Understood. But Notorious is also a love story, if that helps, and Limitless is so clever that I bet you’d like it if you gave it a chance.
It was quite clever - I was bummed that the television show got cancelled after one season.
I have to put in another vote for Notorious- its not a typical Hitchcock and it has a great story and strong performances by the leads and the bad guy (and his mother lol) . I am not really one for watching older movies at all but this is one of my favorites of all time.
Better Watch Out
I liked this movie right up to the ending, which I did not like. This is a movie about a really bad(like, really) who does really bad things and the movie does not deliver on its buildup in the end.
I’ll spoiler-box the problem I had with the ending of the movie.
The kid should have gotten killed and our main character(Ashley) should have had her revenge. The movie ends open-ended instead, which is disappointing. I could see a movie like this that works this way, but this isn’t it. We needed to see the psycho-kid get killed.
Maudie (2016), directed by Aisling Walsh and starring Sally Hawkins and Ethan Hawke. Biopic of Canadian painter Maud Lewis, who suffered from crippling arthritis and lived with her husband in poverty in a small town in Nova Scotia. The film goes to great lengths to show us the misery and brutal conditions in which they lived, so it pushes the tragedy. I usually don’t care for that but liked this film just fine. The acting is very good, IMO, although I’d like to hear opinions of those who knew the Lewises. Hawke’s character doesn’t say or do much, so I guess he didn’t really have an opportunity to go over the top. Hawkins, on the other hand, works her eyebrows and eyes like I’ve never seen outside of silent films. She made it look like her character was distracted by voices in her head and things that nobody else could see. Impressive performance from her and a pretty good film overall, IMO (after seeing it just once).
A few days ago I watched, A Star is Born (1976), starring Kris Kristofferson and Barbara Streisand. I’d seen it before, or I’d seen parts of it before, but I remembered almost nothing about it. The big stadium concert scene was pretty cool, I do remember that as the lasting image.
At any rate, I really liked the Bradley Cooper/Lady Gaga version and I was curious to see the parallels. They were few. First of all, I didn’t feel the chemistry between the two leads (and from what I’ve read, there wasn’t much to work with in the first place - the entire production hated Babs). And the big debut of Striesand’s character was weird. We’re watching this haggard outlaw rocker playing bluesy songs and then out comes Babs in a pantsuit singing standards with a suddenly appearing string section somehow.
The biggest problem is you really don’t feel Kristofferson’s character’s fall from grace. He’s comes off as kind of mediocre over all and when Babs hits the big time the only sign that he’s spiraling is the drunken outburst at the Grammies, but even that came off as almost cool as opposed to Bradley Cooper pissing himself on stage.
The ending was a big problem. The two leads have an argument but then make up and off goes Kris in his Maserati to pick up his manager from the airport but crashes his car and dies. Suicide? Possibly, but they don’t give you much to work with. We only see the car screaming down the road at high speed and crest a hill and then fade to black for the next scene and wouldn’t you know it … he’s dead.
So yeah, it was a watered down version of the story that seemed to only come about to carry Bab’s tunes.
I am just over halfway through Ghostbusters: Afterlife.
I am beyond shocked at this movie. It’s…it’s…a family movie? Almost a children’s movie? I saw one trailer, but I guess…it really is mainly a family movie. For like the kids and parents to watch together.
What the heck is this?
I’m slowly working my way through The Last Black Man in San Francisco. It’s a beautifully made film that makes its point well about the effects of gentrification vs ghettoization (I mean, the film literally starts off with someone preaching from a soapbox) but it’s just so depressing (precisely because it has a point) and, honestly, right now I really need films that will either distract me from reality or cheer me up.
If I wanted to watch something to show me how shit life is and people are, I’d turn on the news.
We watched I Care A Lot last night. Basically, its about a con woman who meets her near-match in the way of a gangster. Its billed as a black comedy and I guess it is but it could have been darker and funnier. Not too bad and I guess I’d give it a 7.
I think I saw that a couple of years ago. It was pretty good.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife
Wow, this was nowhere near as good as I hoped it to be. It’s a great example of how not to do nostalgia compared to Spider-man: No Way Home and even The Matrix 4. This…this…is not how to do it.
Everyone in this movie has almost no reaction to the existence of ghosts. The classic ghostbusters show up with no fanfare and put in about 8 minutes of lame-ness before being done.
Note: This would have been a cute kids movie if it did not have the Ghostbusters title attached to it. The movie is not incompetent. It’s just extremely bizarre for a Ghostbusters movie.
I’m kind of in shock. Ivan Reitman’s son made this???
I’m re-watching the remake of “True Grit” and enjoying it more than I did the first time around.
That’s true, but it’s true of all of the Ghostbusters movies. Each of the movies should end with people realizing that there’s something in the universe that doesn’t fit with any scientific theory we have about how the universe works. There would have to be some creatures entering our universe from some other universe that doesn’t work at all the way ours does. Instead, each new movie in the series assumes that the phenomena revealed in the previous movie don’t have to be explained at all.
Exactly.
If you watch the first film again, you see the three scientists debate whether ghosts exist at all, and whether sightings are real, then suddenly they witness one in the library for the first time, which surprises them, and then the hotel ghost (Slimer) is looked on as a mere inconvenience that needs exterminating, like its cockroaches. There’s no consistency.
In Afterlife, Phoebe doesn’t even know who the Ghostbusters were at first, and for everyone else it was just that weird thing that happened in New York in the 80s. Ghosts are accepted as a thing, but not an ongoing issue. That’s the world they’re in.
I watched The Last of Sheila based on @Mahaloth’s recommendation. Thanks for that - I really liked the mystery and suspense of that film.
I also watched The Day of the Jackal and The Odessa File which are both exciting thrillers based on novels written by Frederick Forsyth. The first is about an assassination plot against French President Charles de Gaulle and the second is about tracking down an escaped Nazi concentration camp officer and a suspected group of underground SS officers operating in Germany. Both movies are set in 1963.
Day of the Jackal is one of my all-time favorites. The rifle test with the melon is one of the best scenes in cinema history. 
Hey, great. I’m glad you enjoyed it. It’s almost forgotten by everyone, it seems.
Badlands 1973 with Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek.
I had resisted watching it because of the horrific Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate murder spree. They aren’t characters I wanted to see celebrated in a movie.
It was on TCM Tonight. I was curious why so many critics have it listed among the best movies ever made. I had to watch it at least once.
The performances were definitely memorable. Martin was scary good as a psychopath. Sissy Spacek as the naive and intellectually challenged teen was devastatingly good.
Her character was quite irritating. Probably by design. Her reaction to the killings was so indifferent and chilling. The character Cato gets shot in the stomach. Spacek asks her bf how does Cato feel about that? WTH? Then she goes into the bedroom and pokes Cato with a stick and casually asks what he feeds his pet. Sheesh. 
The real Caril Ann Fugate received a life sentence. Spacek’s character gets probation.
It’s definitely a well crafted anti-hero movie that’s rooted in the late 60’s and early 70’s. Just be prepared for a lot of senseless killings with not one moment of remorse.
Watched the giant shark film The Meg (2018) starring Jason Statham on UK TV. Can’t really sum it up better than Variety did when they said “Neither good enough nor bad enough.”
It’s not anywhere near as good as the original Jaws or even Jurassic Park. But for lovers of really cheesy films it’s nowhere near as bad as Sharknado. It sits uneasily in the middle not one thing or the other.
TCMF-2L
The book of The ODESSA File is far, far better than the movie. Hope you’ll check it out!