Isn’t this just about every Baz Luhrman film though? Yeah, R+J wasn’t too bad, but mostly Luhrman movies are people running around screaming like their hair’s on fire with LOUD music in tacky clothes and gaudy settings.
Did I mention loud?
One of the Starz channels had a Die Hard marathon yesterday, and I sat and watched the first two.
Die Hard
Die Hard has become the sort of movie you stop on while channel surfing, then flip away from when the commercial comes on. I haven’t actually sat and watched from start to finish, unedited and uninterrupted, in many years. I’m glad I did. It’s still great. Not much more I can say. You’ve all seen it; you know.
Die Hard 2
Not quite as fun as the first one, due to being much more difficult to suspend disbelief. I mean, its not like Die Hard wasn’t ridiculously implausible, but 2 has plot holes you could fly a 747 through – and they do. Still an exciting ride, but I couldn’t keep my brain from shouting, “Why don’t they just fly to Baltimore?!”
I recall enjoying 3 when I saw it (just once), and I never did see 4 or 5. Perhaps I’ll complete the series soon.
3 and 4 are terrific.
5 is atrocious, embarrassing.
Oh, I loved Girl Shy, too. Very funny! It too can be watched in its entirety on YouTube.
A Man Called Otto. Tom Hanks plays a mean SOB but he gets better. Mariana Treviño gives a stand out performance.
Linoleum
Jim Gaffigan movie from last year. He’s good in it, but the movie has a fatal flaw. Way too boring. Just a boring movie with people doing a pretty good job acting, but not enough happening.
Skip it.
I saw it when came up for streaming…and I hated it. Stupid story and bad songs. BAD songs.
Watched Luther: The Fallen Sun.
The good news: Idris Elba is still as great as ever.
The bad news: This is one of the worst written movies I’ve seen in a long time. It is just horrid. People doing nonsense stuff over and over and over. Just unbelievable. The writer/director/whoever is also way into torture porn and needs to spend time in a mental hospital.
I could list a ton of examples of outright ridiculous stupidity but I’ll just do one. Unfortunately it occurs near the end, OTOH it’s really not much of a spoiler. (Okay. I’m doing two.)
Luther fights the Big Bad at a remote, iced in, site in Norway. He is seriously wounded, including getting his second belly stabbing in the movie. (The first is of course treated with duct tape, etc.) His condition is mentioned as “life threatening injuries”. He is flown by helicopter from Norway to London. (Passing over what sure looks like the White Cliffs of Dover to me.) Not to the nearest hospital in Norway. If they wanted to fly him to the UK for some reason, Edinburgh is a lot closer.
Oh, another thing. Earlier in the film they show him looking at his Coat in the trunk of a car. They later show him wearing his Coat. They do not show him putting it on. Do these people not understand how the Coat thing works???
Give it one coat. And that’s just for Elba alone.
I liked it too. It’s rare for a film to stick with me, but that one, I remember. I have all kinds of theories about it, one of which is that it’s about the impossibility of intimacy between straight men in a toxic masculinity context. I know some people read it as queer; I didn’t, but I definitely think it’s about the challenges of male intimacy. Among other things.
I saw Nope. It was great! I’d seen Get Out and enjoyed that, but I heard Us was kind of a thematic mess so I wasn’t sure what to expect with Nope. But it was a well-wrought, coherent story, true to its themes without whacking you over the head with them, and full of some beautiful subtle acting instead of a bunch of stupid melodrama. The scene where OJ is waiting it out in the truck… “Nope.” Glorious. There are some legit creepy scenes that do a nice job building dread. It also subverted many tropes. And the, um, Jean Jacket was kind of cool and pretty in its own alien way. The mark of a good film is when you’re still talking about it the next day, and we are.
Electrician (2020, Prime) - The blurb: Lonely electrician Mark wants to re-connect with his lost family unit, but he knows to achieve this it means re-opening doors to his past he has tried hard to get away from. The key to achieving his goal could also be his undoing and he must decide fast if he is willing to take that risk.
Tagged as Drama and Arthouse is fair, loads of unusual shots and disjointed story telling. Subtle storytelling is a lost art, it was nice to see it in spades here. I enjoyed it overall and would recommend it to fans of Guy Ritchie or ‘rough around the edges’ British films like Made in Britain (1983) or The Firm (1988). You’ll have to be patient, it’s slow. But overall what the hell, B+, would have this on in the background some time in the future but don’t think my wife should watch it necessarily.
The ending was certainly jarring and I am still thinking about it, that’s a good sign for a movie.
I’m trying to track down movies for the next big rewatch of films, and someone mentioned a famous actor who had directed one movie which was about incest, and never did one again. What/who was that again?
Tim Roth, “The War Zone.”
Thanks, that’s it.
Martin
George Romero made this little movie back in the 70’s and it is quite good. It’s about a very strange boy who thinks he is a vampire. Short little movie, just about 90 minutes, but the whole thing is creepy and effective.
I haven’t seen many Romero movies, but this one was very good. Great performance from the lead actor portrayed a very strange, awkward, and clearly mentally ill young man…who kills people and drinks their blood.
I also just saw this last weekend and have to dissent. There were definitely some good parts to it, but overall I was disappointed. I disagree about the subtle acting: Daniel Kaluuya was stoic to the point of woodenness, and paired with Keke Palmer’s over-manic hyperactivity made for clashing styles that were too extreme for me. The guy who played the cinematographer was also way over the top in his forced weirdness for me. I found the dialogue difficult to hear many times and had to go back with subtitles to check what the hell people were saying. There was also too much “the story needs this to happen, so it happens” stuff for me, e.g. the tech guy continuing to come way out to the ranch. (Relatedly, why do outdoor security cameras need to be wrapped in plastic for a rainstorm?) Also, the overall point of what they were up to (which I won’t spell out here) seemed so…small and inconsequential to me. Finally, I thought the backstory with the chimp was decidedly heavy-handed and seemed like Peele holding up a big sign saying “Look, an artistic metaphor!”
All that said, there were indeed some great creepy moments throughout and I did enjoy the attempts to subvert horror movie tropes. I agree with you about the “jean jacket” and the spoilered moment you mentioned. I got the impression that Peele really aimed high here, but for me he fell short of the mark. Overall, I’d give it a B/B-.
I first saw Excalibur when it was in heavy rotation on HBO in the early Eighties, right when I was really getting into D&D, too. I loved it then, and I love it now, despite its flaws. The Wagner soundtrack is stirring, the cast is terrific (especially Nigel Terry growing before our eyes from a bumpkin to a king, Williamson’s sly Merlin and a very young, vivacious Helen Mirren as Morgana). The lush Irish countryside is a treat for the eye. I only wish they’d had more money for the climactic battle scene; instead, the armies (ha!) are lost in the fog.
I think it’s one of the great sf movies. We had an excellent discussion of it when it first came out: Arrival (seen it - open spoilers)
I very rarely give up on a movie, but I bailed on Moulin Rouge! after about 20 minutes. It was just a loud, frenetic, annoying mess.
You know, Excalibur was on again the other day and I re-watched a few scenes. I realized that part of the movie’s charm for me, especially now, are its “low-tech” solutions. Obviously, it predates CGI and other digital trickery, but I’m referring to the way certain scenes and shots were filmed with techniques that seem unimaginative to me. For example, when Merlin falls under Morgana’s spell, actor Nicol Williamson is shown on the other side of some transparent plastic that looks like ice or maybe quartz crystal, and it doesn’t look at all like it surrounds or encases him. Although it looks unconvincing, it somehow adds to the dreamlike quality of the film that I mentioned upthread. Same for the orange-red circle that’s supposed to represent the sun at the end of the film, and I think other scenes that aren’t coming to mind right now. If there were things about the film that I didn’t like, I’d probably call those shots and effects cheesy, and I’d say that it’s a poorly made film.
So, I guess it impresses me because, while I wouldn’t say that I like it despite the unconvincing shots/effects, I’m not quite sure why I wouldn’t say that.
Nope (2022, Prime) I am convinced Jordan Peele comes up with the worst elevator pitch on Earth for his movies just to see if he can do it. Remember The 2016 hit Keanu where there is a crime fighting cat? No, you don’t because it was terrible and the pitch was bad.
Nope’s pitch is just as bad. And yet the film works. I liked it. A different style of horror film and a different take on Hollywood in general. It was worth my time.
Dial M for Murder. I was certain I’d seen this movie eons ago. I expected to watch a few scenes and go “Oh, that one.”
But it was not familiar. At. All.
I enjoyed it. Nice acting by the three principals (Grace Kelly, Ray Milland, and Robert Cummings) and John Williams was very good as the police inspector. The murder plot was a little too tricksy and convoluted, but it was o.k. Very obviously a play translated to the screen. Rather claustrophobic. I really did like that near the end Grace Kelly was wearing very little makeup, since she had just come out of prison to help prove that her husband was guilty. For an actress that was nearly always portrayed as glamorous and elegant, it was a nice touch.
Before the movie started, TCM played a short bio narrated by Kelly’s son. She only made 11 movies; since she married at 26, that’s not too surprising. But, dang! Her costars were nearly all decades older than she was. It was super noticeable watching the various movie snippets all together.
So, enjoyable movie, if a bit static. Very typical of murder mysteries of the 1950s.
ETA: Kelly did, to my ear, a very good English accent.
With you on Moulin Rouge. I think I lasted 15. Total mess. I like Elton John as much as the next person, but I don’t need to hear a handful of lines from Your Song sung over and over and over and over again.