Arq - Netflix’s equivalent of a Sci-Fi network original movie. Low budget but decent enough. If you like Groundhog Day but wish it had some action and sci-fi, this movie is pretty interesting. The story unfolds and expands greatly as the movie progresses.
The last two movies I’ve seen in the theater are Hell or High Water and Eight Days A Week (The Touring Years). I saw both of them twice–Hell or High Water because a friend wanted to go and Eight Days A Week because…well, it’s the Beatles on the big screen! (and there’s a chance the Shea Stadium footage might not be available again any time soon).
In Bruges
Wow, this is one dark comedy. Wonderful setting, great characters. Two criminals are sent to Bruges, Belgium to hide out after a job gone wrong. One is old, one is young, but they have an easy friendship like old friends. Colin Farrell is one of those actors like Tom Cruise that I don’t really like but man he can really pull you into a character. A lot of funny moments, touching moments, and some brutality. Almost reminds me of an understated Tarantino film.
The Wife and I went to see Sully the other week. Tom Hanks did his usual excellent job portraying an ordinary man faced with extraordinary circumstances.
Colin Farrell does a lot of indie type movies. I respect that. Tom Cruise does lots of good sci fi movies, and I have to respect that too.
I love In Bruges, for all the reasons you stated. It gets a subtle shout-out in Calvary, as it happens.
My most recent five:
Keep of Lost Causes
A pretty good Danish cop drama. After his partner is killed, a troubled detective is assigned to the Cold Case Squad and tries to figure out what happened to a rising politician who disappeared on a ferry boat.
Way Out West
Laurel & Hardy in a fish-out-of-water Wild West comedy; they play couriers trying to recover the misappropriated deed to a gold mine. Some great slapstick.
Under the Sun
Disappointing documentary on the lives of everyday North Koreans subjected to relentless government propaganda.
Angel Heart
Saw this 1987 supernatural detective story again. Great movie; every time I see it I notice something new. Mickey Rourke, Lisa Bonet and Robert De Niro are all excellent.
Touch of Evil
So-so Orson Welles potboiler about police corruption along the U.S.-Mexican border in the Fifties. A justly famous tracking shot opens the film, but Charlton Heston is badly miscast as a Mexican cop.
I’ve tried to watch and like this film because I like Welles’s movies so much, but his character is so horribly unpleasant that I can’t stomach him.
I watched a couple of films by Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu. One was *I Was Born, But . . . * and the other was Good Morning. I like both of them very much. They had a fun, Jacques Tati feel to them. The first was about a couple of young brothers learning that social rank exists among adults, and it has to do with money and influence rather than physical strength. The other is also about a couple of young brothers who go on a non-speaking strike because they want their parents to buy them a television. All the boy actors in both films are charming and excellent, and the domestic Japanese interiors are a pleasure to behold.
The Nice Guys. A pair of mismatched private eyes investigate the apparent suicide of a porn star in 1970’s Los Angeles. Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling are enjoyable in this noirish, somewhat darkly comic thriller. All in all, a pretty fun experience.
Our MotW was a documentary: Weiner. Filmed during Anthony Weiner’s disastrous 2013 NYC mayoral race.
At one point he lead in the polls. He got less than 5% of the vote and 5th place in the end.
Good grief. You have this smug jerk on the one hand and a mournfully sad and hurting wife on the other. But both amazingly talented at what they do. You basically couldn’t write a movie with such a disparate couple and have it be believable.
The key word is “narcissist”. It’s like the old joke, the definition of “narcissist” in the dictionary has a picture of Anthony Weiner next to it.
If you really want to understand why this guy who really could have gone places failed so often, see this.
Typical example: People around him, esp. Huma want to get some face time but he’s too busy watching news shows or online videos about himself. Things are falling apart all around him and he’s only interested in himself.
The sorrow I feel for Huma is just, yeah, well … . At least now she finally has realized that it will never end and dumped him.
Weiner and Jon Stewart were roommates when young. There was only one Daily Show clip and it was Stewart cursing out an anti-Weiner heckler. It would have been nice if they covered that relationship more.
For lighter entertainment and to cleanse that out, try Miss Stevens. A road trip about an English teacher taking some students to a drama competition. Lily Rabe does a great job as the title character. A lonely, damaged woman who none-the-less can still be upbeat at times. (And for fans of The Office, Oscar Nuñez has a small role.)
Thanks, ftg. As a political junkie and documentary buff, I’ve wanted to see Weiner since I saw the trailer. It looks and sounds great.
Sorcerer…a dark film well ahead of its time
Sorcerer
Deadpool
I am getting a little weary of superhero movies, too much of the same old tropes. I was cautiously optimistic about Deadpool, I knew it was something different but I hoped it wouldn’t be too wacky for it’s own good. It wasn’t really.
Not being a comic fan I guess I had the wrong impression of Deadpool, he isn’t some all-powerful Q-type (from Star Trek The Next Generation) guy who moves between worlds, he’s just a manufactured mutant with a sense of humor and an awareness of the fourth wall between him and viewers. His humor and smart-alec shtick was good for the most part.
The movie started strong but degenerated into a standard “boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back” mixed with “bad guy does horrible things to good guy and kidnaps his girl, after a lot of work good guy gets revenge on bad guy and saves the girl in a long climactic battle.”
Ryan Reynolds is ok, but Monica Bellucci was delicious as usual.
All in all I enjoyed The Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy more.
They’re both beautiful women but that was Morena Baccarin not Monica Bellucci.
MotW: My Blind Brother.
It’s like what it says on the tin.
Adam Scott is the self-centered “Blind Brother”. Nick Kroll is the “My”. Jenny Slate is the woman caught between them.
Both Scott and Slate are fine actors, IMHO. I’ve never thought much of Kroll but he does a fairly good job here. Very Paul Giamatti-ish, which is needed for the role.
Basically a 3-person story, so nice and tight. I like films where stuff happens you don’t quite expect but that still fits. This is one of those. Mostly serious but enough funny moments to keep it from being a drag.
3 out of 4 stars.
Slate has an article up regarding the insignificant box office of many of the types of films I have been posting about. In particular, it starts off talking about Other People and Miss Stevens. The latter I just posted about and the former I have seen but didn’t post about.
The standard nice indie movie is being shut out even more from theaters. They have a token release and then straight to VOD. (Sometimes they are simultaneous, but then the studio has to rent out the theaters directly which really lowers the box office to about zip. Theater chains hate same day VOD.)
Outside of the increasingly rare art house theater, it’s going to be nearly impossible to see these types of films in theaters. As bad as it’s been, it’s getting much, much, worse.
And as to Other People. A pretty good movie. Some really excellent acting. Kind of a bummer, topic-wise. Some nice filming goodies. E.g., there’s a standard setup shot from a park showing a subdivision going up. Each time the houses are further along giving a good feel for time passing. Jesse Plemons is good, as expected. But the real surprise is Molly Shannon. I’ve never liked her. She tends to overdo it. But here, it works.
It’s weird to see Bradley Whitford as a homophobic person after his appearances on Transparent. Nice to see Paul Dooley still getting work. One of my all time favorites. OTOH, Maude Apatow, Judd’s daughter, needs to keep/get her day job.
Can Molly Shannon and Lily Rabe get Oscar nominations despite their movies grossing only $93,000 and $4,000, resp.? There’s been complaints for some time about nominations for movies that “nobody saw”. Nominations for films like these will just increase the howling.
NPR had a similar story recently on how excellent but tiny indies struggle to be seen these days.
My most recent five:
A Fine Mess
A collection of pretty funny Laurel & Hardy shorts, including one in which they’re racing to clean up Oliver’s house before his wife returns earlier than expected, and another in which they’re movers trying to get a piano up a very steep hill.
Point of Order
A documentary, largely drawn from original kinescopes, of the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings. Could have been better-edited, but a somewhat interesting look at the beginning of the end for ol’ “Tailgunner Joe.”
On the Silver Globe
A Polish sf drama about space explorers regressing to savagery on a distant planet. Fragmentary, pretentious, and interminable - I walked out before it ended, which is rare for me.
When Marnie Was There
Anime film about a shy, asthmatic girl and the friend she discovers in a Japanese coastal village. There’s a twist that my teenage son and I almost figured out. Beautiful animation; a good but not great film.
Forbidden Planet
Saw this classic 1956 sf film again, and it holds up pretty well. Gene Roddenberry credited it with partly inspiring Star Trek; you can certainly see the influence.
Let’s see …
Indignation. Based on the Philip Roth book. Not to be confused to Goodbye, Columbus. Here, the young Jewish man from 1950s New Jersey actually goes to Ohio where he mets a certain young woman and trouble ensues.
Not all that great. In particular, the story shifts around in time in a very confusing way. Plus it’s just not all that original. But it has some nice nostalgia moments, reminding us of how backwards things used to be. Tracy Letts does his usual nasty authority figure routine as the dean.
The remake of Ghostbusters. Gawdawful. Almost all of it was just “doing filler stuff until we get to the next thing”. Chris Hemsworth’s character was a total disaster start to finish. The crammed-in cameos from the original stunk (with the exception of Annie “Whaddya want?” Potts). None of them contributed to the film and generally brought the pacing to a halt. What a terribly poorly thought out and executed movie.
Certain Women is a 3-part movie focusing on segments in life of 3 women in Montana. Each is almost completely separate story from the others. (But if you pay attention you’ll notice a couple tie-ins.)
Laura Dern is a lawyer with a disturbed client. Michelle Williams is building a cabin and in need of stone. Lily Gladstone is a caretaker of a horse ranch who decides to sit in on a night class taught by Kristen Stewart.
Very slow paced, not a lot of stuff happens. Would seem boring, but instead I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen. Just full of subtleties that requires full attention. Not sure if this makes it good or not. It took up time, was well shot, etc. But didn’t get much out of it.
Mascots. Christopher Guest’s latest mockumentary made for Netflix. Many of the usuals. Meh. See it only if you are a Guest completist.
Captain Fantastic. Saving the best for last. Holy moley. A really great film. Great cast. Terrible title.
Not a super hero film. Viggo Mortensen is living off the land in the mountains with his 6 kids when circumstances force a road trip. The first real exposure the kids seem to have had with modern society.
The road trip starts in the mountains of Washington down thru Oregon and eventually to New Mexico. Lovely. Although why Mortensen was driving northbound on I-5 thru Portland is a mystery.
Can’t really say more without giving away a key plot point.
This is a really good movie, well worth seeing. Won a directing award at Cannes.
We watched Big Eyes last night on Netflix.
Meh.
Finally despairing of ever getting it at Redbox, I broke down and bought Captain America: Civil War last weekend, and watched it for the first time. Quite enjoyable. Not as good as The Avengers, though, which I rank the #1 film in the MCU (that I’ve seen so far-- haven’t seen Guardians of the Galaxy, for example.)
At a church event last Sunday, we saw a good Christian football film called Woodlawn.
Definitely been in the mood for comedy to lift our spirits the last couple weeks.
Tried Joshy (note IMDb classifies it as a comedy) a couple weeks ago. Thomas Middleditch and friends hold a bachelor party despite the wedding being called off.
Nope, nope, nope. This is not remotely a comedy. A downer film. A big downer film. A few lightish moments but a whole lot of sad.
It lurches around with unexplained stuff. A person is one way and a few minutes later is behaving some other way completely.
While it has an impressive list of people playing secondary characters, be forewarned. Many of these are cameos. E.g., Lauren Graham, despite being promoted as one of the main characters, is in it for about 1 minute and has hardly any lines. And it’s not a little joke type of cameo like that of Paul Weitz (producer/director of Mozart in the Jungle, etc.).
Really regret watching this one. 1 star out of 5.
So this week we tried Don’t Think Twice. Keegan-Michael Key as an improv player who makes it to the big time: Saturday Night Live. Oops, make that Weekend Live. Gillian Jacobs as his girlfriend/fellow player. Kate Micucci is the most recognizable of the other members of the troupe. Another player, Mike Birbiglia is also the writer/director.
Some funny improv bits, but still it’s not a flat out comedy. The troupe is struggling and the tension between Key’s character and the rest due to his success is the main story.
Two blink-and-you’ll miss them cameos: Richard Masur (who isn’t even clearly shown on camera) and Richard “Larry” from Three’s Company Kline
Does a nice job of slamming SNL, esp. Lorne Michaels.
It has an amazing 100 for 101 on RT. But it’s really not that great. Misses a 4 out of 5 stars. Make it 3 1/2.
Gillian Jacobs is one of my favorite actors. Roles like this seem to perpetually keep her right on the edge of making it really big but not quite getting there.