Extras was terrific. Patrick Stewart was my favorite.
I finally saw Cocaine Bear on Amazon Prime because it’s free now. I like sick humor but some of the violence bordered on torture porn. It would have made a hilarious short film like Forklift Driver Klaus but that kind of violence for humor’s sake can’t be sustained over the length of a feature film. And then they cop out by letting all of the kids and pets survive.
The Wind Rises is a Hayao Miyazaki film about aircraft engineering. It looks great on a big screen (Fathom presentation).
I’m going to agree with you on this one. I’m normally all in when a filmmaker decides to go over the top, and the overer, the betterer. Yes, by all means, let’s test the limits of preposterousness. Film is a particularly good medium for it. Even so, sometimes they’ll find a way to abuse the privilege.
More precisely, it’s the combination of the story of the life of an aircraft engineer with a completely unrelated novel.
Yes, it’s notably fictionalized.
I’m assuming that the aircraft (except for the ones in dreams) were portrayed accurately. Well, accurately for an animated movie.
Yeah there’s a scene near the end involving an ambulance and a stretcher that I thought went way too far over the top and not in a good way. It made me more uncomfortable than most things I’ve seen in the Saw movies.
The Kate Winslett one made me snort with laughter more than once.
Also Ian McKellen explaining what acting is to Gervais.
Yea, I was pretty disappointed by this movie too. I love Gervais and loved him as David Brent in The Office. This movie was a clunker.
His videos where David Brent teaches guitar are terrific, though.
Here is the one where he teaches Free Love Highway, the song from the Office, and plays an extended version. Like Steve Coogan with Alan Partridge, you can see how Ricky plays David Brent so naturally, he doesn’t need a script entirely.
I’ve seen these - they’re great!
Alright, in this movie thread there has been too much love expressed for Extras so you guys have convinced me to give it a go tonight. Don’t have Britbox, but looks like at least season 1 is on YouTube.
I could take or leave Ricky Gervais, but I’m feeling good about this.
Stephen Merchant as his agent is worth the watch, as are the cameos with movie stars, who are clearly being the opposites of their “real” selves.
Ashley Jensen was very good, too.
The Big Easy (1986)
I was thinking about this movie the other day, and I had some time on my hands, so I found it on Prime and hit play. I recall liking it a lot in 1986, and IMO it holds up.
Quaid and Barkin make a sexy young couple, even if the progression of their relationship is less than believable.
The gray area between the good guys and the bad guys is the real meat of the plot, and I think it’s done in an interesting manner. My biggest complaint is how abruptly it ends.
But the New Orleans atmosphere is great, even if it’s laid on thicker than Dennis Quaid’s accent.
Heh. I still remember the trick with the car battery in the NOPD evidence locker.
The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) from the TMC section on MAX. Charles Laughton chews the scenery and Elsa Lanchester is adorkable. A very lighthearted and abridged tale of Henry and five of his wives (Catherine of Aragon is excluded because she was “a respectable woman and thus of no interest”.) Don’t expect a legit History lesson but there are some real old school British actors here having a lot of fun.
Joe Versus the Volcano (1990) - My son dove into my DVD collection and pulled a gem. It’s been over a decade and I had forgotten how great this movie was. I know the actors and Spielberg bagged on it, but they’re all wrong. The dialogue is so much deeper than the costumes and plot would suggest. The colors and scene setups are so much more dynamic than they needed to be. It’s a masterpiece. In a very real sense this movie altered my world view slightly at an impressionable age and I think it did the same for my young son.
And I am growing ever more confident that Joe really has the Brain Cloud malady the entire time, dies of it, and is an unreliable narrator.
I really liked that movie. Meg Ryan and Dan Hedaya were great.