeps in with the same theme. Lumping all those films together, I think this comes out on top. It’s funnier, the cast is better, it’s darker, the plot is unpredictable, and the satire bites harder.  

This is Emerald Fennell’s follow up to Promising Young Woman, which I think is a great example of a film where the screenplay was excellent, but the execution was off. It had tonal issues, but Fennell clearly showed a lot of potential.

Saltburn is a leap forward in every way. She gets top performances out of everyone. Barry Keoghan looks likely to follow up last year’s Best Supporting Actor nomination (Banshees) with a Best Leading Actor nomination. Rosamund Pike gets plenty of laugh out loud lines and is on her best form since Gone Girl. Richard E. Grant often pops up in things and underwhelms (Rise of Skywalker I’m looking at you) but here he is in Withnail & I mode, hamming it up a treat in a tailor-made role. He could’ve done with a few more lines.

This is a gorgeously shot picture, with several impressive Scorsese style tracking shots and long takes. It reminded me a little of The Shining in the way it maps out the location and immerses you in its lavish surroundings. With the Saltburn estate being a parallel to the Overlook. There’s even a hedge maze so it surely must have been a reference point. 

If you like the films I mentioned at the top of my review, I’m sure you’ll enjoy this. For me, it’s this years The Menu, in that it came out of nowhere and ended up being a lot of fun. It's a little slow to get going, but other than that I have no major complaints. 

There’s a good chance that Fennell is going to get another Oscar nomination or two from this. I’m going to predict another double; Best Director and Best Screenplay. So that will be two feature films, 4 nominations and 1 (or more) win(s). Talk about being quick out of the blocks.

The only film I left early from, it's nothing to do with the actors, it's a brutal movie. Go and see killers of the flower moon if you want an enjoyable evening.

100% agree thought most of the film was great but those scenes felt forced plus the last 20 minutes was a let down, the last scene particularly was there to shock

7/10 here, sort of felt like an episode of Skins repackaged into an Oxford and country estate setting. There just was not enough character development in this although there were great performances from Barry Keoghan and Richard E Grant.

This was an interesting one, certainly one I won't forget.

I don't think it tells a story that we haven't heard before, especially in a British context. The location was fantastic and visually its stunning. The story was fairly predictable and it seemed to teeter on the edge of believability. The comedic elements certainly soften what is actually a very dark tale.

I was left wondering what Oliver's initial motivation for the whole thing was. Is the fascination with Felix because of him being handsome and nice or because he wants to be the popular, rich guy? What is he really running away from? There does seem to be some simmering tension with his own father but I don't remember that being explained any further. He does come across as quite lost and there's a hint of him thinking he's smarter than everyone else.

The interaction between the two leads was quite impressive and a complex one. I first thought Felix was just going to use Oliver but we later see several sides to Felix. The parents did feel like some kind of cliches (the eccentric, feckless landowner and the charitable wife) and I think more could have been shown of the siblings between them.

Keoghan's accent did slip a bit and I wonder was that why they gave him a character from Liverpool (an accent that has been influenced by Irish immigration). He was very good, hard to take your eyes off him. Its quite impressive just how much he can change his face and he was very good at playing the humble and servile type when he's scheming on the inside. Grant and Pike were entertaining as well and the cousin was perfectly obnoxious.

It was a good film and worth a watch on its own but I don't think it's as polished as Promising Young Woman and hardly an original story.

It is on Amazon Prime now