Just watched The Marksmen. too. Agree with your summation, but still enjoyed it. Love me some Liam Neesons.
Update: my daughter complained that we’d started watching Cats without her. So we said “Okay - here you go.”
Ten minutes later, she said: “Yeah, okay - you can turn it off now.”
I sat through Blade Runner: The Final Cut again. I don’t know why, it still seems like a hot mess.
I tried to watch Cats. Aside from being really silly, I was distracted by trying to identify the celebrities in cat makeup and costumes. Perhaps in a Broadway performance with unknown actors, I wouldn’t have had that distraction?
Venom
This is a better movie than it gets credit for. I liked it quite a bit the first time I saw it and seeing the trailer for the sequel made me go see it again. It’s better than Black Widow and is generally a fun movie.
Andy Serkis is directing the sequel and I’m curious to see if it is any good.
I saw The Green Knight Saturday and really enjoyed it. I came in with decent familiarity with the poem, so that helped. The slow pacing, the lingering shots, the use of color, and the division of the story into the five virtues of knighthood I thought were all excellent. I struggled at a couple points as it becomes more and clear to me that I much have some level of face-blindness as compared to the average person. There are two moments where recognizing faces is important. One I did eventually ‘get’, and another that I totally missed.
I read an interesting interview with the director where he related how his personal ‘failure to launch’ relationship with his mother took his story away from the path that the poem took. If I can find the link again, I’ll post it here.
One thing I didn’t get in The Green Knight was the interlude with the lord, his wife (who I thought was supposed to be his daughter) and the old woman. I thought perhaps they were trying to tempt him into not completing his journey. And it was weird that his house was far more luxurious and nicer than Arthur’s castle at Camelot. The lord’s house looked almost like something from centuries in the future. The synopsis of the poem in Wikipedia (which I read right after I left the theater) explained better the relationship between the lord and the Green Knight and who exactly the old woman was.
I read an article about The Green Knight today which made it sound pretty good!
I just watched Shadow in the Cloud. What a bat shit crazy, thoroughly enjoyable movie! Just make sure to suspend your disbelief from some Golden Gate Bridge gauge cables.
Gretel and Hansel
Note: there are about 25 Hansel and Gretel cheapo horror movies out there. Make sure you watch the one called Gretel and Hansel and directed by Oz Perkins.
Oz Perkins is the son of Anthony Hopkins and he has become quite the movie director. Very distinct, somewhat off-putting style and if you want a movie to start with, check out Gretel and Hansel. It’s a really excellenet movie and I can’t even think of what genre to put it in other than “strange horror” or something. It will always be compared to The Witch. Both movies are about a young(ish) girl gradually realizing she may have powers.
I actually kind of preferred Gretel to The Witch, though I am likely in the minority on this one. Very creepy, oddly captivating, I really liked this movie and would recommend it to anyone who likes unsettling, but engaging movies.
Oz Perkins did a great job and the lead actress did as well. I’d check this one out.
“No, the other Anthony who played a psycho.”
You are of course right.
I started watching Nocturnal Animals on Netflix. It’s a rather disturbing film, right from the opening credits. The biggest annoyance so far: everyone whispering their dialog. I really hate this trend.
The Girl on the Third Floor
Interesting premise, disappointing movie. Starts strong, pulled me in, ended up being somewhat pointless and boring. Nothing new here, skip it entirely.
My latest five:
Ikarie XB1
A Czech sf movie from 1963, about an Earth starship on a long voyage to another planet. It’s said to have partly inspired Kubrick and 2001: A Space Odyssey, and I could see some design similarities. Very different and somewhat nonsensical plot, though, and all in all not nearly as good as 2001.
Annihilation
A good, creepy sf movie starring Natalie Portman, Tessa Thompson and Oscar Isaac, with a fine supporting cast. An armed, all-female team of scientists attempts to enter and study a disorienting, very unsettling - and growing - zone of alien influence on the Louisiana coast. There’s a strong Lovecraftian vibe and the movie will really get you thinking.
Beverly Hills Cop
Hadn’t seen this Eddie Murphy comedy since it first came out. Wildly implausible but a lot of fun; the contrast between gritty Detroit and swanky Beverly Hills couldn’t be better done.
Long Shot
A political satire/romcom. Charlize Theron is the beautiful young Secretary of State running for President and Seth Rogen is a childhood friend who once had a crush on her and much later becomes her speechwriter. Unlikely romantic sparks fly. Not a bad movie, but not a great one either.
Zombieland
Rewatched this zombie action/comedy and enjoyed it again. Great cast and lots of dark, blood-flecked humor.
I saw this at a matinee in my home town when I was a kid – only I think it was the English-dubbed version re-titled Voyage to the End of the Universe, with the altered ending (and hilariously altered actor’s names, making them sound more Western European). I was impressed at the time, but then the movie disappeared, and I didn’t see it for a very long time. I picked it up on DVD in the original Czech and with the original ending about two year ago. I was surprised how much of it I remembered.
I hadn’t heard that it inspired Kubrick. More interesting to me is that, like another film I saw in matinee at the same theater (First Spaceship on Venus), it was inspired by the work of Stanislas Lem. So, long before I read Lem’s work and saw Solaris or even heard of Lem . , he was influence on my life.
I haven’t read anywhere other than in the local theatre’s publicity materials that it inspired Kubrick, and I’ve read a lot about 2001, so maybe it’s just marketing jive.
The Wikipedia page claims that there’s a lot of similarity, but I confess it’s not obvious to me.
Shadow in the Cloud - Hulu
It was nice to see Chloe Grace Moretz as an adult now. I think I’d only ever seen her as a child actor. She does a great job carrying this movie, but the movie really does not rise above “just above average”. It is not trash, but it is not a great movie. It is only 76 minutes from beginning to the credits and if you need a pretty good movie, this will do just fine.
Great soundtrack/score, by the way. Very synthesizer heavy, sounded like Blade Runner almost at times.
THE VAULT (2021) netflix. I thought it was a decent little heist film. Oceans 11 lite.
Cute set-up for a sequel at the end.