Just watched Coco on Netflix. It was Disney, so of course I cried. And it was beautiful. I mean, you could watch it with the sound off and it would be a work of moving art. Liked it much better than Inside Out, which was O.K. but I don’t get all the accolades.
That movie (Coco) makes me weep.
I watched Scott Pilgrim vs. the World for the first time last night. I don’t do drugs, but now I feel like I know what it feels like :eek:
I also watched The Full Monty- I thought I had seen it before, but literally nothing sparked any memories, so I apparently had not. I rather enjoyed it.
Just got back from RBG, the excellent bio of Ruth Bader-Ginsberg. Whether right or left, one can’t deny what a force of nature the woman is and how much good she has been able to accomplish for equal rights in this country.
My wife and son have seen that and loved it; I hope to see it soon.
I quite enjoyed it the first time but it’s a film that really benefits from rewatching. I now like it more than the ‘cornetto’ trilogy.
MotW: Ideal Home. (Insignificant theater release and then to streaming.)
Steve Coogan and Paul Rudd are a couple who end up with a kid coming into their home and ruining, um, er, “modifying” their happy, um, er, “tricky” existence.
Coogan plays Erasmus, a TV cooking/food show host. Very goofy and unserious. Rudd plays Paul, his partner in business and work. Not sure what his deal is except he has the worlds stupidest haircut.
Jack Gore is the kid. Already a seasoned professional at ???. Starts off uninteresting but gets better.
The IMDb listing of the cast is weird. Kate Walsh is listed 2nd and is basically a cameo, etc.
A few funny bits, once in a while a tender thing. But a lot of “Why are these people acting this way?” stuff in between.
Coogan continues to impress me. Generally known for comedy but has done some really nice serious stuff like Philomena. In this he mostly goes off the deep end into zaniness.
Not too bad but a ways from a really nice movie.
Give it 2, maybe 2.5, tacos.
Our MotW is about a woman who after leaving prison tries to get custody back of her child who is being taken care of by a sibling.
Clearly talking about Maggie Gyllenhaal and Sherrybaby, right?
Nope. It’s Julianne Nicholson in Who We Are Now.
It’s really hard to watch a film that has so many similarities to another, esp. when a couple scenes are really similar. But if you pretend you never saw Sherrybaby you should enjoy it.
Great cast for the most part: Julianne Nicholson, Zachary Quinto, Lea Thompson, etc. Jimmy Smits steals every scene he’s in. (He runs a legal service for poor folk like Nicholson’s character.) Even Jason Biggs does a decent job. OTOH it has Emma Roberts in it. Not helping.
It does have the unfortunate disease of inexperienced writer/directors of having too many extended shots that go on for no reason. But still a fairly top notch film.
This should get award nominations for several of the actors, but it’s probably just going to get lost by the end of the year.
Give it 4 1/2 fingernails.
Incredibles 2. A decent effort, but nowhere near as good as the first. Not helped by my theater which had the volume cranked up to painful levels (and it has a very aggressive score/soundtrack).
We got a trailer for a feature-length animated Grinch. god only knows why someone thought the world needed another version of Grinch.
Watched The Thing From Another World yesterday. Still holds up for me.
I love the closing monologue by the reporter, especially the line “A man by the name of Noah once saved our world with an ark of wood. Here at the North Pole, a few men performed a similar service with an arc of electricity.”
I’m way behind in my movie viewing.
“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.” Ho-hum, didn’t move me in the least.
“Van Helsing.” Non-stop CGI, SFX and monsters. I’ve got 42 minutes left and not sure I’ll finish it. Sad, really.
“Singularity.” How DARE they make me turn off a John Cusack movie! BORING!
“Cargo.” Not bad, but the short film from last year (?) was better.
“The Girl With All the Gifts.” Really good zombie film; the young female lead is nothing short of outstanding. Glenn Close lends respectability. A few twists on the usual zombie genre.
I watched ***It ***last night. Pretty damned creepy. This was my first experience with the franchise, as it were. I started to read the book years ago, but I never got very far into it before I bailed. I’ve never been a big Stephen King fan. I’ve enjoyed the movie adaptations more than the books. Anyway, I never saw the previous iteration of the movie either, so I went in fresh.
Right off the bat I was thrown when the little kid got his arm chewed off and then was dragged into the sewer but for the next forty-five minutes or so I was just irritated at all the gratuitous shock thrills going on. I suppose it was all designed for exposition, but enough is enough. There are only so many drooling clowns with hyper-tremors and fourteen sets of teeth I need to see to get the picture. I did get into it in act three when they had banded together and figured it all out.
Still not a fan. I may watch it again to see what I missed.
Went to see Won’t You Be My Neighbor (the Fred Rogers biopic) the other night. My kids used to watch his show. If I was in the same room, I just wanted to throw a shoe at the TV. But he was a dedicated guy to his idea of how to treat children, and it’s a decent film.
My most recent five:
36 Hours
A World War II thriller about a U.S. Army major (James Garner) who’s the focus of an elaborate Nazi hoax. The bad guys try to convince him that he’s the victim of partial amnesia years after the war ended, in order to trick him into revealing details of the D-Day landing. A clever premise and a pretty good movie.
Incredibles 2
A very worthy sequel to the Pixar superhero-family original - lots of fun, lots of laughs, great action sequences and beautiful animation.
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Ben Stiller stars as a nerdy Life magazine photoarchivist with an active fantasy life. He has to leave his comfort zone to find an elusive celebrity photographer (Sean Penn, understated, bemused and perfect in the role) and locate an important picture. Heartwarming and funny.
Le Corbeau
A 1943 B&W French melodrama about a small French village torn apart by the revelations of a series of poison-pen letters sent anonymously to leading citizens. OK, but not as good a movie as it might have been.
Spider-Man: Homecoming
Funny, exciting reboot of the Spider-Man stories, with a new actor, Tom Holland, doing very well in the part. Lots of good tie-ins to the MCU.
Just saw “Antman & Wasp” last Wednesday.
And…?
Charlize Theron in Tully. Been wanting to see this one for a while.
Theron does another great character dive performance like in Monster.
Directed by Jason Reitman and written by Diablo Cody.
It’s so good that even Ron Livingston does a nice job in it.
Theron plays a mom of two, one of whom is “special” with a third about to pop. Livingston is her detached husband. Theron’s brother gifts her a “night nanny”, the title character played by Mackenzie Davis.
I kept waiting and waiting for the “thing” to happen. The nanny turns out to be … ?
At some point you knew that a dark turn or something was going to happen. 2/3 of the way thru there’s an “event” but not really a turn. And then at the end …
Okay…
Looking back, it takes a lot of “just so” things to happen to make this work right. Suspension of disbelief just barely covers it. Things are stretched a little too far.
But it’s fairly compelling even up to near the end.
Best line: “Milk. I make milk.”
Give it 4 1/2 bags of expressed milk.
Equalizer 2
Denzel kicking ass continuously, against the most reprehensible antagonists imaginable (they were only missing representatives from the Puppy Kicking Mafia for completeness of evil opponents). And never a single moment when the audience thinks “Oh no, Denzel’s in trouble now!” A film perfectly matched to summertime movie watching needs.
Blindspotting
Definitely a movie for our times. A surprising consideration of “white privilege” without being “about white privilege”. It will stick with you afterwards. Yet- genuinely funny moments, real tension, and characters that, at critical moments, don’t act or react in a way that seems to be “because that’s what the script calls for”. Finally, the sense of place in this movie is superlatively done, not just a generic “the hood” setting. I have to absorb it a bit more, but it is likely to show up on my “top movies of 2018” list at the end of the year.
Saw https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/leave_no_trace open in my city last week. Debra Granik should make more films and other filmmakers should make fewer.
Just watched Coco on Netflix. Really excellent animation and a charming story.
Last Saturday, we watched “Enemy” starring Jake Gyllenhaal in a dual role…he was really good, my wife enjoyed it too, but it was one of those movies with a “WTF was THAT all about?!?” ending…I’d recommend it, good Saturday night Netflix movie…